#i think twitter will mostly just be for stream announcements at this point

[chasetrickery]

Oh yeah i made a bluesky recently btw, its funny i got it setup before the most recent exodus of people from twitter

[cattimeswithjellie]

Stream Recap ZombieCleo, 6-23-24

((Did I jump the queue with this one and stay up especially late finishing it specifically because DocM77 asked on Twitter for someone to go over the stream with a fine-toothed comb and give him the salient details? MAYBE. I just hope I can figure out a way to get it to him so he sees it. Anyway, it's stupidly late, have a stream recap in which Scar's audio is a main character that never appears.))

0:00 Cleo opens the stream on the Hermitcraft server. She greets the False raiders and the chatters who were already here, even as she types to False in the game chat. She asks False if she is tired, False replies that she is boiling. Cleo suggests living in Scotland, where it is cool in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Cleo asks Chat if they are good. She herself thinks Chat is great because they are here. Cleo does not know if False shows appreciation for her chat enough, but promises that False does really appreciate them, probably. Chat appreciates False. Ren enters the server and gets an OMG HI from Cleo in chat. Cleo and Ren agree they need to play Plate Up again soon. Cleo will also drag False along on this Plate Up adventure, whether she wants to or not.

3:00 A chatter plays hydration check, so Cleo takes a drink and gives chat a bonus posture check as well. A chatter asks which is Cleo’s favorite punctuation mark. Cleo says it is the interrobang (‽) because it is great. The plan for today is to try and do some planning with Chat’s help, because Chat is smart and Cleo hasn’t got a plan. Cleo is also very concerned that Chat engage in self-care activities. They go full-screen vtuber to lead a mini stretching session and tell Chat they are important and loved.

5:10 The plan-planning process requires some signs. Cleo goes to get some while talking about how nice it is to live in Scotland where it’s not so hot. They thank subs and donos and try to make heart-hands after a nice message, but realize they have not put on their hand sensors. Maybe later for that. A chatter plays the Hotdogs On Your Face song. Mrs. Tango raids into the stream. Cleo goes full-screen again to welcome the raiders and give them the same niceness and self-care message. Cleo is feeling especially nurturing today and Chat is vibing with it.

8:20 Cleo stares at the sign she was about to place down and write the plan on, but she has forgotten it. She thanks subs and donos instead and remembers the plan. The plan is to plan out the city and mark places for Shrubberies, which must be pronounced in Knights that Say Ni fashion ((a reference to the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)), and other important landmarks. NJCoffeeJunkie raids in, but Cleo’s not doing the nurturing thing a third time in ten minutes. A chatter plays sour jelly bean.

10:30 Cameron, Cleo’s lead mod and partner, raids in. Cleo gives in and gives the full-screen nurturing self-care speech again. Cleo finally writes “Granery Food Storage” on the sign, declaring that she is not a teacher anymore and doesn’t need to spell. She shares the plan for the granary building and says hi to Scar in game chat. More thanks to subs and donos. A chatter suggests Scar has a power beyond this world, Cleo wouldn’t go that far but does agree that Scar is pretty dangerous. ((In Season 9, Joe Hills made it a point to greet Scar whenever he logged on, because otherwise Scar had a tendency to drop by his build and murder him. This may have had a lasting effect on Hermit behavior patterns.)) Cleo has a video coming out tomorrow that also involves Skizz and Joel, and it’s going to be fun.

14:20 Cleo shows off how they have spawn-proofed their front lawn area, mostly using glow lichen, which they insist must be pronounced with a short I sound, as in “finger-lickin’” because otherwise it sounds stupid. A chatter announces they came out to their parents and shouts out the gays. Cleo shouts out the gays, lesbians and all other groups and wishes everyone happy pride. They trail off when they realize that Ren has made a stone… “upside-down T” in one of the marked-off building squares. Cleo takes down the definitely-only-an-upside-down-T and replaces it with a sign declaring it the medical tent/emergency room area. Chat is not sure it was just a T. Cleo marks another square for Delivery of Supplies, right in front of the mailbox.

17:00 Cleo makes a big square for the Tavern, which will also be the town meeting hall. When the drama happens (and she doesn’t mean Theatre Kid Ren), they can come in here and plan. Cleo thinks about what else is needed. A boat dock maybe. Chat agrees that if D&D has taught them anything, it is that a tavern is the best place to make plans. Cleo agrees. Chat also suggests an armory. During this time, Cleo also seems to perceive that it is evening and tries to sleep. It does not work. Eventually Cleo realizes it is still daytime and is a bit confused. Chat suggests that night is an illusion. Cleo thinks about the best place to put an armory without blocking the sight lines of the little town. Chat suggests a school as well, but a town on a war footing does not need a school. She sketches out an armory and puts up a sign for where the docks will be.

22:50 Cleo starts trying to sleep again. She taps the bed for about 25 seconds before finally being allowed to sleep. A kitchen tent might be good on the hill, so that gets sketched out as well. A retaining wall for the hill will probably show up at some point. A chatter asks what era the village is supposed to be, Cleo says it’s going to be Magipunk. There will be motorbikes and magic robots. There might be some ruins as well. A chatter asks about the pile of Ren and False heads in the middle of the build area, Cleo says that’s Ren and False being Ren and False. A chatter suggests adding a watchtower, but that would be on top of the hill and Cleo has other plans for that area.

28:30 A chatter says that Scar needs help. Cleo says that if Scar needs help, Scar can ask for help. It is not polite to go into other peoples’ streams and ask for help for other people. Chat suggests a junkyard or scrap heap, but Cleo thinks this community is very into recycling and mending because they haven’t got much stuff. There will be a bunch of barracks tents, those get squares. Cleo needs one more big building. Chat makes a lot of suggestions. Cleo has run out of yellow wool to make plan squares with. They head to the shopping district.

31:40 Cleo hits up Wool Street and buys four stacks of yellow wool, then goes home. Wool Street does not have an ender chest, a clear violation of the Cub Rule, but Cleo pays anyway. Chat is becoming extremely distracted by whatever is happening in Scar’s stream, to the point where Cleo’s mod bans the word “Scar” temporarily. If Scar needs help, Cleo reiterates, Scar can speak to her himself. ((If this were a video recap, there would be a smash cut here to Scar’s stream, where his profound audio issues are currently causing everything he says to turn into an unbearable auditory hellscape until he is reduced to pantomime and beatboxing just to interact with his Chat. But Cleo has no way of knowing this.))

34:10 Chat finally comes up with the good suggestion of a campfire area in the center of town. Cleo agrees with this and decides a longhouse to go with it will do the trick. They begin sketching it out when Scar puts “cLEO!” “where are yyou?” into the chat. Cleo tells him they are at their base. Chat is extremely riled up by now, telling Cleo to run, to escape, pain is coming, prepare your ears. Cameron has caught wind of what is actually happening and tells Cleo it’s not good. Cleo does not know why they should be expected to run from Scar.

35:30 Scar approaches on foot, wearing his Poe Poe skin and hat. He doesn’t say anything. Cleo says hi to him several times. He continues not to say anything. Cameron lets Cleo know that Scar’s mic is looping all desktop audio. Cleo tells Scar that he’s wonderful and she wants him to know that, but the whole no-sound thing is actually extra-creepy. She suggests that she could make things much worse by going and getting her horns.

36:30 Ren flies in, playing one of his own horns. He is clearly well-informed about the situation and intends to make it as terrible as possible. “Burning in my ears,” he sings, “the mic is echoing! It is absolutely pain, in the earholes!” Scar flies away. Cleo admits she can’t hear Scar at all, but the song has her laughing. Ren says that he and his stream are watching Scar’s stream and it is _wild._ Cleo’s Chat is in emoji-only time out right now because talking about other streams is both against the rules and all anybody wants to do. Scar flies back to the waiting pair and Ren immediately begins chanting the beginning of “My Name Is” but he doesn’t actually know the words and mostly improvises. Cleo congratulates Scar on getting her stream put into emote-only. Scar does not respond ((partly because everything Cleo says is being shredded into the nonsense avalanche of sound looping on Scar’s stream and partially because Scar also hasn’t figured out how to unmute his mic in his current OBS configuration)). Scar flies away again.

38:00 Ren and Cleo discuss the wildness of the current situation. Cameron knows what is wrong with Scar’s audio equipment, but there’s nothing they can actually do. It’s not as though they can reach through the computer and get into Scar’s audio equipment. Scar flies back, having successfully unmuted at least, and yells at them to help him. Cleo reiterates that they can’t, while Ren begins beatboxing. Cleo tells Scar he needs to reboot, but there is no way that is getting through overtop the terrible audio mess that Ren is creating. “If I say something I just echo!” Scar yells. “Echo, echo, echo!” Ren starts beatboxing again, because he is terrible. Scar flies away again. Cleo tells Ren he is mean. Funny, but mean. They are both laughing pretty hard.

40:10 In the spirit of attempting to actually be helpful, Cleo begins writing Cam’s suggestion about the problem into game chat, but is interrupted by Scar flying back while singing “Have you heard the take of Mr. Kirkland and his four-pound pie?” Ren adds backup vocals. Cleo is trying really hard to impart some actual information but it is totally buried under the audio barrage that is completely inaudible on this stream. Cleo tells Scar that he is the best, he has completely derailed everything. That isn’t bad, it’s just funny. Cleo spends a lot of streams just listening to Scar.

41:50 Ren apparently closes or mutes Scar’s stream and heaves a sigh, saying he really feels like he’s been somewhere else. Cleo bets Scar wishes he were somewhere else. A chatter plays sour jellybean. Cleo says the funniest part is when Scar unmutes suddenly to say something. Ren begins playing his guitar over his mic. “It’s getting WORSE!” Scar yells suddenly and flies away again. “You’re a mean, mean man,” Cleo tells Ren. The two of them agree that this is pretty satisfying karma for all the trolling Scar has ever done to them. Cleo shows off some of the planning they have been doing with all the wool squares. Ren looks at the 3x3 square marked off for a tent and suggests dubiously that it is a small space for a tent. Cleo assures him it’ll be fine, it’ll be made out of pants. It takes Ren a minute for figure out that the tent will be an armor stand sculpture, not a build. He thinks it’s cool.

44:30 Scar returns once more! Ren and Cleo sing to him. He flies away again. Ren turns on the stream and reports that the audio is definitely not fixed. He tells Cleo that when Scar comes back, they need to hit him with some Bohemian Rhapsody. Cleo agrees, so long as Ren handles the high parts. Ren wants to do the low parts. They practice. Cleo does have a little uncertainty on the high notes and neither of them are sure of the words, but they do a credible job. Chat is very enthusiastic about it.

46:00 Scar comes back again. His audio is still not fixed. Ren and Cleo sing to him. Chat speculates on how many horns could be made just from the shenanigans of the past thirty minutes. They forget the words and jump ahead to the “MAMAAAA” portion. Cleo decides to actually be helpful and tabs out to start sending information and screenshots from Cameron to Scar that might help fix his problem. While Cleo is tabbed out, there is no visual indicator like a menu screen but the game does freeze, leading to the strange phenomenon of Scar audibly being killed by a drowned, complete with hitting and screaming, while appearing completely fine and motionless onscreen. Chat is confused.

47:30 Cleo tabs back into the game to find the drowned attacking them now. They scold it for being on land and kill it, then survey the bits and piece Scar left scattered around as Ren tries in vain to describe the complete audio chaos that is Scar’s stream. Cleo spots Scar’s _enormous_ Poe Poe hat and starts laughing. Neither of them have any inventory space to pick up any of the scattered belongings. Ren makes a chest and does his best while thinking about other songs that he can loop into Scar’s audio purgatory. He asks Cleo if she knows a song that he describes completely as “Dadadadada, dadadadadada.” Cleo does know it enough to dadada along. ((Chat identifies the song as Sandstorm, by Darude.)) He collects up the Poe Poe hat and puts it on. The effect is striking, especially considering that his skin already has glasses. Cleo is impressed. She tells Ren she’s never said this to anyone before, but he should be a member of the Poe Poe.

49:50 Scar returns, naked but for his spare wings. He asks timorously if he can have his things. It seems possible for a moment that Scar’s audio issues are corrected, but no luck. Ren throws back all of Scar’s items, then absolutely engulfs him in the monstrous entity that is the Poe Poe hat. Cleo dissolves in laughter again. Ren starts in with Sandstorm. Cleo tells Scar that she doesn’t mind if he kills Scar. Scar says Ren might have his axe. Ren does, and throws it back while still “dadadadadada”-ing. Scar sets off several flight rockets, apparently just to add to the chaos Cleo cannot hear. Cleo tells Scar he is awesome, but whatever he is going through, she cannot relate. It is funny that Ren is being the menace right now, she says, because usually that’s Scar’s job. There’s a moment of silence, then Cleo asks Ren how long he thinks it’ll be before Scar mutes them. “Let’s keep complimenting me,” Scar suggests instead. “I like that part.” Ren starts playing guitar again. In chat, Cameron is clearly itching for a way to actually reach through the computer and fix Scar’s audio equipment.

