#for half my life my biggest want and goal in life has been to be someone approachable and who seems kind

[slytherinshua]

ALL MY LOVE

genre. fluff. boyfriend headcanons. warnings. minghao dreams abt marriage and starting a family. not proofread and written while i'm sick and have half a braincell so i'm rly sorry if this is a mess. pairing. minghao x fem!reader. wc. 558. request. no. a/n. babe wake up slytherinshua is back skdjskd GOD IM SO HAPPY I WAS ABLE TO WRITE SOMETHING FINALLY 😭😭 thought this blog was literally gonna die cause writers block was so strong. also surprised it ended up being svt that broke through my block esp minghao but yk ill take it no complaints !!!!

boyfriend!minghao who’s a gentle, slow lover. he never rushes, but he also never leaves you with any doubt. he can read you like a book, and any concerns on your mind seem to be instantly resolved before you even have time to bring them up. he’s steady and true; your rock that you always know you can fall back on when things get tough. no matter what, he’ll always be there. he gives you a soft passionate type of love that you would never get tired of even after decades. 

boyfriend!minghao who’s always been ambitious. he has dozens of things he’d like to do and achieve, but he also knows how to take life slow and enjoy the present. he knows he has time to do everything he wants, and he reminds you that you also have plenty of time as well. sometimes you need that extra voice to tell you that it’s okay to take a break sometimes. it’s okay to breathe and think. no matter what, minghao will always be your biggest supporter— always rooting for you to strive and reach your goals, even if they are small.

boyfriend!minghao who helps you relax after a long day. warm tea and a massage are enough to put your mind and body at ease. his hands work like magic over your neck, shoulders, and back. it’s so good, in fact, that you feel guilty for not paying him for his service. he would never accept anything like that from you, though. once he’s done working out the knots for 20 minutes, he’d fall on top of you, giggling into the crook of your neck as he acts like your personal weighted blanket.

boyfriend!minghao who has a whole collection of couple items with you over the years. whether it be clothes, jewelry, or even mugs, everything he buys seems to come in a set of two. he can’t even imagine buying something for just himself anymore when you always seem to cross his mind whenever he spots something cute.

boyfriend!minghao who scolds you (but truly only out of love). his attention to detail and observant nature is both his strength and his flaw. he’s quick with his tongue— too quick— and will catch himself lecturing or correcting you when it wasn’t strictly needed. although it’s rare for his scolding to get on your nerves, as you know its a way he shows that he cares about you and loves you, it sometimes does. but he’s quick with his apologies as well, so no bickering between you two can ever last long. 

boyfriend!minghao who is so happy and secure in your relationship. he knows he’s found the one with you, and now that he’s been able to call you his for years, there’s no way he would ever be able to imagine his life without you. the overwhelming fondness he holds for you plants itself in his head and his heart and always has him thinking about your future together. he’d tell you randomly over tea how much he’s been thinking and dreaming about spending the rest of his life with you. whether it be big milestones like your wedding and starting a family, or smaller ones like waking up in each others arms each morning, he’s excited to experience it all with you.

↳ svt taglist (bolded could not be tagged): @kangtaehyunzzz,, @eternalgyu,, @ddeonudepressions,, @hannahsophie0103,, @minholing,,

@shuabby1994,, @icyminghao,, @98-0603,, @weird-bookworm,, @candewlsy,,

@wonwooz1,, @blossominghunnie,, @haecien,, @amara-mars,, @okshu,,

@parkjennykim,, @wootify,, @svtoose,, @seunghancore,, @ujisworld,,

@heavenfilm,, @sobun1est,, @bananabubble,, @talkingsaxy,, @thesunsfullmoon,,

@talking-saxy,, @nicholasluvbot,, @cupidslovearrows,, @50-husbands,, @hursheys,,

@gong-fourz,, @nonononranghaee,, @forever-atiny

[advantage-artrick]

so this topic has been in convo recently sooo...wanted to see what you would think of it...art gangbang👀 who said that?!!-

omg yessss!! the slutty art agenda has been taking over, and i am so here for ittt! ❤️🤭

i'd say my biggest thought on the matter is that patrick should always be there in some capacity, whether he's participating, moderating, or even just on the phone supervising from a distance. (gotta protect the merchandise, you know?)

anywho, for the purposes of this fic, i think i want him present and pantsless, so that's what we're gonna do. 😊

after all, you can't get special best friend privileges if you're on the other side of the country, now can you?

CW: gangbang (duh), slutty!art, kinda d/s, slight feminization, a lil humiliation, we hit home base on this one folks, mdni!!

yippee! okay, enjoy! 🥰✨️

XOXO

despite only being in his second semester at stanford, art had made quite the name for himself on the men's tennis team.

not only was he an excellent player who could give even the fastest fourth-years a run for their money, he was also considered by many to be the life of the fucking party.

art was probably the biggest lightweight on the team, which they all found surprising considering the stories he'd told them about boarding school and his crazy roommate patrick. while it was true that he was good at smoking because of it, and he was good at keeping drinks down, when it came to staying sober, he remained positively hopeless.

not that anyone minded, of course, because a drunk art was a slutty art, and a slutty art was so. much. fun.

whenever the tennis team decided to meet up and crash a friday-night frat party, they usually waited until art was on his third drink to start fucking around. that's because the third drink was when art started to get flushed and giggly, and it was also when he started responding. . . differently to their playful comments.

usually, when they teased him in the locker rooms, calling him "pretty like a girl" and making fun of his smooth, pale chest, he just rolled his eyes and shoved them off with a laugh when they tried to grab a handful of his ass.

but, when they did the same thing to a freshly tipsy art, there wasn't an ounce of annoyance in sight. they called their little game 'fake out,' because the goal was to get art so needy and drunk on their attention that he wouldn't pull away if someone leaned in to kiss him.

but when the 'chosen one' eventually did, they would always change course at the very last second, leaving poor art confused, pouting, and desperate to be touched.

it wasn't that none of them wanted to kiss him. hell, he was so fuckin' pretty even the straightest guys on the team thought about it sometimes.

one of the only reasons none of them ever gave in to his pretty, pleading eyes was that they had a very high-stakes bet going on between them. the bet was that the first person to break and kiss art while playing fake out would be forced to strip naked and run across campus in the middle of the night until they were seen by at least one person.

so, yeah. art remained unkissed despite his drunken self's best efforts.

but then patrick came down for a visit one week in april, and, well, he had always been a bit of a game-changer.

it didn't take long for the team to notice that patrick was a bit protective of art, especially in a party environment. he stuck close to his side the whole time, steering him away from offers of hard drugs and blowjobs from plastered, half-naked girls. he even monitored how much art was drinking while they were there, making sure he took things slow and didn't overdo it after his inhibitions started to flutter away from him.

that's probably why the tennis players waited until art was on his fifth drink and they were all quite hammered themselves to begin their favorite party game. as usual, they all gravitated back together after an hour or two of socializing, and when the guys saw art wandering over to them, giggling and practically hanging off patrick's arm, they exchanged knowing smirks, getting ready to see who would be the 'chosen one' of the evening.

"hey, donaldson. cute shirt," a third-year named brett started off, giving the others a wink to let them know it was time.

"aww thanks, i just got it 'cause i liked the color," art replied, giving him a dopey, lop-sided smile.

"yeah? you got a good eye then, art. lavender suits you," another boy named marcus added. he was the only openly gay guy on the team, but no one ever gave him shit for it.

after all, the only thing it really affected was his success rate when playing fake out. he'd been the 'chosen one' ten times more than any of the other guys, likely because he had a way with words that art fell face-first for almost every time they played.

art grinned, giggling as he slumped against patrick's shoulder, relying on him entirely to stay up on his feet. patrick just rolled his eyes, steadying him easily as if he'd done it a thousand times before. he didn't seem to be catching onto the game quite yet, but he was certainly well-aware of what art was like when he'd had a few drinks.

"hey, art, why don't you give patrick's poor shoulder a rest, huh?" josh, a second-year singles player, suggested. "come over here with me, i'll make sure you don't fall over."

art nodded easily, entranced as he removed himself from patrick's side and stumbled in josh's direction. but right as he was about to fall into his teammate's waiting arms, one final voice spoke up from the arm chair in their corner.

"no, no, no, hang on, artie."

this voice belonged to none other than austin, their beloved team captain.

"come sit on my lap, sweetheart. josh is so clumsy, he'd drop you right on that cute little ass of yours."

"i would not! art, c'mere," josh retorted, pulling art closer by his wrist and wrapping an arm tightly around his waist.

art squeaked, blushing as he glanced between the two of them nervously. he looked so out of it already, just from a few compliments and a little fight for his attention. it was enough to get him higher than any drug on the market.

now, patrick seemed to be catching on. he could tell they were supposedly just fucking with art for their entertainment. but, he could also detect a strong hunger in their body language towards him, telling patrick that not everything they were saying was entirely untrue.

"there we go. hey, pretty boy," austin cooed with a salacious grin.

patrick hadn't heard what he'd said to win the battle with josh, but when he looked up, art was sitting sideways on his lap in the arm chair, giggling as austin poked playfully at his waist.

the other guys were watching on with jealous eyes, pretty much resigned to the fact that they weren't going to be the night's winner. patrick smirked, the scene reminding him of similar situations they'd been in back at the academy.

he'd used to be just like those boys, pining as he watched art soak up the attention of other guys like a little sponge. but that had been before he'd discovered just how easy art really was when he was drunk, and how easy he was sober if you knew the right buttons to push.

"wow, you're so light, artie," austin teased, standing up with art in his arms just to hear him squeal. "how much are you, anyway, 120?"

"shit, austin, you know you never ask a girl that," brett spoke up, acting mockingly aghast.

art blushed, squirming in austin's hold as he whined out a petulant, "'m not a girl."

"might as well be," marcus said casually, as if that simple sentence didn’t make art hard as a rock within seconds every time they did this.

"you sure are soft like one," brett supplied.

"you got some pretty nice tits, too," austin purred, sitting back down so art wouldn't wiggle right out of his arms.

"yeah?" art sighed drowsily, biting his lip at austin with a shy smile.

"oh, yeah," the team captain answered, walking his fingers up art's stomach so he could squeeze one of his growing pecs playfully.

they'd certainly gotten bigger since the beginning of the year. actually, it was one of the first things patrick noticed every time he came to visit.

art moaned softly, letting his head fall onto austin's shoulder with a hum.

"god, he is so. . ." brett commented, fully entranced by the beauty of art's syrupy movements and subtle flirtations.

even when he was overwhelmed with all the attention, art still managed to keep every boy present wrapped around his little finger.

even patrick, who was the only one to have already gotten a taste, was watching in awe, waiting for a chance to pull art's focus back over to himself.

"can you hurry up and win already, asshole? i want a turn," josh complained, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed.

"who says you get him next?" marcus asked him, smirking deviously.

"marc, i swear to god-"

patrick frowned, wondering exactly what winning meant in this scenario. it didn't take long for him to find out, because right after josh said it, austin pulled art's head up from his shoulder and leaned in as if to press their lips together.

art shut his eyes, tilting his head up eagerly. . . but the contact never came. right at the last second, austin brought a hand up to cover his mouth, veering off course to kiss his forehead instead.

"fake out," brett grinned, and the guys all laughed, watching art's face fall in disappointment.

suddenly, it was starting to make a whole lot more sense why art hadn't told patrick about having hooked up with anyone on the team.

it's because he hadn't.

but it wasn't because they didn't want him. it couldn't be. patrick could clearly see that they would kill for an hour alone with him, so why. . .?

"you guys are so mean," art huffed, but he made no move to get off his captain's lap. he was obviously used to their little game, but that didn't mean he was any better at stopping himself from being pulled along and getting caught up in the moment. it just meant he was less embarrassed about it in the mornings now.

he never expected to be kissed, but he never stopped hoping, either.

the team laughed again, knowing there were no real bad feelings between them. in fact, josh was already trying to lure art over to him with the promise of a shoulder massage, but art was being a tease, smiling as he told him marcus' were better anyway.

they all appeared to be having fun on the surface, but patrick knew art, and he knew when art was desperate to be touched.

this was probably the most needy he'd ever seen art get with anyone else. he was so red and glassy-eyed, and whatever he thought about when he spaced out for a second was practically making him drool. he wanted it bad, but no one was giving it to him, and patrick was absolutely not having it.

"art, c'mere," he ordered, and the whole circle fell silent.

the guys looked over at him in surprise, almost like they'd totally forgotten he was there. art nodded absently, austin helping him get back on his feet before he was wandering back over to patrick with zero hesitation.

"pat, they're being mean to me," art whined, tucking himself back under his best friend's outstretched arm.

art practically melted into his side, taking a deep breath of his party cologne and nosing idly at patrick's jaw. it was almost like he belonged there, and none of the guys had ever seen him quite so at peace when he was already that drunk and horny.

"i saw," patrick responded, raising an eyebrow at the group. there was a part of him that yearned to establish who art's 'chosen one' really was, regardless of who he would've let kiss him. "care to explain?"

"it's just a game, man," josh defended after a moment, not wanting to show how much patrick actually intimidated them. "he's cool with it, i swear."

patrick scoffed, biting back a groan when art started mouthing drunkenly at his neck.

"i know that," he spat, laughing at their scared expressions. "i'm asking why none of you assholes have fucked him yet."

"they've got a bet or somethin'," art mumbled after a moment of startled silence. "they think i don't know 'bout it, but it's why they won't kiss me. . . will you kiss me? pleaseee?"

"just a sec, baby, i wanna talk to them first," patrick placated, smiling at him lovingly.

he was just the cutest thing sometimes. he made it hard for those around him to maintain their self control, which was why it was so surprising these guys had held out for months against their desires because of some stupid bet.

"hang on, dude. before you say anything, the bet isn't why we haven't passed him around yet," marcus butted in from his spot next to austin's chair. "we didn't want to do anything like that because we knew he'd regret it in the morning. he only ever wants us when he's drunk. when we say shit like that in the locker rooms, he always tells us to fuck off. it just didn't feel right."

the team appeared to think patrick would be understanding of this, or perhaps even grateful, but after hearing their little respectful explanation, the only thing he could do was laugh.

"aww, art, have you been playing hard to get?" he teased, tugging at art's messy curls to hear him whimper. "what, you didn't want your new college friends to know you're a slut when you're sober too?"

art groaned, hiding his face bashfully in patrick's shoulder.

"'m not a slut," he argued, but the way he was trying to crawl inside patrick's skin was kind of contradicting that statement.

"no? well, you'll have to tell that to the seven guys who took turns with you back at the academy, huh? and you'll have to convince me too, artie, but we both know that's not going to happen."

"yeah, okay," art sighed. "whatever, can you please just make them fuck me now, pat?"

"all of them?" patrick asked with a smirk, surveying the group to get their reactions.

oh, they were down. every single one of them was so fucking down.

"uhuh," art confirmed, risking a glance over at the team. they were all watching him with darkened eyes, as if they were one small gesture away from tearing him apart on the spot.

art's blush deepened. just looking at the hunger in their gazes was making him feel antsy. almost empty, really.

"so, what do you say, guys?" patrick asked them, grinning. "you think you can share?"

the agreement was, as expected, unanimous and very enthusiastic.

and that's how art found himself back at his dorm, starting to sober up as five boys crowded around where he was sitting on his bed.

well, four of them did, at least. patrick was standing off to the side, watching as they approached to make sure art was in good hands.

josh, who thankfully happened to be art's new roommate, stepped up first. for all his earlier bravado, he seemed hesitant to start anything without patrick's permission, likely still in disbelief that this was actually happening.

patrick sighed, pushing him aside and taking his place in front of art.

"come on, guys," he huffed impatiently. "if you're still thinking about your little bet, i will gladly kiss him first. i never agreed to it so i can't lose, right?"

art nodded happily before the team could even respond, reaching up to pull patrick between his legs.

within seconds, patrick was pushing him down on the bed and kissing him hard, doing everything he knew art liked with an easy precision.

art gasped, wrapping his legs around patrick's waist to pull him closer. it was exactly what he'd been needing for months, and he couldn't help but curse himself for how embarrassed he'd been all year to ask for it.

but he had it now, and all he could focus on was the wet slide of his tongue against his best friend's and the thrilling sound of belt buckles being unfastened in the background.

the rest of the night occurred in three stages.

the first stage had him on his hands and knees, moaning around josh's cock while patrick got him opened up with his fingers.

it wasn't something pat trusted any of the other guys to do, that was for sure. not even marcus, who had offered, but patrick knew art's body better than any of them, and he really didn't want him to get hurt.

not too hurt, at least. he didn't seem to care when josh started fucking art's mouth, making him choke and drool in an attempt to keep up. he was taking it well, though, swallowing him down to the base with ease and letting out sounds of enjoyment that were driving everyone in the room crazy with desire.

"fuck, look at him," they were saying, all either stroking themselves lazily or just about to.

it was the most pornographic thing they'd ever witnessed, and three of them hadn't even touched him yet.

"yeah- fuck- take it, baby. jus' like that," josh groaned, pulling his hair until art keened and started leaking on the mattress below him.

when patrick brushed over his sweet spot a few times, prodding at it roughly just to be a menace, art gasped and came for the very first time that night.

"fuckin' slut," patrick laughed, pulling his fingers out and smacking his ass for good measure.

art whined, arching into his hand like he wanted more, and as much from the sight of him as the warmth of his mouth, josh was finishing right after in record time.

art's eyes fluttered contentedly, the feeling of josh filling his mouth making him hot and dizzy. he swallowed it all like it was nothing, falling face-first into the bed as soon as josh pulled out.

that seemed to be his way of begging for more.

"who do you want first, baby?" patrick asked, spreading him open to tease his teammates with the sight of his tiny pink hole.

austin groaned, looking like he might pass out if he didn't get inside him immediately.

"victor gets the spoils," he said, stepping forward before anyone else could.

patrick snorted, letting him take his place behind art and going to grab them all some condoms. he silenced their complaints with a single glare, reminding them how lucky they were he was letting this happen in the first place.

once austin was all wrapped up, it was time for stage two.

in stage two, no one was left behind. while austin was fucking art from behind, art was up on his knees, going back and forth between sucking off brett and marcus.

within minutes, he was struggling to stay focused, moaning as austin absolutely pounded his prostate. he could barely stop his eyes from rolling back in his head, much less keep his lips wrapped around brett's cock.

but he did his best and they seemed to be enjoying it, pulling his hair and fucking his mouth when they could. marcus even slapped him once or twice, mostly out of overwhelming affection, and art fucking loved it every single time it happened.

the second austin stilled inside him, art fell forward between the two in front of him, pushing back against austin's lap to prolong the feeling of his cock pulsing against his walls. he couldn't feel him filling him up like he wanted to, but just imagining it was enough to have him shooting off again.

"oh my god," brett groaned, hurrying to take austin's place the second he pulled out. "this is fucking unreal. i swear, his ass should be in a museum."

"tell me about it," austin huffed, ruffling art's hair as he went to join patrick and josh on the other bed. "just wait 'til you get inside him."

"he's good, huh?" patrick agreed, grinning proudly.

"oh, fuck yeah. tightest pussy i ever had."

art was panting and a bit overstimulated, but he was in heaven, listening to them all talk about him like he wasn't there to hear it.

he let out a high-pitched whine, biting his lip when brett spread his cheeks open and spat directly on his twitching hole.

"you wanna eat him out?" patrick asked, palming himself languidly through the boxers he'd stripped down to. "it's his favorite thing, i swear to god. he'll be all over you for weeks if you do."

art hummed in agreement, his eyes unfocused and his brain barely working. he wasn't even sure entirely what he was agreeing to, he just knew he wanted something else inside him.

"nah, man. i would, but i'd feel like i'm indirectly sucking austin's dick, and i'm not really into that," brett answered, thumbing over art's entrance reverently.

patrick shrugged as if to say 'your loss,' and then brett was sliding a condom on and pressing into art's perfect ass in one clean thrust.

and that's how things continued for the next hour or so, each teammate taking turns with art's mouth and ass, usually two at a time but sometimes three when art could manage it.

they didn't stop until everyone had come at least twice and art had finished three times, which is when he'd promptly fallen flat on his face, cushioned by the mattress while everyone laughed and high fived around him.

"bro, we didn't even touch his dick once," josh pointed out, nodding towards the wet spot on the bed beside him.

"slut," austin mumbled, smiling at how cute he looked all fucked out and boneless. "i can't believe we waited so fucking long to do this."

"oh my god, the locker room is going to be hell for him now," marcus added, chuckling. he clearly didn't feel bad about it at all.

"yeah, 'cause now we know he likes it, and we've got more buttons to press," brett grinned.

"you know, this might be the straightest i've ever felt," marcus declared, studying art's curves curiously.

"well yeah," josh shrugged, as if that made perfect sense. "i mean, all the boys you've fucked before this have been boys, and he's. . . well. . ."

patrick snorted, adding that comment to his list of things to tease art with later. he was the only one who hadn't gotten to fuck him yet, preferring to stay off to the side supervising in case something went wrong.

when the guys had asked him why, though, he'd just said, "if i take my turn now, he won't be as tight when you go again."

and they'd laughed and told him to fuck off, but they hadn't pushed anymore. patrick was definitely grateful for that, but it had been a long night of not coming deep inside his best friend's ass, and he knew it was his time to shine.

"looks like you'll have to do all the work on this one, man," austin said when he saw patrick standing up to go over to him. "i don't know if he could help if he tried."

patrick just shrugged, rolling him over and smiling when art blinked sleepily up at him.

"you alright?" he asked, climbing up on the bed beside him.

"patrick," art sighed, reaching up to touch his pretty dark curls. "'m good."

"yeah?"

patrick shifted so he was hovering over art, sliding one knee up between his thighs. art nodded, making room for him and pulling him down into a hug.

"soooo good," he slurred, giggling breathlessly. "but. . . wan' you to come in me. please?"

and who was patrick to deny him such a thing?

"that's so not fair, bro," brett pouted, but he sat down on josh's bed to watch anyway.

the other guys joined him, admittedly curious to see what art was like with someone who knew him so well.

"best friend privileges," patrick smirked, tugging his boxers down to finally pull his aching cock out.

and this was stage three.

one of the guys gasped. another muttered an astonished, "oh, shit."

they would never say it out loud, but patrick's earlier excuse may not have been a complete lie.

art, on the other hand, had absolutely zero problem saying it right to his face.

"mmmh so big, patrick," he moaned when he felt it start to push inside him. "so good."

the others watched on in awe (and maybe a bit of envy) as patrick made art completely fall apart piece by piece.

with just a few slow thrusts, he had him almost arching off the mattress, mewling with his eyes rolled back in his head. even though he'd already come three times, he was impossibly hard, and his pretty cock was leaking onto his soft stomach with every little grind.

"there we go," patrick breathed. it was almost like he'd been watching them act all proud of themselves all night just so he could step in and show them how it's really done.

like he wanted them to know they would never be able to get art like this. not like he could.

never like him.

"doin' so good, baby. you were so fuckin' good. so pretty," he murmured, pressing their lips together gently before hooking his arms under art's knees and folding him completely in half.

art cried out from the change in the angle of patrick's thrusts, every single movement causing the fat head of pat's dick to brush his sweet spot perfectly.

spurred on by his needy sounds, patrick picked up the pace, fucking him faster and deeper until art was trembling beneath him and his face was wet with tears.

"come on, baby," patrick huffed, feeling himself getting closer to the edge. "come on, you gonna come f'me? hmm?"

art nodded, sobbing as his release slammed into him and his poor, weeping cock spurted weakly across his tummy.

patrick groaned at the sight of him. he was such a fucking mess. his face was covered in drool and tears, he had somebody's cum in his hair despite how good he was at swallowing, and he had bruises forming on his hips and his own release all over his chest and stomach. he looked like he'd just been passed around the whole fucking school, and patrick had never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.

"oh, fuck. good boy, artie," patrick groaned, fucking him slower as he worked through the aftershocks of his fourth orgasm of the night. "i know, baby," he cooed. "i know, they can't fuck you like i can, huh?"

there were a few noises of offense from the other side of the room, but they were quickly silenced by art's enthusiastic agreement.

patrick laughed, thrusting a few more times before he was coming, spilling deep inside him just like art had been waiting for all night.

art sighed, relaxing into the feeling of being completely filled up. patrick kissed him then, tilting his head up so he could slip his tongue past art's lips.

the poor thing hadn't really been kissed all night. everyone else had been so focused on getting their dicks in his holes to think he might want something like this.

that was perfectly fine, though. it was just another bullet point they could add to the list of things he could only ever get from patrick.

yeah, art donaldson may have been a slut, but to say he didn't belong to anybody. . .

well, that would be a bold-faced lie.

sorry this one took so long, it kinda ran away from me 😅😭

i really need to work on making these shorter lol, like not every smut request requires months of context.

anywho, i hope it was worth the wait! i love love love slutty art, so this was an absolute joy to write! requests are always open!

XOXO ❤️✨️

[myceliacrochet]

Itaf and Mazen's love is beautiful, I love to see it. We are Facebook friends. She said the other day that each donation and kind word is a rose we place on her path. May Itaf and Mazen live happily ever after.

The words of her GoFundMe:

"Hello!

"I am Itaf and this is my husband Mazen.

"My husband is everything to me, and I am his everything... and we are being starved. We want to be together, and we want to see each other smile again in peace. Our love is unique to us, we don't want to lose each other. We don't want a world where one of us doesn't exist anymore. We desire the end of this constant anxiety, hunger and danger. Our love is strong and we want to connect with the whole world, we have so much to give back. Please feel your power to support us through the tiniest contribution, so we can leave Gaza eventually for freedom and peace.

