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asgardian--angels · 6 years ago

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Calling All LOTR fans! Why aren’t you on LOTRO yet??

Hey everyone! It’s Molly here - aka, Sauron’s #1 fan lmao.

Now, we’re a big fandom, between LOTR and the Hobbit and the Silm, there’s millions of us out there, and thousands on Tumblr! And we’re always looking for new ways to experience and interact with Tolkien’s legendarium. Plus, many of us have an overlapping interest in gaming, of any sort. But even if you don’t - read on, I implore you!

There’s an incredibly awesome free MMORPG out there, one that I’ve been playing for years. It’s called LOTRO - Lord of the Rings Online - and it’s gotta be my absolute favorite interpretation of Middle-Earth ever.

For those not aware, an MMORPG is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, basically an open world PC game that has thousands of other users you can interact with within the confines of the game’s universe. And in this case, that’s Middle-Earth!

Everything you know and love about Tolkien’s world is brought to life in stunning thoughtful detail, from the rolling hills of the Shire to the eaves of Fangorn and beyond. You become an integral part of the story of Middle-Earth, assisting the Fellowship both directly and in the littler ways that count most of all - staving off the forces of darkness by doing good deeds and helping the folk of Eriador, Rhovanion, and Gondor. Everything you do ripples outwards to influence the fate of Arda itself! Without you, there would be no hope for the Fellowship to succeed in its dire quest. Traveling from land to land, you become beloved and treasured as a hero by all the free peoples of Middle-Earth, royal and common folk alike. While you may start out small, soon your path will bring you to the feet of great lords and kings, and onto the very doorstep of Mordor itself, where the Dark Lord awaits. Fight the fell beasts of Sauron, skip through the Old Forest with Tom Bombadil, and ride your warsteed across the vast open plains of Rohan - the world is yours to explore, and to save, if you can. Middle-Earth depends on you.

I truly can’t overstate how much I love LOTRO. I’ve been playing for five years now and I am just as much in love with it as the day I first started. It’s always a little dicey, as a Tolkien fan, especially if you’re a highly devoted one, trying to judge and decide if an interpretation of his work will enhance your experience or ruin it - you just want to see justice done by him and everything he stood for. Trust me, I’m like that too (there’s no need to talk about a certain upcoming Amazon series...). So believe me when I tell you that the spirit of Tolkien comes alive in this game. The creators, writers, and designers of LOTRO have put so much thought and care, and heart, into staying true to Tolkien’s vision and messages. Great attention and care is paid with respect to accuracy to the lore and languages Tolkien created as well, something that cements the authenticity of LOTRO for diehard fans. You just feel good playing it (and honestly, I feel like it’s helped my self-esteem?? Those little virtual hobbits are so grateful for everything you do). Warm fuzzies all around. With a fair helping of angst, can’t forget that. Not all stories can have happy endings, but with your help, a whole lot of them can.

So... maybe you’ve read this far, and are a teensy bit interested? Or at least intrigued. This is a chance to expand the world of Tolkien to something you can actually immerse yourself in, be a part of, explore like never before! Wander the cobblestone streets of Bree, smell the pipe-smoke in the Prancing Pony, feel the chill winds of the icy wastes of Forochel upon your face. Do you have the guts to face the Witch-King himself?

LOTRO has so much to offer! Whether you are interested from a gaming perspective, or a story perspective, it’s endless fun. Before LOTRO I’d never played an MMO, and I certainly would not consider myself a gamer. I came from a love of Middle-Earth, and came for a chance to see that story brought to life. So don’t count it out if you think you’re not up for some hardcore gaming lifestyle - this game has the pace that you set for it. Whether you join a social kinship and roleplay, a raid group to do skirmishes, or go it alone and fish the day away, the possibilities are endless.

Plus, I feel like it’s worth stating that the scenery in LOTRO is astoundingly beautiful. It’s not uncommon for my friends and I to ride around just for the view. And you know what else? The music, guys. Just, the music. LOTRO has been blessed these many years with composer Chance Thomas, who has crafted some of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard - comparable to those of the Lord of the Rings films themselves. He truly encapsulates the emotions, the grandeur, the coziness, the uneasiness, the dread and the joy, of every corner of Middle-Earth. (It’s so well-loved by players that TWO official soundtracks were even put out, and I play them in my car all the time, ngl. Check out one of the Rohan tracks here!)

So, for the nitty gritty that you may be wondering about! This is a great time to join LOTRO. Over the years, the game has grown tremendously, adding more regions of Middle-Earth to quest in, building more storylines, and expanding the characters you can have, the clothes you can wear, and the activities you can do! Currently, you can play several races - Man, Dwarf, Elf, High Elf, Hobbit, and Beorning - as well as a wide variety of classes - hunter, lore-master, rune-keeper, burglar, champion, minstrel, captain, guardian, and warden- each with their own unique stories and abilities. Multiple characters can be created for free on one account. There’s a wide customization capability for characters and cosmetic items, for housing, steeds, emotes, pets, and more. That’s part of what makes LOTRO so fun! Most expansions can be purchased in-game using points earned by completing deeds, making LOTRO affordable and FTP (free to play) for a large proportion of its content. Additionally, we have an incredibly thorough and comprehensive Wiki-style website for all LOTRO-related information. This is an incredibly knowledgeable and welcoming community.

...Did I add that there’s maiar in the game too? If you have a keen eye you’ll spot them.

Molly why are really you making this post?

Now, earlier I mentioned kinships. Traveling Middle-Earth can often be more fun with others, and having friends can help you learn the game and offer advice and insight. They can be roleplay partners, band members (yes, you can play instruments in the game!), or just buddies to talk to. Many LOTRO players are in kinships, and each is different, depending on what you want to get out of the experience. You can find a kinship within the game, or on social media - in fact, I found my kinship, the one I’ve been in all these years, right here on Tumblr! I want to extend that hand in friendship to potential new players that are in the position I was all those years ago.

Our humble kinship is called Dwarrowdam. You may recall this is the name for a lady-dwarf! While many of our members are dwarrowdams, that is by no means a prerequisite. We welcome players of all races and classes. Dwarrowdam is a casual social kinship, where we enjoy helping others out, from learning the ropes to festival activities, deeding, raids, concerts, and much more. We host weekly kin nights, where we get together and have fun for a couple of hours. This kinship has been going almost since the start of LOTRO itself, and we are eager to meet new people! A few of our higher-ranking members have had to depart after many years, due to real life commitments, and we hope to build our ranks again. We all thoroughly enjoy mentoring new players, myself included. Dwarrowdam would be a great choice for kinship for any player just starting out, or a continuing player looking for a relaxed social atmosphere as part of their gameplay experience! We are located on the Landroval server, which itself is known for its friendliness and its roleplay opportunities. It is our hope that gaining a solid handful of new, active members will allow our kinship to return to its former glory. Kinships can fizzle out and dissolve if too many players leave, and that is the last thing we want to happen to Dwarrowdam. It’s been like a home for me and many others, and I believe we can restore it.

I am an officer in the Dwarrowdam kinship, along with Badari and Daerhovan. We strongly encourage you to contact us with any questions you might have, about the kinship or LOTRO itself, or if you would like to join Dwarrowdam.

Anyone who loves Tolkien and Middle-Earth should give LOTRO a try. For me, finding it was like filling a hole in my life I never knew existed. It’s thrilling, peaceful, emotional, hopeful, all in one - basically, everything that the stories we know and love already are, but brought to life in front of us. I’d like to think that if you tried it, you’d love it as much as I do. And if you’re in need of a kinship, please consider Dwarrowdam.

And besides, look at Gandalf and his bushy eyebrows. You can’t say no to that.

#lotro #lord of the rings online #lotr #lord of the rings #the silmarillion #long post #mine #do i enjoy writing posts about lotro? absolutely #we seriously need new members #n e w b l o o d #but more than anything i just want to share the joy that lotro has brought to my life #it's gotten me through so many hard and stressful times #you just ride out into the middle of nowhere in rohan and sit there and watch the sun set and everything is right in the world #i LOVE being able to mentor new players it's so fun and having that chance to be in a kinship as soon as i started was pivotal #we welcome you all with open arms #anyway yeah we're desperate for new members and if we can't get some we will probably be forced to merge into a larger kinship #which is alright i guess but you lose that sense of identity #so this is sort of a plea post? like please help us #we need renewed interest in LOTRO itself overall. there's a wide audience to be had but membership is down #and i feel like part of that must have to do with the fact that there's no more movies coming out #nothing drawing new people in #so this is me turning to the audience lotr already has that probably doesn't yet know this game exists

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feralphoenix · 4 years ago

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BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY

if you’re following my blog or if you read my fanfiction, you may have seen me talking in tags or comments about how the radiance hollowknight was a pacifist. “feral, wtf?” you may have thought. “she’s the freaking final boss and tries really, really hard to kill you and all her attacks do 2 entire masks damage. where on earth do you get pacifism out of that???”

to you specifically i say, that’s an understandable reaction! the short version of how i got here was that i started thinking about the story implications of radi not inflicting contact damage and took a deep dive into game mechanics and lore. when i came up for air i had made myself Very Sad.

if this intrigues you and you would like to know more, come along with me, i am happy to point out the things i noticed and share the Big Sad around.

this essay is also available on dreamwidth for accessibility purposes, since my layout’s text may be too small for folks on pc with high-res screens.

CONTENT WARNING: This essay discusses pseudo-zombie plagues and associated body horror, colonialism and genocide, horrible things that happened in real life Australian history... you know, the usual topics that come up when I’m talking about Hollow Knight.

ADDITIONAL NOTICE: TPK fans of the “TPK meant well/was working for the greater good”/“TPK and Radi are equally bad”/“TPK is bad but Radi is worse” variety please give this one a pass, it ain’t for you.

finally if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY: The Radiance Doesn’t Deal Contact Damage And That’s Kind Of Fucked Up And Sad

The vast majority of hostile creatures in Hollow Knight deal contact damage: This is to say, if the Wandering Knight (who I’ll probably spend most of this essay calling by their affectionate fan name Ghost) touches a hostile creature, this harms them.

There are exceptions to this rule. The most notable and most oft-memed example is the game’s literal actual true final boss, the Radiance. Not only will Ghost not be harmed by running into any part of her body, but during her stagger animation, where she drops to the boss arena floor on her front with her whole body splayed out, Ghost still isn’t harmed if she lands on top of them! What’s more, this holds true for her full-power form Absolute Radiance, the secret final boss of the Godmaster quest/endings.

A lot of people find this amusing, because it’s a little absurd that a game’s final boss is an exception to such a consistent element of gameplay! Hence all the “haha moth too soft and fluffy for contact damage” jokes. It is objective facts that Radi is very soft and very fluffy, so it’s very easy to understand why people don’t overthink this too much.

Thinking about things I like in gross detail is unfortunately my hobby. When it comes to Hollow Knight this usually leads to me making myself really sad. I’d like to share the fruits of my theorizing with the class, so other people can be sad with me.

Now, from a game design perspective I can think of a lot of reasons why Team Cherry chose for Radiance not to inflict contact damage. Her hitbox only covers the central part of her body. Her limbs are large, so because of the way she floats, if she did contact damage she would be protected from nail strikes from below and to either side. This would give a player who prefers nail combat a punishingly small margin through which they could inflict damage without also taking a hit, potentially forcing them to adapt to a new and unfamiliar play style at the very end of the game. That’s not fun for anybody and tends to make players feel very frustrated.

In addition to this, Radiance’s attacks are all bullet hell-style spells. All of them except the floor hazards inflict two masks of damage, meaning if you want to stay alive and identify points where it’s possible to heal, you need to learn the spell patterns and dodge a lot. Radi is a large boss. If running into her hurt you this would make the bullet hell elements of her fight extra punishing.

So, I think the purely game mechanics reason for Moth Too Soft And Fluffy is in interest of keeping her boss fight fair, and helping players feel like they have a chance of actually defeating her.

Part of why we all love Hollow Knight, though, is that there’s not much in the game that only exists for purely mechanical reasons. There’s always some form of story or lore integration.

So what on earth is the story reason behind why Radiance doesn’t deal contact damage?

OTHER ENEMIES THAT DON’T DEAL CONTACT DAMAGE

Radi isn’t the only enemy (here defined as fightable/killable creature) in Hollow Knight who doesn't inflict contact damage, so let’s take a look at her fellow exceptions to the rule to see what we can learn.

Broadly speaking there are two categories of Enemies That Don’t Deal Contact Damage. The first is enemies or bosses who used to be hostile, but have become friendly to the player. For instance, when characters like Ogrim and Hornet are not being fought in boss battles, touching them won’t cause damage to Ghost. These story characters who Ghost has more or less reconciled with can’t be damaged by the player out of combat either.

In terms of generic enemies who used to be hostile but have become friendly to the player, we have the mantises of the Fungal Wastes and the Siblings/Ghost’s Shade. We learn from the game’s lore that the mantises Did Not Like The Pale King and were hostile to Hallownest, but that they established a ceasefire conditional on their keeping the people of Deepnest (who were also hostile to Hallownest) from leaving through the area’s main entrance/exit in the Fungal Wastes - essentially the two native kingdoms were pitted against one another by the Pale King.

Now, just because there was a ceasefire, that doesn’t mean the mantises take kindly to Hallownest bugs brazenly trespassing into their dang house; they will get in your face and try to kill you unless you have permission to be there. But once you’ve defeated the Mantis Lords in combat and proven yourself worthy of the mantises’ respect, they’ll let you pass through their turf unmolested. They are no longer actively hostile and don't deal contact damage.

(You're still able to attack them, though - maybe because you’d be locked out of receiving the Hunter’s Mark if you complete the Respect quest/achievement before you’ve successfully killed enough mantises? - and if you attack them, or if your pet charm familiars attack them, any mantises you aggroed will fight back and deal contact damage again.)

The Siblings, as well as Ghost’s Shade, are initially indiscriminately hostile. Our window into Shade psychology is limited, but we know that the Shade died violently and the Siblings probably did too; they may be lashing out. They’re also Void creatures, and Ghost looks a lot like the Pale King, whom we can guess from context clues pissed the Void off significantly by using it as his personal play-doh to make tools and toys with and also using its house as his personal garbage dump for baby corpses.

However, once Ghost recalls their past and breaks the mask of the Kingsoul charm to reveal the Void Heart at its core, the Void recognizes them as a part of it, and Ghost becomes able to direct/lead the Void to some extent. As an extension of this, the Siblings and Ghost’s shade become docile and can now be killed by any weapon in one hit instead of just the Dream Nail (which is made of Radiance’s Light and is the Void’s natural weakness). They don’t deal contact damage anymore either.

That’s it for “enemies that inflict contact damage at one point, but stop inflicting it after becoming friendly or neutral to Ghost”.

The generic enemies which don't inflict contact damage include shrumelings, maggots, maskflies, and lightseeds/lifeseeds. These enemies are incapable of inflicting any damage on Ghost whatsoever, because by themselves they are completely helpless entities with no natural defenses.