51:50 Scar thinks he’s figured something out. He’s only getting one echo now, which is a big improvement from the four or five he’s been hearing. Cleo asks if Scar’s done the troubleshooting Cam suggested. Scar says he tried, but he’s not seeing any of the stuff Cam said he should see. Ren whispers to his Chat that he thinks they muted him. Cleo says they did not, they’re just ignoring him. Cleo reminds him that they are trying to be nice to Scar, which is quite difficult. Ren doesn’t know anything about that, he is trying to make loop tracks.

52:20 “Oh, like this is your Woodstock,” Cleo realizes. Ren agrees. “What about wood?” Scar asks. Cleo sighs and asks why Scar is like this, but Scar has clearly gotten an immediate dose of karma in the form of an innuendo that will not stop looping in his audio feed. He regrets everything. Cleo asks with some disbelief if he actually understands what he just said. Scar says he does because it won’t stop repeating in his ears. If he hears one more thing about wood he’ll go crazy! Cleo has had an epiphany. Could this be Scar’s conscience, a force that simply repeats the exact things he says back to him?

53:00 Cleo tries to help Scar disable desktop audio. This helps, but does not eliminate the problem. Cleo and Cam believe it is desktop audio and Scar is just not finding the correct source. Ren begins chanting the “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck” rhyme, because he is terrible. Scar gives up and leans into it, telling Ren to do the woodchuck thing again. Clearly those two are hearing a lot that Cleo is not hearing right now.

54:50 Scar is silent for a moment, then comes back and says he may have figured it out. “Oh?” Cleo asks. Scar asks if hypothetically, someone were to have three open sources of their own stream in the background on their desktop, could that cause this. Cleo answers “yes” in the carefully controlled voice of someone who wants to say so very, very much more. In the chat, Cameron has been reduced to ellipses. Cleo reminds Scar that the very first thing they asked him was if he had his stream open in the background. Scar admits he had three tabs of his stream open, but they were minimized so he didn’t see them. Apparently he had some trouble linking when he was trying to tweet out his stream start, and that eventually led to… all of this. Chat is melting down. Ren tells Scar “You are easily in my top ten favorite humans.” Scar cannot hear him because, on top of everything else, he is working with a broken pair of headphones old enough to be starting intermediate school in the fall. Ren types it into the game chat.

56:00 Scar adjusts Ren’s audio and tells him he has pumped him up so he can hear better. Cleo says Ren does not need pumping up, that Ren comes fully inflated at all times. Chat wants a clip of that immediately. Scar claims that nothing like this has ever happened to him before. Cleo says at least they know what the problem was now: ineptitude! Ren admits that he gave up on helping immediately and embraced the chaos. Cleo tries to say that they could help a little by passing along Cameron’s advice, but is interrupted by Scar audibly dropping his headset. Chat is just having the best time right now.

57:20 Cleo asks Scar if he’s going to get a new headset. He says “not yet” in the vocal tone of a talking dog who knows he is the one who ate all the ham. She asks why and he explains he hasn’t decided what he wants yet, and also he hates spending money. Exasperated, Cleo reminds him that this is his JOB. Scar snicker laughs and says he was thinking today that he probably does need to have a burial for this headset. He can bury it in the garage. She suggests “burying” it with a ten pound hammer. Scar says he gets sentimental and weird and very specific things: his sunglasses and this headset. He’s had the headset longer than he’s been on Hermitcraft! ((Scar joined Hermitcraft in Season 4, which started in early 2016, meaning that the headset is a minimum of eight years old and probably older.)) Cleo is appalled and insists that this proves the exact point she was trying to make. At some point the headset was good but now it is ancient and diseased and needs to be put out of its misery. Scar insists that it’s not diseased because he has replaced the ear cups several times. A brief discussion of the Headset of Theseus ensues before Cleo rejects the whole premise.

59:30 Cleo points out that if Scar’s headset is over ten years old, he is going to hear _so much_ better when it is replaces. Scar insists that it’s a good headset and gets very nostalgic about how many Hermitcraft meetings have come through that headset, but Cleo would rather not. Ren suggests that Scar needsto take the headset in a field and deal with it Office Space style. ((A famous scene in the movie Office Space involves smashing a printer to bits with a bat.)) This actually seems to appeal to Scar. The three also discuss the merits and risks of a viking funeral for the headphones. Scar likes the idea because it involves a flaming arrow. Apparently Scar did some archery when he was young and even got a couple bullseyes. His archery career was ended when his brother broke the windows on the shed with an arrow and got the bow taken away. Ren says he is scared of bow and arrows because of a time in boarding school where an older boy bullied the new kids by shooting an arrow straight into the air and making them run away from it.

1:02:00 Scar shoots an arrow into the air to illustrate the story. Ren says that brings back painful memories, yes. Scar tells them that this is the first arrow of the new HotGuy bow, because he fell into lava again yesterday and lost everything. Chat is still pretty hung up on Ren’s story. Cleo sighs that at some point they are going to just have to give Scar some kind of frequent flier discount at the bookshop. Scar clears his throat and says it’s nice that Cleo mentioned that because there is a situation where some snails stole all his diamonds… Cleo asks if he stole books from the shop. He insists that it wasn’t stealing because he is going to pay it back! He paid half at the time and the other half is on layaway, which in his mind apparently involves getting to take the items before you have finished paying for them. Cleo insists that they can’t get a new trophy with layaway diamonds!

1:02:40 Scar and Cleo find common ground over the fact that they are both currently the plaintiffs in server lawsuits. Scar is embroiled in a dispute with some snails and a man named Big Ron who may or may not be Mumbo, while Cleo is suing Doc for killing a pig they had a special emotional attachment to. Cleo’s suin’ papers have been delivered and Ren should expect a subpoena at any point. Ren says he’s not going to appear in court for less than a stack of diamonds, suggesting he is not super-familiar with the subpoena power in general and “things a witness should probably not say” in specific. Scar, confused, asks if Ren is Cleo’s lawyer. Cleo clarifies that Ren is a witness. Skizz is Cleo’s lawyer. Scar is sorry to hear that and offers his condolences to Cleo. Cleo says it’s fine because the other lawyer is Joe. She is also not going to say what she did to the judge. She clears her throat and moves on.

1:03:30 Ren reiterates the fact that if Cleo were to see her way clear to making a substantial amount of diamonds appear in Ren’s mailbox, he might just become a very enthusiastic and helpful witness. Cleo insists that all she really wants is for Doc to suffer. Ren says he just wants to make some profit off the situation. Cleo asks points out that Ren is supposed to be married to Doc. Scar agrees and says that it’s not right to get in the middle between family. He asks Cleo if this is about the pig. “Yeah, it’s about the pig,” Cleo admits, sounding a bit embarrassed about it at this point. Cleo is suing for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

1:04:10 Ren informs Scar that there was A MURDER. Scar knows about the murder, it’s tied into his investigation and he has zero leads and he doesn’t know what to do because Doc is expecting results! Cleo is confused until Scar clarifies that as a member of the Poe Poe, he is charged with investigating the diamond ore thefts that were the instigating incident for the pig murder but he has zero leads and he doesn’t know what to do. Ren immediately tells Scar he’s barking up the wrong tree because Ren of course knows absolutely nothing about the diamond snitcher and can be of no help whatsoever. Scar finds that immediate reaction very suspicious. Cleo doesn’t know from suspicions or diamond filchers, all they know is that there’s a diamond thief and it caused their pig to die. Ren admits that it is possible that his quick denial might have sounded a bit suspicious.

1:05:20 Ren admits that he was trying so hard to sound not-suspicious that he accidentally wrapped right back around to suspicious again. Scar laughs and tells him he “pulled an Impulse,” referencing Impulse’s frequent behavior from Friday Night Among Us streams. Scar decides that he has a new prime suspect. Cleo is not sure Doc will believe Ren took the diamonds. Ren says he couldn’t have thought of the prank and even if he had, he wouldn’t have the follow-through to actually do it. Cleo thinks about it and decides yeah, Ren probably doesn’t have the energy. Scar laughs and protests that he already used that as his excuse and nobody believes him!

1:06:20 Cleo says it can’t be her because she has no energy or patience to poke Doc and then have to listen to Doc rant on and on about how terrible the punishment raining down is going to be, only to have him never deliver. Ren wants to plead his case some more, but Scar is too busy laughing at Cleo’s declaration. He agrees that Doc did dole out some punishment last season, but that the threats are mostly bluster. He does a very terrible Doc impression. Cleo does another Doc impression that is also terrible but in a different way. Scar goes to sleep and Cleo points out that this area is mob proofed. Ren points out that Scar literally just died to a zombie. Cleo has to admit that’s true, but it was a water zombie. Scar points out that he died and they both just LET IT HAPPEN. Cleo protests that she was tabbed out. Ren says he was too busy looping.

1:07:40 Cleo offers Ren the opportunity to tell his story and prove his innocence. Ren goes back to the distant days of Season 8 when he and Doc were living in each others’ pockets, basically in voice chat all day long. Cleo offers condolences for that, but thinks it might make Ren more likely to want to commit a crime. Ren insists no, the opposite! He offers as character evidence the fact that False won Demise this year in part because Ren decided not to target her at the end of the game and in fact helped her although he had no reason to do so. Ren is very loyal to his particular people, and Doc is one of them, so therefore QED Ren cannot possibly be the ore snatcher.

1:08:50 “So you’re saying it’s False,” Scar summarizes. Cleo agrees that is what they got from the story as well. Ren insists that False is way too busy to be doing ore snatching with all the river building, etc. Cleo agrees that this is true, except that Ren just told them it was False. “Did I?” he asks, bewildered. Scar and Cleo both heard it. Scar says sometimes you just need to stop talking because you just keep digging, a subject he himself is well-versed in. Cleo says Ren is incapable of stopping talking. Ren suggests pulling footage of several Among Us streams to prove something about his character, but Cleo interrupts, saying that if they’re pulling footage, Cleo can just pull the bit showing Ren killing the pig. Cleo corrects herself a moment later to say Doc killing the pig, but Ren seizes on the slip as the reason innocent folks like himself get sent to jail. Chat is going to clip that and then everyone is going to think he’s the pig murderer. The soundbite where he says “I’m the pig murderer” in a low sinister voice probably will also not help his clip issues.

1:10:30 Scar moves the conversation along by suggesting more Hermits as potential suspects. This turns into an incredibly lengthy and wide-ranging conversation that is much more concisely summed up in the Reddit document devoted to it. Cub eventually joins in as well to defend himself from some accusations against himself and to throw out some of his own. Joe comes along as well a little later but is less interested in levying accusations and more interested in litigating the unfairness of the fact that he had the idea to mess with the diamond ore first but someone else ran with it and has caused a commotion that could have been his. The conversation lasts for nearly an hour.

2:06:00 The argument turns to whether or not a sophisticated redstoner would be required in order to snatch the ores out of Doc’s machine without breaking it. ((There was an early belief that Ore Snatch #2 did break the machine, but careful video analysis reveals that Doc simply did not notice the ore when it was first removed and that the machine remained unbroken until later on when Ren and Scar came over during Ren’s stream and Ren poked at it. That is actually how the armor stand deployed and the inventory shifted.)) Most of the Hermits present claim to have not even seen the redstone circuitry in question, so a field trip is obviously in order. They all fly over to the armor trim shop.

2:07:20 Scar plays the Poe Poe Siren horn as they fly to the shop, which probably makes this an official Poe Poe visit of some sort. They land outside the shop and Ren worries about spoilers, but most of the shop has been around for awhile. Scar gets distracted by a wandering trader while the rest of the group goes into the shop to look around. Ren points out one of the circuits where a replaced ore block is still visible, commenting that looking down into the circuitry is enough to make him feel panicky. Cleo looks at the armor stands instead and mostly feels offended. Joe points out that most of the redstone circuitry is inert while the machine is not active. As long as one doesn’t touch a block that is powered or, like, pseudopowered? He cannot remember the correct word ((possibly something to do with quasiconnectivity?)) but as long as someone wasn’t removing a block that powered something, they should be able to do it with no trouble.

