#i did that instead of the dungeons this time because of friend availability and its kind of a bummer i missed out on a lot of bonus rewards

[gristlegrinder]

i really do wish drms had their own rush week separate from dungeon rush. dungeon rush is fun and i get why drms are folded into it, but i really like doing dragon response missions and i think it would be nice to be able to get extra defense seals while doing them. or maybe even some amalgamated draconic lodestones. tales of dungeon delving are good and i always need them but please, amalgamated draconic lodestones, the economy, please, do you know how many expensive icebrood saga weapons i need to craft—

[roleplayolyhedrons]

Simulating the World (Pt. 1)

I might as well confess from the beginning that I did not grow up playing tabletop (pen and paper) role-playing games. I was a war gamer from an early age. I played behind grand armies, rolling dice to decide the fate of entrenched enemies, and even my soldiers, for that matter. I came to role-playing games at a critical juncture in my own life—a time when I was bored with war games and needed some form of mental stimulation that went beyond what television and video games could offer me at the time. Role-playing games, to me, signify a significant step in a process of self-exploration through games and gaming—a sort of natural progression from one gaming genre, such as war games, to the next, role-playing games.

Mage Knight

I roll the dice—they’re high numbers—what exactly, I can’t recall after nearly fifteen years. Probably a six and a five on the six-sided dice. All kill shot, I remember. I also remember the ugly orange carpet of the room and the dozen or so people crammed into the tiny spare room in my junior high school. My opponent’s face, a fuzzy, easily forgotten face, scowls at the loss of her Mage Knight miniature, her prized soldier on the battlefield. She removed the plastic warrior from the table, which is decorated with sand table terrain—i.e., stone masonry structures, such as fortified walls, square towers,m and sagging buildings with thatched rooves all of which are fashioned from painted soda box cardboard. I’m winning at a game that is, at its heart, very much like chess, although it’s different. In other words, it’s hard to say it tastes like chicken, when, in fact, it isn’t chicken, doesn’t even come close, in many respects. The endgame is the same as chess: Kill off your opponent’s pieces until s/he capitulates. It’s a game my pubescent self prefers over chess because of the options available to one playing the game. No more strict movements on an undecorated board. The pawns of war move in ways that chess pieces only dream of, duking it out over neatly modeled sand table terrain. Dice rolls act as the great equalizer, as much as a good strategy. (And good strategy doesn’t hurt either.) Chess, after playing Mage Knight, feels anachronistic and tastes bland.

There’s a catch to playing Mage Knight: I have to keep it secret because it is one of those things forbidden in my household. It’s far too similar to a game called Dungeons & Dragons in my father’s eyes. When he finds out that I want to play this game with my friends, and on a Sunday of all days, he flips out. My old man decides the best punishment is to force me to read aloud Bible passages. He thinks, hopes, that this activity will purge, scrub away with an intellectual version of a wire brush, any interests I have in such games. My father hands me an old Bible and says, “Here, read this. Make sure I can hear you reading this from in the living room.” I ask him why. He says, “Because I told you to. Now read!” My father truly believes the rumors and theories surrounding the connections between devil worship and suicide among those who play games like Dungeons & Dragons. This is strange to me. My father doesn’t treat my younger brother in the same way. He can play with his friends on a Sunday, and so can my sister. Instead of playing with my friends, instead of playing a harmless game of Mage Knight, I read from Judges, and the fantastical stories from this part of the Bible only serve to kindle my interest in playing out such stories in game form. I can almost imagine reenacting the battles with my miniatures, bought with earned and stolen quarters, all in the name of G-d.

War Games

Military modeling and simulation is the technical term for what hobbyists call war gaming. M&S, as it is more commonly known, has been around for millennia. Human beings, from ancient Egyptian pharaohs to Mesopotamian kings to Prussian military officers have all tried to simulate combat without the risk associated with actual warfare. The answer to this dilemma of simulating a part of the real world was not what we would call LARP-ing—live-action role-playing—, complete with mock swords and shields and cheesy acting to boot. Instead, ancient and modern civilizations alike developed board games using intricate and not-so-intricate playing pieces, along with wooden, clay, or stone boards. What started as a training tool for the ruling and military elite soon became a pastime of those who had little interest or knowledge in the affairs of war and peace.

War games are a permanent staple of modern-day gaming hobbies. Popular war games fill the shelves of big box stores and hobby and specialist shops alike. Entire conventions are dedicated to the wargaming hobby in the civilian world. Names like Avalon Hill, Games Workshop, and Fantasy Flight Games (FFG), conjure up images of miniature warriors duking out over sand table real estate. Players rely on dice and pre-established statistics to determine the odds of combat and movement on the board. In some cases, war games are quite elaborate, with miniatures, realistic, war-torn landscapes, and complex formulas as part of the overall gaming experience. However, other war games are quite simple, with said games being fashioned from inexpensive cardboard cardstock or plastic tokens. Nevertheless, whether it is elaborate war games or cheap cardboard ones, many civilians know war gaming simply as a hobby they love and spend countless hours on. Few know about the origins of war gaming, the grandfather of role-playing games, especially when it comes to its political and military origins.

War games have been around for as long as human beings have fought wars against one another. Such games offer players a chance to experience combat against an opponent without the risks associated with real war. War games, like chess and Go, have become permanent fixtures of the civilian world, as ultimate games of strategy, patience, and mental endurance. Entire libraries have been written on games like chess. However, the war game as we know it is a relatively modern invention. The wargaming hobby is in debt to the likes of Prussian military strategists, who first developed and used the game Kriegsspiel (i.e., literally “war game”) to train military officers in strategy and tactics. This pedagogical method is pregnant with possibilities and problems. Officers, and even the political elite, are better able to get a grasp of combat, which is fraught with unknowns, unknowns that must be anticipated by the commander in question. These same games, however, can create a sort of myopia within those who play them, allowing the officers in question to believe they are best prepared for the situation at hand, when, in fact, they haven’t.

Jackson Kicked My Ass

I’m at my friend’s, Jackson’s, house, an old riverfront Victorian. Jackson is this tall, lanky character, with combed hair, a goofy smile, and the mouth of a sailor on shore leave. We’ve brought together a collection of Warhammer 40K miniatures my grandmother, on my father’s side, bought for me, along with some old hardbound books, clean coffee mugs, and a handful of six-sided dice. The books and cups serve as ad hoc terrain, the best we can come up with, considering the circumstances. Cups serve as towering mountains, and the books are grand mesas, tableland on some alien desert world. The books and cups are organized in such a way that the middle of the table is the narrowest point, with the top and bottom ends widening out enough to allow for our troops to be placed in their start positions. I play a small squad of Space Marines. Jackson plays a squad of Tyranids, an alien insectoid-like race. We’re using our own rules this time because I’ve forgotten the rulebook at home, which is hidden from my father’s prying eyes. I position my Space Marines in a firing line, just before the narrowest point on the table, getting ready for Jackson’s insectoid swarm. Once it’s his turn, he unleashes his horde, charging toward my Space Marines. Both sides are equally matched, considering. It’s my turn again. I roll to fire on the Tyranids, killing three off the bat. Jackson curses under his breath. It’s his turn again. His alien horde attacks my Space Marine line, full force. He rolls and kills two of my Space Marines. It’s my turn again. I find that my Space Marines are in an optimal position. Jackson’s troops are being bottle-necked by the terrain and my soldiers are ready to take them on. I decide to roll an attack against Jackson’s troops. I roll low, really low. So low, it is laughable now that I think about it, some fifteen years later. Jackson laughs. It’s one of those laughs that sounds like monkeys fighting one another over forage. He knows his troops are safe, for now. It’s his turn. He rolls for attack, and he manages to kill four of my courageous Space Marines. I wince as this takes place. Jackson feels victory coming.

“You ready to surrender, bitch?”

“Fuck you, man,” I retort.

“You kno’ I’m gonna fuckin’ win,  bro. Just admit it.”

“Fuck off, Jackson.”

It’s my turn. I roll. Again, the numbers aren’t in my favor. I don’t manage to kill or wound any of Jackson’s horde, which appears to be more ferocious than it did a few minutes ago.

I move my Space Marines back some, giving myself breathing room. Jackson moves closer. I roll for an attack, and I only manage to kill one of his hordes. I feel the sweat dripping off my brow, my hands are shaky, and my heart rate is through the roof. I can’t let this cocky fucker win, I think to myself. Jackson moves in for the kill. He manages to finish off the remainder of my Space Marine squad. In my mind, I can hear the shrill screams of grown men being torn apart by an alien horde. They cry out for their God-like emperor to save them, but their cries fall on deaf ears.

Jackson’s smiling at the end, all of his front teeth, pearly whites even in the dim light, are showing. He reaches over to shake my hand. I take it.

“No hard feelin’s, bro?”

“Sure, no hard feelings.”

“Another round, dude?” Jackson asks.

I nod, and we begin setting up our soldiers on opposite ends of the table for another battle.

[dragonvknight]

(This is based on a nightmare I had last night. I'm playing it safe and putting a Keep Reading.)

I was playing Rescue Team. I was given Squirtle as my starter, and I chose Psyduck as my partner. I didn't name them anything and had them use their species names.

It first seemed off when my partner didn't show up in the first cutscene, and it played off like they weren't there. I had to do the Caterpie saving mission as just Squirtle.

It got stranger when I realized I was playing the game in first person, like an FPS. I was also able to move in any direction I wanted, not bound to the 8-way movement system in the original.

Nonetheless, I finished the mission, and the cutscenes continued to be played off with the partner not being there. Squirtle didn't acknowledge this or anything, he just accepted the free house and formed a solo member Rescue Team.

After that, I noticed that when I was in the dungeons, the music would turn off randomly, and all I could hear were the sounds the Pokémon made when fighting each other. It only happened for a single floor before coming back. It didn't help my uneasiness, though.

The Skarmory fight was really difficult going solo, but I eventually got past it.

I got Magnemite to join my team and give me my first friend zone, but for some reason, he didn't want to join my dungeon party. Every time I tried to add him, he would say "I think I'll sit this one out". That would be my one shot to have someone to help me with the dungeons, and it didn't let me have it.

So then there was Sinister Woods. The cutscene before that played out without anything weird going on. Team Meanies did make fun of my Squirtle for being a loner, but nothing else happened. The dungeon played out normally... for the first thirteen floors.

The dungeon went even further. Floor 14. The lighting turned dark, and the music wasn't playing anymore. I could even start hearing the footsteps Squirtle was making. The only lighting available were the small spots of light emitting through the holes between the leaves.

No Pokémon spawned for me to fight. It felt like an unnerving stroll through unfamiliar territory.

I went through the stairs, and a text box popped up.

"Squirtle."

It had no portrait or name. I had no idea who was calling out for my Squirtle, but it went back to gameplay after that.

I continued to walk through the dark forest dungeon. I looked around me as much as I could, thinking something would eventually come out and get me. Nothing did, though, and I was able to get to the staircase and go to the next floor.

"Squirtle..."

This floor was different from the others. It still had the same gameplay of walking around until I found something, but instead of a staircase, it was a detailed end to the dungeon. Metapod wasn't there for me to save. Nothing was there, really. I started expecting something to happen.

When I walked up to it, a cutscene played. Squirtle walked up to the center of the area and looked around. He seemed confused as I was, wondering where Metapod was.

Suddenly, it put me back in first person view, and another text box appeared.

"Squirtle... Look behind you."

I stared at the screen for a few seconds before realizing I had control again. I couldn't move, but I could move my camera. I slowly moved it behind me, expecting something there, but nothing was there. I started to get more anxious as I turned the camera back around.

When I did, I saw... my partner.

Tall and large, as big as a Dragonite, pale blue colors like its shiny form, holes where its eyes would be, long arms and fingers, and the addition of legs. It completely towered over Squirtle, and it freaked me out.

"Why did you leave me?"

Leave them? Did something happen to Psyduck?

It didn't let me talk or anything, because Squirtle immediately turned around and started to run with immense fear in its eyes.

And so, I ran...

(I woke up after this, so the nightmare didn't go any further.)

[ihavenocluedude]

Baby, this love I have (1/3)

Benji Dunn x Female!reader

Fake dating trope ;)

Link to reading it on Ao3         Link to my masterlist     

Link to mini-series masterlist 

Summary -  A three-part story with the fake-dating trope. Which is like one of my favourite tropes of all time :). Almost midway through the second part, I had listened a lot to the song ’Baby, this love I have’ by Minnie Riperton and I’d been trying to write a fic inspired by the song and then I realised I think it fits the sort of vibe I want for this, at least in the third part especially? It’s not like really said when this fic plays out but it’s at least quite some time after rogue nation?? Because I reference an event in that one. I tried to make it sort of vague and nice bc MI is complicated imo dudes.

Warnings - none really for this chapter but the third part might be 18+

Song to listen to with this mini fic series if you want - Baby, this love I have by Minnie Riperton

Word count for this part - 1 643

It hadn’t been something you'd immediately answered yes to… but you weren’t all that inconvenienced by the situation either. Feeling Benji’s arm around your waist as if it was the most normal thing in the world and laughing your heart out with Ethan and Luther. Benji had been a field agent for years now. The start of his career as a field agent marking the separation that was made between the two of you. 

You hadn’t spent this much time with him since then. Even if the two of you had been very close when he was still in tech. When you could just lean back in your computer chair to see what he was working on, or rather not working on most of the time. 

You’d spent nearly every day back then talking to him. Getting to know him. Getting used to him. Becoming close friends and learning everything about each other. And then it all got ripped away because of his quite sudden short assistance to Ethan Hunt.

You know the team he works with nowadays. You didn’t know them that well. But due to them being quite a bit under the spotlight a lot of people know who they are without truly knowing them… and you had also been introduced twice before. The first time being at some stuffy bar when you had had time to meet them once at the beginning of Benji’s friendship with Ethan Hunt. Just after the incident that could’ve made Benji lose his job but instead led him to the path of him starting to work for the process of being ’promoted’ to a field agent.

Sure that did take a while in between those two stages. But between those two stages, he was working on that path. You saw him work himself to the bone to get a job that could lead to him dying. So whilst you did have those years of him next to you between the moment of him helping Ethan through a phone and getting out of the dungeon. It never felt like enough and it just reminded you constantly of what he was working towards.

After he became a field agent he did try to send you messages when he could. Tried to check in ’as much as possible’. But when you were several countries apart pretty often and he was consistently putting his life at risk… there wasn’t that much to be done with that. You missed him, of course, you did. But to be close friends with a field agent? That is putting one’s heart on the line.

So you took a bit of distance. And you figured that he wouldn’t be that bothered by it, he had his field career now after all. He had his badass friends and cool adventures whilst you were still in a dark tech room. Tech devices surrounding your desk, your computer screens and its keyboard taking up the remainder of the small space available and one of the most annoying tech guys in the world at your side instead of Benji.

Ignoring Benji’s calls somehow became second nature after a while, unfortunately. Sometimes he called just to check in, sometimes he ’needed you’ to help him whilst on a mission. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to be the ’big hero’ who saved the Ethan Hunt’s team whilst in a pickle and it wasn’t that you didn’t want to speak to Benji… It was simply… avoidance of it all.

Every time he called it reminded you that he could be in lethal danger, that he could be calling you with his last words to you. Not necessarily his last phone call or his last words, just his last phone call and last words to you.

You had freaked out when you heard about him getting bombs strapped to his chest by The Syndicate. You hadn’t even heard it from him, but rather from coworkers that were reacting to the news themselves. Which you were thankful for.

If it had been Benji himself telling you, you’re pretty sure you would’ve broken down immediately. Instead, you had the time to get to a bathroom to calm yourself down enough to be able to go home before you broke down. This sort of situation was exactly why you took your distance and still, it didn’t work enough.

The tech dungeon wasn’t necessary for your work you could probably get some sort of big view or a bigger desk. But it was nice to simply sit in front of a computer, the darkness around you not letting you know how time flashed by.

Being able to help the intelligence part of the agency along without gazing out the window, without your work being distracted by more thoughts than necessary. All of that would simply be distractions, things that would get in the way of your success. This way you were focused, no distractions, except for the rare distraction that the agency themselves gave to you instead of the pretty standardized work that shouldn’t be all that standardized.

The biggest disturbance that you’d ever gotten, however, was when something truly unusual happened. Benji Dunn had entered your tech dungeon and was walking directly over to you. He looked slightly different, more confident as he almost looked like he strutted over to you. He still had that awkward cuteness about him, it was just more implied than shown now. It was crazy what a couple of years could truly do sometimes.