Shrumelings are infant members of the mushroom clan who are usually protected by adult fungi like shrumal warriors and ogres. Lightseeds and lifeseeds are harmless single-celled organisms. Maskflies are similarly harmless. Maggots, we glean from the Hunter’s Journal and dialogue from False Knight/Failed Champion, are the bottom rung of Hallownest’s society because they are weak and helpless, and are forced into menial and slave labor by other Hallownest bugs because they cannot defend themselves. The maggots’ plight is the whole reason why False Knight/Failed Champion stole Hegemol's armor in the first place, as he wanted to protect his people.

All of these enemies flee when Ghost approaches them. (Some maskfly groups’ flight triggers are set to specific areas on a map and won’t flee if you can avoid stepping on/passing through those areas, but this is clearly due to a programming oversight because their whole Thing is running away.)

But, there’s something interesting to be observed in the case of lightseeds and maggots: They can fight back against and harm Ghost if they use tools. The little flock of lightseeds you chase around the Ancient Basin eventually get sick of Ghost’s shit and take over Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s corpse, which they puppet around to try to murder you. By doing so they gain access to Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s considerable combat prowess and become very dangerous, contact damage included in the bargain. (The lightseeds’ doing this seems to evoke the vessel’s spirit, since they reach for Ghost when defeated. That’s not a gesture the lightseeds have any reason to make. The Lost Kin fight, by which the spirit seems to gain some form of closure, becomes available here too.)

False Knight/Failed Champion’s fights work on the same general principle. Now that he has a weapon he can attack Ghost, and his armor deals contact damage. The maggot inside the armor does not inflict contact damage; essentially both his boss fights consist of your whacking the armor until he’s stunned and pops out of the armor for a moment so you can hit his vulnerable real body, which is the only part of him that yields Soul when you smack him. In fact, his boss fights will last forever if you let him recover from being stunned on his own.

Between these two groups, Radiance very obviously doesn’t fit in the first, as she’s the final boss and is very vigorously trying to kill Ghost with various magic spells. You can tell from her Dream Nail dialogue that she’s furious about what the Pale King did to her and her people, and is afraid for her life. She is willing to use everything at her disposal to try to destroy Ghost so she can survive, go free, and get revenge for the Pale King’s crimes. If she could do contact damage to Ghost she would.

So, the only logical conclusion to make is that Radi falls into the second group of enemies that don’t inflict contact damage. She is physically incapable of causing any harm to anyone with only her body. Her magic is deadly as all get out and the 2 masks damage explosion noise probably haunts the nightmares of anyone who’s struggled fighting her, but without it she is helpless.

WHY CAN’T RADIANCE DO CONTACT DAMAGE?

It might be pretty hard to reconcile the fact that a character with Audre Lorde energy as potent as Radi Hollowknight’s is has a whopping 0 ATK. The biggest clues we get in terms of story context for her inability to inflict physical harm of any kind can be found within the culture of the moth tribe, who were her people.

Thistlewind, the backer-designed moth ghost who can be found in the Resting Grounds, tells you that the majority of moths were pacifists, and that individuals like them and like Markoth who learned to wield a nail were in the minority. Thistlewind appears to have learned to fight as a means of self-defense while they explored the crater area, and describes Markoth as having done so in order to “[brave] the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten”. It sounds to me like Markoth was trying to recover parts of moth culture that were lost when their tribe was assimilated into Hallownest, or maybe even searching for Radiance or trying to learn what happened to her. (Judging that his corpse is hidden behind one of the Pale King’s shade gates it seems this didn’t go well. Thanks TPK.)

As far as fighting moths go there’s Marmu too, but she seems to be a special case, possibly raised in Hallownest's culture instead of with her tribe. We don’t actually get any sort of canon explanation for how a baby moth wound up as a child soldier who died defending the Queen’s Gardens, but given the overall tone of Hollow Knight as a game and all the colonization/Australian history parallel subtext, some horrifying possibilities come to mind.

So, if Thistlewind, Markoth, and Marmu are Outliers Lepidoptera and should not be counted, how did the majority of moths spend their time? According to Seer, who knows more about the tribe’s history than most (and to Quirrel, who points you to her if you defeat Uumuu before picking up the Dream Nail), the moths’ main prerogative was cultivating and developing dream magic. From the way the Seer describes dreams as a living history as you collect Essence, dream magic seems to be a parallel to the Dreaming (or Dreamtime), a spiritual concept in Indigenous Australian religion related to both history and myth.

To translate this into simple terms, the moths were by and large pacifists whose culture celebrated art, history, and spirituality.

Team Cherry tends to adapt at least some aspects of real-life bug behavior and biology into their sad cartoon bugs, so moths-as-pacifists tracks: Real moths do not really have any way to fight. They defend themselves from predators via their mobility and their markings, which tend towards either camouflage that helps them hide or bright markings intended to scare predators off by indicating they’re poisonous (therefore not good to eat) or look like the face of something much bigger and more dangerous than they are.

There's not that much we can glean about the moths in pre-Hallownest society aside from Seer’s dialogue, because Hallownest destroyed their civilization so thoroughly: Except in the Dream Realm (which is filled with Essence spirographs and the wisteria charms that decorate Seer’s room), their architecture can only be found anymore in hidden parts of the Resting Grounds and at the very top of the Crystal Peak where Radi’s statue and a fuckton of lore tablets Ghost doesn’t know how to read are located.

But, we know that the crater pre-Hallownest was home to a ton of diverse bug nations - the mosskin, the mushroom tribe, the mantises, Deepnest, the Hive, the flukes - and every SINGLE one of those had some kind of warrior tradition, as well as their own unique cultures. In the midst of all that it was only the moths who were pacifists, so from there we can tentatively assume that they were on good enough terms with their neighbors for there not to be any fighting. The mosskin in particular also had and still have a Higher Being on their side, though in the modern day Unn seems to be rather conflict avoidant to say the least.

And we know from Hallownest’s past dealings with the mantises and Deepnest that even having Two (2) Higher Beings isn’t enough to keep rival civilizations off your nuts if they hate you, so it’s improbable that Radiance just did all the moths’ fighting for them.

The only hint that the moths ever had beef with anyone at all is one of Radiance’s Dream Nail lines, “ancient enemy” - this is popularly theorized to refer to the Void and might be corroborated by the Void’s willingness to follow Ghost into Radi’s boss fights and fight alongside them. As the Void seems to be some sort of Higher Being/god of darkness and nothingness, and the Dream Nail’s only offensive ability is to kill Void creatures, the Void and creatures of Light appear to be in a position of mutual vulnerability. Some of the Pale King’s writings in his workshop, which identify the Void as a power in direct opposition to his, support this too.

It’s unclear whether the Void civilization and Radiance ever directly came to blows or whether they were just giving each other the stink eye over being natural enemies - personally I think the latter is more likely because the two civilizations existed on opposite sides of the crater*, and again, the moths were pacifists; plus when Ghost brings the Void along to Radi’s boss fight she is quickly and gruesomely overwhelmed by it.

What I am saying here is that if pacifism was such an integral aspect of moth culture, and Radiance epitomized her people’s culture, and she is 100% incapable of inflicting physical harm, she was probably a pacifist too.

DEEP DOWN YOU KNOW YOU WEREN'T BUILT FOR FIGHTING

Hallownest flourished for a long, long time between the Pale King and White Lady first establishing it and the initial outbreak of the Infection.

There’s no conclusive information in-game as to why this is. We can only guess: Maybe Radiance was so badly hurt or weakened by the moths’ assimilation that it simply took her That Long to become capable of the mass dream broadcast to Literally Everyone In Hallownest that would eventually become the Infection when Hallownest’s people tried to suppress it. Or, maybe it just took a long time for her to come up with a way to fight back. It’s possible that it took her a while to find the resolve to actually fight back, too, with her principles of pacifism in conflict with the necessity of defending herself and taking her people back. Maybe there was a change in the moths’ situation in Hallownest somewhere down the line that compelled her to step in - all the moths are super extremely dead at the time Hollow Knight starts, after all. Even Seer is eventually revealed to be a revenant like Ze’mer the Grey Mourner, only lingering in the world to pass on the Dream Nail and tell Radiance’s story. Maybe it was a combination of all those factors. Barring Team Cherry dropping in to explain this bit of Sekret Deep Lore, we are never going to know.

All we DO know for sure is that when we mosey into Hollow’s brain (and/or Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny our way to the top of Hallownest’s Pantheon) and challenge the literal actual sun to a fight, Radi takes the challenge with extreme prejudice and comes in swinging.

Something interesting I noticed while comparing the Radiance boss fights with the Pure Vessel fight is that some of their attacks are vaguely similar. Where warrior-mage characters like Xero and Markoth have physical weapons that they summon and manipulate with magic, Radiance and Pure Vessel both create nails and daggers out of Essence and Soul respectively. Both characters’ magical weapon attacks are similar in nature too: Some are used to create hazards that must be dodged or avoided, and some are fired directly at Ghost in radial patterns.

This begs a very sad chicken-and-egg question. Did Radi and Hollow develop these battle techniques independently of each other, has Hollow in their prime form somehow absorbed similar techniques to Radi through osmosis since they’re currently chained together by the brain... or is Radi mimicking and innovating on these attacks she knows Hollow can do?

All her other attacks seem very obvious for a light-themed character, after all: Beam attacks and blobs of light. A flash of bright light is also how she shakes off the Void the first time it tries to grab her, too, making for a strong argument that that’s the original natural defense she possessed, and that’s what she based most of her attack magic off of.

Making sword’s and knive’s from Essence when most of her people didn’t even handle these sorts of tools even at the height of her power and influence, though... that seems less like something that would come naturally to her. i don’t really know i don’t have a definitive answer or theory for this one it just Seems Possible and it’s fucking me up guys

Even the Infection - which began life as Radiance’s attempt to communicate, let’s remember, before it progressed to “The End Of Eva Disease Will Continue Until Someone Actually Listens To Me” and then finally Radi screaming “FUCK U LET ME OUT, GET THAT NEW SUNNY D BOTTLE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, HALLOWNEST EAT SHIT” during canon - does not appear to be fatal to living bugs until the tumorous growths grow so large they impede bodily functions, like real cancer. We can observe this phenomenon via a number of NPCs and enemies that are rediscovered as tumorous corpses after the whole Crossroads area becomes infected.

At least to me, all of this points to Radiance being a character to whom violence and causing harm doesn't come naturally, and who has resorted to these methods in desperation.

It actually reminds me a lot of False Knight/Failed Champion. It’s a very common theory among fans that when he stole Hegemol’s armor he killed Hegemol - this is a reasonable thing to believe, since Hegemol is the only one of the Five Great Knights of Hallownest who never appears at all in-game, not even as a corpse like Dryya and Isma. Like Radi, False Knight/Failed Champion is a character who rose up and turned to violence in order to protect his people, despite the maggots not being a belligerent species.

False Knight is one of the game’s first major bosses, sometimes the first boss that players encounter at all. And so Hollow Knight’s story bookends with two separate victims of a predatory system, one who lived within and was cannibalized by it, one outside of it who was deliberately targeted by the Pale King. Neither of them started out as a fighter, but both of them still adopted violence as a tool to protect themselves and their people. Radiance is as doomed as False Knight by the Pale King’s genocide, but just like False Knight, she has no intention of going quietly, and will rage against the dying of the light as only the literal actual sun can.

Cue Deedee Magno Hall voice clip. You all know the one.

*A footnote: There’s no conclusive evidence to tell us whether the Void civilization was contemporaneous with the other pre-Hallownest indigenous bug nations or whether it predated them. Mask Maker has a line suggesting that the Void civilization tried to expand throughout the crater in its heyday and that maybe this was linked to its collapse, but in general the Void lore is just too darn thin to draw firm conclusions - it’s like trying to speculate on the ancient stone age cultures of the Americas that came before pre-settler Indigenous countries when the only sources you can easily access are elementary school level US history textbooks. (To non-Americans: We mostly teach kids propaganda until they hit college-level courses and it sucks so much ass.) This is very realistic worldbuilding, but also please Team Cherry I want to know more about these ancient bugs who apparently got lost in the sauce

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #the radiance #hk radiance #essay #long post under cut -#bad and naughty catholics go in the catholic wiggler

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loudmouthcd · 4 years ago

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introducing . . MALI CHUSUK . CIS WOMAN . 21 YEARS OLD . HEALTH AND SPORTS SCIENCE MAJOR . GIRLS SOCCER TEAM CAPTAIN .

hello hello !! im so excited to be here ! my name is g , and u can find me on my musings blog @ pocmuzings if u ever want to hmu ! i’m 23 and in the aest timezone , so ill be on at pretty random hours between working my 9-5 ! i’m a cis woman , and use she / her pronouns . i’m a proud brown beautiful woman ( im indian ) ! if u would like my discord , feel free to ask ! i’m a horror movie enthusiast , and would d*e for any poc in the entire world . .

i’m currently trying to figure out where the heck my sidebar links have gone on this theme . . so pls Bear with me fkjnfnjkfj . ( help . . help . . they’re in the theme preview idk what i did )

here’s mali , she’s a muse i’ve always wanted to play but never been able to !

inspiration for her is mandy milkovich from shameless , rosa diaz from b99 , rebeca from elite , kiara from outer banks and viola from shes the man

mali was raised in a house filled with boys , and her father was quite strict and determined . her relationship with her father has never been very personal, but more so almost like a business deal , or like a coach and his student

mali was quite active as a child , and quite energetic . she was always running around and bouncing off walls - it drove her father wild because he could never make her sit still , whilst also trying to raise her older brothers at the same time

because of this , mali kinda took to her own devices . she was introduced to soccer at school , and that was her first love . she found herself playing it at every lunch break , or rolling the ball under the desk during class time . it helped with her jitteriness

it took a year or two before her father realised that she was quite keen on soccer , and she was good at it - and he was overjoyed at the talent she had when it came to playing . she was a strong striker and attacker , but she was also quite aggressive and competitive on the field . she didn’t really have much etiquette when it came to the game , and she would play dirty at times . this . . only made her father even happier . suddenly he went from barely noticing her , to being at every soccer practice and game she had . he bought her the best soccer cleats he could afford , and pushed for her to win every game and score as many goals as possible . he went from not being very invested in mali , as the only girl in the family ( he didn’t know what to do with a girl ) , to being her number one fan

at first it was great . . but then . . her father got a little overbearing and controlling. if she didn’t make a shot , she could feel his disappointment radiating from a mile away . if she allowed someone to trip or foul her , her father would berate her in the car for not having been more intuitive . her father pushed her to be more and more competitive and the best she could be . mali still thoroughly loved soccer , but she started to find it slightly draining .