2:08:20 Cleo abandons the redstone discussion to fiddle with the armor stands that are particularly offending her. One statue has the arm buried inside the chest and that is just unacceptable. She fixes the armor stand to give the statue a more natural posture. Joe says that surely it’s fine and Doc definitely will not get upset about people adjusting things in this room, of all places. Cleo scoffs and says Doc won’t know. The others begin discussing whether the shop is actually open for business, with Joe deliberately muddying the waters by pointing out that the shop must be open because it has no door or anything keeping people from walking inside. Cleo continues making small adjustments to the postures of the statues and is busy with a fish-headed model when suddenly the alarm goes off. It is impossible to tell from Cleo’s perspective who broke the block that triggered the alarm, but all the Hermits who entered the building are still on the main sales floor when she turns around to look. ((Ren’s POV on this is also useless as he was freecamming into the redstone, but Scar’s stream POV shows that Cub placed a magma block at the top of the front doorframe of the shop and broke it, which triggered the alarm. It’s not clear what Cub was doing, but “being a smartass about the is-the-shop-open question” is a fairly safe bet.))

2:09:10 Ren warns everyone to stay up top as the alarm system is dangerous. Scar immediately notices that there is now a Warden in the depths of the machine. Cleo laughs and reminds everyone to be quiet. All the Hermits mill around on the glass display floor to try and get a glimpse of the Warden. Scar asks why it’s not attacking them all. Cleo suggests that it might be distracted by the noise of the alarm itself. Ren says it’s just climbing the stairs and they’d better get going. The world turns black. The Hermits flee.

2:10:20 The Hermits regroup on the grassy lawn well outside Doc’s shop. Cleo is still laughing pretty hard. Ren says “So yeah, that’s the scene of the crime.” Cub wonders if the wandering trader will be killed by the warden. Scar is worried; that trader has gilded blackstone miniblocks and Scar wants him alive. The Warden does not appear to be making an appearance now that everyone has left, though. Cub, Joe and Scar head back towards the building to see what’s happening inside, but Cub and Scar turn back well before the door, driven back by the obnoxious noises of the alarm. Joe goes straight into the building. Ren speculates why someone would want to investigate now, if not to find better ways to get in later. Scar points out that with the alarm already tripped, it’s basically free game now until Doc resets it. Joe only stays inside for a few moments before coming back out. Scar shoots an arrow at him but doesn’t connect.

2:11:40 Somewhat belatedly, the group starts to wonder what triggered the alarm. Cleo suggests that surely someone must have gone down into the redstone. Ren suddenly wonders whether freecam possibly could’ve activated it. Cub pooh-poohs that idea but nobody else is sure. Ren says it’s not a very good alarm if it can trigger just from a customer entering the shop. ((Ren is acting like he doesn’t know what triggers the alarm, which is strange since he helped test it and should know full well that it is breaking blocks.)) Chat knows that the alarm trigger is breaking blocks. Cub admits he placed and broke some magma blocks. Cleo demands to know whether they can set off the alarm so easily, by just setting down a block and breaking it. They are going to annoy Doc _so much _ with this knowledge. Scar suddenly realizes that this means there is very little effective way to pay for items in the shop, since pulling a wallet from a shulker box, placing it down and picking it up again would trigger the alarm. It is not, they decide, a very good alarm system.

2:12:40 Cub decides he’s going in. The others stay outside and talk about whether or not they were scared of the warden, a bell curve that seems to have a lot to do with how much they played the lower levels of Decked Out 2. Cub types in chat that it’s fine, then flies back and tells them that he did get blasted. “Nice,” Cleo compliments. Cleo is of two minds whether they should all keep their mouths shut or leave some kind of sign at the door for Doc. Scar is worried about property damage, but the sonic shriek does not break blocks, only players. Cleo does like the idea of Doc thinking his alarm caught the culprit, then getting linked to the stream and realizing it is just a bunch of bumbling Hermits. They also think it is funny that now the Glitcher actually can do anything they want in the next few hours until the alarm is reset. Nobody else knows the name “The Glitcher,” or at least they are pretending not to. Cleo consults with Chat and passes along the knowledge that the name The Glitcher was provided to Doc on a sign after one of the ore thefts. Scar thinks that this new name sounds a lot like the work of one Cubfan and plays his Darth Vader breathing horn in an attempt to intimidate him into a confession. It does not work. In the background, Joe has left the group and gone back towards the shop, but drops out of sight at the base of the sand pile and eventually flies back around to rejoin the group without actually going inside.

2:15:10 Cub pushes the Grian and/or Scar theory again, but that’s been discussed before. Ren decides that after an hour and fifteen minutes, they are not even a tiny bit closer to figuring out whodunnit. But there is a warden in the shop now, so that’s something? Scar thinks that a warden has got to be bad for Doc’s business, right? Cleo doesn’t believe that Doc cares at all about the success of his business, mostly because he’s being paid in sand. Doc is just being dramatic. Cub circles back around to “The Glitcher” and the quotation marks around it are audible. He asks if it’s true there was a sign. He and Scar both want to see a screenshot from Chat. Chat thinks Cub is pretending a little too hard.

02:17:00 Cleo and Ren both suggest putting up signs purporting to be from the Glitcher, solely for the purpose of trolling Doc. Scar insists that they cannot do that, he is the investigator and he is supposed to be _helping._ Ren thinks it would be very funny to have a sign reading “Soz for tripping your alarm, -The Pincer” (Or Pincher, it’s hard to say.)) Cleo gives him a sign and tells him to have at it. Scar protests loudly again and says they can’t do that. Ren clearly considers it, but then says he cannot do it either, he is Doc’s husband. Cleo grabs the sign and runs for the shop.

2:18:40 Cleo braves the terrible noises of the shop to place a sign in the doorway reading “LOL, Failed Again!” Ren is right behind her and protests that she didn’t add the part about The Pincer. She agrees she did not, because that is LAME. Scar gets the screenshot he wanted from his Discord chat and suddenly remembers Doc talking about these signs. Apparently Doc saw that there was a misspelling on one of the signs and (in Scar’s words) decided to blame the dumbest guy in the crew. Cub also believes that a misspelled sign points in Scar’s direction. The new sign is not going to serve well as a piece of evidence, given that there is a lot of stream evidence about who placed it and why and when, but Cleo doesn’t care. Doc deserves to be wound up, he murdered Cleo’s pig.

2:19:50 Ren has to admit that even though Doc is his husband, he does have something to answer for when it comes to Pig Murder. Scar is paying attention to his chat for once, he tells the others to hang on because an investigation is taking place in his Discord. While Scar is so ostentatiously distracted, Cleo begins handing out a few judicious gifts of diamonds, though the stream lag inherent in a bunch of hermits together leaves a lot of room for them to steal from one another. Cleo becomes convinced that Joe has become the recipient of diamonds they intended to go elsewhere and begins beating him like a pinata in the hopes they will disgorge. In the background, Scar announces that his chat believes Big Salmon is behind the whole thing, but he has no idea what that means. Joe flies away. Scar swears he saw Grian walking around near Doc’s shop, but Cleo has no POV angle to confirm or deny that. Cameron informs Cleo that Ren got the diamonds and is lying about it. Cleo congratuates Grian on some excellent trolling. They go up to the shop, but do not find Grian. Cleo thinks that sneaking in under everyone’s noses for trolling is huge Grian energy.

2:22:20 Ren finds a sign on the sand store that was not there earlier. “Sorry about your alarm, Scar, Chief Investigator.” Scar swears he did not put it there, and indeed he would’ve had a very hard time doing so because he has been moving and talking with the group basically the entire time. Ren insists the sign is there, and it was even glow-inked. Cub says that must’ve been Grian, so Grian is a suspect too. Even as he says it, Joe throws a handful of glow inks out of his inventory and onto the ground. Scar notices it right away. Cleo points the finger at Joe. Joe says he said ten minutes ago that he was going to put up a sign on Scar’s behalf apologizing for the alarm, but nobody ever listens to him. Cleo laughs and says they love it when a plan comes together, they just wish it was theirs. The others are skeptical. Scar points out that Cleo is really pumping the ego of whoever did this and that’s a little suspicious. Cleo says that if they were the culprit, they would’ve told everyone. Joe points out that Cleo could’ve told everyone and it might not have changed anything. After all, Joe told everyone he was going to place the sign and nobody listened to that! Cleo points out that people actually listen to them.

2:24:30 Scar has a thought, forgets it immediately, then immediately remembers it again. He wants to know why his Chat is so insistent that it is Beef. ((Scar’s chat is very devoted to the Big Salmon Theory.)) Why would it be Beef? Cleo laughs and says every single one of them knows why it isn’t Beef right now, and that Beef is too busy to be getting up to any kind of shenanigans. The others agree and warn Scar not to say anything or else there will be real trouble. Scar suggests that Beef’s gonna have a beef with him, but he doesn’t offer any further hints. ((Cleo is obliquely referring to an announcement Beef will make the next day; he and his wife are expecting their first child and thus Beef has way bigger salmon to fry than moonlighting as the Ore Snatcher.)) Cub explains that Beef was part of the Big Salmon consortium that feuded with Doc and Big Wood at the start of the season, but that feud is pretty much over now. They all admire the Big Salmon floating in the Hourglass.

2:26:00 Scar reports that his Chat has turned around on the Beef question, they believe Cleo that it cannot be Beef. The group goes back to trying to decide who the Ore Snatcher actually is, aside from Joe who is still mad it isn’t him. They each go around the circle and give Scar a theory, but none of them seem better supported than the others. Scar says this is all useless, but he’s going to go get a search warrant to search everyone’s storage systems. Ren asks if Scar is going to search his own storage system, perchance? Scar says he’ll have Doc do it. Ren is satisfied by that. Cleo says that’ll definitely work, because nobody on this server except the culprit has deepslate diamond ore, surely.

2:29:00 Scar’s favorite theory is that it was Doc himself, causing drama by stealing his own diamonds. The others think that’s a funny theory. Joe says his favorite theory is that the Scicraft guys got in touch with Karin, Doc’s partner, and gave her detailed instructions on how to carry out the thefts in retribution for unspecified petty wrongs. Whenever Doc is out of the house with Doccy, she’s sneaking onto the server with his account and stealing the diamonds based on detailed tutorials. Scar loves this idea. Ren asks if that means Karin has to come to court. Nobody is sure if she even has a Minecraft account. She might have to make one to come to court.

2:30:40 Cleo laughs and suggests that this has all been a big ploy to jump-start Karin’s YouTube career. Joe is taken by this idea and suggests it would be an amazing spinoff series, Karin and Mrs. Tango and Lizzie Shadow-Beans, but they’re all thieves. Ren puts forth a suggestion from his chat that maybe it _is_ Lizzie, pranking Doc when Joel is out of the house. Cleo thinks Karin is a more likely suspect than Lizzie. Scar admits it’s unlikely, but hilarious. Cleo says that now it is imperative that some Hermit’s spouse begins pranking the server. Joe says that now that his fiance Badgerspanner has heard that, she’s going to demand to be able to do it. Cleo laughs and points out that Joe will get blamed for that. Joe cheerfully announces that he knows, and it’s just going to make more work for Cleo because she’s going to have to explain to him why, when everybody thought it was a funny idea during this stream. Scar suddenly chimes in with “Desperate Hermitwives” from his Chat.

2:32:50 Cleo wants to wrap up, but she stays long enough to hear one more Bdubs theory. Ren wants to know what better way there could be to get people into the court for lawsuits than by causing a bunch of trouble? Cub likes that idea, but Cleo and Scar argue about whether the court actually costs money. Cub is still accusing Scar though, saying that nobody has more to gain from crimes on the server than the Poe Poe. Scar protests, saying he and Bdubs are the Judicial system and devoted to stopping crime! Because the police are never corrupt, right? The argument continues for a moment until Scar finally says “I touched Doc’s boring machine, I blew it up, I banged it too hard, and I’m not interested in banging Doc’s redstone anymore.”

2:34:35 There is a moment of silence. Cleo announces she is leaving. It’s been a lovely stream, they should do this again sometime never. She flies away laughing and insisting that nobody should ever ask Scar why, because No. Cleo apologizes to Chat for getting nothing useful done, but Chat clearly does not care. Cleo goes back to full screen to thank subs and donos, then says that even though she didn’t plan a lot, she did technically plan the plan, which was the plan all along. So that’s something. Cleo raids into Rendog and (with a brief interruption from Joe and his train whistle) ends their stream.

[atalossofwords]

YOU TASTE THE SILVER - IvanTill WIP (PART 1)

Hi y'all. The brainrot took me with no warning, and I've written 5k for these two just the last two days. I've no idea how much I'll write, but I'm going to squeeze the serotonin for as long as I can lmao

Anyhow, this is a streamer/actor AU that somehow evolved into a sugar daddy AU. Till is a streamer, and Ivan is a famous actor who found him when he was a small streamer and fell in love; he's been sending donations for a good while now, but they've never communicated outside of it.

