#he did this at dev camp last year too

[dvar-trek]

Ondřej Pavel via Guerilla Sports' Meghan Angley (14-SEPT-24)

Rookie Faceoff 2024

He really said "oh, my strengths? How about a list of everything the Colorado Avalanche is bad at?"

[thewritingofspencerrose]

M.Hughes Masterlist

How Many Hockey Players Does It Take To Unscrew a Lightbulb

liked by _quinnhughes, _alexturcotte, and 732 others

"You all really didn't have to come help me pack," Is all I can think to say once I get past the shock of opening my front door to players from the Devils, Ducks, and Canucks. "I- How did you all even know? Let alone get tickets so quick?"

"We're professional hockey players Kid, we have the money for last minute tickets AND the muscles for carrying heavy things into your Uhaul," Is Elias Pettersson's response.

"We're basically the dream team of moving," Is Cole's addition, popping out from behind Nico to give me a hug. Make that four NHL teams represented.

"But you didn't have to all come? I don't have that much stuff and I already had Trev and my brothers."

"Just say you're happy to see us and move over so we can get in," Is Brady's jab, pulling me into a hug before pushing me back into my nearly empty apartment, each boy giving me a hug as they go until the only ones left to enter are my brothers and boyfriend.

"Hey there Kiddo," Quinn greets, pulling me into his side and kissing the top of my head. "You didn't really think we wouldn't call in the army to make this easiest for you."

"Or that we wouldn't be coming with you to Cali to unpack," Jack chimes, holding up three tickets while still in the entry.

"Just the three of us, the other boys are all heading home tomorrow," Lu is the one to comfort, seeing the anxiety in my body rise and making it fall. "It looks like you pretty much have everything packed."

"I do," I agree, looking over the room of boxes, only a few items here and there as the men glance around, most having never seen my apartment before.

"What's left of this place is cute?" Dawson offers, trying his best to compliment what was left. "I'm sure it was even cuter before."

"Thank you Daws, that's a lot nicer than what Jamie was saying the other day," I chirp, the comment directed at said Ducks player who nearly drops the box that he had acquired.

"I didn't mean it like that! All I said was that this place wasn't cute enough for you!" He attempts to defend, looking to Trev for assistance.

"Not to defend his honor or anything, but he did follow it with 'your stuff will look so much cuter in our apartment'," Trev offers, and I can't help but jokingly roll my eyes.

"And this is why he's your one true love," I grumble, the Petey, Q, Jimmy and Mason walking out with boxes in hand, having just taken any old boxes and gotten moving.

"Hey now, you know you're my one true love, baby," Trev assures, moseying up in front of me and pulling me in by my hips, wrapping his arms around me and giving me a peck.

You can hear the groans of the room before you can actually determine who's groan is who's. All I do know is that Jack was definitely the one to say "ew" and Cole absolutely said "oh my poor eyes!"

Drama queens.

"Okay, that's enough of that," Luke is the one to pull me away from Trev, pulling on my hand like he did as a kid.

God when did we all grow up.

Cole, Trevor, my brothers and I. All that we're missing is Alex.

And all my boys made it into the NHL.

And I'm a nurse.

"Hey, don't fall too far in there," Quinn's words pull me out, him and the others having gotten back in the time that I was in my head, Luke having just gently been rubbing my shoulder in the mean time. "Where'd you just disappear to?"

"Just thinking about how much we've all changed since Jack and the boys were in dev camp."

It's a simple answer, but its enough that Q pulls me around the corner into the hallways, leaving Luke behind to lead the continued emptying of where I've lived for two years.

As soon as we're around he's looking in my eyes before pulling me into a hug, tucking me under his chin like he's always done and holding me tight.

"I know change, especially big changes, make your anxiety spike," well he caught me there, "but this is something you've been looking forward to since you were toddling around putting bandaids on us after peewee practice. As much as I hate to say it, you are the most prepared out of any of us to go out into the world."

"Q-" I cut myself off, knowing if I continue I may just cry. "Thank you."

"Hey Mags-a-million, where- oh," Cole pauses, a blush coming to his cheeks at interrupting Quinn's and my sibling bonding moment.

"Uh, yeah, what were you going to ask Coley?" I ask, wiping the few tears that did gather from my waterline.

"I just wanted your permission to move the box that says undergarments. I felt kind of weird doing it without asking and didn't want Trev to kick my ass," He explains, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Cole, it's not like you're digging through my panty drawer," I can't help but laugh, his entire face burning bright red.

Quinn just shakes his head, running his hand through his hair. "I'm pretty sure you made it weirder by asking."

"Why did Mason just tell me that Cole was asking about your under stuff?" Trevor's voice interrupts us once more, taking me from my brothers side and pulling me into his arms, glaring with very little ammunition at Cole. "Back off my woman Caufield."

"See! This is why I asked!" Cole yells, officially having enough of the teasing before glaring at Trev. "You," He emphasizes with a point, "can carry it, jackass," Throwing his hands up to his usual level of dramatics before wandering away.

Trev pecks my forehead, the brightest smile on his face as he leads us after our favorite dramatic.

"I think this is really going well."

[carmsgarms]

just wanna hug you for the jkr post bc my former friends made me feel insane for not validating their continued engagement 💜

Bestie listen youve unzipped me and im about to go off. Harry Potter was my entire life until she literally couldn't shut the fuck up about trans women being perverts and infiltrators. I was a lonely neurodivergent weirdo and Harry Potter brought me solace as a kid. I read each of the books at least 7 or 8 times, that shit is INGRAINED in my brain. One of my best friends of 10+ years is my friend today because the first thing we bonded over was seeing the last HP movie. I used to be deadset on my 2nd tattoo being my pottermore wand with my hogwarts house. I wanted a fucking HP-themed wedding. The first funko pops I bought were Harry Potter ones. My first serious boyfriend told me he wanted to propose to me in front of Hogwarts castle (this was something he said to guilt trip me when i dumped his ass) ((also thank the gods that never happened he was a shithead and so is jkr)). My mom for some godforsaken reason let me help her name my youngest brother when he was born because she couldn't think of a name and my 10yo ass fuckikg picked DANIEL because of Daniel Radcliffe. I was in DEEP.

And you know what? Aside from the books I camped out to buy on release day and the DVDs that are crammed in a box somewhere in a storage unit, I have gotten rid of every single Harry potter thing I owned because I grew the fuck up and found better things to like. Sure I'll watch the DVDs again every few years to feel the nostalgia again because a good chunk of the cast are great people (we fucking stan Dan Radcliffe and David Tennant in this house ) but I'm not giving jkr another cent of my money or an inkling of my time beyond that.

You are so valid and you are allowed to be upset if your friends continue to engage with Harry potter content.

Anyone who days "uwu my nostalgia" ask them if they still sleep with their fucking baby blanket too.

My former boss wouldn't shut the fuck up about the new video game when it came out. At least once a week he'd ask me if I'd played it yet and every single time I would tell him "I'm not engaging with that franchise anymore. JKR uses money to fund anti-trans legislation." And he'd always spout some bullshit about nostalgia or "but it's SO good" or "yeah I just try to separate the art from the artist / oh but the devs who worked hard on the game! / but playing the game doesn't actually support her! (yes the fuck it does if the game does well it boosts her platform)"

And especially now that my wife has come out, I'm extra ready to fight the next grown person who tells me they ~separate the art from the artist~ like fuck off. There are better things to spend your time and energy on. I hope everything JKR makes flops hard. Everything shes done since the last movie has been a disgusting cash-grab and none of it is even good. I'm beyond thrilled that BG3 has had a wild runaway success and a longer-lasting player base than the fucking game she put out. Nothing has ever disappointed me more than JKR being the way that she is.

Oh but the lore and world building? The ability to make your own character in such a fun and magical immersion world?bDnd has better lore than Harry potter ever did and the lore adds up and makes sense. If you look at her shit beyond the surface level she is actually fucking TERRIBLE at world building especially when she tries to do it without being a fucking racist ((does anyone remember when early drafts for the American magic schools that were using Native American imagery and it was all REALLY FUCKING OFFENSIVe and let's also not forget "no-maj" being the least fucking creative thing she ever came up with)

"But my hogwarts house" PLEASE choose a better Personality.

I have more nostalgia for Avatar the Last Airbender these days since i got into that when it first started airing when i was 12 (and look if you're really into the fuckin houses as your Personality you can get that with ATLA! Water tribe forever bitches)

"But the characters!!!" Please. There are better characters ALL AROUND YOU. pick up a fucking comic book. Yknow Superman actually has a similar structure, he's got the nerdy Normal friend and the love interest and it's a goddamn shame none of the movies include his bestie Jimmy because he's just as important as Lois Lane is.

"But all the strong female characters!" It is 2024 please I beg you to find other female role models (I will again point to Avatar the Last Airbender and Literally Any Comic Book Featuring A Woman. Captain Marvel is actually really good. Battlestar Galactica is also chock full of strong female characters and that came out in the early 2000s!)

Bestie i genuinely feel bad for all the fucking white people who can ignore all the bullshit JKR has done and said and all those sad saltine cracker flavor type people whose entire personalities are Watching The Office and Enjoying Harry Potter And Star Wars. Grow up. Move On.

If it's that important to you (and i mean the general you here not you specifically), please do what I did and Marie Kondo that part of your life. You don't need to hold onto the safety blankie you had as a child. You don't have to hold onto the pair of shoes that got you through high school and are out of fashion and falling apart. You give it a sendoff. Say "thanks for getting me through that part of my life but I'm moving on" and you move the fuck on.

I did something really sappy for my 30th birthday - I said goodbye to the franchise. I mourned what could have been. I went to Universal studios ((also bc Simpsons land and fast and furious ride and ET and a bunch of other stuff are there)) but I stopped into Harry potter world to do everything once and say goodbye to that part of my life since it was something I had wanted to do for most of my youth, and my friend who i became friends with because of harry potter was there with me. We drank the fucking pumpkin juice, had breakfast at the three broomsticks, appreciated all the little easter eggs around hp world, rode the hagrid ride, and ate a chocolate frog I wore my trans rights shirt and dressed gay as hell, my friend is trans so he just ~existed blissfully~ . I think every Harry potter fan needs to acknowledge that the franchise was good for them in the 90s, mourn that part of their life, and move on.

Bonus: me being Gay as Fuck in front of the castle. I hope JKR fucking rots and fades into obscurity and people come to realize she's worse than HP Lovecraft.

[luke-hughes43]

hughes little sister and went second in the 2023 draft and maybe just her brothers realizing how much their sister has grown up and it’s not the little girl who use to hide in their beds when she was scared or would cling to them when they had to leave

oh yes!

she ends up at the ducks with trev (which scares luke and quinn and excites jack) and the boys are so happy for her.

after her draft party, the 4 of them end up in the same room, all semi drunk/tipsy, and cuddling on the same bed like they did when they were kids.

they all just have one big pile of each other and just reminise on their childhood and how much fun they had together. jack says, "remember when quinn ripped off my braces and y/n, you clung to me for days and refused to talk to quinn for like a week."

"i remember. and i remember me and luke always being paired up during mini sticks so you two could beat on us. it's why i became a forward. to be better than you jacky."

"how'd that work out 2nd overall?"

"pretty damn good. we all know it won't matter until games start. as long as my rookie year goes better than yours, i'll call it a win." y/n snides back at jack jokingly.

quinn and luke laugh while jack pouts. luke pulls y/n as close to him as he can. those two were inseperable growing up, being the youngest. luke says quietly to no one in particular, "this is the last time we're gonna be in the same room until next summer."

"no it's not. we have the rest of this trip and the rest of the summer."

"y/n you have dev camp in a few weeks so you'll be gone. i'm going to see dylan and a few of the guys for a few days beofre dad starts training. jack is going to new york to see trev. and quinn is going god knows where. we all have plans for the rest of the summer. and you guys won't be in new york/new jeresy at the same time, ever."

"i guess your right luke." quinn says.

there's a silence over the room that gets broken by y/n, "i'm gonna miss you guys. i wouldn't have gotten where i am and i don't know what i'm gonna do without you guys."

"we're gonna miss you too y/n."

"at least you'll have trevor in anahiema and quinn isn't that fair away and you'll see him 4 times next season." jack says trying to look at the bright side. y/n scoffs, "because having trevor around is supposed to make me feel better? i'll end up babysitting him."

"yea she has a point jacky." quinns says. luke stays quiet not wanting to think about losing his baby sister to the nhl. jack and quinn are the first pass out but y/n and luke can tell that they are both still awake. y/n can also tell that luke is lost in his thoughts.

"penny for your thoughts lukey?"

"i'm not ready to lose you yet. not to the likes of zegras anyways."

"you're not gonna lose me. especially not to trevor. luke, i'm your little sister, i'm always gonna be the biggest thorn in your side and your best friend at the same time. besides, who else am i gonna go to when there's a big spider in my room or who's bed am i gonna hide in during thunderstorms or who's gonna be my first call after my first game? it's gonna be you moose, my big brother who basically my twin. i'm not going anywhere."

"you're going to anahiem."

"i know. but this was the dream luke. we're finally living it. this is a good thing, i know it's sad in the moment but this is a good thing. we're finally living the dream that we've talked about for i don't know how long. we're always gonna have each other and we'll never really lose each other either."

"i know. i just hard seeing you grow up."

"i know. have i told you what number i want in anahiem?"

"no." he shakes shaking his head. she responds softly, "43."

"really?"

"yea. after my big brother, twin flame, and partner in crime."

there's no words said after that. both of them letting their exhaustion consume them. later on that night/early the next morning, ellen pops her head in to check on her kids and see them all cuddling in one bed like the used to when they were little. she snaps a few pictures before leaving them be.

she shows the pictures to jim and gishes about how her babies are all grown up now. jim just says softly, "we did good honey. we did real good. the rest is up to them."

once all the kids wake up, they decide to spend that day as a family and deal with their friends and thte media later. today was about the family and they loved the idea of that.

[occasionallyprosie]

Devotion - Chapter 8: "The Wilds Reborn"

Dev wakes up to a familiar boy… one thing leads to another, and somehow he ends up co-parenting with a wolf.

Read On AO3

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----

Dev roused when a presence approached and was instantly aware of the thick darkness in the air. It was still there, and it was strong.

"Wow," a soft voice breathed. "No, Wolfie, stay back."

A whine. Footsteps.

A hand around his hilt. A familiar soul—

He went willingly. Maybe if it had just been Fi, he would've expected her not to even allow him to draw her. She was barely strong enough to keep shape, and Link was weak, extremely so.