whenever she had a second of time outside of studying , her father would be making her run drills or shoot goals in the backyard . she never really got a lot of time to be by herself or do stuff she wanted ( like just normal teenage girl stuff . . getting crushes on people , going to house parties , having her first beer . . )

mali has spent majority of her time either with her brothers and her father ( the entire house is pure chaos . messy . loud burping . video games . yelling across rooms to each other . there’s constant noise at all hours of the day ) , or hanging out with her fellow soccer team players ( sometimes they got along with mali , sometimes they saw her as too much of a ball hog or taking the game ‘ too seriously ‘ ) . mali hasn’t really had a chance to develop many friendships outside of this , and it’s beginning to really effect her

mali has decided to take somewhat of a step back from soccer ( and the competitiveness of it ) , but she’s also not telling her father about that . mali misses having FUN with playing , instead of seeing it as a sport and chore .

she also wants to have the full college experience . her entire first year was dedicated to soccer and getting used to college and living out of home for the first time . this new independency is fantastic , but mali has no idea what to do with it . she wants to live . really live . really get the full experience .

mali really wants to be more ‘ feminine ‘ . she wants to know how to do boss eyeliner , and wear pretty dresses with heels . at the moment , her wardrobe consists of baggy sweaters , ripped jeans , and a lot of sweatpants . she finds woman to be so so beautiful . . but looks at herself and sees a Gremlin . . oh to be a Woman . . wow . .

mali can be described as . . . very very blunt and loudmouthed . a bi disaster . chaotic and messy . competitive and driven , but also very blasé and careless at times ( reckless may be a better word ) . she’s very spontaneous , and always up for literally anything ( if u wanna get a burrito at 2am , mali will come . if you want to roadtrip across the state , mali will ride shotgun . she never says no )

mali is very sick of being seen as ‘ one of the dudes ‘ or ‘ one of the guys ‘ , she especially wants to be making more female friends and have more females in her life , because . . she’s literally never had many that weren’t on the soccer team with her , or her own competition !

connections ( but also pls i will fill any connection u WANT )

trainwreck meet trainwreck : give me two disaster bastards ! together they are absolute chaos ! they are very similair in that they are both abrasive and intense and very high energy . they usually will encourage each others bad behaviours or be somewhat of a bad influence to each other

‘ one of the boys ‘ : give me a male friend who literally sees mali as another one of the guys . it irks mali sometimes and she has to remind them , hey . . im a girl too , and they’re always like ‘ yeah but ur not a GIRL girl ‘ , and that lowkey grinds her gears . SHE WANTS TO BE A GIRL GIRL

soft females : please . . my god . . give me the softest sweetest gal to mali’s absolute demonic energy

soccer players : 100000% believe mali has challenged ur character to an impromptu game of soccer at one point . it doesn’t matter if ur not in the same league or team as mali . if u play soccer for even one second , she will want to size u up and try Beat u at it .

childhood friends : i ain’t never seen two pretty childhood friends . . no i’m kidding , but i do love childhood friends so SO much

ride or die : I LOVE RIDE OR DIES . GIVE ME TWO PEOPLE WHO WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR EACH OTHER AT ANY TIME . THEY’D DROP ENTIRE WORLDS FOR EACH OTHER

siblings but not by blood : they bicker , they rant , they get frustrated . . but they always always come back to each other . they can call each other an asshole then text each other ten mins later and be like ‘ taco bell ? :) ‘ dskjnfdnjk

watch it , bitch : mali is . . a Lot . she’s very intense and loud , and she has no manners . she’s very competitive and aggressive at times and i completely understand why that isnt everyones cup of tea ! lets get some negative connections up in here !

bi bi bi : give me hookups . past . present .emerging . future . let mali be a hoe , she deserves it . she deserves the college experience

party in the usa : whos gonna introduce mali to alcohol n partying and having a Wild As Heck night ?

outer banks : pls pls pls pls PLEASE give me an outer banks - esque squad . total idiots . absolute morons .. there’s not a single brain cell between them . .

mali , you look like shit : please teach her how to not wear the same sweatshirt 10 days in a row . pls clean her up . pls show her how to be Pretty . make her over . . . i beg of u . .

older sister : honestly kinda like the above plot but i’d love for a Wise Woman to just . . be a mentor and guide to mali and be an amazing friend to her

GIRL SQUAD : i literally love female friendships so muhc . . its smth that can be so personal . . but really my god . give me and mali a bunch of females in her life , shes never really had that before and she Deserves it

pain in my ass : they both irritate each other endlessly . they’re both too similair , maybe ,and that’s why they clash . a lot of it is ‘ harmless teasing ‘ and ‘ banter ‘ for the most part , but they literally fight like an old married couple around each other .

#pyrrhic.intro #this is a wild ride its 2am i gotta be up for work in 5 hours #do i hate myself ? absolutely #anyways i adore u all #do i already wanna bring in more chars ? yes #will i try Restrain myself ? maybe .#i will get to starters and intros ASAP

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arkt-nehrim-archive · 4 years ago

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For the asking thing: Thoughts on Lexil Merrayil? :3

I adore Lexil. He’s -brilliant-, and he felt very genuine to me compared to other characters. He was always happy to see us, -thankful- that we came back in one piece, and sets himself up to be trying as hard as you are even while not giving himself the credit of -honestly carrying nearly this whole thing himself-. I really feel like more could’ve/should’ve been done with him. And I don’t just mean for like, content that could’ve been added in Forgotten Stories, I mean from a -total- narrative sense too. This might get lengthy. And also spoilers, so many spoilers.

The Star City, for example. Lexil clearly showed interest and ability in being able to go along for that trip, but instead his mentor/mother figure Yaela gets shoe-horned in as a random expert in Starlings, when if -she mentored him-, Lexil could’ve have just as easily been. “Didn’t he need to stay to work on the Beacon?” Development on the Beacon was at a stand-still at the time, he would’ve been free to go on the trip with you. Cue actually getting to speak to him on the ship, and the opportunity for a romance dialogue -if- there had been one as an option for him (providing us tall ass Aeterna players with a not borked cute scene). Carrying forward into the journey where -he- would’ve figured out the everything, with -all- the relevant data running amok in his head since he’s basically been doing 90% of the work here and it -could’ve- been a stressful thing. Not this “GASP! I FIGURED IT OUT! -barfs exposition out of nowhere coming to conclusions for the sake of plot convenience over it actually making any sense to magically know these things off of some pictures that could definitely be interpreted in like 20 different ways-”. Lexil, you, and Jespar/Calia could’ve spent that 12 hour window to explore and get back to the ship smacking your collective heads against the wall to figure this out, having another moment that Enderal prizes so much to truly -discuss- and potentially argue your points, before Lexil (after hearing all the counsel) could more -realistically- come to the conclusions that Yaela came to. Oh no! The big dragon boss reeeee! Now there’s a character defining scary moment where you can CHOOSE to either leave Lexil behind to hold the line while you escape -OR-, if you got the chops for it, -fight the lvl 100 Steel Dragon- with your best pal Lexil, getting to finally show him in -combat- for once, paired up with your choice of bestie. “But wait, if we chose to let Lexil die, how would we finish the Beacon-” YAELA! Who could be JUST as sad about losing her basically adoptive son to Tealor’s magical adventure quest to be famous save the world, and -she- could finish the Beacon. Or Yuslan could, I mean he contributes quite a lot too, especially when we hit snags. Oooor, we beat the boss and Lexil is proven a total badass that we -all know him to be-. But wait then why would they have any reason to flee in the drop pods? Easy! The steel beast still destroyed the ship and there’s no other way down, plus the alarms are still in play at that point (thanks Kurmai), so it’s not like it isn’t still dangerous to be there. It could’ve given him -such- a deeper role to play even if that was the only quest we got to really -do- with him out in the field. Alas~ Such is only the dreamy realm of headcanon. Before I stop, I want to add in that Lexil had an effect on me that’s -never- happened in a videogame, ever. And that was at the -end-. Already striking was just -seeing- the Cleansing happening, but it’ll be forever burned into my memory seeing that subtitle at the bottom of my screen, “Lexil Merrayil: -wheeze-” I whirled my camera around trying to find him, and by some awful luck, he was -centered- in my camera in such a way that took my damn breath away. He looked like he might’ve been running for the very place I was going, before he collapsed. Took the few steps needed to get closer to him, in which I saw just how awful he looked; the shivering I remember the most. It froze me solid, I just couldn’t -do- anything for -minutes- while the Beacon roared in the backround and that heart-wrenching music played, and somehow, for whatever reason, -all- of my failures and triumphs up to this moment in the game did not feel like -this-. I felt awful that I didn’t even -know- a healing spell, in the off chance that would help. I couldn’t bring myself to try to put him out of his misery, despite the obvious terrible pain he was in. I don’t honestly remember what happened after, at some point I had to have moved, because I finished the game. But I legit barely recollect between waiting there with Lexil aaand waking up in the Star City for the Brave New World ending, it’s all a haze. Maybe it was the fact of anybody I’d encountered, he well and truly -did not deserve this-. It made me wonder what sort of writer would -want- to write that. And y’know, some people think that helplessness expressed in their stories is provocative and -good-; and for some it -is-. For me it’s...overdone and unnecessary, as its so often accompanying other tragic circumstances that are already bad enough on their own. Lexil’s situation was obviously no different, I mean. The Cleansing and all that. Yes, some writers desire to load their stories up with grimdark awfulness, that’s tragedy as a genre in a nutshell, some kind of reminder of “real life” where bad things happen and you can’t do anything about it. Buuut... Lexil was a bit much in a game with several other prior character deaths, one of which is a -suicide-, another a -child-. There’s a point when it is -too much-, even for a tale of that genre, -especially- in a conclusion that just ends in -everyone- dying. Lexil’s fate required such a disconnect that I don’t really remember the end, as I said, and I still haven’t been able to go back and play again, because everytime I see that Beacon at the beginning, I think of Lexil and the fate that awaits him and me; it puts this firm -stop- into it that questions what about another trip through could possibly be worth it when -that- is the end? And it -sucks-, because Enderal is such a fun game! I genuinely -loved- it, up until that. It’s one of the greatest games I’ve ever played, but man... Lexil. How’s the saying go? Straw that broke the camel’s back? Maybe one day I’ll manage to play again, but so far I never make it past that first meet with Jespar.

Huuh. Wow, that got long winded. So uhm, to answer the question. Lexil Merrayil left quite an impression. He’s very special to me; if not just for being a solid, under appreciated character, than for the emotions he invoked. I really wish he got a better hand dealt to him, but, alas.

@cat-with-a-keyboard Thank you! Apologies for the feels trip!

#Vyn #Enderal #Enderal: Forgotten Stories #vyn-spoilers #Lexil Merrayil #answered ask #also Tumblr hilariously broke this so it pushed the Keep Reading up out of the actual text box and now I can't fix it #apologies for that xD

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maxismatchccworld · 5 years ago

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Patch Notes June 2019

UPDATE: 6/18/2019 – PC 1.52.100.1020 / Mac 1.52.100.1220

Hiya Simmers!

Is it hot outside, or is that just my gland problem? Anyway, let’s not worry about that - we’ve got some awesome new stuff to talk about! With all this Summer heat and with Sims 4 Island Living’s release just around the corner, we’ve got a few new free updates we are so excited to share with you! So let’s slap on some sunglasses, squeeze into that swimsuit, and dive on in...

What’s New?

Randomize Traits Button:

A Randomize Traits button has been added to CAS and in the Live Mode Age-Up Molecule. Oh yes, it’s now just right there, waiting to be clicked. Over and over and over and over. I can’t really believe it either, but here it is. The dark days without this small hero are now just a distant unpleasant memory. From here on out, if you just want to grab-and-go your Sim’s personality and get the heck outta CAS, or if you want to add a little challenge to who your Sims might be, it’s just one click away. Jeepers, this feels good. Seriously, I’ve been wanting this forever.

Lounge Chair:

Everyone (even you) gets a FREE LOUNGE CHAIR! That’s right, we’ve added a delightfully Portable Lounge Chair, so you can now lounge by the pool the way you’ve always wanted: Laid back. With your mind on your Simoleons and your Simoleons on your mind.

It’s Pride Month!

Show your pride with some fantastically colorful new clothing. The rainbow leggings are my personal favorite. Nah, maybe the body suit is my favorite. But now that you mention it, I can’t stop dressing my Sims in the new t-shirts -- created in partnership with the It Gets Better Project -- so I guess I just love it all! In addition, we’ve also included a selection of decorative Pride flags for hanging on your Sims’ walls. Finally, we’ve updated our bathroom door sets in-game so that every bathroom door also includes a gender-neutral version for builders, and includes a full suite of color swatches for mixing and matching to your heart’s content. Happy Pride Month, everyone!

Stilt Foundations:

Or as I like to call them, High Heels for your House. Or House Heels. These things don’t need to be limited to just the tropics. Stilts are a great partner in crime to manipulated and flat terrain alike in any biosphere. You can find them in Build Mode alongside all the other regular Foundation types. Now go get your stilt on.

Further Eaves Extension:

Now you can pull your Eaves… further.

More Door Colors:

Ok, we may have gone a bit overboard here… There are 350 new color swatches spread across all of the doors and arches in the base game catalog. If you’ve ever wanted matching doors in Light Brown, Reddish Brown, Brown, Dark Brown, Gray, White, or Black, then this is certainly the update for you!

A Couple New Lot Traits:

Clothing Optional: This new venue-only lot trait will inspire your Sims to -- you guessed it -- get nude.

Off-The-Grid: Now you can live out your nomadic fantasy on any lot. Applying this lot trait will remove your Sim’s use of power and running water, but on the upside it keeps your bills down. Keep a lookout for existing objects with the “Works Off-The-Grid” note in the Buy Catalog.

More Toddler Diaper Colors:

We added some L’il Swimmies Splashy Diapers! You don’t necessarily have to use them for splashing in the water, but that’s where our brains were at when we made them. We made these not only in anticipation for Island Living, but we also thought you’d appreciate more swimming options for your toddlers to use in the Seasons Kiddie Pool.

Back Float:

A new Back Float interaction is available for Sims swimming in the pool. Click on that water. Try it out. Take a load off.

Fishing Additions:

Brace yourself, we’re about to cast you into a deep dive…

We added several new interactions to allow players to fish in different ways and interact with other Sims around fishing activities.

Sims can perform a few new Fishing-based socials to gain useful info (via UI TNS/Notebook) and push NPCs to Fish.

Fishing is now joinable.

Improved fishing interaction tuning and autonomy to make the interaction more efficient and fun.

Upper skill levels now provide more meaningful rewards, with new Interactions added to Fishing skill levels

New high skill cast interaction “Angle for Big Catch” increases chance of getting rarer fish.

New high-skill VFX visuals on Rare fishing spots.

Ability to now “Mentor Sims in Fishing.”

Fishing UI has improved information, including Notebook info with Bait information.

Tuning for fish that can be caught is unique per world & more fishing spots added to some of our previously shipped worlds.

New bait preference system applied to most existing fish that modify catch chances.

Ceiling Fan Updates:

Ceiling Fans will now cool a room if you have Seasons and the fan is on. Oh yeah, speaking of which, we also added the ability to turn them On and Off. And while we were at it, we figured we’d make them dry off damp Sims too.