”Benji?” Your voice came out more shocked than intended, your eyes widened and your chair instantly pushed away from your desk a bit to fully take in the unusual sight.

”I need a small favour.” Benji seemed to almost lightly cringe at his words.

”A small favour?” And now that came out more mean than you wanted your voice to say it. He had checked in a couple of times… he didn’t put up the distance between the two of you… you did. So if he comes to you for a favour… it was probably quite big? Not something he wanted you to be able to ignore. ”Sorry.” It came out in a sort of whisper, small and afraid that he’d think you hated him or something.

”Can we talk in private?” He asked, impatiently… so it could be a mission? But would Benji Dunn really come all this way to just ask you for help on a mission? No probably not. You nodded, agreeing to see the man you had ignored for some time even more up close, even more alone together than you would be in the small ’tech dungeon’ of safety.

You walked him into one of the files rooms, where printed versions of documents still resided even with big digitalization of almost everything.

”Long time since I’ve been here.” He chuckled looking around at the beige walls and the generally cramped area. Obviously not wanting to approach the subject directly but rather observe things he’d never bring up in a thousand years otherwise.

”Benji.” You said with a clear tone that made it known that you just wanted to know what the hell he was there for.

”I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend.” His voice was way calmer than you would ever guess he could sound while saying a sentence like that.

Although the next things he said betrayed his slightly more awkward and embarrassed tone that you’d expected from him, ”I told the team I was sort of seeing someone, to get them off my back. For some reason they still sometimes expect a field agent to have relationships even with our… dangers.” The words took forever to truly sink in. Your eyes widened even more than when you just simply saw him. Your brain failing to take all of this in.

Benji had never really talked to you about his love life. Thankfully. You knew he had dated a couple of girls during his ’only-tech’ years, it had been quite obvious… and it made you frown almost every time you saw him smile at his phone and send texts with pet names to people on his phone. But that was simply the way it was back then, you were just friends. And then you weren’t even that anymore.

”What?” You questioned, your shock evident in your voice. Field agents weren’t exactly discouraged from dating people, but it wasn’t encouraged either. And a lot of people followed that path, not really dating anyone seriously. Often flings, one night stands. Not getting married like one certain agent did.

”I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend.”

”I… Uhm… I don’t know.”

”You do still owe me from that lunch you know.” He friendly joked, a small smile on his face as he brought forward the last time the two of you had seen each other. It had been so long ago. It was after the bomb incident. You had needed your space, you knew that, but you also couldn’t go along with keeping space from him without seeing him one last time. He had paid, he had offered at the time and with him having the technically bigger and better paying job, you accepted. There was never really a mention of you paying him back but you had still felt slightly guilty about it.

You sighed and looked into his eyes. His lips instantly formed into a small smile that clearly was meant to look pleading. It was still the same Benji. All you had to do was embrace and show your old feelings and that would be it. You just had to live out your old daydreams of dating the man in front of you. The feelings and thoughts that still lingered on your brain even after this long from not seeing him.

”Fine.”

A/N - I desperately wanted to post something today and I’m like not completely done with the third and final chapter (bc it’s gonna be the longest of the three and I want to write it nicely) but the second chapter is done already and should be posted soon ish so they should all be posted within a quick time

[dmsden]

A History Lesson - Looking back at D&D’s history

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Well, this is the 5th Monday in March, and that means I get to write about anything I want! It’s also my birth month, which means it’s my anniversary of getting into D&D (42 years!), and that has me feeling nostalgic. Coupled with a discussion I had recently with some friends, I thought it would be fun to look back at the various editions of D&D and give you all a bit of history. I’m not going to get into Gygax vs Arneson or any of that. I’m only talking about the published game itself, not its creators or its storied origins.

The original D&D (or OD&D as it’s sometimes called) came in a small box. It had three booklets inside - Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures - along with reference sheets and dice. Each was softcover and roughly the same dimensions as a DVD/BluRay case. The game was pretty rudimentary - for one thing, it assumed you already had a copy of Chainmail, D&D’s direct wargame predecessor. It also recommended you have a game called Outdoor Survival for purposes of traveling through the wilderness. It had only three classes - fighting man, magic-user, and cleric - and nothing about playing other races. It did have the insane charts that 1st edition would ultimately known for, and it was possible to play a pretty fun game of D&D with it, as its popularity would come to show.

The game expanded through similar chapbooks - Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, Gods Demigods & Heroes, Swords & Spells. With the exception of the last one, each brought new facets to the game - new classes like Thief and Monk, new spells, new threats. It was clear the game was going to need an overhaul, and it got one.

I consider this overhaul to yield the real “1st Edition”, as so much of the game didn’t exist in those original games. The game split into a “Basic” game, just called Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The basic game was a boxed set that included a rulebook, a full adventure module, and dice...or, well, it was supposed to contain dice. The game was so popular and new in those days that demand for dice outstripped production. My copy of D&D came with a coupon for dice when they became available and a sheet of “chits” - laminated numbers meant to be put into cups (we used Dixie Cups with the name of the die written on it), shaken, and a random number pulled out without looking. It was meant to introduce new players to the game, so it was a trimmed down version. Races were human, elf, dwarf, and halfling, and classes were fighter, cleric, magic-user, and thief. The box only included rules for going up to 3rd level, with the intention that players would then graduate into AD&D. This is where I joined, with the old blue cover box set and In Search of the Unknown, before Keep on the Borderlands even existed.

AD&D was the game in its full glory. Along with the races I mention above, we got half-elves, half-orcs, and gnomes. The four basic classes also had sub-classes, like paladin and ranger for the fighter, druid for the cleric, illusionist for the wizard, and assassin for the thief. There were rules for multi-classing, as well as “Dual-classing”, a sort of multi-class variation for humans only, which, when done in the correct combination, could yield the infamous bard...which didn’t actually yield any bard abilities until around level 13 or so.

This edition had 5 different saving throws for things like “Death Magic”, “Petrification & Polymorph”, “Spells”, and so on. It had the infamous Armor Class system that started at 10 and went down, so that having a -3 AC was very good!  It also had specific attack matricies for each class; you would literally look on a table to determine the number you needed to roll on a D20 based on your class, your level, and your opponent’s armor class. It was fun, but it was very complicated.

It also had some, frankly, shitty rules. There was gender disparity in terms of attributes, which my group totally ignored. Because the game designers wanted humans to be a competitive the game, and because non-humans had so many abilities and could multiclass, non-humans were severely limited in the levels they could achieve in most classes. In fact, some classes, such as monk and paladin, were restricted only to humans.

As the years went on, things got a bit muddled. It probably didn’t help that the rules in Basic D&D and AD&D didn’t perfectly line up. In D&D, the worst armor class was a 9. In AD&D, the worst armor class was a 10. All of this led to an overhaul, but not one considered a separate edition. AD&D mostly got new covers and new books, like the Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeon Survival Guide, Monster Manual 2, and the Manual of the Planes. It got a number of new settings, too. In addition to the default Greyhawk setting, we got the Forgotten Realms setting for the first time, details of which had been appearing in Dragon Magazine for years, thanks to the prolific Ed Greenwood. We also, eventually, got the whole Dragonlance saga, which yielded the setting of Krynn.

In this new version, Basic D&D broke off into its own game system to some degree. Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling started being treated like classes rather than races, with specific abilities at different levels. Higher level characters could be created using progressive boxes - Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal, each with its own boxed set and supported by Mystara, a completely different setting that got its own updates over the years. It was odd, because D&D essentially was competing for players with AD&D, and I remember arguments with friends over which version was better (I was firmly in the AD&D camp.)

In 1989, when I was in college, they finally brought forth 2nd edition D&D. This streamlined things a little. Armor Class still went down, but now attack rolls boiled into a single number called To Hit Armor Class 0, or THAC0. It made the whole process of figuring out what you needed to roll a bit less cumbersome, but it was still a bit awkward. The classes got a lot of overhaul, including making Bard its own core class. But what I remember best about 2nd edition was the boom in settings. This was the age of settings, and many beloved ones got started, including Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer.

It was also the age of the “Complete Handbooks”. They brought out splatbooks about every class and race in the game, as well as books expanding several concepts for the DM, such as the Arms & Equipment Guide, the Castle Guide, and the Complete Book of Villains. There were also splatbooks about running D&D in historic periods, such as Ancient Rome, among the ancient Celts, or during the time of the Musketeers. The game got new covers for the rule books again, and a bunch of books about options started coming out. It was a boom time for books, but many people complained there was too much.

Without going too deep, TSR ended up in severe financial troubles. They declared bankruptcy, and there was real fear of the game going away. And then Wizards of the Coast (WotC) stepped in. They helped TSR get back onto its feet, and they helped produce some modules specifically engineered to help DM’s bring an end to their campaign...possibly even their whole campaign world...because something big was coming.

That something big was, of course, 3rd edition D&D. The game got majorly streamlined, and many sacred cows ended up as hamburger. AC finally started going up instead of down. Everything was refined to the “D20″ system we’ve been playing ever since. Races could be any class. There were no level or stat limits for anyone. After years of the game being forced into tight little boxes, it really felt like we could breathe. I had stopped playing D&D, but 3rd edition brought me back into the fold. I often say that 3E was made for the players who’d felt constricted and wanted more flexibility.

The trouble with 3E, and its successor 3.5, is that it was still a dense and difficult game for newcomers to get into. It’s been acknowledged that D&D essentially created many of the systems we see and know in other games - experience points, leveling up, hit points, etc. But trying to break into the experience for the first time was difficult. The look of 3E was gorgeous, but I understood that it must seem awfully daunting to someone who’d never played.

4E and its follow-up, Essentials, was an attempt to course correct that. They tried to make this edition incredibly friendly to new DMs, and, frankly, they succeeded. By creating player classes and monsters and magic-items that were all very plug and play, they did a great job of creating a game that someone who had never DMed before could dive into with no experience or mentor and start a game pretty easily. Encounter design was given a lot of ease, and there were promises of a robust online tool system that would help out with many of the more tedious aspects of playing.

There was also a lot of shake up in terms of choices. Suddenly, new classes and races were proliferating like crazy. We got the dragonborn, the tiefling, and the eladrin right in the core book, but we said good-bye to the gnome and half-orc at first. Suddenly the warlock was the new class everyone wanted to try. We got paragon paths and epic destinies that would really shape a character as time went on. The game went very tactical, as well, which some of us loved. The concept of rituals came into the game. Later books like the Player’s Handbook 2 and 3 gave us back gnomes and half-orcs, and also gave us minotaurs, wilden, shardminds, and githzerai. We got new psionic classes, brand new class concepts like the Runeknight and the Seeker...

But there was a tremendous backlash. People felt that, in making the game so very plug and play, they’d taken a ton of choice away from the players. Without the tools (which were never that robust, frankly), it was almost impossible to navigate the massive panoply of options. And, worse, it was harder and harder to develop encounters without those tools. People complained that the game had gone more tactical in order to sell miniatures and battlemats. Given that I have never played the game without miniatures and battlemats (since I started in the days when D&D was still half-wargame), I found this odd, but I also understand my style of play isn’t everyone’s.

The one argument I will never understand is that it didn’t “feel” like D&D, or it was somehow ONLY a tactical game and not a role-playing game any more. Again, given that the original game didn’t even call itself a role-playing game, this felt odd. Personally, I roleplay no matter what game I’m playing. If I’m playing Monopoly, I’m roleplaying, doing voices, and pretending to be something I’m not. I honestly enjoyed 4E, and I know a lot of folks who did, too. A lot of it may simply come down to style of play. But I also enjoyed all the games that came before, including Pathfinder. To paraphrase the YouTube content creator The Dungeon Bastard, “Does your game have dungeons? Does it have dragons? Great. I wanna play.”

As a sidenote, in the months leading up to 4E’s release, a lot of internet videos were released by WotC emphasizing the nature of change and talking about differences in the rules. They also released some preview books showing the direction they were heading. WotC must have anticipated that people were going to find this edition very different indeed. They also cleverly brought in some very funny folks - Scott Kurtz from PVPOnline and Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade - and got them to play D&D for podcasting purposes. Looking back, this must’ve brought in a lot of listeners who might never have played D&D and given them a reason to try it out.

After its release, WotC clearly noted that missteps had been made, as this edition of the game was losing them players. They began work on what they referred to as D&D Next, and, this time, they did massive amounts of playtesting, some of which I participated in.

I don’t feel like I have to describe 5E to any of you, Dear Readers, as you could go to virtually any store and pick it up. I am a big fan of 5E’s simplicity and elegance, and I suspect this is the edition of D&D we’re going to have for some time to come, especially given its popularity. Given the effect of podcasts like Critical Role (and I might save an article on Critical Role’s importance to D&D until my next Freestyle article), D&D is likely more popular now than it’s ever been, with a much wider and more diverse audience than ever before.

I know I’m painting with broad strokes here, but I hope this was, at least, entertaining, and maybe you learned something, Gentle Readers. Until we next meet, may all your 20s be natural.

[diavolosthots]

DARK DECEPTION CHAPTER 11

READ CHAPTER 10 HERE

Author's note: I finally updated this lol. This is definitely building up to the climax that I hope to have in the next few chapters, but we'll see.

Warnings: mentions of rape, non-con, mentions of torture, angst

Pairing(s): Diavolo x Reader, Lucifer, Leviathan

After his talk with Lucifer, Levi attempted to text you under the disguise of another game day, but you had yet to answer. Different scenarios ran through his head, all of which didn’t end well, but he hoped you could hold on just a little longer. Diavolo hadn’t seemed right with him for some time now and even before the wedding, where he reluctantly agreed to be on your side, he knew that something was up, but he could never place his finger on just what that was. Now he knew for sure and honestly he’s patting his own back for going to Lucifer with that. “Alright.. Hacking into the castle…” Nervousness rushed through him but Lucifer swore that spell protected him from being detected by Barbatos and that’s the only thing he’s counting on right now. He needs to get this done as soon as possible because the last thing he wants is for something to actually happen to you. 

Meanwhile, Lucifer took it upon himself to come up with a plan of his own. He hadn’t talked to you since that wedding, and he swore he would stay out of it, but if you truly are in danger like Leviathan said, he may be the only one who can help you, and no matter what you are to him, your safety is of utmost importance. He made a promise back then. A promise to protect you, and he would never go back on that promise. It pained him to see you in the arms of someone else when you should be in his arms, safe and sound… Mentally, he was going insane as scenarios ran through his head of everything you had endured this far, and would endure for the foreseeable future unless he manages to get you out of there. He was determined to get you out of there, too, but going against Diavolo, betraying the one person he thought would never betray him after swearing his loyalty to the guy… it will prove more difficult than anyone could think. For now, the spell protected them from being seen by Barbatos, at least in the future, but Barbatos wasn’t dumb and he would figure it out sooner or later… he’d sense something was wrong. 

Lucifer walked circles around his room, in deep thought. The most obvious action he should take is bust in head first, as ridiculous as that sounds. If they take too long coming up with a perfect plan, Barbatos and Diavolo have more time to perform the perfect defense… no… Lucifer needs it to be completely spontaneous, in a way that no one sees coming, and he needs to do it sooner than later, before the spell wears off… Possible complications start running through his head and he even has to take into account that the citizens may be against him. They serve their King, of course, and even if he could take most of them out easily, it would take energy out of him, energy he needs to rescue you. Leviathan would obviously be at his side, as would the rest of his brothers, but how much could they take before they, too, would fall victim to exhaustion? Losing one of them would be like losing you, and he can’t have that. His pride and irrational side tells him to do it by himself, to keep everyone else out of it, but he also knows he wouldn’t stand a chance at doing it alone. He needed his brothers, just like he needed them back then… except this time, he’s determined to have no loss, no casualty… but a definite victory. 