Dev was maybe half capacity. He let the sunlight go to Fi and he took form in front of Link, kneeling in front of him.

Something snarled and lunged.

Dev didn't flinch, just went intangible and the wolf flew past him. He couldn't help but snort a bit.

"Wolfie!" Link scolded. "I'm sorry—You... I know you."

Dev looked up at Link. He gave a sad smile. "Hey, Cub."

A glazed look fell over his eyes and Dev looked at the wolf, which looked at him oddly.

"I'm the spirit of the Master Sword," Dev told the wolf, a past wielder who Dev had never met. There was awareness behind those midnight blue eyes, a sort of understanding, recognition even. Dev looked at Link, who was staring at nothing. The scars on his face...

Dev cupped his face, wanting nothing more than to soothe such injuries, but he sensed no pain in his wielder. 

How he wished he could've prevented him being injured at all. How could everything have gone so horribly wrong?

"This is your fault."

Whine. "How is this my fault?!"

"You've been with him since he woke up. This is completely your fault, you're his responsible adult!"

A blazing fire behind the wolf and sword spirit was all that remained of a monster camp, Link cheering happily as he walked over to gather the spoils.

"Not my fault!" Huff.

"It so is. When he used my methods, the fire would already be out. The trees wouldn't still be burning!" Dev froze. "The trees!"

Ice rod drawn and soon the air cooled from blazing flames.

Dev started making Link train with him.

He used his tornado rod, tapping Link’s leg and arm gently into place.

"Your form is off, you have no knowledge of how to hold that sword much less manage to wield it without breaking it. I'm not letting you wield me and Fi until you can use a regular broadsword without breaking it."

Link groaned, swatting his magic rod away. "Oh come on, Dev! You're a legendary sword! I doubt it’s even possible to break the Master Sword.”

No. None of that. Dev grabbed Link's shoulders. "Fi died once. I had to replace her, cub. I was a regular Hylian once, and I tried to fix her, goddesses I tried. All I did was fix the blade, her spirit decayed, and after a few years I became the new spirit. Right now her spirit is fine, just exhausted, but the blade won't be able to take much abuse."

Link visibly faltered.

"I'm not telling you that you're wrong or that you're a bad fighter, honestly, you're a wild one." Wolfie made some sort of huffing noise that sounded almost like the dog equivalent of a laugh. "It's incredible what you can do. But you treat your swords like a club and don't even do basic weapon maintenance."

"Weapon maintenance?" Link questioned.

Dev gave Wolfie a disappointed look. He pointed his ice rod at him. "Your fault."

Bark. "Stop blaming me!"

"I'll show you how to do weapon maintenance, then how to use a sword without breaking it. By the time I'm done with you, you'll be able to fight hordes of monsters with only one sword... and a wolf."

Link snorted.

Link beat Ganon, Wolfie disappeared before the end of it, and after a few months, Link disappeared.

Dev was used to it by this point, both of his former wielders had disappeared too. He hunted those portals again, burning and slaughtering the monsters that came from them. 

Eventually, far earlier than the last two times, a portal formed near him and it wasn't monsters that came out of it.

Link was back, and in tears.

"Cub!" Dev spotted him near immediately.

Link saw him and he ran to him, collapsing into his arms and sobbed.

Dev gave a worried look but he wrapped his cub up in his arms and cloak, cooing softly. "Hey, hey what's wrong?"

"I had to leave," Link cried. "She called me back and we're not done."

Dev didn't understand, not completely, but he could figure it out. He rubbed Link's back. "If there's anything I've learned, she never lets you leave things half finished. You'll—You'll go back, okay?"

He inhaled shakily. It took some time before he was breathing stably and not breaking down.

Several years later, Dev was carrying a torch as he followed Zelda below Hyrule Castle, just beside Link. He raised the torch higher, scanning the walls and its engravings. It was new, or well, newer than the ruins that remained from when he was alive. But still ancient… had he really been around so long? That some things called ancient were far, far younger than him.

"Recognize anything, Dev?" Link asked.

"Nothing," Dev admitted. "Some of the architecture a few floors up was familiar, but this is completely new to me. Not older than me, probably from a time I was absent from Hyrule or dormant."

“How interesting," Zelda breathed, brushing her fingers against the stone walls. “It’s… incredible, truly incredible.”

They went deeper. Dev sliding ahead of Zelda, as they moved things were getting… darker, something dangerous was deeper in these catacombs. As much as he wanted to have them both leave, handle the problem himself like he would have so long ago, that wasn’t an option. He wasn’t the hero anymore, he could help and protect, but he’d retired a long time ago.

“Something dangerous lurks below,” he said lowly. “If you wish to avoid battle, then we should turn back.”

Link and Zelda shared a look before shaking their heads. Dev nodded and he moved on deeper, the young hero and princess behind him.

At the base of a set of stairs, the walls opened up into a huge chamber. A large circular chamber, one with a dais at the middle of the room with some skeletal creature on it… one he didn’t recognize. It was no monster he had faced before, but the malicious darkness that enshrouded it was familiar. Too familiar… and far stronger than what he recognized it.

A green hand, one in a magic completely unfamiliar to Dev, ceased holding the skeleton down, it and a golden stone falling to the ground. The skeleton’s head turned, and from that moment, everything went by so fast.

The skeleton spoke, something about a Rauru and trusting Link.

Then the malice around it reared up, swarmed around, its power exploding around them. Dev dove forward, it was his job, his and Fi’s duty to protect the hero from darkness, and his duty to protect every scion of the goddess, every one of hisZelda’s descendants.

He pulled his energy into a shield, blocking both his spirit and Zelda from the attack. Link disappeared from Dev’s senses as he focused them to hold back the barrage of power—

It suddenly reared back, pulling back into nothing before attacking again far more powerfully.

It swarmed, carving holes into his shield and then cutting into him. He almost screamed, all his energy rapidly diverting to protect Fi. She was still in need of more power, she was still weaker than she should be. He had to protect her, he had to keep her safe like she used to do with him—

The malice tore through him, he lost all senses.

He couldn’t even protect Zelda and Link anymore. As the attack let up, he fell, pulling what remained of his energy together quickly. He had plenty, he had enough.

Link grabbed his arm. “Dev—“

The malice reared up again, twisting and diving toward them.

Dev snarled, shoving Link back, and he threw a splitting blast of his own magic at it, trying desperately to protect his—

Everything went white, senses shattered, energy drained in an instant.

Next>>

[jackhues]

moments from the benny interview/podcast: mitts off with luke gazdic

source

i don't really watch sports interviews/podcasts but i actually really enjoyed this one! the host knows benny and is a leafs fan, so you can actually see how happy he is for the guy. i recommend watching it because benny's accent's so agjshlgslj in this. also this was supposed to be moments but i got carried away and it's become more of a summary

he and the host, luke gazdic, know each other from their san diego days. gazdic said at first when he saw benny he was thinking "this guy's not that good", but he also recognized that he had the build and passion to play hockey. he worked hard too, he just needed to find his role

benny used to fly through his physicals, and he still does. that's the reason a lot of coaches kept him around, he was so fit even if he wasn't amazing at the game. he was 7th/8th dman usually, and trainers/coaches would tell him "you might not see your first game for months" but he was happy to be there and would work his ass off to get the chance to play.

he pronounces familiar like "fam-iliar" (like it sounds like he's going to say family, but it becomes familiar)

benny's enjoying toronto, living just outside of downtown. he's been getting to know the city: exploring restaurants and cafes. he likes trinity-bellwoods and ossington (as a toronto native: those are some nice places, not as sketchy as the heart of dt)

he has two dogs, one from his san diego days, a rescue from his anaheim days, and he got a cat from his gf's friend. he jokes saying "i call it a zoo at home. my gf's the zookeeper, and i'm the bank".

he said "i don't know if i'm a cat guy, but i have a cat". he's just surprised at how different cats are

benny admitted he had an awful camp with the leafs, and he wasn't really mad that brad sent him down. he knows he "just didn't play good, and they [the team/management] don't really know me". he just told himself to work harder. he was battling an injury through camp and his first thought was to get that solved, the time in the minors helped him.

he kept a positive mindset in the minors saying "if you're going i don't belong here, it doesn't help anyone".

while in la's dev camp years ago, he though he was good, but he wasn't called back for rookie camp. in the q, the team finished last, around -35/-36.

then he got a call from anaheim, he destroyed the physical testing and was hitting a lot during that camp. joked about how "he didn't make any friends that week". but anaheim liked that kind of dman, so they gave benny a shot on a one year a-deal, but halfway through the season, he signed his nhl entry level

he considers himself naturally athletic, but he works his ass off to outwork people and make the spot. in juniors, they didn't expect him to play, but ppl got injured, he got a shot and then he was never out of the lineup after that.

he credits his coaches who pushed him to be better. he believes that made him much better, getting on the ice 15 minutes before, etc.

the way his parents raised him was huge to him, he was taught to work for what he wants. he said he was never "spoon-fed" and then asked if that was the right expression, which made gazdic laugh and agree 'yeah you're picking up on all these phrases. that's perfect'

he has a dfm cap : doesn't fucking matter. they had t-shirts and other stuff too

the first time mackinnon cut back on benny, he was like "... this guy's good", he couldn't really defend the move, it was just such a shock.

they talked about a time in sd when benny threw his stick and just went after a guy with both hands, and how he did it again during a game against seattle. benny explains "the stick part, i think my stick was broken and i didn't want to get a penalty" (he pronounces it pen-aal-ty asfjdsfns).

he talks about hitting too saying "it's a simple thing to do, but it's hard to bring it every night and be good at it." he says you have to be careful with your timing, on not getting penalties, on the toll it takes on your body, etc. he says he "always enjoyed hitting, not to hurt guys" but to let them know he's there kinda thing.

he said "if you miss your hip check you just miss the guy" which can lead to breakaways, etc. you can't really miss those. he's been doing those hip checks since bantam, and if you miss it you just look stupid.

"if i do something stupid, i'll answer the bell" in response to his hits. if it's a clean hit, it's clean, but if it's not, he'll answer. he'll stand his ground on either side

gaudreau (cbj) tried a superman punch on benny, and benny tried one right back.

he has some "big names under his belt" - he fought wilson twice, which surprised gazdic

"probably not my smartest decision in life" <- talking about fighting wilson

he once saw an injury during his sd days, where someone's wrist tendon and part of their artery was cut - like he was near the bench door seeing it happen clearly. after that, the team got wrist and achilles protection, which he still wears. he didn't wear the neck guard then bcz it didn't 'look good' and it wasn't common then either. but after what happen to adam johnson, he decided "fuck it. i'm gonna protect myself."

benny goes no tarp, but he has socks on. gazdic didn't wear socks which benny finds crazy. but benny only wears socks, boxers and a jock, which is also crazy. he says it gets a bit hot, esp with the neckguard, so he mainly only wears the padding

his shoulders get scratched up bcz of no tarp

he used to use sakic curve sticks, but they stopped those. p28 is one of the curves he uses. he also has 95 flex, started at 105, but went down. says it's good for crosschecks

luke gazdic is such a big fan of benny, he talks about how he watched leafs games and was just cheering him on the entire time. he's a really genuine person and i love that.

benny talking about 'the big guys' -> "it's impressive to see how they're working so hard, constantly. working on their edges and their skills, it brings out the best in the rest of us"

specifically brought up willy and auston^

"you have to be smart [when defending auston]. if you just dive at him, he's gonna toe drag you, make you look stupid."

when asked which player surprised him in a good way, he said calle jarnkrok immediately. "i love him.... he's so effective... always smart with the puck... in every situation he just does the job"

luke gazdic brings up the older guys like darcy tucker, wendel clark, tie domi and compares benny to them, saying : if you play hard in this city and you work your ass off, they [leafs nation] will love you. they will embrace you for all time... if you just continue the way you're playing now, they'll love you" (which, as a leafs fan, is very true. once you're in, once you're embraced by leafs nation, you will forever be loved. you could have zero points, but if the fans decided to adopt you, you will be loved a hundred years from now - there are ppl i grew up hearing about, old games i watched, and those guys were gone and retired before i was even born. some of them were gone before my dad was born. but once you're loved by the fans, there's no leaving)

gazdic goes "[every time there's leafs coverage] i love it, i have a big smile on my face. [the reporters/articles going] i love this benoit kid... it makes me so happy"

benny stays away from social media to try to focus on his game, but he has noticed some of the loves the fans give him. "if the fans love me... it touches my heart. you know, it's not every day the fans love a simple, stay at home d-man. you know, the fans usually love those skills guys. but if they do love my game, i'm touched by it. i'll just keep to do it, i'll stick to it." (i wish i could show benny the lb's comments)

he was recognized twice in public. he didn't get that in anaheim and can tell just how different hockey culture is here.

he loves milk.

seriously, he drinks a big glass of milk before bed or else he can't sleep (gazdic thought he was trolling, but he wasn't)

gazdic joked saying 'milk' the leafs jersey sponsors, should get benny in an ad

he has a glass bottle of (3.8%) milk in the fridge - no bagged milk, no carton milk

"that's the real stuff" - benny referring to 3.8% milk

he loves the milk sponsorship on the jersey

had to break bcz of character limit

benny tries to have a smile on his face. his parents never pressured him to play hockey, so he's always played because he loved it. now it's his job and he thinks "if i don't love it, i can do something else" but he takes a lot of pride in playing that game and he loves it. so he's got a smile on for everyone - for the fans who come and cheer for him, for everyone who's watching. "my smile's a reflection of the joy the game brings to everyone"

his mindset when he'd been cut on other teams was "i need to learn from the situation and grow". "you need to miss some stuff, you need to make mistakes to learn"

"if you think too far you won't be present in the present" <- talking about playoffs

"go crush it man, keep doing what you're doing" <- luke gazdic to benny

[purplesurveys]

1896

20 random people... Don't look at the questions beforehand! :D

Nina

Celeste

Hans

Lui

Kaye

Angela

Mom

Reena

Gabie

Kuya

Pau

Jo

Lei

Andi

Leigh

Marie

Dad

Dev

Sam

Pia

Ok, here we go...

How did you meet #4?: College org. I was an applicant at the time, they were already a member, and they seemed very friendly to all the newbies so I stuck around them. In time we became close and even got in the same friend group, which we're both still part of today.

How much does #9 mean to you?: She's a co-worker so while I wouldn't, like, die for her per se or can say that she's 'everything' to me, I'd look out for her nonetheless.

