#game knowledge

[strawberry-queen-66]

Me: *happy because the premiere included several Joel x Tess moments*

Also me when the episode ends without Tess calling Joel Texas at least one:

[techdriveplay]

How to Improve Your Gaming Skills

In the competitive gaming landscape, where esports tournaments and online multiplayer games dominate, every gamer aspires to level up their abilities. Whether you’re a casual player looking to climb the ranks or a dedicated gamer aiming to compete professionally, knowing how to improve your gaming skills is crucial. This guide will explore the strategies and techniques that can transform your…

[reallyndacarter]

A PSA

[neo--queen--serenity]

Lena losing her patience and furiously berating Gwen for potentially endangering the staff members of the OAIR is quite literally the opposite of how Elias ran the Archives.

Elias used the Archival staff—as well as his Archivist—as pawns that can be readily replaced as needed. His patron offered them minimal protections at best (the Archivist’s privileges notwithstanding), and even then, he would never actually intervene to save any of them if they were in danger, much less take precautions to protect them at their headquarters. They are used as bait, as sacrifices, as currency, as objects. The listener knows, eventually, how easily he could discard them if his plans called for it.

But Lena. This episode showed us that Lena keeps her entire organization running through keeping her subordinates hidden, safe, and unnoticed by the Externals. It’s quite clear through her conversation with Gwen that such a safety risk has never happened before.

As far as we know, Lena has successfully kept all of her employees alive, watched them come and go, bemoaned the turnover rate, and then got them to look the other way while they documented and dutifully filed the horrors.

But most impressive of all, she’s kept her real work hidden from her subordinates, and her subordinates hidden from her real work—a feat Elias had no interest or desire to accomplish.

[sennamaticart]

Joust ⚔

[kevjeanyves]

jean moreau going viral every 4-6 months among non-exy fans for being drop dead gorgeous…videos of him spitting out his mouth guard or adjusting his neck guard…videos of him yelling in angry french during the olympics…his interviews in front of the cameras where he’s quiet and awkward in the most endearing ways…6’4 with dark curly hair and a ridiculous amount of muscle…yeahhhh

and every time he goes viral for being beautiful, his fans are ready on twitter with threads like “jean moreau’s homoerotic friendship with exy legend kevin day” or “jean moreau and his boyfriend jeremy knox” or “jean moreau being best friends with neil josten”. then THOSE threads become hit tweets

jean moreau princess of everything you’ll always be famous

[spiderziege]

i think the lore-implications of the alter ego pack are kind of funny like imagine. you think your sister is dangerous so you send her to a different world. none of your friends know about her. you see her again once when you go through a rift in someones basement, but when that rift closes you leave her again and this time youre making peace with it, you think, youre living your life and she's living hers. and then a lot of time passes. and one day Beef comes up to you, and he never even went to empires, but he says 'hey look at this card i made' and he hands you a picture of your sister. what do you even do then

[r3dvlvet]

See, being an audience member there is NO WAY the Landlord ISN’T Jess Ross after her presentation on wrestlers and drag queens but I’m not in this situation so I can only use what I know as an outside observer!!!!

[artilite]

stuck... forever?

drew this right after finishing act 4! had a day of intermission before going on and finishing the game so this ending really got to soak with me...

[sun-snatcher]

If you're writing for dp3 then Hiraeth from your prompt list would work SO well since they're all stuck in the void! 🤲🏽😭 We need Gambit fics its a DROUGHT HELP

♧ ⎯ LUCK O’ THE DRAW !

summ. You find the Devil himself at the end of the world. Surprisingly, it isn’t the first time you have. It is, however, the first time it hurts. pairing. Void!Gambit x f!Anomaly!reader (established relationship. Kinda. Multiverse be funky like 'dat.) w.count. 1.8k a/n. Because Channing deserved that Gambit all those years ago, and I've come to (attempt to) deliver what the the people have asked. Masterlist here.

MOST PEOPLE MEET THE DEVIL at a crossroads, but you meet yours in— quite literally— the back end of fuckin’ nowhere.

It hurt more than it should.

Your heart practically stutters. 

“Remy.”  

Then he turns, and you wait for the flash of recognition in his eyes.

Nothing comes.

And then. And then.

Realisation— logic. The cold, hard truth: This isn’t your Remy LeBeau. Your Remy had died long before, in a Universe that was pruned and erased into nothingness by the TVA. Your Universe. The joke? That the Gambit before you is merely a variant amongst a million. The punchline? He looks exactly the same as the day you’d lost your own. 

“Well, this is awkward. You know off-shoot Hawkeye here?” Wade says, astonished, before his eyes widened. “Ah. Tragic exposition time for the readers, I see.”

Your mind is still reeling. It feels like someone’s just jammed a chisel straight into your gut. “I— Knew a version. Variant, I guess,” you manage to correct yourself, distracted by the skirting trenchcoat and the all too familiar sound of shuffling cards. 

Christ, it’s like he’d stepped right out of your memories.