"What happened to us?

"My husband and I live in Rafah, Gaza under harsh conditions. For more than five months, we have been under bombardment, war and fire.

"My house was severely damaged due to the bombing that was next to me. The shrapnel fell right on top of us. We narrowly escaped death. Many of my neighbors and relatives died because of these attacks. So we couldn't stay and had to relocate. Our new "house" is mainly made of tin sheets (see picture below).

"We are now in severe hardship, hunger and thirst. We eat grasses, animal feed and drink polluted salt water to survive. There is no water, food, or treatment. Even though the little we have, every morning if possible, we feed the cats and make sure they got something as well.

"We want to escape by all means. Please support us get out of here. You can make a difference even by donating a coffees worth.

"Helping us means that you give us life and live safely. Help, to get us out of this burning hell here. The bombs are dropping mercilessly on our land.

"Every minute makes a difference. Every little amount counts. A small amount that doesn't hurt you, can make the biggest difference to us... you personally don't have to carry a huge burden, we are asking for a collective deed, when many people give a little, we will make it. Thank you so much.

"❤️

"---

"Adressing your commonly asked questions:

"1. Can we trust this?

"Our friend in Germany has started this campaing for us, because we in Palestine are not allowed to do a GoFundme. Our friend will make sure the money reaches us safely via Western Union. Thank you so much for helping and asking!

"2. It feels like a losing battle

"That's true for every time you give a Dollar to a homeless person as well, and you still do it from time to time, so they can get something to eat today.

"In our case, we are trapped in the real life squid-games or hunger games. You can actually help a ton by giving 1$ and spread the news! We are still alive... the battle is not lost yet.

"3. Focus on two people? Then what about all the other people?

"We love this thought, because it shows so much compassion, but it will cause hopelessness and inaction. You are here now, so if you want to help, here is a good place to start. Just even 1$ and spreading this campaign on social media to reach our goal will make the biggest difference. Thank you!

"(If you want to help furthermore, we'd greatly appreciate if you consider donating to the UNWRA Gaza relief fund as well).

"This is a scene from my diary of harsh conditions. It was a very good day I bought half a kilo of rice, cooked it, and now I'm done. I was trying to buy a kilo of sugar but it is insanely high priced.

"4. Why this specific amount and does it really help?

"The little bit of food we can still get here got extremely expensive, so even just staying will be costly if we want to stay alive. The costs of coordination at the Rafah crossing will go through the Egyptian Hala company. One of the burdens we have to carry is non-reliable bureaucracy, the cost is $5,000 - $10,000 per person. There are road and crossing fees from Rafah to Cairo of approximately $100 per person. I do not know how much it costs to fly from Egypt to the host country where Carolin invited us to. So our aim is to get $20.000 (which translates to 22.500 Euros incl. the GoFundMe fee) to at least get the Rafah crossing for sure. If we have extra we can afford to get to our host country as well, which would be the absolute dream - but our first goal is to get out.

"5. How do I stay informed?

"I post my Inside-Gaza diary on Facebook and Instagram, please feel free to follow me there, I will post updates!

"Follow my diary on Facebook

"Follow me on Instagram

"Furthermore Carolin will help keep this Fundraiser up to date!

"6. Why should I help?

"Because we can only succeed when everybody gives a little bit.

"This is our current home, thanks for your help even for the slightest bit! Greetings from Gaza...

"7. How often is the money being sent?

"The donations are being transferred on a regular basis, so that they are with Itaf and Mazen as soon as possible.

"8. How is the money being used?

"It will be used to evacuate eventually and in the meantime to buy food and water, to survive the harsh conditions.

"--

"Thank you for taking the time to read this and for considering supporting our cause."

Donate:

https://gofund.me/79bcce1f

Vetting:

I don't know of any vetting for Itaf and Mazen. I just know them on Facebook, and the RIS is clean on all the pictures in this post.

@acehimbo @butchfeygela @bisexualspeed @butchjeremyfragrance @k1teko @ohjinyoung @revoltingcocks @yampulp @eraserheadbaby2 @nocturnal-notes @rememberthelaughter2016 @parfaithaven @gryficowa @tittyinfinity @6o3o9 @fantasykiri5 @sadbiooi @battleofthegarys @illpunchababy @alliterate-accident @flashingdaydreams @s7ar-sai10r @tallytals @monotremesoup @dlxxv-vetted-donations @ilikefoodandyourmom @i-named-my-cactus-albert @pogasssm @thethrillbasisindeterminable @agremlinthing @huzni @bagofbonesmp3 @hussyknee @divorce-enjoyer @treffyfrinn @effen-draws @thatsonehellofabird @neechees @queerpotat @queerstudiesnatural @maester-cressen @lampsbian @freddyfazbearboyfriend

[cheeseplants]

2024 fic roundup

Can I just create an ask game? I wanted to create a snapshot for 2024 for me, and would love to hear from others, so I’m going to interview myself like a loon.

Please join in if you want 🙂 I know we’re in Dec, so feel free to answer at the end of the month if you wish!

What fandoms do you write in?

Good Omens! Aziraphale/Crowley!

And I wrote one for the tiny fandom of The House in the Cerulean Sea. Linus/Arthur 4ever.

How many words have you published in 2024?

This is a tricky one. My official total is 270,737 words but three of those were collabs. So if I count the fics that only I wrote it’s 117,911. Which is still a bit mind-blowing to me, as I only started doing this Nov 2023.

What is your greatest achievement this year?

It has to probably be my first ever longfic over 50k. I set myself a goal to write something long and follow the beats of a classic romcom. And I did it! It was really me muddling through it trying to work out what the Hell I was doing. But it exists and some people even said they liked it, so I count that as a win. 

It’s called The Apple Doesn't Fall Far and it’s about Crowley inheriting a cottage from his aunt and butting heads with Aziraphale the councillor who is in charge of knocking it down. And spoiler alert. They fall in love

What are your favourite top three fics you wrote this year?

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far - as above! 

Rating: E 

Wordcount: 58,135

It’s sugary sweet with enough light angst to create some nice drama. But it’s mainly cosy, low stakes, comfortable, contemporary British romance vibes. 

The Ecstasy of Eden

Rating: E

Wordcount: 28,303

5 times they used sex pollen, and the one time they didn't Through the Ages fic. Written for the High Sex Pollen Event. It is a fun romp through the ages with some surprising angst chapters that I absolutely love. They are silly piney fools. ALSO I got art made for it!

If we were

Rating: E

Wordcount: 3,362

In 1941 Aziraphale and Crowley imagine their life as humans.

This fic fell out of me almost fully formed. I was half asleep and began daydreaming fic (as you do) and by the time I got to my laptop, my fingers wrote it in basically a couple of hours. It is everything I love. Bittersweet, yearning, them being completely in love but unable to do anything about it, slow dancing, almost kisses and some spice!

What was your biggest pit of despair moment?

The Ecstacy of Eden was a slog at times. I had written chap one and three, but it took so long for me to get chap two into shape. I couldn’t work out what the Hell I was doing. Got beta feedback where they could tell I was clearly feeling really stuck after I wrote it because it was all a bit lacklustre. 

Almost totally gave up. I had a few: I’m never writing again, what’s the point? moments.

Somehow I pushed through and made it work. 

In a lot of ways, that was probably the moment I saw my writing improve the most. BUT IT WAS A HORRIBLE SLOG. Ugh. I wanted to say this because I know we all have them and it’s good to talk about it!

What have you learned?

Honestly, how to use commas better! I can already tell my grammar has improved a lot from when I first started. I don’t rely on epithets as much. I know what semi-colons are for (thanks @fishey-me!)

I am getting better at letting fics breathe. I feel like my background in marketing and comms makes me want to write very precisely and I am slowly learning to cast that off and take time setting scenes. I also found a few tools to help me outline better. 

Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes

Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker

They’ve been invaluable in teaching me what the Hell I’m doing. My main takeaways - work out your character's flaws and work out the theme of the story. 

I also learned what sex pollen is and then wrote a 30k fic about it.

What fic did you want to do but never made it off the ground?

Ugh, I have one in my drive called Crowley and Aziraphale go on holiday. I imagined it as a canon-compliant fic post S2 where they go on a sort of make-or-break holiday. I just liked the idea of Crowley being all grouchy in the sun and Aziraphale awkwardly trying to flirt over Sangria. ALSO only one bed! But it sort of sits in my drafts and I’ve not done much with it. 

Did you beta any fics? Any favs you want to shout out?

YES. Many fics!

But I think I’ll have to give my biggest shout-out to @kneelbeforeyourdogbabylon for Sins of Knowledge! I’ve help beta more than 100k of that (wow) and it’s a wild ride. Go check it out. 

What three fics have you read this year that you love?

Listen I have tons and tons I’d love to recommend, but I am going to whittle it down!

First up it has to be @happynachohologram who surprised me on my birthday with not only their first ever fic, but basically one of the best South Downs retirement fics ever. I still think about it. It’s under 2k and it’s absolutely beautiful. 

The Best Part by @happynachohologram

Rating: E

Wordcount: 1,702

A throwaway comment from Aziraphale sets Crowley wondering about the best parts of retirement.

-

UGH, next up @gaiaseyes451 This fic changed me. I don’t know if I’ve ever been more hooked while being emotionally devastated as this fic. Mind the tags but it’s wonderful.

A Little Life by @gaiaseyes451

Rating: E

Wordcount: 71,624

When Professor of Botany Anthony Crowley met bookshop owner Ezra Fell one November afternoon both knew their lives had irrevocably changed. From that moment forward, Anthony and Ezra’s existence was intertwined. Their story was written in the moments and memories they created as they moved through life’s chapters of coming together, building a family and facing the challenges of being human. This is a story of unconditional love and the joy and humour, obstacles and grief that inevitably come with choosing the same person, day after day, over and over and over again.

-

Gorgeous pine-scented Crowley and one of the best premises I’ve read in a while. I know most people must have read this but if you haven’t you’re in for such a treat!

Stuck on Me by @zin-lynn-c

Rating: E

Wordcount: 56,538

After a drunken handfasting ceremony goes awry, Crowley and Aziraphale find themselves magically bound to be touching at all times. In order to set the situation to rights, they must embark on a multi-day journey to seek help from the last true witch in England.

What ideas are percolating for next year?

I think my next longfic is probably going to be a road trip with college-aged Az and Crowley. The characters keep yelling at me in my head, so I think they want to be written. So far Crowley is an activist punk who needs a lift back to London after graduation and Aziraphale is a posh boy who represents everything Crowley stands against.

Animosity to lovers my beloved!

It’s probably set in the 90s so no one has a mobile phone and Crowley can be obnoxious with a box of cassettes playing Az a bunch of bebop he pretends to hate. I have a scene of Crowley taking Aziraphale to his first gay bar in my head that I can’t get rid of, so I probably need to write it. 

Who do you want to thank?

OMG all of @goodomensafterdark for giving us a platform and being a lovely bunch of pocket pals! I want to give A BIG shoutout to @happynachohologram for letting me yell all my insecurities at you and for always screeching when I send them pictures of Crowley and Aziraphale holding hands in the South Downs. 

And to @kneelbeforeyourdogbabylon for agreeing to beta my 50k longfic! Pretty sure it would never have been published if it wasn’t for you two. 

And @doonarose for organising the madness of the original CYOA!

Anyone in my tags feel free to join in or in fact anyone at all. I'll tag a few more below. Tag, answer any Qs that suit and play along!

@adverbian @isiaiowin @onedappercat @angie-words @brenna

[firewalkwithmme]

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ – productivity tips and goals

all the time i find myself feeling unmotivated and unfocused, and my goal of the year is to improve my productivity in order to keep up my academics and to improve overall mental health. some reminders and actions I am implementing into my daily life to achieve these goals include:

౨ৎ don't use your phone as soon as you wake up. i have a habit of doing this to help me wake up, but i feel much more refreshed as i start my day without prolonged use of my phone.

౨ৎ read in the mornings. i like to start my day in a relaxing way, and one of the best ways is to wake up early to have a cup of tea or coffee while reading a book. i know this doesn't work for everyone as there are many people who prefer to start their day as soon as they wake up, but personally, this is one of the best things for me as it also allows me to keep on top of my reading goals!

౨ৎ do the hardest task first. i have a tendency to put off the items on my to-do list that are the most daunting or the ones i'm least excited about. doing those tasks first is so so helpful, because not only is your mind fresh and ready to tackle harder things at the start of the day, but the rest of the day is so much more enjoyable knowing that the biggest item on your to-do list has been checked off already.

౨ৎ schedule your study time and take breaks. this is something that i want to start doing more, as i find it very helpful when i do. i like to break up my day into short periods designated to certain tasks or assignments. i find my focus starts to drop off after about an hour and a half, so it's great to take short breaks in between sessions. often, the pomodoro method is useful for me.

౨ৎ study in different areas. i find i like a change of scenery when i move from one task to another, because i can't sit still for long. i like to alternate between my desk, my living room, the different libraries on campus, and a few cafes in my area. it's also great when your study areas are in different locations, because a short walk and some fresh air can serve as a lovely break.

౨ৎ leave your phone in another room while you study. my phone distracts me to absolutely absurd amounts, and it's no secret that i'm addicted to it. it really is those damn phones. this is something i need to work on more, leaving my phone away from my workspace so i am less distracted. it's also refreshing to go the extra step and leave your phone at home when going out if you can - i've done this a few times and want to try doing it more this year.

౨ৎ something is always better than nothing. this is a saying i like to use on particularly hard days when i struggle to get anything done. it's just a small reminder that even if you have 5 things on your list and you're feeling overwhelmed and frozen (executive disfunction, anyone?) that even if you complete one page of a fifteen page reading, that's still one less page that you have to read tomorrow and it is still an accomplishment.

౨ৎ go to your damn classes. it's so cold outside right now. walking to an 8:30 am lecture in the wind and snow sounds like the worst possible thing that could ever happen. self-discipline is possibly one of my worst skills at the moment, so i get it. but just go, because the more you skip the more it becomes a habit (speaking from experience). going and getting the lecture over with is relieving, and it helps you stay caught up in the course. go to class!

in 2025, i am incorporating these into my day-to-day study routine in the interest of becoming more productive and more content!

[curseofdelos]

I was rereading the 'should we let Nico suffocate in a jar' scene, and I was struck by Hazel's relationship with Jason in this scene and in this paragraph in particular:

Because Hazel and Jason WERE friends pre-canon!! In TLH, when Jason gets his memories back, Hazel is one of the characters he lists as someone he was friends with back in Camp Jupiter. Then, in SoN, Hazel is among the campers who looked up to Jason as a leader - both as a praetor and the former leader of the fifth cohort - and was eager to get him back.

...But then, in this scene, he doubts that Nico is trustworthy and questions if rescuing him is the best course of action.

What's interesting too is Hazel, in SoN, also doubted how trustworthy Nico was. He was keeping things from her and was annoyingly cryptic, and this was something that frustrated her. However, the second Nico is in serious danger, she sets all her reservations about him aside and rescuing him becomes her primary goal. (Rick's writing can be so inconsistent sometimes that I'm not confident this was intentional, but my interpretation of this is that Hazel was so afraid of losing Nico that she forgave him for all the lies, half-truths, etc. Petty squabbles don't seem important in the face of potential tragedy.)

Hazel approaches the "should we rescue Nico" debate from the perspective of someone at risk of losing her brother. Nico is the only family she has left, and the only demigod who can relate to her struggles of being a kid from the 30s/40s transplanted into the modern day. She loves and cares about him. Her own feelings and her own relationships take priority over the quest. It doesn't matter to her that they're walking into a trap; she'll do whatever it takes to get her brother back.

Jason, on the other hand, is approaching the debate from the perspective of a soldier. His biggest concern is whether or not Nico is someone they can trust, and if he's worth risking their lives (and the quest and the world) to save.

Jason has no personal relationship with Nico at this point and no reason to trust him - especially considering Nico was travelling between both camps and said nothing to him during those several months Jason lived at CHB, and especially considering the number of times he's lied to and betrayed Percy over the years. Yes, the reasoning behind Nico's actions are sympathetic and valid, and the decision to keep secrets was out of his hands to a certain extent, but Jason's (and Percy's) hurt and distrust of him is valid too. WE know Nico can be trusted, but it makes sense that Jason doesn't given his experience with him.

Jason has been at Camp Jupiter since he was a literal toddler. The Roman legion is the only life he knows. He was born and raised to be a weapon for the gods. His entire story happens precisely because Hera/Juno wanted a champion. He was moulded to be the kind of person who follows the gods unquestioningly, and at this point in the series, he's only beginning to break out of that mentality (hence why him standing up to Zeus later in BoO is such a big moment for him). He prioritises the quest over Hazel's feelings because as a Roman leader, he was taught to prioritise the quest over all else.

And it's so interesting to me the way that this difference in opinion - Hazel prioritising Nico's life over the quest VS Jason prioritising the quest over Nico's life - ultimately leads to a fracture in their relationship and completely alters the way Hazel views Jason for the rest of HoO. In Jason's defence, he does apologise to Hazel fairly soon after this moment, but it's interesting to me that in HoH she's still clearly (and understandably!) bitter about the position he chose to take - to the point she wonders if Jason would abandon her too if he deemed it necessary for the quest - and in a way she isn't bitter towards Leo (iirc) despite him making the exact same points.

Because Jason was her friend. She looked up to and respected him. When he disappeared, she was among those who missed him and wanted him to come back. He was a fair, good, and just leader, so she assumed he would be on her side and fight for what she believed was right, but he isn't and he doesn't. When the time comes for Jason to support Hazel in rescuing someone important to her - in much the same way she supported his rescue - he fails her. He doesn't take her feelings or her trust in Nico into consideration. He weighs the cost-benefit analysis in his head, and isn't sure rescuing her brother is worth potentially walking into a trap.

And Hazel is hurt. Who wouldn't be? And Jason does try to make things right by apologising, but not immediately agreeing to stop your friend's brother from suffocating to death in a jar is a difficult argument to bounce back from.

idk. The way their different approaches to the "should we rescue Nico" debate causes their friendship to fall apart in this scene is so interesting to me <3

[armageddon-generation]

The Bear Season 3 is a bridge season that feels weird on purpose, but also has some big problems: A review/ramble

Season 3 is clearly a bridge season, and suffers from having been written & shot alongside season 4. As a result, unlike the seasons 1 & 2, it doesn’t feel like a distinctive or complete chapter of the restaurant’s life. Just half of one.

This is partly because there’s no ‘end-goal’ like in S2, or clear progression/visible improvement to the restaraunt like in S1. Season 3 is about stagnation. Most of its storylines are left unresolved- the review, Sydney’s job offer, Tiff & Frank’s wedding, Marcus being inspired by his mother’s death, Tina and the dying farmer’s market, Carmy’s conflicts with both Claire and Ritchie. All these threads will roll into Season 4, and Season 3 suffers from that.

PACING, FLASHBACKS AND TONE: FORM REFLECTING FUNCTION

HOWEVER. This being a ‘bridge’, character-focused season isn’t inherently bad. Individual episodes of The Bear still tear when they want to. Episodes 1, 2, & 3 are a very strong setup for the season and establish good momentum. Episodes 6 & 8 are fantastic character pieces, and 8 in particular made me bawl. Even the finale, though bogged down by masturbatory celebrity chef cameos, was a strong episode.

The problem is all the stuff in-between. The actual day-to-day running of the restaurant feels hollow and empty now. There’s a distance between the characters and it feels like they don’t interact as a group anywhere near as much.

Part of this is absolutely deliberate. People joke about S3 'method acting' its way into bad reviews to reflect the restaraunt, but losing steam and the connections between characters is genuinely a formal reflection of the kitchen crew's moods, as the day-to-day grind of running the restaurant wears them down.

The use of flashbacks in 3x1 is excellent, but Season 3 quickly becomes way over-reliant on them (episode 9 especially, oh my god). Again, this feels like a conscious choice to reflect Carmy’s state of inertia/the fact he’s perpetually trapped in the past. It makes sense, but that doesn’t give the show a pass for being boring, and 3x9 was the first time I’ve ever felt genuinely bored by this show.  

FUCK THE FAKS & NEGLECTING POC CHARACTERS

My other problems are much more clearly the fault of the show; I do not give a flying fuck about the Faks. Neil is cute in small doses. The brothers are great as soundboards for other characters; Theo getting Sweeps to talk about his backstory in baseball, the brothers comforting Donna at the end of 3x8 Ice Chips, or the haunting argument finally forcing Carmy to talk about Claire.

But on their own? When they’re just bouncing off each-other? These guys aren't half as funny as the show seems to think they are. And their scenes drag on so long. For example, the B-plot of 3x5 Computer wastes half of an otherwise strong episode with pointless fucking around, propped up by a pointless celebrity cameo. I do not Give. A. Fuck about haunting, Mr. Cena, why the fuck are you here.

The aggravating time-wasting is made worse by The Bear continuing to neglect and underuse its POC characters. This is the second season in a row where I’ve felt Syd only got the bullet-points of an arc. She is the LEADING LADY. Ayo is now the show’s biggest breakout star. USE HER.

I really enjoyed Tina's focus episode, but unlike Forks and Honeydew last season it doesn't move the plot forward, and unlike Fishes the flashbacks don't contextualize Tina''s actions in the present because she's barely doing anything in the present, despite the show setting up her struggles in the kitchen early in the season.

Meanwhile, Ebra got crumbs again and Sweeps got a single scene, which is tragically at least better than he had last year.

Marcus’ arc this year is a fascinating microcosm for the show’s themes, but it barely gets a second to breathe because we have to cram in another five minutes of the Fak brothers arguing about that time Neil got taped into a cardboard box. It’s ridiculous. And then they showcase Nat being all protective of Marcus in an episode he’s barely in, when she barely interacts with him. It feels unearned & disingenuous, using Marcus as a prop for a Hell Yeah gotcha moment.

I liked Josh Harnett though, that casting had purpose, and both Chef Terry and Luca were used excellently.

CAMEOS

The surprise celebrity cameos this year felt distracting and indulgent in a way last year’s didn’t. In Fishes the slew of cameos were a dramatic tool meant to disorient the viewer. This year, John Cena is here to distract you from how pointless this B-plot is, and we've brought in a bunch of famous chefs to tell you direct-to-camera why cooking and the service industry are so important.

The chefs in particular are bizzare after season 1 spent most of its time telling us how evil and toxic the fine dining industry is. But now it's actually just the fault of a few bad apples, and these guys are really rad actually?

CLAIRE

Much has been said about how Claire was an underwritten archetype for Carmy to project onto. Now, I don’t much give a fuck about shipping in this show, but it’s clear Claire & Carmy’s romance didn’t connect with most people. It felt hollow. At the time, I thought this was deliberate, like the tone and flashbacks this season; Claire’s writing reflected Carmy’s perception of her as a saintlike childhood daydream who could deliver him from all the stresses of his life.

But this season, not only does the show refuse to let Claire go, it doubles down on objectifying her as a prop for Carmy’s self-loathing, trapped in his memory.

Again, this might work thematically if I knew Claire as a person, or was at all invested in their romance, but I don't and I’m not. As it stands, the multiple extended flashbacks with Claire feel like futile attempts to plug the holes in Season 2's weakest storyline, and drag their episodes down. If we’re supposed to root for Carmy to find happiness outside the kitchen, this is having the opposite effect, and it’s made worse by it all being left unresolved by the finale.

Either do something with this character or move on, because right now every time Claire appears I clock out emotionally, and that’s not her fault, it’s the way the show treats her.

CARMY THE ASSHOLE

All this contributes to an overriding problem that I again think is deliberate, but risky; Carmy isn’t likeable this season. He causes his conflicts with Ritchie and Syd, to whom he has passed down his generational trauma. Carmy's menu is the biggest thing dragging the Bear into bankruptcy. Carmy has stopped working to resolve his familial trauma like in seasons 1 & 2, just as Nat starts making headway. He functionally doesn’t exist outside the kitchen, entirely preoccupied with the past & a girl the audience doesn’t care about.

Unlike previous seasons, the few times Carmy is called out for his bad behaviour he doesn’t make much effort to listen or improve. Again, I get that this is the point. Carmy is on a low, self-destructive ebb, and hopefully when things start resolving in season 4 he’ll snap out of it. But him dragging the show down with him has consequences.

EPISODE COUNT & FINAL THOUGHTS

A lot of people are saying that S3 only had enough plot for 2-3 episodes, and while I think that’s disingenuous- The Bear has always been a character-focused, vibes-first show- I do think it should've returned to the 8-episode count of season 1. You can consolidate the same amount of ‘plot development’ into fewer episodes while maintaining the deliberate sense of inertia. Cut back on the Faks and flashbacks to give more time to the kitchen crew, and many of the complaints would disappear.

Anyway, all this to say that The Bear season 3 is not Bad like some are saying, but it is a step down from its first two seasons. It feels like it’s got lost in its own head and lost a part of itself along the way, and while a lot of that is deliberate- formally reflecting Carmy’s internal conflict- it exacerbates existing problems (underwritten POC, Claire) and creates several new ones (celeb cameos, overusing flashbacks, unresolved plotlines) previous seasons were able to sidestep.

[tiredbogwitch]

No one has any clue what the fuck the Firelights actually Do so I'm gonna dump my headcanon here as the official lore in continuation of my saga of Zaun headcanons.