Ceiling Objects Build Sort:

We also added a new Ceiling Objects Build sort category to make things like Fans easier to find.

Swimming Things:

There is now a chance for interesting things to happen to your Sims while swimming, like getting a cramp or losing their suit (eek!). Swimming also now gives your Sims a boost in Fitness skill gain.

Part-Time Jobs Update:

And last but not least (you still with me?) all existing Part-Time Jobs are no longer just for Teens. That’s right, now elders could work as Fast Food Employees. Young Adults could be Babysitters if they want. Why not? The Part-Time world is your oyster. Oh oh oh -- and one last thing on that note: You can now have two Part-Time Jobs at once and pick between shifts. Wowee.

And now on to the unintended features…

General Issues.

Toddler’s Needs will now always be refilled while they’re at daycare.

Exterior trim now correctly applies to rounded flat blocks.

Adult Sims will now be able to successfully put Toddlers to bed. I wonder what their secret is. I may need to tap them for tips.

Sims on fire are now able to safely extinguish themselves in a pool. That’s refreshing.

The Dizzy Palms Ceiling Fan’s blades now tilt in the right direction.

Toddlers will no longer be put down from the high chair before they’ve finished eating. Patience mama, they’re still learning.

Gender Preference now affects flirt options.

Teen Sims will no longer spin into their Everyday outfit when going to school. If Randy wants to wear his swim trunks to school, well that’s Randy’s business.

Flirting with another Sim in a group conversation no longer increases the entire group’s Romance with you. That was awkward.

NPC Invites for Talent Showcase and Lounge will now take you to the appropriate venue.

We have fixed that bizarre issue where you’d have your Sims travel home, and then you load into your home lot, and your Sim’s skewer thumbnails are all greyed out like they’re not there, but when you hover over the skewer it tells you your Sims are at home. But like, they’re not at home. You’re staring at this empty lot, unable to play your Sims and you’re like.. “Is this even my home?”. And you start to question whether you selected the right lot on the map, but then you’re like “Wait, yeah - this is totally my home. But where are my Sims? It’s telling me they’re at home, but they’re not here.” Anyway, this should be fixed now.

Ghosts will no longer be obsessively calling you 5-ish times a day to see if you want to come over and hang out. They’ve been working on their self-control and are limited to at most one call per day now.

Terrain Paint now functions properly on Laptop Mode for AMD graphics cards.

NPC Sims will no longer get a sudden need to get nude after waking up if they have traveled off-lot and returned while you are visiting them. This one was weird. I wish I could show you the bug video.

Get Famous

We’ve toned down the amount of excitement that occurs when a celebrity makes an appearance outside of Del Sol Valley. They should be showing up outside of Del Sol Valley less often as well, so that should cut down on the ruckus.

It was a setup! I’ve been framed! It wasn’t me, I swear! You’ll pay for this! You got the wrong guy, it was Wilma! Wilma, I tell you! Celebrity Sims will no longer be falsely accused of stealing things. And for Wilma’s sake, I hope they get over what happened in the past.

Captain Sigma’s Gig costume no longer includes a chicken mask. That was a fowl fashion choice.

Performing “Tell a Group Story” Interaction Goals will now complete for the Fan Meet & Greet Event.

We fixed the issue with Del Sol Valley’s terrain disappearing when View Distance was set to High. Graphics cards (that we know of) that were affected by the issue:

Intel HD Graphics 3000

Intel HD Graphics 4000

AMD Radeon R6 Graphics

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5145

NVIDIA GT 120

We fixed the Del Sol Valley skyline texture glitch after exiting CAS.

Elder Sims will no longer have the option to retire from the Acting Career, just to be met with a sad, sad reality. Before they were taunted with a TNS telling them they got this big great pension and now they can sit back and relax, but the pension amount was §0. That’s just so dark…

Seasons

Now, if you travel during a holiday, the holiday decorations on your neighbor’s homes will be removed after the holiday ends. They were admittedly being either a bit overly festive or just a tad lazy. Either way, it’s been dealt with.

Sims will no longer gluttonously guzzle/gulp/slurp/chug water/milk/orange juice during events. No need to be so shellfish.

Jogging Vampires will no longer hold an umbrella while jogging because that’s just silly.

Coffee and Tea is safe to drink again. Sims will no longer receive the “Lethal Heat” buff and die upon returning home after drinking three hot beverages.

Cats & Dogs

Strays can now eat and use litter boxes without having to make the lot a Cat Hangout. You poor poor babies. You’re safe now.

Existing Sims/Saves will once again be able to lecture their pets. Now you can let Biscuit know how you truly feel when she jumps up on the counter.

It’s been ongoing, but we are actively calming those overly excited pets. Your queue should no longer fill up with a stack of a zillion bubbles from your pets when you run certain interactions. We’ve been working on this issue for a while with a few other fixes, but it’s been rearing its head with new repro steps here and there. So hopefully this fish sticks.

Having a puppy or kitten nearby will no longer interrupt your Sim’s bath or shower. We swear they weren’t doing that on porpoise.

Sims are now able to walk through doors with Country Curtains.

City Living

Building pieces in apartments will no longer be invisible when viewing from the upper floor. That must have been very disconcerting to not know what happened to your stuff.

Cleared out some pesky extra plants floating around the Romance Festival.

Your Sims should now be able to buy art from the Street Gallery object during a Yard Sale.

Oh this one’s a doozy. Get this: Talking John and Potty Mouth 2.0 toilets no longer play their sound on an endless loop when a child Sim runs the Use & Massage interaction, even after the toilet is destroyed. Bonus points to SimGuruJill for keeping a straight face writing that one.

Foundations will no longer cut out the floor of a Penthouse.

Get Together

Empty Clubs will no longer linger in your Clubs Panel. They are now self-aware enough to know when the party’s over and it is time to go home.

Get To Work

Coworkers are now spawning for the Science career. Yes, they missed you too.

Breast Feed is no longer available for male Sim parents of non-alien babies. Only alien spawn possess the cosmic knowledge of the most nourishing MANaries.

Strangerville

We fixed some buggy dog-walking behavior in Strangerville.

We shortened up the time it takes to complete the Give Orders Daily Task in the Courageous Captain Rank of the Officer Branch of the Military Career. That was a mouthful.

Jungle Adventure

You will no longer receive countless notifications when you leave your kitten or puppy at home while vacationing in Selvadorada.

Vampires

Vampire Sims will now once again gain points after they reach the Grandmaster level on pre-April (2019) patch saves.

Your Vampires will no longer be unrightfully chastised by NPCs for drinking their blood after they specifically asked if it was ok. Like, I’m trying to be polite here and you said it was fine, and now you’re like all bent about it… what gives?

Perfect Sun Resistance Vampires will no longer use umbrellas when routing in the sun. Flaunt it, baby.

We fixed the weirdness with trying to add points while drinking the Draught of Reconfiguration. Now you should be able to add points just fine and your options won’t be greyed out.

Cured Vampires will now change body temperature. Why you gotta be so cold?

Laundry Day

Sims will now hold laundry bags the right way. What is the right way, you ask? Trust me, it’s better than how they were holding it before.

And now to wrap it all up, let’s get playing! I hope you enjoy your summer updates and have yourself one wonderful day today.

Stay Cheesy,

-SimGuruJill

#s4cc #s4mm #ts4cc #ts4mm #maxis match #thesims4 #s4 patch notes

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soren-bleu-kun · 5 years ago

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BnHA Fics I’ve Read This Week 2

Here are my notable stories that I found and read this week. Some of these contain manga spoilers.

Confined By My Own Mind (I’m Not Fine) - This is a Dadzawa fic that, despite the title saying that it must be, takes place from Aizawa’s perspective and not Midoriya’s. During this fic, the homeroom teacher of 1A realizes that something is wrong with one of his students and pulls him aside during class.

Aches and Pains - Another Dadzawa fic, this time from Midoriya’s side of things. Unable to sleep because of the old pains in his bones caused by misusing his Quirk, Midoriya heads out of his room and runs into his teacher in the dorm kitchen.

Disowned - This is not the most realistic Shouto Todoroki fic that I’ve ever read, but I like the idea of him losing control of his power and himself after being kicked out of the Todoroki family. I wish this fic went a little more into the “why” of things, and the aftermath, but still a good little story.

Angel’s Egg - THIS IS NOT COMPLETED YET! Usually I don’t read, much less review, incomplete stories, but this one - only at three chapters so far - is a great story so far. Basically, what if Izuku was left on All Might’s doorstep, but instead of a baby, he’s an egg that has to be incubated? It sounds weird but it’s actually really cute - and baby Izuku has little wings. Honestly, give this a read and encourage the author, it is so good.

Day 10 - Wait No, Aww Crap, Here We Go Again - This long titled fic is the first Kaminari Centric fic that I have read, but it will not be the last. In this story, Kaminari gets upset about something that Monoma said to him, and his friends make sure that some adults takes care of it - like they should in canon but don’t.

Pretty - This is a fic where Monoma and Shinsou are an established couple, and Monoma goes off to visit his boyfriend in the middle of the night. No smut, I don’t review any of that. Honestly, this was cute, even if I don’t really ship it.

Spare Scares? - This is clearly going for ShinDoriya, and they really make this a cute story, but this is more or less before any relationship that they could/will have. Basically, Shinsou only came to this UA Halloween party to find Hatsume and pick up something he needs for training, and runs into Midoriya, who is here dressed as a ghost.

The Road That Went Forever - Would you like to utter despise Hisashi Midoriya? I know that I wasn’t planning on it when I read this fic, but that is what happened. Basically, after he finds out that Izuku is Quirkless, he starts trying to find a way to get rid of him and he does.

A Routine Affair - This is the second Huyumi fic that I’ve ever read, and I still see it as a bit of a crack ship more than anything else, but this story is cute. Basically, Hawks brings Fuyumi coffee before work every day and it takes her a very long time to realize that he likes her.

Float - Now this is an interesting one. Basically, Midoriya is trying to unlock Float, which is Nana Shimura’s power. It turns out the only way that he can do that is to let go of the things he’s been feeling that are weighing him down and talk about them. This is very much a “fuck Bakugou” fic, which is my favorite. I love that Midoriya finally gets to feel and talk about all of the things that were done to him in this one.

Savior - Basically, what if everyone told Bakugou to stop being an asshole to Midoriya on the first day of school instead of condoning his behavior?

Uraraka’s Guide to Crushes - This is a TsuChako fic, which I think is a cute ship but don’t read about often. In this one, Uraraka is so sure that this will be a quick crush and then it’ll be over. The thing is, it doesn’t go away, which means she might actually have to confront her emotions... terrifying.

The Sparkling Hero : Aoyama Yuuga - I have never seen a fic entirely dedicated to Aoyama, which made this an interesting read. Though not canon to the few things we do know about his background, it is still an interesting take on one of UA’s most sparkling future heroes.

The Second Prince - This is a “what is AFO were Midoriya’s dad” fics, in a royal fantasy AU. Although some of the characters are OOC, this is a look at what Midoriya’s life would be like if he lived in a little castle where he can’t get hurt and still tried to help people anyways. I was surprised by how much I liked this fic.

First Try (Not the Last) - In this fic, Midoriya has a Quirk, something that he only discovers when he tries to launch himself off of a building like Bakugou told him to. This is the first fic in the series, and I haven’t read it all the way through yet. Pretty good though.

Like Light Through a Window - In this Aizawa and Hagakure Centric fic, the teacher finds the young hero in training after she’s been almost crushed under a building. He’s able to see her face for the first time, but only because it’s covered in blood.

The Deaf Hero: Deku - Basically, what if everything were the same but Midoriya was losing his hearing during it? Forty chapters, worth the read.

I See You - In another fic where Midoriya is missing one of his senses, this blind successor of All Might wants to be able to see his mentor. The only embarrassing part is asking him if he wouldn’t mind Midoriya touching all over his face.

Remember From Here on In - This is a fic where the author comes up with the six Quirks that Midoriya is going to get because of OFA. Although not canon, it was very good and fun.

Remembrance - Throughout the course of these three chapters, Midoriya gets blasted back through time and lands in a world pre-All Might. Or at least, not the All Might that he knows, since he’s still at UA.

Shout & Mute - In this EraserMic fic, the two of them are stuck in each other’s bodies throughout the course of the fic because of a villain. While staying at Hizashi’s apartment in his body, Shouta realizes just how much he loves him and knows that he’s going to end up confessing even if the feelings aren’t reciprocated.

How Not to Enjoy the Weather, an Article by Kaminari Denki - The story toys around with the idea of this electric boy getting overpowered during thunder storms and him isolating himself so that he doesn’t end up hurting anyone that he cares about.

A Deadman’s Gun - Throughout ten chapters, we get to see what would happen if Midoriya never got a Quirk and instead fell in league with Stain.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil - A Bakugou and Kaminari friendship fic. Turns out that on the day that Kaminari forgot his contacts that he hasn’t told anyone about, and Bakugou forgot his hearing aids that he needs because of his Quirk. They decide to depend on each other throughout the day.

Pictures, Posters, and Tender Beauty - During this fic, we get to see exactly what Midoriya thinks about his mentors weakened state. Dad Might fluff ahead.

Electric Connection - This is a story where Kaminari can’t sleep - thanks ADHD - and so the entire BakuSquad comes into help. Shinsou is his boyfriend in this one, but it isn’t the focal point of the story.

Caught Up - This is a Shinsou Centric fic where he fights through all of the not-quite-comments about his Quirk, and is thankful for having Aizawa in his corner. The last scene is Shinsou and Aizawa working together with the capture weapon.

How To Ask Out a Guy in 2000 Words or Less - This is a ShinDoriya fic, and it features exactly what you think it does based off of the title. A very cute little story.

Ghost - This is a story that actually features Shinsou and Shigaraki, the two of them having met at a toy store when Shinsou was just a little kid. Honestly, I wish there were multiple chapters of this because the idea is really interesting.

Eyes On Me - Throughout three chapters, we see how Aizawa deals with his own panic attacks and the reasons why he feels the need to help his students through theirs.

For Blood and Wine are Red (and Blood and Wine Were on His Hands) - Despite having a very long and Oscar Wilde inspired name, this is a short one-shot about Vigilante!Midoriya breaking into Aizawa’s apartment, looking for a first aid kit.

Schrödinger’s Cat - This is a an extremely beautiful and painful story where Midoriya is found, months after going missing with a new powerful Quirk, white hair, and no memory of how he got there. This story was translated by the author from it’s native German, where is got less than five hundred hits. I think that everyone should read this fic and give the author a lot of love.

Around and Around We Go - One of those “Five Things + One” things, this time with EraserMight and hair ties. A very cute story. I don’t get the chance to read a lot of EraserMight but I’m glad that I took the time to read this one.

Playlists - Useless lesbians Momo and Jirou pine over each other and don’t realize that their love is requited until Jirou makes her crush known via a playlist.