Until Till opens his PO box and Ivan's need to spoil Till is too much, at least. Then all bets are off, and Till finally starts thinking more about the stranger who keeps sending him gifts. I have a basic outline for it all, but I'm going with vibes first, since I mostly just want to write them and torture Ivan.

I'm going to be posts little snippets of what I've writer so far over the next few days, so please don't be afraid to come to my inbox to ask about them!

This was inspired by this fic! Check it out!

Till wasn't the most famous streamer there was. Not anything near that, actually, though he thinks he does well enough.

He has an established fanbase, almost 500k of them, he's sold some merchandise and collabed with some pretty nice people. He likes streaming, varying between his songwriting and recording processes and any new video game that catches his fancy.

When he started, he didn't think he'd do this for a living. He probably wouldn't be able to afford it, being a struggling musician as he was, for once.

He couldn't blame his comfortable living situation solely on one person, no, since that would be incredibly inconsiderate of the rest of his fans, but this one Navi person definitely funded Till's move from his old apartment mostly by themselves.

Case in point.

NAVI (TILL'S ATM) DONATED $100: Hyung, how's the new house?

Till reads the donation out loud, ignoring his chat going a little crazy over Navi's donation. By now, Till is used to Navi only ever sending messages through donations. He'd be so flustered, in the beginning, and worried enough he almost disabled them. Luckily Hyuna talked him out of it.

"It's going well. As everyone can see, my studio isn't done yet," he says, gesturing behind himself into the empty expanse of freshly painted wall. At least he'd painted it black already. "but the rest is going okay. I'm really sorry for the week I had to take off, everyone."

He quickly scams the chat, his heart feeling warm as all the people watching rush to reassure him that it's not a problem, he should take care of himself, and how glad they are he managed to move from his shitty rented apartment.

"Actually, I have some news for you all." He scratches his neck, a nervous habit, and looks to the side. Hyuna convinced him to do this, so he knows it's something streamers do, but he can't help being anxious about it. "Since I moved, and this place needs some decorations, I was thinking of opening a PO box and doing an... what's it called? Unboxing?"

The chat is going crazy, he can barely keep up, oh god. He feels his cheeks heat.

"An unboxing live and then decorate my stream setup with some stuff I get. Would you guys like that?"

His chat is a mess of "yeses" and incoherent screams, and Till can't help but smile a little. He's got to say, he's looking forward to this.

The following weeks are a bit of a mess. He streams less than normal, still setting up his new apartment; he goes with Hyuna to buy electronics she swears will make his streaming better.

Dewey, his brother, goes with him to buy a new shelving unit and help him set up all his new furniture. Isaac is strangely fixated on saying Till needs rugs and other things, otherwise his apartment is "just a place, not a home, bro", apparently.

He checks in with his PO box frequently, each day more excited by all the packages he got. After two weeks he announces on twitter he'll be closing the PO box in a week since he wants to be able to open all the gifts on stream and he's already got a good amount of them.

The day after his announcement, he goes to pick up any new packages to store in his living room since he doesn't want to burden the office workers and finds a package that makes his stomach twist in itself.

It's a large box, clearly packed by hand instead of the usual post-service stamps. And it has a large sticker reading "FROM: NAVI" on it.

Till doubts anyone would use the name to get his attention, since he does treat all his viewers equally, so this really is from Navi. He wonders what is in it, since Navi clearly has money to spare and intends to spend it on Till.

"It's probably a maid dress." Hyua says, helping him lug it all to his apartment.

"It's not!" He splutters, mortified. Hyuna raises an incredulous eyebrow. "It's probably snacks, or something like that. Navi's said they travel a lot." That, somehow, just makes the eyebrow twitch higher.

"You remember what your viewers say?" She asks, hip-checking his door open. He follows, frowning a little. He always remembers what his viewers say.

Navi, obviously, since they only talk in donations, but also a few other regulars. Kirby has an older sister they're sharing the computer with; Siren started learning the guitar because of Till, and is doing well for himself; Jaewoon – with the username Till's Merch Overlord – draws and is currently suffering through art university, BonBon who has a one-year-old and listens to Till while doing his household chores.

"Yeah? I mean, there's only so many people who regularly chat. And out of those, a good part are my mods." He says, shrugging. He knows Hyuna pays someone to mod for her, but Till didn't think he'd need a mod, since he never expected to get so many views. He kept going without mods for so long that the most active members of the community ended up auto-modding the rest, at which point Till just reached out and asked if they wanted to mod, and now he pays them for it because he felt bad otherwise.

(Of course, Navi isn't a mod. They'd fit Till's criteria, but they never chatted normally, so it was kind of hard to ask.)

"Aaah, you're just too wholesome, heartbreaker." Hyuna says, sighing, the old nickname that still makes Till confused coming out with a teasing lilt. She waves him off before he can say anything, though, plopping the box on the couch and grinning at Dewey. "Hey, this one you'll definitely want to check!"

Till rolls his eyes as his brother 'oohs' and 'aahs' over the package, Isaac peering over with a pocket knife ready to pry it open. When Till mentioned opening a PO box, he insisted on checking the gifts beforehand, just to make sure they were all stream-appropriate and, most importantly, not dangerous for Till.

He was grateful his brother cared, but he was less amused by the teasing and hint-dropping they'd been doing over the content of the packages. He leaves them to it, moving to the kitchen to get some much-needed coffee.

Looks like Isaac bought bungeo-ppang, so Till fills a mug and picks one, nibbling at it and looking into his fridge. He should go buy more food, but there's a seven-eleven right across his street, so he almost never bothers stocking up. He does need to get more tea, though, since he dislikes drinking water, and for reasons unknown, his chat enjoys it when he drinks on-stream.

He finishes updating his list and walks back to the living room, where Dewey has already closed the package back up, but is holding a small parcel in his hand, frowning. Hyuna looks over as he approaches, a complicated expression on her face.

"The rest of the package is fine to open on-stream, but I think this one might be best off-stream." She says, and the lack of any teasing or barb makes him worried. She must've read that in his expression, because she grins. "Do you happen to know why this Navi person likes you so much? I wouldn't mind getting some of these myself."

Till can't help but scowl, snatching the parcel from Dewey's hands. He doesn't know Navi, not really, but they're still one of his first viewers, and they do kind of give Till a lot of money.

"Keep your hands away from my viewers, hag." He has to move fast to escape her grab, which soon develops into a little keep-away with the parcel, soon ending up with Dewey on the ground howling with laughter as Isaac tries to haul Hyuna off him, curled on himself on the ground to keep the parcel to himself.

"Ugh, you brat! Just open it!!" She exclaims, sitting down on Dewey's lap, making the older man yelp. Till huffs, but sits up to analyse the gift.

It seems to be an envelope, like many of the letters he got, but there was something inside of it, making it weirdly bulky. Till folds it open, tipping the envelope so whatever it is can fall on his open hand, and stares.

There is a pair of... earrings, on his hand.

Diamond earrings, to be precise.

That the fuck.

Till stares at it, then peers inside the envelope. Nothing weird falls out, like a damned credit card or pure gold, but a little recipe with the return address of a high-class jewellery store makes itself known. The rest of the envelope contains a certification for the damned diamonds.

Till curls up back again, head in his hands, groaning. His face is so hot you could cook an egg in it.

Navi got him diamond piercings because Till complained once, months ago, that he wanted to switch out his piercings but didn't have the money for it.

"C'mon Till! You didn't tell me you had a sugar daddy!" Hyuna jeers, and from the hiss and yelp, Dewey just dropped her. The sound of them bickering – Hyuna insisting this Navi person has to be after Till's virtue, and Dewey being insulted by the thought of someone going after his little brother like that, plus Isaac googling the store to throw fuel on the fire – is enough to distract Till form his own freakout.

He sits back up, his face still red, to study the piercings better. There are six items in total. One is a simple diamond stud, a tiny and delicate stone, probably for his second hole. A pair of bigger stones, with four elongated asymmetrical spikes, making it look like a shining star, probably for his first hole. One's a series of round stones inlaid together in a belt, forming a hoop, for his helix piercing. The final ones are two silver loops, delicate and silver, for his double auricle piercing.

He thinks if he puts any of those on, he's going to spontaneously combust.

(Later that night, after Hyuna and Isaac went home and Dewey crashed on his couch, Till locks his bedroom door and tries them on. The pair of star-shaped earrings go on both ears, the tiny stud on his left, alongside the helix, which he takes a while to get on since it is so finicky, he pierced it himself with a safety pin in high school. The hoops go on his right, looking a little lonely with just the earring, remembering Till that he really wishes he had money to get a constellation on that ear.

He's wearing a simple white shirt, ready for bed, that slips off his shoulder to show off the simple moon covered by clouds on his clavicle, clashing with the TILL tattoo he has over his neck. He turns this way and that, watching the diamonds shine, and feels almost bad for using them.

Why did Navi send this to him? What did Till do, to deserve something as delicate as this? He's not the kindest of people, he's kind of an asshole actually, all shouting and side eyes. He's not the kind of guy that can properly appreciate such nice jewellery, not the kind of person that should be appreciated like this.

Still. The diamond shines against his skin, the silver compliments his white hair. He takes most of them off, only keeping the simple snake bites. He doesn't want to somehow dirty up the diamonds.)

part two

[alwayslurkinginthebackground]

Press Play - A "Kissing You" Drabble

Pairing: Frankie Morales & f!reader

Warnings: Sharing of insecurities, blink and you miss it possessive Frankie. Truly this is just a boat load of fluff.

Word Count: 1k

Prompt #62 : Caressing your lover’s cheek

a/n: Not SPECIFICALLY saying that the show mentioned in this is TLOU, but if I happen to reference a highly anticipated show premiering at 9PM with an unnamed actor on the same day that TLOU premieres, then it's just COINCIDENCE. Mostly though this is just a self indulgent piece because I am lucky enough to have friends that put up with my shit but I still question it all the time and I'm so glad I found this community that is equally obsessed and where everything goes. I love y'all. Happy TLOU Day!

Masterlist | Previous Drabble | Next Drabble

You’ve spent two years waiting for this day. 

When it had initially been announced that your all time favorite actor would be headlining one of the most anticipated shows of the year, you’d been excited. When the first pictures from the set appeared, just pixels really, your excitement had grown to a frenzy. And now? As you scrolled again through Twitter looking at the red carpet interviews and press releases and the first of the reviews as you waited for the premiere itself? Near hysteria.

You’re sitting on the couch, snuggled beneath the blanket, your filled water bottle and a bag of peanut butter M&Ms sitting on the table in front of you. A specifically purchased box of tissues sits next to them - Puffs, without lotion because no one wants lotion in their eyes when they’re already crying. The apartment smells like popcorn, and when Frankie appears a moment later, bowl in hand, he’s quick to settle in next to you, pulling the blanket over both of your laps. 

“Are you ready?” he asks playfully, throwing an arm around your shoulder. You lean into his embrace instinctively, nerves rolling through your belly. It’s a weird mix - anticipation and nervousness because what if it isn’t as good as you hoped.

You check your phone again, just to make sure it isn’t time yet. Five minutes. “I don’t know if I’ll ever truly be ready for this,” you laugh lightly, “but I’m sure everyone else is ready for me to stop talking about it."

Frankie’s head tilts slightly in confusion, eyebrows furrowing as you turn away from him. You queue up the appropriate streaming service in preparation, avoiding his gaze the same way you hope to avoid the conversation you know is now coming. With his free hand, he reaches to cup your cheek, caressing it as he encourages you to look at him. “What do you mean?” 

“I don’t know, it’s just…” you start, struggling to find the right way to answer his question. It’s always been painfully obvious to you that those around you are quick to be annoyed by your obsessions. It comes across as a bit manic, and to the average outsider who couldn’t care less about most of your hyperfixations, you know it can be a bit much. “Sometimes I just feel like I bombard people with constant chatter about things they probably don’t care about. Or I feel guilty because I’m basically forcing you to like the things I like without ever stopping to ask if you actually want to watch the things I do.” 

You throw your arms against your lap in frustration as if to emphasize your point. The show hasn’t even started yet and you can feel the tears forming in your eyes, a fact that Frankie doesn’t miss as he runs his thumb over your cheekbone to catch them as they fall.

“Querida,” he starts, voice gentle and soothing, “you know I’m not picky about what we watch, and you do not bombard people any more than they bombard you.”

You choke on a sob as you try to respond, “yeah, but no one really cares.” Your brain reminds you that time is still ticking, and you cough as you reach for your phone, checking the time again only for it to remind you that there’s still three minutes left. “Everyone just thinks I’m ridiculous.” 