“Lucifer!” His name being called pulled him out of his thoughts, Leviathan standing in front of him, in his room, once more. The demon’s eyes were wild, something unreadable storming within them and he wondered what had happened. Had Leviathan already got caught? No… they can’t be that fast. “What is it?” The heavy breathing, the wild eyes, the shaking hands… none of it were good indicators to Lucifer. Had they already lost before the battle even began? “I.. I did it… He was hiding cameras, but not just in the gaming room… they’re all over the castle…” That’s why Leviathan was freaking out? Lucifer would’ve guessed as much, considering that Diavolo was always seemingly everywhere at just the right times, “Is this what you’re so upset about? I do--” “No! It’s not that there’s so many… it’s… it’s what I saw, Lucifer…” Levi swallowed thickly, his wild eyes turning into ones of sadness as he recalls the past few minutes, “I was… I was going through them, and I landed on the one in the dungeons, by the maze, you know where Henry 1.0 now is… There was a door… and .. it looked like Cerberus was in it…” Lucifer raised an eyebrow, “Cerberus? Nonsense Leviathan, he’s here, protecting the grimoire…” but Leviathan shook his head, “No. I’m sure it was him…  You can’t hear anything but I saw.. I saw (Y/N)... and she looked terrified.. I’m pretty sure she was screaming… I think.. I think Lord Diavolo is using him against her, to torture her…” 

Fear ran through him, although he hated showing it. Cerberus was a beast, even he knew that, and if Cerberus was being used against you, he also knew that you had little to no way of surviving, or at least escaping. He pushed past his brother, speed walking down the halls to Leviathan’s room where the cameras were still pulled up. Levi, of course, followed him, scared for you as well, “wait! Lucifer! I don’t… you don’t want to see this…” but it was too late. Lucifer already sat at his brother's desk, watching as the horror unfolded in front of his eyes. Nothing could be heard, much like Leviathan had said, but he didn’t need to in order to understand what was going on. In a way, he was actually glad that he didn’t hear anything because there you were, in Diavolo’s chambers, kicking and fighting against him as he threw you onto his bed. It was clear that there were bruises, scratches, and probably even bite marks on your precious skin, and Lucifer knew that Cerberus was actually there, being used against you, and not where he was supposed to be. 

“Lucifer… I don’t…” but the eldest held up his hand to shush Levi. His eyes were trained on the screen, watching as Diavolo tore through your clothes, his mouth opening in words that he knew were let out in shouts, all while you cried helpless beneath him. The demon practically winced when he saw their King have his way with you, spreading your legs harshly as you squirmed and tried to get away from him, but to no avail. Lucifer bit the inside of his cheeks, chewing on them as his heart ached, for you. Someone he put his loyalty into, someone who called him his best friend, was doing this to you, against your will, in a way that no one should ever be handled. Heavy thrusts moved you against the bed, which was looking like it banged against the wall from the sheer force, and Lucifer felt sorrow when you turned your head away to try to escape the picture of it all, but Diavolo wouldn’t have it. He gripped your face by the chin, talking to you again. Part of Lucifer wanted to know what he was saying, but another part of him couldn’t bear to hear the unfavorable words that left the Demon Lord’s mouth. You cried, he knew you did, shutting your eyes tightly in hopes that this nightmare would be over soon. He didn’t know what it was, but Lucifer couldn’t look away, even after his heart shattered into a million pieces and rage filled its place instead. He tried staying calm, to not let too many emotions show on his end, but it was hard when he watched you, the one person he truly loved, be used like a toy. 

He sat there for what felt like ages, watching Diavolo play with you, until his hips stilled and he presumably had finished. Once again, he watched as the King’s lips moved with words, letting go of your face but not before a hard slap was delivered to your cheek. Lucifer could practically hear the echo of the action. Leviathan took it upon himself to turn it off, to get that off of the screen, knowing Lucifer wouldn’t have. “Lucifer…” he tried again to reach out to his brother, placing a hand on the eldest’s shoulder in a form of comfort, but Lucifer brushed it off, standing up quickly and walking out, before anyone realized how close he was to breaking, “get everyone together, Leviathan. We’re going in.” he didn’t know what prompted him to say that, but he needed to get you out of there, as fast as possible. Even as tears started to cloud his vision, even when he started to feel so useless… he swallowed it all, putting his head back up with pride as the plan came together in his head. No one would do that to you ever again, and he will get you out of there, no matter the cost. 

[if-you-built-yourself-a-myth]

Check Ignition: Part IV

A Sobbe fake-dating Hogwarts AU that one person asked for and I dove into headfirst

Part I // Part II // Part III // Part IV

Requests are open if you have any oneshot ideas or opinions on how this should continue!

In their bedroom that night, Jens had a whole roll of parchment full of ideas. Robbe fell asleep first on the common room couch after Hufflepuff’s party, and meandered to his room at three AM to find Jens awaiting him on the windowsill. Aaron, conked out, had pulled the curtains of his four-poster shut and cast a few silencing charms for privacy.

“Muffliato,” Robbe cast under his breath, just in case. Aaron wasn’t the greatest at Charms.

“I was supposed to patrol tonight,” Robbe told Jens. “Did Jana go alone?”

Jens nodded. “She said you would’ve lost her anyway, whatever that means.”

“You’re talking again?”

“Uh, yeah, of course. Okay, here, look at this…” Jens smacked down his parchment on the little floor space they had in their bedroom. Each little segment of dormitory housed four boys with their beds in a circle around the heater in the middle. While Jens, Robbe, and Aaron didn’t have a fourth shoved in with them, the fourth bed’s curtains were also closed. Robbe assumed it was Moyo staying over after the party. Their copious belongings covered most available surfaces: books piled up next to bedspreads, clothing strewn over trunks, candy wrappers overflowing from trash bins.

“I think you have to dial it up,” Jens explained. He flattened the parchment until Robbe could kind of read his sloping cursive. The title at the top of the page was scribbled out, replaced with the words Operation Ditch-Noor. “Noor seems more persistent.”

Robbe thought back on their conversation. It made his head hurt to think. “She’s done.”

“Didn’t seem it today. How much did you drink?”

“I can read it,” said Robbe. He, in fact, could not read it. Why did Jens have to write everything in cursive?

The party itself had gone by pretty smoothly, from what he could piece together at the moment. Sander turned on music from his player, an upbeat song called Rebel Rebel, and had everyone spinning in circles on the common room carpet. Robbe didn’t remember kissing Sander at all. He remembered taking a cupful of punch from Aaron and not asking about its alcohol content. The girls left early to go console Zoë on the loss, and he’d woken up with a blanket that he didn’t have when he fell asleep.

Actually, that was a pretty solid outline considering the circumstances. Good on Robbe.

Jens gave Robbe a minute to puzzle through the spirals on the parchment. If he looked at it sideways, it might be a picture of a big black dog.

“Thoughts?” said Jens. He bumped Robbe’s shoulder with his own. Robbe looked around. When did they sit on the floor?

“Good,” he said.

“Good. It was a major oversight on your part, not having a public date in the first week. You’re going to have to compensate now.”

“What?”

Jens sighed. “Like, you have to be twice as convincing. Why am I even friends with you?”

“You’re so smart,” Robbe agreed.

“Is that Robbe?” said the fourth bed. It didn’t sound like Moyo. Moyo’s drunk voice was always deeper than his normal one, full of false bravado, while this one was much lighter. Sure enough, Sander peeked his head out from the curtains. His hair stuck up in all different directions.

Jens got up from the ground and smacked Sander’s arm as Sander tried to reach for Robbe. “You don’t have to trick us. Jeez.” He addressed Robbe again. “He’s been like this all night.”

Sander ignored him. “Come over here,” he said to Robbe. “I haven’t seen you.”

“You saw me,” Robbe said.

“Not a lot.”

“Yeah, so this is the kind of material we need.” Jens pointed at the parchment roll. “Noor’s going to leave you alone.”

“Come here, Robbe.”

Robbe sobered—while Sander didn’t exactly sound serious, there was something more in the way he said those words. What, Robbe couldn’t be sure. He was probably projecting, making the whole thing up.

Sander’s clothing was rumpled, a stain on the collar of his shirt. There were circles around his eyes as if he’d been rubbing them. His perfect hand was just begging to be held—the vision began to blur a little bit on the edges, and Robbe had to blink a few times to make the picture clear again.

This wasn’t real. He was drunk and it wasn’t real. Robbe was hallucinating or something, that’s what it was.

And he didn’t want to sleep with Sander, at least, not yet.

“I am going to be physically ill,” said Jens. “Save this.”

They left the parchment on the floor. Jens climbed into his bed, Robbe into his. Sander left the curtains open on bed four, staring over at where Robbe lay, so Robbe left his own curtains open. Gotta have that line of sight. He knew Sander was drunk as a skunk, but goodness, it felt wonderful to have his attention.

“Goodnight, love,” he called over.

Jens covered his head with a his pillow. "Kill me."

***

Sander was gone when Robbe got up the next day, and just as well, because it was one PM. Robbe’s head hurt like a motherfucker. Good news, though: he could now read the parchment Jens had tacked to the door of their dormitory. Not without pain, but without much struggle. In the bottom left-hand corner, an artsy signature marked that Sander understood the objectives. Sander Driesen. He dotted the i in his last name with a little circle instead of a plain dot.

Robbe speed-read the document to the best of his ability. And panicked. If Sander was following this, they had plans at five today.

He gathered his things and dashed to the shower, careful not to wake up anyone else who might still be sleeping. Aaron seemed to have gone out; his bed was empty. Jens wasn’t visible, and Robbe didn’t think it right to open the bedcurtains to see if he was there. The shower water was freezing cold. Robbe did a little warming spell he thought he remembered and ended up evaporating it all.

He took a very cold shower.

When that was done, he changed into a collared shirt with a sweater overtop and a pair of khaki pants. Casual date outfit, check. Fake date. Couldn’t forget that. He appraised his reflection in the mirror for too long to be considered normal.

There was plenty to do in the span between now and five o’clock—exams were three weeks away and Robbe didn’t know the main ingredients of Amortentia. But he couldn’t bring himself to open the books. It made much more sense to pace around the room.

Of course they’d go on a date. Real relationships would have dates.

And Sander—last night—it was nothing.

Robbe spent a lot of his mental energy convincing himself that things didn’t matter. He spent a little more trying to forget this revelation.

Four forty-five arrived before he could list out all the possible ways a date could go wrong.

The castle was always louder on Saturday afternoons and evenings. With the morning’s hangover remedied, students were free to gossip as they pleased. As Robbe headed down the stairs to the dungeons, where Jens’ note detailed he would meet Sander, he heard no less than four separate conversations that should have been private. Two Gryffindors were having a Wrackspurt problem in their dormitory. Several Slytherins discussed a magical cure for gonorrhea that would not alert Madame Pomfrey to their situation. Yasmina and Zoë attended extra Potions sessions together, and Robbe heard them debating the proper way to skin a human arm for use. Most of interest: Britt and another girl in the final hallway.

“Sander doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Britt lamented. “I don’t think he’s been going to the hospital wing.”

“You don’t know that,” the girl replied, resting a comforting hand on Britt’s back.

Robbe tried to shrink back on himself as he walked by.

Britt wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “And I’m the one that’s gonna be there when it goes to shit.”

Give it up, thought Robbe. He booked it the rest of the way to the Slytherin common room’s entrance.

Sander was waiting beside the door, his back against the stonework. His look today was different than Robbe had ever seen it, a leather jacket and a t-shirt paired with tight black jeans. When he raised a hand to wave at Robbe, the shirt rode up enough to expose a line of pale skin. Robbe felt overdressed in his sweater. Sander shouldn’t think he was taking this too seriously.

“Where are we headed?” Sander asked, as soon as Robbe was within asking range.

Robbe’s eyes went wide. “I thought you were planning it.”

“I've been hungover.” Sander pushed away from the wall. He slipped his hand into Robbe’s, and they headed for the staircase that led out of the dungeons. Usually, only Slytherins used it. “I'm good with whatever. For Britt, obviously. Somewhere she'll see."

The staircase spit them out into the upstairs hallway. Sander brought them outside through the front doors and down into the sprawling lawn. He stopped once his feet hit the grass, and turned to Robbe. “Dealer’s choice.”

“Did Jens give instructions?”

“Jens doesn’t dictate your dating life.”

Robbe frowned. “My fake dating life.”

He hated Sander’s pained expression. “Yeah, exactly.”

Only one way to make Sander smile again, and that was to go somewhere nice. Robbe surveyed the campus. They couldn’t go to Hogsmede today unless they snuck there, and Sander wasn’t in subtle attire. There was the forest, all of those beautiful, towering trees, but there was a fifty percent chance of death if they got too close. The Whomping Willow ruled out a good chunk of grassy lawn. He knew their only option would be to sit by the lake.

Lots of couples sat by the lake. Any fake relationship should feature a date there. It got foot traffic, it was public, it screamed to the world hey, we’re together.

Robbe didn’t bring a blanket. What if he got cold?

What if Sander got cold?

The thought alone of Sander cuddled into his side was enough to drive Robbe to action. He wondered what that said about him as a person.

“The lake,” said Robbe. “We can—um—we can be there.”

“You have something to sit on?”

“Uh…”

“Yeah, I counted on it.” Sander reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny square of fabric. With a wave of his wand, it grew into a full-sized picnic blanket in his arms. “Show me where you want to be.”

***

The early evening air, combined with the chill off the lake, had Robbe shivering in no time. He should have brought his coat out with him, but it wasn’t in the best shape, and he worried that mending spells could only keep it alive for so much longer. Best to save it for winter, when things got bad. Sander, on the other hand, had no problem removing his own jacket and sliding it around Robbe’s shoulders. He wrapped one bare arm around Robbe, sliding his hand into Robbe’s back pocket.

“This is nice,” he said.

“Cold,” said Robbe.

“I’ll tell Jens to plan the next one. He seems to like us as a couple.”

Something in Robbe’s stomach fluttered. The possibility of more intoxicated him. He caught himself before the desire became too strong; there had to be more. No convincing fake relationship was just one date.

Dusk crept in along the sky. Many of the other couples gathered their things to attend a Great Hall dinner, the likes of which Robbe had not consumed all week. He willed his stomach not to growl. Their blanket was close enough to the lake that casual waves poked at its edges.

“That’s your friend, isn’t it?” said Sander, pointing toward the castle’s open doors.

Robbe looked over. Zoë and Senne made their way across the lawn with their own picnic blanket and a lumpy knapsack. Behind them was Milan, Zoë’s best friend and Senne’s suitemate. Zoë smiled when she saw Robbe and jogged the remainder of the distance between them, dropping to the grass an inch away from Sander’s blanket.

“Look at you!” She pinched Robbe’s cheek. “Date night, I take it?”

Robbe tried not to look sheepish. “Jens said we should.”

“Mmhm,” said Zoë. She turned her attention to Sander. “Tell me the love story. I need to know.”

“Oh, it’s a great story. Settle in.” Sander adjusted his position. He scooted away from Robbe, then gently tipped backward until his head rested on Robbe’s lap. “Picture this. My ex brought her best friend on one of our dates because she was mad at me. We went to the Three Broomsticks.”

Robbe remembered the Three Broomsticks. Obviously. His cheeks heated. He began twisting sections of Sander’s hair around his fingers, if only to do something with his hands. He knew Zoë just wanted to hear what Sander could think up on the fly.

“Her best friend had a date, too. No problem. I was going to spend the time staring at the wall so I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Except, the date walked in, and it was Robbe here, and I just lost it. I saw him sitting there and I thought, Sander, he is the one.”

Now Robbe was really blushing. He wanted to go vaporous and phase through the ground, if he could just remember the spell…

“I thought I was being dramatic, that I needed to give it some time. But I couldn’t get him off my mind. So I broke up with Britt. She used to complain that he spent all his time up in the astronomy tower instead of patrolling. You bet your ass I went there one night to see if he’d come up. And he did.” Sander shrugged. “The rest is history.” He propped himself up and caught Robbe in a chaste kiss.

“Yeah, you can cut the bullshit.” Zoë turned to check Senne’s progress toward them. He was still a decent distance away. “Robbe told me about this.”

Sander huffed. “I said nothing that wasn’t true.” He kissed Robbe again.

“Yeah, pretty sure none of that was true. But I like the backstory. It’s really good.”

“I think I could make it as a writer,” said Sander.

Robbe assumed the conversation would end there. Zoë and Sander did not seem like the types of people who would have much to say to one another. Unfortunately, Zoë’s prying conversation gave Milan time to catch up.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, upon seeing Sander and Robbe together. He got in close to Zoë for a stage whisper. “So this is Robbe's straight guy!” Zoë shot him a look. “What? is he not straight?”

Sander did not miss a beat, even though a statement like that implied Milan knew the truth of the arrangement. “Bisexual, actually. Or pansexual—I’m still trying to figure that part out.”

“Aren’t we all,” said Milan knowingly. “Don’t fall for Robbe, then.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sander laughed. It sounded more resigned than joking. Something inside of Robbe combusted.

Milan and Senne went off and picked a spot a respectable distance away to study for their exams. Robbe noted in passing that Milan was reading pages much deeper in the Potions textbook than he had learned. He hadn’t been to a class since he started fake-dating Sander.