Nothing Cuts Like a Mother - In this Inko Midoriya Centric fic, we have the mother going to UA to tell Aizawa about the troubles that he has, with his Quirk. She also tells him about the bullying that Izuku Midoriya went through, and tells his teacher that these mistakes cannot be repeated.

Team Player - This is a fic about Dabi not wanting to be redeemed from his sins. That was for Touya, an old him. He isn’t that guy anymore.

Helping Hands - Primarily from the perspective of Kirishima, this is a fic that deals with an AU where Midoriya never got into the Hero Course, and is instead a Gen Ed course student at UA. Cue Bakugou attacking him on the second day, telling him that he doesn’t even belong at the same school as someone like himself - and then see all of Class 1A get angry for Midoriya because “Dude did you just fucking attack a dude because he’s Quirkless?”

It’s Hurt Denki Hours - Now, I don’t really like the way that this one ends, but in this story the BakuSquad is convinced that Kaminari is the traitor and refuses to talk to him. This really hurts Kami, because he was actually really, really worried about his friends and this hurts him deeply. There is also a bit of a misunderstanding about how Shinsou’s Quirk works, but I will overlook it for the angst.

Optimistic Friendship Association - This fic features Midoriya accidentally texting Shinsou instead of Yagi, asking how to get OFA to stop breaking his bones. When he’s asked what that is, he panics and says it’s a school group. Now he just has to find a way to explain why a group around optimism is breaking bones...

Lichtenberg Figures - Another Kaminari Centric fic. In this one, Kaminari accidentally hurts a civilian after panicking during a villain attack. Not wanting to hurt anyone else, he starts refusing to use his Quirk, which does nothing but hurt him in the end.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll - This is a fic that has nothing to do with intercourse, drugs, or music. No, this is an ADHD Kaminari fic, where his RSD makes him not want to fill out a test that he doesn’t remember any of the answers to and he draws all over it. As someone with ADHD, this hit close to home but was really good.

Kiss Away All These Thrills - A short ShinKami fic about the two of them playing the Pocky Game. Spoilers: it ends with a kiss and a confession.

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main-to-card-games-and-pain · 6 years ago

Text

Like A Strike of Lightning

I actually had so much fun writing this. It’s my first IronDad story ever (first Marvel for that matter, as well), so please tell me what you guys think of it. :) I’m new to the Tumblr scene, so if anyone has any tips for me please share them, I’m already loving this site, it’s such an open and accepting community.

Rhodey watched as Tony added his third spoon of sugar into the coffee with an incredulous eyebrow.

“Tones.” No answer. “Hey, Tones!”

The engineer blinked a few times and focused his eyes onto Rhodey with a disgruntled sigh.

“You don’t take sugar in your coffee dude,” Rhodey reminded the literal mess of a human being he’d chosen as his best friend. Tony blinked a few more times before falling into his regular casual suave.

“I know how I take my coffee Rhodes, but I’m flattered you pay such acute attention to my actions. I’m trying new things, broadening my horizons, discovering a new age-”

“Not sleeping in favour of staying downstairs all hours of the night?”

“And maybe a bit of that too, yeah,” Tony admitted sheepishly, his impish grin never fading.

Rhodey shook his head fondly despite his ever-concerned eyes doing a once-over over Tony’s whole body. He looked…fine; better than he’d seen him before, (which wasn’t saying much,) but worse than he’d looked in the past month or so.

He didn’t smell like booze, he rarely had since Peter had started to come over on an almost daily basis (bubbly, and kind and alive), and he looked surprisingly well fed, so Rhodey decided he had no need for his Stern Rhodey to make an appearance today. This was just normal Tony stuff, as soon as his next project was finished he’d sleep for a day and be right as rain again.

“Take care of yourself, man. You’re a frickin nuisance to look after sometimes.” The colonel said this with all the fondness in his heart.

“But I’m your nuisance, Honeybear!” Tony called behind his back, scooping up his coffee mug and walking out of the kitchen.

Rhodey rolled his eyes and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Tony, stop being a child and get your butt to this meeting.” Pepper was furiously whispering into the phone, her fingers stiff against the cell in frustration.

“Pep, I could, but I really don’t want to. I have important business at the lab.”

“What could you possibly be doing that’s more important than meeting with the most prominent potential investor of the new medical research facility?”

“A lot of things, I’m Tony Stark; genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist.” Pepper rolled her eyes, she honestly didn’t get paid enough to deal with this.

“Playboy? Really?”

“You can take the player out of the game, but you can’t take the game out of the player.”

She scoffed, “Well, unless you get here in the next five minutes, Hugh Hefner, you can have dinner alone tonight. Do not ruin this opportunity for the company, Tony.” She hung up before her stupid fiancé could reply.

Tony, to his credit, did show up to the meeting. He even had a bouquet of flowers to offer Pepper upon his arrival. This time, Pepper scoffed in appreciation.

“How did you get these so fast?”

“I know a guy who knows a guy,” he pecked her on the cheek before taking his place at the head of the table, “I’m sorry for my tardiness, gentlemen, let’s get this over with shall we?”

Pepper made a face, surprised. Tony must have realized how paper-fucking-thin the ice he was walking on was. Or he wanted to score tonight.

Both sounded a bit like Tony, but ice doesn’t harden that fast.

Happy was going to regret asking but, “Hey, Tony, you’re uh- you’re in the back of the car.”

The billionaire looked down at his seat and then back up to the bodyguard, as if just now realizing his position.

“I am, yes.”

“Is there a reason…?”

“Well, you’re my driver, aren’t you? I think driving’s your job Bud.”

Happy couldn’t contain the surprised grunt he let out, Tony never let him drive (except when the kid was in the car). Even when he was his driver, which was pretty annoying to be honest. Now that he was officially not the driver anymore, Tony wants to be a passenger? That was also pretty annoying, which is why Tony was doing it, Happy was pretty sure. Well, he wouldn’t let him win at this little game. If Tony Stark wanted to sit in the back like a proper snob he could do so at his leisure.

“O-okay… That’s new, but sure. And I’m your Head of Security, not your driver.”

“Same difference.” Happy huffed in annoyance and slid into the driver’s seat.

“Want me to pick up the kid?” Happy asked nonchalantly, already getting ready to put the signal on and pull to the right to exit to Midtown.

“Nah, this is a grown-up type of excursion I think, Haps.”

Happy almost crashed the car. Since when did Tony ever not want to be with Peter? Any chance he got he was spending time with the high-schooler.

“You sure…? We’re just going to the shipyard aren’t we?”

“Yeah, it’s not my day today anyways, right?”

Happy chuckled, “‘Your day?’ What, you get formal custody of him?”

“Keep wisecracking and I’ll be in a different type of custody real soon Old Boy, shut up and drive.”

Tony smirked into his hand, shaking his head as if offended. Happy knew he meant no harm, he never does. And ever since he’d started letting the kid spend a bit more time with him he’d been generally better natured. It was nice to see him happy.

Happy put his hands up defensively, appeasing Tony with the silence. The billionaire slouched against the leather of his seat, massaging his temples gently and sighing. Serves him right getting a headache; follies of fatherhood. He chuckled again, unbeknownst to the man in the back.

Secretly, in a deep dark corner of Happy’s heart, he kind of wished they were going to pick up Peter. He was kind of warming up to his company. Not that he’d ever admit that.

The alleged ‘Tony’s Day’ came along, as it did every Friday through Monday, unofficial as it may be. That meant Happy was spared the task of picking Peter up from school, as Tony enjoyed doing that himself.

At exactly 3:16 pm, just as it was every other week they’d done this, Peter bounced towards the black Bentley, curls pushed from his face with the breeze and his excitement. In a whirlwind of limbs and a backpack and a flurry of curls and essays and just Peter, he was in the car.

“Hi Mr.Stark, I got an A on my essay in Philosophy, look!” Baby browns met Tony’s dark chocolate eyes, excited and trusting.

“That’s great Peter, mind shutting the car door?”

“Oh… sure,” Peter’s volume died, his face crumpling in rejection that Tony couldn’t place. The teen reached out the car and pulled the door closed.

Tony and Peter had a routine. When Peter got into the car he had to tell his mentor one good thing he’d achieved that day. Sometimes it was big things, like an A on an essay, sometimes it was small, like he’d been called on in class and had answered perfectly. (Tony knew that it helped with Peter’s anxiety, but never explicitly said that that was the reason he’d made the rule.) With big things, Tony was supposed to reach across and ‘close the car door’ like he had right after Germany.

They were always ‘not there yet’ (except they totally were and Tony did it to hug Peter).

The car pulled away from the school and started its descent back towards the Tower. It was relatively silent for a few moments, Peter kept glancing at Tony.

“So what do you want to do when we get back to the tower, kid?”

“We aren’t going to pick something up to eat?” Peter’s eyes didn’t look as trusting anymore.

“Of course we are, I meant after that, unless you want to play a game of roulette with my cooking?”

The kid huffed out a laugh and shook his head, feigning casualness while tensing up. “I would rather play roulette with a Russian, you can’t even call what you cook food.”

“So that settles it, where we going Peter?”

Peter watched as Tony’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. He hadn’t blasted AC/DC either, and forgot about the food, and the hug, and he never called Peter by his actual name.

Something was wrong. Peter felt a jolt of his Ned-named Spidey-sense trigger the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. Tony just felt wrong.

“Actually… I totally spaced Mr.Stark, and forgot that my aunt wants me home tonight. Her night-shift got moved to Monday, and she won’t be able to see me until then so she meant to call you and ask if we can change dates. I’m so sorry I forgot, Mr.Stark, you can just pull over and I’ll walk it.”

Tony’s grip tightened again, his jaw clenched and under the sunglasses Peter saw his eyes harden.

“You don’t want to come over?”

“No, I do!” Peter assured, his eyes widening and voice hitching up a semi-tone. “Just, we can hang out another day, right?”

“Something wrong Peter?”

The superhero flinched at the name, it just sounded so harsh and wrong coming out of Mr.Stark’s mouth. He only called him Peter when he was angry or worried.

“I don’t think so,” he mumbled in reply, “Are you feeling okay Mr.Stark?”

“I’m fine kid, just worried about you, you’re acting a bit weird.”

Peter knew something was wrong with the mechanic, he felt it. This just… wasn’t Tony. He knew it was horrible and he knew he shouldn’t, just on the chance that he was just having a panic attack or something, but he could feel it.

“Mr.Stark… I don’t feel so good.” The man didn’t even twitch.

Once, after the Snap had been undone, Peter had said it right before he was going to hurl. It was a stupid stomach flu, and he didn’t think of the last time he’d said that phrase until Tony had lost all the blood in his face and his eyes had gone all wide and haunted. He made sure he never said it again.

This wasn’t Tony. Holyshitholyshitholyshit he needed to get out of here.

“Pull over,” the boy demanded, fear beginning to tinge his voice. “Pull over, now, I don’t feel good.”

“Yeah, you don’t look so good, you can rest in the tower.”

“N-no, just pull over, I want to go to the apartment. May’s there, she wants me home anyways.”

“You sure, kiddo?” Peter might have been slightly reassured by the nickname, if he didn’t feel the metal of a repulser digging into his side. Tony was wearing his gauntlet, poised and ready to fire into Peter’s gut at any moment.

It’d started a week ago.

Tony heard an alarm go off upstairs; nothing major, just some motion sensors that were supposed to detect anything larger than a sizeable rat.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y what’s up there girl?” The mechanic stopped his tinkering to listen to her reply, wiping the sweat from his brow heavily.

“I do not have a camera positioned in a place where I can determine what the life form is. From heat signatures I would guess that it was from Earth.”

“Thanks Fri, real big help.”

“I might remind you that it was not I who placed the cameras,” the AI retorted, causing the faintest of smiles to grace Tony’s lips. “I can send someone from maintenance to check it out, if you wish.”

“Nah,” Tony threw down his tools, “I think I’ll just pop up and see for myself. There’s only so many times you can replace a parachute before it gets a bit boring.”

The billionaire strolled through the hallways, tone casual as he chatted with his AI.

“Perhaps if Mr.Parker would refrain from falling from such large heights on such a regular basis, the task would not seem so mundane.”

“If I could get the kid to stop trying to make a Spider-Pancake I would Fri, now lets go see what’s been tripping those pesky sensors.”

The mechanic threw the door to the roof open, taking a deep breath of the fresh air and Manhattan lights. The darkness shrouded all of the corners on the roof, leaving Tony to squint past the dim glow of the lights around him.

“Man, I really hope you’re just a particularly talented racoon,” he mumbled to himself. Something rustled behind a ventilation opening, catching the man’s attention. “Well, screw your courage to the sticking place, right? That worked out for Macbeth…” `

Tony took a breath and inched forward, letting the door shut behind him with a slam.

“Why am I afraid to check on this? I’m an Avenger, I can deal with a racoon.” He punctuated his statement by confidently striding forward towards the sound, only to jump two feet in the air when something banged against the ventilation. A large owl fluttered its wings and took to the sky, completely uncaring of the shaken inventor it left behind. “Bloody owls,” said inventor huffed, turning back towards the door.

He didn’t notice the thick black smog that had begun to roll towards him. Like a snake striking its pray, the smoke attacked.

It filled Tony’s eyes, mouth, ears, nose; his eyes widened in panic and he went to scream, only to find he couldn’t draw in any air. The smoke was suffocating him, smothering and invading him. It was unlike any pain he’d ever experienced before, profoundly physical but also excruciatingly mental.

His memories were this thing’s to play with, and it was tearing his brain in half.

Flashes of his happiest moments, Pepper smiling as she presented him his own gifted arc reactor, Rhodey smacking his arm playfully while the two of them trained together, his mother, singing gently to him, they were running at breakneck speeds in front of his eyes and this thing was tainting them. Tony could feel it, like it was rubbing its evil all over his memories and taking them for itself.

It was absolute agony.

Then, the flash of a dimpled smile appeared, followed by a childlike laugh and the sound of tools as they tinkered with a suit.

No! You don’t get those! They’re mine, you can’t touch them! He screamed in his mind, clutching his fingertips into his hair as the smoke continued coming, coming, coming, invading his body without relent.

But the mind and body can only fight for so long, and this was a fight that even Iron Man couldn’t win.

When the man lost consciousness the only thing he could be glad about was a reprieve from the pain.

When Tony woke up he couldn’t move.

This, in itself, is a startling way to start your day, but what made it worse was his complete lack of ability to speak, or even open his eyes. What’s more, there was an awful pounding in his head, like a pressure that wouldn’t let up, a presence in his head that was as disturbing as it was powerful.

Don’t fight me, Stark. You belong to me now.

Tony would have gasped had he had control of his body. He couldn’t even quicken his breathing, try as he might to stave off panic, for his body wouldn’t respond.

I control your entire being, Stark, this will all be much easier if you just concede to my power.

What have you done to me?

I claimed you. You’re mine now; all you’ll be able to do from now on is watch as I live your life.

Why are you doing this?

Too many questions; I’d like you to be quiet now.