Remy’s eyebrows shoot up as he studies you. Something in your chest pulls taut, threatening to snap as he speaks. “Apologies, mon ami. But as far as I remember, I ain’t never seen you before.”

“Ouch,” Wade winces, looking between you both. “What a classic trope! This is like, me talking to my past Mom in The Adam Project. Funnily enough, my Mom was you!” He snorts, pointing to Elektra. 

You ignore Wade and offer Remy a wan smile. “I figured. It’s okay.”

…It is obviously, in fact, not okay. 

You avoid him like a plague shortly after the entire commotion; it’s almost comical. Wade had managed to come up with a plan with the rest of the group, albeit a ramshackle, flimsy one, but you’ve hardly been able to pay attention through the bloodrush of shock rocketing in your head, anyway. 

Being around this Remy is stunningly stifling. 

The lilt of his accent, the sharpness in his smile; the flourishing of cards and the faint hum-drum of kinetic charge against his fingertips. 

You’ve seen it all before, once upon a time. You never thought any of it could ever bring you to this bad of a heel. 

It hadn’t taken long before you’d tried drowning yourself at the end of a bottle of brandy Logan had handed you that night. (The whiskey tames his mordance and makes him uncharacteristically civil. He’d said something along the lines of: Y’need this more than I do, bub; look like you’ve just seen a fuckin’ ghost. Shit, I guess you did, huh? )

“Mais la,” comes a huff. “Ain’t that mine?”

A frisson runs through your heart. 

“Sorry,” you say, barely glancing up from the barrel fire tucked outside the team’s hideout. You’re not quite sure you can handle meeting his gaze. “I know I should’ve asked.”

A playful hum. Remy settles on the log adjacent to yours. “S’alright. No harm done, chèr.”

It takes everything in you not to flinch at the endearment. If he’d noticed, well— he’s smart enough not to mention it. He’s curious and it stands to reason; afterall, he’s never quite seen someone look at him as weathered as the way you do. It’s as if the effort itself to do so would be unbearable.

“Y’kno’, I been told I’m easy on the eyes. Not for you, tho’, eh?” Remy shoots you an amicable smile. It’s charming, if a little compelling. “Guessin’ I made bad on you where y’from? You done been boudéin’ since y’first got here.” 

You let out a laugh. It’s the most brittle sound he’s ever heard come from someone. 

“No, no,” you shake your head. “It’s… You just make me a lil’ homesick, is all.”

Remy bristles with his deck of cards. A Charlier cut; a One-handed shuffle. It’s a mindless tic; your variant used to do the exact same with the exact same ease.

(Such a miracle, you remember thinking once, that there could be symmetries in the Multiverse. Now you learn, perhaps, it’s far more a curse. Either way, you can hear Remy’s doting voice in a distant memory, dimpling coyly at you: “S’just the luck o’ your draw, chèr.” )

You tamp down the memory before it could sink its jowls any deeper in you. 

“You’re curious,” you say.

He makes a noise of assent. Revolution cut; One-handed shuffle. Repeat.

“I ain’t gon’ axe if y’ain’t wanna answer.” 

It’s kind of him. 

You forgot he was like this.

Witty, yet gentlemanly. The way Remy always has been.

Underneath the blanket of the night, the crackle of the flames limn the planes of his face in flickering, hazy saffron. The look in his eyes is sincere as they meet your red-rimmed gaze. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen him, and in this light no less: tall, cutting, strong.

Lively.

The last you’d seen Remy, he’d been drawn out and battered by the war. Not that he’d ever admit it; he always insisted on keeping up his sunny disposition despite the constant losing battles happening. (Sometimes you think you resent him for doing that; it’d felt like he’d taken the light of the world with him when—)

You thank your lucky stars the variant Remy doesn’t make a comment on how you must be staring so openly. It’s a feeble attempt to committing every detail to memory, you suppose, in case you don’t get the chance again.

“In my Universe, a war was waging against mutants.” Your nails tinker against the empty bottleneck of the flat whiskey you’d nursed, thinking of how to cut a bloodshed of a story short; to get your point across before you falter and lose your footing.

“There was a mission sanctioned, and during it— a decision had to be made at that moment. So… you chose. Easily.” Your brows pinch tight against your will. The molten burn returns to the back of your eyes. “You saved so many lives the day you died.” 

Something catches in your throat when you realise your mistake, find yourself amending instantly, “He. He died.”

(It had been swift. A small mercy, all things considered. There wasn’t even a need to check for a pulse when you finally managed to reach for him.)

You’re fidgeting, too, with something in your other hand. Remy catches sight of it only now: a card, sitting pinched between your ringed fingers. Nine of Hearts. Its edges are torn and creased across the face, singed an ashen black. 

A proverbial piece of Remy’s heart, carried to the end with you.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a cold rush over his body at the sight. 

“…I’m sorry, chèr,” he offers quietly, inadequate as it is. He hadn’t expected that. 