Describe #14 in 2 words.: Extremely intelligent.

What is your best memory with #5?: I loved when she came over to watch YTC Busan live with us! That was also such a random mix of friends to end up happening, so I was anxious they'd all be opposites – but it got really fun.

Do you know all of #2's secrets?: I know none of them seeing as we're only workmates and I like my boundaries.

When is the next time you're going to see #7?: In an hour or two, I'm guessing. She went out for a bit for errands.

When's the last time you saw #17?: 2 AM, Friday – dropped him off at the airport. From there, I won't be seeing him again until November.

How do you think #13 feels about you?: After trying to teach me one of her party card games last Sunday, I bet she now thinks I can get ditzy as all hell hahaha. But apart from that I don't know what else she thinks of me! We rarely see each other and are always shy when we do, lol.

Are #11 and #12 anything like each other?: Quite the contrary; they're a good example of how two people cannot be any more different.

Describe the relationship between #14 and #19.: They have a nonexistent relationship, but if we're gonna be extremely loose about degrees of separation – Hans went to the same school as Andi (#14); they both also were schoolmates with Gab, who used to date Sam (#19).

Is #10 single?: No. Has been engaged for a while now, too.

If you could tell #8 one thing right now, what would it be?: Let's go out soon and maybe we can try a new hobby together, too.

What is the funniest thing you've ever seen #16 do?: I haven't had many funny encounters with her tbh as she's kind of shy and doesn't really want to put herself out there – that, and we've always worked from home.

Can I name coolest instead? There was a time when my teammates and I each needed to make 10-slider decks about any topic (meant to be an exercise on public speaking); and she had what I thought was the most unique and personally relatable presentation – she covered her favorite lesbian media. Music, movies...and there's a bunch in there that I was able to relate to...just cause of my past, I guess. Haha. It felt pretty bittersweet, and I gave her some of my recs too.

How did you meet #15?: School. I can't remember when we got close, though. Maybe in high school if I had to guess – we stay friends these days, too, as she's with Andi.

What would you do if #4 died?: I'd be shocked to say the least. I'm imagining that'd bring the college friend group back together again.

What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen #3 do?: He had a brief stint as a camp...something (guide? counselor? idk terms) in the US a few years ago, so when he came back the first thing he did to me was share a bunch of camp songs he picked up from his time there. After he taught me, he proceeded to sing them all to entire time hahaha.

Are you friends with any of #19's friends?: Not with most of them. We only have a few mutual friends, all linked to Angela/Hans.

Who is #7 to you?: My mom.

What is one thing #13 is really good at?: I'm gonna go with biology and chemistry as she's literally a licensed pharmacist.

What would happen if #1 and #3 hated each other?: That would crush me, tbh. Hans is family at this point, and it'd be sad if he and my sister actively disliked one another.

Is #11 anything like #18?: I guess. Very surface-level similarities, but yeah. They're both leaders, their personalities are both pretty nonchalant...that's what I can think of now.

How much trust do you have in #12?: Lots, in the grand scheme of things. Jo is reliable and trustworthy.

If you fell off a bridge, who would you trust to catch you, #4 or #6? Why?: Angela, 100%. We're exponentially so much closer.

Who do you like the most?: It's a tie between my dad and Angela.

Who do you hate the most?: I didn't put in anyone I dislike.

How did you meet #1?: I would guess she was introduced as my little sister when I was 2.

What would you do if you never met #14?: I probably never would've gotten back into wrestling.

Would you date #20?: Hypothetically, in another universe – sure, why not? She's pretty and so so so SO ridiculously kind and has just such a warm personality.

Have you ever seen #8 cry?: Just once. We cried together at the time, but they were happy tears.

Would #5 and #13 make a good couple?: I've never thought of that. But I don't think so.

Describe #9.: I don't know her much outside of work, but from what I've seen she's hardworking; has a sensitive side in that she doesn't really like getting scolded; and she's a million times friendlier than I am – she gets along with everyone which makes her such an important part of the team. You gotta have an extrovert in PR, and she's that.

Do you like #16?: Yes.

Do you think #4 is attractive?: Personally not my type.

When's the last time you talked to #19?: Around two weeks ago.

Would you date #10?: Hard pass, that's my cousin.

What's the best thing about #15?: She has this innocent and pure aura around her that I adore very much. Like she can never get mad at anything and anyone.

Best thing about #7?: She's very resilient.

Have you ever kissed #11?: Nope.

Have you ever slapped #18?: I've never slapped any one person on the list.

When's the next time you're going to see #12?: I have no idea, our group rarely makes plans to see each other anymore. The last time I saw her was mid-2023 and we didn't even get to meet up after to talk about our Yoongi concert experiences like we planned.

Is #16 pretty?: Yes!

What was your first impression of #4?: Kind, approachable, helpful, reliable, older than me.

Is #13 your BFF?: No.

Have you seen #15 in the last month?: I haven't seen her in years actually lol. Andi and I hang out all the time and I always check in if Leigh will be tagging along...and she just doesn't.

Have you been to #20's house?: I have not. We're not that close.

Last time you saw #14?: April! We watched a wrestling gig. I'll be seeing them again later this month for trivia night – they added me to their team because two of the topics will be Friends and BTS, haha.

Next time you'll see #10?: Tomorrow, I'm guessing! We'll be coming over tomorrow and I think he'll by home.

Are you really close to #1?: Not heart-to-heart talk levels because we're a dysfunctional family and can't bear baring our souls to one another LOL – but it's a close-friend type of close for sure.

Would you give #20 a hug?: Sure. I'm sure I hugged her a few times when we saw each other 2 weeks ago at our surprise engagement party for Angela and Hans.

Tell me a secret about #5.: I don't know her enough to know her secrets.

Describe the relationship between #14 and #3: They were schoolmates in grade school until Andi moved.

What's your relationship with #5?: She's one of the school friendships I've been able to retain all these years. We're not best friends but we check in on one another from time to time.

Have you ever danced with #18?: I have not.

How do you know #13?: She's my closest cousin on my dad's side.

Does #2 have a boyfriend/girlfriend?: I don't think so. She had a dating phase early in the year, but I haven't heard much updates from her since.

Have you ever wanted to punch #6 in the face?: Maybe just once, heh.

Has #11 ever met your mother?: Nope.

Have you traveled anywhere with #12?: Nah. We could've, for Yoongi's tour! But I ended up in Thailand, she in Singapore.

If you gave #7 $100, what would they spend it on?: Probably on groceries.

Best memory of #2?: One of our events where we both ended up fairly tipsy.

What is one thing you most want #14 to know?: That I always feel bad for being the occasional terrible replier, but I hope they know that I always love it when they message and send me the most random questions or rants.

What's the last thing you did with #15?: I honestly have no clue. She's the one I've seen the least often.

When did you meet #8?: We first met around six years ago, when Angela brought us together for some drinks. We never talked again until 2021 when it was Angela (again) who put the three of us in the same chat since we all liked BTS. We got super close from there.

What do you wish for #17?: Good health is #1. It's something I find myself thinking about more often now; and for him not to feel lonely and sad when he's away.

[qonqr]

QONQR 4.0

Greetings Players

It has been a very long time since my last formal update. I’ve been struggling with some tough decisions regarding QONQR over the past few years. The TL;DR; is that I’m working on QONQR again. I’m making efforts to keep it alive. The details follow. Warning: it is a lot of doom and gloom, but there is positivity at the end.

Some background and history

Version 2 and 3 of QONQR were written using a coding technology called Xamarin. It allowed us to write code once and run it on iPhone, Android and previously Windows Phone.  For a small company like ours, it wasn’t feasible to write the application 3 times for 3 different platforms. Xamarin was written on top of Microsoft’s technology, and Microsoft purchased Xamarin several years ago to make it the core of its cross-platform developer solution.

Several years ago, QONQR simply couldn’t pay my salary anymore. I started a new application with another entrepreneur and that project was also a cross-platform application, written in Xamarin, this time for PC and Mac. I’ll refer to this app as “NOTQONQR”.  For the past 10 years, I have worked in Xamarin on Android, iOS, MacOs, and Windows (and Windows Phone). Building cross platform software has become one of the most frustrating and unfulfilling career decisions I’ve made. I realized it wasn’t phone apps or gaming that was making me miserable. It was everything cross-platform and the dependency on multiple companies to make a good product so that I could in turn make a good product.

While things started out “OK”, building software in Xamarin over the past decade has destroyed my passion for building software. I, along with the developers I have worked with, had the attitude for years that the issues were the result of being on the cutting edge and early days of cross platform development. I lost that opinion years ago.  To this day, the outstanding bug list for Xamarin is thousands deep. Many of these bugs have been on the list for years, and now they will never be fixed.

While this sounds like a Xamarin issue, it is an industry issue. Look around at other cross platform solutions, and you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t have many hundreds or thousands of outstanding bugs on their public bug trackers. Building apps is a nightmare, it has been from the start. I have spent most of my development time on both projects the past 5 years fixing issues caused by big companies or governments. I can’t count how many times I spent my days fixing something that worked just fine 6 months ago, but now is broken because Apple, Google or Microsoft decided to do the exact same thing a different way, and now a rewrite is needed.  Governments around the world have passed laws making it harder for developers to build apps. Privacy laws have made it nearly impossible to keep predators, would-be hackers and toxic people out of an app. Governments and consumer advocacy groups are suing and fining Apple and Google at every opportunity. As a result, Apple and Google are making changes that satisfy the mob, but hurt developers like me. No smart developer would build a game like QONQR today. The things we did before to ensure the GPS coordinates were legitimate, people were actual people, and gameplay was fair have nearly all been removed from my toolkit, making it very hard to protect my good players from bad people.

To further the opinion that this is an industry problem, a friend of mine who is a well-known Android podcaster, author of several android developer books, and speaker and many large developer conferences recently made a blog post about the state of app development. He mentioned that he is seeing burn out in both Android and iOS camps. Developers are tired of fighting the issues and are leaving to become web developers or leaving all together. He even admitted that he thinks his days as a mobile developer are numbered, despite being an internationally known and industry respected mobile dev. Too many developers are exhausted from the continual churn of fixing things that shouldn’t need to be fixed.

My mental status the last few years

I frequently receive support emails berating me for allowing cheaters to cheat, including two emails last week from a long-time player demanding I either “fix my shitty app or shut it down.” Sadly, most of the perceived cheating isn't actually happening, and the small number issues that we are blocked from addressing are the result of Apple and Google, and many of them are in direct response to new laws and regulations that protect everyone, including criminals and predators, but not developers.

In the first 5 years of QONQR, I would regularly work from 7am to 2am multiple days a week. However, for the last 5 years I have been in a developer depression of sorts. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I would sit at my computer for hours, sometimes an entire day and struggle to write 10 lines of code. I’d find any excuse not to code. Everything I looked at was broken. Internet searches showed me never ending bug reports in Xamarin, Android and iOS, that went unfixed, and workarounds that must have worked at some point, but no longer work today. I hated the profession I had chosen, the technology stack I had invested my career in, and felt trapped by being tied to two applications that I had ownership of, and from which I couldn’t just quit and find a new job. My wife would ask me frequently to consider finding a career I thought I would enjoy and just give up software all together. Unfortunately, I simply didn’t have passion for anything outside of my volunteering as a high school robotics coach. That is a retirement, not a career move.

The technology situation today

Xamarin was declared “dead” by Microsoft a couple years ago. It was replaced by a technology called MAUI. In nearly all respect, MAUI is identical to Xamarin, but of course different enough. My fellow developer and I started migrating NOTQONQR from Xamarin to MAUI about 3 months ago. Early indications are that MAUI will have better performance and stability than Xamarin had. It seems to be slightly or moderately better in most cases.

For the developers reading this, I’ll get into some technical details in this paragraph, skip to the next if you aren’t a developer. We built the UI for both apps using code. XAML markup wasn’t even an option for years when QONQR staring using Xamarin. You needed to build your pages one element at a time using code. No markup, no layout tools. Many/most developers who have been using Xamarin for more than 5 years, probably built their UI using code, rather than markup, even after XAML became an option. For the NOTQONQR app, I spent a week in June and completely converted the code from the Xamarin framework to the MAUI framework. It was pretty easy to get to a point everything would compile. I was able to get tens of thousands of lines of UI code to compile in the new framework in a few days. When the app would run, we found lots of minor issues with layout. Things didn’t align quite right or wouldn’t become visible when they should have been shown. We came to the realization that we needed to completely rewire the UI in XAML, and could no longer draw our pages using code. The rendering engine was built for pre-compiling your page layout and it was clear Microsoft had not put much emphasis or testing on generating UI on the fly. It makes sense. Given the timelines the Microsoft developers were under, it was the right choice. Unfortunately, it took a few weeks migration and made it into a few months for those of us who started with Xamarin a decade ago. The effort to get to MAUI even though it is basically the same as Xamarin is a huge lift due to the age of our code.

I attempted to migrate QONQR to MAUI two years ago when Xamarin was declared “dead” and MAUI the new successor. At the time, MAUI could not play sounds, did not have notifications, and could not make an in-app purchase. The product was “ready for production” and completely unusable. I was stuck. There was no way I could migrate QONQR to MAUI and given my mental state, I just couldn’t force myself to push through the issues like I had in the past. That was a stopping point for me and QONQR. I’m sure all the players noticed nothing new was happening.

Fast forward two years, NOTQONQR must migrate. I wasn’t the only owner of the app and my partner company needed to make it work. We were looking at a complete rewrite of the app in a new language, or push through a MAUI migration.  So we revisited MAUI. Things are much better two years later.

When I started working in MAUI for the NOTQONQR app, it felt like home. I spent years working in XAML markup before Xamarin. MAUI made sense and seemed to work well. Yes there are still thousands of bugs on the backlog. This is frustrating but not new.

My attitude got better. I have spent several days in the past month working past midnight in MAUI. I’ve spent my weekends writing code. It has been a significant change from being unable to force myself to write code, to looking forward to it again. I can’t say that I love writing code again, but I do feel productive.

The future for QONQR

I’m up against a big deadline. Apps written in Xamarin have an end of the year deadline to be migrated to something else or stop working. I am getting notices that maps will stop working in the next version of iOS if I don’t update my controls, and an update isn’t possible in Xamarin. It is very possible the current version of QONQR will not work on the new iPhone or when everyone updates iOS.