You can fuck right off if you think I’m going to take this without a fight. You can’t just invade somebody’s body and expect them-

Tony, do be quiet. I’d hate to have to do something drastic. You’ve got a cute little fiancée, what was her name? Pepper?

Don’t you touch her-

It wouldn’t be me, Tony, it would be you. Shame if anything happened to her.

Tony mentally thrashed against the creature’s hold, but found there was no give in its control.

Calm down Stark. I won’t do anything, so long as you sit down and shut up.

Disgusted with himself, Tony Stark complied.

I’ve seen your memories, I will adopt how you act and speak. No one will know about me being here, they will think I am you.

They’ll notice; my friends, Pepper…

Will they?

“You’re a frickin nuisance to look after sometimes.” Rhodey, I’m here, that isn’t me! You’ve known me since college buddy, c’mon, notice something isn’t okay!

Shut up Stark.

“But I’m your nuisance Honeybear!”

Rhodey, please. Please, help me.

The trapped superhero felt his captor’s satisfaction at his pleading, like it spurred it on, like it enjoyed his cries.

“Want me to pick up the kid?” No, no, no, no, no, please, we don’t need to get Peter.

Are you sure? I’d rather like to meet this young one for myself… You’ve been surprisingly resistant about letting me see him in your memories. If you won’t let me know him I’ll just have to meet him myself, right?

Tony had long since succumbed to his fate, long had he stopped trying to get his family to notice something was amiss with the inventor. Now he pled for small mercies from this thing, like keeping Peter far away from it.

I get him every Friday through the weekend, please, don’t.

There was silence and Tony felt his conscious heart beat faster. (He’d discovered around Day Three that even though his actual body wasn’t reacting as he did, his conscious remembered fear, and remembered how it felt.)

“Nah, this is a grown-up type of excursion I think, Haps.” Thank you.

You can’t keep him from me forever.

Admittedly, since this thing had taken him Tony had been scared. But, on Friday afternoon he was terrified.

He kept watching the clock as it inched closer and closer to 3:16.

Right on time, like always, Peter was there. Tony could feel the thing’s elation.

I’m anxious to meet your son.

He isn’t my son.

Blood doesn’t matter to me.

“Hi Mr.Stark, I got an A on my essay in Philosophy, look!” That’s great Bud, I knew you had that one down.

“That’s great Peter, mind shutting the door?”

Tony saw the disappointment, saw the hurt in Peter’s eyes and heard it in his voice. It hurt, almost as much as when he lost him. (He was losing him again.)

Cute kid.

You don’t know him. You don’t know the half of it.

Tony could barely hear what the thing and Peter were saying, he was so focussed on Peter’s face. He watched his kid like he’d never seen him before.

His eyes shifted, he was scared; could he… tell?

Sure, there were little things the creature was getting wrong, but no one else had noticed. Everyone had put it off as Tony going through a weird patch, but Peter never looked at Tony the way he was now.

Then he tried to leave.

Tony could feel his captor’s anger. It terrified him.

What have you done to make him afraid of me?

I haven’t done anything! You would know if I had.

You’ve shrouded the child from me; how do I know there is not something you have done?

The creature sent a jolt of pain through Tony’s mind causing the man to scream out in agony. He ‘breathed’ in and out, trying to control the lingering flashes of pain.

“Are you feeling okay Mr.Stark?” God, Peter, jump out of the car if you don’t feel safe, please.

“I’m fine kid, just worried about you, you’re acting a bit weird.”

“Mr.Stark… I don’t feel so good.” The sentence hit Tony like a truck, and it sickened him that he could feel the creature’s indifference because how can he possibly be so unaffected when Tony lost everything in that moment?

But when the creature didn’t react Tony saw the panic settle in his eyes. He knows.

“Pull over. Pull over, now, I don’t feel good.”

Let him go. Please, he does this sometimes, just pull over.

He knows. He is going to be a thorn in my side; I will deal with him.

“Yeah, you don’t look so good, you can rest at the tower.”

“N-no, just pull over, I want to go to the apartment. May’s there, she wants me home anyways.”

“You sure, kiddo?” Tony realized the repulser was out the same time Peter did. No! His voice was thick with desperation, guttural and instinctive. No, don’t hurt him, please don’t!

Keep annoying me and I’ll blend his insides.

“You’re not Mr.Stark.” Clever kid Stark, it’s too bad I’ll have to kill him when this is over.

Tony fought harder than he’d ever fought the control. His begging had descended into inarticulate howls.

“He’s here, like an annoying wasp in my ear most of the time, but nevertheless here. An unfortunate side effect of my occupancy, I’m afraid, is that I can never shut my host up. But I’m sure I don’t need to remind him what I’ll do if he doesn’t quiet down.” Not-Tony hissed and dug the repulser further into Peter’s side, letting the nanites form a small blade. It cut the teen, the dotting of blood beginning to show through his school shirt like blooming rose petals.

Stop hurting him! I’ll be quiet! Please stop!

Shut up.

…

“Blessed mercies, he’s quiet.”

“What did you do to him?” Peter’s voice was tight and angry as he watched whatever this monster was control his mentor’s body.

It looked like him, sounded like him, but it was so very not Mr.Stark that Peter was sure this experience and all the other’s he’d had with Mr.Stark wouldn’t cross themselves in his mind at all.

“You humans are a fickle bunch; it doesn’t take much for me to get into your vulnerable minds but once I’m there, God help me if I try and make it my own. You all just stay there, yelling at me. I wanted this body for myself; I took it, but I can’t have all of it. Your ‘Mr.Stark’ hid you from me, as much as he could.”

Peter ignored the tirade, focussing instead on the passing buildings from the car window. The sun was blaring down at him and the buildings were passing by in a blur. Like a slap in the face Peter suddenly realized- They were leaving the city.

“Where are you taking me?”

“That isn’t your concern. Tony needs to make a phone call now, and you’re going to do your part in it.” Peter glared at the man. “I don’t even need to threaten you do I? Because all it takes is this,” Tony took the repulser away from Peter’s side and put it against his own, “and you’ll do what I say, won’t you?”

Even the creature noticed the shift in the boy, how his expression changed from anger to fear. Peter nodded stiffly. “I won’t do anything.”

Tony nodded, pressing the button on the steering wheel to make a call. The dial tone rang twice before Ms.Pott’s voice filled the car. “Tony? What’s up, I thought you were picking Peter up from school?”

“Hi Babe, yeah, I picked him up but we’re not going to go back to the tower, gonna spend a little mentor-mentee bonding time.”

“Oh, alright. I’ll see you later tonight then, hi Peter!”

Peter went to answer but found the words stuck in his throat, he cleared the blockage and answered in a squeak. “Hi Ms.Pott’s!”

She chuckled and replied, “I’ll see you two later, don’t burn the city down.”

The phone call clicked off and so did Peter’s last chance of communication.

“Can I talk to Mr.Stark?”

“No. If it is any comfort to you, know that he is being more of a nuisance than usual because you are here.”

The blade had returned to Peter’s side, cold and threatening. Peter assumed Mr.Stark was saying something. His Spidey-senses flared again, getting dangerously close to a sensory overload.

There were so few cars on the road now, this creature had taken them onto some industrial backroad, and it made Peter nervous. The sun was beginning to set by now, Peter hadn’t realized hours had gone by. Everything pointed to the terrifying realization that this thing wasn’t planning on letting Peter go.

It must have shown on his face because Not-Tony smirked at him, “You must understand why I cannot let you go, you would ruin everything.” Something flickered on his face, just for a moment, but Peter saw it. He could only pray that it was Mr.Stark.

“Mr.Stark?” The teenager hated how afraid and how young he sounded, but he couldn’t help it. “Mr.Stark I know you’re in there, please, fight it.”

The blade dug further into his side, “Shut up kid, you are making him agitate me.”

“Please,” a tear fell onto Peter’s cheek, surprising the young hero. “Please Mr.Stark, I know you can do it…”

But he didn’t, not really. Peter trusted Tony unconditionally, loved him like a son loved a father, but he didn’t know if it was even possible to shake whatever this was off; plus, it may be too late if he does.

“But if you can’t, just - just remember that I don’t blame you, okay? This isn’t you.” He shuttered in a shaky breath, eyes filling with unshed tears again. “Thank you for bringing me back, and for being the best, well, everything I could I ask for. I love you.”

And that was it, because the tingling had become full on tremors of danger reception, and it hurt, and it meant something was coming.

“That’s enough of that, time’s up ki-” Peter watched half in horror half in hope as Tony’s face scrunched up in pain and he grunted, after a few pained breaths the man looked up and Peter almost cried because it was familiar. “Peter?”

“Mr.Stark!” Peter gasped in relief, shifting towards his mentor excitedly. “I knew you could do it-”

Tony grunted in pain, yelling in frustration as he began to lose control.

“Peter, Peter, baby,” his voice was rushed but gentle, “I’m go-going to undo your seatbelt Bud, okay? And then when I slow the car down you’re going to jump out and run as fast as those spider legs can take you okay? I nee-need you to do this, I don’t have much time.” Tony’s frantic fingers clicked the release of his kid’s seatbelt, while Peter pulled the lock of the car door, nodding numbly.

The car gave a sudden jerk as Tony lost control, the billionaire’s arm flailed and sliced deeply into the teen’s side. Peter wailed in surprise and pain, watching with wide eyes as the bed of rose petals quickly became solid red.

No! Kid! I’m so sorry… Jesus Christ, he’s a child!

I am ending this now.

No! I am begging you. Please!

Now that he knew it was possible Tony Stark fought like mad to take over his body’s movements. He was flashing in and out of control, in absolute agony the entire time. His body was yelling in pain, jerking like a madman as the two fought for control.

Peter was clutching his side, hissing through the pain. “Mr.Stark?”

The man slammed his foot onto the brake.

Peter, having no seatbelt on, went through the windshield.

“Peter!”

Tony was wrong.

When he had first been attacked by this thing he had thought that there was no worse pain than that; he was wrong.

This, this, right now, was worse than anything he could have imagined. Seeing his - god dammit - his kid go through the windshield and knowing it was his own fucking fault because he was the one who’d undone Peter’s seatbelt.

It may have been the creature in control when the brake was hit, but if he was dead it was Tony’s fault.

How could you? Let me go to him.

There is no point in that.

The thing sounded so pleased with itself. Tony was crying, a profound spiritual pain radiating through his core. He wailed, because he could see Peter on the side of the road, and he wasn’t moving.

He looked so broken.

No! You know what? Fuck this and fuck you, that is my kid and you hurt him. I am done with this. I have been controlled my whole life asshole, I am not letting you control me anymore. Not when my kid is at stake.

And Tony fought. He fought through the pain the creature sent his way, and the muscle spasms, and even when he felt himself regain control of his body’s movements he kept fighting. He fought until he felt himself retching, mouthful after mouthful of the black smog pouring away.

His body was verging on collapse, like it had when it’d taken him, but he had to be stronger this time, because this was Peter they were betting.

Like the crack of lightning, it stopped.

Tony was left clutching the steering wheel of the Bentley, breaths coming heavy, and the dull memories of the pain seeping into his bones.

He won.

But he only basked in it for a moment before he was scrambling out of the car. He hit the pavement on all fours, making a mad dash for the prone form sprawled against the pavement.

Tony crashed to the ground beside him, taking in all the injuries. Peter’s face was a bruised and bleeding mess, his side sodden with his blood, and his chest was just a black splotch. He broke ribs when he went through the windshield; he could be bleeding internally. Cuts littered the entirety of his body, and Tony knew from experience that Peter would have severe road burn if he turned him over.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y?” Tony sounded lost. He didn’t know what to do. “Please tell me you have help on the way.”

“Approximate time of arrival is 15 minutes sir,” the AI replied.

“That isn’t fast enough!” The mechanic cried, pulling the teenager into his arms. “Hey Petey, you’ve got to wake up now. C’mon, wake up.” There was blood everywhere. Tony desperately pressed his hand against the wound in Peter’s side, he didn’t even twitch. “You’ve gotta use those superpowers now Bud, show me how amazing you are at healing yourself. Show me your eyes, just please, show me something.”

Some of the bruising was fading already, that had to be a good sign, right? He was so small.

Tony could hear the sound of a suit coming towards them. “Hear that kid? That’s help, they’re going to fix you up so you’re perfect again alright? And then you can tell me about that Philosophy paper yeah? I’m so proud that you got an A, but I’m not surprised at all. You’re so smart Peter, please.”

“Tony.” Heavy footfalls followed the colonel’s concerned voice as he ran to the pair.

“Rhodey, please! He needs help…” Tony had long passed the mark of sobbing. He offered the boy in his arms to his best friend, looking up at him with all the trust in the world that he could save him.

“Okay, alright, we need to get you help too though, alright?”

“No, just him, just take him.”

“Tony I need to make sure you’re sa-”

“He’s dying Rhodey, I’m okay, but he’s running out of time! Take him and stop wasting the precious few minutes we have!”

Rhodey looked conflicted until his military instincts kicked in and he nodded tersely. “Okay, but another suit is on its way I want you back and in the Medbay as soon as possible, got it?”

Tony nodded, exhausted. Rhodey cradled his package gently and launched himself back into the air. Tony nearly sobbed with relief because it was finally over.

When the suit came, it was encasing an unconscious man.

When Peter woke up he was warm, and his blankets were soft, and a weight had settled against his arm and it soothed him even more.

Medbay his brain supplied.

He hadn’t been in here for a while, was probably some kind of record.

The weight on his arm shifted, and Peter realized it was a person. In fact, it was Mr.Stark. The events of the past few hours came back to him in a flash and involuntarily he jerked up with a gasp.

Mr.Stark was immediately awake, carding his hands through his hair and making shushing noises. This left Peter deeply confused.

“M’ster Stark?” He grumbled, letting his head lull into his hand.

“Oh, hey Petey, you’re awake this time.” The hand stopped, but didn’t remove itself from his hair. Peter liked it, it made him feel safe.

“Mm?” Mr.Stark knew what he meant.

“You were really hurt kid, you’ve been sleeping for the past two days.” Peter could hear the guilt in his mentor’s voice, the self-loathing and the worry.

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah, you are now Buddy. Your healing factor did a lot of the work for us, and Dr.Cho did the rest.”

“Car.” Pain flashed over Tony’s face, Peter didn’t mean to do that. The hand removed itself from his hair, the teen instantly missed it.

“God, I’m so sorry Peter. I never should have- Christ.”

“Not your fault.”

“I took off your seatbelt; I was so stupid.”

“Trynna save me. You always take care of me,” Peter’s voice was drugged and mumbly but he knew the inventor could understand him.

“Doing a piss-poor job of it, but I’ll keep trying. You saved me though, undoubtedly. You’re the only one who noticed something was up.”

Peter smiled and Tony almost teared up, “Not Mr.Stark, Mr.Stark doesn’t forget food.”

“No, I don’t Buddy,” Tony chuckled, “You should rest. I’ll see you later, alright?”

Tony was about to turn his back on the hospital bed when a hand clasped his suddenly.