Zoë flashed an apologetic smile. “I didn’t tell him you were straight. Don’t know where he got that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Sander.

“And I didn’t mean to tell him the relationship was fake either, he was just so excited—”

“As long as it doesn’t get to Britt or Noor, we’re fine.”

“Robbe, are you okay?”

“Yes,” Robbe lied.

There were pleasantries afterward, although Robbe didn’t catch the specifics. He had other things to process. Sander talking about how they met—it all felt so real. Robbe found himself in a booth at the Three Broomsticks again, watching Sander take slow sips from his drink. He was in his four-poster bed while Sander slept, the curtains open so they could see each other in the dark.

He stepped on the emotion. Sander said he wouldn’t dream of falling in love with him.

Zoë went off to sit with her best friend and boyfriend, leaving space for Robbe and Sander’s date to begin. Where to begin? Number one: Sander would never fall in love with him because this was all fake. In tandem with Noor’s premonition last night, Robbe suddenly felt like he’d much rather be back inside the castle. In his bed. With the curtains pulled this time.

A headache could get him out of here. An urgent need to throw up? Maybe a mysterious summons from Jens. He needed to remember the charm that let him disappear.

Number two, back to Sander. He had wrapped his arms around his head, exposing that same patch of stomach. A line of black ink that might be a word traced the line of his hipbone down.

“Robbe?” Sander waved a hand in front of Robbe’s face.

Robbe blinked. “Huh?”

“Have you been hearing me?”

“Um,” said Robbe.

“You’re pulling my hair.”

Robbe moved his hands away. His mind was a mess of different thoughts—what would he tell the boys about this? It wasn’t fucking real. And Sander’s head was in his lap right now. He should have seen this coming before… no, he had seen this coming.

“Don’t stop,” said Sander softly. “Just… lighter.”

Robbe ran his hand through Sander’s hair. Lighter. A confession dangled on the tip of his tongue and he needed to push it back down.

“Some of what you said was true,” he said. He hoped Sander could draw the connection across conversations and realize he meant what Sander had said to Zoë, not Milan.

Sander understood. “Most of it was true.”

They waited a moment, listening to the soft waves on the lake and the bustle of other couples nearby.

“Right,” said Sander. “You’ve taken me on a date. The least you can do is tell me something nice.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Do you need Jens to write your speeches too?”

Robbe shied away from the vulnerability angle this time. Sander wouldn’t have any use for the information four weeks from now when exams were over. He marveled over how soft Sander’s hair was between his fingers, despite the fact that the ends were dry and dead from the bleach. “My father was the cook of the family,” he said. Something personal, but not intimate. “He had this recipe for blood sausage that had so many spices my mother could never stomach it. We would bring it to dinner parties when we didn’t like the people. It was funny to watch them try and compliment it during the meal when they clearly hated every last bite.” This was the story’s happier conclusion. Its actual conclusion was that his father took all the recipe cards when he walked out, and Robbe didn’t know the ingredients even though his father promised he’d get them when he turned sixteen.

“Tell me something nice.” He poked Sander.

“I don’t know if what you said constitutes nice,” said Sander. He reached up and ran a finger across Robbe’s chin. But he went on. “There’s this lady where I work over the summer that brings me David Bowie albums. She gets so excited every time she finds a new one in a garage sale somewhere, or at store, and I can’t tell her that I already own the albums already. I have five copies of Space Oddity.”

Robbe didn’t know who David Bowie was.

Another lapse into silence. Sander never seemed to mind a comfortable quiet. He guided Robbe’s head down to his for a simple kiss, but he left his eyes open, and Robbe could follow his sightline to Noor and Britt as they walked back to the castle from who-knows-where.

“Tell me something secret,” said Robbe. This much time without something on his mind could be seriously painful. “I went first last time.”

He kind of wanted Sander to refuse.

“I don’t have any secrets, Robbe.”

“You must have one.”

“Do you?”

Robbe shook his head quicker than he should have. He tried to sound as casual as possible when he said, “I’m an open book,” but he doubted it did any good.

The thing was, it was totally believable that Sander wouldn’t have any secrets. This was the boy who announced his sexuality to a friend of a friend that he didn’t even know. This was the boy who saw someone else in the astronomy tower, unloaded his relationship woes, and promptly kissed said someone else to get away from them. What did he have to hide, besides this relationship? What could someone like him possibly have to hide?

The dying day faded everything out into a stained-glass image that could take up the wall of a Hogwarts bathroom. Robbe let himself relax until his surroundings were no more than shapes and colors, pushing everything from his mind until he could barely process his hands running through Sander’s hair. The thoughts surfaced anyway. He was going to have to tell the boys about this, eventually, and maybe even Sander himself, if that was possible. Even now, his skin was electrified from contact.

So much for pushing back the sexuality crisis. It had to happen today.

“It is kind of nerve-wracking, all these people to convince,” Sander said, out of the blue. “I don’t even know who that guy is.” He pointed vaguely at Milan. “But right here, with us, this is okay. It’s just me. That’s my secret.”

That’s exactly the problem, thought Robbe. It’s just you. And I’m falling in love with you.

He said, “That’s a cop-out. Tell me something else.”

[neokad]

Phantasy Star II - The 1989 JRPG that could

(This post is dedicated to @kuukigajan, my best friend, whom motivated me to post here again, so... I hope you'll enjoy this!)

This game. This freaking game.

I'm gonna say it right now: this post will contain massive spoilers about pretty much everything in Phantasy Star 2's story, so if you do plan on experiencing this game fresh, I strongly advise you to not read this post at all beyond the first paragraph, but... here's the gist of it: Phantasy Star II is one of the most important and groundbreaking JRPGs of its time, and I just did not believe this game was from 1989, at ALL. For that and a few other reasons, it has become one of my new favourite games of all time <3 

In fact, I do want to start with the one big flaw of this adventure so that I can just gush about everything else that's brilliant about PSII. I have to be honest: the dungeon design in this game is horrible. Now to be fair, it does make the many places you visit more memorable, but well... there's a rumor floating around that an actual trainee made the layouts for the dungeons - and since this game was a bit rushed for the Genesis's launch, the devs just didn't have time to replace the... stuff he submitted. And let me tell you, this rumor makes sense: PSII's dungeons are too big, too maze-like, too confusing and also FILLED with strong enemies. And in a game where you don't get a way to save anywhere until the midway point, it can make your adventure very frustrating and potentially grindy because of that... Now I wouldn't say that PSII's nearly as bad in this area as say, the original version of Dragon Warrior or ironically the first Phantasy Star, but the dungeons can totally make you feel like the game's harder than it actually is, at least without a map.

Thankfully, you should never feel bad for using any maps or guides with this game! The execs at SEGA at the time made the very smart decision to include a walkthrough with each copy of the game, including maps, tips, secrets and more! Said guide does encourage youto not look at it as much as possible but... it's totally fair to just use this, without any shame!

And that is a great thing, because... with you armed with this piece of paper, Phantasy Star II can finally show you its actual brilliance.

The game's plot starts off a thousand years after the events of the first Phantasy Star game. Since Alis and her party defeated Dark Force, the inhabitants of the Algol solar system - and its three planets of Palma, Motavia and Dezolis - have enjoyed relative peace. However, at a (to my knowledge) unknown point in time, a computer entity known as Mother Brain has started imposing itself onto mostly Motavia. This, over time, has actually given many benefits to the region: the once deserted wasteland was given rain, water and crops, so that it could finally host viable, comfortable civilizations. The citizens that lived here could finally ditch their (arguably) nomadic, harsh lives in favor of comfort, pleasant weather and more. And most importantly, Mother Brain allowed its citizens, save for a few, to ditch their current jobs and live a life of laziness, without any obligations or pressure to do anything other than well, existence. This is reflected many times during the game through NPC dialogue, too!

It is on such a setting that our protagonist, Rolf, wakes up from a strange nightmare. In it, we see Alis batting Dark Force and struggling in doing so, but as soon as he realizes this, Rolf wakes up in cold sweat. He then proceeds to calm his nerves, realizing that no such dramatic events could possible happen to him - after all, he and many others have been under the universal protection and care of Mother Brain, whom at this point, has provided all of their needs for centuries. He then gets out of bed and goes to the central tower, where we works as an agent in case some things do go wrong.

And gone wrong things have! His superior informs him that biological monsters, which had been created and bred in the Mota biosystems laboratory, have gone rogue and infected the regions of Motavia at a rapid rate. Because of this, Rolf is asked to investigate the cause of this phenomenon. Once he gets home to prepare for his journey, he is ambushed by best girl Nei, who has been rescued by him many months ago from the clutches of a serial killer. She does not want to be left alone anymore, and since she is also worried for Rolf's sefety, asks him to accompany him on the mission. Naturally, Rolf accepts.

Here, I do want to bring up Nei in more detail! She's in fact, the first of PSII's brilliant story-gameplay interactions, and here's why! Nei is in fact, a crossbreed experiment between a human and an unknown animal with cat-like features, but here's the thing: this said experiment was a failure. Because of this, Nei is only one years old, and yet her physical and mental age are progressing way more rapidly than they should. And you can feel this effect on the game itself: she needs way less EXP than any other party member in the game to level up, and because of this she will skyrocket in levels way beyond the rest of your crew... with a catch. Because of the nature of the experiment, the genetic code inside of her is slowly being messed up and corrupted, which not only causes her level ups to be less valuable than anyone else's, but it also becomes an important plot point later...  Unfortunately, despite her absolute cuteness, her status as a half-half made her a victim of bullying, racism and so much more, which is... pretty messed up to bring up at the time not gonna lie o_o

Starting up the journey, the party discovers that rogues have destroyed a neighboring city, and it just so happens that their base is situed at Shure, the first dungeon of the game . One assumption I like to make from this scene is that life has become so easy and careless on Motavia that people just went and did crime out of pure boredom, because life just wasn't thrilling enough anymore with Mother Brain doing everything it could for its inhabitants...

However, upon climbing said tower, Rolf and Nei find out multiple dead rogue bodies, whom have been presumably murdered by the many biomonsters roaming the place. They do, however, manage to find some dynamite and most importantly, a letter. This piece of paper informs our heroes that the daughter of a Darum, the very same person that tried to murder Nei months ago, is held captive in another tower, which explains why he turned to crime in the first place. They then decide to do the obvious, which is to rescue daughter Teim in her captivity location. Once they meet up with her, she explains her desire to talk to her father to set things straight and sway him from the life he's been getting into, as well as hide her from the surviving rogue members with the help of a veil. Our group manages to meet up with Darum, but... her daughter asks the party to stay put, as she does not want them to interfere with her as she explains things to her father. However, in the heat of the moment, she forgets to remove her veil, which causes Darum to not recognize her. In his confusion, he murders her own flesh and blood and sits there, stunned, as he watches the reason he caused many untold atrocities... wither away below him. Shocked and going insane by this situation, he sees no other way out... but to commit suicide with the help of a bomb.

It gets worse.

While this scene was tragic and brutal to say the least, it does allow Rolf to cross the previously guarded bridge where Darum was always located, which allows him to investigate his mission further.

I do want to make a sidenote here actually! Phantasy Star II does include eight playable characters, but unlike Rolf and Nei they do not join you at fixed intervals - instead, they will become available in your home town of Paseo once conditions are met. Sadly while they do have a recruitment quote, a few lines and a backstory, they do not have an impact on the main story in any way. This does blow as this means PSII does not have much in character development and interaction, but I did want to mention that there’s more to this game than just Rolf and Nei :P 

Upon exploring the regions of Motavia, the party manages to make its way to the Biosystems lab, and what they find here is horrifying to say the least. The lab is in horrible shape, with cracked floors everywhere. On top of that, there is no one inside the lab anymore, it being completely deserted, save for some horrible-looking creatures being kept insides tubes, decorating the now sinister looking building... Because of this, Rolf deems it safe to pick up the recorder inside the lab, to analyze it and try to find out just what exactly went wrong - if anything at all - to hopefully figure out why the world has been sacked by biomonsters. And sure enough, the gang make its way back to Paseo.  After handing over the recorder to the library located in Paseo’s Central Tower, it is now made clear: the biomonsters were caused by a large amount of energy used in a very short amount of time in those labs, causing them to mutate extremely rapidly. This had the predictable but unfortunate effect of ruining the natural order of the ecosystem, which is why these species are wrecking havoc without control. The librarian giving this information also makes the following connection: this outpour of energy must have come from Climatrol - another lab which regulates the weather of the terraformed planet so that it can sustain its new shape. Following this, Rolf and co. take a few steps to reach Climatrol - and I want to highlight a specific one!

The story somewhat pauses until then, but one of the dungeons you’ll go through is a garbage dump... and one of the treasures is a jet scooter you can use! Sounds cool, right? Well it is, but even such a cool object has been abandoned by the lazy society, since teleportation is much more convenient to them. I just thought it was a really neat detail, that’s all ^_^

Once making their way through the relatively normal Climatrol, something does wait for them at the top of the building... something... unsettling...

This is Neifirst. She was another failed experiment just like Nei, sharing the same biological data as her. However, unlike her sister, her creators tried to kill her on the spot due to her status. This made her enraged against the species that gave her life, and as an act of revenge, decided to unleash this bio catastrophy to slowly wipe us out. This is where another truth is revealed: Nei did not come with Rolf just to protect him, she actually wanted to put a stop to her sister, because while she did dislike being treated like a freak or a monster, she never wanted to hate her species as a whole... It remains that she still wants to stop her sister’s plans, and despite Rolf’s protests, the two engages in a fight. However, due to Neifirst being much stronger, Nei sustains heavy damage and is incapacitated. But, this is where the rest of the party comes in, and thus they finish the job and kill off Neifirst dead in her tracks, Rolf then quickly rushes in to his dear friend’s side, but as he does... it’s too late... Nei is dead.

This is yet another reason why Phantasy Star II is such an important game: it is, to my knowledge, the very first JRPG in which a major playable character dies permanently. Heck, Rolf even tries to bring her back through the local Clone Lab - because yes, citizens have access to eternal life by cloning their bodies until the end of time - but... since Nei’s genetic code was degenerating rapidly, they could not clone her body anymore. And, since Neifirst was also defeated, it is also impossible to get a fresh code back from anywhere in the world. Nei is dead. And you cannot do anything about it.

But don’t worry! It still gets worse!

But just as you’re about to find a way to fix this, it turns out that Climatrol has collapsed, which caused an immense flood all over the world. Since the government - and by extension, Mother Brain - isn’t happy about this, you are now considered a fugitive, a criminal. You are now the bad guy, and you are wanted for treason. 1989, anyone??

This is where the second brilliant story-gameplay integration of Phantasy Star II happens. Where until now you’ve only fought mutated monsters due to the outbreak, the government has now sent thousands of carious cyborgs and robots against you - and lo and behold, this is now the only thing you are fighting in both the overworld and dungeons, and the previous creatures are now nowhere to be seen. THAT’S REALLY SMART. Now sure, even if you are considered evil to many, you still task yourself with the task of unflooding the planet, and to do so you simply reactivate all four colored dams in the continent. However, upon reactivating the fourth one, your party is suddenly ambushed by a trio of robots sent by the cops, and this time? They succeed in capturing you. Your party is now sent in chains on a hovering satellite, as you are sentenced to slowly wither away and die in there without any trial of any sort, simply because you went against Mother Brain’s dear wishes...

But, something goes amiss. The sattelite starts to malfunction, and is now set to crash on one of the three planets of the Algol system. And despite you all trying to alter its course, it is too late. The satellite crashes onto Palma - the planet of the first Phantasy Star game - and it is gone.

That’s right! The planet in which many players took the time to save with Alis’s gang, to have a huge dungeon crawling adventure, the planet where you defeated Lassic in a glorious fashion. GONE. In only a few seconds. But... what about yourself? Well, you actually died! But a space pirate wandering close to the crash site pulled out your remains and cloned everyone’s body back to life... which makes you technically not yourself, and also dead, for the remainder of the game! ...May I remind you this game was developed in 1989?

Tyler the space pirate then escorts the zombie party back to Paseo, but not for long - you see, your commander, who hasn’t truly approved of Mother Brain’s actions against your group, allows you access to a spaceship. This is a big deal, because space travel as a whole has been banned ten years ago due to a major accident in which Rolf had lost his parents, and thus, the one stationed in Paseo is the last one remaining on the planet. But sure enough, Rolf takes the opportunity and travels to the ice planet of Dezolis, or Dezo.