I had planned to try and work on QONQR over the summer, but having a summer intern at NOTQONQR I needed to manage and that MAUI migration taking months more than planned took all my time away. Now that intern has returned to college, and the NOTQONQR migration can be wrapped up by the other developer on that team, I have told the owner of the NOTQONQR company I’m taking a month off work. I’ll be avoiding my other job to focus on QONQR.

Sadly, the first two weeks of the QONQR migration have been painful and slow. After two weeks of long days and weekends, I have the Welcome page, login and map working including the Android Anti-hacker security checks. That’s it. Some of the simple pages may work as is, with the basic migration, but all of the complicated pages (which is a lot of the app) will need a fresh start. For example, the launch page draws everything in the middle of the screen stacked on top of each other. Very little can be salvaged, I need to start over and build the screen from scratch. I think many of our pages may be this way.

Admittedly, I spent much of my time the past two weeks just trying to get the core of the app to work. A lot of the system stuff like local storage, notifications, sounds, colors, fonts, images, etc all had to be setup differently. I had to start with a completely new map. Animations never really worked well in Xamarin and they aren’t any better in MAUI. I’m taking them out everywhere I can since they have always been the source of most crashes. Today I have a running app in MAUI, but it doesn’t do much yet. The past two weeks have shown me this looks possible to complete before the end of the year.

Beta release of QONQR 4.0.

Distribution: If/when I get to that point, the beta would be available through Google Play and Apple App Store and you would need to opt-in to the beta program. I previously had been using Microsoft’s App Center for pre-release versions of the app for player testing. That has been shut down. The only good option available is to release through the stores, which requires official (and long) app reviews on Apple, even for a test release. You won’t be able to run the beta side by side with QONQR 3.X

Barebones: Registration may have to be done online in the early releases. Upgrades and ordnances may also have to be purchased one the web portal. Probably no notifications.

No Chat: Right now, I am planning to remove chat from the app. The US Senate passed a bill in July that would make me responsible for anything posted in my app by a user. While this bill is unlikely to become law, it is a sign of further punishing app developers, but not giving us the tools to keep bad people out of our apps. I will replace chat with a link to the “Unofficial Community Discord”.  It is unclear how this potential law may impact the forums should something similar become law in the future.

Launch: I’m going to do my best to get something like the old launch screen working, but it may be just the simple launch screen to start. Whatever I come up with, I hope it will be temporary. A big challenge with QONQR is hackers attempting to automate launching. While I have some ways of stopping that after a few hours the current “are you human”, takes hours to have an impact. I’d like to redo this screen so that it requires more than just tapping in the same spot over and over to launch. No one likes change, but I hope you like cheaters less. I’ll do my best to come up with something players will tolerate but is harder to automate.

Messaging: Player to Player messaging may eliminate the use of the custom emoji packs we have sold. This will simplify the complexity of this screen and message passing. If you purchased one of these emoji packs, you will receive a bundle of cubes as compensation. I won’t know for sure if we are removing the packs until I get in there and attempt to migrate.

Sync Lock Mini Game: This unfortunately needs to stay as our only reasonable way to combat multi-scoping. I am well aware this still hurts families, but I don’t have an alternative giving the privacy laws the EU and US have enacted that prevent me from taking better measures. This is a very complex UI and I’m concerned about the effort it will take to migrate.

No music: I don’t think I’m going to migrate the background music. I think it is time to let this go. Background audio is hard and inconsistent.

Skins: This seems unlikely. The library I used in Xamarin to tint images doesn’t work on Maui. I don’t have plans to work on a replacement until everything else is working.

New features: None are planned yet, but the largest roadblock to new features in the past 3 years was the knowledge that anything we built was being built on a dead coding platform. If the migration succeeds, that roadblock will be gone.

Can developers help?

Many have asked me if they can help or if I can make QONQR open source. Sadly, I don’t think this is a viable path forward. Exposing all of the code would make it a trivial matter for a hacker to bypass all the protections in the app and automate and manipulate everything except buying cubes. Even if I went to the effort to pull out the secret code that stops hacking the app, any developer who worked on the code would be perceived a cheater. There are too many instances in the past where a player I asked for advice or tips, claimed to be a QONQR developer and claimed to have a special build and/or free cubes. This has never been true, but if people think their opponent is cheating they stop playing or stop spending money that is needed to keep the servers alive. The past has shown that letting anyone have even a little access never ends well.

Even today, with as hard as it is to stop hackers and cheaters the impact is much smaller than most people believe. Yes, some players are probably cheating their location, but they are put into overheat penalty on their scope when they do. They can deploy in two locations, but deploy fewer bots than if they stayed in one spot. I get many emails with “proof” that someone is cheating. Most of the claims don’t hold up when investigated. There are certainly limits on what I can do, but the perception of people cheating is much much higher than actual instances we have uncovered. Every day, I receive dozens of automated notices where QONQR code blocked devices that had a hacked version of the game, attempts to steel cubes, GPS spoofing penalized, too many failed launch verification, and players switching devices too frequently. There are many many cheater detections in place and they are working. For the most part, the biggest problem with cheating isn’t that it is happening, but that players think it is happening much more often than it really is. Giving anyone access to even part of the code would only make this problem worse.

In Reflection

Next week, it will be 14 years since the name “QONQR” came out of Justin’s mouth at a Starup Weekend competition. So much has happened in that time. There was a time when I felt like it was going to be time to turn off the servers because profits had gone negative. Then Gmenman goes and gets a huge damned Legion tattoo. There was no way it could be shut down in the months after that. A while later, profits got a little better and the servers were safe again. A few years ago, I posted a fairly negative blog post about how things were going, hinting that things may finally be coming to an end. The next day I received a heartfelt thank you message from a player who had shared that she struggled in her real life and QONQR was the first place where people accepted her as the person she was, and didn’t judge her as they did in the real world. She thanked me for making a safe place for her to be her true self. There was no way I was going to take that away from her, so I kept the servers up. TotallyGomer and YellerCukes both shared with me their appreciation for QONQR as a way to stay in touch with their friends and the outside world before their passings. This will forever be something I’m proud to have provided. Together we have grieved the untimely losses of several players, and the memorials show how much they are missed. Players have been through so many challenges in their lives, with QONQR friends supporting them along the way.

The necessity to either rewrite QONQR or shut it down has been looming over me for months. It doesn’t make financial sense for me to stop working at my other job and spend months rewriting the QONQR app to keep this going. The smart thing would be to shut it down and move on. Focus on something new and leave behind all the issues of mobile gaming, government regulations, and abusive mobile marketplaces.  But…  the smart decision has been the wrong decision too many times before.

QONQR is too much of who I am, who you are, who we are. I’m going to try. QONQR may be always full of issues. It may have fewer features than in the past, but I’m going to try and keep the heart of what QONQR has always been in the new version. I can’t promise it will be done soon and can’t even tell you it will keep working on your current or new device in the coming months. However, I’m here today to tell you, QONQR is too important to let go, and I’m working on keeping it going until I find it just isn’t possible. I now believe I can make it work. I ask for your understanding and patience as the 4.0 beta moves forward.

For those that continue to buy cubes, thanks for keeping the servers alive.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough - Wasting time at the southern checkpoint

Spoilers below

Guess who backtracked about 5 hours of game time because they only just discovered that the newspaper actually changes every day based on what you did that day, and now they need to go back and collect them all? This is why I’ve been playing since October, have over 500 hours on my steam account, and still haven’t finished one single playthrough yet…

I’ve been playing since October. Wow. This game has just totally taken over my brain. On the one hand it’s been amazing to have my brain so thoroughly distracted, cause things have been getting really rough, and I appreciate the distraction, so so much. But on the other hand… I do sometimes wish I could be spending all this effort doing something actually useful. Last year I had been making some progress on personal projects, and I’ve had no desire to touch it at all since October. Sigh.

After finishing the backtracking and collecting all the papers, guess who found Carm’s Garms and wasted a few hours dressing everyone up like barbie dolls? I am NEVER going to finish this game!!! Look, it’s not my fault that Astarion looks so fabulous in so many things. I think my favorite dye for him is the white and scarlet, but sometimes the black and furnace red has good results. My tav used to wear a lot of red but has lost his taste for it - reminds him too much of what he wore as a bhaalspawn. He’s been using the azure and blue dye a lot.

So of course I finished the Open Hand Temple investigation. That was super interesting but also super sad, more tiefling refugees getting shit on, and the only person who really cared about them got murdered for his trouble. I like the little touch that Astarion disapproves of any religious comments that you make: on brand. I only just noticed getting a statue made gives the subject a permanent buff. Enjoy, Astarion. (and everyone else in the camp: enjoy Astarion) Found Petras and Dalyria at the flophouse. Trying to kill each other - that’s how you know they’re really siblings.

Obviously if I was at the clothes shop, I ran into Naaber. Oh boy. I didn’t get the joke at first and was quite bowled over by how strange and out of place he is, though I did find it funny and listened to everything he had to say. Then I looked him up online and found out he’s a running gag brought over from BG2 which is funny… But I ALSO came across a discussion where people were, as far as I am able to tell, asking in complete earnest if there was any way to deal with him besides killing him. ??? Look I know there’s no “wrong” way to play and whatever way makes you happy is the right way, but like damn. WTF are some of you doing? He’s an annoying dude to be sure, but it is a LITTLE bit funny, and if you don’t like him, you don’t have to even talk to him at all. (right? It almost sounded from what people were saying that he was following them around being a nuisance, but he definitely didn’t follow me. Did he used to follow players in previous patches or something?)

And then I went to Sharess’ Caress. Boy oh boy, the devs really liked this location didn’t they, they put in a ton of detail, lol. It’s kind of funny how everyone wants to meet at Sharess’ Caress. I thought it was just a funny brothel, but apparently it’s a respectable taphouse as well, judging from how many people just hang out here / conduct business meetings? Or is this like the people who claim they like to go to Hooters for the wings? Anyways I adore the cat, I adore mamzell Amira, I adore the put-upon chef. I adore how Amira introduces Raphael and makes the services he’s offering sound ambiguous. I wonder if she knows full well what he’s actually doing in that room, but this is how she introduces him, and some poor asshole who just wants a quick blowjob gets talked into selling his soul instead, or if she really does just think he’s some kind of freelance gentleman whore, temporarily renting out a room from her. I can’t decide which is more funny.

Drow twins: god the dude is hilarious and the girl is interesting. I must have spent at least one solid half hour just reloading and trying out all the different dialogue branches with them. What do other races get to talk to them about, I wonder? Being a drow I had some options to ask about their history and how they ended up here, and also point out that Sorn’s Menzoberranzan Love Trick is just a name to make customers excited. I assume at least that non-drow characters have other paths to get to their backstory? I wasn’t able to see the foursome because I was romancing Astarion, and he’s not comfortable with that, but I checked them out each on their own. Everything with Sorn made me laugh and laugh. If you say you aren’t sure what you’re into, he chats with you a bit, and dark urge has a few extra little options that are so funny. The only thing I didn’t get to see was what happens if you fail the athletics or persuasion checks. Nym was kind of an interesting encounter - first you have the humour option of just complaining and crying to her for a couple hours, or you can actually just talk, listen to her talk about herself or get some weight off your own chest. If you choose to talk about boundaries, she will talk about how the female drow stereotype is a spicy dominatrix, but she doesn’t feel comfortable doing the rough stuff. That suits my drow just fine - as his boundary, a male drow can say he’s uncomfortable with dominant drow women. It was very interesting. And apparently my tav keeps his gauntlets on during sex. Not sure if that was a bug or on purpose but it was funny, lol.

That was just me checking things out for my personal curiosity anyways - in my actual save game, I didn’t do anything with either of them. I know Astarion says he’s ok if you fool around, and whether he actually is or not is debatable (he seems more comfortable here than when you talk to him about Halsin, IMO), but my tav just really has no interest if Astarion isn’t there.

I walked in on the nymph and her client… I had no idea what happened there so that was a shocking surprise.

I was stuck for a while trying to decide what to do about Raphael offering the contract. I had said that I would do anything in my game to trigger his hilarious little monologue at the epilogue party. It sounds like you must sign the contract then break it in order to get that. But everyone in the party is so freaking mad about it, I don’t have dialogue options to indicate I’m doing it fully intending on going back on it later, I don’t really want to deal with the Emperor being pissed off just yet, but if I lie to him, what do I do with Voss? Lie to him too? Man I dunno. I think it’s simpler just to tell Raphael to fuck off. Plus it’s also pretty funny to go and steal the hammer from him later. He’s the one who made me aware of the hammer: if he hadn’t mentioned it at all, I wouldn’t have known about it, but now that I know that he has it, BECAUSE HE TOLD ME, I’m going to go steal it? I just think that’s hilarious. Idiot.

HOWEVER IN THE END: I decided to do the contract. I have a second playthrough that I started and put on hold with a tiefling paladin, and since she would NEVER sign a contract with Raphael, I think I’ll make my durge do it. But besides just meta game reasons, I also reasoned… he just recently found out he’s a bhaalspawn, and I think he’s feeling like his crummy soul is forfeit. No big deal signing over his soul to a devil when he’s already completely fucked. Who knows, maybe Raphael and Daddy Bhaal will have a fistfight over it later and that would be hilarious. That’s where my tav is coming from.

I also did Gortash’s big fucking coronation but I’ll write that up as its own thing I think. Goddamn I am enjoying this game so much.

[soldiermom1973]

I wasted entirely too much time reloading a save to pass an insight check. Probably close to 30 minutes. I finally did it when I decided it would be my last attempt & then I'd sign off for the night & try again tomorrow. FYI - it was the one with Ethel & Mayrina's brothers, so you can tell she's lying. But I got it & all is right with the world.

Other than that - I am constantly amazed at the amount of forethought the devs & writers had when it comes to how differently things might play out based on player choices. Case in point -

Last time, I didn't save Sazza - I busted her out of the grove, but she died in the fighting in the cave behind. I got into the goblin camp ok, then to the sanctuary & saved Volo, but but IIRC, I failed a check somewhere that instantly aggro'd every goblin inside the sanctuary, even before finding Halsin. I couldn't even talk to Minthara, so I was surprised when I'd read about all these people who recruited/romanced her. Like... how???

So this time I saved Sazza and did a lot more exploring in the goblin camp - there are at least 5 goblin children there and I hate that there doesn't seem to be a way to save them. They're just kids, you should be able to save them & send them somewhere.