The Firelights are basically like a nonprofit organization with a Robin Hood twist. Their mission is to be a stabilizing force in Zaun, trying to do whatever they can to take care of both each other and their people. Since they aren't an actual nonprofit, and Piltover doesn't give a damn about human rights, this is where the Robin Hood stuff comes in.

They have to gain their resources (food, water, medicine, etc.) Via theft. So they tend to rob Piltie ships. They try to avoid the foreign ones just to lower the risk of backlash (the foreign governments putting pressure on Piltover to crack down on them, etc.), but they'll do what they believe is necessary to get supplies (and also sometimes mistakes just happen).

They're not above violence, but they do try not to kill people just because they know it can get messy with Piltover if they do. That being said, I believe they probably have killed a few, at the very least on accident. Fights can be brutal, especially if your opponent isn't holding back like you are.

Another thing: their masks aren't just to hide their identities from their enemies. The reality is, things can happen. If they started walking around bare-faced in Zaun, it would be easy for other Zaunites to identify them and possibly give them up (whether to Silco or enforcers or whoever). So they wear them til they're back in their hideout.

The Firelights try not to operate in Zaun beyond distributing supplies or fighting Silco. This is to both prevent their identities being leaked and because they never want to be seen as a "policing" force in their own home. The last thing Ekko wants is to see his own people as "others" or "suspects". Yes, the Firelights are his family, so he seeks to protect them. But Zaun is his home, the Zaunites are his people. He IS a Zaunite, just as all the Firelights are. And he never wants any of them to forget that.

As for who he DOES fight in Zaun: in season 1, Silco is at the top of that list. However, I feel like they probably have other enemies too, even if Silco is the biggest fish (as de facto leader of Zaun at the time). The Firelights have been around (by act 2 s1) for seemingly a few years at that point. It's entirely believable they'd ruffle some feathers along the way. Perhaps a few gang leaders/drug lords (the type to either follow Silco or be desperate to usurp him) who think taking the Firelights out would be the next step towards their goals. Other enemies might include of Silco's allied chembarons and anyone who tries to attack their deliveries.

Distribution of supplies: after robbing a Piltie ship, they'd take stock of whatever they got and send anything they can spare to a connection of theirs in the rest of Zaun. I'd imagine (since they don't seem to have hospitals) to an orphanage of some kind. So, food, clothes, medical supplies, etc. Basically anything a trading ship might have that would be useful to people.

If they snag loot that happens to not be immediately useful (nonessentials like jewelry or knick-knacks or something) they'll either try to repurpose/upcycle it or they'll sell it and use the money to either buy those supplies or put towards projects (such as building tech) to help their mission.

My musings are only half fleshed out and I'm really expanding most of this on the fly as I write it. But I do like to explore the possibility that they're not as sunshine and rainbows as they might seem in their rare moments in canon (and in my post so far).

Less sunny ideas under the cut:

I saw a clip from s1 the other day of a scene that I totally forgot about. When Caitlyn first tells Ekko about the Hexcore, his first thought is about what they (he) can do with it. Namely, as a weapon. Against Silco.

And yes, his traumatizing childhood punctuated by Silco basically coming in and fucking his life up out of nowhere DOES mean it makes sense that Silco is Enemy Number One in Ekko's eyes, arguably even more than Piltover. (Because Piltover ruined the world around him, but Silco might as well have personally walked in and shot everyone he loves right in front of him. Silco IS the villain of Ekko's story, arguably more than anyone else). THAT BEING SAID, he's expressed anti-Piltover sentiments since basically the first time we meet him. So what if Silco telling Marcus to paint the Firelights as terrorists... isn't entirely baseless?

When I say terrorists of course, I really only mean to Piltover. Actual terrorists exist, but many revolutionaries are also painted as terrorists. Silco saying this and giving the bomb as "evidence" isn't just him "being evil", it MAKES SENSE because that's probably already what Piltover would think even without the fake evidence. So what if the Firelights WERE planning to attack Piltover at some point?

Maybe not the same way Silco was. At the end of the day, his whole thing is being calculating (he's also got more life experience than Ekko, who's the same age as his daughter). So Silco definitely thought through Zaun's independence plan waayyy more than Ekko has (whether or not the plan is a good one is notwithstanding, stay focused here). So maybe the Firelights kinda have this plan to like. Destroy Piltover.

Not with bombs, but to be fair, Ekko IS a smart techy guy. He's not into grenades like Jinx, but he did make those hoverboards. He designed the fans to be able to withstand the thick air in Zaun. So what if he's generally just really familiar with the ventilation system? What if he was planning on doing something similar to what happened in Season 2 (redirecting the air to Piltover), but like, worse? Maybe he'd make it so the air system was permanently pushing the Grey into Topside, and maybe he even wanted to put something else in it? Give them a taste of their own chemical warfare? It would take years to do, and might be his end goal, but really, what else would someone who's been radicalized by oppression, who's filled with all this pain and anger, who has so much innovative skill - what else would someone like that do? Lay down and take it? Considering he made the Firelights... I don't think so.

Obviously I don't think he was actually planning on doing this; I don't think they thought him or the Firelights through at all. But he's expressed interest in violence before, and he's also anti-Piltover, so I figure he has to do SOMETHING with his anger (and also as much as I love him, being that squeaky clean and perfect of a character is.... suspicious to me. Or at least not as interesting. You can't live in a world so unforgiving and come out unstained, especially with all that- understandable- anger in him). He clearly wants peace, in whatever way he can (hence he wanted to give the Hexcore to the council himself; likely to bargain for benefits for Zaun). He's hopeful, but I don't think he's necessarily naive about it. He knows that they're most likely never going to just hand it to them- or else they would've done that already. So just in case, he has a plan to take it for himself.

[arenabreadandbiscuits]

Writer In Need! - Writing & Art Commissions Available, Please Read The Whole Post And Vote To Help Me!

My mom has been admitted into the hospital today.

Hey guys, serious post so please treat it as such but genuinely I need commissions. I'm currently at the hospital with my mom and I won't bore any of you anymore with the many issues I have but commissions would be both helpful on her to help pay for things that's are more low priority while bigger money is dealt for bigger things. Nonetheless my point is commissions are open. I'll draw but pieces take longer but I am happy to do Hazbin Hotel, Demon Slayer, and various OCS no matter where they're from so please just ask me.

Hazbin is my biggest fandom right now so I prefer working in that fandom but I can hear others out. I'm a part of quite a few.

Though I can draw I do prefer more writing commissions over other things so please ask for those. At the top of my page it mentions what I will and won't do so please refer to it but I'll write cc x cc, OC x cc, OC x OC, angst, smut, fluff, 3k, 6k, 10k words... Just please look at my account and read everything before commissioning ANYTHING.

I will only take payment as Cash app, Chime, and/or Venmo but I'd really just like to have the money for peace of mind. Don't pm me with offers of other things... 'sugar daddy' looking for a baby desperate for help? Please stay away from me. I ONLY want genuine commissioners and if you choose to be one I will talk to you fully about your commission to make sure I get all the right info and actually start your story if you send full/half pay.

It's just... I'm going through so much. I hate having to ask the Internet for help because sometimes people don't listen and offer times they don't care but bless any soul out there who reads this and bless your life if you decide to actually commission me in this time of need.

I'm putting a poll for interaction to hopefully actually get commissioners. I usually beg people who aren't serious to not vote but sometimes people enjoy getting others hopes up so I know most likely it'll still occur but I have to try. I think maybe months ago I made a goal to see if I could reach 400 dollars just from commissions. It'll take work but work that I will and have to accept.

Here's some pictures of me currently at the hospital because I know people don't really listen to these things when they don't trust them and that's smart and completely fair.

I have videos as well but here's just a couple. Once again I'm looking for serious commissions. Want a 4k, 5k, 8k(?!) story of your OC smashing Lucifer I'll do it just please give me your money. I'm desperate and my mentally is trying to keep stable so please gods and goddesses let people see and be serious about this post like I'm begging for them to be.

Here's the poll

Please don't vote if you aren't going to do one of these two things. I'm in genuine need of help again and I'm hoping this works this time because it hasn't in a while now.. I have many examples of writing on this account though I'm aware I need to make another master list..

I'm also more than happy to write and/do art for:

Obey Me

The Arcana

Stardew Valley

Harvest Town

Dislyte (specifically writing since I haven't practiced my art style with them)

Demon Slayer

Tokyo Revengers

Possibly more...

If you've voted or you're a commissioner looking to give me work, thank you. I'm happy you're here and hopefully.. you enjoy your stay here while you have it. Honestly if I don't get commissions after this post I just honestly don't know what I can do.

[liulith]

Why Vox’ one-sided psychosexual obsession with Alastor is PERFECT for a #radiostatic QPR

This fanwork is an edited version of a comment I wrote for a fic from the 666: Live on Air! Series by @prince-liest You don’t need to know the fic to understand it, though! Just keep in mind that those are headcanons based on a hypothetical established relationship between Alastor and Vox, in which Vox’s obsession for Alastor has changed flavors from hatred to love, and Alastor doesn’t return his feelings but finds his pathetic obsession entertaining, flattering and somewhat cute. (Also, this doesn’t address the past friendship (?) between them that is being hinted at by the photo in S1 finale, since we have zero context for that at the moment)

Why Vox is Like That

My headcanon is that Vox has always been the type to strive for power and recognition, always reaching for the top of the heap. The problem is that he’s too good at it.

Once he gets into whatever position of power he wanted, he gets bored because what he truly likes is fighting his way to the top. Whatever comes after can be enjoyable but it never compares to the “fight” itself – and thus Vox is always left unsatisfied, setting new goals to become even more powerful because *surely*, that’s what will finally bring him the sense of fulfillment he wants.

(We can kinda see it in his introduction. The man looks bored to tears before Alastor waltzes back into his life and turns him into a manic mess! Here’s a tumblr post about it)

This is precisely why I think Hell gave Vox hypnosis powers: the same reason it gave Alastor the body of a prey animal. It’s torture! With those powers, Vox can get almost anything he wants and he hates it. On Earth, people were a challenge; not everyone can be bought, and he had to rely on his skills.

Sure, he still has those skills in Hell; but in Hell, where every sinner is a potential enemy and the exorcists come down once a year, power is key to his survival and he has to take any victory he can get; meaning, he’ll never be able to *not* use his hypnosis powers, not as long as he wants to survive, even if that makes the fight to the top lose its appeal.

[Insert non-existent tangent on how Val not being affected by the hypnosis – because he’s half blind – is a key factor in Vox’ attraction to him]

Why Vox can’t NOT be obsessed with Alastor:

Alastor is powerful enough to resist his mind-control powers. Alastor can’t be swayed by Vox’ influence, his connections, his power, his money. In short, he’s a challenge. Vox needs to earn his attention, needs to work for it.

Thankfully for him, there *is* something Alastor is interested in: his genuine, unguarded, desperate self: the one that has a full manic episode/mental breakdown when he learns Alastor is back in town. The side of him he always hides under layers and layers of confidence, bravado and corporate talk!

And, deep down, that desperate side of him is exactly why he strives for power so hard in the first place. This man is full of insecurities and he NEEDS to be the biggest fish (shark) in the tank.

This means that Alastor is the embodiment of his deepest fears! He sees through all his bullshit, makes him lose all his composure, and is able to destroy him in EVERY WAY that matters. And yet, he doesn’t. Because, he tolerates (likes) him (in the context of this AU) just as he is, patheticness and all :3  I think there’s something very liberating about that.

Plus, Vox is a simp. He’s a manic sado-masochist who gets off on seeing Alastor humiliated and being humiliated himself, he wants Alastor helpless under his claws, wants Alastor to step on him and tear his heart out if that’s the only way Alastor would touch him, wants to have a cutesy dance-off with and make him laugh until his face hurts.

Oh Vox, we’re really in it now

He’s obsessed with Alastor and wants him in any way he can have him – and I think he’d be ready to give himself over to Alastor in any way Alastor wants to have him as well, because as long as it means Alastor wants something *from him*, it’s worth it. Even if it destroys him.

So, in a context where he has experienced Alastor being on friendly terms with him, where Alastor he has seen Alastor’s genuinely smiling at him and handing him the smallest crumb of affection, there’s just no turning back. Yes, he *could* still get off on seeing Alastor hurt because he’s deranged like that, but he doesn’t want it anymore.

or, well. the vicious, demonic part of him does still want to hurt him, but not exactly for the same reasons as before. It’s more of his caged beast of a heart wanting to make its predator pay for ruining it, in a desperate attempt to reduce his pain (at Alastor’s perceived “indifference”), to force Alastor to SEE him (not that he can. Lol).

BUT! he doesn’t need to do that now! Not when there is so much he would have to give up! So many other emotions, reactions he can get out of Alastor, knowing that HE did that!! To Alastor!! Him!! He cares so, so much. He’s the biggest shark in the tank but Alastor is the water around him. I suck at metaphors.

FML: Alastor edition

Hell turned Alastor into a prey animal because he has always felt like one. I think that at his core, he’s never going to get rid of his instinctual mistrust of others and fear of having any exposed vulnerability turned against him, because it’s part of a defense mechanism he developed since childhood.

He grew in Louisiana as a mixed-race* boy (*it's a bit more complicated than that since "Louisiana Creole" is not a racial designation but let's say Alastor is 100% mixed-race with a POC mom in this context), in an era of widespread lynching and racial segregation, at a time where millions of Black Americans migrated to the North because of the horrible socio-economic conditions of the South. Hell, he was alive during the great Mississippi flood of 1927 – the most destructive river flood of the entire history of the US – and he SAW the government refuse to prioritize the safety of the POC who were 75% of the population (literally; “The refugee camps also dealt with extreme racial inequality, as supplies and means of evacuation after flooding were given strictly to white citizens, with Blacks receiving only leftovers. African Americans also did not receive supplies without providing the name of their white employer or voucher from a white person. In order to fully exploit black labor, Blacks were frequently forced to work against their will, and were not permitted to leave the camps.”)

We don’t know if he was white-passing or visibly mixed, or if his white dad was in the picture, but since he only mentions his mother in canon I’m gonna run with the idea that she raised him alone. He seems to have had a positive relationship with her, which may have impacted his relationships with women in general. However, as a Creole woman, his mom couldn’t guarantee his safety in a society that was rigged against her.

So, he grew up learning the world was out to get him, that no one had his back, and that *performance* was key to his continued safety and survival. By performance, I mean learning how to act around white people to appear non-threatening/avoid being reduced to his ancestry/manage to “pass” well enough. But passing too well would also exclude him from his own community, as mixed people often are.

He also learned that despite his best efforts, no matter how competent he could become, some things would always be unfairly inaccessible to him for reasons outside of his control, and he couldn’t stand for it. The quiet rage, the humiliation, he took out on people by becoming a serial killer: permanently excluding “unworthy” people from society, and consuming them to assert his absolute dominance over them.

FML: Alastor edition. Why he would like Vox:

As the Radio Demon, Alastor has more power than he ever craved in his human life. He’s also vulnerable to the exorcists (Adam), to higher demonic powers (Lucifer, etc.) and was put on a leash by a mysterious character (Lilith? Eve? Roo?).

He’s more desperate for control than ever. It’s not that hard in his daily life, since most people (besides Husk and..? idk) don’t know he made a deal, and he can act like his usual confident self. However, it’s a control that is not unconditional, never absolute nor freely given.

And Vox? He’s hopelessly devoted to Alastor. Alastor has the upper hand on him in terms of raw power, but he also has the absolute psychological and emotional upper hand here. Vox is putting his heart and everything he has on the line in a way Alastor would never do in his worst nightmares. Vox is probably the only person who ever *let* Alastor have this much power over them, and Alastor loves to see it.

This, in turn, makes Alastor more willing to show his more vulnerable side, in a way he would never do if he were also in love with Vox imo. Because Vox is “only Vox” to him, and losing Vox wouldn’t destroy him the way it would if he returned Vox’ feelings, he’s paradoxically more likely to get closer to him. Being in love with Vox would make him too vulnerable and I honestly think that if he became that desperately attached, he would kill him in a fit of panicked narcissistic self-preservatory rage, to prove he’s stronger than this. He’d be too scared to have his feelings taken advantage of, and his brained is wired to kill anything that gets in his way.

Having Vox as a friend, however, is just perfect for him! Just the right amount of closeness and connection that enables him to give him his trust, without fearing he’s being blinded by feelings outside of his control. And knowing that Vox wants him *that* desperately but accepts Alastor’s inability and unwillingness to return this love, and is content to be given anything Alastor allows… Well, that’s heartwarming in its own right, isn’t it?

And THIS is why RadioStatic as a qpr/fucked up friendship with benefits has so much potential, to me! <3

[downtroddendeity]

@turnkeyassurance saw your tags and figured I'd take the opportunity to pause my descent into madness to give my more sober opinions on the Ni no Kuni franchise, lol. (Warning: I am a humongous JRPG nerd)

The NNK games are really odd ducks, quality-wise. You can call either one a good game or a bad game and call either one better than the other, and any combination of those opinions can be something I think is entirely justified. Both of them have things they do remarkably well and also serious, profound, deal-breaking flaws, and the really weird thing is that there's almost no overlap between those two lists for the two games. What clicks and doesn't about both of them is going to be deeply individual.

What Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch does, with resounding success, is Vibes. It sets out at every single step with the goal of being a playable Ghibli movie, and it sticks to that principle. It's all about beautiful, cel-shaded whimsy. It's a game for people who want to feel like they're wandering through the meadows in the movie version of Howl's Moving Castle. There are lots of puns, and you can befriend all the random encounter monsters and feed them ice cream.

But that's also its Achilles' heel: because it's dedicated entirely to imitation, it has trouble bringing things to the table that are really its own. It has the visual and narrative aesthetics of Hayao Miyazaki's films, but it doesn't have the raw emotion at the heart of them. And as a game, its mechanics combine the clunkiest features of menu-based combat and action RPGs, and while everything about the Pokemon-esque mechanics seems designed to encourage players to collect and experiment with them, the balancing turns attempting to do that into a miserable grindy nightmare.

The other problem is that it... isn't actually the first Ni no Kuni game. Wrath of the White Witch is, in fact, a remake of the Nintendo DS game Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn, which was never released outside Japan. The reason for this is pretty easy to explain, because DDD had another gimmick besides its aesthetics: it came with a real-life physical copy of the wizard spellbook, and the player had to look things up in it and draw sigils on the DS touchscreen to cast spells. So, we've got a high-effort remake that had to completely cut the central mechanic... and which also expanded the plot so that the original main villain was no longer the primary antagonist. This results in a game with what is very clearly a final dungeon and very clearly a final boss and very clearly a resolution to the story, which suddenly has a completely different plot dropped on it like a fucking anvil that it expects you to be just as invested in even though it hasn't had anything like the same level of buildup.

And ironically, this is almost the exact opposite of the biggest problem with Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom, a.k.a. the one with my new blorbo, the President of the United Union of Eagleland. 2 is an effort to try to cement an identity for the series that can be its own, rather than requiring them to depend indefinitely on borrowed Miyazaki nostalgia. It just has the teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy problem that at some point in development it had a budget shortfall so bad that you can finish the game without ever realizing that there is a continent-sized crashed interdimensional spaceship on the world map.

This game has had a machete taken to it. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely respect the work they did to make what they could with what they had, but you can see the signs of massive scope cuts to literally every aspect of the game. The back half of the game has almost exclusively recycled enemy and environment assets; voice acting has been trimmed down to canned voice clips; the catboy protagonist's ears and tail are barely animated; one minigame was so inadequately playtested that a level 16 mission is massively harder than level 50 ones; and while whatever restructuring they had to do to the main plot still left the final version with a more solid and coherent central arc than WWW in my opinion, it also left a lot of truly gaping plot holes, like oh, I don't know, why the President of the United States got turned into a 19-year-old.

Literally, they just. Entirely forgot to explain that. Half the DLC is just the writers scrambling to fix stuff like that and add a bunch of character development that should have been in the base game.

However, despite all this, I personally enjoyed NNK2 more than NNK1 unironically, not just for Rolandposting reasons. Compared to the first one, it plays much more smoothly as a straight action RPG, and while it can't provide the same knock-your-socks-off aesthetic cohesion, to me it seemed a lot more heartfelt- that is, like a game that was made because people had a story they wanted to tell.

But, well, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the non-unironic reasons, because the story they really, genuinely wanted to tell was about a magical catboy growing up and learning to become a leader, and somehow, miraculously, they really thought that was the story I was here for too when they opened the game with the President of the United States being isekaied by Nuke-kun.

Sorry, guys, I have a crippling addiction to dramatic irony and my day job is tech work in local politics, you could not have more laser-targeted this at making me specifically laugh my ass off if you tried.

[eurothug4000]

INTERVIEW WITH SHIGENOBU MATSUYAMA - PRODUCER ON SILENT HILL THE ARCADE

I had the pleasure of interviewing Matsuyama-san, one of the producers on Silent Hill the Arcade! Here's what he had to say :)

Q - How did the idea for Silent Hill The Arcade come to be?

A - During the arcade boom of the 1990s and the 2000s, a desire was born to combine the unique worldview of the Silent Hill series - which was already a very strong IP console game-wise – with the haunted houses one might find in an amusement part. We wanted something that could provide an easy and pleasurable experience to an extremely varied range of customers… as in, the casual users. This is the idea that brought Silent Hill Arcade (SHA in short) to life. However, since our goal was to create a new kind of experience that could not be replicated anywhere else, we designed a game that could make the most effective use of the 5.1ch surround sound system, which was something that arcade games hadn’t adopted until that point, with a type of cabinet that could be somewhat isolated from the rest of the arcade via the use of curtains.

Q - Roughly how long did development for the game take?

A - At the time, the development cycle of an arcade game was so short it would be unimaginable today. The shortest one was around six months, the longest about one year and a half. I think SHA took us around one year and two months.

Q - What parts of development were most enjoyable for you?

A – Usually, arcade games are tested a certain number of times, both during development and just before launch in each and every country where their release has been scheduled (which, for SHA, meant Japan, the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, France, Hong Kong and Singapore). In order to keep the development budget for SHA as low as possible, however, I personally traveled alone to the US for the market testing, assembled the cabinet all by myself, repaired it when it was out of order, and stood next to it for days on end, pen and paper in my hand, ready to collect the players’ data. Game development, nearly 20 years ago, was very much an analog experience. It was also hard work, but when I look back, I have so many good memories of that time.

Q - Do you remember any kinds of ideas that you and the team wanted to include in the game, but didn’t in the end?

A – I’m sure this will sound obvious, since SHA was based on a pre-existing IP, but since the framework was pretty much already set when it came to characters and plot, we had to be extremely careful not to deviate from it so that we wouldn’t create inconsistencies. Personally, I would have loved to take the story in slightly wilder directions and include new and fresh ideas.

Q - I loved seeing so many locations from Silent Hill 3 and 4 make an appearance in the game! Was the team who worked on those two games involved in making any decisions for Silent Hill The Arcade?

A - We of course personally consulted select staff members of Konami, like for example Producer Yamaoka, with whom I had been acquainted with since before SHA. However, most development teams had a mix of internal and external members that changed pretty fluidly with each and every year, so there was no real collaboration between the various teams.

Q - What level of freedom were you given for creating this original story within the Silent Hill universe? Were you given any specific directives on what you could or could not integrate/use in the story?

A - If I have to express my personal point of view on the matter, however, should you compare the storyline for SHA with the timeline of the other games, you would indeed notice a few minor inconsistencies that we were not able to completely solve. That’s something I still have regrets about.

Q - Tell me about translating a traditional survival horror experience into the rail shooter genre and control style. What kind of considerations did you have to make for this?

A - The biggest challenge was by far to design a game system that could be as simple as possible, and to regulate the level of challenge in a way that felt balanced, because we didn't want to force complicated controls or an exceedingly high difficulty level on the casual arcade players. Moreover, there was another balance we had to strike perfectly: more specifically, the one between the aforementioned "haunted house" element - the one that was unique to SHA, with its sequences of terrifying events - and the thrilling playstyle that a rail shooter should provide to the player.

Q - As a final product, what are your personal thoughts on the game?

A - I think it had a state-of-the-art sound system, that the design of the cabinet, with its creepy-looking curtains, made people want to take a peek inside, and that the rail shooting system was simple and could be enjoyed by virtually everyone. I think we managed to combine these various elements with a one-of-a-kind worldview of Silent Hill in a way that was in my opinion pretty good! Of course, each and every member of the staff did their part, and I thank all of them wholeheartedly.

Q - Are you working on anything currently that you’d like me to mention?

A - Feel free to write whatever you prefer! If anything, I should thank you, since you allowed me to walk down the nostalgia lane and recall memories from almost 20 years ago that had been dimmed down by the passage of time. Thank you very much!

Shigenobu Matsuyama's site: shig.jp

[demifiendrsa]

Grand Theft Auto VI details characters and places

■ Synopsis

Vice City, USA.

Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them. But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida—forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive.

■ Jason and Lucia

Jason Duval

Jason wants an easy life, but things just keep getting harder.

Jason grew up around grifters and crooks. After a stint in the Army trying to shake off his troubled teens, he found himself in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners. It might be time to try something new.

“If anything happens, I’m right behind you. Another day in paradise, right?”

Meeting Lucia could be the best or worst thing to ever happen to him. Jason knows how he’d like it to turn out but right now, it’s hard to tell.

Lucia Caminos

Lucia’s father taught her to fight as soon as she could walk.