Suddenly Frankie is holding your face with both of his hands. “You are not ridiculous,” he states sternly, and you’re looking at him now, your eyes locked on his at the seriousness of his voice. “Seeing you light up about something you’re excited about is the most beautiful thing on this planet, and if others can’t appreciate that then fuck them. And I don’t care what it is you’re excited about, even if it’s not something I understand or would ever watch on my own, because all I care about is that you’re happy. Hell, you listen to me talk about flying all day long and you never complain.” 

You shake as your breath leaves your body in quick huffs, and you reach up to hold your hands over his, keeping them firmly locked in place as you lean your head into one of them. “That's different," you insist. "You literally fly helicopters and that’s fucking amazing. This is just a dumb show that happens to star an actor I really like.”

“It is not a dumb show,” he repeats back to you with emphasis. “It’s the biggest fucking show of the year!” That gets you to laugh, and you turn your head slightly to press a kiss to the pad of his thumb. “Sweetheart, believe me when I tell you that I always want you to share your passions with me, because if others can’t appreciate them the way I do, then that’s their loss. So let me ask you again. Are you ready for this?” 

A smile forms on your lips as the excitement takes over in your mind once more, “I’m ready.” 

“Good, because there’s only a minute left.” A glance at the clock on the wall confirms his statement, and he presses a quick kiss to your lips before pulling you against him, settling you so your back is against his firm chest, arms wrapping around your waist. His head rests on your shoulder as you pick up the remote, eager to press play the second the clock strikes nine. 

“And you promise you’re not jealous of my obvious infatuation with a certain actor?” you ask as the last seconds tick down.

His lips ghost behind your ear as he whispers his response. “Never, because only I get to hold you like this. And later?” he continues, tone becoming more possessive, “I’m going to carry you into our bedroom and my name will be the only one on your lips.” It’s a promise you know he’ll keep, and a shiver runs down your spine at the thought. “Now, you’d better hit play before I do it for you, because I can’t wait for this fucking show.”

Masterlist | Previous Drabble | Next Drabble

[northropi]

New Pinned, and on More Or Less Leaving Twitter

As the old one got long-winded (it kind of turned into an explanation for why the policy that broke me was bad at points, this is less of a concern now because it just keeps getting worse), I'm gonna make a shorter pinned now, lasting until I feel a majority of people following my Twitter accounts that have any vested interest in me make their way over here and elsewhere.

As of... A while ago, honestly, I have decided I will no longer use Twitter for art, lore, or videos. I will still use Twitter to promote them, but I admittedly do not anticipate that the platform will persist as a viable place for trans people to exist for very long, so this is mostly to wink-wink nudge-nudge people following me onto other platforms that will house my content for the foreseeable future. I am likely to continue interacting with stuff on Twitter for as long as my accounts remain intact, and may post preview snippets in announcement tweets. At the current time, I do not have a means or intent to monetize, let alone paywall, my content, save possibly through commissions- if you see a post from me that is a preview I urge you to check the thread for the link to the full version. These will not be paywalled for the foreseeable future- I would like to emphasize this as a previous post that had a cropped version of the image and telling viewers to visit the link in the reply. The full version seemed to achieve greatly more interaction than did either the reply with the link in it, or the Newgrounds post it linked to that showed the whole thing. I think people assumed this was a preview for a Patreon post and moved on, it's not. I don't want to get too pushy because personally I hate setting up accounts for things I'm unfamiliar with but, like, it's free, a lot of artists are going there, and Twitter is in very bad shape.

Now that I have you on this site, I urge you to check my Carrd for the others. Tumblr will be mostly for off-the-cuff writing and WIP/concept art, Wix will be more organized, Newgrounds will be finished art, Reddit is there (for now), and DeviantArt will be backup art if I ever forgive them for their little debacle. I intend to eventually start streaming on Twitch, possibly without voice just to get it off the ground in a reasonable timeframe, and posting algorithm fodder to YouTube. I intend to eventually have a Discord but even at my size having a Discord that anyone can just join requires moderation and I can't really do that right now, not the least alone.

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

Of course, I don’t think you’re wrong either! It’s absolutely a matter of preference in the end. The frustration comes from whether it’s a preference based off assumptions or reality.

just frustrating to see wild guesses like “they’re deleting the bridge! I’m so angry!” (they probably just. haven’t coded that back in yet. why would they delete it entirely, some of it is paid?? we don’t know how they’ll deal with it yet) or folks making up a plot they’re going to hate because they didn’t understand the stream and go off very negative hearsay of hearsay and think it’s already all confirmed and such. that was mostly discord and twitter tho lol the tumblr crowd’s been mostly reasonable so far

I also agree ER was very different in nature— but for the devs it seemed to serve a similar role, hence the comparison. A lot of old players also really hated the focus being off the main cast during too, even if Mei and Raven etc were there… but the Flame-Chasers did end up being widely beloved despite the veteran complaints so I suspect the same thing’s gonna happen. And that would be good!

SO basically, I’m not trying to convince you, just have a constructive discussion ?w? I get your point of view and I’m glad if you can see mine, and along the way, maybe bystanders will think it’s not so doomed or something. Absolutely your right to be bummed out by what’s been announced so far but I don’t like being hasty with conclusions…

Also Moon Arc was terrible but still didn’t manage to make me drop the game so how bad can the Mars plot get really?

So they fucked up honkai impact entirely and we are ONLY 3 to 4 updates away from this. Instead of Seele, Fu Hua and other characters taking the lead in part 2 as most have expected, they completely changed the purpose of the game. I haven't ever been so passionate about characters this much it breaks me to have to quit like this. Goodbye Honkai Impact 3rd it was nice while it lasted.

[landinoandco]

Our Love is a Game

Lando Norris x Reader

Request from @jamieeboulos

Warnings: pinch of fluff, cute ending because they are the best

Word count: 2.7 k

Requests are open :)

It all started with a phone number, an innocent exchange that would subsequently change the world you knew; mostly for the better. When you had met Lando, as far as you were concerned you had just met a 21 year old who lived in London and had a passion for cars. How wrong you were. It was only when things started to get serious that he sat you down and explained everything that came with being a formula one driver; more importantly the fandom that he was involved in. 

You had always been a private person and admittedly this piece of information almost broke your relationship but after some time to think you had decided that he was worth it all. You both decided it was a better idea to keep your relationship as quiet as possible - you took every precaution to make sure you stayed a stranger to the fans.

For the past 2 years, you thought you had managed to stay clear of the cameras, the photos and the twitch streams but it wasn’t until a fan-made compilation caused your world to spiral out of control. 

You and Lando were out for a run, it was a part of your morning routine - a great way to start the day and it was time that you two could escape the motor sport world and act like a normal couple without worrying about who might be watching. It was time you both valued and appreciated. On this particular morning, Lando had decided to add to his Instagram story, a short video of his morning adventures - the mist still hanging around the trees as you ran under a heavily graffitied bridge, the early birds song chirping animatedly. At the time you didn’t think much of it as you were too busy tying your hair back up to notice. 

It wasn’t until you got home and looked at his story that your heart stopped, rushing over to the kitchen island you placed your phone down and ran your fingers through your hair. It was a blink and you’ll miss it moment but in the corner of his video - the last millisecond before it ended - there was a flash of a purple top (the purple top you had been wearing) and a swish of brown hair as you chucked it back up into a ponytail. 

“Lando.” You called out, trying to keep your voice as calm as you could. You didn’t know why it had affected you so much - or why you were so desperate to keep your identity a secret. It wasn’t like you wanted to hide your relationship; you were the happiest you ever had been, everyday was exciting and offered new prospects - it was more that you were so used to being in this bubble with Lando, the idea of it bursting seemed rather unappealing. Usually you didn’t care for how others saw you but seeing some of the words that people used to describe him, it would be enough to trouble even the thickest of skins. 

Lando’s close proximity broke your thoughts as he stared down at your phone, pausing on the flash of brown and purple. “I am so sorry, love.” He almost whispered, his eyes widening at his carelessness. He picked your phone up to take a closer look. 

“It will be alright, won’t it? I mean, it’s a blink and you’ll miss it.” You had said, more to reassure yourself than Lando. He didn’t answer, anxiety building in the pit of his stomach because he knew exactly what he had started. 

The fan-made compilation didn’t go viral until a few hours later - as it turns out that flash of purple was the perfect cherry on top of an unappetising cake. Lando was sat on stream - not that this was out of the ordinary and Max had decided to join him, leaving you alone to rewatch Friends for the umpteenth time. 

The pair were sat reacting to videos on YouTube when a clip of a seal swimming into a shoal of fish started playing - the amusing part was that they kept quickly dispersing away from the seal in question. Unsurprisingly, they laughed and Lando spluttered: “This is me trying to find a girlfriend.” What the fans didn’t know was the apparent irony of that sentence and this was what caused the major meltdown; whilst Lando and Max were busy crying with laughter - that chat had filled up with the same link and references to the video you would be redirected through. 

Max was the first to stop laughing, tapping Lando on the shoulder as he pointed at the chat. Hundreds of the same message filled the screen: “That’s not what this compilation shows.” “Lando, what are you hiding from us?” “Lando and Max laughing knowing very well he has a girlfriend.” 

“Chat what on earth are you waffling on about.” Max chuckled uneasily, looking at Lando out of the corner of his eye. Lando sat with a forced smile, his nostrils flaring as he continued through the comments. He could only let out a tense laugh as he swallowed thickly - his throat feeling suddenly dry. You were still sitting, completely engrossed and unaware that Lando Norris was now trending on twitter. 

Max had come up with an excuse to end the stream not long after, Lando uncharacteristically quiet. His thoughts were with you in the other room, had you seen it? Did you know? How would you react? He felt as though he had lost all control, like he had failed you entirely - all he wanted to do was protect you yet he was the one to screw it up. 

“Hey,” Max nudged his shoulder, “It was bound to happen at some point. Let’s go and see if she’s seen it - if not then -” He took a deep breath, “We will watch it together. We need to know what we are working with here.” Lando nodded, unable to reply, his body went into automatic pilot mode and too quickly he was standing facing you. 

Pausing the tv, you looked at Lando - his jaw tightened and facial expressions set as though he had just seen a ghost. “Is everything ok?” You asked apprehensively. 

“There’s something you need to see.” Max reached for his phone, pushing Lando onto the sofa. You offered your arm to Lando, pulling him into a hug. Max pulled up the video and pressed play. A tense atmosphere held the room hostage - breath restricted and gazes fixed onto the tiny screen in front of you. 

It started with a clip from this year’s Goodwood - Lando preparing to drive his last hill climb - you remembered it well, a McLaren hat placed on your head mainly to cover your identity; knowing that there would be more than a few fans around. The clip moved to 3 separate stills - all of you in your McLaren hat. One with your back to the camera, you hand placed around Lando’s waist, the other two a side profile as you spoke to Max. 

The reaction was immediate, you slapped your hand to your mouth, Lando looked horror-struck and Max was watching you carefully. 

The video moved on, this time a clip from the quadrant video where Niran trains like Lando for 24 hours - Lando and Niran were in the kitchen preparing to eat their breakfast when once again the video moved to stills. This time they were of your reflection in the oven - holding the camera. You had thought at the time, if you were behind the camera it would stop every chance of you accidentally being caught on camera. Apparently not. 

The video had moved on again, this time to stills of Lando arriving on track - of course there was no way for you to get on track without being photographed and you were fine with that because you would just arrive after Lando either with Jon or Charlotte. Photos of you arriving with Jon and Charlotte flashed up - with them you were just another member of staff but put with those other stills and it really did yell out that you and Lando were romantically involved. Finally the flash of purple from Lando’s story. The game was up. 

“Oh my-” You stuttered as the video came to an end. Fortunately your Instagram hadn’t been shown but judged by how skilled you knew the fans to be - it would only be a matter of time. “I feel sick.” You admitted, wiping your hands across your face. Lando still hadn’t said a word, staring blankly at the floor. Max was the first to come up with something logical, turning to you and Lando. 

“It will blow over.” He started, “The fans will soon lose interest and move onto the next big headline. We just need to ignore anything we see regarding the subject.” He moved his attention to you. “Maybe avoid social media for a few days. Let everyone cool down -” Sensing your means to interrupt, he held his hand up. “I know you shouldn’t have to and I know none of this is fair but unfortunately people have no boundaries and believe because it’s on social media it is their business. If they were in our situation, I’m pretty sure they would be the first to complain. Let’s just go along with it for now. It will give you time to think about what to do next.” 

Lando cleared his throat, pulling you closer into him. “I’ve failed you. All I wanted to do was protect you.” At this, Max got up and left. 