But I digress - I'm trying to save all the tieflings AND Sazza, so when I talked to Minthara, I HAD to agree to attack the grove. I used a guide and managed to drop her by destroying a bridge, but I'm not sure if Sazza made it or not. I'll find out in Act 2 if she's at Moonrise. I also feel like I found Halsin in a completely different place than last time, but I could be wrong (I am old, you know). What I DO remember is how I've been able to talk to 2 of the 3 goblin leaders you're supposed to kill and have killed those 2 without triggering the rest of the goblins. I've also managed to poison the booze cauldron outside in the party, so all in all the fighting should be a little easier for me.

I also met Abdirak, too. Last time was after the goblins were all dead, so the conversation with him was so very different this time. Some of his ambient stuff has him inflicting pain on a couple of goblins which obviously didn't happen last time. I really wish I had recorded the way it played out last time.

On top of this, I've discovered the Shadow Druid thing and am trying to work on that, but I found and saved Halsin, who wants to go right back to the grove. Needless to say, I reloaded a save and hauled ass out of there so I can catch Kagha in her lies. So I've got a bunch of quests that tie into the Grove/Goblin Camp and I've been super paranoid about screwing something up because I did them 'out of order'. I can tell this is going to be one of those games where once I find a routine/path where I like the choices/outcomes, that's the way I'll forever play it. After I do a couple more exploratory runs, that is.

Oh, and last time I played, I made Volo stop his 'surgery' because I was afraid he'd kill me. Found out otherwise and I HATED that cutscene. I have a very strong constitution and can handle a lot of gore and ick. Just not when it comes to the eyes. I can't STAND watching stuff about eyes. It's the biggest reason it took me so long to decide to have lasik done. In fact, years ago, my oldest was playing one of the Dead Space games (I forget which one), and I was in the kitchen. He yelled for me and said there was a cut scene I absolutely had to watch. Well, it was Isaac, in a chair, under a needle. And... well.... if you know, you know. My kid intentionally missed that fucking needle just to laugh at my discomfort. Fucker.

But I have a cool fake eye now, I guess. And can see invisible things supposedly. And am part of the one-eyed club or whatever Wyll called it. Yay me.

I'm cranky now - I have half a headache because the neighbors are having a bonfire and the smoke is killing me. So have a pic of our favorite quasit.

"Basket is boooorrrreeed! Basket wants to murderize!"

Here's my new BG3 character. She's another high half-elf sorcerer with draconic bloodline (I really liked the scales on my other tav's face). I'm going to try for an ice/lightning build for her, hence all the blue. I couldn't think of a name for her, so I went and asked my son, who's normally very good with coming up with names, and his smart-ass self decided her name should be Archibald. I made a face, but I decided the name Archie would suit her. She hasn't protested, so Archie it is.

I'm going to try to romance Astarion but I don't know how strong my willpower will be to stay away from Gale. I think that wizard ruined me. Lol.

I actually feel bad that I gave this one a name and not the other. I mean, she wasn't Tav, but I never really thought about what her name was. Maybe she'll tell me later, when I write her stories.

I'll tag this stuff as 'Archie BG3' so you can filter it out if you want. I'll only be playing once or twice a week, as my work schedules permit. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

[huggybug]

you gave me something to lose - nick blankenburg

word count: 1.8k words

the much anticipated contract extension fic!! check this out before you read ;) title from ‘love someone’ by lucas graham! also don’t mind the messy timeline with dev camp🫣 it was already written before as y’all know lol

“I talked to them this morning. Two years” Your eyebrows shot up.

“Nick! Babe that’s amazing, congratulations!”

“Thanks but I was actually think-”

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about it or something stupid like that, Nicholas. This is all you’ve ever wanted! You would be an idiot if you turned this down and I can’t date an idiot”

Nick laughs. “Baby, calm down please” He waits for you to take a deep breath before continuing, “I was thinking… you should move with me”

“Me? In Ohio?” Your eyes widened. You hadn’t even thought about it if you were being honest. Ever since Nick signed in April, you two had been taking everything one day at a time, there was too much going on to think about the future and what it may hold for you both.

“Well yeah, I can’t exactly commute from Michigan” You roll your eyes while Nick smirks at you. “I don’t want to do this without you” Your heart pounded in your chest.

“Nick… of course I’ll go” It was simple, you loved Nick. You have ever since you saw him in your freshman year at the first hockey party of the season that your roommate dragged you to, claiming her ‘sophomore friend’ on the team would get you guys in.

“Good because I really didn’t want to live with Kent”

…

“This one… or this one?” You pointed to the final two options of kitchen bar stools and waited for Nick to share his opinion. You two were finally in Columbus and while you had pre-ordered the main things like your bed and couch to the apartment before you actually got here, there was still so much to buy.

So today has been primarily spent in Pottery Barn, you first had to reroute Nick from Ikea because that’s apparently where he thought the good furniture was.

Nick had decided to let you decorate since he didn’t care what the apartment looked like as long as it ‘had a place to sleep and a place to eat’ he was fine. However, since he was paying for most of it, you figured he should get a say also.

“They look the same”

“This one is white leather with gold metal and this one is cream with bronze metal” You explained, pointing to the two stools again. Nick looked between the options, clearly not seeing the difference and you sighed.

“I’ll just ask your sister” You groan as you snap pictures of both stools, texting them to her quickly. “I want you to actually like the stuff we get Nick! I don’t want this to be my apartment that you have to pay for” Nick was paying for the apartment and while you tried to convince him to let you pay half of the rent, which did cause a big argument, he didn’t budge.

“I will like it. If you picked it, I’ll like it, trust me” He smiles, stepping forwards and reaching for your hips, dragging you close to him.

“You at least have to help choose the bed” You grumble, looking at him with a pout.

“Fine, let’s go look at them now and then we’re going for lunch”

…

“I thought we were done for the day” Nick whined as you punched in the next address on his car’s gps.

“This one’s quick, I ordered online so I just have to pick it up” You explained and Nick huffed before starting to follow the car’s directions.

You had actually gotten a lot done today. All the furniture was ordered and should be in by next week and your car was full with random decor that was totally going to look amazing. Nick’s sister agreed on the white and gold bar stools so you luckily got those since they were the last few in stock and Nick even pretended to be excited about that.

With all the stuff you got today on top of everything from your last few Target runs, you were pretty much all set and now you just had to get everything out together in the apartment. There was just the final couple things you had to pick up and then you’d be done.

…

“Where’d these frames come from?” Nick pulled out three frames from the trunk of the car, trying to remember if they were from Ikea or Pottery Barn.

You dropped the box you were holding and rushed over to grab them from him. “I’ll show you inside, c’mon”

Nick helped you get them into the living room before you both unwrapped them. You grinned at Nick as he took in the three pictures you had gotten framed. The first one was from one of his last games as a Wolverine, him posed in his iconic celly. You got it because you knew how much Nick loved his time at Michigan and he definitely already missed it.

The second was a photo of the two of you at the graduation party his mom threw as soon as he got home from Finland. It was your favourite photo; Nick was looking at you with a huge smile on his face and your one arm was wrapped around him while a flute of champagne dangled from the other hand. Your mom said it looked like your engagement party which made you laugh at the time but now looking back on it, you kind of agreed.

The last one was a photo you took after his first NHL game. He was still in his uniform and you were wrapped around him, squeezing his torso tight as his arm draped around you. You both looked happy as can be and you figured it was a good memory to have framed in your house.

“Baby… these are awesome” Nick smiles. The pictures meant a lot more to him than they probably should have but he didn’t say much, he just looked at them again and then started carrying them around the apartment, trying to find the best place to hang them.

The rest of your day went similar to that. You worked together to bring everything in from the car and start organizing the apartment exactly the way you wanted it. Nick was an amazing helper and by the time the sun set, your were both ready to give up for the day.

You were moving around him in the kitchen, trying to throw together a quick dinner because today had quite literally wiped you out. “Here, relax” Nick said as he handed you a glass of wine with a smile. You eyed the open bottle on the counter behind him, your favourite rosé.

“Nicholas you’re too good to me” You grin, swiping the glass from his hand and taking a quick sip. Nick smiled as he turned back to the stove, stirring the pasta he’d been cooking while you prepped everything else.

“I’m just trying to make it worthwhile” Nick mumbled.

“Make what worthwhile?” You ask, looking up from the vegetables you were cutting. He turns to face you, leaning against the counter as he picks up his own wine glass, casually taking a sip.

“You coming here” He says quietly.

You raise an eyebrow, setting your glass down on the counter and stepping closer to him. “Nick…”

“I just feel guilty… I forced you to move away from home and I don’t know, I just want to make sure you enjoy it here” Nick was staring down at his hands, swirling the wine in his glass as a form of distraction.

“You did not force me to move here” You assure him but you’re not sure if it works.

He shrugs, telling you to forget it. “Today’s supposed to be a happy day, I don’t want to ruin it”

“No, hey- I don’t want you to think I’m only here because you asked. I wanted to come with you but I wasn’t sure if we were there or what”

“I always want you here, I don’t think I could do it without you” He says, placing his wine glass on the counter behind him and pulling you into him by your hips.

“You can do anything Nicholas, you should know that by now” He was nothing if not self-motivated. You’re almost positive there wasn’t a single thing he wanted to do that he hadn’t already accomplished. It was something you loved about him.

Nick hummed, “I’m happy you’re here”

“I’m happy to be here babe” You grin, bumping your nose against his. “But c’mon we need to finish dinner because we’ve got a long day tomorrow and I need some sleep”

You broke apart, resuming your movements around each other in the kitchen. It was so domestic all of a sudden, not that you weren’t used to cooking with Nick since you spent a fair amount of time in college cooking for the boys but this was different.

You were cooking in your own apartment. Your and Nick’s home. It felt so natural and the feeling excited you. You couldn’t stop your mind from thinking about what your life could turn out to be; entertaining the idea of marrying Nick and having kids. Sure, maybe it was a little soon but there was no harm in daydreaming, right?

…

The summer practically flew by. Nick was busy at development camp while you finished the final touches on your apartment, then he was training on and off the ice and was busier than you’d ever seen him.

It was fine though because you were together. He could come home from training and you’d be there, it made everything so much easier because on top of his ridiculous training schedule, there wasn’t also the aspect of trying to do long distance. You two made the trip back home for a couple weeks; Nick was happy to see his family and the boys a little before they all had to go back to their respective cities for the season.

However, after the way too short trip, you were headed back to Columbus. “This is crazy” You look over to Nick who was now staring at you.

“Yeah, planes are pretty cool” You joke back and Nick laughs while shaking his head.

“No like… we’re going to Columbus right now” You furrow your eyebrows. Did he not realize you’d already spent a few months in Columbus?

“Babe are you feeling okay?”

“It’s just a lot to take in” He shrugs and you smile, reaching for his hand.

“We’re going to Columbus for you to play in the NHL on your million dollar contract” Nick blushes when you continue to boost his ego.

“Yeah but also, we’re starting our life… like our real life outside of college” He said it like it was all hitting him at once and you smiled gently.

“We’re grown ups” You affirm.

“Thank you again for being here, I really wouldn’t want to do it alone”

“You wouldn’t be alone, you have Kent” You grin.

“Not what I mean”

[im-a-space-gay]

Welcome to Camp Sanders!

(I’ve downloaded three translators to find out half the time Google Translate was either the only one getting it right or the only one getting it wrong. If there is any mistakes in any language besides English, I am sorry as I only speak English fluently [ha, fluently]. Also yes, ANOTHER AU. Look, I’m idea/story fluid along with gender fluid. Deal with it.)

“I do not see the point of summer camp,” a fourteen year old boy stated, looking out the car window in resentment towards the camp and kids of varying ages running around.

This boy’s name was Logan Lee Lucy, born November 3rd in Japan and moving to the U.S. when he was three. With black hair pushed away from his eyes that were sapphire blue, he wore rectangular glasses and a black T-shirt with gray shorts. Normally he wore polos and ties, but his awful mother said that was too formal for where she was sending him.

Camp Sanders.

Camp Sanders was a summer camp for kids from eight to eighteen, and was in the middle of a forest without anything around it. It was a place for kids to find and pursue interests, and there was plenty activities from outdoors to indoors, pleasing every kid.

Every kid, except for Logan, of course.

“You need to spend some time in the sunshine and make friends,” his mother said in response, and Logan huffed, crossing his arms and sliding down the seat.

“Friends are for spineless maggots who are dependent on others for happiness,” Logan glared, and his mother sighed.

“No wonder why you’re never happy.”

“I’m happy plenty, I’ll have you know!” Logan lied, finally unbuckling his seatbelt, and grabbing his backpack.

“Alright,” his mother said, twisting around to look at him with a smile from the driver’s seat. “Just... try to have a nice summer, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too,” Logan said before leaving, grasping his backpack straps as he stared down the streams of kids, his mother driving away behind him. He was just about to follow the children before someone poked his shoulder. He looked over to see a boy that was probably his age, smiling widely.

He was fairly tan, with a infinite amount of freckles and curly orange locks with bright blue eyes. When Logan paid attention to the smile, he could see a small gap between his two middle incisors on the top. He had a baby blue crop top and khaki short shorts, with a pink backpack and round glasses.

“Hiya! I’m Patton Hart, fourteen, he/him!” He said, sticking his hand out to shake, which Logan did with a raised eyebrow.

“Logan Lucy, fourteen, he/him.”

“Nice to meet ya Logan!” Patton smiled wider, and Logan picked up on a small Irish accent. “Now, I’m no expert, but are you new?”

“Yes?” Logan blinked, wondering if he was that obvious before something else crossed his mind. “Wait, some people come here repeatedly?”

“Yeppers!” Patton said, pointing at himself. “I’ve been here for three summers before this one, and I’m friends with most that keep coming here! I just really love this camp! Among other things....”

Patton murmured the last part with a blush, suddenly acting shy as he fiddled with his earlobe with a tiny smile. Logan would ask, but he was rather befuddled with this new information.

“So you come back to summer camp... because you want to?” Logan asked in desbelief, and Patton’s shy demeanor vanished as he nodded with a bright grin.

“Uh huh! Who knows, maybe you’ll do the same!” Logan scrunched his nose at the statement.

“Doubtful, but alright.”

“Now, I’ll help you get signed in since you’re in my age group!” Patton said cheerfully, taking Logan’s hand and dragging him with the rest of kids that were going to a giant building, which Logan found out was the mess hall upon entering.

Logan, after looking around the -rather aesthetically pleasing- hall, realized that Patton was talking to him and listened in.

“-onder which cabin you’ll be placed in!”

“Cabin?” Logan parroted, and Patton glanced in his direction before pulling him to a forest green table with a couple clipboards.