“Never got to tell you about m’essay.” Tony heard the statement for what it was, Peter asking him to stay.

“Oh yeah, I heard you got an A, I’m proud of you. Why don’t you tell me about it?” Tony reclaimed his chair beside Peter’s bed, not letting go of his hand.

Peter smiled, relaxing back into the sheets, “The topic was on if death was evil, so I said for my thesis…”

tag list: @keep-a-bucket-full-of-stars @ur-a-lizard-hairy @enter-the-melon @miraculous-mermaid03 @baloobird

#iron dad #protective tony stark #precious peter parker #hurt peter parker #mind control #whump #angst #blood #fanfiction #not starker #tony is a good dad #what is quality? not this lol #mostly dialogue #tony stark #peter parker

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thesims4blogger · 5 years ago

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The Sims 4: New Game Patch (June 18th, 2019)

Remove all MODS and Custom Content before updating your game

UPDATE: 6/18/2019 – PC 1.52.100.1020 / Mac 1.52.100.1220

Hiya Simmers! Is it hot outside, or is that just my gland problem? Anyway, let’s not worry about that – we’ve got some awesome new stuff to talk about! With all this Summer heat and with Sims 4 Island Living’s release just around the corner, we’ve got a few new free updates we are so excited to share with you! So let’s slap on some sunglasses, squeeze into that swimsuit, and dive on in… What’s New?

Randomize Traits Button:

Show your pride with some fantastically colorful new clothing. The rainbow leggings are my personal favorite. Nah, maybe the body suit is my favorite. But now that you mention it, I can’t stop dressing my Sims in the new t-shirts — created in partnership with the It Gets Better Project — so I guess I just love it all! In addition, we’ve also included a selection of decorative Pride flags for hanging on your Sims’ walls. Finally, we’ve updated our bathroom door sets in-game so that every bathroom door also includes a gender-neutral version for builders, and includes a full suite of color swatches for mixing and matching to your heart’s content. Happy Pride Month, everyone! Stilt Foundations:

Now you can pull your Eaves… further. More Door Colors:

Clothing Optional: This new venue-only lot trait will inspire your Sims to — you guessed it — get nude.

More Toddler Diaper Colors:

A new Back Float interaction is available for Sims swimming in the pool. Click on that water. Try it out. Take a load off. Fishing Additions:

Brace yourself, we’re about to cast you into a deep dive…

We added several new interactions to allow players to fish in different ways and interact with other Sims around fishing activities.

Sims can perform a few new Fishing-based socials to gain useful info (via UI TNS/Notebook) and push NPCs to Fish.

Fishing is now joinable.

Improved fishing interaction tuning and autonomy to make the interaction more efficient and fun.

Upper skill levels now provide more meaningful rewards, with new Interactions added to Fishing skill levels

New high skill cast interaction “Angle for Big Catch” increases chance of getting rarer fish.

New high-skill VFX visuals on Rare fishing spots.

Ability to now “Mentor Sims in Fishing.”

Fishing UI has improved information, including Notebook info with Bait information.

Tuning for fish that can be caught is unique per world & more fishing spots added to some of our previously shipped worlds.

New bait preference system applied to most existing fish that modify catch chances.

Ceiling Fan Updates:

We also added a new Ceiling Objects Build sort category to make things like Fans easier to find. Swimming Things:

There is now a chance for interesting things to happen to your Sims while swimming, like getting a cramp or losing their suit (eek!). Swimming also now gives your Sims a boost in Fitness skill gain. Part-Time Jobs Update:

And last but not least (you still with me?) all existing Part-Time Jobs are no longer just for Teens. That’s right, now elders could work as Fast Food Employees. Young Adults could be Babysitters if they want. Why not? The Part-Time world is your oyster. Oh oh oh — and one last thing on that note: You can now have two Part-Time Jobs at once and pick between shifts. Wowee. And now on to the unintended features… General Issues.

Toddler’s Needs will now always be refilled while they’re at daycare.

Exterior trim now correctly applies to rounded flat blocks.

Adult Sims will now be able to successfully put Toddlers to bed. I wonder what their secret is. I may need to tap them for tips.

Sims on fire are now able to safely extinguish themselves in a pool. That’s refreshing.

The Dizzy Palms Ceiling Fan’s blades now tilt in the right direction.

Toddlers will no longer be put down from the high chair before they’ve finished eating. Patience mama, they’re still learning.

Gender Preference now affects flirt options.

Teen Sims will no longer spin into their Everyday outfit when going to school. If Randy wants to wear his swim trunks to school, well that’s Randy’s business.

Flirting with another Sim in a group conversation no longer increases the entire group’s Romance with you. That was awkward.

NPC Invites for Talent Showcase and Lounge will now take you to the appropriate venue.

We have fixed that bizarre issue where you’d have your Sims travel home, and then you load into your home lot, and your Sim’s skewer thumbnails are all greyed out like they’re not there, but when you hover over the skewer it tells you your Sims are at home. But like, they’re not at home. You’re staring at this empty lot, unable to play your Sims and you’re like.. “Is this even my home?”. And you start to question whether you selected the right lot on the map, but then you’re like “Wait, yeah – this is totally my home. But where are my Sims? It’s telling me they’re at home, but they’re not here.” Anyway, this should be fixed now.

Terrain Paint now functions properly on Laptop Mode for AMD graphics cards.

Get Famous

Captain Sigma’s Gig costume no longer includes a chicken mask. That was a fowl fashion choice.

Performing “Tell a Group Story” Interaction Goals will now complete for the Fan Meet & Greet Event.

We fixed the issue with Del Sol Valley’s terrain disappearing when View Distance was set to High. Graphics cards (that we know of) that were affected by the issue:

We fixed the Del Sol Valley skyline texture glitch after exiting CAS.

Intel HD Graphics 3000

Intel HD Graphics 4000

AMD Radeon R6 Graphics

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5145

NVIDIA GT 120

Seasons

Sims will no longer gluttonously guzzle/gulp/slurp/chug water/milk/orange juice during events. No need to be so shellfish.

Jogging Vampires will no longer hold an umbrella while jogging because that’s just silly.

Cats & Dogs

Strays can now eat and use litter boxes without having to make the lot a Cat Hangout. You poor poor babies. You’re safe now.

Existing Sims/Saves will once again be able to lecture their pets. Now you can let Biscuit know how you truly feel when she jumps up on the counter.

Having a puppy or kitten nearby will no longer interrupt your Sim’s bath or shower. We swear they weren’t doing that on porpoise.

Sims are now able to walk through doors with Country Curtains.

City Living

Building pieces in apartments will no longer be invisible when viewing from the upper floor. That must have been very disconcerting to not know what happened to your stuff.

Cleared out some pesky extra plants floating around the Romance Festival.

Your Sims should now be able to buy art from the Street Gallery object during a Yard Sale.

Foundations will no longer cut out the floor of a Penthouse.

Coffee and Tea is safe to drink again. Sims will no longer receive the “Lethal Heat” buff and die upon returning home after drinking three hot beverages.

Get Together

Empty Clubs will no longer linger in your Clubs Panel. They are now self-aware enough to know when the party’s over and it is time to go home.

Get To Work

Coworkers are now spawning for the Science career. Yes, they missed you too.

Breast Feed is no longer available for male Sim parents of non-alien babies. Only alien spawn possess the cosmic knowledge of the most nourishing MANaries.

Strangerville

We fixed some buggy dog-walking behavior in Strangerville.

We shortened up the time it takes to complete the Give Orders Daily Task in the Courageous Captain Rank of the Officer Branch of the Military Career. That was a mouthful.

Jungle Adventure

You will no longer receive countless notifications when you leave your kitten or puppy at home while vacationing in Selvadorada.

Vampires

Vampire Sims will now once again gain points after they reach the Grandmaster level on pre-April (2019) patch saves.

Perfect Sun Resistance Vampires will no longer use umbrellas when routing in the sun. Flaunt it, baby.

We fixed the weirdness with trying to add points while drinking the Draught of Reconfiguration. Now you should be able to add points just fine and your options won’t be greyed out.

Cured Vampires will now change body temperature. Why you gotta be so cold?

Laundry Day

Sims will now hold laundry bags the right way. What is the right way, you ask? Trust me, it’s better than how they were holding it before.

And now to wrap it all up, let’s get playing! I hope you enjoy your summer updates and have yourself one wonderful day today. Stay Cheesy,

-SimGuruJill

It's not mentioned in the patch notes, but actually yes! That issue should be fixed this patch. Please let me know if it's not! There were way too many bugs to mention every single one 😅

— SimGuruNick (@SimGuruNick) June 18, 2019

#news #the sims 4 #sims 4 #ts4

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askmerriauthor · 5 years ago

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Because @oldroots is apparently going to start playing Shadowrun soon, it reminded me of my old game and the character I ran in it. I’ve shared D&D characters before, so let’s do it again with some different systems.

Shadowrun “Captain” - no given name the party ever knew. Captain was a Dwarf Rigger who was more cybernetics than man. The DM warned me that having too much metal was a bad thing and my response was “I don’t need a soul, I need chrome” so that should give you an idea of where my mind was with this guy.

Captain was never seen by the party at any point. He was constantly jacked into his van - which had been heavily modified to be a mobile slicing rig and looked like an emergency medical vehicle on the outside. Because he literally never left his van, he communicated with the outside world entirely through sliced computer systems, drones, and holographic projections of cutesy mascot characters. The game was unfortunately short-lived so I didn’t get much chance to get into major hijinx with him, but Captain’s theme was too much fun for me to ever forget.

Call of Cthulhu “Bonn Douglas” - hired gun. This was in a fast-and-loose Call game where it was a mix of Cthulhu mythos, Hellraiser, and a few other more obscure horror themes. The DM was a big horror buff and loved to genre blend, so it made for a really interesting running story. Bonn was a mercenary agent - hired muscle who specialized in firearms and demolitions, brought into the Big Scary House as part of a bodyguard team for the party of intrepid investigators. Having been involved in a lot of Really Bad Shit™ already, Bonn didn’t scare easy and tended to be pretty blase about the encroaching supernatural horrors that welled up around the whole party.

Things really came to a head when Bonn took up a sniper’s position to pick off some weird ocean zombies who were making their way up from the shore. As he looked through his scope, one of the zombies made eye-contact with him and, as the DM specifically stated, Bonn mentally experienced “a psychic onslaught of the worst, most horrifying events that your mind both can and cannot comprehend”. Lost a TON of Sanity on that one, but Bonn was still trucking. From that point on, however... he was immune. Again, fast-and-loose game; the next time the DM asked for a Sanity loss, I said “Why? This is just some weird looking critter. You said yourself that I’ve seen FAR worse already”. The DM liked that and ran with it. So Bonn, while being mad-yet-functional, proceeded to be an anchor for the entire group as he was the only one who could reliably wade through all the nightmarish events without turning into a gibbering mess.

Bonn is also the only Call of Cthulhu character I’ve ever played who basically won the game. As in, the party ended up getting their sorry asses sent to R'lyeh itself and everyone except Bonn died there. Bonn was able to call on a favor from the Cenobites (Hellraiser is in this game, remember) and get himself bamf’ed back to land. While there he actually saw Cthulhu itself but, as the DM said, he’d seen worse. Thus Bonn lived and actually ended up returning in the next campaign as an older, more grizzled veteran of occult shit to help mentor a new team of investigators. Bonn actually ended up dying in that second campaign (small room + skeleton golem + grenade + poor rolls = AMAZINGLY GRUESOME DEATH), but his demise was not in vain. But his death shredded the last thread of Sanity for a character in the party who he really hated, so I counted it as a win. Plus the Cenobites snatched up his soul, so it’s technically possible he might still be able to come back canonically in a future game.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten “Father Jacob” - the only holy man amid a gaggle of miscreants during a zombie apocolype. For those of you unfamiliar, All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a great little game that focuses on zombie horror survival, where all the player classes are based on movie tropes. So our party had folk like “The Jock”, “The Movie Nerd”, and so forth. I played Father Jacob, a fire-and-brimstone priest who carried a bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other. In this game system, only religious characters get what’s basically magic for the setting and I really wanted that sweet HP-restoration in a game where I knew we were going to be hurt by literally everything around us.

Things went along as well as zombie invasions ever do. The undead rise up and begin slaughtering folk, our gaggle of survivors are forced together out of necessity, and we try to escape the city while avoiding getting eaten. Didn’t work out so well - we didn’t lose anyone on the way but kept getting injured or drawing attention, so it all culminated in the group making a mad dash down the coastline with a horde of zombies hauling ass after us (they were fast zombies, so yay). One of our party decides to go by the old adage of “you don’t have to outrun the bear, just your slowest friend” and promptly shot another party member in the legs so the zombies would swarm him alone. Father Jacob was having none of that. He’d stuck close with the party through thick and thin that entire time and wasn’t about to let things end with treachery, so he turned around to get between the shot party member and the horde, planted his feet firmly in the sand, and got set to make a roaring last stand.

...so you can imagine his confusion when the Zombies completely ignored him and continued on their merry chase after the rest of the group.