Life has been coming at her swinging ever since. Fighting for her family landed her in the Leonida Penitentiary. Sheer luck got her out. Lucia’s learned her lesson—only smart moves from here.

More than anything, Lucia wants the good life her mom has dreamed of since their days in Liberty City—but instead of half-baked fantasies, Lucia is prepared to take matters into her own hands.

“The only thing that matters is who you know and what you got.”

Fresh out of prison and ready to change the odds in her favor, Lucia’s committed to her plan—no matter what it takes.

A life with Jason could be her way out.

■ Only in Leonida

When the sun fades and the neon glows, everyone has something to gain—and more to lose.

Cal Hampton

What if everything on the internet was true?

Jason’s friend and a fellow associate of Brian’s, Cal feels safest hanging at home, snooping on Coast Guard comms with a few beers and some private browser tabs open.

“There are way too many birds flying around in perfect formation.”

The psychopaths are in charge. Get used to it.

Cal is at the low tide of America and happy there. Casual paranoia loves company, but his friend Jason has bigger plans.

Boobie Ike

It’s all about heart—the Jack of Hearts.

Boobie is a local Vice City legend—and acts like it. One of the few to transform his time in the streets into a legitimate empire spanning real estate, a strip club, and a recording studio—Boobie’s all smiles until it’s time to talk business.

“The club money pay for the studio, and the drug money pay for it all.”

Top quality cuts.

Boobie might seem like he’s just out for himself, but it’s his partnership with the young aspiring music mogul Dre’Quan for Only Raw Records that he’s most invested in—now they just need a hit.

Dre’Quan Priest

Only Raw… Records.

Dre’Quan was always more of a hustler than a gangster. Even when he was dealing on the streets to make ends meet, breaking into music was the goal.

“Dancers are like my A&Rs. If the record’s a hit, DJs gonna be spinnin’ it.”

You’re with the label now.

Now that he’s signed the Real Dimez, Dre’Quan’s days of booking acts into Boobie’s strip club might be numbered as he sets his sights on the Vice City scene.

Real Dimez

Viral videos. Viral hooks.

Bae-Luxe and Roxy aka Real Dimez have been friends since high school—girls with the savvy to turn their time shaking down local dealers into cold, hard cash via spicy rap tracks and a relentless social media presence.

“All my dimes in this club. Meet my twin, make it a dub.”

One hit away from fame.

An early hit single with local rapper DWNPLY took Real Dimez to new heights. Now, after five years and a whole lot of trouble, they’re signed to Only Raw Records, hoping lightning can strike twice.

Raul Bautista

Experience counts.

Confidence, charm, and cunning—Raul’s a seasoned bank robber always on the hunt for talent ready to take the risks that bring the biggest rewards.

“Life is full of surprises, my friend. I think we’d all be wise to remember that.”

A professional adapts.

Raul’s recklessness raises the stakes with every score. Sooner or later, his crew will have to double down or pull their chips from the table.

Brian Heder

Nothing better than a Mudslide at sunset.

Brian’s a classic drug runner from the golden age of smuggling in the Keys. Still moving product through his boat yard with his third wife, Lori, Brian’s been around long enough to let others do his dirty work.

“I hauled so much grass in that plane, I could make the state of Leonida levitate.”

Looks like a Leonida beach bum—moves like a great white shark.

Brian’s letting Jason live rent-free at one of his properties—so long as he helps with local shakedowns, and stops by for Lori’s sangria once in a while.

■ Places

Vice City

Everything in Excess.

We’re a long way from the ’80s, but Vice City is still the sun and fun capital of America.

The glamour, hustle, and greed of America captured in a single city. Each neighborhood has something to offer, from the pastel art deco hotels and bright white sands of Ocean Beach, to the bustling panaderias of Little Cuba and the bootleg brands of the Tisha-Wocka flea market, out to the VC Port, the cruise ship capital of the world.

Leonida Keys

Gateway to Paradise.

The dress code is casual, the bars are loaded.

Life in this tropical archipelago isn’t flashy but it’s easy. Get your buzz on and pull up a deck chair but look out—you are right on the doorstep of some of the most beautiful and dangerous waters in all of America.

Grassrivers

Welcome to the Wetlands.

The untamable jewel of Leonida’s crown.

You never know what lies beneath the surface of this primordial expanse. The gators may be the most famous attraction, but there are far deadlier predators and weirder discoveries among the mangroves.

Port Gellhorn

Live Hard.

This is Leonida’s forgotten coast.

Cheap motels, shut-down attractions, and empty strip malls won’t bring the tourists back, but there’s a new economy in this once-popular vacation spot. It’s fueled by malt liquor, painkillers, and truck stop energy drinks. Jump on a dirt bike and hold onto your wallet.

Ambrosia

Keeping Leonida Sweet.

The battle for the health and wealth of Leonida begins here.

In the heart of Leonida, American industry and old school values still reign supreme—whatever the cost. The Allied Crystal sugar refinery provides the jobs, while the local biker gang provides almost everything else.

Mount Kalaga National Park

Wild, Wild Country.

Room to breathe on the state’s northern fringes.

A national landmark up against the state’s northern border, Mount Kalaga offers prime hunting, fishing, and off-road trails. In the lush surrounding backwoods, hillbilly mystics and paranoid radicals live far from the prying eyes of the government.

Grand Theft Auto VI will launch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on May 26, 2026.

[flashypunches]

season 1, episode 1: minecraft but I join PARKOUR CIVILIZATION (fan-made) transcript. the scenes which are bracketed in squares are what I assumed to be flashbacks.

Pro with Sunglasses: Let’s go, open up, it’s time for parkour.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Alright, time for my mandatory parkour check, let’s get this over with.

Pro with Sunglasses: You’re late. You know the deal: you can do the one-block jump for the raw chicken or you can attempt the one block vertical jump for the beef.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Here in Parkour Civilization, no one chooses to jump for the beef. It’s better to be safe and do the one block jump for the chicken, rather than risk your entire life for just half a hunger bar more.

Pro with Sunglasses: Tomorrow, you better not be late, or you’ll be doing two block jumps as punishment.

Evbo: Yes sir, sorry, I won’t be late next time.

Evbo’s Monologue: Down here, us Parkour Noobs only get fed once a day. One piece of raw chicken is just enough to get you to the next day, but that’s the life of Parkour Civilization. If you wanna survive, you have to parkour.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Every Parkour Noob has the same goal, and that’s to make it to the top layer, where all the Parkour Pros live. Except most Parkour Pros are born on the top layer. If you’re a Parkour Noob, there’s only way up, and that is through the temple of Parkour. The Temple of Parkour is the only structure in the world that combines the bottom layer to the top layer. To make it up, you have to do an impossibly hard Parkour course that no Parkour Noob has ever completed. And that’s assuming you even get the chance to complete the course. 

The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier, and the only way a Parkour Noob gets past the barrier is if they’ve earned a ticket. I’ve never even tried getting a ticket before. But if I’m going to rank up to a Parkour Pro one day, I’m going to have to.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: In my neighborhood, pretty much everyone has fallen into the void and died, except for the guy who lives right next to me, he’s been my neighbor for five years– 

Evbo: No! Why’d he try going for the beef?!

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Well, I guess I have to change my statement: I now live in this neighborhood alone.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: In Parkour Civilization, only Parkour Pros are allowed to break or place blocks. For Parkour Noobs, it’s strictly prohibited, and unfortunately, I found that out the hard way. 

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: A while ago, I was searching around, and I somehow stumbled upon an oak log. No one has seen an oak log in years, since trees don’t exist in Parkour Civilization, so I had to try to take it.

[Black & White Pro: Stop right now. 

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Oh no, I’m done for.

Black & White Pro: You really thought you could break that without me noticing? What, were you going to try to cheat parkour?

Evbo: No sir, I didn’t try to cheat. I just thought it’d be super rare and I wanted to collect it–

Black & White Pro: Stop talking, give me two jumps now.

Evbo: Two jumps in a row? Okay, sorry sir, I’ll do it right now.

Black & White Pro: You know what, you seem a little too happy about two, let’s make it three.

Evbo: Okay… I’ll do three?

Black & White Pro: Y’know what, now let’s make it four jumps in a row.

Evbo: Ugh, four in a row? C’mon…

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: In Parkour Civilization, it should be no surprise that all punishments were just more forms of parkour. And that was the last time I ever tried breaking a block.

Black & White Pro: You’re lucky you got a light punishment. Don’t forget, you’re at the bottom, so follow the rules.]

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: It’s safe to say that if you’re at the bottom level of Parkour Civilization, it’s not exactly the best. But not everything in Parkour Civilization is that bad, for example: I was able to use parkour to buy the biggest house in the neighborhood. In Parkour Civilization, literally everything is parkour, and that means parkour has replaced money. 

[House Selling Pro: Welcome! Choose which house you wanna buy.]

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: It’s pretty nice. In Parkour Civilization, all you have to do to buy anything is just make more parkour jumps. I’m not really sure why or how parkour works as a currency, but all I know is, I basically bought a two-story house for free. Somehow when I was buying my house, I convinced myself to go for the ladder jump to buy the bigger house. 

In Parkour Civilization, parkour jumps with trickier items like ladders are worth more. That’s why this jump basically bought me a mansion.

[House Selling Pro: No way! Thank you for buying the big house, let me take you right to it, just follow me.

Evbo: Let’s go, this is awesome, I just bought my first house!]

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: All houses in Parkour Civilization are pre-built. And they all have one thing in common: it’s a requirement that every single house has a parkour jump inside to get to your bed. This is a way to make sure everyone in Parkour Civilization parkours everywhere they go, even inside the house.

[House Selling Pro: So, this is the neighborhood you’ll be living in, you’re the only two-story house here. So if you follow me, I’ll give you a house tour.

Evbo: This is so sick! That ladder jump literally made me the richest one in the neighborhood!

House Selling Pro: As you can see, you have a jump on the top floor and a jump on the bottom floor. Let me show you the upstairs, and then the house is all yours.

Evbo: Alright, I mean, everything looks good. I just have to do this jump to my bed, and yeah, I think I got everything figured out.

House Selling Pro: Perfect. Last thing, I just need to check if your parkour jump is good.

Evbo: How are you supposed to check if it’s good? Wait, what the– did this guy for real just jump off? Uh, I’m really confused, is he alive? Why did he do that?

Pro with Rainbow Headband: Alright, just wanted to confirm that your house is ready to move in. The guy did in fact die, so everything should be good. 

Evbo: That guy seriously died? 

Pro with Rainbow Headband: Yeah, don’t worry about it, it’s a part of the job. Enjoy your house.

Evbo: How is that a part of the job, what?]

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Nobody really remembers how Parkour Civilization really started. Most of the Parkour Noobs, down there at least, think that the Parkour Pros were the ones who started it, but the truth is that I think I was the one who started it. For some reason, I can’t remember the best, but I’m pretty sure this is how the story went:

[Evbo: Yo, Seawatt. Yo. Hello? Bro, you think I could get a diamond real quick, I was mining for like three hours and I only found two diamonds, I just want to make a diamond pickaxe. 

Seawatt: Uh, sorry. Don’t have any to spare. 

Evbo: Bro, c’mon, don’t be like that, you were literally just holding one. Dude, just give me one and I’ll pay you back later, I just need a pickaxe.

Seawatt: Alright, fine, give me one second. If you want a diamond, you’ve gotta give me something. Alright, watch out– back up for one second. Look, if you can make this four block jump, I’ll pay you one diamond.

Evbo: “Make this four block jump,” wait, why? Why are you going to pay me to do parkour? What do you even gain from this?

Seawatt: Uh, I don’t know. I’ve just never seen anyone do it before, I’d pay to see it done.

Evbo: Oh-kay, I’ll take the offer. Ugh, this is so annoying– alright, just give me a second, I know it’s possible, I’ve done it before.

Seawatt: I’ve told you bro, it’s not possible.

Evbo: Just stop talking and watch, I’m going to do it in like– thirty seconds. And, there we go, finally. Look, I told you it was possible. 

Seawatt: No way, that was actually incredible. Well, I got my money’s worth.

Evbo: Let’s go, I got paid for parkour!

Seawatt: If you want, I can keep making more parkour for you to do, and I’ll pay you for it.

Evbo: Are you kidding? Dude, totally. Alright, I’ll be back here tomorrow I guess?]

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: And this is basically how parkouring for money started. The next day I showed up to Seawatt’s house, he offered me way more diamonds this time, and he constructed an entire parkour course outside of his house to do. But little did we know that this parkour course would completely change the way that the world works. Soon after this event, the Parkour Civilization began.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Now that I think about it, there’s kinda an unexplainable gap between those events and now, but oh well.

Pro with Sunglasses: Parkour Check time, you’ve got 30 seconds.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Another beautiful morning and I have to parkour for some more raw chicken that will make me starve even more. 

Evbo: Alright, alright, I’m here.

Pro with Sunglasses: One block for raw chicken, one block vertical for beef.

Evbo: Considering my neighbor just died for going for the beef, I’m just going to go with the chicken again.

Pro with Sunglasses: Keep in mind, there’s a ticket event today. It’s going to be about two-hundred blocks west.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: This was huge news, if there was actually a ticket event today, I would need to go for the beef. Ticket events are usually far away, and I would starve by the time I got there if I chose the chicken. But luckily, I got the beef.

Pro with Sunglasses: No way, you made that jump? You might become a Parkour Pro one day!”

Evbo: Wait, you really think I could rank up to be a Parkour Pro?

Pro with Sunglasses: Hah! Not a chance, you’re a Parkour Noob, you guys never rank up.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: It’s important to know that Parkour Pros have really big egos, and they like to put down the Parkour Noobs. This was an important day. This was only the second time I’ve jumped for the beef, and now, I have a chance to earn a ticket.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: The Ticket Events are so risky because they’re located so far away. If I wasn’t paying attention, I could miss one of these one-block jumps and my entire chances of becoming a Parkour Pro would be over. But luckily, I made it to the Ticket Event. 

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: When I got here, there were only three Parkour Noobs in line to do the Parkour course. Most Noobs don’t even show up for the courses anymore, because if you miss one jump– you end up like this guy. And that’s the price you pay if you want a ticket to be a Parkour Pro. I watched as the second Noob fell to the void. 

Evbo: Hey man, do you think you could go already? 

Noob Second in Line: I don’t know man, I’m kind of nervous I’m going to fall.

Evbo: No, you don’t need to be nervous, I’m sure you’re fine– oh, shoot… okay, nevermind then.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Before going for it, I wanted to study the Parkour course. You see, every week, the Ticket challenge changes, and it’s completely random. And this week’s course was extremely difficult. There was a two block jump to get to the ticket, and if you get it, a two block jump to get out of it.

Here’s the thing about Parkour Civilization, parkour can be used for anything. And that includes bribing Parkour Pros.

Evbo: Check this out, if I do a parkour jump with a 360, will you replace one of the two block jumps with a one block jump?

Pro with Sunglasses: You want to do a one block jump with a 360? Fine. There’s no way you’re going to make it, but I’ll accept.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Let’s go, the Parkour Pro accepted my bribe! And now I have another problem, I have to do a 360? Have I even done this before? Whatever, I’m just gonna go for it– please make it! No way, I actually did it!

Evbo: Alright, a deal’s a deal, right?

Pro wearing Sunglasses: I’m not gonna lie, that was the coolest thing I’ve seen a Parkour Noob do. Well, deal’s a deal, here you go.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: Let’s go, now there was only one two block jump in the course.

Pro wearing Sunglasses: Still gotta make the first two block jump, Noob.

Evbo: Yeah, yeah– just let me do the course, bro.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: This was my best chance to finally earn a ticket. If I actually get this ticket, I could access the Parkour Temple and make my way up into a better life, as a Parkour Pro.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: There was no turning back now, I had to start the course. Most Parkour Noobs aren’t experienced with diagonial jumps, but somehow, I got past it. And now, was the two block jump. This was life or death. I closed my eyes, and I went for it.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: I’d expected to be falling thousands of feet per second into the void, but to my surprise, I was standing on the platform with the ticket. And thanks to the deal I made with the Parkour Pro, I only had a one block jump to get out of the course.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: This was life changing. This was the first time I’ve ever received a ticket to access the Parkour Temple, and I promised myself that I wasn’t going to waste it.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: I made my way over to the Parkour Temple. I was in a good spot, I had three full hunger bars, which was the most hunger a Parkour Noob can have. This was it. There was no better time, no more perfect time to try making the Parkour Course to rank up to a Parkour Pro.

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: I walked up to the hoppers in the ground, and I threw in my ticket. After a few seconds, the invisible barrier that guards the Parkour Temple was down. And now, of course, I had to make sure I didn’t fail the one block jump to actually get inside the Temple. I made the one block jump successfully, and now I was officially inside the Temple. 

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: This was it. This was the moment I’ve been waiting for my entire life. This was the Parkour course that no Parkour Noob has ever beaten. If you miss any of these jumps, you’ll either die from fall damage or fall directly into the void. But I’ve come too far, and I’ve practiced too much to have that happen. 

Evbo’s Internal Monologue: I wasn’t just gonna be another Parkour Noob that fails this course. I was gonna be the first one to rank up to become a Parkour Pro. My journey to becoming a Parkour Pro starts now– 

[lagtrainzzz]

"Let's go! Open up; it's time for parkour."

All right, time for my mandatory parkour check. Let's get this over with.

"You're late. You know the deal: you can do the one-block jump for the raw chicken, or you can attempt the one-block vertical jump for the beef."

Here in Parkour Civilization, no one chooses to jump for the beef. It’s better to be safe and do the one-block jump for the chicken rather than risk your entire life for just half a hunger bar more.

"Tomorrow, you better not be late, or you'll be doing two-block jumps as punishment."

"Yes, sir. Sorry! I won't be late next time."

Down here, we parkour noobs only get fed once a day. One piece of raw chicken is just enough to get you to the next day, but that's life in Parkour Civilization. If you want to survive, you have to parkour. Every parkour noob has the same goal: to make it to the top layer, where all the parkour pros live. Except most parkour pros are born on the top layer. If you're a parkour noob, there's only one way up, and that’s through the Temple of Parkour.

The Temple of Parkour is the only structure in the world that connects the bottom layer to the top layer. To make it up, you have to do an impossibly hard parkour course that no parkour noob has ever completed—and that’s assuming you even get the chance to complete the course. The inside of the temple is protected by a barrier, and the only way a parkour noob gets past the barrier is if they've earned a ticket.

I've never even tried getting a ticket before, but if I'm going to rank up to a parkour pro one day, I'm going to have to.

In my neighborhood, pretty much everyone has fallen into the void and died—except for the guy who lives right next to me. He's been my neighbor for five years. No! Why did he try going for the beef? Well, I guess I have to change my statement: I now live in this neighborhood alone.

In Parkour Civilization, only parkour pros are allowed to break or place blocks. For parkour noobs, it's strictly prohibited, and unfortunately, I found that out the hard way. A while ago, I was searching around and somehow stumbled upon an oak log. No one has seen an oak log in years since trees don't exist in Parkour Civilization, so I had to try to take it.

"Stop right now!"

"Oh no, I'm done for."

"You really thought you could break that without me noticing? What, were you going to try to cheat parkour?"

"No, sir! I didn’t try to cheat; I just thought it was super rare, and I wanted to collect it."

"Stop talking. Give me two jumps now!"

"Two jumps in a row? Okay, sorry, sir. I’ll do it right now."

"You know what? You seem a little too happy about two… Let’s make it three."

"Okay, I'll do three."

"You know what? Now let’s make it four jumps in a row."

"Ah, four in a row? Come on!"

In Parkour Civilization, it should be no surprise that all punishments are just more forms of parkour. And that was the last time I ever tried breaking a block.

"You're lucky you got a light punishment. Don’t forget, you’re at the bottom, so follow the rules."

It's safe to say that if you're at the bottom level of Parkour Civilization, it's not exactly the best. But not everything in Parkour Civilization is that bad. For example, I was able to use parkour to buy the biggest house in the neighborhood. In Parkour Civilization, literally everything is parkour, and that means parkour has replaced money.

"Welcome! Choose which house you want to buy."

It’s pretty nice; in Parkour Civilization, all you have to do to buy anything is just make more parkour jumps. I'm not really sure why or how parkour works as a currency, but all I know is I basically bought a two-story house for free. Somehow, when I was buying my house, I convinced myself to go for the ladder jump to buy the bigger house. In Parkour Civilization, parkour jumps with trickier items like ladders are worth more. That’s why this jump basically bought me a mansion.

"No way! Thank you for buying the big house. Let me take you right to it; just follow me."

"Let's go! This is awesome; I just bought my first house."

All houses in Parkour Civilization are pre-built, and they all have one thing in common: it’s a requirement that every single house has a parkour jump inside to get to your bed. This is a way to make sure everyone in Parkour Civilization parkours everywhere they go, even inside the house.

"So, this is the neighborhood you'll be living in. You're the only two-story house here, so if you follow me, I'll give you a house tour."

"This is so sick! That ladder jump literally made me the richest one in the neighborhood."

"As you can see, you have a jump on the top floor and a jump on the bottom floor. Let me show you the upstairs, and then the house is all yours."

"All right, I mean, everything looks good. I just have to do this jump to my bed."

"Uh, yeah, I think I got everything figured out."

"Perfect. Last thing, I just need to check if your parkour jump is good."

"How are you supposed to check if it's good?"

"Wait, what? Did this guy for real just jump off?!"

"Uh... I’m really confused. Is he alive? Why did he do that?"

"All right, just wanted to confirm that your house is ready to move in. The guy did, in fact, die, so everything should be good."

"That guy seriously died?"

"Yeah, don’t worry about it. It’s part of the job. Enjoy your house."

"How is that part of the job? What?"

No one really remembers how Parkour Civilization started. Most of the parkour noobs down here, at least, think that the parkour pros were the ones who started it. But the truth is, I think I was the one who started it. For some reason, I can’t remember the best, but I’m pretty sure this is how the story went:

"Yo, Seawatt!"

"Yo! Hello?"

"Bro, you think I could get a diamond real quick? I was mining for like three hours, and I only found two diamonds. I just want to make a diamond pickaxe."

"Uh, sorry, don’t have any to spare."

"Bro, come on, don’t be like that! You were literally just holding one. Dude, just give me one, and I’ll pay you back later. I just need a pickaxe."

"All right, fine. Give me one second. If you want a diamond, you’ve got to give me something, all right? Watch out, back up for one second. Look, if you can make this four-block jump, I'll pay you one diamond."

"Make this four-block jump? Wait, why are you going to pay me to do parkour? What do you even gain from this?"

"Uh, I don’t know. I’ve just never seen anyone do it before. I’d pay to see it done."

"Okay, I’ll take the offer. Oh, this is so annoying. All right, just give me a second. I know it's possible; I've done it before."

"I told you, bro, it’s not possible."

"Just stop talking and watch. I’m going to do it in like 30 seconds."

"And there we go, finally! Look, I told you it was possible."

"No way! That was actually incredible. All right, well, I got my money's worth."

"Let’s go! I got paid for parkour."

"If you want, I can keep making more parkour for you to do, and I’ll pay you for it."

"Are you kidding, dude? Totally! All right, I’ll be back here tomorrow, I guess."

And this is basically how parkouring for money started. The next day, I showed up to Seawatt's house. He offered me way more diamonds this time, and he constructed an entire parkour course outside of his house to do. But little did we know, this parkour course would completely change the way the world works. Soon after this event, the Parkour Civilization began.

Now that I think about it, there’s kind of an unexplainable gap between those events and now, but oh well—parkour check time!

"You got 30 seconds."

Another beautiful morning, and I have to parkour for some more raw chicken that will just make me starve even more.

"All right, all right, I’m here. One block for raw chicken, one block vertical for beef. What are you choosing today?"

Considering my neighbor just died going for the beef, I’m just going to go with the chicken again.

"Keep in mind there’s a ticket event today. It’s going to be about 200 blocks west."

This was huge news. If there actually was a ticket event today, I would need to go for the beef. Ticket events are usually far away, and I would starve by the time I got there if I chose the chicken. But luckily, I got the beef.

"No way, you made that jump! You might become a parkour pro one day."

"Wait, you really think I could rank up to be a parkour pro?"

"Not a chance. You’re a parkour noob; you guys never rank up."

It’s important to know that parkour pros have really big egos, and they like to put down the parkour noobs.

This was an important day. This was only the second time I’ve jumped for the beef, and now I have a chance to earn a ticket. The ticket events are so risky because they’re located so far away. If I wasn’t paying attention, I could miss one of these one-block jumps, and my entire chance of becoming a parkour pro would be over. But luckily, I made it to the ticket event.

When I got there, there were only three parkour noobs in line to do the parkour course. Most noobs don’t even show up for the courses anymore because if you miss one jump, you end up like this guy—and that’s the price you pay if you want a ticket to be a parkour pro. I watched as the second noob fell into the void.

"Hey, man, do you think you could go already?"

"I don’t know, man. I’m kind of nervous I’m going to fall."

"No, you don’t need to be nervous. I’m sure you’re fine… oh, sh—shoot! Okay, never mind then."

Before going for it, I wanted to study the parkour course. You see, every week, the ticket challenge changes, and it’s completely random. And this week’s course was extremely difficult. There was a two-block jump to get to the ticket, and if you get it, a two-block jump to get out of it.

Here’s the thing about Parkour Civilization: parkour can be used for anything, and that includes bribing parkour pros.