“Yep! You’ll be placed in a cabin based on age and sex -unless you’re trans, than you go in with the gender you identify with so you don’t feel dysphoria- and you get five bunk mates!” Patton explained, telling him to sign in while he checked which cabin Logan was placed in.

Logan finished his signature when Patton gasped loudly, and Logan jumped, looking at him in confusion. Patton faced him excited, showing the clipboard to him.

“You’re in the Sides cabin! THAT’S MY CABIN!” And before Logan could open his mouth, Patton gasped again with a worried look and turned the clipboard to him again.

After scanning it, he sighed in relief.

“Uh,” Logan intelligently said, and Patton looked up, blinking.

“Oh sorry, I was just checking who left the Sides cabin. It was just Dev, so no reason to worry!”

“Alright,” Logan nodded, feeling like he was missing something.

“Well,” Patton said, grabbing Logan’s hand again. “Let’s head to our cabin! You’re going to love the others!”

They were out of the mess hall before Logan could blink, Patton being in more of a hurry than before, they weaved through the crowd before arriving at a small cabin that looked exactly the same as the rest of the cabins, if you excluded the sign above the door reading “Sides”. Patton took a calming breath before opening the door, and everyone in the room looked over, making Logan flinch even as they looked at Patton with wide grins.

Two of the boys were undoubtedly twins of Hispanic origins, one wearing a red T-shirt and washed out overalls, while the other wore a green T-shirt and black overalls with holes, their dark brown hair swooping dramatically and brown eyes filled with energy. It seemed these two were playing tug-o-war with a small rope before they opened the door.

Another had dark skin with a splotch of a lighter skin tone on the left side of his face, black hair braided away from his eyes. His left eye was green, while his right was brown, and he had a yellow tank top with a two headed snake and ripped jeans. It appeared this one was recording what the twins were doing with a smirk on his lips.

The final one seemed to be the only one of American descent in the cabin, with pale skin and brown hair long enough that it covered his eyes and ears and touched the tip of his nose. He had a strange hoodie that mainly was black, but the sleeves had alternating black and purple stripes, and the hood and pocket were purple. He also wore black high-waisted shorts with black thigh highs that almost reached the shorts, leaving the smallest sliver of pale skin between them, and purple headphones around his neck. He was hanging upside down, halfway off one of the top bunks, showing his emerald eyes.

“Hiya!” Patton said excitedly, dragging Logan in behind him, making Logan barely have time to close the door behind him.

“Patton!” The twins yelled simultaneously, dropping the rope and running over to hug Patton, thankfully making him let go of Logan’s hand so he could back away from the group hug.

When they pulled away, they looked at Logan, and smiled near-identical grins.

“Who’s this you brought with ya?” The one in red asked, making Logan happy when he stayed out of his personal bubble. Patton gasped and clapped, gesturing widely to him.

“Everybody, this is our new bunk mate, Logan! Logan, meet everybody!”

“Hi?” He said confused, and Patton pointed at the twins.

“These are Roman and Remus Royal, the twins! Roman wears red and Remus wears green,” Patton explained, and Logan nodded, making a silent note that the twins were color-coded. Then Patton walked over to the dark skinned one and slung an arm around him. “This is Janus Smith, a ball of sarcasm and friendship!”

Janus snorted, waving before saying, “less friendship, more snake.”

Logan blinked confused, wondering what that meant but Patton was already bounding toward the one hanging precariously from the bed, blush on his face.

“And this is Virgil Storm! He’s really anxious, listens to music a lot, and speaks any language except English out of spite, I’ve been told. He still understands English though!”

“こんにちは,” Virgil nodded, biting his lip. Logan nodded back, pleasantly surprised when Virgil spoke in his home language.

“こんにちは。英語を話してみませんか?” Logan asked, and he saw the others looking confused while Virgil smiled.

“私の家族は英語しか話せません。私は家族が嫌いです。”

Logan rose his eyebrow but nodded.

“Okay.”

“Anyways,” Patton said, dragging everyone’s attention to him. “It’s nice to see you all again!”

“You too!” The twins chimed, Janus nodding.

“Tú freisin Patton,” Virgil said, finally moving so he was not about to fall off the bed, covering his eyes with his bangs, and Logan was pretty sure Patton was blushing again. Probably because of everybody saying it was nice to see him as well.

At least, he thinks Virgil said that. Logan only spoke English and Japanese, not whatever that was. Though that did make him curious how many languages Virgil knew.

“So, shall we play twenty questions?” Janus questioned as Logan and Patton put their stuff on the remaining bunks. Everybody was quick to agree (wow okay he was going to have to get used to people speaking languages he didn’t understand), and Logan had only one thought as he watched Janus play catch with the twins, with Patton telling them how his year was and Virgil occasionally muttering to him in Japanese that he wished Logan luck with dealing with all of them.

Maybe this summer won’t be so bad.

[randomnameless]

Don't you think the devs didn't like Rhea, like at all? I don't get her character arc, was she supposed to be like Dimitri - too focused on the past so she ignored the present, and she is supposed to open her eyes now to the present? But it fails because Rhea's past returns, through Billy, and saves the world!

True to her tier, Julia - I mean Rhea, has... no character arc ?

Is her arc all about letting go of her mother and finally learn to live for herself?

Well, Billy - who is her mother, or its own being we're not even sure - Billy who was born from her desire to resurrect the Goddess and her mom, Billy who was born from her desire to have someone to alleviate her charge to guide and save the world...

Well, Billy saves the world. Also, for added bonus, Sothis managed to interact with Rhea after her awakening within Billy (the famous off-screen scene).

So, no. If Rhea let go of the past then... Fodlan was doomed.

Unlike Dimitri, she was right to be focused on her Mother, because it ultimately brought Billy and saved the world.

Rhea's lesson is to trust humans and stop tampering with History?

But we don't see how the humans who know about the Truth react, save for CF and, well, CF shows why Rhea thought it might be a good idea to hide her identity.

Edel knocking at her door with Baldo and Waldi is actually a consequence of Rhea trusting humans - by trusting Wilhelm she allowed Edel to barge in 1k years later with her "knowledge" and will to get rid of the non-humans.

Rhea's lesson is to stop trying to govern and lead everything on her own?

I was preparing a post about it, but Rhea always shared power and leadership of Fodlan with humans - which is, ironically, one of the reasons why Fodlan is in such a state, because despite doing her possible to make Garreg Mach a nice place, the rest of Fodlan, ruled by humans, isn't as nice (Adrestia is Adrestia, Faerghus is Kingless and Miklan does his things, Gloucester periodically assassinates his rivals, etc etc).

And yes, I am aware typing this really really sucks (and it hurts tbf) because it means Fodlan would be better with one ruler for the continent... Sadly, this message is the one the game conveys, with all of its endings. Fodlan prospers because it is united under one leader (+ a church in AM).

Rhea's arc is all about letting go of her burdens and finally be free to rest?

Finally she gets her well deserved holidays!

But it's not her arc, or at least, an arc that was spured and concluded by the game, because Rhea already planned on doing that after letting Billy inherit her role as Archbishop. Unless it was her character arc, and the game is just "Rhea's last minute delays before she picks her van for a camping trip in Zanado" and it seriously sucks.

Rhea creates personal and close relationships

Well, this could be one.

SS wise, she can only be saved if she managed to trust and be close to Billy (i hate it did i already mention how i hated the uwu factor?). Rhea is closed off to Seteth, Flayn, her knights, but also, Jeralt and Aelfric.

But because she opened to Billy and managed to form a lasting or meaningful friendship/relationship/whatever, she can rely on Billy and in turn Billy's help and acceptance becomes her salvation.

Rhea finally managed to get close to someone, and that someone, in turn, doesn't betray or leave (Cichol left once, Jeralt left too) her but saves her.

But I really, really hate this "arc" because it erases, imo her character. If the devs insist on saying this is her arc, then I'll go full redshit and join the Cap on his ship and teeter at the borders of reality - because the character "Rhea" IS created is much more than someone who is just lonely and really wanted a friend, and only Billy managed to save her.

Why? Because unlike Tiki and Myrrh, Rhea is not the last dragon after Zanado, her brother and niece are with her. She also has a knight who loves her and would die for her, just like a surrogate son who thinks the world of her. She used to have Willy, for whatever he was worth, he is still on her mind 1100 years after his death (?) as a figure of old who helped her and supported her.

So much like Dimitri - who managed to be hit with the "uwu factor" only after IS fridged Dedue - Rhea already has an entire network of existing relationships, she is not lonely waiting for Billy, she thinks she is lonely, but also knows she has trusted comrades, friends, and family she can rely on.

Ultimately I might be ranting on and on about this (Rhea's friends, current and formers) because of my first route bias - in this mess of a route, we can see Rhea has supporters and allies who will die for her and whom she values. So no, in CF, Rhea isn't "lonely without u uwu" - Rhea is a character with her friends, her family and her men.

I think IS didn't really know what to do with Rhea, and just like Edel, piled tropes on quirks and informed traits until the end characters tastes both sour and bitter. Hopefully, since Rhea belongs to the Julia tier, the defaults in her character aren't as striking as Edel, who had to be the red Emperor, but also peak waifu material.

[priorireverte]

Congratulations Ash!

Your application for Ted Tonks has been accepted. And we have a simply, truly happy reunion of the formerly dead! Hooray! I’m so happy for the Tonks. Unless . . . things are never as easy or simple as they appear.

Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!

OUT OF CHARACTER

NAME & PRONOUNS: Ash they/them

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m a front end dev for a virtual event platform who works between 5-7 days a week but I’m usually active after 6pm and on weekends. I have slow weeks when on lighter projects and busier weeks when we have a lot of shows.

ANYTHING ELSE: N/A on triggers. I’ve been roleplaying on tumblr for i think 14 years? Too long.

CHARACTER DETAILS

NAME: Edward “Ted” Álvaro Sepulveda Tonks

BIRTHDATE: October 10th, 1952

DEATHDATE: March 15th, 1998

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cismale, he/him, flexible heterosexual.

BLOOD STATUS: Muggleborn

HOUSE ALUMNI: Hufflepuff

OCCUPATION: Prior to going on the run, Ted worked as a Broadcaster for the Wizarding Wireless Network. Upon return, he doesn’t have a career yet.

FACECLAIM: Pedro Pascal

CHARACTER BACKGROUND

POSTBELLUM

Ted had been on the run for seven months. Over half a year, without seeing his wife or daughter, spent in the countryside near his childhood holiday spots. Doing just a sad excuse of camping for what? To lose his life to a group of indoctrinated youth and the werewolf who turned his son-in-law?

The pain is the last thing he remembers. Ted was never a stranger to pain. Not during scuffles in primary school or stray hexes in the corridors of Hogwarts. Though he couldn’t say he had ever experienced pain like this, it wasn’t all pain. There was a warmth, not unlike the one he felt when falling asleep to his wife, that urged him to close his eyes. They hadn’t hurt Dean yet and that was the one thing Ted had wanted to make sure of. Not the boy, too young to be going through this. Just him.

Waking up in the Ministry had been a surprise. He expected death or a dungeon, tied to a tree if they were truly desperate, but he wasn’t chained or shackled. There were no ropes keeping him. Just a barrier and soft voices explaining his new reality. He laughed. It was all he could do really. Laugh at his luck, if that’s what it was. He had been brought up Catholic and, if he tried, Ted could still tell you the stations of the cross. He didn’t feel much like Jesus coming back from the dead. He hadn’t done enough with his life to claim that nor would he ever. But the irony of rising again, of another chance at life, got to him. Ted found himself praying before bed. Silently staring up at the ceiling, asking for the safety of his family. His wife, Dora, Remus, and his grandchild. If he recited his prayers, something he hadn’t done in nearly thirty years, perhaps he’d find them safe. Unchanged by the war and happy.  

He finds himself running his hand over his throat or chest, searching for scarred skin. There’s no sign of his attack. No physical reminder of what ended his life and, he has to know, did it really end? Why was he given a second chance over so many others? He wasn’t a true Order member. He never fought back against blood supremacy in a strong way. Ted lived his quiet life with his family not wanting to make waves. He had just wanted to be happy.

If he could go back and do it all again, he still would have gone on the run. He would have resisted capture. Stood in front of Dean to give him a chance to run for it. He has regrets of course. Not being with his wife in times of terror and uncertainty. Missing the birth of his grandchild who is no doubt just as much of a terror as Dora had been. But his family’s safety matters much more than his own life does. Well, did.

PERSONALITY

If there’s anything Ted was, or is, good at it’s talking. He can tell a story with a smile clear in his voice and actions. Read an ad or two over the Wizarding Wireless Network like nobody’s business. That’s what he loves most, telling stories.  His childhood was filled with stories of his parents’ time in Chile and new tales of Cornish mythology. Those words didn’t leave Ted as he grew older. He still turns to them in times of stress, taking the advice from their lessons to heart. He may know now that life can have struggles but he didn’t used dwell. If you’re a good person, you will have a good life. He knows music can tell a story in the best way. It doesn’t matter what language you speak or know. You can be countries away and hear a song written fifty years ago and the story is clear.

He’s rather gifted in charms, finding that when he discovered magic it was the least imposing course of study. Ted tries to find the beauty in all he can. Charms was just a class that made that easy. It’s how he became interested in broadcasting in the first place. He had fancied he’d be a writer, even though his speech was always better than his writing, but the intersectionality of older muggle technology and magic was too much of a puzzle to pass up.  

He’s never been mindful when it comes to tidying up. He’s no tornado. As he’s gotten older, Ted is sure his ways of leaving things around the home and forgetting dates and times has been a constant aggravation to his wife. His sense of time was never good. He tends to get caught up in conversation, appreciating face to face interaction over anything. He always floo calls when you’re supposed to write. Andromeda has dragged him away from too many conversations when they were just supposed out for one errand.

Ted doesn’t know how to deal with loss. His father passed a few years into Dora’s childhood and he never spoke about it much. His mother moved back to Chile soon after. His solution was cooking as much of the food he had grown up with as possible. Playing the music his mother had blasting over the record player in the kitchen during his childhood. Teaching her all the tales he had been taught. All the little lessons he was given.