Shaking your head, you pressed your lips to his forehead. “You could never. Think about how long we kept it secret for. Besides, until we announce or admit anything - it isn’t confirmed.” You offered, trying to soothe his worries. He nodded, still not convinced. 

“Our love is like a game and it’s not a game I enjoy playing.” He croaked, lacing your fingers together. 

“I know, Lando, I know. Let’s let everything calm down and then we can think about what our next step is.” 

Weeks later and it was the night before you were due to leave for your summer holiday. You would be spending it with Lando and some of his friends and family. Due to the current pandemic, it had been so long since you had been away - even if it was a bigger group of you going; you were still looking forward to spending that quality time with Lando. 

Max had decided to take himself and Tom off to the streaming room - leaving you and Lando to sort out the remaining items you needed for your time away. 

“I have a present for you.” He said suddenly, his hands behind his back. You beamed, taking a step closer to him. He shook his head, “If you want it - “ He pointed at his lips. 

Rolling your eyes, you pecked his lips then held out your hands like a child. Lando chuckled, “Close your eyes.” Hands still outstretched and eyes closed, you waited for Lando to present you with your surprise. He grasped your left wrist and attached something to it - “No peeking.” He added. A moment or two later, he dropped his hold of your wrist and said: “You can open them now.” You could hear the smile on his lips. You opened your eyes and looked straight to your wrist - he had given you a pink watch. You furrowed your eyebrows and looked up at him, his eyes twinkled as he then pointed to the orange watch on his wrist. 

“Watches?” You asked, confusion laced your tone. 

Nodding, he said, “We all have matching watches but in different colours - they are for our holiday away.” 

You gave him a lopsided grin and wrapped your arms around his neck, “I love it. Thank you.” 

In the streaming room, Max was having to ignore the majority of the comments because they were all asking the same thing: “Who was the girl from the compilation.” He was trying his hardest to keep moving off the topic, instead showing off the watches - it had been his idea, blue for him, orange for Lando, a child’s watch for Tom and a pink watch for you. He had listed off all of the colours and said who they belonged to: “And then pink-” He paused, mentally face palming. He looked over to Tom for assistance - he hadn’t meant to say pink at all. “And pink is for someone.” He cursed his poor excuse but as if by magic - Lando walked through the door. 

Distracting the stream from his slip up. 

Croatia was a dream come true, the hot summer sun on your back and the time to just relax and recharge. Days spent with Lando sunbathing on the boat or stuck in a tense game of Uno. Not being the only female was brilliant as well - as they got to go off and not feel guilty about leaving you on your own. 

Currently, you and Lando were standing in each other's arms - the afternoon drawing into the evening as the sun began to set. You had your arms around his neck and his arms were around your waist, sighing contentedly you broke the silence: “This is nice.” He pressed his lips into your hair, a sign that he agreed with your statement. In that moment, it was just you and him - everyone seemed to disappear from around you and all worries vanished. It was the simple yet affectionate moments that had always meant the most to you. You felt as though you could relax every muscle in your body, listening to his steady heartbeat - you wished for this moment to never end, to forever be in his arms and to not worry about who sees you there. 

Ever since that compilation had been made, the thought had been on your mind a lot. Were you ready to go public with Lando? At the end of the day you were both happy and surely that was the most important thing. 

Later that night, you were sitting eating your meal when a phone was handed to you, displayed on it was a picture of you and Lando - in each other’s arms. 

Instantly you knew what this meant, looking at Lando you were met with the same expression. He did as well. 

You and Lando had decided it was time to announce your relationship, there was no point sneaking around anymore if people knew and were looking out for you. You had agreed that the best way to do it was if you joined him in a stream, that way they got to know you a bit more for who you were. 

“Is it ok to feel as nervous as I am?” You asked him, pulling up a chair beside him. He was setting up the stream, two mugs of tea placed in front of you. It seemed completely unnatural to sit facing the camera. 

“I mean, this is kind of a big deal so yes I would say, it’s completely natural for you to feel nervous.” He reached for your hand, rubbing his thumb over the back of it. Nodding, you took a deep breath. 

“Ok. I’m ready.” You said, your heart beating at a million miles an hour. The corners of his lips turned up, leaning in to leave you a kiss on the lips. 

“I love you and I’m so proud of you.” He admitted quietly, as though you were the only person in the world, his eyes flickered with complete adoration. 

“I love you too. Now, shall we start it?” 

Lando went to press the start stream button but paused. He turned back to face you, his eyes wide and offered an apologetic smile. 

“What did you do?” You asked, a smile toying at your lips as you had an idea of what it might have been. 

“Stream, meet my girlfriend.” 

He had already started it...

[enduracarrotchips]

YouTuber AU

Hello welcome to Dating Scandal but with Twitter Involved (nightmare)

A little exposition here: 

Link, Zelda, Sidon, Revali, and Riju are the most popular group of youtubers on the internet and have a huge fanbase that likes to theorize, draw fanart, and write fanfiction about them. Disclaimer, I don’t actually interact with real-person fandoms myself lol there’s just too much potential for drama and misunderstandings & they’re always bound to end in a dumpster fire but that is sort of what this au is about so.

Impa, Mipha, Daruk, and Urbosa are family friends that appear in a lot of their videos/streams. 

(This is an art blog I swear)

enter vidcon 20XX

Link: 

blows stuff up/sets stuff on fire with a side of cooking vids and gaming

most are filmed outside, he does those challenges where you try to cook stuff with limited ingredients/materials

has the largest fanbase of all of them, but not the most…intimidating.

does a lot of collab videos, mostly with Impa, Daruk, and Riju because they have similar interests/channels, but Zelda appears in his videos and is seen filming and the stans read too far into it

simps. i’m pointing at you.

Most popular videos are “shield surfing on rock!—how I broke my leg” “can Daruk eat Impa’s motorcycle?” and “how to inhale ranch dressing.”

Twitter handle is @ arsonistslullabye because he’s a hozier fan

45m subs

Zelda:

theories, analyses, conspiracies, and the occasional e x p e r i m e n t

she once got link to eat a frog for 50 bucks.

most people argue that she’s better than more popular YouTubers because she actually has quality content to give to the world and she has a lot of defensive supporters

She used to get a lot of hate before Urbosa spoke up about it and scared the bejeezus out of everyone

has an actual posting schedule

“Happy Sunday everyone, it’s Zelda Hyrule and today we will be talking about cryptozoology and why blupees exist, you cowards.”

Twitter handle is @ zeldaofhyrule and she is pan. just so you know. One of those calm extroverts that mystify me to this day.

18m subs

Sidon:

fashion/life hacks. Like gourmet troom troom but if they were real people.

Has the 2nd largest fanbase

most of them are girls

Sidon has a boyfriend though, which he told everyone at VidCon a few years ago

cue the drama and shipping and the entire fandom trying to figure out who the boyfriend is. A well known reddit thread emerged that presented the common guesses being Link, Sidon, and Zelda.

“But it can’t be Zelda, Sidon’s gay.”

“I’m not in the fandom but I thought Zelda was a boy??”

“Did you just say Sidon? Is that a typo? Are you saying that Sidon’s dating himself?”

Sidon x Sidon became a fandom joke.

Don’t look at me I’m just setting up all the worldbuilding. every fandom has their weird dark sides and Sidon x Sidon is the Linkcest of the Sidon YT fandom.

Mystery BF is actually Bazz, a pretty inconspicuous guy who appeared in a few of his videos. This was confirmed a year ago, but everyone still ships him with other YouTubers because they’re convinced he was lying to throw them off his scent. He really can’t catch a break and this is why you should not ship real people.

Twitter handle is @ officialprincesidon

says “beguiling” a lot

21m subs ᕙ( ͡❛ ▿ ͡❛)ᕗ

Mipha:

Sidon’s sister, hasn’t posted a single video but just has the channel for show because she appears in so many of Sidon’s videos as a model for his makeup tutorials and whatnot

has 328k for that. Everyone loves her, she’s great. @ mimipha

Revali:

Link’s sworn rival

Link thinks they’re friends

He kept popping up in link’s Twitter threads and making snarky comments until zelda called him out for not even following link (so why was he stalking his acc) which kept the Twitter drama to a minimum

Revali was the catalyst of a few popular memes and that’s where most of his subs come from.

drags link into a few challenges that always get a ton of views because of how competitive they get

“ITS JUST ASININE” is a running joke that everyone tries to get him to say. His @ is itsjustasinine as well

Urbosa is the only person who can win an argument with him

5m subs and growing rapidly. newer to youtube than everyone else.

Impa:

Doesn’t have a channel she’s just a mutual friend of Mipha, Zelda, and Link

Rides a motorcycle, so she is used in a few of Link’s videos.

@ ihaveamotorcycle because she thinks having a motorcycle is a personality trait. the most unruly on Twitter when it comes to replying to fan’s stuff, leaking upcoming videos and generally causing chaos.

Mipha’s girlfriend. That’s how she met Zelda and Link.

Urbosa:

Is actually a model, but she has a ton of YouTuber friends because she’s known Zelda since birth.

when she entered the youtube community she didn’t realize she would be adopting like 15 children

5m subs. her videos are professional & related to her modelling career. @ urbosasfury

I feel like she would do unboxing vids. I’m not sure what she’s unboxing.

Daruk

Just a friend of Link’s, fun guy. yells a lot. once ate a rock and had no reaction.

people are scared of him for that reason

Riju:

yoga & gymnastics & “ha look at how flexible I am its eAsY” videos

you know the type

she also does reactions and is sponsored by save the sand seals charities which she is very enthusiastic about. She’s also Urbosa’s niece and the only minor in the gang (15). I like to think that the champions YT community is actually not creepy so everyone respects her a ton

doesn’t post frequently, she mostly appears in Link’s videos to jump out of airplanes or whatever. And sometimes Zelda’s if she’s interested in the topic. 500k subs, but she’s always really popular when she appears in Link’s videos.

VidCon:

In the months leading up to VidCon, some fans on the internet made a few discoveries: first of all, that the inside of Link’s house is painted green. This is a big deal because all of his videos are filmed outside either in his backyard or on trips that he and the brosquad go on to do…whatever bros do. explosions. idk. The point is he had some announcement about VidCon and filmed it inside. Only the wall and a potted plant were shown.

However, the colour was similar to the the shade of Zelda’s living room. Fans dug through years and years of old videos and found a clip of Zelda walking through a hallway, where there was an open door and a glimpse of a houseplant.

There were 2 types of responses to the theory:

“They could just be roommates guys calm down”

“and they were ROOMMATES?”

others pointed out that Link could just not have a house and had to crash in Zelda’s

Some guy on reddit claimed he had a botany degree and declared that the houseplants in the clips were not of the same genus. Normal people pointed out that the plant would have grown 4 years between the clips and would look considerably different.

#Zelink trended on twitter for a while and people posted other old clips from both of their channels and the frog video blew up again

Impa retweeted a post tagged as #zelink with “rofl” and later publicly apologized for causing confusion.

Fans noticed that in the “can a motorcycle drive over my arm” (it was clickbait he’s fine) episode 2 years ago, Link was eating out of a paper lunch bag with his name written on it in handwriting that a few people claimed to look like Zelda’s, leading people to believe that she had packed him a lunch.

However, this theory was shot down with the counterargument that Zelda can’t cook. although. i mean how much skill do you need to make a sandwich.

No one knows what tumblr is doing at this time

Zelda wore a scarf in her “Save the Sand Seals” video that matched identically to the scarf Link wore when he travelled to Hebra to film a shield surfing video, but it’s been debated wether it’s actually the same scarf or not.

Neither Zelda nor Link has spoken up about the theories, and besides Impa’s one slip on twitter, neither has any of their friends. Zelda received a lot of backlash for the assumption that she was dating Link because he has a lot of delusional fans that didn’t want her to “steal their man” or whatever the hell that type of fan would get mad about

Oh yea and bolson & karson run a zelink fanpage on twitter sorry I forgot about that

after that whole mess, everyone was even more anticipant of VidCon in the hopes that some of their questions would be answered.

The whole batch went to VidCon this year: Link, Impa, Daruk, and Riju are a gang while Sidon and Mipha go together and Zelda & Revali each go separately. Urbosa is there for supervision moral support

Zelda has always been much better at dodging questions that she doesn’t want to answer than anyone else, so her Q&A went without a hitch. When asked to confirm the rumours she said “which one?” and then moved on to the next question (without actually confirming any rumours).

Link is generally a more awkward person but eventually said that he had filmed the video in Zelda’s house because it was nicer and didn’t realize it would cause such an uproar. Fans were disappointed, but Bolson claimed he saw Link and Zelda exiting the hotel elevator on the same floor after Link’s Q&A session. No one believed him.