"Check this out. If I do a parkour jump with a 360, will you replace one of the two-block jumps with a one-block jump?"

"You want to do a one-block jump with a 360? Fine. There’s no way you’re going to make it, but I’ll accept."

"Let’s go!"

The parkour pro accepted my bribe, and now I had another problem—I had to do a 360. Had I even done this before? Whatever, I’m just going to go for it. Please make it… no way, I actually did it!

"All right, deal’s a deal, right?"

"I’m not going to lie, that was the coolest thing I’ve seen a parkour noob do. Well, deal’s a deal. Here you go."

"Let’s go!"

Now there was only one two-block jump in the course.

"Still got to make the first two-block jump, noob."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just let me do the course, bro."

This was my best chance to finally earn a ticket. If I actually get this ticket, I could access the Parkour Temple and make my way up to a better life as a parkour pro. There was no turning back now; I had to start the course. Most parkour noobs aren’t experienced with diagonal jumps, but somehow, I got past it, and now it was time for the two-block jump. This was life or death. I closed my eyes and went for it. I expected to be falling thousands of feet per second into the void, but to my surprise, I was standing on the platform with the ticket. And thanks to the deal I made with the parkour pro, I only had a one-block jump to get out of the course.

This was life-changing. This was the first time I’d ever received a ticket to access the Parkour Temple, and I promised myself that I wasn’t going to waste it. I made my way over to the Parkour Temple. I was in a good spot; I had three full hunger bars, which is the most hunger a parkour noob can have. This was it. There was no better time, no more perfect time, to try making the parkour course to rank up to a parkour pro.

I walked up to the hoppers in the ground and threw in my ticket. After a few seconds, the invisible barrier that guards the Parkour Temple was down, and now, of course, I had to make sure I didn’t fail the one-block jump to actually get inside the temple. I made the one-block jump successfully, and now I was officially inside the temple. This was it. This was the moment I’d been waiting for my entire life. This was the parkour course that no parkour noob had ever beaten. If you missed any of these jumps, you’d either die from fall damage or fall directly into the void. But I’d come too far, and I’d practiced too much to let that happen. I wasn’t just going to be another parkour noob who failed this course—I was going to be the first one to rank up to become a parkour pro.

My journey to becoming a parkour pro starts… now.

"Hey, wake up! You want a chance to eat today or what?"

"All right, let’s get this over with. Let’s go."

"Hurry up and do the parkour, noob."

Down here in Parkour Prison, even the cells have one-block jumps. If you miss a single jump or if a parkour pro catches you not jumping for 30 seconds, you’ll be thrown into the lava.

"All right, I gotta ask—do you want to do a diagonal jump to reduce your prison sentence time?"

Most parkour noobs would never take this deal; diagonal jumps are just not worth the risk. But I wasn’t just going to sit in Parkour Prison my entire life. If there was any chance I could get out sooner, I was going to take it.

"That was unexpected. Congrats, you’ve earned one day off your prison time. That means you go from 49 years and 320 days to 49 years and 319 days left."

And this is how my life is going to be for the next 49 years in Parkour Prison—that is, unless I find a way to get to that portal and make my way back to Parkour Civilization.

Parkour Prison is located directly under the bottom layer of Parkour Civilization. If a parkour noob misses any jump, they fall into the void and end up here. And the only way back to civilization is to spend 50 years here without failing a jump.

Before I was sent here, I never knew this place existed. I was so close to becoming a parkour pro. My entire life, I’ve been training for one goal: to go to the Temple of Parkour and complete the impossible course to rank up to become a parkour pro. I had everything. I’d earned the ticket to get inside the temple, and I had enough food to make the journey. But when the time came, I failed the first jump. And now… I’m dead?

"What the—where am I?"

"Welcome to Parkour Prison, or as most noobs call it, their worst nightmare. If you’ll just follow me, I’ll take you right to your cell."

"Parkour Prison? What is this place? I don’t get it. How am I still alive?"

"And just make sure you don’t miss any of these one-block jumps, because if you fall in the lava, you will die… for real this time."

"Oh yeah, not a problem. I’ve never missed a one-block jump in my life."

What I didn’t get is why Parkour Prison existed. Instead of letting the parkour noobs just fall into the void, somehow this massive structure was built under the void to catch us. But why?

"All right, noob, this is your cell. Go on in."

All of the cells in Parkour Prison are separated by a three-block gap, meaning once I go inside this cell, I’ll never be able to escape. But that wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

"Make sure you’re doing at least one jump in your cell every 30 seconds. If one of us catches you not jumping, you’re not making it out of here."

Just minutes before this, I was about to rank up to be a parkour pro, and now I’m in the most dangerous place in Parkour Civilization. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only noob right now in Parkour Prison. My guess is most of them by now fell in the lava.

Wait, there’s actually someone here! Let’s go; I’m not alone down here. Wait, why does this guy look familiar? He’s been my neighbor for five years. No! Why did he try going for the beef? No way… it is my neighbor.

Wow, I’m so glad I’m not alone down here. No… dude, what is wrong with this guy? All right, he has to be doing it on purpose at this point. The only thing that’s better about Parkour Prison is they feed us fish instead of raw chicken.

"Hey, noob, let’s go. You’ve been selected for parkour testing. Be down there in 30 seconds."

And this is one of the not-so-good parts about prison—the random parkour testing.

"Bro, wait, you didn’t even fill in this gap. Ah man, now we gotta do another one-block jump."

If you're a prisoner here, the only thing you hope for is that you don’t get selected for random parkour testing. Every few days, the pros pick a noob at random to test out a new course they’ve built. This time, the course I was selected for had fence parkour. If I failed to make this one-block fence jump, I wouldn’t be coming back.

"Let’s go! We don’t have all day; get on the course."

"Yes, sir. I’m going right now."

The worst part about these random courses is that they intentionally use harder blocks for the jumps. The pros know that the noobs have almost no experience with fence jumps but build them anyway.

"All right, testing complete. Back to your cell in 30 seconds."

By some miracle, I was able to get past this week’s random testing course. But what about next week? Or the week after that? There’s going to be a day when they build a jump I can’t do, and I need to get out of here before that happens. Luckily, I’ve been thinking of a plan to make my escape.

Back in Parkour Civilization, I used parkour to bribe one of the pros, and now I was going to do it again.

"Hey, guard!"

"What do you want, noob?"

"I got something to show you. Can you come over here?"

"This better be worth my time, or I’m not feeding you tomorrow."

"Okay, what… oh, nothing really. I just wanted to ask if I could pay you with, uh, three diagonal jumps in a row for five minutes of free time."

"Three in a row?"

"Yep, three in a row. What do you think?"

"You’re definitely not making that, but it’s not like I care anyway. Sure."

Like always, parkour can be used to get out of any situation. But now I had one chance to make three diagonal jumps in a row, or else I was dead. Come on… one, two, three! No way, I actually did it!

"Okay, five minutes of free time, but you better be back in your cell by the time I get back."

The bribe worked. Now I had five minutes to roam around Parkour Prison to see if I could find a way to escape. I had no clue what was going to happen to me after I escaped, but I didn’t have time to think about that right now.

While I jumped around the prison, I noticed someone doing the random testing course.

"Wait… is that who I think it is?"

"No, you don’t need to be nervous. I’m sure you’re fine…"

"Oh no way, it is the guy who failed the ticket event in front of me. That guy was nice. I hope he clutches up these glass jumps and makes it back to civilization."

Something was strange about this testing course. Why were they using glass for parkour? Glass jumps aren’t even a thing at the parkour noob level. If noobs have never done glass jumps, why would they use them for testing?

"I just gotta get out of here."

"I bet you’re trying to think of a plan to escape, right?"

"What? Escape? What are you talking about? I would never try to escape!"

"You’re not? I was going to take you to the portal, but if you don’t want to…"

"This obviously seems like you’re trying to set me up."

"It’s not a setup. No one says you have to stay here. You can leave at any time. Just follow me, and I’ll take you there."

I was 99% sure I was being led into a trap, but it didn’t matter. If he got me close to the portal, I’d try to improvise. If this guard was leading me into a trap, I couldn’t see what it was. He was already getting me so close to the portal. At this point, I was just going to take a chance and hope he was telling me the truth.

I was now five blocks away from going back to Parkour Civilization.

"You can leave now if you accept the terms that you can never earn a ticket to rank up to become a parkour pro for the rest of your life."

"Wait… you’re saying that if I go back to Parkour Civilization now, I can never be a parkour pro?"

"That’s correct. Or you can wait out the remainder of your 49 years here in prison."

So this was the catch. I could leave Parkour Prison right now, but in return, I could never become a parkour pro. Or I could try to survive here for another 49 years. It wasn’t worth it to stay; I needed to get out of here.

"Okay, I’ve made my decision. I’m going to go back."

"So you accept? Good luck."

This was it. The work was done. I escaped Parkour Prison, but at what cost? Leaving now meant that I would be a noob for the rest of my life.

When I went through the portal, I was brought back into Parkour Civilization. The portal spawned me at the entrance of the Temple of Parkour. This was probably the last time I would ever step foot in this temple. I had my chance to rank up to become a pro, and I failed. Now, I can never earn a ticket ever again.

"You know, it’s not the worst thing in the world. Now I can just go back to my ordinary life in Parkour Civilization. Now that I think about it, it’s not the worst situation in the world. I mean, at least I still have my mansion."

"Wait, who is this? I still own this house, right?"

"No, you don’t. This house no longer belongs to you. This parkour noob just purchased this new mansion, so you’ll have to leave now."

"Wait, wait, wait! This guy just bought my house? How can he do that?"

"Well, you fell and went to Parkour Prison, so you lost the house when you were down there. This parkour noob bought it."

"Bro, really? Wow… so I really don’t own this house anymore. Well… this guy can just—"

"Uh, okay, it’s for sale now. Let’s go so I can move back into my house."

"After you buy it again."

"Sure, wait, really? Are you serious? I have to buy it again?"

I went back to the shop to go buy my mansion again, but while I was in Parkour Prison, something bad happened. The prices for houses in my neighborhood went way up. Now, if I wanted to buy my mansion, I’d have to pay for it with a two-block jump. It was too risky. I was going to have to find somewhere else to live.

Fortunately, I found another shop that was selling wood houses—a bit of a downgrade from the stone house, but it was all I could afford. I could either do a one-block fence jump for a small house or a one-and-a-half-block standing jump for a large house. I figured if I was going to be living on the noob level for my entire life, I might as well buy the big house.

Luckily, escaping Parkour Prison gave me the confidence to make the jump easily. Now I had a mansion in a new neighborhood where, not to my surprise, everyone fell into the void, so it’s just me living here. The house is definitely a bit of a downgrade from my previous mansion, but it’s still a two-story house, and it has a painting, which is something you don’t really see that often in Parkour Civilization.

I just keep wondering what my life would have been like if I actually made it to the pro civilization. Now, I don’t think I’ll ever figure out what it looks like up there. I just wish that—

Whoo—what was that?

When I went to sit in my chair, I backed up against the wall, and there was nothing behind me. This painting was covering something. I walked through the painting, and it revealed a secret door. For some reason, this house I bought had a hidden passage. Whoever made this was obviously trying to hide something. But what was it?

There was a ladder that led to the bottom floor, and when I got down there, I found a man. Somehow, there was already someone living here. By his leather boots, I could tell he was a parkour noob. This was obviously some mistake. I went to leave, but then—

"Wait, don’t leave!"

The man spoke to me. He said he’d been watching me.

"I watched you enter the Temple of Parkour. I think you have what it takes to rank up."

"I’m sorry, man. I think you’re confused. I can never earn a ticket anymore. I’m going to be a parkour noob forever."

"No, there is still a way. I can get you a ticket."

"Wait, wait, wait! What are you talking about?"

"When I was younger, I earned myself a ticket, but I never used it. Instead, I hid it far, far away."

The old man said it wasn’t his destiny to rank up to be a pro, but it was mine. He brought out a compass and threw it to me. He told me that if I followed this compass, I’d find the hidden ticket. This was the second chance I’d been looking for.

I had no way of knowing whether the old man was telling the truth or not, but at this point, I had nothing to lose. Maybe this works, maybe it doesn’t—all I know is that I wasn’t done with Parkour Civilization just yet.

"Come on, just one jump at a time, and I should be there soon."

"Where do you think you're going?"

This can't be good. I was at a parkour checkpoint.

"Why do you want to leave Parkour Civilization?"

If the pro found out why I was really out here, I might end up back in Parkour Prison. I needed an excuse.

"I, uh, just wanted to practice my two-block jumps."

"Listen, noob, out there you'd never survive. Besides, what do you need to practice for? You can never rank up, buddy."

Despite my story, it didn’t work. I was in big trouble now. Following this compass was the only possible way I could make it up to Parkour Pro Civilization. I was going to have to try something else.

"I told you to go home!"

"What if I paid you with a backwards jump?"

"A backwards jump? Okay… at least he's listening."

Now, I had one chance at this.

"Oh… my God, I actually made it! That was crazy."

"Wait, no, that was crazy! Move aside and let me try this."

"You got it. Just make sure you jump far!"

Oh shoot—that was not my plan. I thought he was just going to let me pass!

Well, I guess that works. Now that I’d made it past the parkour checkpoint, it was time to start searching for the hidden ticket—that’s assuming the ticket I was looking for was even real. After the mysterious old man gave me this compass and told me it would lead to a ticket to rank up to Parkour Pro Civilization, I immediately started preparing for the journey. This time, I wasn’t going to fail.

The biggest problem I had to solve was my food supply. Parkour noobs only get fed once a day, and if this compass was taking me far away, there was no way I’d survive on just raw chicken. So, for the past week, I’d been doing the beef jump every single morning, and for the rest of the day, I tried not to parkour at all to save my food. That’s when I almost got caught.

"Hold up… what was that sound?"

Oh no, I’m starving. This isn’t good.

"Why are you taking damage? Are you starving?"

"Starving? No, I’m just in pain because I love parkour so much, and I wish I could do it all the time."

"Oh man, sorry to hear that. Yeah… love hurts. Well, I hope you feel better."

By some miracle, the parkour pro bought my excuse. If he’d stayed around any longer, I might have starved to death. I had to eat the piece of beef I’d just jumped for, but it didn’t matter. I had already prepared enough by rationing my food. I was able to save up four pieces of beef for the journey. I had no clue if this would be enough food to survive the trip, but the old man said I had everything I needed, so I was just going to have to trust him again.

Now, it was time to go searching for the ticket. Crossing this line of stone meant I was heading into the parkour outskirts. No noob, including myself, had ever been out here, and probably for a good reason. All I knew was that the further away you got from Parkour Civilization, the more dangerous the jumps became. Already, I was starting to see huge chunks of parkour missing. No one knows how the outskirts came to be like this—or at least, no one down here knows.

Unfortunately, the compass kept taking me further and further away from Parkour Civilization. The old man must have hidden the ticket out here, knowing that no parkour pro would ever go this deep to retrieve it. I was running out of time. I had already been jumping for hours, and now I was down to one piece of raw beef, with still nothing to show for it. That was, until I saw something in the distance.

I had no way of knowing, but I had a feeling that this was what I was looking for. In all my time here in Parkour Civilization, I had never seen anything like this. This couldn’t be a coincidence, which meant I was going to have to parkour to the top. I hadn’t really prepared for anything like this—vertical jumps don’t exist naturally down here. The only place I’d seen vertical jumps was when I jumped for food. Luckily, I made it to the top without falling into the void.

I didn’t see anything at first glance, but when I pulled out my compass, I realized I was in the right place. I didn’t get it; the compass was pointing me to the exact block I was standing on. The ticket should be here… unless the old man hid the ticket out of sight and put it underground.

If I broke this grass block and a parkour pro caught me, I’d for sure be going back to prison for life this time. But if I was going to have any shot at making it up to Parkour Pro Civilization, I was going to take that chance. Well, here goes nothing.

I broke the block, and underground, there was a chest. I couldn’t believe it—I had actually found the ticket! But when I opened the chest, something was wrong. There was no ticket to be found, just a barrier. The old man lied to me. There was no ticket to get up to the pro civilization. Why would he send me all the way out here to get a barrier block? This didn’t make any sense. The old man knew I would risk my entire life for a ticket, but he set me up. There had to be some explanation for this.

Well, if I’m lucky enough to survive the trip back, I can ask him why he sent me all the way out here just to get a barrier block, which is also illegal to have. By some miracle, I made it back to the parkour checkpoint without falling.

"Hey, you. You were the last one to see the pro stationed here. What happened to him?"

"Oh, I, uh… well, I showed him a backwards jump, and then he tried it for himself and then… fell."

"You? A backwards jump? Are you serious?"

"Uh… yeah."

"Okay, now I have to try. So, you just go backwards…"

And he’s gone too. Am I going to be blamed for this?

Fortunately, I made it back to my house, and no parkour pro caught me with the barrier block. Now, it was time to ask this old man why in the world he sent me out there to retrieve this.

"All right, bro, are you going to explain to me why the—what the—?"

When I got down to the basement, the old man was nowhere to be found. All that was left was a hole in the ground. Did he jump into the void on purpose? I didn’t understand what was going on, but that’s when I noticed an item left on the ground. I knew what it was before I even picked it up—it was a ticket to rank up to become a parkour pro. The old man had it on him the entire time but still sent me to retrieve the barrier block.

The old man wanted me to find this barrier for a reason, and now this was the sign that I was ready to rank up to become a parkour pro. It was time to head to the Parkour Temple.

I made my way back to the place I never thought I’d step foot in again—the place where no parkour noob in history had ever made it out alive. I went ahead and ate my last piece of beef. Just like last time, I was in the perfect spot. Three full bars of hunger were exactly what I needed to make it to the top. The barrier guarding the temple was up, so I threw in my ticket, and the entrance to the Parkour Temple opened.

All I had to do now was something I totally never do—and that’s fail one-block jumps.

"Okay, I made the first jump. That’s always a good sign."

This time around was different. I wasn’t going to let the pressure get to me. I was going to be the first noob to ever rank up to the pro civilization.

"No… looking at this jump is giving me flashbacks. My journey to becoming a parkour pro starts… now."

No, this time was different. I successfully made the first jump, and for the first time in my life, I was actually on the parkour course. Now, all I had to do was take it one jump at a time. The first section was the stone blocks. So far, I’d only encountered one-block vertical jumps, but they were nothing I couldn’t handle.

Even though I had been on the course for a good amount of time, I was still far from making it to the top. After I passed the stone block section, I moved on to the stone slab section. Slabs aren’t too common at the noob level of Parkour Civilization, but luckily this section wasn’t too hard. However, it was the next section I was worried about: the stair jumps.

The next jump I had to complete was by far the hardest jump I’d ever seen. It was a two-block jump, but I had to go up half a block. But I didn’t come all this way to give up. I went for the jump, but I jumped too early. I thought this was it, but by some miracle, a block below me broke my fall, and I only took 2 and a half hearts of damage. That was too close to call—if I was even the slightest bit off, I could have fallen all the way down into the void.

On my second attempt, I made the jump. That stair jump essentially marked the end of the stair section, and now I was on the stone walls. Walls were almost never seen at the noob level, but fortunately, I didn’t see anything bigger than a one-block jump for the rest of the way. All I had to do was sneak and stay on the course, and that’s when I reached the point where the jumps stopped.

I was so high off the ground now, but I knew I was at the end. I climbed up the stairs until I was face-to-face with the entrance to the Parkour Pro Civilization. This was it—I was about to be the first noob in history to rank up. But then, the realization hit me: the last jump to get to the Parkour Pro Civilization was a three-block jump. It was impossible. This was why no noob had ever ranked up to become a pro—the course was impossible to begin with. But then I remembered the barrier block.

This is what the old man wanted me to use it for. He knew the course was impossible and wanted to give me a chance to rank up. I placed down the barrier block and made the two-block jump. I did it. I actually did it. I was the first noob in history to ever complete this course. No one at the bottom level knew what society was like up here, and I was going to be the first one to figure it out.

What was it going to be like? Would I actually be able to see the sky? Well, I guess we’ll find out.

I walked up to the stone walls, and the doors opened, revealing a room I’d never seen anything like before. I turned the corner and saw a parkour pro just standing there.

"Uh, hi…"

"What the—who are you? Where did you come from? I’m the only one working here."

"I came from the noob level. I just beat the course and ranked up."

"Wow… um, I wasn’t expecting this. I’m not sure what to do here… uh, just go over there and throw your leather boots in the lava."

"All right, time to get my iron boots."

"Yes, sir! One noob ranked up—a noob by the name of Evbo."

"Yes, sir, I’ll keep an eye on him."

And that was it. That was the last time I would ever wear leather boots again. From the looks of it, I only had one more lava jump to go, but this time, there were dispensers. I backed up, jumped over the lava, and was equipped with iron boots. I was officially a parkour pro.

After I went through, I saw one more jump that led to some barrels.

"What is this for?"

"It’s for food. You only have to pay one jump for two steaks here."

Only a one-block jump for food? That’s amazing. I opened the barrel to see something I’d never seen before: cooked meat. In my entire life living on the noob level, I’d never seen a piece of cooked beef. And now, as a parkour pro, I could fully replenish my hunger bar, which meant I could sprint.

"Oh man, this is crazy."

"Congratulations on becoming a parkour pro. You can now head up those steps and begin your life in Parkour Pro Civilization."

Those were the exact words I’d wanted to hear. This was it. When I walked up these steps, I would be at the top level of Parkour Civilization.

When I entered the temple, I immediately saw massive statues. These statues looked like they were showing the parkour noobs and the parkour pros—they even had their boots on. This place was insane; I’d never seen anything like this. I mean, look at these statues… wait, gold boots? Who wears gold boots?

This doesn’t make any sense. What is this? Am I not at the top of Parkour Civilization?

"Hey, parkour delivery! Let’s go, my parkour delivery is here."

Now that I was a parkour pro, I could get parkour delivered to my house.

"Hey, did you order parkour construction to this house?"

"Yes, sir, that’s me. I ordered the, uh, six-block-tall slime jump to my bedroom."

"Sounds good. Where do you want it built?"

"Uh, let’s see… I think this would be a good place for it. You think you can build it right there?"

"Oh sure, I can make that happen."

To think, just a few days ago, I was a parkour noob, and now I’m getting custom parkour jumps installed in my house. This is crazy.

"This look good?"

"Yep, I think it’s perfect. Hey, thanks, man, for parkouring all the way out here."

"Sure, you got my payment?"

"Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. It was four one-blocks in a row, right? Okay, one, two, three, four. There you go."

"Thank you very much. And my tip?"

"Your tip? Really?"

"Don’t tell me you thought you weren’t going to tip me. If you’re a parkour pro, it’s always expected that you tip when you buy something."

"I hope I make this… oh, that was close!"

"Oh wow, a 360! Yeah, you’re good, man. Thanks."

And like most things in Parkour Civilization, the way you tip is with more parkour. Luckily, I survived that payment for the jump installed in my house. If I’d missed any one of those jumps, I would have fallen back down to the parkour noob level, and my journey to becoming a pro would have been for nothing.

But I won’t say it wasn’t worth it, because now I can practice slime jumps anytime I want inside my house. This is how my new life is as a pro in Parkour Civilization. No parkour noob at the bottom level knows what life is like up here—except me, the only one to rank up and become part of Parkour Society.

To rank up to a parkour pro, I had to be the first noob in history to beat an impossible parkour course. When I got to the top, I got my iron boots, and I was officially a pro. I thought I had made it. I thought I was at the top of Parkour Civilization. But then, I realized I truly knew nothing about the world I was living in.

My journey to reach the top of Parkour Civilization wasn’t even close to being done. Now, I was about to discover what life was like on the second layer of Parkour Civilization. At the parkour pro level, everywhere you look is a two-block jump. When I was a parkour noob, I thought two-block jumps were extremely hard. But now that I could sprint, I realized they were almost like one-block jumps.

Something about the pro level felt different. Maybe it was the fact that when I was a noob, I’d see dirt in the sky, but now there’s nothing above me. That’s when I looked back at the Parkour Temple. There was still a world above me, and now it was way higher up. But there was something else that was different. I was staring down at the house I used to live in. When I was on the noob level, I’d look up and all I would see was dirt. But somehow, on the pro level, I could look down. And I could only assume that the same goes for the layer above me.

Now that I was adjusted to my surroundings, it was time to go searching for a place to buy a house—assuming life still worked like that up here. When I looked around, all I saw were identical buildings. Maybe this time, I wouldn’t be getting a mansion. But that’s when I found a building that looked different, and it definitely didn’t look like a house. When I walked inside, sure enough, it was a shop to buy a new house.

"Hey, aren’t you the noob who ranked up?"

"That would be me."

"Oh yeah, I thought it was you. I’m selling houses today. Choose the one you want to buy."

"Let’s go! It’s time to buy my first house as a parkour pro. Let’s see what these prices are. I can get one house for a two-block jump? Oh, that’s super cheap!"

"All right, what’s this one over here? I can get one house for a 2.5 block jump. Okay, that’s a little more expensive. And this last one is one house for a three-block—wait, why are these all the same? All of these options are for the same house?"

"Oops… busted! I was trying to get a little more profit."

"Why would anyone fall for that?"

Since there was only one house to buy, I obviously went with the cheapest option and bought my first house with a two-block jump.

"Congrats on buying your first house as a parkour pro. Let me take you to it."

"Let’s go!"

Since all the houses were identical, it was no surprise that mine looked similar.

"Uh, you're all set to move in. Feel free to call the parkour delivery service if you want your jumps changed."