Inaction could be said to be one of Ted’s failures. He thinks, or thought, that no matter how bad things got there was always a light at the end of the tunnel. He supposes this ideal isn’t gone from him. He’s been given a second chance. Prior to death, he presumed you could muster through anything and if you stayed a good and kind person you could get through to the other side. He was taught God rewarded the good. It was why his parents had immigrated to England before he was born, why they were given the opportunity. They were good people. They deserved a chance to make something of themselves. It was why he and Andromeda were able to build a life together. But not joining the order and taking a stand against blood supremacists and extremists didn’t keep him safe the second time. It didn’t allow his family to be untouched by loss. Things hadn’t worked out until now.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY

Edward “Ted” Álvaro Sepulveda Tonks was born in Truro, Cornwall, England to two Chilean immigrants in the fall of 1952. His parents had moved to Truro prior to his birth for more opportunities. Although they named their son Edward in hopes of assimilation for him and his father anglicized their last name from Tolhauzsen to Tonks, Chilean culture was the main theme of their home. It was baked into every fiber of his being whenever he walked through the door. English was barely spoken in the household, only more so in the time that he and Andromeda lived with his parents. Bringing in take away had to be done under the cover of night or he faced his mother’s stern looks and even sterner words. His mother didn’t work in the traditional sense but as a homemaker excelled beyond compare. His father was an employee at a music store and eventually came to own it.

His parents are the reason Ted is and was so family focused. It was taught to him that family comes before everything and he carried that through with him to adulthood. They were the people who stood by you in all things. Eventually he came to understand that could apply to chosen families as well. It was strange for him to meet Andromeda and learn that not all families put the same values of love and care in places of high honor. Respecting your parents was highly important but loving them and receiving love in return was what that respect was built on.

Despite not growing up the richest, Ted never wanted for much. He was an only child who was rather dotted upon by his parents. To learn that he was a wizard might have been the only serious friction they went through. If not for the day his girlfriend showed up on his doorstep to tell him that she was pregnant. His parents grew to love magic when he came home for the summers and showed them what he had learned but as he grew older, Ted found it harder to see a life where he could stay in their world. In the muggle world at all. It would be like shutting a part of himself off. Like not living up to his full potential.

HISTORY

Hogwarts was a fantasy. There was no other way to describe it. It was nothing like Ted could every dream when he wondered why strange things always happened to him. When he was younger and broke his mother’s vase and it stitched itself back together. Or when he would run home from primary school and make it back in a fraction of the time it took to get there. The answer to any of his happy accidents wasn’t magic. It couldn’t be. And yet, it was. He just didn’t expect a different flavor of exclusion when Hogwarts was presented to him.

Injustice wasn’t unfamiliar to Ted Tonks. Growing up during the mid 1950s, he was used to seeing ‘Keep Britain White’ signs. His parents were strong and kept their heads up despite the riots and protests surrounding them. His father told Ted, stay kind and stay sharp. If you stayed kind, no one could go against you. If you stayed sharp, no harm would come to you. As Ted moved into the wizarding world, he learned that he would not be judged by the color of his skin or his family’s country of origin but his blood was still in no way pure. He leaned on his father’s words and was sorted into Hufflepuff.

Andromeda Black was another happy accident. He’d have had to be blind not to notice her. He didn’t count on her noticing him. He had gained a good group of friends just by his nature but their social circles never interacted. How could they? The segregation of houses, purebloods and non-purebloods, was a clear line. It was during classes that the line was able to be blurred. Mutual tutoring turned into secret meetings over the years. Promised whispers Ted told himself not to believe in or give hope to. It wasn’t until the day Andromeda stood on his doorstep looking very much not like herself, a year after they had graduated Hogwarts and continued seeing each other in secret, that Ted knew she was an inevitability. They weren’t married when Dora became even a speck on the horizon. He was still an intern for WWN at the time and she had given up her whole life for them. For their family. Ted wasn’t sure he would ever be able to sacrifice something that even slightly measured up to the gift she had given him.

Nymphadora wasn’t a name he chose. It wasn’t a name he would have thought of but his later years of Hogwarts had been marked with many nights in the Astronomy Tower learning all the stars from a girl named after one of them. It was certainly more regal than Ted would ever be. And if he happened to know of a certain saint with the same name and told his mother that Andromeda was thinking of converting to Catholicism, no one was the wiser.

Their small home in the country was never a place of worry or fear but some days when Andromeda left for St. Mungo’s, Ted worried until she was back safe and sound in his arms. It took eight years after his daughter’s birth for Ted to feel comfortable bringing her to work with him. To not look over his shoulder in the marketplace for fear someone would be looking for them.

After Dora had left Hogwarts and decided to become an auror, Ted began to worry again. He was good at hiding it. Puttering away in their little garden or forcing his wife to listen to his stories of the new musical group that was destined to become the next Weird Sisters. He kept as busy as he could, even if busy meant learning new recipes with Andromeda or spending nights in the backyard with their telescope. They could endure another war. He wasn’t worried about that. He was worried about Dora, full of her mother’s spirit and wit out there fighting it.

OOC EXPLORATION

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

I think the idea of the dead coming back is such an interesting premise. We never get to learn more about the Veil or the Department of Mysteries and this is such a cool take. Ted is one of my favorite characters who I’ve never been able to portray at an older age.

Also, an rp that values writing over one-liners? Sign. Me. Up.

EXTRA FOR NON-BIO CHARACTERS

CHARACTER CONTRIBUTION

Ted Tonks is one of the many minor (minor) characters in the Harry Potter universe but his story is so interesting to me. To decide that he was going to marry a well-known pureblood woman and make a life with her in such a dangerous time is such a heavy decision. I think Ted can represent a lot of good natured and honest qualities, valuing love above all else. I’m truly excited, if I get the chance, to play with how those values can shift if he’s given a second chance at life. Will he be less hesitant than before? More likely to throw himself into the fray? Or will he be even more cautious at staying out of the affairs of others? Family is really the only thing he has left and I believe he cherishes it above all else.

PRESENT

Ted has been back for six days. He’s sat in the Ministry camp, and really what else can he call it? His cot isn’t comfortable, nothing like his bed at home but a supreme upgrade from the forests of England. He’s surrounded by old friends he had fallen out of touch with years ago. People he hasn’t seen since his own time at Hogwarts. There’s still only three people he desperately wishes to see. His wife, his daughter, and his grandchild. But something is wrong and Ted knows that. He hadn’t realized he died when they first told him. He just thought he had been tortured. There’s something in these Unspeakables’ eyes, in the lines of their faces, that tells Ted he had missed quite a lot. The other matter at hand is his wand. He hasn’t been given it back. It’s not odd for him to do things the muggle way. Before all of this, he took a sense of pride in doing things slowly. Taking his time to craft a dish or fold some clothes, it gave him time to think and pause. But since he was eleven years old, Ted has never been without his wand or without magic. When he lays in his cot at night, after a time of silent reflection and prayer that could better be described as a plea to whatever entity is out there, Ted focuses on the small bit of wandless magic he used to be able to do. A lumos he had to learn when Dora was young and used to come into their bedroom in the middle of the night. Eyes full of tears at the dreams of monsters in the dark, under her bed or in the hallway closet. When he was too groggy to grab his wand from the bedside table, a small ball of light at his fingertips was the next best thing. Now, he can’t even muster up the slightest of glow.

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

I keep meaning to say this but always forget when I make these posts. The 2 cutest Killers in DbD are Demogorgon and Pig. When they nod their heads they make me coo! it’s so cute! ^-^

I just don’t get how the Blendette player the only person who isn’t a coward in her matches.

I got to witness a No Mither Default Meg completely destroy a Blight on the boat on the swamp. They never left the boat. She had Dance With Me, Quick & Quiet, and Deception alongside No Mither, so she kept losing line of sight with him and then hiding. The whole game. It was amazing, and also sad that he got played that much.

When you get in a Chase with a Survivor, that lasts more than 30 seconds, you should probably give up. 

Yesterday I played some No Mither games. 2 in a row I got the same Nurse who didn’t see me all match(despite having to save ppl so much) until I was Dead Harding into the Hatch! It was stressful. I de-pipped in both games because my teammates all died so quickly so I got around 10K pts each time.

Since it’s that time of year, I used all my Ormond Offerings on my Claudette. Snow. Christmas. Winter. The whole shebang. Also, I wanted to discover all the rocks we can walk on now and was having too much fun. I might not hate the map so much now, but for blending purposes it’s still the worst map of all.

I haven’t worked out a good strategy against the Twins yet. All of them just seem to do the camping and slug-the-whole-team strats which are boring. But then if you have Unbreakable or someone else has a build for quick Healing and you get off the ground, you’re the bad person.

The devs gave a redeem code for 20 rift fragments but I already finished it so I couldn’t use it. “GIFTTHERIFT”. The Tome will last a week longer too btw.

The other day they had a limited code offered for Adam to get that sweater he’s wearing in a video down below, and I managed to get one in time. There were ‘only 25K available’ and I did it within a minute of the post being made. I was stressed.

I really like my ninja vaulting build.

Oh btw! On corn maps, there are big boulders spawning randomly at map tiles and blocking Lockers. I’ve encountered this several times these past few days.

Visually Ormond is much better. And looks like a resort now.

I hide here when the Killer is checking the area because that cabinet hides most of the girls very well if you crouch exactly like this. Also... this sweater is NOT ugly. makes me wonder if they know what an ugly sweater is.

I hid here while the Killer came up the hill and then fell down to go elsewhere. He didn’t see me somehow.

He let me get hatch in the end.

I showed him this thing I found.

Now he looks like he’s coming at me but he’s actually frozen in place. I walked around him several times and was going to kick him but then decided not to just to punish the Killer for tunneling me for 3 minutes. I was also salty because 3 minutes and only 1 Gen got done because everyone was looking for Ruin. Seconds after this pic was taken, she DC’d.

I hope the devs don’t fix this. It’s funny. With the dudes it just looks like they’re skating across the ground with leg movement at all.

This entire match was something else and that end... The stress. The respect for Bill. I on;y did it for a Daily but it was worth it.

THIS WAS GREAT! XD

[blackjack-15]

When the Boys Come Marchin’ Home — Thoughts on: The Creature of Kapu Cave (CRE)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: CRE; mentions of ASH’s mechanics; TMB.

The Intro:

Oh, thank Heaven, onto a game that’s fun to talk about!

Creature of Kapu Cave probably holds the title of ‘Most Maligned Nancy Drew Game’, at least in my mind; suffice it to say that while it has its fans, it’s most certainly not a fan-favorite. I’m not afraid of standing against the grain slightly here – not after my CUR meta, which is way more divisive than this one is gonna be — and saying that CRE is not only one of my favorite games (for mostly subjective reasons) but also just a solid, if not a stand-out, game in the series, far more deserving of praise than the title before or the title after it.

Yeah, next is ICE, and there’s no game more deserving to start out our “Odd Games” section than it. Yeesh. But that mess is still a couple thousand words away, so let’s dive right in.

The last of the Jetsetting Games, CRE cranks it up to full force by depositing Nancy straight into the beaches and jungles of Hawai’i, keeping the indoor locations to a bare minimum and even then limiting them to: a research facility dominated by plants, tents, caves, and a hilarious kitschy tiki shack.

Everywhere Nancy goes, HER is eager to point out that she’s on Hawai’i, and it’s honestly refreshing after being cooped up inside for all of CUR, most of TRN (my love for that game aside), and most of DAN. CLK had a mix of outdoor (mini-golf, tunnels kind of, car rides/chases, the barn) and indoor (the Inn, the Bank, Topham’s house) locations, but CRE blows it out of the water with just how much we see of Hawai'i, and how determined the devs were to keep Nancy — and thus, the player — out in nature.

CRE is a game where Nancy’s pre-professional-detective presence is actually fully justified; as a recent (and bougie) high school grad, she’s working an internship for a Dr. Quigley Kim, an etymologist studying the norsobeta oderata moth on the island and their odd shift in ~mating habits~.

In my good Christian game, no less.

While Quigley is far more interested in the norsobeta oderata moth going hot ‘n’ heavy than in her assistant, Nancy still gets a good education in frass, bugs, and what dealing with ‘professionals’ and academics is actually like. I can even handwave the ‘bugs’ idea rather than the humanities/history that Nancy is normally drawn towards, because Nancy’s the type of person to want to expand her horizons.

The Hardy Boys are, as ever, a bright spot in an already pretty sunny game. The switching between them and Nancy is a fun thing that the games haven’t really done before — at least not with this level of immersion and control — and it really makes CRE stand out as a game.

Finally, a point which should work in CRE’s favor: its detractors often point to the game as feeling rushed without a proper storyline. While I believe this negative statement to be (and hope to prove it so) mostly untrue, there is a persistent rumor that went around at the time of CRE’s release (and is still noted on the Wikia today) that CRE’s production was greatly rushed in favor of working on the new interface that would come with ICE.

While there’s no definite proof of this rumor, it does fit with HER’s general business practices (even before Pinch-A-Penny Milliken became CEO), and should probably be kept in mind while considering the outside forces surrounding CRE.

The Title:

Even detractors of this game have to admit that its title is pretty awesome, especially for this point in the Nancy Drew series (we’re about halfway, for those not keeping track at home, both through the series (#15/33) and through this meta series (#15/30, as this series will skip MED/SEA/MID). While the book it’s incredibly loosely based off of is called Mystery on Maui, The Creature of Kapu Cave is way more evocative as a title; the location still tells us that we’re in Hawai’i, the “Cave” addition tells us we’ll be spending most of our time outside, and “Creature” means a prowling presence stalking Nancy throughout the game.

In other words, it has all the elements to promise a really fun (and, at this point, unique) entry into the series.

While it’s not exactly part of the title, it doesn’t really fit anywhere else, so I’m going to take the time here to mention how wonderful the cover art is. It’s cohesive, well-segmented, and shows off the focal point (the entrance to the cave), the reel-in for the audience (the Hardy Boys) and the lurking danger (the volcano/lava). It works so well in tandem with the title that I feel like it’s worth pointing out here.

Now, onto what the title promises us:

The Mystery:

Nancy arrives bright-eyed and ready to work upon landing on Hawai’i, arriving at a place called “Big Island Mike’s Immersion Excursions” to get the keys to the car that she needs to drive to get to her professor — Dr. Quigley Kim — and to their base camp. The titular Big Island Mike, having other ideas, assigns her to complete a necklace for him in order to get the keys, saying that she’ll see that she’d rather do his Immersion Excursion than work for Quigley at camp.

Which, like, fair point. I’ll take Mike over Quigley any day.

Nancy has barely gotten to the beach (and received a call from Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Game and Marginal Boyfriend Ned) when she spots the Hardy boys, looking decidedly worse for the wear than in TRN (why is Frank’s hair so light???? WHAT DID THEY DO TO JOE’S FACE???) and promptly hangs up while Ned is still confused and asking questions.