Fans went back to theorizing over who Link, Zelda, and Sidon were all dating, because apparently they can’t just be dating unknown people and have to be with other YouTubers

Sidon and Bazz got engaged about a week after VidCon, making at least 4 preteen girls cry

actually try 4 million

Sidon x Sidon made a brief comeback but Sidon spoke up about his fandom for the first time ever on twitter and told everyone that no, he was not dating himself. eventually, everyone settled down and accepted that none of them were in a relationship save for a few loud fans.

Link and Zelda still got the occasional “when will you tell us who you’re dating?” comment but most of them were joking and the people who still hardcore shipped them were generally frowned upon. Zelda’s popularity went up after VidCon and she regained the 200k subscribers she’d lost after the first theory dropped.

Two months after VidCon, Link posted a video titled “Zelda and I’s House Tour!” and gave around 45 million people a heart attack

as revealed in the video, they had actually been dating since they were 16 and everyone’s just a fool.

the potted plant is named Hestu.

[traincat]

I know the comic piracy debate is a never-ending cycle, but in India where I live, you can't get western comics (or manga for that matter). There aren't comic book stores. Sometimes on Amazon you can find collected editions worth more than INR 1000 at least, for the paperbacks. Most older collections, even from the early 2000s, will be upwards of INR 6000. And sure, it's because the exchange value is so low for Indian rupees, but that's still a LOT of money to Indian citizens. You can get digital editions of random odd issues for approx. INR 150, so that's there. But overall it's really a huge investment to buy a physical comic. So yes, I pirate. But I get so guilty when this debate rolls around, every time. I just don't see any other alternative.

I debated whether or not to answer this considering I haven't really addressed the comics piracy issue before so I'm not sure I'm the right account to talk about it, and also because my askbox is not a confessional and I am not a priest, but then some Spider-Man news broke that I feels ties into it this so whatever, we're going for it. The comics piracy debate comes up every couple of months and will probably continue to come up every couple of months until forever and all of these points have been stated before by others because nothing in this debate is new. First things first, you shouldn't feel guilty. I'm going to suggest actually that nobody should feel guilty, unless you are like, a millionaire and you're exclusively pirating indie books. The prices you're quoting are prohibitively expensive but I have some unfortunate news for everyone involved: the prices are really bad in the US, too. If you want good collected editions, especially in hardcover, they're going to run at similar if not quite equal prices. Comics have gone from a cheap hobby to an overwhelmingly expensive hobby.

This is a good article comparing to the cover costs of American comics since the 1960s adjusted for inflation which I think puts some things in perspective. Comics currently cost roughly $5 USD per issue, which doesn't sound that bad, even though most of my monthly streaming services are roughly that price for a whole month's access to a library of content. But it only doesn't sound that bad if you're not buying special issues (the Marvel Pride book retailed for $10), and if you're only reading one or two books a month. The problem is, American superhero comics are specifically designed so you're not reading just one or two books per month -- this is why we have events! And crossovers! Not for the story potential but because it forces the consumer to purchase more product. This is why there's constantly an event running with a checklist of tie-in issues in the back. So now you're spending probably at least $20 a month. If you're a fan with a lot of interest in different titles, and in different publishers, this can easily hit triple USD digits. It's a money pit. It's not affordable to most people. And this is where that new Spider-Man news comes in, because it was announced today that Amazing Spider-Man is going back to a thrice monthly schedule like it used to operate on during Brand New Day. Which sounds good at first -- more comics, yay -- until you realize that's probably going to be $15 USD a month for a one title. That's $180 a year for one title, not including annuals or special issues. That's not feasible for a lot of fans -- young fans, poor fans, fans with other financial obligations etc. And most people aren't reading just one title. I don't know how the X-Men fans are currently financing their Krakoa habit and I'm afraid to ask. There are services like Marvel Unlimited, which make things slightly more affordable, but I imagine the wait for newer issues to hit the service can be alienating for some fans who want to join in current discussions, the library has some incredibly massive holes in it which is unacceptable when it's coming from inside the mouse house, and I believe, although I could be wrong, that it is not available in all countries. Comics are no longer an easily accessible hobby, if you're paying for everything you read.

"But the creatives deserve to get paid" is the common argument and yeah, they do, I'm not arguing that point. They should absolutely get paid and they should get well. I'm a writer, I'm a published writer even, and I want to be a published novelist, and I definitely want to get paid, and I'm reserving the right to be a complete hypocrite about this, as I do with everything in my life, but this is where the difference between indie publications and Marvel publications comes in: Marvel is owned by Disney. There is absolutely no excuse for Disney not to pay their creatives. If they are not getting paid fairly, it's not because you pirated a book -- it's because Disney has a vested interest in not paying their creators, as evidenced by Alan Dean Foster's lawsuit claiming that they are withholding royalties from him. Fans pirating these books are not the reason the creatives are not getting paid fairly -- the creatives are not getting paid fairly for the same reason that Disney park employees experience homelessness, and it's because Disney would rather put that money into the pockets of their executives. There is no debate on that subject. It's easier and perhaps more convenient to blame fans for pirating comics rather than putting all of their money into what has been for years now a prohibitively expensive hobby to keep up with, but the fact of the matter is Disney could pay all of their creatives what they're worth without hurting their bottom line and instead chooses not to. That is not on you, as an individual reader. You have no reason to feel guilty about that, no matter what your circumstances are, and you do not have to justify your actions to either me or the House of the Mouse. I'm with you, and Disney ultimately doesn't care. They're making that money up elsewhere and then not distributing it fairly to the people who create the properties their media empire is built off of. But especially if you're buying older books, you should know that your money is not going to the creative team -- once it's out of publication, they're not going to get any of the money you spent on it. The argument then becomes that you should be supporting local comics stores which yes, is true, but also doesn't apply to everyone, like anon who doesn't have access to local comic book stores. And again, this can become prohibitively expensive -- collections are expensive. Older, hard to find collections can be very expensive. Once something is out of print, all bets are off on what it might be selling for. Buying single issues is only affordable if the single issue isn't desirable or sometimes if it's in exceedingly bad condition. For the sake of transparency, I have a fairly big single issue collection because it's my preferred format, but I had the time to bargain hunt, access to local comic book stores and large comic conventions, and I'm very good at sniping eBay auctions. The most I have ever dropped on a single issue was expensive for me -- and still under three digits USD -- and it's for an issue from the '60s that is not in great condition.

The problem with this debate is that it is generally a nuanced issue that always gets boiled down to "piracy bad" in a way that makes a lot of well meaning and well intentioned fans, especially the ones with extenuating circumstances, feel bad. It's not your fault. You shouldn't feel guilty. There are a huge amount of reasons why someone might pirate something that are not bad reasons and do not make you a bad person who is personally withholding money from the creators -- because you're not. I don't publicly tell people where to pirate comics, mostly because I really don't think it's that hard to find out for yourselves especially because several creators involved with Marvel themselves have, I suspect accidentally, posted pages of their work to social media WITH THE BANNER OF A WELL KNOWN COMICS PIRACY SITE STILL IN THE IMAGE please learn how to crop, so maybe my standpoint on the issue wasn't well known, but there it is. I think readers should, if they are able to financially and otherwise, support the creators they like, but that it should be acknowledged that this is a more complicated issue than it's commonly made out to be on Twitter and that the largest part of the blame needs to be put on the companies making these comics inaccessible to many and who refuse to pay their creators fairly, not on individual fans. Don't feel guilty, anon.

[elitegymnastics]

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. 

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz. 

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant. 

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did. 

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen. 

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

[loudlyunladylike]

Ok so the Outsiders SMP is a modded SMP based on Maze Runner but like it has its own story so like you can't really say "oh ya, this character is like this character from the books!". The stories are somewhat the same: trapped in a maze, big monster- ya know. (Don't wanna say too much about Maze Runner cause I don't wanna spoil it even though I know very little about it cause I never watched the movies)

One of the main differences is there is magic in this world (somewhat), with Demons, Angels and Fae existing. The ccs behind Outsiders have said the differences species don't have any like powers but Hell does exist so there has to be some magic to have a portal to Hell.

It's very much a lore heavy server even though a lot of bloopers and out of character moments happen often. The CCs don't really have a schedule for lore, they kinda just stream it whenever they want. Big lore streams tend to have most of them and are planned ahead, with a announcement sent out on their Twitter like a week ahead, while smaller lore tends to be only a few of them and is announced maybe a few days in advance.

If you do ever wanna watch it, Loudly, or any fellow Loudly followers, Owen has cut down versions of the streams on his YT (OwenjuiceTV), and he has one of the most up-to-date series on it. Graecie_, Bekyamon and Squidney also have episodes on their YT, but aren't as up-to-date as Owen's is. I will warn you though, I totaled up the time it would take to watch of the episodes he has up so far, and it would take 10 hours, 11 minutes and 46 seconds to watch all of them if you took no breaks.

So thats a bit about the series itself, but now I am going to talk about some of the characters cause I can. I really love most of the characters, you can sympathize for them and most of their actions can be explained. Some of their actions can't and those are the ones you will see most people hate. Sometimes characters say stupid things and I'm like, I love you a lot but please shut your mouth, you are so wrong or aren't taking information into account (*cough cough* c!Ori *cough cough*).

Don't get me wrong though, they're all really well written characters and you hate them because you understand their motives, not cause they aren't written well. This is what I feel about c!Oeca(he/him), I hate him a lot but he's written well and I (kinda) understand what his motives are. He's just a little- annoying, let's say, at times.

Talking about characters I like, I am unreasonable attached to c!Kyle(he/him) for some reason even though hes only done 2 lore streams. I know so little about him and met him very recently, but if something happened to him, I would cry. I don't know why I am so attached and invested in him, I just am. I am also unreasonable attached to c!Sillvia, c!Apo and c!Krow, but at least I know why I am attached to them. c!Sillvia(they/them) because they are the only one with common sense, c!Apo(he/they) just cause he's a sympathetic character and you feel bad for them, c!Krow(it/he) cause it has a lot of good points and sees things from an unbiased perspective most of the time, kinda not blinded by emotions. It also is just a funky little demon dude.

I love c!Magic(she/her), c!Graecie(she/her), c!Acho(he/they), and c!Owen(he/him) just cause they are so sweet, and just want the best for everyone, and are trying their best. They're trying to stay positive for everyone and I feel really bad for them and I just want them to have a good ending(and mostly everyone else). I also want this for c!Ori(he/they) but I also would shake them given the chance, please sir think about your actions and words for once.

Also I have so many theories about the world they're in, about The Maze, about why they're there, about their past. It leaves just enough out that you don't know quite what's happening and it's so good, it let's the fans make up their own theories about what's happening. It's just such a good series, man.

(Sorry this is so long, I just had a lot of thoughts. I think im gonna continue this another day so this isn't even longer)

-Raindrop

Yooooo, this all sounds so cool, and you wrote so much!!! /pos

Like that sounds like a banging concept and genuinely sounds very interesting, I can see myself putting it on one of these days. I also love how much you clearly love it like woahy look at this!! Look at you go!!

[tarantulas4davey]

i saw someone else mention it but how do you think the ralbert youtuber au would go if they only met online so like race doesnt know waht ao looks like?