"A parkour delivery service? Let’s go! Being a parkour pro is awesome!"

The living room in my house had two one-block jumps, and the entire house itself was three stories tall. It looked like there were three jumps to get to my bed on the top floor.

"Hey, it’s your neighbor! Can I come in?"

"Oh, uh, sure, sure!"

"Thanks. You’re that Evbo guy, right? The noob who beat the course and ranked up?"

"Yeah, that’s me. I’m the first one to do it, I guess."

"I can’t believe you’re my neighbor. That’s crazy! Well, you probably have questions about life up here, right? Anything you want to know?"

"Yeah, one actually—what happens if we fall? What’s the punishment for missing a jump at the pro level?"

"You go down a level. If you miss a jump, you’ll be a noob again, and you’ll have to beat the course again."

"Okay, so I can never fall. Noted. So, who are the people above us then? What’s above a pro?"

"It’s probably best I just show you. Here, come with me."

My neighbor started telling me everything there was to know about Parkour Civilization. He brought me back to the Parkour Temple, where all the statues were. He explained how Parkour Civilization starts at the noob level, and at level two, you become a parkour pro. Then, there were the parkour masters. If you were lucky enough to rank up, you’d get gold boots and become a master.

My neighbor said that parkour masters never come down to the pro level, but if they do, it’s a parkour pro’s nightmare. He said the parkour masters are ruthless. Then, he walked over to the largest statue, the one with the diamond boots.

He explained, "This is the parkour champion. Most people down here don’t even believe the champion is real, but the stories say there can only be one parkour champion. Whoever that is lives at the top of Parkour Civilization. Which means, if I was going to make it to the top, I would have to become the parkour champion."

My first day as a parkour pro was strange. For once, no one was at my door making me parkour for food. But then the question arose: how do I get food now? Or what do I even do? I saw another pro heading somewhere, so I decided to follow him. Soon after, I saw a few other pros going in the same direction, which meant they were probably heading somewhere important.

After a few minutes of jumping, I saw the massive structure they were all heading toward. When I got closer, I noticed a bunch of parkour pros lined up for something. Whatever this place was, these parkour pros were willing to do two-block vertical jumps to get here. Fortunately, I didn’t fail any of these jumps, and I made it into the line. I must have woken up late, because I was the last one to show up. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but that’s when I saw what everyone was waiting in line for—a dispenser at the end of the structure.

The pro in front of me picked up two items, but the only thing I saw them holding was a piece of paper. What could be so valuable about a piece of paper that people would wait in line this long for? When it was my turn, I clicked the button and got a piece of steak. So this is how the parkour pros get food. Then I received a piece of paper. The paper said, “Farm work = 15 minutes.”

This was when I realized how life was different on the pro level of Parkour Civilization. Instead of parkouring for food like the noobs, the pros parkour for work. Just like the guy who sold me my house, the guards in Parkour Prison, or even the pros who fed me every day—they were all just completing their daily tasks assigned from this piece of paper.

Now, for my first daily task, I was assigned to work on the farm. Before this, I had never seen an animal in Parkour Civilization, but this is where they were all kept. This place was responsible for feeding all of the parkour pros and noobs, and it should be no surprise that in Parkour Civilization, even the animals had to do a parkour course. My daily task meant that I had to watch all of the animals complete the parkour course.

"Oh man, this job is terrible. Now I’m just going to have to watch a cow fall off and… die. Whoa, what the—oh my God, this cow is crushing it! How did he even do that?"

The parkour pros only eat the meat from animals that complete the parkour course. They say it enhances your parkour abilities. As for the other animals that don’t make it… well, that’s where the meat for the noobs comes from. Some noob is going to have to eat that.

Wow, I can’t say I miss that.

Parkour pros do their daily tasks for a reason. Once you’ve completed the task from your piece of paper, you take it to the training grounds. This place is essentially the only reason parkour pros are incentivized to work—because it’s the only place in Parkour Civilization where you can practice parkour without worrying about falling to the lower level. The entrance to the training grounds is blocked by a barrier, and the only way in is to throw in your slip of paper once you’ve completed your work.

The daily task I completed gave me 15 minutes of practice time. That meant, for the next 15 minutes, I could practice any parkour jump I could think of. Here, you have the ability to build any parkour jump you want. But since this was my first day as a parkour pro, I didn’t even know what I needed to practice, so I just decided to try the jumps people had left behind.

It seemed like a lot of the pros were practicing fence jumps, which are jumps I had little to no experience with. But what scared me the most was what I saw over here: someone was practicing not one, but multiple three-block vertical jumps. It almost seemed impossible to do even one, but if someone was practicing these jumps, that could only mean one thing—that the way up to become a parkour master would be nearly impossible. If I was going to have any shot at ranking up to become a master, I was going to have to spend a lot more time in here practicing.

Ah, another beautiful day, and I don’t have to wake up to either raw chicken or raw beef. Even though I’ve only been here for a few days, I feel like I haven’t really enjoyed myself yet. For once in my life, I don’t have to go outside to parkour for food. I don’t even have to grab my piece of steak—I’ll still have full hunger for days. And now, instead of being bullied by all the parkour pros like I was down at the noob level, I can just do anything I want. No one’s here to punish me.

"Hey, you want to come with me to get our daily jobs? I don’t want to be late."

"Uh, yeah… I don’t think I’m going to do my daily task. I think I’m just going to chill today, honestly."

"What? What do you mean you’re going to chill? You’re not going to get your daily task? Are you sure about that?"

"I mean, no one says we have to, so what’s the problem?"

"I don’t know. I’ve just never seen anyone not do their daily task."

Wow, maybe I’m teaching the parkour pros that they don’t have to parkour all the time. But later that day, I realized I had made a huge mistake.

"Uh, what in the world is that sound? Bro, come on, I was just trying to sleep. Who keeps making that horn noise?"

"Dude, hurry! You gotta get out here now! Follow me and make sure you don’t miss a jump."

"Whoa… what’s going on? Be late for what? Wait, where are you going?"

I started parkouring in the direction my neighbor was going, and that’s when I saw a line of parkour pros standing completely still. I had no idea what was happening, but I followed my neighbor and soon joined the line with all the other parkour pros. No one was saying anything.

"Hey, can anyone tell me what’s going on?"

"Dude, don’t say anything and look straight ahead."

"Why can’t someone just explain what’s happening?"

That’s when it happened. Not too far ahead, someone dropped down from the sky—it was a parkour master.

"One of you was supposed to design a new course, but someone didn’t do their task. Who was it?"

Oh no, I’m done for. Why does this have to be me?

I watched as the parkour master interrogated each parkour pro, knowing that sooner or later, he would reach me.

"You. What was your task?"

"My task? I, uh… I was… was selling houses to noobs on the bottom level."

"Someone already did that task. Prepare for a parkour battle."

"A… parkour battle?"

"The parkour battle starts now."

This is just great. Why does my first parkour battle have to be against a parkour master?

"For my first attack, I’m attacking you with a three-block jump."

A three-block jump—that’s doable. I think I can survive this round.

In Parkour Civilization, it’s no surprise that people fight each other with parkour. If someone attacks you with a jump and you don’t make it, you pay the price.

Oh, this isn’t good. I’m already down four hearts.

"I gave you an easy one, but I guess this is going to be over faster than I thought. Get ready for my next attack."

The worst part about parkour battles is that you can’t even attack your opponent until you defend one of their attacks. Judging by this next jump, I probably wouldn’t be attacking the parkour master at all.

"Your turn. Four blocks by three blocks—diagonal jump."

"All right, here goes nothing… One, two, three, four… one, two, three… oh man, this is so far. How did he do this on the first try?"

I was hoping to get lucky, but luck wasn’t on my side. The second attack hit me, and I was down to two hearts.

"This is too fun for me. One more attack, and you’ll be gone forever."

The parkour master was right. If I failed to defend one more attack, it was game over for me. All I could hope for now was that the parkour master would fail this last jump, giving me a chance to attack.

No way he makes this on the first try… Oh God, he made it.

"This is it for you, parkour pro. A three-block vertical jump to decide your fate."

This was it. My entire journey in Parkour Civilization came down to this one jump, a three-block vertical jump. I thought that when I ranked up to become a parkour pro, my days of parkouring to survive were over. But I soon realized I knew nothing about parkour society. Even as a pro, I wasn’t close to being at the top of Parkour Civilization.

Parkour pros are the workers of society. Every day, we get a new task to complete. I found out the hard way what happens if you skip your job. The one day I didn’t complete my daily task, a parkour master came down and challenged me to a parkour battle. Now, I had to do the hardest jump I’d ever attempted if I wanted to live.

This was it—all my work to rank up as a parkour pro would be for nothing if I didn’t make this jump. But at least I was going to die trying. I took a deep breath and jumped.

Is this real? I… I did it. I made a three-block vertical jump.

"You just bought yourself five more minutes of time, but we both know your fate. Get ready to attack me."

The parkour master was right. All I did was buy myself a little more time. How was I going to do a jump that the parkour master couldn’t do? And if I made it too easy, he’d just get another chance to attack me. I got lucky last time, but I didn’t think I’d survive another attack.

For my first attack, I built a one-block jump and added a 360. Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance this would work.

"A 360? I’ve never done that before. But if you did it, it can’t be that hard. Let’s go."

Oh, he’s never done it before? I needed him to fail this jump…

"What? Who even does 360s? What is this?"

By some miracle, my attack against the parkour master was successful. I think I found his weakness—he couldn’t do a 360. This was my chance; I just had to make sure I kept making my jumps.

For my next attack, I built a two-block jump and added a 360 again. I’d never even tried this jump before, but my entire life depended on it. I jumped and successfully made the two-block jump with a 360.

"This is ridiculous. How are you doing these jumps?"

I watched as the parkour master tried to defend against my attack, but once again, the 360 was too difficult for him.

"This… can’t be possible. How are you beating me?"

Now, both the parkour master and I were at two hearts. The next person to land an attack would win the parkour battle.

"All right, you ready for a three-block jump with a 360?"

"No, stop! I yield. You win the parkour battle."

"What? Are you serious? No way—I actually won the parkour battle!"

Somehow, I’d beaten a parkour master.

"Because you beat me, I have something that can help you rank up to become a parkour master."

"I could become a parkour master?"

The master explained that the course to becoming a parkour master was nearly impossible, but he had something that might help me along the way. He pulled out an item and threw it on the ground. When I picked it up, I realized it was a Totem of Undying.

"Somewhere in the course, there’s a jump you won’t survive, and you’ll know it when you see it. Use this to attempt the course, and find any information you can about the secret to completing that jump. If you figure out how to make the jump, you can rank up to become a parkour master."

This was insane. Earlier today, I didn’t even know parkour battles existed, and somehow, I’d won my first battle—not just against anyone, but against a parkour master. Now, I had a reason to return to the Parkour Temple and attempt the course to become a parkour master.

I didn’t like thinking about the fact that this wasn’t the course to rank up; it was just the path to get up to the temple. But I wasn’t going to make the journey up to the temple just yet. Not only did I need food to restore my health, but I needed to complete my daily task. I’d barely escaped with my life after missing one day of work, so I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Today, my task was to feed noobs. I realized that despite all this time as a parkour pro, I’d never been back to the noob level. I wondered if anything had changed down there since I’d ranked up. If you’re a pro in Parkour Civilization and you fall, you lose your rank and become a noob again. But you can still go down to the lower level through a different path.

This was the first time I’d returned to this part of the Parkour Temple since I ranked up. Now that I was a pro, I had access to a different doorway that I’d never seen before. This new path led to a giant staircase that would take me back down to the noob level. If I missed one of these jumps, I’d definitely die, but fortunately, one-block jumps are too easy for me now that I’m a parkour pro.

When I reached the bottom, I collected everything I needed to complete my daily task. It’s crazy to think that I’m still the only one to have ever completed this course. The barrier I used should still be there, so maybe someone else will.

This is so strange. I once lived in this neighborhood—that was once my mansion. Now, as a parkour pro, I can see what it really looks like from down here. When I lived here, I was the only one left in my neighborhood… so does anyone live here anymore?

"Hello? Anyone home?"

Silence.

"Okay, I guess not. Maybe someone bought my mansion. I don’t know… uh, hello? Anyone here?"

"Yeah, yeah, I’m coming."

No way—someone actually does live here!

"All right, time to set up the jumps. Let’s see, one-block jump for raw chicken, and then the one-block vertical jump for raw beef. Man, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this job now."

"All right, mandatory parkour check."

Oh great, it’s you.

"You’re a parkour noob now? Weren’t you just at my house?"

"Yeah, you delivered my parkour to me."

"So… what happened?"

"What do you think happened, genius? You gave me a huge tip, and I was so happy… and then I fell out the front door."

"Hey, well, you know, I ranked up, so you could too. All right, now you have to choose your jump."

"You think I don’t know what to do already? Just let me jump for my food in peace."

Huh, I feel like I remember being in a situation just like this.

"You really think I could rank up to be a parkour pro?"

"Not a chance. You’re a parkour noob. And you think you’re so good now? Just wait till I rank up."

Oh, shoot… oh man, that sucks. Now he has to spend another 50 years in Parkour Prison.

After finding only two noobs to feed, I went back to the other neighborhood, where I had last seen the old man. It seemed so strange that he disappeared out of nowhere. I wanted to see if there was a chance he’d come back. But when I got to the house, a parkour master walked out the front door.

Luckily, I wasn’t spotted.

What was a parkour master doing all the way at the noob level? And why did he come from this house?

When I thought the coast was clear, I made my way over. This couldn’t be a coincidence—this was the only house I’d seen with a secret room, and now a parkour master shows up here? Did he even know about the secret room?

I went inside, but something was wrong. There was no secret doorway; it was gone. I was sure this was the right house. That parkour master must have come here to block up the entrance. I sat there thinking about why the parkour master would do that, but nothing made sense.

Now that I’d finished my daily task, it was time to try the course to rank up and become a parkour master and find this Impossible Jump. I got back up to the pro level, dropped off my daily task paper, and prepared to climb the Parkour Temple. Now I had one thing to worry about: making it through the initial course to get into the temple. I wasn’t worried about falling—I was worried about wasting my Totem of Undying.

The parkour master had said that I wouldn’t survive the Impossible Jump, so if I reached that jump without the totem, then this entire journey would be for nothing.

I scaled my way up the side of the Parkour Temple until I reached the top. Most of the jumps were two-block vertical jumps, but toward the end, I had to make a three-block jump. I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Finally, I made the last jump and was inside the Parkour Temple.

What’s crazy is that none of those jumps were part of the actual course to rank up—this was the real course. At first glance, I was seeing blocks I’d never seen used in parkour before. But I was expecting that; there’s a reason why almost no pros even attempt this course—it’s so dangerous. Fence jumps, trapdoor jumps, ladder jumps—the jumps just kept getting harder and harder the more I looked.

But I wasn’t here to rank up. All I was here to do was find the Impossible Jump that the parkour master told me about. If I found this jump and studied it like he advised, maybe I’d have a real chance of becoming a parkour master.

I climbed to the top of the ladder and reached the start of the course. Any fall from this height would result in death. And of course, the very first section was fence jumps. I held out my Totem of Undying and stepped onto the course. Fence jumps were my worst nightmare, but so far, I’d made three in a row. I soon realized that’s all I needed to do because I think I’d found the Impossible Jump.

What is this jump? Is this a four-block vertical fence jump? There’s no way… but there was nowhere else to go. This had to be the right path, but this jump… it had to be impossible.

Well, the master gave me the totem for a reason. I attempted the jump but got nowhere close to making it. That was it. That was my one chance to use the Totem of Undying, and I was just hoping that was the jump he was talking about.

Now, I had to study the jump, and I knew just the way to do that. Fortunately, my neighbor was working as the parkour delivery service today.

"Hey, I need a jump built in my house. Follow me; I need to show you what it looks like."

"All right… so the jump I need built… it’s a little ways away."

"Oh man, is the parkour jump all the way up there?"

"Uh, yeah, it’s fine. I’ll tip you good; just follow me."

I led my neighbor all the way up into the Parkour Temple and showed him the jump I wanted him to build. Since the jump was complicated, he placed down a block that copies every block on the jump, and after paying for his services, I now had this impossible parkour jump inside my house. Now I could study this jump every single day.

It turned out the jump was a three-block vertical jump, but with the fences, it turned into a four-block. It was actually impossible. So, what was I missing here? I couldn’t just practice the jump because parkour civilization rules state that all jumps inside your home must have a risk of dying. Practicing wasn’t going to be my best option.

Ugh, this doesn’t make any sense. I’ll think about it tomorrow, I guess.

I was about to leave it, but that’s when I slipped.

No!

For my entire life, I’d been parkouring to survive. That’s how any of us survive in Parkour Civilization. If you don’t make the jumps, you pay the price. No matter how many people I’d seen fall, it never stopped me from believing I could parkour all the way to the top of society. I was the first noob to ever rank up to become a parkour pro. I’d beaten a parkour master in my first parkour battle, and I’d even found the Impossible Jump that the parkour master told me about. I actually thought I could be a champion one day. But one jump can change everything.

No… I thought I was dead. Until I wasn’t.

What? How am I alive?

My journey in Parkour Civilization should have ended—I was supposed to die there. But a barrier block caught my fall. This barrier block had to have been placed by someone… unless it wasn’t?

The guy who delivered the parkour used a device that copied every single block from the Impossible Jump. That had to be it—the barrier was from the Impossible Jump. This is what the parkour master wanted me to find. It was the way to get past the Impossible Jump. And now that I knew about it, I could actually rank up to become a parkour master.

This meant I was going to have to prepare. I couldn’t believe it; just a few minutes ago, I was about to fall back down to the noob level and become a parkour noob forever. And now, I was preparing to rank up again to become a parkour master.

"All right, let’s see what my daily task is today… parkour course building. Okay, definitely cannot skip that."

The last time I skipped my daily task, it was parkour course building, which resulted in a parkour master challenging me to a parkour battle where I barely survived. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. This was the first time I’d been assigned a daily task in Parkour Prison, and the only way to get there is by jumping into the void.

Ever since I escaped this prison, I’ve never been back. And now, here I am, working here.

"Oh, finally, you’re here! I thought you were never going to show up. The parkour masters want another glass course made. And make sure you don’t make the jumps too easy—there are only two noobs left in Parkour Prison, so I’ll just grab one of them to do the course."

There are only two noobs left in Parkour Prison? I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

In Parkour Civilization, the parkour pros are responsible for building new parkour courses for the parkour masters. And since the pros would never want to try these courses themselves, the prisoners of Parkour Prison are used instead.

No way—it’s you again!

"And you think you’re so good now? Just wait till I rank up."

"Oh, shoot. I’m sorry, man, but you’ve got to be the one to do the random parkour testing today."

"Why can’t you pick the old guy? He’s like 100 years old!"

"Look, man, I don’t make the rules. You just have to do the course."

"This is too easy. I’m making it out of here—no, no! Oh no, he’s gone. For real this time."

All right, daily task completed. One step closer to becoming a parkour master.

"May you save us all, Evbo."

After a few more days of completing daily tasks, I was getting closer to attempting the course to rank up as a parkour master. I had been planning this out carefully—I wasn’t just going to jump into the hardest parkour course of my life unprepared. I’d saved four of my daily task papers to use at the parkour training grounds. As a parkour pro, each daily task I complete gives me 15 minutes of practice time, and since I saved up, I now had one hour to practice as much parkour as I could.

This would probably be one of the last times I could parkour without worrying about dying, because once I step foot into the parkour temple to become a master, there would be no turning back. All my preparation relied on the assumption that there was, in fact, a secret path to get past the Impossible Jump. But I’ve come too far and been through too much to give up now—I have to believe there’s a way to rank up.

I practiced every jump I remembered from the parkour temple. Most of the jumps were either fences, trapdoors, or ladders, and I used my entire hour in the training grounds practicing those jumps. By the end of the session, I felt like I’d unlocked parkour abilities I’d never had before. I was speedrunning through fence and trapdoor jumps with ease. Even three-block jumps weren’t a challenge for me by the end of my training, and that’s how I knew it was time to head to the parkour temple to attempt the course to become a parkour master.

"Yes, sir. He’s heading to the parkour temple now. Don’t worry, sir—I have something planned. I can promise you he’s not making it out alive."

This was it. It was time to start the journey up the parkour temple. The last time I made this climb, I had a Totem of Undying for a second chance. But this time around, there would be no second chances—this was my last and only run. If I didn’t make every single jump in the course, this would be the last view I ever had of Parkour Civilization.

But that’s how life in parkour works: you either rise, or you fall. You can never stay in the same place, and I had decided that I was going to be the one to rise.

I reached the top of the ladder, and it was time to start the parkour course. Any fall from this height would be the death of me. But the fence jumps weren’t what worried me—it was The Impossible Jump. This was the moment I’d find out if the secret path was real or not. I’d studied the placement of the barrier block back at my house. If I wanted to land on the barrier, I’d have to walk off the fence. If I jumped, I’d miss it, assuming it was even there. But there was only one way to find out.

I walked off the ledge—and I was alive. The barrier was there. The secret path was real. Now I knew it was possible—it was possible to become a parkour master. I looked around for the next step and saw the outline of a barrier three blocks to my left. It was a staircase of barriers leading back up to the parkour course.

I’d never done invisible parkour before, but there’s a first time for everything. I made the three-block jump and was on the secret path. I couldn’t understand—had someone made this path, or was the course designed like this from the beginning? Either way, the secret path got me back on the course, and now I had to make every jump on the first try.

Thankfully, I got past the fence section and moved on to the trapdoors. Trapdoors are only a quarter of the size of a regular block, meaning if I missed the jump by even a little, it would be game over. This next jump was a three-block diagonal jump. I hadn’t practiced this one, but I made it. I had cleared the trapdoors and was onto the regular doors.

I had almost no experience with door jumps, but I knew I had to be careful. If I wasn’t paying attention and opened one of the doors the wrong way, I could get knocked off, and there would be no Totem of Undying to save me this time. The jumps kept getting harder, and with each jump, I felt like I was barely hanging on. But as long as I was staying on the course, I was okay.

One by one, I kept making the jumps, getting higher and higher off the ground. The last door jump was a three-and-a-half-block jump. It was far, but it wasn’t going to stop me from ranking up.

I didn’t like thinking about the fact that this course had no room for error. When I ranked up before, at least there were blocks to potentially break my fall. Here, there was nothing that could save me. Luckily, I made it past the door section and now I was onto the ladder section.

Everything was going smoothly until I encountered something I’d never seen before.

Is this jump even possible? A two-block vertical ladder jump?

I’d never attempted a jump like this, but it had to be possible. I went for it—and I made it. That’s when I saw one of the hardest jumps I’d ever encountered.

Oh no, this could be the end of me. Come on… please hang on.

I was inches away from slipping off the ladder, but by some miracle, I was still on the course. Now, I was parkouring on fully grown trees. I didn’t even know trees still existed in Parkour Civilization, but I didn’t have time to focus on that. I was looking at the final jumps and realized I was almost at the top—I was actually going to do it.

"All right, where do I jump to now? What the—what’s going on?"

Suddenly, I heard a sound—a hissing noise. No, no… I was too late to realize what it was. I opened my eyes, and I was still on the tree with two hearts left.

"What happened? Was that part of the course?"

"Impressive. I thought the TNT would do the trick, but you just won’t stay alive."

"What the—who are you? What are you doing here? I’m so confused. What is going on?"

"Oh, please don’t tell me you thought you were going to rank up. You—you were a noob. You don’t belong up there. You could never be a parkour master. You belong at the bottom level. You were a noob; you were born to be one, and you’ll always be one. And now, I have to finish the job. Prepare for a parkour battle."

Oh God, a parkour battle is the last thing I need right now. I only have two hearts left. That means if I fail to defend even one attack, that will be the end of me. And to think, I actually had a chance of ranking up.

"Say goodbye to Parkour Civilization. The battle starts now. I attack you with a two-block diagonal vertical jump."

Whoever this was severely underestimated me. I’d beaten a master in a parkour battle, and I sure wasn’t going to lose to a jump like that.

"There’s no point in fighting back; your fate is inevitable."

I didn’t listen to him. I knew that as long as I could keep parkouring, I was still in this.

Now, I couldn’t afford to play it safe. I needed an attack that would finish him once and for all, and that meant doing a jump I’d never done before.

"Come on, please make it…" I did it.

"No… no! What was that? What was that jump?"

"Well, that would be a two-block downwards backwards jump—wait, sorry, I messed up. It’s actually a two-block downwards backwards diagonal jump."

This was it. The pro lined up at the edge of the block and jumped backward.

"Come on, please…" But he missed. I did it—I won the parkour battle.

But against who? That was just a parkour pro. Why was another pro trying to attack me? And why didn’t they want me to rank up? What was all that stuff he was saying about how I was born to be at the bottom?

There was too much to think about, but I had to set it aside because now I still had to worry about surviving the parkour course. And not just the jumps—who knows if there were more traps waiting for me ahead. I looked at the rest of the course and could see the final stretch of jumps. All I had to do now was a slime block jump.

Let’s go. All those days using my custom slime block jump to get to my bed were just practice for this moment.

I jumped and made it. Now, I was standing on one of the final jumps of the course, and I could see the doorway up ahead. Next were the three-block vertical jumps, but I’d been practicing for this moment. I used my momentum to do all five jumps in a row. In less than ten jumps, I would be a parkour master.