I see we have another strong entry for Nancy’s “Girlfriend of the Year” nomination.

The three sleuths trade new information and Nancy finds the sea shells that she needs to make the ‘beginner’ necklace and get the keys from a reluctant Mike. Nancy sets off, car-having and confident, over the bridge and into the jungle – but not before hearing about Kāne ‘Ōkala, the ‘rough-skinned’ man, and his recent reappearance that can only spell bad news for the island.

The forces of Mystery – not to mention the tropical weather — seem to be dead-set against Nancy, as a bad storm and an equally bad man-made (or Creature-made, rather) disaster not only prevent Nancy from getting back to the beach and to safety, but also prevent her from meeting Quigley at their Base Camp, which has been ripped to pieces by someone — or something. Nancy has to survive the jungle, find Quigley, figure out what has sent Kāne ‘Ōkala on a rampage across the island — and, the most deadly task of all: sort frass.

Meanwhile, appearing on the very same beach where Nancy “Whirlwind” Drew talked to them are the Hardy Boys, undercover as vacationers at Big Island Mike’s Immersion Excursions to scope out his daughter Pua for their client Richard Aikens, as Pua is potentially being used for an ad campaign and they need to ensure that she doesn’t have any skeletons in the closet.

In other words, they’re vacationing with a side of snooping, all expenses paid. Jerks.

Because the writer is relatively competent, these two plotlines of course intersect, as Nancy finds out dirt behind the Mapus while Frank (and Joe, briefly, before he takes some hardwood to the head) finds the information Nancy needs for the titular cave, when he’s not busy making shell necklaces, trying out shave ice, and threatening random people via phone.

So because this game usually gets a lot of flak for its story, I thought — contrary to what I usually do in this section — I’d lay out the entire plot, point by point, so that it can be judged, rather than discarded based on some nebulous remembrance of its ‘nonsensicalness’.

We begin, pre-game, with disgruntled ex-pineapple grower Mike Mapu opening up his idea for a tourism business focusing on island living while the Hilihili Research Facility, headed by the CEO of Aikens Biotech, Richard Aikens, opens its doors as well. The connection between the two? The land officially granted to the Hilihili, it turns out, would go to the Mapus if the Hilihili were to go out of business.

Mike then hatches a plan; spread the word of a local folktale figure – Kāne ‘Ōkala — that’s returned and is wreaking havoc all over the island because the Hilihili’s research is killing the pineapples. While each little upset and natural storm adds to Mike’s claims, he needs something bigger — proof that the local pineapple crop is actually suffering.

Enter a shipment of fritillated flag beetles. The beetles start munching on the pineapples and their natural predator, the norsobeta oderata moth, noting that its prey is more plentiful and well-fed than ever before, begin eating and mating in unheard of numbers, drawing the attention of Korean-American entomologist and noted quirk Quigley Kim. Quigley quickly notices that there’s a little too much work for her to be able to just observe all day, and puts out an ad for a research assistant — an ad that reaches all the way to River Heights, Illinois, where Nancy jumps on the opportunity and a plane.

At the same time, Richard Aikens hears about a champion surfer who lives not far from his research center in Hawai’i and wants to use her in advertisements – provided there are no skeletons in her closet, of course. In order to find any trouble before it could cost his company money, he turns to ATAC, who send out Frank and Joe Hardy to start digging.

And that’s where the game starts.

Honestly speaking, this is a fine story — not as strong as some games, stronger than other games. The biggest problem I could see someone having with it is that so much happens pre-game — but that’s true of a lot of Nancy Drew games (CAP being the obvious standout).

Faced with the prospect of the Hilihili continuing to survive, Mike keeps spreading rumors and tries to prevent Nancy from reaching Quigley, who’s the one person who could foil his plans, as she’s studying moths who feed on the very bugs who are, themselves, feeding on the local pineapple crop. Meanwhile, Malachi Craven, secretive head researcher at the Hilihili and noted grouch, thinks that Quigley is spying on him (which she is, but we’ll gloss over that) and goes to her camp to confront her, tearing the place up in a fit of rage when she’s not there.

Thus, when Nancy happens on the crime scene and discovers an audio tape of whatever attacked the camp (which is really funny to think about knowing that it was Craven), coupled with the fact that Quigley is missing, the rumors of Kāne ‘Ōkala build even higher than Mike could have anticipated.

From here on, the story is as laid out in the game — Nancy and the Hardy Boys snoop, finding secret tunnels and lava caves, documents that Big Island Mike definitely shouldn’t have, Joe gets whacked into a concussion by a wooden head — the usual mystery stuff. While there are holes to be poked, they’re no more extreme than most other Nancy Drew games, and less extreme than most games that get put in the same pile as CRE.

Now, onto the characters that make up this mystery!

The Suspects:

Starting us off with the sheer force of his personality is Mike Mapu, otherwise known as Big Island Mike. Provider of Big Island Bucks, lover of shave ice, purveyor of varying degrees of fish bait, and our Big Bad for this game, Mike is a larger-than-life figure who controls much of the game, keeping the Hardy Boys busy, trying to delay (or even prevent) Nancy from getting to Quigley, and keeping telltale documents closely guarded — yet in plain sight.

As our suspect, Mike is honestly a decent choice — I would say he and his daughter are the two best out of our cast — and I have no problem with his actions within the game leading up to the climax. While the climax itself could use some work, Mike’s actions and his plot to achieve his goals make sense, track well, and honestly his plan is pretty well thought through. Mike, unlike a lot of suspects, takes 3 people (4 if you count Pua’s help) to take him down, rather than the Lone Nancy, and I honestly think that says a lot about how well he pulled it off.

His daughter, Pua Mapu, is at the center of the Hardy Boys plotline. A champion surfer on the brink of achieving stardom through advertisements, Pua only cares about surfing and getting ready to surf, but helps out with her dad’s business anyway giving surfing lessons, paying excursioners for necklaces, and even gives out fishing tips.

Pua’s our resident non-entity suspect, but has a bit more of a place in the story given her relation to a far more interesting suspect and her being the lynchpin in the Hardy Boys story. She’s the reason that Mike is actually found out; Nancy by herself couldn’t have gotten where she would have needed to go in order to solve the mystery, and the Hilihili probably would have folded before she could have gotten proper documentation, let alone confronted Mike.

As a suspect? Pua would have been an interesting choice, honestly; the bulk of her dad’s decisions would have been shifted onto her, and he would have been her (moderately uneasy) support. Her motive is already present in the game; if her dad inherited land, that means money, and money means she wouldn’t have to waste her time giving out fake money for fish and necklaces and could instead focus on surfing 24/7. A simple motive for a game where so much happens before Nancy and the Hardy Boys get there, but a good motive nonetheless.

In a very real way, Richard Aikens’ absolutely dumb decision to use the daughter of the man who would inherit his land should he fail for his advertisements is what saved his research facility; had the Hardy Boys not been there to snoop around Pua, most of the plot wouldn’t have had the chance to happen.

Specific to Nancy’s storyline is Dr. Quigley Kim, an entomologist who’s far more on the “observation” than the “research” side of academia. Drawn to Hawai’i to observe the norsobeta oderata moth’s unusual mating season, she hires Nancy to…well do to basically everything except the actual observation, has a tendency to ramble, and hates the nasal sound of her voice in recordings (because the recordings render it truthfully).

Quigley is missing for the first bit of the game, and is usually the suspect the player will meet last, so she has a bit less time to be suspicious — not that she’s a prime suspect anyway. A bit kooky, a whole lot annoying, and absolutely wrapped up in her work, the only thing Quigley’s actually guilty of is spying on Craven (and she never gets in trouble for that anyway).

While I appreciate the slight nudge she gets into the Non-Culprits who do Bad Things that Nancy Discovers, Quigley’s probably the weakest member of the club, and thus doesn’t feel subversive enough to be actually interesting.

As a culprit, Quigley would have been an odd, weak choice; as an entomologist, she’d have no reason to destroy the local pineapple crop, as the pineapples are in the food chain that she’s studying. The game never really goes out of its way to make her seem overly suspicious, which I find a point in its favor, as no player was going to believe it anyway.

Rounding us out is Dr. Malachi Craven, a short-tempered plant scientist with horrible plant allergies — irony at its finest. Brilliant, irritable, and egotistical, Craven refuses to work anywhere that’s not at least halfway solar powered, has been thrown out of a conference of his peers for calling them “hopelessly deluded morons”, and is on non-speaking terms with his brother (though he has a soft spot for his niece).

Craven is the obvious suspect in this mystery, as his bad-tempered and secretive nature is what really gives the rumors of the Hilihili tampering with the local pineapple crop its running shoes. Had the lead scientist been anyone even a bit more amicable, Mike’s plan likely would have fallen through — but since Craven keeps so close a watch on the facility and is so harsh to deal with, he unknowingly plays right into the rumors.

As a suspect, he would have been rather pointless; there’s enough “evidence” against him that the authorities would have already gotten involved, found out he was harming the crop — for what reason, who knows — and stopped him before Quigley could even start her moth project. As it is, he works as a competent distraction, as well as a character who’s slightly more sympathetic than I think he’s really intended to be.

The Favorite:

The Hardy Boys, as is the case with nearly every game they’re in, deserve a spot in this section. Ignoring the design choices that were, all in all, definitely for the worse (2006 was an ugly year, kiddos), the Hardy Boys are light, bright, and entertaining. Playing as Joe and getting whacked by a wooden head is great; playing as Frank threatening the man who whacked his brother is great; all their little mannerisms that separate them from Nancy and each other are well done, and the voice acting is top-notch.

And the fact that they bring with them the chance to change the User Interface (UI) and make it a pretty color is fantastic too.

I actually think the swapping mechanism is done better here than in ASH (note that this is one of the only times you’ll hear me say anything negative against ASH), because you’re only swapping between Nancy and a Hardy Boy, not a possibility of four different people. It’s a lot easier to keep track of things when each character is limited to a certain area, though I do love that the different responses that suspects would have to different people in ASH is sort of beta-tested here in Pua’s different responses to Frank and Joe.

I love the location that was chosen for the game; Hawai’i is the spot of not a few Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mysteries, and it was cool to have a game that works in both the jungle and the beaches, rather than choosing one over the other.

I might be in the minority, but I actually really love Dr. Craven as a character. He’s got a bit more depth than most suspects even at this point, and you can tell he loves his niece despite his relationship with his brother.

My favorite moment in the game is honestly Frank’s gangster moment when he calls up Johnny Kuto, ready to kill him for hurting his brother. It’s a great moment of voice acting, a great brotherly scene, and a whole lot of fun to see Frank (and Joe, but Frank in particular here) having the mettle be an Agent, regardless of his age.

My favorite puzzle probably ties between the shave ice logic puzzle (I’m always here for a logic puzzle, as readers of this meta series already know) and frass sorting. I never really got why other people disliked frass sorting, as it’s an easy and fun puzzle to me. Bring on the frass.

I’m also going to add in here my love for the minigames in this game — specifically making necklaces (fishing is fun too, but I prefer trolling for shells). It’s fun to find the shells, to snorkel to find more (and move the plot along, of course)…I just really enjoy the Immersion Excursion part of this game, and would totally go on one in real life.

In a very stupid way, I like laughing at how horrible Nancy is as a girlfriend in this game; not only does she refer to Ned in the tutorial part as “a really good friend of mine” rather than “my boyfriend” (seriously Nancy what the eff) but she also abruptly hangs up mid-conversation on Ned when she sees two people that she thinks might be the Hardy Boys. It’s almost absurd how bad of a girlfriend she is in this game, and I like laughing at it.

#NedDeservesBetter2KForever.

Lastly, there’s a bit of dialogue that I love in this game – I know, CRE isn’t even a Nik game, so I was shocked too — when Frank’s listing all the things he’s found out for Nancy that will enable her to get into the titular cave.

He finishes his list and then says “oh, and I also saved the whales and brought about world peace”. Nancy responds with a teasingly dejected “Darnit, I was gonna do world peace”, and Frank answers her with an amused “Sorry, you have to do bug stuff”. It’s a fun, funny moment, and it’s nice to hear Nancy/Frank banter, no matter if you ship them or if you prefer them as friends. Shout out to, as always, our good ol’ boy JVS for his great work with Frank this game (and another hooray for the inimitable Rob Jones as Joe).

The Un-Favorite:

My least favorite moment in the game would probably be listening to all of Quigley’s recorded data; they weren’t really trying to make her nasality subtle, and boy does it get unbearable really, really fast. The fact that this is the stand-out worst moment in the game says a lot about how much I personally enjoy this game, and how inoffensive even the ‘bad’ stuff really is.

Well, mostly. See below.

Rather than frass sorting, as seems to be ubiquitous in the fandom, the little stealth section is by far my least favorite puzzle in the game. It’s nerve-wracking, timed, mandatory, and makes you rely on tiny visual cues to win it — in other words, it’s my worst nightmare when it comes to games.

I’ll include the endgame puzzle in here too, though I like it better than the stealth puzzle, just because it’s honestly a bit of a letdown. Nancy and Frank are in lava caves — cool — with currents that lead there – double cool — and the final endgame puzzle is lava mahjong? It’s a poor way to end an otherwise engaging game, even if it doesn’t prevent me (like other puzzles that have been and will be featured in this section) from replaying the game.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Creature of Kapu Cave?

First things first, I’d change Joe’s entire design for this game. I don’t know why they chose “caveman Jesse McCartney” as their guiding star, but it was an unbelievably poor choice. Sure, Frank’s hair is a bit light, but considering they keep him dark brown for the rest of the games rather than the black hair he had in TRN, I’d be fine with just tinting it a bit darker and focusing on the Enormous Wrong done to Joe Hardy.

The other thing I’d fix is the endgame puzzle. While that style is done well other places in the series (TMB being the obvious example of the tile-style endgame), it really doesn’t fit CRE, and it makes the ending feel like an anti-climax. Even a trip through another set of currents would have been better, though honestly even a final confrontation just through speaking to Mike would have been better.

Other than that, I don’t think I’d change anything else. Sure, there are puzzles and moments I’m not too fond of, but I don’t think that the game suffers from having them in it. Honestly speaking, as long as the player pays attention to the story and tries to put it together rather than just waiting for the final scene, The Creature of Kapu Cave isn’t an impenetrable mystery nor a poorly written game; it’s just a mystery with a beautiful location, fun games, and entertaining puzzles to soup it up.

Oh, and the Hardy Boys, of course.