It was a huge WTF moment around the entire table and I was just as baffled as anyone else. The zombies simply weren’t interested at all in killing Father Jacob. Seeing this, the party member who’d shot our buddy started to slow down thinking maybe the zombies wouldn’t hurt him either. He IMMEDIATELY got dragged down and torn apart, so karma. As things wrapped up, the DM revealed to us that the zombie invasion wasn’t due to super science or some ancient curse - it was a religious apocalypse. The dead rose to devour the sinners of the world and Father Jacob was literally the only person in the party who had faith, so he was spared. He’d never been in any danger the entire game but we never realized it because we all stuck close together no matter what. So I guess I won that game too? ^^;

#character stuff #shadowrun #call of cthulhu #all flesh must be eaten

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toasttz · 6 years ago

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From the Tabletop #5

So, we arrived in Hell. With an opener like that, you know it's gonna be good. Or it would've been, had Hell not become the most boring place still technically within creation due to the last campaign. So Scarlet's personal mission (Admittedly fueled by some metaknowledge on my part and having like 3 new Solar ideas in line at this point) was to get in, get the clue for the One Piece, and then get the hell out of Hell. Magpie and Volkenstein kinda went along with my lead, but only because they literally knew no other way to exist by this point. Which kind of lead to their own downfalls over the next few sessions, courtesy of my willingness to just give PCs overly-generous trades in my haste. But let's slow it down a little. Our first mission was to head to the Veridian Plaza and the Pool of Drowned Poisons (our GM and Valentinian's player know way, way more about Exalted's frankly overly-dense lore than I, so I accepted this as part and parcel of being in Hell). Unfortunately, this got complicated fast by, of all people, Alabaster Albatross, back for her petty comeuppance against Scarlet and co. In a pretty big damn hurry to get on with it, Scarlet bartered Volkenstein away for a day's time in return for passage, which A.A. happily accepted, due to liking his muscles to a, frankly creepy, degree. So, enter we did, only to be told he were required to be in a bathing suit despite the fact that no one in their right mind would actually attempt to swim in the Pool of Drowned Poisons. The name alone should be dissuasion sufficient. Scarlet, of course, had a bikini on under her clothes and Magpie decided to stop by the gift shop which, also of course, they had. It is Hell after all. Inside, she met... well, Inferno Cop. Don't know who that is? Look it up on Youtube, you owe it to yourself. But, no, it was not Inferno Cop who then proceeded to just incinerate a demon, but Valentinian! In a rather badass sudden reappearance. Magpie, no doubt channeling aspects of Maxwell, asked Valley to become her mentor. Valley said "No" pretty damn quick. Scarlet had a rather amusing exchange when she followed in to see what was taking Maggie so long. Scarlet: Oh, hey, Valley. I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first? Valentinian: The bad, I guess? Scarlet: Maxwell's dead. I might have sort-of decapitated him. Valentinian: (100% monotone) Oh no. How sad. Scarlet: The good news is you get to be the Maid of Honor at my wedding! Valentinian: Wait... WHAT?! With Valley back in tow, we began shaking down anyone we could find for intel. This ultimately pointed us towards Master of the Eternal Golden Paradise's theme park - Super Happy Fun Land. So off we went! Unfortunately, it was guarded by a demon who, so long as he was in the light of the Green Sun, was unkillable. This posed a pretty significant problem on account, uh, the Green Sun doesn't... ever set. So we were initially repelled until Valentinian suggested we needed to make a dark deal to handle this. So we went to speak to the Ebon Dragon. A nasty piece of work, Scarlet initially offered herself for a "good time", but was quickly shot down, as the Ebon Dragon explained he preferred them "young". Pausing not for a moment, Scarlet offered him Magpie - 24 hours with him for 24 hours of darkness over the guard. Which he accepted with sadistic glee. The circle quickly changed the tune of the joke to "He's forcing her to play Super Smash Bros. Melee with tournament rules." Before long, the gate guard was dead (and we then joked Scarlet took an impromptu biology lesson after bisecting the poor bastard). For the next session, Valentinian's player was unable to join, so we agreed that he and the Oath Warriors went on to enjoy the theme park and take a load off for a time. Magpie and Volkenstein (who had returned from their respective times being sold off by Scarlet) basically scoured the park, but Scarlet ultimately found the clue (a statue of Master, pointing towards a particular star in the sky) which sent the trio into the Endless Desert. There, they found a bank, of all things. Just because the desert is ENDLESS doesn't mean there's not landmarks, apparently. Inside, we ask a random worker there to see the boss of the location. After revealing Master's journal, she was taken in to see the boss-man himself: Master's own son, Aladdin, the Dragon of the Desert Wind! It's important to note that if an Exalt procreates with a demon, the result typically ends up in a monsterous creature. In this case, a dragon, with his father's in-built desire to accumulate wealth. Which was apparent, as the room we met him in was flooded with gold and riches of all sorts. When Scarlet pettioned him for the next key, he explained that he couldn't give it to her, but she was free to take it... with the asterisk that if we chose the wrong thing, he would transform into his dragon form and devour us all. The only clue he offered us was "The thing most valuable to my father is the key". Magpie offered to take Aladdin, but he laughed her suggestion off and told us flat-out it wasn't him. I, with benefit of metaknowledge but still within the believable scope of Scarlet's ability, parse that it was money, but not just cold hard cash. Something that represented the full sum of his wealth. There, I found the first penny that Master ever made, on prominent display. Scarlet chose it and it was confirmed we chose the correct key. Upon returning and regrouping with the others, we learned the location of an Oath Warrior was actually nearby, in the castle of Zen. We met Ascendant Sword and Heavenly Sky, who also had a grudge against Zen, but the latter also had a bit of a grudge from an incident 2000 years prior, with Valley. This resulted in them having a few minutes of bickering before Scarlet stopped the problem by giving Valentinian a great big hug. I'll leave you to parse how that stopped the problem for yourselves. This resulted in Scarlet needing to return to the Black Turtle and sail it down to their current level. Hell is separated into different layers, which are dynamic and ever-shifting, adding to the omnipresent dangers of living or being in... well, Hell. TL;DR version, she got down in good time with the ship and its cargo of war mecha with little trouble. As the raid on the castle started, I PM'd the GM with a particular idea I had in mind and he signed off on it. So the battle opened with Scarlet, riding in her mech which was riding atop Gwyn's mech (almost forgot: Gwyn had left to escort an NPC back to her hometown, as his player resumed role as GM), belting out JPop songs from Macross 7 - Totsugeki Love Heart, in case you were wondering - as she rolled crazy well for her performance to draw all eyes up to her as she sailed in, smashing against the first wave and wall of the keep. This was all to allow Valley and Maggie the chance to infiltrate the castle with all the main defenses distracted. It worked beautifully, being one of my favorite moments in the entire campaign. Once inside, Valley found Orlando, one of his Oath Warrior fellows, under a berserk mind control curse - likely brought on due to the previously-mentioned "DO NOT TOUCH, THIS MEANS YOU, ZEN" sign. He was no slouch and Valentinian had to fight fiercely to down his raging friend. It even ended with me punctuating the battle by putting my blade tip-down through the cockpit of the rival mech, and Maggie... weirdly trying to engage in skinship with an unconcious Oath Warrior, no longer able to resist either his assaulters or the mind control he was under. It was uncomfortable for all of us. Afterward, we departed Hell and sailed for the South, towards Gem, where Master's first coin had been minted. This ultimately resulted in a complete and total clusterfuck. For context, Valentinian's player wasn't able to join this session, and Volkenstein and Magpie were just DETERMINED to drag the game to an absolute crawl. As we were barely heading through the pass to head into the desert proper (the non-endless desert this time), this conversation actually happened: GM: Okay, you guys need any last-minute things? Magpie: Yes! I want to get some snacks. GM: Um. Alright, you find the vendor. Magpie: I want caramel popcorn. GM (As vendor): Why are you asking about such high-fallutin' fancy goods there, girl? Me, OOC: They aren't going to have it, dude. It's the bronze age. Magpie: But it's my favorite type. GM: How would you have ever had it? Magpie: Well, Arilack... Me, OOC: NO! They wouldn't have it! That's a luxury good in this age, dude! Sugar is a luxury and they wouldn't have it here, let alone waste it making caramel of all things! The only viable alternative they MIGHT have is honey and they absolutely would not waste that on popcorn either. Hell, they probably wouldn't waste the corn either! Magpie: W-well, what about cheddar popcorn? Me, OOC: STOP! GM: Uh. Right. Let's get on the road. That more or less set the tone for the rest of the trek south. So, on that frustrated note, I'm going to pause here. Join us next time as the Seven Deadly One Piece campaign comes to a close and a new game full of crazies began. See you there!

#Tabletop RPG #Exalted #Third Edition #That Guy Story

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impivus · 6 years ago

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very rushed very shit intro comin @ you all but here goes nothing ! i’m felix from the gmt tmz, i use he / him pronouns, and im gonna power nap any minute now because one thing you should know about me is that i’m eternally on the verge of passing out from minimum exertions during the day. this is my pain in the ass eunsu: not even going to sugar coat it - he’s the human personification of a headache dumpster fire all in one beefy package and i really don’t even blame your character if they just . ignore his presence because, me too !

under the cut there’s some information about him if you want to get to know more about him regardless. smash that mf heart if you want to plot.. and i will get to you ? sometime ? its an ambiguous promise but i keep them, discord is also an option so just ask if you’d prefer to plot on there. eun’s about is here but no plots as of yet because life is hard and We Cant all Have Everything

aka im lazy

* ☾ ✧ * º ━━ is that KIM JONGIN walking about ? nope ! that’s just EUN SU CHO. & i’ve been told that they work as a INFORMATION BROKER ! apparently, they are TWENTY FIVE ( 204 ) years old . some people say they are a CISMALE, DEMON ! HE is very CULTIVATED & INTUATIVE but also DECIETFUL & MENACING. i wonder if they are just as odd as the rest of us . ⇢ SYNOPSIS. MBTI TYPE / entp, the debater ZODIAC SIGN / scorpio ENNEAGRAM TYPE / 7w8 KINSEY SCALE / 3 MORAL ALIGNMENT / chaotic evil / neutral HOGWARTS HOUSE / slytherin ⇢ AESTHETICS.

goosebumps raised and feelings of growing dread, the dark corner of a room where light doesn’t reach, silver pocket - watches with dead batteries, the scratch of a record player needle, flares in the sky, bad ideas coming to life, half-assed clapping when it’s required, figures dancing within the shadows & a smile you shouldn’t trust .

⇢ OVERVIEW

literally anybody: when are you free? eun su: im forever imprisoned in my own personal hell so i am never truly "free" but i don't really have plans all next week except for monday

this is eun su, and will y’all believe me if i say he used to be a good egg before he turned into the rotten egg i’m presentin y’all with today ?? i kid u not.. bs free zone. he did once .. have a hort he was born to a cult of witches, his twin brother absorbing all the magic that was meant to be equally distributed between them in his mother’s womb, which pretty much left eunsu as the black sheep of the family. said cult had been living on a small, near enough desolated island for literal decades, entertaining themselves with magic, seeking out knowledge, observing the unassuming populace, and toying with other supernatural creatures who dared cross their paths. unfortunately for eunsu’s family, tragedy struck when one of his aunt’s tried to over throw the high priestess ( his mother ) in their coven. unyielding in her position and untouchable to the magic she was exposed to, her sister went about other ways to break the woman’s spirits, dabbling in black magic predominantly to achieve her goals. eunsu’s brother was, thus, cursed before he was even born with an incurable heart defect that would see him dead before he reached double figures. eunsu’s mother was broken not mourned over how much he missed out as on a child: but she mourned for the fact that he was the only child that harboured any magic in their veins, the only child that could’ve carried on their lineage. queue entrance of eunsu and his Whats the Worst that Could Happen Attitude. being young and naive, thought he could’ve been able to solve it by himself, solve the issues and earn his mother’s lacking affections. eun had heard about dark vessels that could miraculously grant wishes through summonings. though he didn’t have magic in his veins he had a fire in his heart, and after all, demons cared not for who or what they fed from: so long as they appeased their hunger. all it wanted in return was a good, pure soul, and that’s what the demon stole from him before it mended his twin brother’s heart, giving the boy a new lease of life that wasn’t intended for him from the start. pity that eunsu died before he got to the age of twenty, following a quick and hungry fever that overtook his frail body and too soon turned deadly. there was no surprise that, come judgement day, he was turned away at the gates of heaven, in exchange for becoming one of lucifer’s own.

as a result of being eternally cursed with immorality and a tainted soul, he's lived some hundred-odd years and is coping by making the current populace in jeonseoul suffer along with finding purpose in digging out the secrets of his past life, mayhaps trying to find the demon who cursed him.... which could definitely be a wc.. and strengthening his abilities as a demon.

his personality is a bit insufferable; eunsu keeps himself distant and cryptic, because he likes it that way. he's a real weirdo ( if u have ever watched hxh he’s hisoka.. THAT weird ) that's hard to forget: completely mischievous, dramatic, and malicious to boot. some days he's waxing poetic about the futility of having a sense of justice and the next he's using his demonic powers to make some innocent tourist think they're hallucinating as they attempt to walk into a steady flow of traffic.

ultimately life's a game to him and bih.. he’s here to have fun ! he's outlived his actual family and friends ( well, aside from his brother who he barely remembers, prolly be a wc if anyone’s interested ) and he's not looking to get attached to anyone. it would be great to Die because it’s his forever Mood but he also gets furious if anyone tries to actually expel him for real - so he'll simply prod at the world and its people until he gets the reactions he wants.

fair warning: it is a pain to genuinely care about eunsu and not many people will wanna do it. he comes and goes into people's lives as he pleases, stops reaching out once he's bored and only ever grazes the surface of a relationship based on its worth or his curiosities, innocent ppl, cute ppl, etc are just gonna be eaten up by him then dropped.

the people who will be closest to him are doubtlessly other demons ig ? but he also hates y’all too so.. don’t get too friendly like he’s not here to make friends he’s here to be Jeonseoul’s next top Demon. also since he died sumn like 200 years ago it’s possible some wizards / familiars knew of him and his coven, it’d be super interesting for someone to have known cute human eunsu in exchange for chaotic bastard demon eunsu

⇢ MISCELLANEOUS

since he’s a young demon, his horns are small and his wings barely span about two inches above his shoulder bones, he got itty bitty bat wings lbr he’s kinda pissed abt it. there’s tattoos over his scars from clashing with other demons / hunters / angels, but his devil’s mark lining the back of his neck, performed by first demon who took his soul, has never faded away.

he also works as an info broker, which ties in with the fact that he’s a contractual demon ! it's more of a hobby than a job, something he does for kicks and to restock his gambling money and alcohol money, but he offers a helping hand to solo clientele for private cases if need be, just remember to bring your negotiation skills because his manipulation skills are a1.

he's well-versed in witchcraft even if he can’t actually possess the abilities that actual witches can. while hardly the mentoring type, he could be convinced to equip people with his knowledge of latin, spells or dark magic they want if he's interested enough. then again he might decide to screw them over for kicks so ask him for favours with caution.

for someone who carries a ton of spite and secrets, he passes as an easygoing, casual literature major on the daily to disguise his true intentions. find him at the university pretending to be a student and failing miserably at it like edward’s thousand year old ass in twilight

he cheats at the casino with his demonic powers but does it infrequently enough to pass it as luck. play games with him at your own risk. casinos are one of his favourite places but he can really be found anywhere with ease but some other places he frequents are: beaches, libraries, museums, bars, etc !

he'll get on people's nerves, but getting him to care to the degree of hate is another story. living this long has numbed him; people don't surprise him anymore and he doesn't care to spend time thinking about others. the secret to getting him to turn deathly serious is as simple as telling him you can tell that he was once a good person - because the cheesy truth is he was. he just convinces himself that he's given up trying to remember his human life and finds it easier to live like he’s dead.. yknow which he is.

romance makes him queasy, he's a spiteful old bastard and the concept of sweet love rubs him 100% fictional. there's someone he fancied before he was cursed but i'll save you the story: that's a distant dream now.

he might quote romantic works or put some pretty words together but he's fake as Fuck. if he notices someone innocent and unsuspecting crushing on him they are in so much trouble. he'll kiss their hand then twirl them right off a cliff. corruption kink central right here laid ease

as of rn he’s trying to master how to teleport and shadow control but he really is like on level one and he’s got to get up to level 50 to achieve even a fifth of what these other demons can do

edit: i totally forgot to include eunsu’s ‘demonic’ title after he was banished to the perils of hell. it’s ironically just saint, and he goes around using that bc it’s blasphemous and a big ole middle finger to god himself. nobody will know his real name, but if there’s an off chance that they do, that’s a massive threat to eunsu and he’ll get his Snipers on Scene

tl;dr:

#oddintro #. I HAVE THE POWER OF GOD AND ANIME ON MY SIDE ── / OOC. ❞#so this is. a thing!

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