Now, I was at a tricky part—chain jumps. I’d never even seen these before, but compared to surviving a surprise attack and a parkour battle, it was nothing to me anymore. I made the final chain jump, and I was one jump away from becoming a parkour master.

This was it—everything was leading up to this. The old man who helped me, the parkour master who gave me the totem—they all wanted me to make it to this point, and I wasn’t going to let them down. I jumped, and I made it. I did it. I… I actually did it.

I turned around and looked down at how high I was off the ground. I’d beaten the course that no pro even attempts, and now, I was about to rank up. Once I stepped through these doors, I would no longer be a parkour pro. I would be a parkour master.

The doors opened, revealing an entirely different room. All the walls were made of quartz. I couldn’t describe it, but everything felt so perfect compared to the layers below. I looked over and saw a lava parkour jump with dispensers in the middle.

Oh, I know what this is. This would hopefully be the last time I ever have to wear pro boots again.

I took off my boots and threw them into the lava. Now, I just had to make sure I didn’t fail this jump. I jumped through the dispensers and was equipped with golden boots. I was now officially a parkour master.

The last time I ranked up to become a pro, there were people working in the Parkour Temple, but now I didn’t see anyone. I remembered how different society was between the noob and pro levels, so how much different could this society be? Well, there was only one way to find out. I walked up the stairs, taking in the grandeur of the Parkour Temple.

All right, I think I’m ready to see what society’s like up here.

I walked up the stairs into the Parkour Master Society.

Becoming a master of Parkour Civilization wasn’t easy. I had to risk my life finding a way past an impossible jump, complete parkour jumps I’d never done before, and even survive a surprise attack while trying to rank up. But no matter what challenge I faced, nothing stopped me from ranking up to become a parkour master. Now, I get to be the first parkour pro to see what society is like up here.

Oh my… this is what Parkour Civilization looks like as a master.

Up here, only the best of the best can survive. All the jumps are three-blocks; one missed jump and I’d rank back down to a parkour pro. All my work to get up here would have been for nothing. It looked like I’d be fighting for my life with every jump.

As a parkour noob, I only had to do one-block jumps. When I became a pro, those one-block jumps turned into two-block jumps. And now, as a parkour master, everywhere I looked, there were three-block jumps. But now, up here, there were also parkour highways. Taking the highway seemed a little easier since the glass jumps were about two and a half blocks. I was expecting life to be different up here, but I didn’t expect it to look like this.

Were these even houses? They looked more like skyscrapers.

Wait… could I actually buy a skyscraper as a master? I looked up and saw a parkour master effortlessly making the jumps. Just when I thought he was going to die from fall damage, he caught himself with a water bucket and moved on.

I’ve never heard of water bucket parkour before.

Then I remembered—the parkour master I battled came down the same way. So, parkour masters can use water to avoid fall damage.

All right, I need to go find myself a water bucket.

I made my way over to what looked like some sort of parkour staircase. This definitely didn’t look like an easy staircase to climb.

"I wouldn’t do that if I were you."

Oh no, my first day as a parkour master, and I’m already in trouble.

I turned around but didn’t see anyone, until a parkour master dropped down out of nowhere.

"It seems like you’re new here. You should probably get off the staircase if you don’t have your water bucket yet."

"Okay, I’m not going to fight back on this one—not trying to make enemies on my first day."

The master explained that I shouldn’t go up high without a water bucket because one missed jump and I’d die from fall damage. He said, “Masters never die from fall damage.”

"Okay, so… how do I get a water bucket then?"

"Do you even have a house yet?"

"Uh… no."

"All right, buddy, you should probably get a house first. Like that one over there. You need something on the ground level—somewhere you don’t have to go up high for."

Are you serious? These are actually houses?

"Okay, so how do I get a house?"

The master showed me the building where I could buy my parkour skyscraper.

"Hey, you’re new here, so I’ll help you out a little bit. I’m kind of rich, so just take this, and hopefully, that will help you buy your first house."

You’re rich? Wait, what does that mean?

It was already clear that I knew nothing about life up here. The parkour master dropped me five oak blocks. Why would he give me these? How much is a skyscraper going to cost?

I made my way over to the shop where I could buy my first house as a parkour master. I walked inside, and the store looked nothing like the other shops I’d been to. Instead, there was just one giant hole in the middle.

Okay, don’t tell me I have to do this jump to buy a skyscraper. Is this even possible?

"Clearly, you have no idea how this works. You have to build your jump, buddy."

I can build my own jump to pay for my house? Now I understand why the parkour master gave me these blocks.

"All right, what am I going to build? Wait, how do I even know if this is going to be enough to buy the house? Can’t you just tell me how much the house costs?"

"No, that’s your job. Just a warning, if you don’t pay enough, I’m not going to sell you a house."

I have to guess the price? Just great. Let’s hope this three-block diagonal jump works.

"Nice! All right, did I get the house?"

"Bro, you’re kidding, right? You’re trying to buy a skyscraper. Why would you think that would work? If I had a dirt house to sell, I wouldn’t even give it to you for that."

Oh, that’s not good. I just wasted three of the blocks I had. How am I possibly going to make a jump hard enough to buy a skyscraper with one block?

"Okay, let’s see… this is a three-block jump into a two-block jump. Oh God, I have an idea, and I don’t like it. But if I’m going to buy a parkour skyscraper, this might be my only choice. This is such a bad idea… why am I doing this? Whatever, I’m just going to go for it. One, two…"

I did it. I made the jump.

"I can’t believe it! I’ve never even seen a 360, but you just paid me with two in a row. This is incredible! Let me show you to your parkour skyscraper."

If there’s one thing I know about life in Parkour Civilization, it’s that a 360 can solve everything.

"All right, here’s your new house."

I must be the first person in history to have bought a house on the noob level, the pro level, and now the master level. I cannot wait to check this out!

"Wait… how do I even get up here?"

"Oh yeah, usually when people buy this house, they water bucket from all the way up there to get inside."

I have to jump from all the way up there just to get up one block?

"No, no. Since you paid me a lot, I’ll help you out." The guy handed me a block that I could use instead of water bucketing, but he said, "As a parkour master, if you’re caught using this, everyone will make fun of you."

That means I’m going to have to get a water bucket fast if I don’t want to become a social outcast up here.

All right, time to check out the biggest house I’ve ever bought in Parkour Civilization. The downside of being a parkour master is that every jump in my life is now so much harder. The houses up here have more spaces to fall through; I even have to jump just to sit on the couch. But that’s what it means to be a master in Parkour Civilization. Parkour masters are never supposed to fall, no matter how hard the jump is, so I guess I have to do all these glass jumps every time I want to get to the top floor of my house.

When I climbed up the ladder, I found myself in my very own garden. I didn’t even know nature like this still existed in Parkour Civilization, but now I have it in my house. This entire level of civilization was still so crazy to me. I couldn’t believe half of the things I was seeing—never in my life did I think I’d have to swim up a waterfall to reach the top floor of my house.

I was so amazed by everything around me that I didn’t notice I was at only two hearts. If I missed one of these jumps and took fall damage, it might be the end of me. But I’m a master now, so I don’t miss jumps—

No!

One missed jump cost me one heart, leaving me with only one heart left. I had been so focused on buying a house that I didn’t realize I had no food or means to regenerate. I was still suffering the consequences of the ambush at the Parkour Temple. Now that I had time to process, there was no way that person acted alone—someone didn’t want me to rank up, and whoever that was is still out there. It could be another parkour master, or maybe someone else entirely. All I knew was that I had to figure something out quickly if I wanted to survive. One more missed jump and my entire journey would be for nothing.

If I’m going to have any chance at surviving, I need to find food.

I took the parkour highway until I saw a massive building in the distance. I could only hope it was a place to get food, because I was down to four hunger bars, and I didn’t even want to think about what might happen if I lost the ability to sprint.

I walked into the building and, so far, I didn’t see anything that looked like food. All I saw were dispensers and hoppers on the wall, each labeled with different types of parkour items.

Maybe this is where I can get more blocks to build jumps… or maybe not.

"Why don’t these machines even work? I’m not getting anything."

"Hey, buddy, you’re not seriously trying to rob the parkour bank, are you?"

The Parkour Bank? I already knew parkour was how people paid each other in Parkour Civilization, but this was different. I watched someone walk up with a piece of paper, put it into a dispenser, and receive wood blocks in return.

I realized the paper they used was something familiar—it must have been a daily task paper. This meant that even as a parkour master, I couldn’t get out of doing daily tasks.

On the other side of the bank, I saw a staircase that looked impossible with just one heart.

"Hey man, no offense, but the top floor is for people with money. Come back when you’re rich."

How does everyone know it’s my first day here? Well, I found the bank, but that didn’t help me at all. My situation was only getting worse. I was now down to three and a half hunger bars. If I didn’t get food within a few minutes, I’d lose my sprint, and every three-block jump I’d been doing would be impossible.

I really hope this place sells food.

"Yeah, this is the place for food. You just have to build your jump."

Oh no. I’m done for. I have no blocks left. I have no way to pay for anything in Parkour Civilization. I’m going to be the first parkour master in history to starve. How embarrassing is that?

Wait a minute—unless… Parkour can be used for anything, even bribing parkour pros. Could I bribe a parkour master for food? Would that work?

Just then, someone fell from above and landed nearby.

Oh my God, they must have fallen from all the way up there. Well… free blocks for me!

I collected the blocks and felt a surge of hope. In my entire time in Parkour Civilization, I’d never even seen ice jumps before, but I couldn’t be afraid now—I needed the food.

"All right, what does two three-block ice jumps get me?"

"Dude, dude… you seriously paid that much?"

"Wait, what do you mean ‘paid that much’? Did I pay a lot?"

Apparently, ice jumps were worth a lot in Parkour Civilization because I got 64 golden carrots.

"Please come back anytime, bro!"

Let’s go! I’m not going to be the first parkour master in history to starve. Now I actually have a chance to start living life as a parkour master. I don’t even know what to do next. Should I go to work, or should I get a water bucket?

Oh yeah, definitely getting a water bucket.

I took the parkour highway until I found another building. Hopefully, this would be the place where I could get a water bucket, because I didn’t really feel like a parkour master until I had one. I walked into the building and saw a giant glass staircase with a small platform at the top and a target on the floor below.

"You’re here for a water bucket?"

"Oh, uh, yeah… is this where I get one?"

"You don’t just get one. You pay for it with your life. Climb up to the top of the staircase and grab a water bucket. If you make it, you keep it."

Of course I have to risk my life again. Getting a water bucket was the only thing in Parkour Civilization where you couldn’t just pay with parkour, but I was ready for the challenge.

"Yes, sir. Somehow, he ranked up? I don’t know… doesn’t matter. Maybe he’ll die from the water bucket jump, but if he doesn’t, we’ll be there to stop him."

I somehow made it to the top of the glass staircase. I can confidently say that stairs are the worst thing about being a parkour master. But right now, stairs were the least of my worries. I opened the chest and saw it filled with water buckets. The only way I was going to be able to keep one of these was if I went for the water bucket jump and made it.

If I succeeded, I’d unlock an entirely new level of parkour. If I failed… well, my entire journey would be for nothing.

But that's the way life is in Parkour Civilization—you jump to survive, and I happen to be pretty good at it. Why did I do this to myself? I should have never ranked up; life as a parkour noob was so much easier.

That said, I have to admit, life as a parkour master is awesome. This is what it’s like being at the top of Parkour Civilization.

Wait, no way—did I seriously just catch another master doing a one-block jump to get to his house?

"No, no, I don’t even know how this got here," he mumbled, embarrassed.

Now I had to start reaching my house the “real way,” which meant taking a trip on the parkour staircase. Here in Parkour Civilization, masters should never be seen doing one-block jumps. If you’re caught, you basically become the laughingstock of Parkour City. I’d kept the one-block shortcut for as long as possible to avoid reaching my house the real way—because the real way up to my house is brutal. If I miss even one of these water bucket jumps, it’s game over for me. But up here, the best parkour masters never take fall damage, and I was determined to be one of the best.

"Please don’t let me die… oh, thank you," I muttered, relieved.

All that, just to get to my house. But this is the price I paid to become a parkour master. I defied death more times than I can count to rank up, and now, as a master, the only way to survive is by doing the hardest possible jumps. These were jumps I could only dream of as a parkour noob. Now, with my water bucket in hand, I have the ability to become the greatest master in Parkour Civilization.

My first days on this level were confusing, but now I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it. As a parkour pro, I had to complete a daily task every single day. But now, as a master, I can choose to do a task whenever I want. Instead of earning practice time, masters are paid with blocks. As a master, if you want to pay for things, you have to build your own jumps. That means the more blocks you have, the more powerful you are. Right now, I don’t have enough blocks to build many jumps, so it’s time to work.

"Parkour delivery here—can I come in?"

"All right, let’s hope I can do this job well."

"Hey, you ordered some parkour built, right?"

"Yeah, that’s right—I ordered my new chain couch. You can put it right over there."

A chain couch? I’ve never heard of that before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.

"Uh… all right, I think I built this right. Is this what you wanted?"

"Oh yeah, this is a real couch. Maybe if you’re as rich as me, you can afford one of these one day."

"Uh… sure. Well, I hope you enjoy your new—oh, shoot. No tip, seriously? That guy said he was rich! I could have gotten some ice blocks or something."

The truth about being a parkour master is that people don’t always get along. Not only do you have to survive every jump, but you also have to be ready to defend yourself with parkour.

"Whoa, buddy, what do you think you’re doing? Everyone knows I’m the guy who sells houses. Go and take a different job."

"What do you mean? My job today is to sell houses."

"You can’t just skip one day. Come on, I need the money."

"That’s it. Parkour battle, you and me, right now!"

And by “defend yourself,” I mean you have to be prepared for a random parkour battle at any time. For my first move, I attacked with a three-block diagonal jump into a three-block vertical diagonal jump. I thought it was a strong attack, but the parkour master clearly had no problem with it. Now, it was his turn to attack, and I was in serious trouble. He built a three-block chain jump.

"Let’s see you try to defend against this attack, buddy."

Wait, I don’t even have chains to build with. I can’t do this jump.

"Then you have officially lost the parkour battle, and the house-selling job is mine again."

And there it was—my first time losing a parkour battle. But that’s just part of the learning process of being a parkour master.

Despite everything I’ve learned, there’s one thing I haven’t figured out: how to get to the top of the Parkour Temple. If I can make it up there, I could potentially become the parkour champion. But back when I was a parkour pro, I could see the path to rank up along the wall. Now, there’s nothing there.

"That’s because you can’t see it. It’s said that only the parkour champion knows the way up."

Standing behind me was the master I’d beaten in my first parkour battle—the one who’d given me the Totem of Undying and helped me find the way past the impossible jump. Without his help, I wouldn’t even be alive, let alone a parkour master.

"I knew giving you that totem was the right choice. Now that you’ve ranked up, you have the chance to save all of Parkour Civilization by becoming the champion."

"Save Parkour Civilization? What are you talking about? Why do I need to become the parkour champion?"

"You don’t understand. We are at war. We thought all hope was lost until you ranked up. People aren’t supposed to rank up, but you did it anyway. You need to come with me. Now."

What is going on? There’s a parkour war, and somehow I’m supposed to be the champion? What am I getting myself into? I should have never ranked up—I was happy in my mansion.

The master led me into the Parkour Temple, down a hidden hallway, and into a secret room. When I walked inside, I saw a small-scale model of the entire Parkour Civilization. The master said he had a mission for me. He told me to travel as far north as I could and find the highest parkour highway. There, I’d find a building that’s extremely difficult to get into. But if I could get inside, I’d find the truth about Parkour Civilization.

"Go at night," he said. "And if you succeed, you might be able to save everyone."

It was time. I woke up in the middle of the night—this was a stealth mission. If everything went according to plan, I’d get in and out, and no one would even see me. And if this was a trap, well… the master did give me the totem, and he could have stopped me from ranking up if he wanted. But at this point, I wasn’t doing this for him. I was doing it for me. If there was any chance I could uncover the truth about Parkour Civilization, I had to take it. Someone tried to stop me from ranking up, and this place might hold the answers.

I traveled north like the master had instructed, and at the top, I saw the parkour highway I needed to reach. There was no turning back. Going up might be a one-way trip, but if this mission could actually save Parkour Civilization, then someone had to do it. Why not me?

Now that I was at the top of the staircase, getting to the parkour highway was a different story. I didn’t even know if this jump was possible.

I’m going to regret this.

I backed up, gathered momentum, and jumped.

"No, no, no…!"

I thought I’d fall short, but I made it. That was way too close. Hopefully, that’s the last time I have to do something like that.

Following the parkour highway, I eventually saw a building that looked different from everything else in Parkour City. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be easy to reach, but that’s why the master sent me. The guy who’s never failed a jump before. Yeah, let’s pretend that’s true.

The entrance to the building was guarded by a challenging parkour course. As long as no one showed up to challenge me to a parkour battle, I’d be fine. But if someone did… well, it’s been a good run.

The next jump was a four-block jump. I don’t think I’ve ever done a straight four-block jump before, but the master said this mission would be difficult. If anyone could do it, it was going to be me. I gathered momentum and made the four-block jump.

"Oh, four-block jump down, and now... oh my God, what is this?"

I stood on a path of ice blocks, and at the end, there was a jump way too far to even comprehend. This could have been a five—no, six-block jump. I couldn't believe it. I tried looking around for barrier blocks, hoping for a secret path like before, but I found nothing. Somehow, I was going to have to make this jump, and I think I had an idea of how I might be able to do it.

"Okay, I get one chance at this… oh man, if only I were rich enough to buy ice blocks to practice. Oh, I do not want to do that again. There must be a parkour god looking out for me."

Back to the secret mission. Now I was just hoping I didn’t walk into an ambush. I walked inside and saw a giant hole in the floor with some parkour jumps at the top. I was thankful that I didn’t see anyone waiting for me, but I wasn't thankful for the glass pane staircase.

"Why do they have to make staircases so complicated in Parkour Civilization? This was supposed to be a stealth mission, but the staircase is making it really hard for that to be possible."

After what felt like forever, I made it up the staircase to the top floor. I looked around and didn’t see anyone—just a strange pedestal in the middle and a giant screen.

"What is this thing? This looks so—"

Suddenly, I had a flash of a memory.

"Look, I told you it was possible. No way, that was actually incredible! All right, well, I got my money's worth. Let’s go. I got paid for parkour. If you want, I can keep making more parkour for you to do and I'll pay you for it."

What just happened? How did I see that vision? That’s my memory… isn’t it? That’s Seawatt. I’ve lived that before. What is going on?

I walked over to the screen and opened the book on the desk. It said, "Enter user." Well, I was here for information, wasn’t I? Might as well see what this does. I put my name into the book and placed it back on the desk, and text appeared on the screen.

"Rank: Noob."

"What? How? I’m a master though—"

Before I could think any further, someone appeared right behind me. Before they saw me, I quickly hid behind the bush.

"Oh no, this is not good. This is not good," I whispered.

The person muttered to themselves, "Going into work late today, I guess. Or early maybe, I don’t know."

So far, they hadn’t seen me. But then someone else came into the room. It was Seawatt. I know him, don’t I? He’s from my memory.

I watched as Seawatt walked up to the desk and started putting something in the book. The player on the pedestal started moving. I watched as this player, without boots, walked up to a parkour jump and failed the one-block jump.

"And we got another noob. Good, we needed more of those," Seawatt said with satisfaction.

What is going on here?

"You can come out from behind that bush, you know."

Oh no, this is not good.

"Okay, time to improvise," I mumbled, stepping out.

"Bro, the bush is see-through. You really thought that was going to work?"

"Can you just tell me what’s going on? Why did I see you when I stepped on that pedestal? We know each other—that’s our memory."

"Nope, that’s just what every new person sees. It’s a fake memory to make you think that parkour is how you succeed in life. I mean, why else would people parkour if it wasn’t for money or social status?"

"So it was all just a lie?"

"I don’t get it. What is this for?"

Seawatt pointed to the three jumps on the pedestal. "These jumps—the ones that player just fell on. What happened to him?"

Seawatt explained that these three jumps decide whether a new player becomes a noob, a pro, or a master. Right when you join Parkour Civilization, these three jumps decide your entire fate.

"But… how is that fair?"

"It’s not about fair. It’s about order. If you can’t parkour, you deserve to be at the bottom."

"This is so messed up. I can’t let this keep going on. I have to find a way to stop this," I thought. If I can attack him with a parkour jump, he’ll have no choice but to battle me. I have to do an attack he’ll never be able to do. It’s time to go for the 720.

"I wouldn’t do that if I were you," Seawatt warned.

I looked over and saw that he already had an attack built—a jump with candles.

"Yep, candle jump. One attack from this, and it does ten hearts. Goodnight."

I was finished. I couldn’t attack; I couldn’t do anything. I was defenseless.

"So, what happens now?" I asked, resigned.

"Despite my best efforts to get rid of you, I couldn’t do it. So, someone else will."

Seawatt placed a parkour jump made out of brewing stands.

"I’ve never even heard of parkour with brewing stands before."

"Interesting thing about brewing stand jumps: they’re not just difficult. They can deal any potion effect you want."

This was it. I had no brewing stand to defend myself. I took the hit and slowly started fading away.

"Have fun with the champion in the arena."

Just one minute before I was set to fight the parkour champion. All right, I’m going to take thirty-two blocks and hope that the greatest player in Parkour Civilization doesn’t know how to do a 360.

I was now getting ready to face the parkour champion in the arena. The worst part was, I was only allowed to bring sixty-four blocks to fight with. I had no clue what the champion would attack me with, so I took some of every block. This was life or death. If, by some miracle, I could defend the champion’s attacks, I’d have to use these blocks to build the hardest parkour jumps I’ve ever done. I wanted to believe I could win, but deep down, I knew this could very well be the end of my journey.

"Before you step into the arena, drop all of your blocks. I need to count and make sure you’re bringing sixty-four."

"Here, these are the blocks I’m bringing. They should add up to sixty-four."

"You’re good. You may now fight the parkour champion."

This was it. One way or another, this would be my final battle in Parkour Civilization. The door opened, and I stepped into the arena. It was time to fight. If I somehow beat the parkour champion, maybe I’d have a way to save everyone in Parkour Civilization. But if I lost, well, let’s just say I should have died a long time ago.

I thought the Parkour Civilization I was living in was fair—a place where everyone could parkour to rank up in society. But I was wrong. I discovered the truth: your entire fate is decided by three jumps, and there are people at the top of Parkour Civilization who will stop at nothing to keep this order. Unfortunately, I couldn’t discover the truth without paying the price. And now, there’s nothing I can do.

"Have fun with the champion in the arena," Seawatt said ominously.

And now… it was time to fight the champion.

"Wait—what? You’re not the champion! Who are you? You’re a pro! What are you doing here? I thought I was fighting the champion."

"Oh yeah, you have to fight me first. Please, just go easy on me, though—it’s my first time here."

"Okay, I guess I’m not fighting the champion. First, I have to fight a parkour pro. This is weird. I’ve never even fought a pro before. What jumps can they even do?"

For my first attack, I went with a three-block vertical jump. I didn’t want to do anything too crazy because if I missed, I’d give him the chance to attack and risk taking damage. Fortunately, it seemed like this fight was going to be easier than I thought—until something happened.

The blocks I used for my attack all disappeared. In the parkour arena, if you place blocks, you never get them back. And now I realized why I was fighting a pro. It was genius, actually. If I wasted all of my blocks before facing the champion, I’d have no fighting chance.

“Hey, uh, quick question. The people who put you here—what did they say you were here for?”

“Oh, yeah. They said I would be, like, warming up the crowd, you know… for the fight.”

“Warming up the crowd? Uh, you know there’s literally no one watching, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Please, just get this over with.”

“Oh, God. I’m… I’m a terrible person.”

This was the weirdest parkour battle ever. For my second attack, I built a four-block jump, and, of course, it was successful once again. But at this point, I wasn’t worried about winning—I was worried about the blocks I was losing with every attack. There was no way I could afford to use more than two blocks per attack, at least not in this fight. For the final attack, I did a backwards jump.

“Did you just go… backwards? This is not going to be pretty—oh, shoot!”

That was not how I thought it was going to turn out. It was a little unfortunate that I essentially wasted two blocks on that jump since he didn’t even try it. But at least I survived the first parkour battle without taking any damage.

“So, now what happens? Do I fight the champion?”

I stood there on the platform, not knowing what to do, until I saw someone jumping toward me.

“All right, this is it. This is the battle for life or death. Let’s get this over with.”

“So, you must be the champion, right?”

“Me? The champion? You’re joking, right? Look at my boots—I’m a master. Do these look diamond to you?”

“Well, I don’t know! I thought I was fighting the champion. So, when does that happen?”

“You still have two more people to go through if you want to see the champion. But you’re not making it past me. Let’s go—start the battle!”

This was not good. I had to win two more parkour battles if I wanted to even see the champion. It was clear that the odds were stacked against me, but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying. Now I was fighting against a master. This meant I couldn’t hold back with my attacks; I’d have to attack with harder jumps. I decided this was a good time to use one of my stairs. For my first attack, I did a four-block diagonal stair jump, but I knew the attack was too easy, even for myself.

“That’s what you’re attacking me with?”

I was getting ready for the master to easily defend my attack, but by some miracle, he failed it.

What? The master didn’t know it, but I realized he built the jump wrong! He tried doing a harder jump than my attack.