And honestly? Even though this next part has nothing to do with the main story, it’s probably one of my favourites in the entire game. In this section, you simply must make your way through an abandoned space station, which has not seen use in years. At first, you’d think it was somewhat related to the spaceship incident, but as you explore this space station, you find a bunch of animals and newspapers lying around. You not only find some irrelevant ads about various products, but also news flash about a horrible gas spreading throughout the station, begging every inhabitant to evacuate immediately, which... definitively implies a very bleak fate to the place and its inhabitants o_o 

And on top of this unsettling setting, this is the first time you get to hear “Silent Zone”, my favourite track in the game. While the rest of the soundtrack is very upbeat, catchy and all around excellent, this track in particular is very... sad, desolate, lonely, in spite of it being just as catchy! It all combines for a brilliant example of “show, don’t tell” that really sets the mood perfectly to me <3

Either way, upon exploring more of Dezo - a frigid wasteland with few inhabitants - the party gets to meet up with Noah, a party member from Phantasy Star I! After reawakening from a cryogenic sleep, he then reveals that unlike Paseo and Motavia, Dezo basically never submitted with Mother Brain’s control and benefits simply because they did not want to live a life without any struggles. Unfortunately, this is also where you learn that Paseo came to terms with this *after* being to MB’s whims and as such, you can connect the dots and realize that the satellite crash was no accident after all... it was all planned.

Noah, however, knows about how deeply MB has ruined everything for the inhabitants of Motavia and thus tasks Rolf with collecting eight legendary ancient weapons all throughout Dezo, located within some ruinous, empty, cold dungeons which make for stunning atmosphere and presence, believe me!

Once that’s done, he then entrusts Rolf with the ultimate Sword and, thanks to kinetic abilities, sends him and his troupe to the space station housing Mother Brain. And once there, for the first time in centuries, a human being has met with Mother Brain.

And of course, the computer scoffs at those rebelling against her. She laughs at how they think they’d want a life with struggles, wtihout comfort, without anyone providing their needs, when work and hardship seems so uninviting on a desert wasteland like Motavia, or a frigid hell like Dezo. And yet, after a (pretty difficult!) battle, you emerge victorious! Or do you?

After the victorious outcome, Noah senses some additional presences beyond Mother Brain’s spot, and urges the party to investigate. And then... I don’t think I’ll even explain it in words. Please watch what happens. It is disturbing.

Yeah. We, the humans, were destroying our planet, Earth. Thus, we escaped through this spaceship to avoid extinction, and found the Algo system. It then, to our species, only seemed logical with so few numbers, to instead slowly weaken the population of all three planets with Mother Brain, making it then easy (although a very long process) to get rid of the population and start anew, even if it meant genocide. What I love about this twist ending is not only how it’s presented: the creepy music, the way you did *not* expect it at all, the number of humans on the screen at once, and so on... but also, how you don’t even know for sure how it ends. You don’t know if Rolf, Rudo, Amy, Kain, Hugh, Shir, Anna... if any of them survived. But it looks grim. It looks like we lost. And it looks like everyone we fought and tried to save... will rot until the final days anyway... Phantasy Star II... is important. Sure, I could talk about how the game is challenging due to how both your party members AND the enemies are very capable in battle or the stellar, catchy, memorable soundtrack...   but its story... is stunning. In 1989, we were still used to princesses being saved by armored heroes from dark dragons. We were used to things going all well in the end. But in 1989, Phantasy Star II taught us many things that would become staples in the future of JRPGs:  Yes, your cherished ones may die with you not being able to do anything about it No, you may not be able to save everyone you’d like to. Yes, your actions might make things worse for yourself and everyone else. No, things aren’t quite as black or white as they seem. And no, you might not always win. Phantasy Star II is a masterpiece. It’s a bit hard to approach this game today, but with a guide, this game is a must play. It’s unique. It’s ambitious. It’s chilling. And I adore this game to pieces. Thank you for reading, somehow <3

[lilyaceofdiamonds]

Is it bad that i’m starting to only get online to play FFXIV when i’m pretty sure my friends won’t be online?

I’m just so damn tired of hearing everything i’m doing wrong.

How do you play a sandbox mmo wrong??

‘You’re supposed to move around the enemy to hit them from more effective attack spots’ and ‘Oh, always wear the best gear you have available’ and ‘You need to do more of the main story’ and ‘You should always do X’ and ‘Most people would get to this part naturally in the narrative but you didn’t because you did things in the wrong order’ and ‘Use these attacks except for when you use these ones’ and ‘Go attack those minions, I’ll do most of the damage to the boss’ and ‘teleporting is quicker why don’t you do that ever’.

My dudes. I told you going into this game that i don’t give a fuck about the fighting and dungeons and raiding. Telling me the whole point of my character class is to move around and attack at ‘positionals’ (whatever the fuck those are) isn’t gonna change the fact that i pick a spot and stand there while pressing the same three buttons. Telling me i’m ‘the only one’ doing the story in the wrong order is Bullshit. Telling me to go attack something else isn’t going to help bc by the time i find the other creature and run over there its already dead by another ally EVERY TIME. I’ll never learn where anything is if i teleport and i LIKE walking from place to place, okay. I’m not in a rush, it’s not like there’s a time limit, damn.

I’m here for the crafting and botanying and mining and looking fucking fabulous in my matching lower-level gear instead of the ugly-ass ‘recommended gear’.

I’m not actually dexterous or sighted enough to be a gamer, guys. Chaotic screens with a thousand things moving are hell, and i can’t even click down on the buttons hard enough half the time to move my character with any kind of speed. I’m not actually going to remember all the things you’re telling me to do when i can barely click on the enemy to attack them after accidentally clicking on my allies every time. I can’t SEE the enemies you’re directing me at before they get taken out, and i got tired of saying ‘i don’t see that whatever-you-said’ after the forth time.

Just let me be a shitty novice, okay.

[bl597]

🍒- heyy:) i’m a gryffindor(she/her), i’m bi, i really like reading, playing guitar, hanging out with my friends, watching movies/tv shows... i consider myself a very creative person and very energetic(?), i’m always up to do something and i love exploring new things and going on adventures! thank u!! and congrats on ur 300 followers i’m so happy for youuu

hey sweetheart, hope you enjoy it!! thank you so much, your support means a lot to me🥺💖

warnings: none, just fluff?? this one is kinda big oopsie, this isn't reviewed bc im lazy, english is not my first language, so I'm sorry for any mistakes!

my masterlist ♡ join my sleepover!

I ship you with... Harry Potter!

you and Harry have quite a taste for getting in trouble

not really getting in trouble, just going on adventures and ending up getting in trouble

its as if you two had a magnetic for trouble inside of you

and that was how you actually met

you grew up hearing about the boy who lived

and how he defeated you-know-who when he was just a one year old baby

and how he brought peace and safety to the wizard world

it was impossible not to know who Harry Potter was

in your first year, the only thing you could hear about on the train were rumors that Harry was entering Hogwarts this year

and everyone was like mERLIN'S BEARD!!! ITS HARRY POTTER!!

and a lot of people were not so discretely pointing at the dark haired boy

or better, at his scar

the oh so famous scar

and you could cleary see how uncomfortable he was with all the sudden attention he was getting

so you decided to let him breath instead of observe his every more just like almost everyone was doing

anyways

you got sorted into Gryffindor!!

and you were so happy bc almost your whole family was from that house

and it was just so exciting!!!

Harry was a Gryffindor too and although you were housemates, you didn't really talk to each other

though you always knew what happened to him bc the news at Hogwarts spread faster than anything

ok so you officially met each other in potions detention:D

you didn't really do anything but Snape just doesn't like Gryffindors

or kids

or people in general

so you had to go to the dungeons after dinner

and when you entered the classroom, you actually thought you were in a regular class bc there were a lot of students?????

you recognized some familiar faces like Neville Longbottom, Seamus Finnigan, the Weasley Twins, Lee Jordan and Harry Potter and two Ravenclaw girls

you suppressed a laugh when you walked past Snape and saw his expression

and then you sat down on the only available place: right by Harry's side

you two made some small talks every now and then and quietly laughed at Snape

and after that night you two became friends :D

the next morning when you were having breakfast at the Great Hall

Harry shyly approached you and you two started talking

qne then he introduced you to his best friends: Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger

you befriended them too yay

okay

so you and Harry always hang out together sometimes

and after a year or two of you two just spending time together

Harry started realising that his feelings for you weren't platonic anymore, he saw you as 'something else'

and he got really awkward (yeah, more than he already is)

and you immediately noticed it bc like???? the boy could barely stay in the same room as you without looking like a tomato and saying the most random things ever???

and you tried to convince yourself it was just something random like puberty idk

because you may or may not had feelings for the awkward boy too

but you didn't want to think about it because you didn't want to feed your hopes bc c'mon

it's Harry Potter, the boy who lived, the youngest seeker of the century

why would he want someone like you?

bc you're amazing and you're the sweetest and a fantastic person who deserves all the love in the world pls don't doubt yourself

and Ron and Mione were so done with you and Harry being so oblivious

so they set up a plan to get you two to confess to each other

it worked and you're now dating :D

Harry always supports you, no matter what

but he wouldn't want you to get involved in the adventures he gets himself into bc they're too dangerous and he would never want you to get hurt especially bc of him :(

he loves it when you read to him while you cuddle in the common room (hes the small spoon and thats it thats a canon)

he also adores to watch you play guitar because omg you're amazing

he always listens to whatever you're talkinf about with a silly smile on his face

because you talk about it with such admiration and with such a beautiful, wide smile that it makes his heart beat like crazy

he's very shy and whenever you held his hand or kissed his cheeks/lips he would be like ohmygODSJDBDOSJDJSKSHDKDLSJDKD inside

which is adorable :((

this little bean is head over heels for you

you two always go on adventures together

and sometimes walk around the castle at night just to have some fun

Filch once almost caught you two lol

and you are the cutest couple in Hogwarts

ugh Harry is so sweet

this got enormous????? sorry kzkdjdkdk

~

I ship you with... James Potter!

you and James boy are the Hogwarts' troublemaker couple™

and everyone knows you two

because you and the boys are always pulling pranks and getting detention

Filch hates you lol

ok so you two actually went on your first because of a sily bet you made to see who pulled the best prank:

if you won, he would do all your homework for a few weeks

and if he won, you'd go on a date with him

guess who won :D

you accepted it as a joke

not really expecting it to turn into something else

but turns out you had a great time together!!

it was a Hogsmead trip so you went to almost every shop there

and he bought you a lot of candies despite you telling him he didn't need to

anyways

after that date, you both agreed on going out together more times

just to see what could happen

and it went perfectly fine

so you started dating :D

you are the cheesiest couple Hogwarts has ever seen

he loves pda

he's always holding your hand, hugging you or kissing you

no matter where you are

James is a very sweet and caring boyfriend

and he always supports you and your decisions

and he would never

i said never

pressure you to do something you don't want to or that you're uncomfortable with

he's a gentleman and wants you to be comfortable around him

you and the boys always hang out together bc you are besties™

you and James use his invisibility cloak to sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night

or to go to the Astronomy Tower for a midnight date

you're always cheering for him during quiddich games

and you proudly scream at everyone around you that that boy with messy dark hair amd wearing glasses flying right up there was you boyfriend

because you're so proud of him:(

he loves it when you read to him

because your voice is so angelic and every word that leaves your mouth is like a song to him

he loves it when you play guitar because you're so talented and he thinks you're so perfect

and he's so in love with you

he'd do anything to make sure you're happy and alright

and he always makes sure that you're getting the right amount of food and sleep that you need

he always tells you jokes because you laugh so hard at them

and your laugh is the most beautiful and precious thing he's ever witnessed

James would do anything for you

i'm not even joking

the little shit would throw himself from the Astronomy tower if you ever asked him to

he gladly never did it because you're not crazy to tell the kid to literally kill himself right plis dont do it

anywAys

James Potter is the best boyfriend someone could ask for

change my mind about it💅

i think I'll stop here

it got way much shorter than Harry's bc i got a little too excited while writing it but yeah whatever jsjskdjdkd

[aenwoedbeannaa]

Friend of Humanity | A The Witcher Drabble

Prompt: “If you could do me a big solid and not do anything, that would be sublime.”  

Summary: You and Geralt go to see Jaskier perform in Novigrad and Geralt becomes incensed when a rowdy theatregoer has the nerve to say something about the Bard’s singing.  

Word Count: 1,760

Warnings: None, just some swearing if that offends you. Also, some minor spoilers for The Witcher 3.

A/N: A quick drabble based on one of these writing prompts was just want I needed to get myself out of my head and back in the mindset of enjoying writing and not overthinking it. Hope you all enjoy 😊.  

“Can’t believe you’ve willingly volunteered us for a night of poetic nonsense,” Geralt grumbles as the two of you pick your way through the crowd packing The Rosemary and Thyme looking for an empty table. The once derelict former brothel has been restored rather nicely. Long wooden tables occupy the large floorspace in front of the stage, where patrons sit crowding long wooden benches drinking and chattering away while a young bard plucks away at a lute singing what are clearly his first works. No one seems to be paying much attention, but at least no one is shouting or throwing bread at him.  

“Oh, come on, Geralt,” you pout, “Don’t you want to support your best friend in the entire world?”

“Doesn’t saving his life on numerous occasions count as supporting him?” he protests, “Looks like there are plenty of supporters here.”  

You roll your eyes as the two of you spot a table occupied only by three men who have clearly been making quick work of gulping down tankards of beer judging by their slightly slurred speech and belligerently loud conversation regarding a recent run-in with the guards.  

“Would you really send me here all on my own?” You blink up at him through your lashes, giving him that look that you know makes him melt and, like clockwork, his expression softens as he resigns himself to his fate for the evening.  

“Well,” he finally says, “I suppose I haven’t heard his latest retelling of our adventures.” A small smile plays on his lips and his eyes flicker with what you know is love. Beneath his exterior, the Witcher really is, as Jaskier once wrote - ‘as simple as a spear shaft, incapable of pretending.’ He could not pretend that he did not care for his friend.  

You grin, “I cannot wait to hear how he saved your skin this time, Witcher.”  

“I wait with baited breath,” he says with an expression of stone but eyes alight with something akin amusement.  

Just then, a barmaid cuts into your conversation to offer the two of you mugs of ale.  

“On the house,” she says with a halfhearted grand gesture that, from the looks of it, was clearly demonstrated by Jaskier to be repeated exactly. He was quite proud of the tavern he and Zoltan have been running for the last months. Zoltan, who has no taste for poetry, takes care of the food and drink. (Even the ridiculously priced wine that Jaskier insists upon stocking despite its clear lack in sales.)

Geralt nods politely and immediately drains half the mug. You thank the barmaid as she heads off and then pick up your own mug to take a long draught.  

“Would you look at that,” you say as you raise your tankard slightly, smirking at the Witcher, “Guests of honor.” You clink your mug against his. He refrains from any reaction save for a small huff that might be laughter.  

As you bring the glass back to your lips, the young bard on the stage shuffles off, making way for none other than Zoltan Chivay himself. The room goes silent at once as patrons turn in their seats to face the stage.  

Geralt can’t hold in a chuckle as the dwarf begins speaking in a grand voice and waving his arms about.  

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, the reason you are here tonight!” A grand gesture. “The fearless bard, the friend of the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, who is here with us tonight!” A gesture toward the place where you sit next to Geralt, who has his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed at his old friend. A soft murmur flows through the crowd as the tavern’s patrons turn in their seats and crane their necks to get a glimpse of the White Wolf.  

“Unmatched in talent, a lyrical genius, and a seasoned explorer of the world, the famous bard - Jaskier!” One final grand sweep of his arm sends everyone’s attention back toward the stage, off to the left where Jaskier steps out from behind the curtain, dressed like a peacock and positively beaming with pride as the audience claps.  

“Here we go...” Geralt mutters under his breath, looking forlornly at his now empty tankard.  

Jaskier, you have to admit, does have a way of commanding a room. The murmers have subsided as the bard begins playing a tune. For many, these songs are the only way they learn of happenings in the world. And, while extremely embellished, Jaskier’s songs ring of truth in a way that official notices and political speeches do not. People want to listen to people like them; people who are not emperors, kings, or queens.  

And so Jaskier begins singing. This particular song, of his capture by the thug, Whoreson Jr.’s, men. Apparently, he sat rotting away in a dark dungeon, until one day Jr. showed up quite unexpectedly to carry him off to Oxenfurt, where he was certain he would be able to talk his way out of captivity. After all, he graduated from the University summa cum laude—the song makes sure to mention.  