He can’t imagine how haunting it must be to look at someone you’d shared a lifetime with and be met with a complete stranger instead. 

A living, breathing, ghost.

That unbiddable feeling of longing had always seemed to accompany the sight of him; but now it’s different. Now, there’s a blistering, brutal pain to come with; All-encompassing grief, thick as molasses in your lungs, overturning itself like a phantom from wherever you thought you’d buried it a long time ago. 

The only way to smother it would be to reach out, to hold him like you had once before, and isn’t that an ironic inconvenience? 

“No, no. I’m sorry,” you tell him, sigh coming out as an awkward laugh. A breeze passes and you inhale deep to ground yourself. Press your eyes shut momentarily to will away useless tears. “It must be so weird to hear all of this from me about— well, you, technically.”

“Mais, can’t ‘ave all been a bad memory, tho’, right?”

Right. No. It hadn’t been. There’s something else too. An undercurrent. Beyond the grief, the deep ache in your marrows— you think it’s nostalgia. Hiraeth. More bittersweet than it is painful.

It’s… It’s watching mutant schoolkids teaching him UNO for the first time. It’s the bickering over the beignets for breakfast, or your feet on his lap at the couch in the lounge after dinners with the rest of the X-Men. Lazy banter. Conversations that go everywhere and nowhere.

“Yeah,” you agree, feeling something bloom in your chest you thought long lost. “You taught me everything about your home, too. Down South. Told me about the bayou, the cypress trees. Your Cajun, your ways. We used to play Bourré.”

Talk of home has him ducking into a laugh. Remy had been in the Void far longer than the rest (he figures, at least)— he’s very nearly lost most of his fragmented memories to time by now. “Did I? Oughta’ play a game or two wit’ you.”

You buckle at that. “Ah. You were always the better player.”

Then:

He makes the leap before he runs out of steam. “Was we…?”

His finger darts between the space you two share.

“Oh, no,” you override, sheepishly. “No, we, we were good friends and stayed good friends. I was—” Your breath scurries; a reconsideration. “I was glad with that. You had a Southern belle named Anna Marie. A powerful mutant called Rogue. You two were good for each other.”

You must have given yourself away somewhere, though, the way Remy is reading you with a pinned gaze. It’s the same, levelled look you’ve seen before— the kind he gets in a game of cards. 

Something discerning eclipses in his eyes.

He’d gotten the measure of you in an instant. 

“Gambit musta’ been blind blind not t’see you.”

Ah.

You smile. It’s windswept. Resigned. “Well. Doesn’t matter now, does it? My Gambit’s gone. No matter how much I wish I can see him again.”

Remy’s eyes dart to your hands.

“Y’kno’, chèr,” he begins, something spirited in his tone. “In the world of cards, each a’ these and they suits hold a meanin’.”

He flourishes his deck, hypnotisingly smooth with every elegant cut, fan and spring. Every shuffle cascades as smooth as liquid in the sleight of his hands.

“Some of my folks back in New Orleans I remember, they learned me to read ‘em. Now, outta the whole deck? What you got there; the Nine of Hearts is also called the Wish card.”

The small laugh that punches out of you is bell-like. “Really?” 

It’s warm. Bright. Musical to his ears. It washes over him, and he can’t help but hang on to the peal. He wanted to hear it again. 

“Yes, Ma’am.” Remy clicks his tongue as he shoots you a sunny look. “Would never lie t’you, chèr.”

The cracks in your soul don’t disappear, but they surely lighten as you look gently at him. “Huh. Well, I guess I got my wish, didn’t I?” 

He chuckles. 

“Mais, I ain’t your Gambit but—” 

He leans. Reaches out behind your ear with an empty palm, playfully revealing a gilded card from seemingly thin air with a sharp flick of his wrist:

Another Nine of Hearts. His. He hands it over to you, by way of meaning—  I’m here, now.

New beginnings.

You take the card with a smile.

[mugwot]

funnyjokespunperson

[reality-detective]

I'll bet you didn't see this on TV? 🤔

[shushmal]

steve, occasionally the mental terrorist: so, is lizard jail actually fun?

eddie: please stop

steve: like, you all yell the entire time at each other. must be hard getting the lizard out of prison.

eddie: i know you're doing this on purpose. stop it.

steve: you're like the judge right? and everyone else is the lawyers? who's the defense attorney and who's the prosecutor?

eddie: please

steve: what crimes did the lizard commit to receive 25 consecutive life sentences?

[kenchann]

meli finds out something

[optimisticmayonnaise]

I don't speak much? No. I just have this skill called

[Talk and Overshare]

Cooldown: 2 weeks

Effect: User talks to someone with the slightest bit similarity in interests, and goes on talking without realizing from normal topics to furry art and people simping over terrorists.

After skill is used user will become too embarrassed to speak ever again after going through all the cringe that has gone from their mouth. Repenting lasts for 4 years or until skill is used again.

Additional effect: Get [Anxious] debuff when looked at

[kaiserouo]

"Huh."