I got lucky with that first attack, but that wasn’t going to happen again. I needed to do harder jumps. I used two more of my stairs to build another four-block diagonal jump. If I made this, I would only need one more attack to win the battle—but I missed. I came so close, but I didn’t land on the stair, wasting another two stairs.

“I see—even if you do beat me, you’ll have no blocks to fight the champ with.”

The master was right; I was running out of blocks quickly. I only had one stair left, and I wasn’t even done with my second battle. I watched as the master built his first attack. I was going to have to defend myself against a four-block ice jump.

“Go on, use some of your ice blocks. I’m sure you don’t have that many of them.”

He was right. I only had four ice blocks with me. Even if I defended this attack, I’d only have two ice blocks left. I went for the jump and almost slid off, but I stayed on.

“Oh, that was too close.”

It was now my turn to attack, but this battle was taking too long. I knew what the master was doing—he was trying to make me waste all my blocks. But there was no way I could let that happen, which meant I could only do one thing: I needed to build an attack that would end this battle right now. And I knew just the way to do it. In a parkour battle, the harder the attack is, the more damage it does, and I was about to attack with one of the hardest parkour combos I’d ever done.

“All right, four-block jump into a two-block. Let’s do this.”

I attacked with a four-block jump into a 360, and I made it.

“Let’s go! I actually made it—that was the craziest parkour combo I’ve ever done. All right, buddy, your turn: four-block jump into a two-block 360.”

“This is impossible!”

I watched as the parkour master attempted the combo and failed. The damage was enough to win the parkour battle.

It worked! That parkour combo I did may have just saved my life… at least for now.

If that master was telling the truth, I still had to win one more battle to face the champion. There was nothing else I could do. I tried looking around for a way to escape, but there was nowhere I could go. The only way out of this arena was to continue fighting. From across the arena, the path opened up, and my third opponent jumped toward me.

“Evbo, you’ve come so far, but this is as far as you go. I’m afraid you won’t make it past me to fight the champion. Let’s begin.”

“Okay, let’s do this. It’s just another master. I just beat one before, and I can do it again. If I can finish this battle with a couple of parkour combos, I might have enough blocks to fight the champion.”

For my first attack, I decided to build two four-block jumps. I thought this combo would be hard, but I had no clue who I was facing. The master made the jumps easily, and my attack was unsuccessful. Now I was in huge trouble. Unlike all the other people I faced in parkour battles, this master was not afraid to attack with his own parkour combos. And unfortunately for me, his was much harder than mine. The second jump in the combo was a jump that I didn’t think would be possible. It was too far, but I had to try—my life depended on it. I went to defend the attack but over-jumped it. The attack dealt five hearts of damage.

“Oh, this is not good. This is really not good.”

I managed to gain back two hearts, but my hunger was low. This was it—no more second chances, no more regenerating health. I had to make these jumps. The parkour master attacked with an even harder combo, this time using two chains and an ice block. But by some miracle, I made it.

“Oh man, how did I just do that?”

This master was too good. No matter what jump I thought of, I knew he could make it. That’s why I was going to have to do something that’s never been done in the history of parkour battles, and I was going to have to do it on my first try.

“Finish it up with the three-block candle jump, and we’re done. Let’s go. I’m probably going to die. All right, let’s do this. Flower pot jump to chain, chain to backwards jump, to 360 fence jump, diagonal chain jump to the candle.”

I… I… I did it. I just made the hardest parkour combo in the world.

“Evbo, the champion tasked me with making sure you don’t rank up. But I now realize that’s not possible. Your parkour is beyond me. You have my respect. Good luck against the champion.”

Before I could say anything, the master gave up and jumped off. I won the third battle, which means now I only have to battle the champion—the one who tried to stop me from ranking up this entire time.

All of this parkour… just to die by the champion. This was it. Standing in front of me was the champion of Parkour Civilization.

“You put up a good fight, I’ll give you that. But this ends here.”

I watched as the parkour champion built his first attack. It was a five-block jump.

“If you beat me in this battle, you become the parkour champion, and you could be the one that makes the rules. But this is my Parkour Civilization, and I never lose.”

The parkour champion made the five-block jump.

“It’s… not possible. It’s just not… I… I can’t do it.”

This was it. This was the end. There was no second chance, no backup, nothing to get me out of this. I lost, and I won’t be the one to save Parkour Civilization.

I opened my eyes and found myself in a place I knew all too well. I was down at the bottom, in the Parkour Temple, at the noob level of Parkour Civilization. I opened my inventory and saw leather boots on my feet. After the battle with the champion, I was now a noob again. I let everyone down.

I was supposed to be the one to save Parkour Civilization, and I couldn’t do it. Now, the Champion gets what he wants. No one can ever rank up again; no one’s free. People risked their lives because they trusted me to help them, and I failed. It was all for nothing. Now I’m just back at the bottom. I don’t even have Sprint. I can’t do more than a two-block jump. It’s over, right?

The old man gave me the last ticket to rank up, and even if I did, what’s the point? The only way I could save people is by becoming the Champion, and he’s impossible to beat. Well, it’s out of my hands now. There’s nothing I can do. Maybe I’ll just go back to parkour prison; at least there I could get fed some better food. I’d rather have fish than raw chicken.

“Down at the bottom again, are we?”

“What? Maybe I was wrong about you…”

“You were wrong about me? Wait, who are you?”

“Something tells me you already know the answer.”

The strange man turned around, and he was wearing netherite boots.

“Oh, I do not want to do that again… there must be a parkour god looking out for me. You’re the Parkour God! But you were just a myth. Is this all your doing—Parkour Civilization?”

“The civilization I created was never intended to divide people. But the new Champion had different plans.”

“And you… you wanted me to stop the Champion, and I couldn’t. I’m sorry you put your trust in me. I thought I was good enough. I thought I could do it.”

“You seem like all hope is lost.”

“I mean, I… I can’t do anything. I’m back at the noob level. I can’t get a ticket anymore; I can’t even sprint. What good is a one-block jump going to do against the Parkour Champion?”

“As long as you can parkour, there is always a way.”

The Parkour God dropped a pair of boots on the ground and jumped away.

“What is going on?”

I jumped over and grabbed the boots the Parkour God left. These were no ordinary boots. They were diamond—only the Parkour Champion wears these. And now, I had them. I threw away my leather boots and put on the Champion boots. Immediately, my hunger bar returned to full, and I could see up into the upper layers.

“Oh my God, this is crazy. What is going on?”

I don’t know where the Parkour God got these boots from or why he would trust me with them, but it didn’t matter. This was my second chance. I don’t know how I’m going to get back up to the top, but I’m going to find a way. Everyone’s life depends on this, and that’s why I’m going to be the one to save Parkour Civilization.

Parkour Civilization was in danger. I thought people could parkour their way up to a better life, but I realized it was all just a lie. The truth is that the Parkour Champion controls everyone and everything. I thought I could be the one to put an end to it and save everyone, but I failed. Luckily for me, second chances come around quite often, and I still have one more shot at saving Parkour Civilization. The only way I can put an end to all this is if I beat the Parkour Champion, and that means I have to get back up to the arena somehow.

And that was going to be harder than I thought. I had diamond boots on, meaning the barriers to the Parkour Temple shouldn’t be here—but they were. I had no way up, which meant somehow, I was going to have to get a ticket.

“Oh, this is not good. I can’t even earn a ticket myself. The only way I’m going to get one is if some other noob has one. But even if I got lucky and a noob hadn’t used their ticket already, I couldn’t find anyone.”

I was beginning to think that there were no noobs left and that they were all in prison until I finally found one still standing. I asked the noob if there was any chance he had a ticket or even knew someone with a ticket so I could get into the temple, but he said that Pros don’t come down here anymore to do ticket challenges. It’s now impossible for parkour noobs to rank up at all. This has to be the Champion’s doing.

If Pros don’t come down here at all, the noobs have no way of getting food. That means if I don’t get up in time and beat the Champion, everyone down here will die. There has to be a way I can get past these barriers. I mean, the Parkour God wouldn’t have given me Champion boots for nothing, right?

And that’s when I remembered—I had Champion boots on now. These boots were meant for the person that rules Parkour Civilization, and that’s when I thought back to what the Champion said: “If you beat me in this battle, you become the Parkour Champion, and you could be the one that makes the rules.” If the Parkour Champion makes the rules, they had to be the one to place the barriers, right? Which means, if someone placed them, someone can get rid of them.

It was a shot in the dark, but I thought I’d at least try. “Ah, this is pointless. This is not going to work… wait, what? It… it broke?”

I couldn’t believe it, but there it was—a hole in the barriers. This is insane. I can break barriers now!

“Ah, thank you, Parkour God!”

I got rid of more of the barriers until there was a space big enough to jump through.

“All right, let me make sure I’m not hitting my head on any of these, and now it’s time to go save everyone.”

I did it. I was now inside the Parkour Temple, and I was one step closer to getting back up to the top. Now that I was in the temple, it was time to start actually coming up with a plan. I was going to have to find a way to somehow get back into the arena and fight the Champion. And even if I managed to do that, I’d still have to worry about beating him, which is a whole other story.

My rough plan involved grabbing blocks, and I thought I could get some here—but the chests were empty. Those chests were usually filled with blocks for the Pros to do their daily tasks, but someone had removed all of them. My idea of getting blocks was already off to a bad start, but I had a backup plan for where I could go to get more.

I made it back up to the second layer of Parkour Civilization, but now was not the time to celebrate. I still had a long way to go to reach the third layer, and time was running out. I made my way over to the place where I could get all the blocks I needed. The parkour training grounds should have thousands of blocks I could use. The last time I was here, I was training to rank up to become a master, but something was off—the course I built to practice to rank up was still here.

“This doesn’t make sense… have all of the Pros just been practicing this course I built?”

But that’s when my situation got a whole lot worse.

“No, no, no, come on. They can’t be empty! Why are they empty?”

All of these chests should have been filled with blocks to build parkour jumps, but they were all empty.

“Okay, this is not good. This is really not good.”

Something strange was going on, and I needed to find some answers. I took a trip back to where I used to live when I was a Parkour Pro. If there was anyone I could trust to talk to, it would be my neighbor—assuming he was still alive. I found the house where my neighbor used to live, and thankfully, Parkour Civilization hadn’t claimed him just yet.

“Evbo! You’re alive… and you’re the Parkour Champion?”

“Well, I’m not really the Champion… I mean, I guess technically I am? I don’t know; it’s a long story.”

I asked my neighbor what was going on, and he said everything had changed. He told me that parkour Pros aren’t allowed to go down to the noob level anymore. Some Masters came down and took every block, and now the Pros can’t even practice anymore.

This was it. This was truly the end of Parkour Civilization. First, it was the noobs in danger; now, it’s the Pros, and soon it might even be the Masters. One by one, the Parkour Champion is taking away everyone’s free will. And if I don’t end this now, there will be no one left to oppose him.

All right, no pressure—the fate of the world is in my hands, and now I have to speedrun one of the hardest parkour courses there is. Unlike getting up to the Pro level, there’s no easy way up to the Master level. If you want to get back, you have to do the course. Even though I’ve completed this course before, this time it’s different. Time is running out, which means I can’t waste any by taking this course slow, and I can’t afford to miss a single jump. If I do, then I guess the Parkour God trusted the wrong person.

Luckily, I made it through the course, and I was now at the Master level. Finally, I was at one part of my master plan, which… well, has not been going to plan at all. If I don’t get these gold boots… okay, thank you! Finally, something goes according to plan. I didn’t know if I’d still get Master boots with Champion boots on, but luckily I got an extra pair.

Now that I was on the Master level, I had to blend in. Any one of these Masters could be working for the Champion, and if they saw me with Champion boots, that’s attention I definitely don’t want right now. At least with the gold boots on, those working for the Champion might not recognize me.

The next part of my plan: if I have any shot at getting back into the arena, I’m going to need the Parkour Master who saved my life. But when I went to the secret room in the Parkour Temple, he was nowhere to be found. Of course—it was too good to be true to have two things in my plan go smoothly. Now I’ve got to improvise. I needed to figure out where the Parkour Master lived, but I had no idea which house was his. The only thing I could do was sit and wait for him to show up. But if I stayed down here too long, I’d risk being found by the Masters on the Champion’s side.

I needed somewhere that would buy me a little more time, and the only place I could think of was at the very top of the parkour staircase. At least here I wouldn’t be seen easily, but if I needed to get down fast, I didn’t have a water bucket to save me. I realized I was standing so close to the barrier between the Master and Champion levels, and I had Champion boots. Meaning… if I put these on, will I be able to see what life is like at the Champion level?

But before I could put them on, I saw the Parkour Master I’d been looking for. Now for the part I wasn’t looking forward to. The only way I can follow him is by taking fall damage, and I just hope the drop to his house isn’t too far. Of course, it’s a 50-block drop. I’ll never survive that. Oh man, I have an idea, and I don’t like it. Yep, this is officially the worst idea I’ve ever had. No more thinking; let’s just do this.

I got momentum and jumped. I thought I was too short, but I made it! That was so crazy! I know the Parkour God doesn’t like me for that one. Barely surviving, I managed to find the Parkour Master without being caught, and now it was time to carry out my plan to save Parkour Civilization.

I told the Master everything that had happened and showed him that I had Champion boots. I told him that if I was going to beat the Champion, I would need his help.

“I can’t believe you survived and met the Parkour God! We can actually save everyone. Just tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it.”

I had the Master give me some blocks and told him to wait here for the next part of my plan. If everything goes right, I should have everything I need to get back into the arena and defeat the Parkour Champion… assuming everything goes right, which it hasn’t so far.

I jumped over to the Parkour Bank. To get back into the arena, I was going to need harder blocks to build parkour with, and I think I know how to get some.

“Hey man, I don’t mean to assume anything, but the top floor is for people with money. You can come back when you’re rich, though.”

The upstairs must be where the bank keeps the harder blocks.

“Sir, you’re not allowed up there.”

“Sorry, man. Got a bank to ra—okay, never mind.”

I was expecting to see places where I could buy flower pots and candles, but instead, there was just a massive box with a door.

“Sir, this is a private vault for one of our most valuable customers. You need to leave immediately.”

A private vault… hmm. I guess that might work.

“You’re not getting into this vault. No amount of money could make me open this door.”

“No amount of money? Man, clearly you’ve never heard of one of my bribes before.”

“Just stop. It’s not even worth it. What… what did you say?”

“Open the door now. I take it you don’t see a backwards 360 too often.”

“Well, I have to let you in now. Just… please don’t take anything.”

Yeah, I’m definitely not listening to that.

I started looking around the vault for anything I could use, but most of the chests were empty until I finally stumbled upon a water bucket.

“Okay, I needed blocks, but I guess I’ll take this.”

I didn’t get it. Whoever owns this vault is supposedly rich, and the only thing I found is a water bucket and 16 blocks. Never mind. I thought this vault was a dead end until… it wasn’t. In the last barrel, I found 16 brewing stands. Now my plan could actually work. It was time to go defeat the Parkour Champion.

“Uh, sir, I just wanted to let you know someone got into your vault. You’re the only one who has access to it, so explain to me how that happened.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but he bribed me with a backwards 360. I had to.”

“A backwards 360…? There’s no one that can do a… no. No! How is this possible?”

You know, someone told me something interesting about brewing stand jumps—they’re not just difficult, but they can deal any potion effect you want. That’s why I wish you the best of luck in this parkour battle because if you don’t make this jump, you’re getting the slowness effect.

I watched as Seawatt tried to defend against my attack, but he failed.

“All right, now it’s time for some answers. Tell me how to beat the Parkour Champion.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m telling you that.”

“Yep, I thought you’d say that. Let’s see… three blocks… oh, that’s plenty. All right, one more chance to tell me—unless you want to defend another one of my attacks.”

“I think I can handle a three-block.”

“All right, man. If you think you can make this jump with slowness, be my guest. I’m just going to let you know now that it’s not possible, so in a couple jumps, you’ll lose everything.”

“Okay, wait! I’ll tell you! Please, I like my life here…”

Well, that was easy.

“I can’t believe I’m telling you this. The Champion uses barrier blocks to parkour. He’s the only one that has any left. He builds parkour jumps with barriers.”

That means I was right. The five-block jump was impossible—he just used a barrier.

“Okay, wait. So, if he uses barriers for his attacks, how do I defend against that?”

“If the Parkour Champion finds out about this, I’m going to lose everything.”

“I don’t care. Just tell me.”

“Fine. There’s a secret rule in parkour battles that says if you build a harder jump than your opponent’s attack, they have to do that jump instead.”

That’s how I’ll beat him. I can just attack with a harder jump. Even if he does use barriers for his attacks, I just have to build better ones. Oh man, this is crazy.

“All right, let’s do this. Send me back to the arena like you did before, and this time I’m only fighting the Champion.”

“So, if I let you attack, what’s stopping me from just getting rid of you once and for all?”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that. That’s why I got one of the best Parkour Masters I know to watch you at all times, and if he finds out I don’t make it into the arena… well, let’s just say you won’t see the attack coming before it hits you.”

“Oh man, how do you even do these jumps?”

I really hope this plan works. There’s no way I could make one of these. Just as I thought, Seawatt had no choice but to listen to me. All I was hoping for now was that I’d wake up in the arena. I knew Seawatt couldn’t be trusted, but I had no choice. This was the only way I could get back into the arena.

And, luckily, it worked.

Now, I could finally battle the Parkour Champion, and this time, it was going to be different. I had all the blocks I needed and made my way into the arena. Now, it was time to see if Seawatt was going to uphold his end of the deal. But he did. Standing in front of me was the Champion of Parkour Civilization.

“All right, let’s go save everyone.”

“I should have known the old man would give his boots to you,” the Champion sneered.

“What? The old man? Doesn’t matter. You can try as many times as you want, but your fate remains the same.”

The Parkour God didn’t just give me random Champion boots—he gave me the old man’s boots. He was the old Parkour Champion. Okay, this was a lot to process, but I had to focus on defending this attack.

Seawatt had gotten me this far, but now it was time to see if he was really telling the truth. The Champion’s attack was technically only a four-block jump with a barrier, so the parkour combo I was about to do should be harder. I countered with a three-block 360 into a three-block fence jump.

“What?” The Parkour Champion looked confused, and suddenly, his attack disappeared. It worked—it actually worked! The secret rule Seawatt told me about was real, and now the Champion had no choice but to defend my attack.

Just when I thought I had the upper hand in the battle, the Champion pulled out barrier blocks. Instead of building my jump, he built some invisible parkour combo. I had no idea what sort of invisible parkour combo he built, but whatever it was, it was better than my attack, and my attack was erased. That only left me with one choice: I would have to build something even harder.

I didn’t know what the Champion had built, so I couldn’t hold back on my next attack. I knew I had to risk it all. I pulled out a 180 vertical flower pot jump into a backwards 360 candle jump—and I made it! The Champion’s attack was erased, and he had no choice but to either try my attack or build something even harder.

But the Parkour Champion wasn’t fazed and countered my attack with one of the hardest known jumps in Parkour Civilization: two Neo jumps in a row—jumps where you have to leap around a block in midair. I knew I couldn’t do these jumps, and this was not the time to try them. But the Champion had set the bar high, meaning if my next attack wasn’t harder than his, I’d lose everything. And if I didn’t make the jump I was about to build, my entire journey would be over.

But that meant the same thing for the Champion. Any one of these attacks would deal more than 10 hearts, so I had to make this jump. The Parkour God trusted me with these boots to save everyone, and for the first time in my life, I actually felt worthy of them—worthy of being the Parkour Champion.

“This shouldn’t be happening!” The Champion yelled.

I thought I’d bested him, but I was wrong.

“This ends now,” he said, building an attack directly over the void. “Either you go down, or we both go down.”

This was the end. The Champion knew he’d lost the battle, so he built a jump that would take us both down, and there was nothing I could do to defend myself. Deep down, I knew this was most likely my last jump in Parkour Civilization. But this time, I wasn’t going to give up.

“Parkour God, if you’re watching, please just give me the strength for one last jump.”

I didn’t expect my feet to hit the ground again, but they did. When I turned around, the Parkour Champion had fallen. I… I won. I actually won. It’s over, right? I’m the new Parkour Champion. I’m supposed to be the one who can make the rules and save everyone… but how do I do that?

As I was standing there, something started to happen. My items disappeared from my inventory, and I was teleported to the Parkour Temple. When I walked outside and looked around, I realized there was nothing above me. That’s when I remembered something the Parkour Master had told me: “The Champion is the only one who knows the way up.”

I turned around and looked at the Parkour Temple, and where there was nothing before, there was now a way up to the very top of Parkour Civilization. My journey wasn’t over yet; I still had to make it to the top. Luckily, I was now considered the best in Parkour Civilization, so if anyone could make the jumps, it was me.

Only one more set of jumps stood between me and the top. I had always dreamed of this day, the day I’d look up and see nothing above me. But I never would have imagined what I’d have to go through to get here. Every jump I’d made and every jump I’d failed had led me to this moment.

Now I was here, and there was nothing—just pure emptiness and the sky. I didn’t have any idea what to do until I saw a structure in the distance. I walked over and saw blocks I’d never seen before in Parkour Civilization—command blocks. They were placed in front of a throne. I stepped up onto the throne and received my own pair of Champion boots, but this time, they weren’t someone else’s. They were mine.

It only made sense that doing parkour on command blocks gave me the power to make the rules of Parkour Civilization. But before I started changing the rules of society, I needed to do something first.

“Well, I think it’s time I give these back. I have a feeling you’ll probably be needing them.”

“Evbo… you… you did it. You saved us.”

“No, no… I didn’t do anything. It was only possible because of you. That’s why… I think you should be the Champion. I don’t know what to do with Parkour Civilization, but you—you’re the Champion. You know how to fix things. I just don’t think I’m ready to be the…”

“Whoa, what are you doing?”

“You think all of this was for me to become the Champion again? I’m old, and you know Parkour Civilization better than I ever could.”

“All right, then. I’m going to need your help with every four-block jump on these command blocks.”

With every jump, I had the power to change the rules of Parkour Civilization. And with the help of the old Champion, I wasn’t just going to make things go back to the way they were—I was going to make things better than they ever were. Parkour was never about making or failing a jump; it was about getting up and trying again.

The Parkour God told me, “As long as you can parkour, there is always a way.”

In my Parkour Civilization, people will always have a chance to try again.

do you love the color of the sky

[romaticiseadarkcity]

a lot of the reason I got into urban design is because of two human rights: food and shelter. after my environmental science degree I became hellbent on decolonising our land use, and one of the first things to go was whatever is going on with housing—but also, along with it, bringing back the intrinsic value of natural areas rather than the exponential increase of land value due closer to the cities.

what this has told me is that we as humans love connection. we need land to grow our food (less now with the advent of vertical farming and hydroponics) but we love all coming together in clumps. we also love access to green space, nature, and we want as much of both as possible. for our mental health, it’s ideal we have good amounts of both, the balance will differ from person to person, the need for both will differ from person to person, and quality impacts our mental health and access to necessary services more than quantity. this is something we can work with as urban designers: creating value, forms of capital with the goal to meet humanity’s needs. it’s possible, if we stop thinking of value purely in terms of money.

I’m obsessed with slums: imagine moving to the city and taking the shittiest accommodation possible just to be near the resources and opportunities. after spending my high school and undergrad years lonely on the peri-urban outskirts of a big city, I’ve done the equivalent of it—spending 3/4 of your income on rent isn’t sustainable, especially if you plan on going back to study, but I’ve done it. I’m also obsessed with development and charity and the reason behind it: most property developers are fundamentally selfish and I have longed for half my life now to prove to the world that we can do it another way; sustain ourselves by providing homes with a sense of place to people who need it the most, upgrading living conditions for a community in line with their longings, and be fueled by the social and relational and community capital it produces rather than money. the way my brain works, this has a direct link to my productivity.

the relational positive feedback cycles of my brain aside, the more I’ve studied the more I see the scientific principles behind things like economic formulas that can predict all things supply and demand, which is basically what the housing industry is. stuck in the private sector for too long while the government is slow, I’ve spent my life making structures out of wood with my handy impact driver from trees I grew myself, thinking, if I can make this place out of nothing but photosynthesis and a nickel metal hydride battery just because I had some energy to burn off, surely it’s not that difficult to provide for people just through creating?

still, economics is a mathematical art that we have to learn like professionals in the soul-sucking industry in order to break creatively and artistically in ways that actually work. practically, my first exposure to doing this as an adult beyond the hypotheticals of the classroom was a presentation by max chandler mather, and as he steps down from his position as a member of parliament here in Australia I want all of you to google him and see the policies he has—inspired by Vienna, which I’ve been too broke from paying my rent to go visit yet, and something to do with breaking the cycle of negative gearing in taxes that I still don’t quite understand. but I understand the rest.

i was 21 and this was the first time I realised the environment and human housing don’t have to be conflicting needs. i raised my hand and asked, how do you make it environmentally friendly in line with your party’s policies? isn’t housing development one of the biggest contributors to land clearing? and he said being built according to government plans and regulations actually ensures that the highest environmental standards can be achieved as actual experts will be involved, something developers so rarely do (and every architect you meet will rant about) to cut costs. from there I looked into sarah bekessey’s coined term biodiversity sensitive urban design and the research she’s done into this mid rise paragon of human and environmental health at the royal melbourne institute of technology. I got myself qualified (well mostly) to design this stuff but I think what’s gonna do it for me is working with a group of people who share the same ideals, rather than just because of a job opening. I might reach out to some of these contacts.