You hear Geralt groan, knowing what part of the story is coming next. You can only shoot him a knowing smile and offer him your still half-full mug of ale, which he takes and drinks deeply from.  

And Whoreson’s men,

Those sons of whores,

They escorted me in a hoard,

Thugs and yes-men,

For them I play this unpleasant chord.

Several patrons laugh and cheer as he strikes a chord that would make even the tone-deaf shudder. No doubt most of these men and women had dealt with the man’s thugs. Being one of Novigrad’s four crime bosses had given him immense power and stirred up quite a lot of hatred.  

But apparently, not everyone was so inclined to listen to such blatantly rude remarks about their late leader. In particular, the three men sharing the table with you. In your periphery, you can see one of the men with a tightly closed fist. The other two have their lips pressed into tight lines and are shaking their heads.  

Of course, Jaskier is blissfully unaware of this as he continues on singing about the evils of the old crime boss and telling of how he’d managed to deceive them. 

Just as he is getting to the part of the story where the escort was ambushed by great friend of humanity, Geralt of Rivia, one of the men stands up abruptly, raising a clenched fist at the bard. “You jiggalo bastard!” he yells, drawing the attention of the entire tavern – especially Geralt of Rivia, who looks quite ready to unsheathe his steel sword and start swinging.  

And here you were, hoping for a peaceful night of music. How naïve.  

But you also know that the man is drunk and unsteady on his feet – unlikely to cause any real harm. Being outspoken as he is, he Bard typically draws reactions like this at his performances, and so far it had not resulted in anything worse than him being pelted with bread, half-full tankards of ale, and whatever else the patrons had readily available for throwing. So, you tug on Geralt’s arm, trying to convince him to sit down.

You give him a pointed stare when he looks down at you, hissing through clenched teeth, “If you could do me a big solid and not do anything, that would be sublime.”

Geralt looks down at you, then back at the enraged man, who appears to have run out of insults and half-eaten food to throw at the stage. The rest of the patrons, save angry drunk’s buddies, are watching with wide-eyed curiosity and excitement. Even Jaskier has stopped singing.  

Geralt speaks slowly an evenly, as if slowly unwinding the tight coil of anger inside him – a truly terrifying sight. “Do you wish to say any more?” he asks, glaring at the man who seems to have somehow shrunken at least three inches in height. “Because I would greatly prefer listening to the bard sing, as I came here to do.”  

Several of the guests nod emphatically, considering they’d been left off at a true cliffhanger, not knowing how Jaskier managed to escape, and what became of his companions.  

“The Witcher’s right!” shouts a woman on the other side of the room. “Shut your trap, or get out!”  

The man scowls, clearly not happy about the idea of having been bested by ‘mutant scum’ and a ‘stupid wench.’ Yet, immediately after hurling those newest insults, he cowers, attempting to shrink away from the Witcher, who is now leaning over the table to get closer to the thug. He smiles hideously as he speaks the next words, “Now sir, I highly encourage you to listen to the lady and the mutant, or I’ll throw you out myself. I don’t enjoy when my nights of poetry are interrupted by angry thugs.”  

The man grumbles something unntelligible and his two friends stand up with him. For a moment, you are worried that a fight might break out, but thankfully the men seem intent on helping their friend stumble out of the tavern. The three held the attention of the bar’s patrons as the trio sways and stumbles their way to the door and disappears out into the night.  

Geralt finally sits back down with a huff, draining the rest of what used to be your ale. Meanwhile, onstage, Jaskier is positively beaming, likely already writing a song about the time the White Wolf chased a terrifying, violent thug out of the tavern.  

“Geralt of Rivia, ladies and gentlemen!” the bard exclaims grandly, “Friend of humanity and patron of the arts!”  

Before Geralt even has time to react, one of the patrons tosses a coin in his direction, and another follow suit. For a moment, they all seem to have forgotten about the interrupted story, and one even calls out that Jaskier ought to sing the tune that had made Geralt famous.  

Geralt looks positively mortified, but you pay him no mind. Instead, you raise a freshly filled tankard of ale in a toast and smile slyly at the Witcher as you join in the song—

Toss a coin to your Witcher,  

Oh valley of plenty,  

Oh valley of plenty!

And as you sing, you can’t help but think to yourself how lucky you are to have happened upon this relationship with Geralt, the supposedly emotionless mutant, who despite what the rumors say about Witchers and their supposed lack of emotions, is one of the warmest and kindest men you have ever met.

A friend of humanity.

[killprettymagazine]

Five Reasons To Kill Your Houseplants

There are a few things that you can buy to take your apartment to the next level: matching bookshelves, a bar cart, and a good houseplant, at least that’s what big Plant wants you to think. They may be beautiful, they may be luscious, and they may help cover that stain on your wall that won’t go away, but many houseplants are hardened criminals who want to squeeze every penny they can out of you. Let this be a warning to all would-be botanists out there: kill your houseplants.

1. They Steal Your Breath While You Sleep

A myth often attributed to cats and goblins, scientific studies have revealed that it’s actually houseplants that suck the breath out of your body while you sleep. Larger potted plants like the Mass Cane or Bird of Paradise take small sips of oxygen from your lungs from a distance, but wandering plants like Ivy and Pothos have been known to crawl onto a person’s chest at night and make a meal out of whatever’s available in their lungs.

2. There’s Only So Much Sun (And Plants Are Taking It)

Are you getting enough Vitamin D? If you have even one houseplant the answer is a resounding no. The sun is burning out at an exponentially faster rate, and thanks to needy houseplants that interstellar death is going to happen before we know it. To totally slow the sun’s imminent death we’d have to destroy all plant life on Earth (which sounds great but who has the time), but you can do your part by throwing your houseplants into an incinerator. The sun (and all those babes with bodacious tans) will thank you.

3. Cacti Are Notoriously Violent Offenders

Admit it. Someone either bought a cactus for you because you’re awful at taking care of plants or you bought one because they look cool and you’re awful at taking care of plants. That’s all well and good, but did you know that 73% of cacti have been arrested on weapons charges? After parole many cacti dive right back into a life of crime and many of them are carrying out smuggling and weapons rings from the comfort of YOUR HOME. Are you ready to be an accessory to cacti crimes? Didn’t think so.

4. The Snake Plant Is Not Made Of Snakes

How do you feel about housing and feeding liars? I’m not talking about Steve (who is definitely gambling again by the way), I’m talking about the Snake Plant. The only thing these plants have in common with our slithery, poisonous friends is the way it looks. The green and yellow bands are impressive, but snakes they are not. How great would it be to have three or four snakes flailing around in a pot full of dirt at all hours? You could feed them mice and throw them at people who were giving you grief. Instead you’ve just got a dumb plant on your hands.

5. Monstera Deliciosa Refuses To Name The Guardian Of The Amulet

At night I can hear the Monstera Deliciosa on my bookshelf muttering in an arcane language about the Amulet. It cackles to itself in the language of the old gods, yet it refuses to speak when the sun rises over the horizon. The Amulet must be destroyed lest the world be consumed by an age of darkness, but to do so we must find it first. The Monstera Deliciosa knows what dungeon crevice hold the Amulet but refuses to comply with my demands of naming its guardian, and for that it must be destroyed.

You can follow Jacob Shelton on Twitter and Instagram or read more of his work in Mindfuck or in like every issue of Kill Pretty.

[stronghours]

CUSTOMER SERVICE

E T S Y

Darling Fallon    Sep 3, 2013

Sensational (sin-sational!). i write on behalf of myself (S) and my lover (m). we have been ripped off by bulk-produced molded hoods before and i can only say HAND CUT LATEX ONLY never look back!! worth the money and will eventually pay for itself. neck fit like loving glove and adds dynamic intensifier to breathplay. Lovely proprietor replied prompt when “m” had questions re: breathability (she added extra breathing hole at no extra cost). class acts all around (and not just in our dungeon!) will return for more but “m” needs a break first if u get the drift lol1!! thanks to lady j!

Purchased item: DeMarco FetishWear – Latex Chrysalis Hood (translucent…

3 Helpful

  myMister   Aug 24, 2013

this one writes on behalf and with permission of MISTER. this one quaked with bliss when package arrived. truly awful to behold in the wise hands of MISTER. this one’s neck is small and delicate For His Pleasure and all item adjustments were made to order and did not affect shipping time. if this one could be so efficient For His Pleasure this one would be in heaven on earth. instead, this one is less than a hole. item truly enhanced <O sensation. without a doubt will be used over and over in this household for due punishments of this very worthless one. discrete pgk’ing. thanks to designer J for deepening this one’s service to MISTER.

(NOTE FROM MISTER – WILL PROPRIETER PLEASE PRIVATELY EMAIL TO DISCLOSE IF YOU ARE MALE/FEMALE/OTHER SO “myMister” (this one) WILL BE ABLE TO PROPERLY ADDRESS YOU IN ACCORDANCE WITH ITS FORMAL ROLE)

Purchased item: DeMarco FetishWear – Throttle Collar w/ attached Gas…

1 Helpful

  JulieJuice   August 3, 2013

LOL rip-off!!! cant believe all u ppl sucking this guys dick. says everywhere in product descript. (and you guys reviews!!) that custom sizing is no additl. cost but mine cost more!! only small alteration to titty holes cause of my cleave situation. bullshit. not buying from him again.

Response from J

Hi again Julie. If you check our many enlightening inbox conversations from 7/5-7/16 you will be reminded the additional cost was due to your request of more ring hinge insertions as the standard amount in pattern block “was not bling enough”. Cleavage was irrelevant. Sizing related alterations are always no added cost. Custom alterations requiring additional materials/effort and adjusted pricing will always be discussed and approved on client end before any exchange of payment.

Purchased item: DeMarco FetishWear – Hexagon Restrictor Harness…

HELPFUL?

  HannahCakes!    Jun 1, 2013

Hey Whats Up I’m Caleb (obviously don’t have an etsy) and using my lady’s account. She got the catsuit for my birthday and she looked so sexy like J-Lo or someone. Didn’t want her doin the latex stuff because I thought shed have to shave off all her pubes and personally i like that kind of thing a lot but no harm done. Anyway she was super sexy and the suit thing looked good and stayed together even when we started rockin. To other full bush guys out there if youre girl wants to wear the latex stuff SHE CAN KEEP HER BUSH she just has to use lube to oil up the bush that she has.

Purchased item: DeMarco FetishWear – Domina Catsuit w/ Pussycat Zipper (red…

7 Helpful

  HannahCakes!   3 months ago   Friend   Ignore

Caleb Review

Hi J,

Saw my boyfriend’s 6/1 review and I was like uh ohhh. I asked him to leave one because he went gaga over the catsuit, but I wasn’t expecting all the bush stuff. If you don’t want to be associated with that and want to delete, that’s ok on my end. A little embarrassing! – Hannah!

Reply from DeMarco FetishWear    3 months ago    Friend    Ignore

Hi Hannah. Please don’t worry about it, any positive review is welcome. His feedback has apparently hit a chord with some specific hesitations and concerns buyers have been experiencing but not confiding with me, so I plan on keeping it up for the time being. Enjoy your garment.

  JoeyoftheHerd    3 months ago   Friend   Ignore

Moo-cow snout muzzle thing – (idea i had)

Hi. Is this idea good

Reply from DeMarco FetishWear    3 months ago    Friend   Ignore

Hi Joey. Are you interested in a custom cow muzzle/mask, like the pup play masks on my page or are you just brainstorming for personal reasons?

Reply from JoeyoftheHerd    3 months ago    Friend    Ignore

idk it’s just an idea i had

Reply from DeMarco FetishWear    3 months ago    Friend    Ignore

It’s a cool idea

Reply from JoeyoftheHerd    3 months ago    Friend    Ignore

Thanks man i thought so 2

1234Brett10093456    3 months ago   Friend   Ignore

I REMEMBER YOU FROM RAWHIDE

JULES yes I know who you are and I know your name are you scared yet?? I remember when you used to hang with Roscoe out at Rawhide because Roscoe pretended to hire you because he secretly wanted to fuck and suck you till you cried and I saw all that. I have brown flippy hair, blue eyes and am tall/cut versatile but lean TOP. I know you faked being gay. You heard of bi-now-gay-later but have you heard of gay-then-straight-betrayer (you)? That is fucked up that you still sell stuff but pretend to be a gay guy because that makes your stuff sell better because the gay guys want to fuck you. I know you are faking because my muscle bud Tomas (latino) saw you making out with a ginger chick at the wet bar in Entrance last week. He said it was probably a joke but I know it wasn’t because he said he saw tongue. I wont let you be a breeder without a fight. I am willing to tell EVERYBODY YOURE SECRET. But I wont if you prove to me YOU CAN STILL BE GAY. Im attaching a pic of my cock so you know im not lying and can follow through. I will only believe YOU ARE GAY if we can see each other face/face (i can host only on fri- I have two roommates) and our cocks have to touch and you have to stay hard for at least five minutes while I suck and jack your cock and tongue your balls (shave or dont i will leave that up to you). condoms ok but if you want to be a breeder so bad maybe I will just breed your ass but if youre actually a gay guy you’ll like it and cum thick ropes as I fuck your dirty little slut hole and youll tell me youre a hole while I fuck it with the shiny precum head of my cut fucking cock (7inches erect). you will smell my hole and BECOME GAY again IT WILL HAPPEN  - Brett Costino

  TheSteelyDanMan   2 months ago   Friend   Ignore

Latex & Breastfeeding Concerns

Good morning, J I hope you are well. Returning customer, here. My kajira/wife and I are splinter Gor lifestylers (NOT KAOTIANS) [link] but are currently isolated due to our deviation from standard kajira beautification ideals and the arrival of our first child (girl - Gemma) two months ago. My wife’s submission has usually been expressed fashion-wise in various strict latex outfits, a few of which you have kindly provided us over the past couple of years. Naturally, the arrival of a mini-me results in some changes! My wife, insecure after birth, wants to return to strict full-coverage latex, but this desire is at odds with her physical situation of actively nursing Gemma and we both have worries. Does the constriction of latex effect or otherwise harm milk production, or could secondhand latex exposure harm our baby? I imagine you have catered to many lifestyle situations where this might be relevant so I thought I would ask. Thanks very much. LEO

Reply from DeMarco FetishWear    2 months ago    Friend    Ignore

Hi Leo. While I have catered to many lifestyles, I’m afraid I must exercise discretion in this situation, as it would be on par with giving medical advice. I will say any allergy is a possibility and one should exercise undue care with a very young infant, not just in matters of latex. I highly encourage you and your wife to discuss this with her doctor as frankly as possible. In the long run it might be worth reevaluating aspects of your wife’s submission and temporarily making do with latex pieces that do not restrict the breasts, while nursing is a part of her daily reality (I’m sure I don’t have to tell you examples are available on my page). Best of luck and congratulations on the new addition to your family.

  NoraBarnacle    2 months ago   Friend   Ignore

A sincere offer…

Several months ago, I bought a pair of latex gauntlet gloves from your shop. Since then, astonishing changes have come over me. I used to be high-powered, highly controlled, a formidable woman (natural ash blond, green eyes, 45”-40”-44”) I was determined to keep these feelings to myself, but I can no longer resist, as I wholeheartedly believe your Dominating spirit, imbued in the gauntlets, is leading me forcefully but masterfully into your care. If it pleases you, know I have not touched my aching slit for one month total as I am uncertain whether you desire me to feel pleasure that is not approved by you. There are no images of you on your site, but I have drawn an accurate picture of you in my mind and I know you are the Man that I never knew I was waiting for, the Man who will lead me, the Man who will hold my neck and strike my forehead to his knee in his insistence that I allow myself to be led. When I wear the gauntlets, they are your own gallant hands restricting my weak bones. I can no longer resist. I can no longer resist. I can no longer resist. I can no longer resist. I can no longer resist. I can no longer resist. I can no longer resist. I can no longer resist. I do not desire to resist. Please message back so I can properly present my acquiescence, body and soul, unto you. I squat disgracefully on my plump thighs, full of whorish tremor that makes me unworthy, but still I desire. I will service your home with my ardent hands and service your thick and striving cock with my wet tongue. Respond to this small soul. I submit to your gallant wisdom – A Secret Admirer

  RicoMetals   1 month ago   Friend   Ignore

Redhead Modle in Pic for Serve Her Serrated Corselette

Hey man-to-man who is she. I love redheads. Does she modle for other people/would she modle for my pieces? there’s no head in the pick – what’s her nose situation? we could all do collab and I think it would be hot. Let me kno - RICO

Reply from DeMarco FetishWear    1 month ago    Friend    Ignore

Hi Rico. I have not blocked you (yet) because said model wanted me to reply to you first and inform you, she’s already an established performer in her own right and does not want to model for a guy who “thinks I need some sissy seamstress to pimp me out to shitty welders online”. As I only have basic welding experience, I can offer no further comment or defense on your behalf.

  DerryBerry454   1 month ago   Friend   Ignore

Inquiry re: standard leather sleep-sack dimensions

Hello Miss J, quick question:

I will buy this item no hesitation no delay if you tell me right now about your vagina. Questions I prioritize:

1.     Color labia (outer)

2.     Color labia (inner – aroused)

3.     Clit length in centimeters or whatever measurement is most flattering to you

4.     Range of clit engorgement

5.     Depth of vaginal canal (I will allow ballpark figure as I know not everyone has graded speculums lying around)

6.     Percentage of clit orgasms v. vaginal orgasms – bonus points if you describe uterine orgasm, if that is your experience (no pressure to answer last part, as I understand it is not necessarily vagina-adjacent)

7.     Are you hairy? What color?

8.     When you wash your vagina do you douche or do you use fingers to rub through labia folds and that is it?

9.     Color of menstrual blood

10.  If you wear panties, do you find the crotch of your panties degrades due to PH of your vaginal discharge? (give me the qualities and I will calculate this for you)

While a picture of your vagina is welcome (and will only be for my private use) I really do like gathering these stats (I’m kind of a nerd) and would appreciate as much openness on your behalf as possible and you will benefit too because I’ll give you money for your lovely product. Talk to you soon! 😊

  B O A R D

[RUBBERVALLEY FIENDS THREAD 3/3 2006-PRESENT] TOPICS: 850 POSTS: 10,356

DungeonMaster (MOD 2): Hey people, we’ve reached the end of the summer and you know what that means – Ivan himself of the halls of Rubber Valley presents inaugural post of their annual sweeps week filming extravaganza – first photoset already up and we’ve got the goddamn brilliant LYDIA SUCKS sons! The greatest bitch on the face of the planet almost psyched us out but she’s here she’s low and she’s ready to blow. Vid upload will probably take till tomorrow to render but we’ve got some great pic galleries already. Ivan really spoiling us pigs lmfao. Seeing lots of setup and dress-up and behind scenes stuff for yall candid pervs. We’ve got full body latex and face coverage hoods and I see a breathing tube and the barn inversion setup. Possible inverted ceiling fuck? The boys can dream. Links to download pics results in PERMABAN – only official links to Rubber Valley site allowed, don’t know how often I have to say it. You want to pass ripped screenshots you do that through email *casts pearls before swine*

GOBgobGOB: no pic of lyds upside down yet ☹

LordJim: Not interested until I see Ivan haul out the FuckRacers from two years ago – wonder why he doesn’t bring those around more often? Great view stats on current vids and who doesn’t like a fat ass getting auto-fucked while she steers the go-cart supine?

SUCKPUNTER: lmfao all views are you bro

GOBgobGOB: D I R E C T H I T

SUCKPUNTER: hey lordjim where’d you learn the word supine

LordJim: Yeah “laugh out loud” very funny guys.

SUCKPUNTER: did you learn it at college

DungeonMaster (MOD 2): Lydia looks gr8 folks. Queen pristine and ready to cream. SUCKPUNTER – chill out because I’ve got my eye on you. Don’t take the bait Jim. You’re like thirty.

SUCKPUNTER: at least I don’t get off on bitches doing the pinewood derby

LockSTOCK2FUCKINGBARRELS: LYDIA!

GOBgobGOB: LYDIA!!!

McLovin: LYDIA LYDIA LYDIA

TheWorldofMartinAmis: Goddess. Wish she’d get her boobs done though.

LockSTOCK2FUCKINGBARRELS: same! I’ve been waiting for years for her to get into xtreme body mod. Right up her alley. If she’s at EXXXOTICA EXPO next year I’m going to try to get her meet and greet and ask. I know tattoo guys who’d pay HER to give her first tat.

McLovin: Lydia wouldn’t go. She’s like indie transgressive.

DungeonMaster (MOD 2): nice to see you again lockSTOCK. I see your POV but Lydia has several interviews where she says most of her viewers see her bod as a clean palate in the art of pain – as in, wounds have to go away in order for us to appreciate a fresh ruining ; ) tats and huge implants are a little tougher to work around. Anyway in my mind you can fix bad tits but you can’t fix bad attitude

ThatOneFootGuy: id suck her feet

McLovin: woah fuck 4th latex pic in dressing series with her mouth open and her eyes shut – who the lube guy with his arm right down her front?

SUCKPUNTER: lol hand clear to her pussy and hes not even hard faggot

McLovin: scope the ginger amazon in the background with camera – new girl? Don’t recognize. Didn’t know Ivan was bringing new people around this year’s sweeps.

LordJim: I wondered too when I saw. I’m sure DungeonMaster mod understands if I copy/paste following from Ivan (no pics, text w/actress info):

Newcomers are always welcome in RUBBER VALLEY (especially if they’re lovely, and especially if they’re ladies!) and this old goat is pleased to welcome DOMME LUX, our friendly neighbor down south in that little town called Chicago. Mysterious as she is alluring, you’ll see her shining light sampling tidbits of delight off our Valley Girls throughout the uploads this month (or even taking a crack at a couple!) We’re just getting to know her, but I have a feeling she’s a generous gal at heart as she kindly offered us the services of her Personal Valet, Jules DeMarco, who himself spoiled us all year with devious latex devices for our steadfast daring dollies after the unfortunate 2012 passing of our beloved torture designer Merrick Marvel (memoriam post 03/04/2012). Check out Jules’s Half-Bag Breast Mummifier in scheduled post 7/22 (Heather Bunny in the inverted Wench Wrench) the diabolical Arachnae-Hood (Lacey Jane, spinning in our trusty Landscape(her) Rolling Pin 7/16) and the Double-Fuck Full Body Boa Binder with eerie inflatable bubble hood (Lydia Sucks, finale post 7/31, don’t miss it, SUBSCRIBE). I must confess, we took advantage - the poor fella ran himself ragged helping us with film prep all week. So as an apology we let him get up close and personal with Rubber Valley’s reigning heroine LYDIA SUCKS fitting her in a custom four-limb black latex catsuit with half-face hood, made especially for her brave beautiful bod. He takes a good long time greasing her up before Ivan and Barry get her hoisted and joisted and in her best bitch-bat position among the rafters of the exalted Rubber Valley barn, where we leave her to squirm in terror! (but let’s get real – what scares Lydia? We’re wracking our brains!) Uh-oh, is Domme Lux looking jealous in the background? Is she plotting a little comeuppance for our Lovely Lady Lydia? Only one way to find out – SUBSCRIBE!

DungeonMaster (MOD 2): Np lordjim, if you hadn’t posted I was going to. Looks like we’ve got fresh meat in the valley.

TheWorldofMartinAmis: very pretty girl, but always bummed when a new one turns out to be top. Call me old fashioned, I come to the Valley for slaves.

SUCKPUNTER: firecrotch

GOBgobGOB: brb too busy crankin it. milky gingerbread titties come to daddy

McLovin: @TheWorldofMartinAmis, Ivan always has at least one femdom around. Room for everybody in the valley

LockSTOCK2FUCKINGBARRELS: holy shit I know that guy.

SUCKPUNTER: lmfao faggots know faggots

LockSTOCK2FUCKINGBARRELS: no for real. His real name is Jules Marinelli. I worked with him one summer lifeguarding beaches for the park’s district. Our boss found his website where he sells his sex stuff, and it was this whole big thing. Found the kink club Entrance through that (check it out if you’re in my hood ever – huge, clean, not too much gay shit, great ladies of all stripes hanging around, but limits on drinking if you’re trying to access certain levels). He’s bi. He’s either secretly Domme Lux’s slave or Domme Lux is his slave and it’s mega on the DL because it’d hurt her career if it got out she could ‘verse. There’s all this gossip.

SUCKPUNTER: bi guys r fags

DungeonMaster (MOD 2): SUCKPUNTER – that’s strike one. lockstock – not deleting your post because from what I can see JDM doesn’t/isn’t acting in explicit scenes, but let’s cool it with doxxing info. Looks like he’s had an experience with that before, and as a small business owner myself, I know how it can suck. We aren’t gossiping high school girls. Settle back and enjoy what Ivan gives us.

GOBgobGOB: *sees dudes in the chat and stops jacking off*

LockSTOCK2FUCKINGBARRELS: NP mod, feel free to delete it later before it causes problems.

TheWorldofMartinAmis: going back to previous discussion – don’t think a breast job automatically constitutes body modification

DungeonMaster (MOD 2): think about it martinamis, it’s a slippery slope – you want to see some swollen battered fish get destroyed, or a fresh natural girl get destroyed?

SUCKPUNTER: i am not a faggot and a whore’s a whore and im here to see whores fucking destroyed

GOBgobGOB: *tony soprano voice* she was a HOOOOER

SUCKPUNTER: fag or cunt all whores get fucked

LordJim: Mod, step up. This isn’t going to get better. With all due respect

SUCKPUNTER: fag or cunt ALL WHORES GET FUCKED

DungeonMaster (MOD 2): yeah, already done. That should be the last of him. Don’t know why I expected that situation to turn out differently.

  FROM: lydias-verified@terrorproductions.com

TO: JulesDM86@gmail.com

Subject: Debrief – valley week

Jules,

As discussed, attached is current info for my old webmaster service from when I had to run my own fansite. Decent price and decent vendor system. Can only be an improvement on what you have now. That is not an insult, but I know it sounds like one. Stay with me.

[link] [link] [link]

And above, the top three most trafficked boards I’ve found following my own career and the rubber valley gang. We’ve caused quite a stir already and its only July 15th. I wouldn’t count on this causing an uptick in your business, but I think you know that. The standard gentleman at home spending twenty bucks a month for guaranteed links to a woman being fucked inside out while wearing a sensory deprivation hood simply doesn’t translate him to spending 100-200 dollars, contacting a seller, taking measurements, and going through the effort to order he and his special girly the hood itself. But I know you believe you’ve chosen your life the same way I believe I’ve chosen my life and won’t whine. I will say, if your ego is bruised, that your clothes are wonderful. They feel maybe half like death. I’ll wear them again and again.

On a funnier note: I have accounts myself on all the above message boards and post semi-regularly. It might amuse you to do the same thing, but you need to be careful regarding your identity. Feedback from viewers is never relevant, but it needs to be pure (don’t ask me why – my brains are fucked out). I won’t tell you who I am, and you won’t tell me who you are. Maybe we’ll find each other.

I wouldn’t tell your Cathy, since some sensitive (if inaccurate) information is flying around. Your instinct towards privacy, while cute and old fashioned, is an apt instinct. Looks like the good people of Chicago can’t keep their fucking mouths shut. Will you be able to find a straight job if your work now goes up like a dead dog’s gut? Don’t despair. Your nice long cock dropped so well down my throat while your Cathy beat my clit with the edge of your belt (nice touch – whose idea was that?) so while you might not get another chance to perch in a lifeguard’s throne, you might very well have a future in film. You’re vigorous, discrete, disciplined, clean, and a cutie-pie. Have your Cathy make some films of you alone or you two together. It’ll excite her, so you have no choice but to be excited yourself. You’re excited reading this. You believe you chose this.

Anyway – Cathy! Don’t be insulted on her behalf. I loved playing with you both. She’s kind and a lot of fun, which are virtues I still let myself appreciate in others. Let her know I appreciate how she let me use you. She’s a good girl and has a good future in store, especially with her personal valet running her life. Pick her outfits, pick her makeup, pick her clients, pick her laundry soap – is it already like that? I want to be buried alive, but you want to be buried in chores. Please dream big, Jules.

Rubber valley is where I have the most fun out of all the shoots I have in a year, but I really was lucky that you two showed up. Poor old Merrick Marvel (not even that old – colon cancer). But out with him and in with you. I enjoyed our river talk and I felt very safe in the car with you at the wheel, though I know I tormented you a little (but I’m pretty sure Cathy helped you out later with that – will you write back to me what she did to you, and if she let you come?) At one point you were with Ivan in the garage, and I tried to have a little talk with her about oblivion, but she either understood my point and got scared, or simply didn’t understand. It’s unfortunate, kind of soul-sucking, how our dominant “loved ones” transform into necessary evils. Adjust the tube. Grasp the handle. Move the thigh. Use the vocal cord to form the order. But what do they know? I never knew how to explain.

I’ve attached some personal pictures of me. I like knowing that you have them. I won’t contact you again except under strict business purposes, so let me sum up. Serve Cathy well. Don’t let her get bullied. Flourish creatively. Keep that belt. Fuck as often as your body commands you to fuck (if I suspect that sometimes your body is Cathy’s body by proxy, then this number will double, perhaps triple, but the choice is out of your hands because she owns your cock). You have a lot of growing up to do. Don’t despair. More to come.

We won’t see each other soon, but we’ll see each other again. Ciao! 

I expect improvements.

XOXOXOXOXOXOX

Lydia S

[gothicfury]

Maouju de oyasumi

Sleepless Princess in the Demon Castle.

Episode 1 Sleepless Princess of the Castle 眠れぬ城の姫

Nemurenu Shiro no Hime

review and spoilers

Genres: Comedy, Fantasy, Magic, Shounen, Slice of Life, Supernatural

Disclaimer: There will be a lot of Lol.

Lol. Let's start with that, this has to be one of the funniest and cutest anime that I've seen for a while aside from Overlord.

It's a tale about Princess Aurora being abducted by a Demon and placed in a Demon Castle where it's incredibly boring so there is nothing to do but sleep, but she can't doze off because she finds many obstacles along the way, It is after all a Demon Castle.

So the focus of the story is the Princess's quests in trying to find a good night's rest.

When she first tries to snooze she finds out that she cannot doze off because of her cheap pillow, it then becomes a mission for her to find things to aid her in her sleep.

This is where the teddy demons come in to bring her food, she sees the knife and fork from the platter that they brought, and akin to a murder movie she menacingly races her knife, ready to stab these cute teddy demons.

The teddies get scared but luckily right beside them lay a cute little green hairbrush, ergo instead of opening them up for their stuffing, she just brushed off their teddy fur, which the teddy Demons thoroughly enjoys, and for this reason, they become her minions who give her the dungeon keys to escape when she needs to, in exchange of forever being groomed. lol.

Her next undertaking was to collect things to make the pillowcase, she starts running around the palace stealing things leaving the demons hilariously worried and confused, making them think that she had escaped.

At first, she steals a furry-looking hedgehog's hair which they call a Quilladillo, then she rips off the cloth from the curtains and uses them as a disguise, tricking a headless knight into giving her rare herbs from the treasure room, which she mysteriously pulls off. She laughs while leaving the knight farcically bewildered.

She goes back to her room with her obtained materials to construct what she desired. She made some soft yarn from the teddy's fur by spinning them by hand, then she sews the herb-dyed curtains with the hedgehog's hair as a needle to make a pillowcase then she filled it up with her fluffy stuffing. Alas! her Soft Princess Deluxe pillow is complete. A game-like frame jauntily appears saying her Quest is complete making us, viewers, proud and giggling at the same time.

She hugs it and immediately feels the difference, she starts to feel lethargic from all the running around that she made, and finally she is able to fall asleep.

Next, is The Demon King finds out that the Princess had escaped. He appeared frightening at first but he actually turns out to be a funny guy and decides to have a talk with the Princess about her actions.

But when The Demon king along with his minions tried to confront her they found her sleeping peacefully emanating the peace she feels with everyone so they ended up staring at her for a few seconds and felt as if it was just a tragedy to wake her up. The demons just suggested to just have a talk with her tomorrow instead, To which the King agreed by comically walking away.

They briefly show the Princess castle along with the residents and the hero worried for her contemplating if she is in a horrible state.

The scene ludicrously moves to the Princess waking up satisfied from her long power nap, but seconds later she finds out she has sheet marks on her face and marks on her forehead from wearing her crown since she wore it to prevent her bangs from moving.

Mortified, she now decides to make a headband from the pillow remnants but she needs tools to make something cute, emphasis on the cute.

Inadvertently a demon with scissor hands come in and she focuses on the scissors as if in a trance, paying no mind to whatever the demon is saying, coincidentally some of his scissors fell, she then proposed to exchange her crown with the scissors, to which the demon happily accepted Thus she was now able to make her soft cute crown headband, Alas! The Congratulatory Quest Complete Screen appears again. Hoorah! for the Princess!.

And now the Princess moves on to a new quest, by a stroke of luck, a Demon passed by with a soft shining cape. She then prepares her scissors for the pursuit to find Luxury Sheets. She calls her teddy demon minions by clanking the brush to her dungeon cells iron bars, with the dungeon keys at hand the small demon teddies fly to the Princess with their small demon bat wings blushing with excitement.

The castle rings of snipping scissors sound followed by screams, The Princess was hunting down cloaks. Everyone was in a panic haze.

Finally, she sees it, but she finds that it wasn't a cloak instead it was a silky ghost shroud that was alive and can talk.

This is the part where you cover your mouth because our Hime apathetically says, "But I have no need for the head and arm."

Then proceeds to cut off its head and arms, killing the ghost shroud much to his dismay. This scene will get you laughing so hard, as his friend screams his name in terror whilst he dies... "Ghost Shroud!" and to top it off she leaves the demon traumatized.

Another quest complete, she gets a Celebratory "Excellent work!", from the narrator. The Princess then Enjoys herself by diving into a sea of her sheets enjoying the silky wonderful aura of the cloth she had murdered until she falls quiet slumber.

The King angered, concludes to talk to her again, but just like the other night, they find her sound asleep again and they just didn't have the heart to wake her.

Meanwhile, The hero in the Princesses' kingdom went on an exploit to find her and talked about fighting demons near the wind fortress but it was to no avail.

The Princess was now having a hard time because there was an increase of snoring demons in consequence she still can't get some shut-eye even though she made a pillow and sheet. She summons her Teddy Bear demon minions again and is determined for a quest to find a new place to sleep in; The pursuit for a comfortable bed.

The Princess finds herself lost since the castle is huge, she now sits atop of chests for treasure loots in the noble armory. She tries her luck and opens one of the treasure chests in hopes that she can salvage things that she requires. Two items fall out of a box, a talking diamond that she accidentally trips on and a shield with tornado wind which she was supposed to tumble on yet subsequently the wind catches her. She figures out that the wind was cushioning her and is quite comfortable and cinches to take it but it's too big so she uses the talking diamond to violently bash into the shield so she can take out the important part, all while the diamond was screaming in pain and disagreement.

Meanwhile, the King has a conversation with one of the demons about the importance of the shield stating how rare and valuable that item is, all while our Hime ferociously clobbers it in the background.

She was able to take the orb where the wind came out but she passed by a lava room, and accidentally trips on a blob and falls on the pool of hot lava and dies, while demons watch frantically from afar.

She gains consciousness but without control, she found it calm and relaxing, and though she found a good place to relax, she later finds out that she was revived by a cleric, and what she was lying on was a crude casket and was mortified.

Later on because of her genius she resolves the casket was closed she would get the shut-eye that she desperately yearned for. She saw some of the parts were rigid and sorts out that it needs to be smoothened, which funnily she sees the cleric horns and looks at him mischievously.

The Princess then forcibly uses the cleric horns to sand the sides of the casket while he frenziedly argues. Realizing next that it needs to be shiny, she grabs the blob that she slipped on earlier and uses it to shine the casket. In the background, you can hear zombies and demons trying to stop her asking for mercy, begging her to not do that to the blob because the blob will, die, well because it's alive. lol.

But our Hime did not listen, instead, she finished fixing her casket and is in awe of her creation, she placed her magic sheets, soft pillow, lied down inside, covered the casket, and finally, she's able to attain a quiet stupor, triumphant she falls into dreamland.

To which the last commendatory Quest Complete appears, and the narrator says, "Achieved peach and quiet."

It ends with one of the cutest ending themes "Gimme!" by ORESAMA

And just leaves you feeling cute and happy,

In conclusion, this was a really funny anime, I highly suggest you watch it. It's reminiscent of Akazukin cha cha at least in my experience. I will tell you that it falls dangerously near the kid's genre because of how kawaii it is, but I doubt it because of all the violent murders our Princess has committed.

If I will rate it, I would have to say this is a seven out of ten bunnies.

Enjoy and Thank you,

Chotto Matte,

Mat

#Maoju de Oyasumi, #Sleepless Princess in the Demon Castle.

#Sleepless Princess in the Demon Castle.

#Nemurenu #Comedy, #Fantasy, #Magic, #Shounen, #Slice of Life, #Supernatural

#Anime Nemurenu Shiro no Hime

[barrendome]

the 2b2t survival guide

are you planning to play on 2b2t? have you been playing but can’t seem to get out of spawn? or have you been waiting 12 hours in queue to no avail?

in that case, have i got some stuff for you! heres a handy guide about how to actually play, and some tips to help along the way!

step one: preparing

you can just hop right in and go, but it is smart to know a bit beforehand.

know what you're getting into. the server has no rules to it, so you just have to expect a fuckton of disgusting shit, slurs, etc. just kinda accept that, and ignore it.

get a hacked client. sure, you can play on vanilla, but doing that will make your life harder. the best client to use is impact, but if you really need to you can download wurst instead.

make a plan. although this is optional, its smart to do. you can just wing it if you wanna, but it’s helpful to have a goal for what you wanna do in the server.

step two: queue

queue is basically inevitable, but there are a few things you can do to make the wait less painful!

decide if you want priority. priority queue is a godsend, it takes 30 min at MOST to join the server! but on the other hand, its 20 dollars per month. if you’re planning on playing for a long time and dedicating lots of time to playing? get priority. if you just wanna check the server out? don’t worry about buying it.

join when nobody else would. the best times i’ve found are near 1-3am, or on a weekday in early mornings. you’ll still have to wait hours, but not as long as you would otherwise.

pray for a server restart. when it restarts, turn on auto-reconnect (if you have that) or just keep on trying to connect. you’ll get onto the server extremely quick if you’re able to join right after a restart.

do something else. multitasking is the best way to wait. leave queue running in the background and check on it whenever you can, but fill your time with other stuff. i usually draw or watch videos when waiting!

step three: common sense

you gotta use normal common sense, but also server-unique common sense.

remember: there are no rules. people are going to kill you. people are going to grief you. people are going to say gross shit. the worst kinds of people are here on the server, you have to accept that.

what you build is gonna go. no matter how nice it looks, how far out it is, how tiny it is, whatever. its how 2b2t works. when you build, you have to remember that its going to get destroyed one day.

you aren’t safe. no matter how far away you are, or how nice that one person is. don’t get lulled into feeling secure, stay on edge. better safe than sorry.

enderchests are your friend. you’re definitely gonna die, several times, so keep any important things in your enderchest. for more space, put everything into shulker boxes and store the boxes in your enderchest. this is why silk touch pickaxes are something you’ll need: because your enderchest is the only safe place for your items.

signs are the best communication. carry a sign with you, and read all the signs you find. its not important, but its fun to read what people write, and its nice to make your own mark on the world with just a simple sign.

don’t trust anyone. or at least, be cautious of everyone. if you run into someone, expect deaths, and be cautious even if they give you stuff.

you aren’t special. oh, so you watched a bunch of fit videos and know everything about the server? no you don’t, shut up. you’re gonna spam things in chat and grief a bunch of builds to become a notable player? you’re gonna become a minor annoyance, shut up. you read this guide and now know how to become the best 2b2t player ever? my guide is shit, shut up.

everyone hates new players. don’t openly say you’re new. just stick to yourself for the first while of joining.

step four: chat

so you’ve joined, and you connect to see.. the constant spam of chat.

hide the chat. go into settings, and turn chat off. usually chat isn’t worth looking at, except for warning about server restarts. if you wanna keep chat on, just turn down the opacity.

use /ignore. theres bots constantly flooding the chat, so if you wanna keep chat on, spend time quickly ignoring all the bots.

don’t ask for help. you do not wanna let everybody know you’re new, and if you don’t get ignored, people will send gross shit or fake help instead.

if you have a question, ask google. like the point above, asking for help isn’t a good option. search stuff up on google or the 2b2t subreddit before asking chat. and try not to ask obvious questions either.

don’t get into arguments. don’t rile people up or argue, its kinda risky, and again some bad shit will get sent your way. its really not worth it. if you get angry at some gross shit people are saying, just /ignore them, because fighting them will make you just a laughing stock.

step five: escaping spawn

i know what you’re thinking, “tumblr user barrendome! stop rambling and just tell me how to actually PLAY now!”, and yeah yeah, okay, i will.

turn your hacks on. what i’d suggest is turning on storage esp, player esp/tracers, search (search for blocks like melons, crops, wood, etc), and things like that. also keep xray and freecam ready, and make sure you set keybinds for those.

collect, store, die, repeat. i never did this, but my boyfriend did, and it worked incredibly well. he would collect as many resources as he could, store them in an enderchest whenever he saw one, and then either die of hunger or something else. he’d repeat this process until he had enough stuff in his enderchest to get him out of spawn.

save your hunger bar. try not to run, and try not to jump. its hard, but its important. most deaths are from hunger in the first while of playing, so just try not to get hungry. for this exact reason, the main thing you’re looking for is food.

don’t go into the nether right away. spawn nether is impossible to get out of, so travel on the overworld for about 2000 blocks, and then its safe(ish) to go into the nether.

20000 blocks is the safer zone, but its still spawn territory. outside of 50000 blocks is when id consider making a base if you really need to, but try to go much farther if you can. 

step six: just outside of spawn

so you’re out of the major spawn area... now what?

find food, farm food. get as much food as you can, thats the most important thing to do at this moment. make sure you have as much food as you could need, and store some in your enderchest.

make a temporary base. you can make a small house, a hole, or even just a dirt hut. just make sure you have a place to store all your extra stuff, and a place to stay for now. (sidenote, don’t put a nether portal right beside your house.)

find a bed. later on, beds aren’t a big deal, but at first they definitely are. try to find or make a bed, and set your spawn somewhere. i’d suggest hiding the bed somewhere near your temporary base, but don’t make it visible.

get geared up. use your xray and get some diamonds, look through dungeons for enchanted books, make yourself tools, etc. its best to get what you need now that you’re out of spawn.

go fishing. you can get food, enchanted books, xp, etc. going fishing is actually super useful. the autofish hack is your friend right now. but don’t go afk when fishing, you can get kicked for it.

remember the nether highway myth. if you have almost nothing, and are travelling on the nether highways, there’s a good chance a high-level player could stumble upon you, take pity, and give you stuff. remember not to trust anyone right away, they could still end up killing you. but there is still a chance that being on the highways could get you everything youd ever need. again, though, make sure to put everything in your enderchest!

step seven: planning and playing.

im ready! ..what do i do now?

make a goal if you haven’t already. if you wanna be a nomad? plan where you’re gonna wander. if you’re gonna make a huge base? plan where to build it and go out there. if you’re gonna go visit monuments? figure out which ones and their coordinates, and start walking. gonna join a group? figure out which one would be safe and fun to join, and try to get in.

get as far from spawn as possible. unless you wanna stay near spawn, try and get 100,000 blocks away or further. and if you really wanna keep a base intact, don’t stay near any of the major highways.

have fun! as rough this server can be to play on, theres a lot of cool stuff you can find, and its important to find joy in the chaos.

and that’s all for now!

i may have forgotten things, so feel free to send me anything i missed! but i hope that everything i was able to write down will be enough to help anybody that wants to join 2b2t.org, the oldest anarchy server on minecraft!

[casualcatte]

Quiet, almost breathless humming eased through the quiet of the library accentuated every few heartbeats by the slither and tock of a book being slid home into its place on the shelves. Upon investigation, the source of the sounds was a viera of indeterminate age, but the vivaciousness in her movements and her countenance made her appear young and eager. Large, sky blue eyes scanned the shelves with a quick, knowledgeable air before making a small “aha!” sound and sliding another book home into its place on the shelf. Several books needing to be returned home sat on the table behind her.  Long, honey blond hair framed her face, one hand sweeping it absently back as she picked up another book. However, as she did so, she took notice of the new arrival and gave a bright smile. “Oh, well, hello there! Is there something in particular I can help you with?”

Without waiting for an answer, she pirouetted with such fluid agility that bespoke of, perhaps, a previous life as a dancer. Another book slid home on the shelves as she awaited an answer. Picking up another book, she held it in her hands as she once again looked at the visitor with that enormously inquisitive gaze. “You seem like you’re looking for something.”

More beyond the courtesy snip!

Notable Affiliations

These can be used as points of contact.

♦ Hyzenthlay is a librarian with the Cabinet of Curiosity in the Crystarium. 

♦ She's a known archaeologist and ruin explorer, a number of the pieces she's found on display in various places.

♦ A fair hand at tailoring and weaving, some may know her from her sensible clothing pieces upon various persons in the Crystarium.

♦ She possesses the Echo. Only to facilitate travel for her between Norvrandt and Eorzea; she's no epic hero and has no real control over such powers. Echo memories are ONLY at other players' discretion. For those who do not engage with Echo-enabled Characters, she's simply a far-traveler from Ilsabard.

What I'm Looking For...

Mostly just friendly folks to Roleplay with.  I'm not particular as to character race or background, though their interactions with Hyzenthlay and how she reacts to them will ultimately determine their fate.  I'm wholly an "organic" roleplayer; I've never liked the idea of scripted relationships or allegiances, rather letting them grow as they will based on what happens in roleplay.

Long-term, short-term, I'm perfectly content with whatever time a person has to donate.  I'm more than happy to play a bit part in plots and personal stories.  However, don't expect me to play a villain, that's not in Hyzenthlay's personality.  (Nor am I fond of playing the villain, because I'm bad at it.  )

What I'm NOT Looking For...

♦ Drama Llamas. I'm not looking for drama or people who can't keep Characters separate from Players.  What happens in roleplay is just roleplay; it has no regard or reflection on you or me as people behind the keyboard.  Please, keep that in mind. 

♦ Exclusivity. I don't expect to be anyone's sole source of RP and enjoyment, nor do I expect them to be mine. I enjoy having a robust friends list and being a social butterfly.

♦ Passive Roleplayers. If you're the kind of person that always has to be approached, has to be given stories to write, or has to be prompted constantly to RP, then I'm not the roleplayer for you. I enjoy active, engaging characters and players who have as much interest in creating the story as I do. 

These are all deal-breakers.  I don't have the time or energy these days to cope with people that can't respect these boundaries.  

I am OKAY with...

♦ In-character Conflict.  Again, see the IC=/=OOC caveat.  Just because my character doesn't like or get along with yours doesn't mean I dislike you on a personal level.

♦ In-character Dungeons/Questing.  I thoroughly enjoy mixing PVE and RP!  I like using all of the world instead of just the city or specific taverns

I'm NOT OKAY with...

♦ Roll-based Combat.  I find it boring.  I'm sorry!  That's just how I feel.  If I want to play roll-based combat, that's what my D&D nights are for.  

♦ Excessive gore, violence, sexuality, or horror.  I may be older in age, but these "mature" themes aren't something I enjoy roleplaying with any regularity.

If you have questions or would like to add me to your Friends List, please don't hesitate to contact me -- or leave your in-game contact below and I'll contact you!

About Me ♦ I’ve been roleplaying for almost 30 years now. I love discussing roleplay ideas and implementing them. I’m not worried about “spoilers” or ruining immersion by discussing and planning storylines OOC. Planning ensures that everyone has a chance to contribute ideas that are fun for *them* so everyone has a good experience.

♦ I tend to be patient with people of all roleplay styles and experiences. Just be courteous if you need to AFK mid-RP for an extended period or reschedule the scene.

♦ I am a 40+ year old woman with severe Rheumatoid Arthritis. This means I may need to cancel plans last-minute depending on my pain levels/fatigue or I may need to leave mid-scene. This is NOT an indicator of interest – or lack thereof – I have a disease that needs careful tending and I have to listen to the needs of my body before anything else.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I'm usually online from 8pm (Eastern) until whenever I decide to log out for the night.  I don't have a day job anymore, so I keep pretty strange hours.  The latter half of the week, I tend to do Real Lifey things (D&D and Hubby Date Night, woo!) so I can be pretty hit-or-miss since things come up spontaneously.

Availability & Contact Information

Timezone: GMT/UTC -5 or Central (US) Time.

I’m mostly available from 8pm to 8am, Sunday through Tuesday. Beyond that, my schedule gets pretty unpredictable and difficult to manage.By preference, I enjoy in-game RP, but if scheduling is an issue I don't mind using other methods of play like Discord or even Googledocs, whatever works best!

Discord: writerholic#1384 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rp_aficionado Tumblr: https://roleplay-aficionado.tumblr.com/ Pillowfort:  https://www.pillowfort.social/roleplay-aficionado