OH MY GOD yes ok i’ve talked about this before but Many Thoughts, Head Full™️ about this and that time someone brought it up made me half regret how i originally wrote it cause ITS SO FUCKING GOOD

ok so imagine if you will -

the sort of,,,,, key among us crew??? from before, but minus al. at this point al has been streaming on twitch for a hot minute and posts youtube vids sometimes but he’s faceless and sort of underground compared to the rest of them

then he plays in a different lobby with spot and elmer right when the game started blowing up, and the rest is history

spot reaches out on discord and offers to have him in their main lobby for a few rounds on stream and they go from there

for the record when he first joins it’s literally a copy paste of jason’s reaction corpse the first time they meet but it’s race’s reaction to “red” (find here) i’m not kidding the thirst is REAL besties

and like obviously it goes well cause red keeps playing with the massive group

but in the shuffle race gets red’s discord and follows him on instagram and twitter and stuff

and race being race is like ‘i’m gonna befriend him cause he seems GREAT’ meanwhile albert’s brain is just short circuiting cause there’s a pretty boy ACTUALLY TRYING TO TALK TO HIM !!!

and after a couple months they’re streaming after they get proximity chat working and red is ACTUALLY crew mate for once and they’ve finished their tasks and are just chatting

and albert just says something about piercings or his hair or his tattoos or something and race is like “bro you know i have no clue what you look like right?”

albert’s just like “????? i haven’t sent you a picture or something ???? lol one sec” and he just messages one of the only pictures he has of himself to race on insta so he can open it without showing his stream

and obviously albert can’t see this at the time but race literally goes “😳🤭🥴” on stream to several thousand people. like you can literally see the moment it hit race’s brain that albert was hot.

long story very short cause this post is going to be ridiculously long any what they keep talking and vid chatting behind the scenes and streaming together (and flirting so much all the fans can’t tell if they’re already dating or not honestly)

and eventually they get a chance to meet up in person (and it may or may not be a date that they haven’t told anyone is a date)

they film some stuff together but overall they’re pretty lowkey about the fact they’re kind of a thing,,,,,, like romantically. cause they don’t want the internet to run with it and make it something it’s not before they’ve figured out how much they actually like eachother

the answer is a hell of a lot. like just- so much. they’re not MaGiCaLlY iN lOvE or anything but they just sort of click and can tell that t h i s is the type of person they would WANT to spend their life with

which is why they publicly announce their relationship 10 months later. mostly cause they’re moving in together and don’t really have a platonic explanation for buying a 2 bedroom apartment that has one guest bedroom.

and obviously by this point there’s been plenty of theories and guesses (that were honestly quite accurate and weren’t horribly disrespectful like the nightmare that was the 2014 gaming community cause both parties were publicly out as gay, in race’s case, and bi, in red’s) but having it confirmed was a big ‘holy shit’ moment for the fandom

and the squad is some of their best friends so they’ve known for months and they’re all just like “lol yeah all that’s changed for us is we can make fun of them for being grossly adorable on stream now and tease them on twitter instead of in the groupchat”

albert does his face reveal in similar fashion to the original like,,,,, 3 months after that?? and then from there it pretty much just follows that natural flow of canon au

oh except they get engaged a bit later lol. closer to 27/28 then 23/24 (i cant remember what age i had down in that post)

ahhhhh this was really fun !!!! i love this concept sm and have been thinking about the differences since the original ask came through over a month ago

thank you for being patient with me anon !!! this has been sitting half done in my drafts for far too long so i’m finally posting it

[willddheartt]

18 Days | Wilbur Soot

30 days to fall in love with someone? Sounds easy right? It would be if that person wasn’t so unbelievably annoying in almost every sense.

You’re not sure how you found yourself in this situation, but you were positive there was no backing out now…

Series Warnings: Mostly fluff and angst, and a very poorly constructed enemies to lovers plot.

Word Count: 686

Masterlist Series Masterlist

18 Days

Today was the day you were going to announce to the internet you met up with Wilbur and were staying with him. Yesterday was a slow day, the two of you not waking up until the mid afternoon, from staying up so late the night before. Neither of you were up to posting or streaming. It was a nice day to just settle into the new environment and relax. 

When you turned your phone back on from it being dead it blew up with messages from your roommate asking if you were okay and if you made the journey safely. Replying to her you apologized, telling her what happened and that you were safe. You even snapped a lazy photo of you and Wilbur on the couch to send to her to prove you were okay. In the picture Wilbur laid with his head on your stomach as the two of you stretched out over the couch. You attached a little message with the photo, ‘I don't know how he's comfortable like this, he's so much taller in person.’

“Wilbur!” You yelled from behind him. He jumped back, turning around quickly holding his heart.  “I’m gonna get you a bell,” He took a breath  It was so easy to jump scare him, you found great enjoyment in it the past two days.  “So are we going to stream later?” You asked rocking back and forth on your feet  “Maybe tomorrow?” He asked, “We can post a photo together on twitter tonight.” He said  You looked at the time, It was only 2:00PM. “Okay, I’m gonna go shower so I can get ready.” You said grabbing the towel from your room. 

It took you longer to get ready for than you thought. Normally you didn't go all out but where you were streaming with Wilbur you had to combat his beauty somehow. You made sure your makeup was on point and there were no imperfections to be found anywhere, even though Wilbur said many times you already looked great. You were really nervous. 

Wilbur and you had a full photo shoot in the bathroom because the lighting complimented the both of you wonderfully. You took a lot of photos but ended up settling on a photo where you sat on the counter behind him and he stood between your legs with his back to you. You caught the aftermath of that photo that ended up in a piggy back to his room, he threw you down onto his bed laughing with you. The amount of photos and laughs that happened after taking photos was almost enough to get a noise complaint.  You and Wilbur were clutching your stomachs trying to catch your breath.  “These are pure gold,” You laughed with Wilbur beside you, feeling like you were floating on cloud nine with serotonin. 

You rolled onto your side, facing him, your laughter began to die down and subside into silence, with the faint sounds of your breathing. You looked at him but he was already looking at you.  “WIlbur,” You whispered, noticing how his eyes shifted from your gaze then back up.  He hummed in response, slowly leaning closer to you. You realized what was happening and shot up, sitting up. 

“Okay,” You coughed, “So, yeah I think we can post these photos,” You nodded, looking at your phone, avoiding his eyes as he sat up beside you.  Wilbur coughed, “Yeah, We’ve got some good ones.” You nodded and ran off to the guest room. 

Oh god, you thought. You mind going at a mile a minute. You can't believe he just tried to do that. This was only supposed to be an act. You wanted to talk out loud to yourself to reason things out but didn't dare test how thin the walls were.  This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to try to kiss me. That wasn't in the agreement. 

You ran through every possible thing, maybe you were just overthinking his actions, or you misunderstood. Whatever it was, it had to be something, anything, other than Wilbur trying to kiss you. 

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Hi, this ask is a bit longer, sorry. this is PART 1. I'm here cos I'd like to know your thoughts on the way the responsible st people are treating their fans. Frankly, there's a number of folks I know who once were really into the show but are now losing or have lost interest due to the lack of info we're given. also found plenty of people on the internet that feel the same way. It's a shame but I think most of them are disappointed, angry, annoyed or simply stopped caring.

“Part 2: Maybe via screenshot? I, too, find myself struggling to keep my interest alive. I'm really not trying to be unreasonable here. I know we're in the middle of a pandemic and I doubt anyone'd expect s4 to be released within the next 2 months. but I find one has to become a little creative these days, but no, frankly this lack of content is insulting. No teaser trailer, no serious updates, only unofficial ones. Barely any twitter activity and if there's a new tweet it's only unrelated stuff.

Part 3: I don't think this presumptuous 'it's st. Everyone loves it no matter what' attitude is a wise move. How do you feel about it? I'm assuming your analysis, which are great btw, help you staying interested, don't they? But they seem to forget not everyone does that. At the end of the day people are people and people might lose interest and move on. It's a shame though. Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. Thanks for your patience.”

Thank you for writing in. There’s never a need to be sorry about an Ask made in good faith. I thought this one might be good to answer immediately even though I’m very behind in my responses.

I understand your frustration. It’s been over a year since season 3, and we probably would have gotten season 4 by now if not for Covid. When one considers that we probably aren’t getting season 4 until, conservative guess, this Spring, it’s difficult to not get frustrated. I do think, though, that we need to be careful about where we aim that frustration.

Perhaps it’s because I’m older, but I harbor no anger at the Duffers or anyone else responsible for creating Stranger Things. I grew up in the time before social media or streaming services. Aside from VCRs, we had no means of on-demand television, and our entertainment news was mostly limited to TV Guide. Behind-the-scenes peeks and TV trailers were sparse, generally limited to the weeks leading into the new Fall TV season. This just isn’t fazing me like it may the younger generation. I understand, though. Many of you are simply accustomed to what you grew up with, just as I am.

I do feel a need to defend the showrunners. We get quite a bit of information, official and not. We’ve gotten teasers, cast announcements, and the postings of a Twitter account run by one of the Duffer’s assistants. Yes, a lot of that content has slowed, likely due to not having planned for an extended delay, but I hesitate to cast any blame on them for it. I simply remind myself that they do not really owe us anything. I repeat, they do not owe us anything.

We receive the fruits of their labor in the form of a very entertaining TV show. It is something they’ve chosen to do, and they are doing their best to do it. I fear we may be at risk of being spoiled by our current (at least prior to the shutdown) level of access to entertainment. Instant, on-demand gratification has become the norm as a result of social media and streaming services. It’s really hard to blame you, and anyone else, for getting upset now that this trend has been suddenly disrupted, but we need to engage in some self-reflection here. What right do we really have to demand anything from these people?

Production is still on despite several other shows being outright cancelled. All reasonable steps are being taken to ensure a safe filming environment so that we can get the show as soon as possible. We do get updates from the social media accounts, even if those updates have become fewer and farther between. There’s an element of diminishing returns when it comes to this sort of thing. There’s only so much they can give us without spoiling the product itself. They simply be scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point.

We do have some unofficial “leaks,” yes. Honestly, I’m not sure how unofficial those really are, though. The set photos that have come out have been minimal to the point that I feel they may have been designed to be as such. If it were really all the work of rogue production crewmembers or fans sneaking in, I would have expected a lot more. I’m not saying that it all has been authorized content masquerading as leaks, but I am saying it could be. They know the fans who are still following things are the ones who would look at unofficial sources. It’s not too much of a stretch to consider that they’ve done this on purpose to get the online fanbase speculating in order to keep interest going. I know it’s certainly given me something to do after I analyzed almost everything I could think of from the existing episodes. Not everyone does that, as you say, but the more casual fans probably aren’t even paying attention to the time between seasons. Others, like me or you, are either creating, or consuming, fan content in the meantime.

I ask patience and understanding of you all. These are the people who have clearly created something you love. They are suffering from this pandemic, as well, but they are still trying their best to give us what we want. We may all need to lower our expectations a bit. I fear they’ve grown to be too high in recent years, resulting in an unfair demand on content creators. Since this is the season of good will towards man, I’ll simply leave you with this reminder: patience, tolerance, and respect are things we often demand from others, but fail to demand of ourselves. Everyone involved in the show is working hard to get things done, and we need to show patience, tolerance, and respect while we wait.

[gogyposting]

Agreed with you on the post; I lean towards 'it's all just business babeey' conclusion, and that while they are qbaiting in a sense of using their flirting relationship to drive up the engagement (and therefore profits too), if people are stupid enough to believe it's actually ~real~ and that they have queer rep in DnG or whatever - it's their own fault. Ship to your heart's content but if you become delusional and start dnf truthing on main - I'm not even sorry for you.

Thing is, for whatever reason two guys flirting will always attract new (often young, often queer and often female) audience, even if that initial flirting was just friendly banter and not intended to be bait at all. I don't want CCs to change their behaviour intentionally to avoid that audience, you know? Especially since explicitly saying they're not together changes...pretty much nothing tbh. If Dream or George announced tomorrow that no, they're not together, calm down gays - at best fandom would be like "ya-ya we know", at worst - "omg they're so closeted and afraid of being found out :(". So at this point they might as well ramp it up intentionally and benefit from the whole situation.

Mildly off topic, but what does piss me off is that dnf truthing will literally be based on a.) obvious bait b.) normal behaviour between two friends that was cherry-picked to make it seem like 'dnf are so in love!1!". E.g. the 10 hour calls that they've done to our knowledge, like, 3 times? And that George had with Bad and Sapnap as well so it's not like some Dream-exclusive thing? Fandom ran with it and now whenever Dream and George are not on streams I'll see multiple posts about how "It's all good guys, they are probably on call with each other! They can't stay apart for too long uwu". This is what I mean when I say that DnG don't even need to bait, fandom will bait itself using the flimsiest arguments. Mildly frustrating but what can you do.

idk what to say to any of this really, it’s worded perfectly and i agree with all of it. especially you’re last point like?!? i’ve never been a dnfer but taking a step away from these ccs has given me a fresh perspective and i really think that so many clips that i see on my dash or tl are either obvious bait or just. Guys Bein Dudes. friends bein pals.

it’s one thing to find their relationship cute and to speculate like, for funsies. because that is not something i see any problem with and the vast majority of the people i follow on tumblr seem to fall into this category. a lot of people (young fans on twitter, mostly) just take everything wayyy too fucking seriously and i guess i don’t really have an issue with that either, i just think they might be setting themselves up for disappointment or have an unhealthy attachment to their ship. like, people accuse me of treating dng like fictional characters when i say they queerbait, but then turn around and meticulously analyze george blinking faster when dream starts talking or something as Definitive Proof that they are in love. or they over exaggerate this jealous dream bit which by the way, annoys me to no end. 

i’m not gonna lie though and pretend like they are just two normal buddies cause. i have eyes. there are some....questionable things that these two say/do that are not indicative of normal bro behavior. i side eye them HARD quite often. and i don’t want to be the fun police here, i hope that anyone who reads this doesn’t think i look down on people for shipping dnf? i don’t. i just think it’s kind of weird when people take it so seriously and invest in their dynamic wayyyyy too much. because, yknow, (looks at smudged writing on hand) Pair of social relationships and all that

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E86 (Nov. 26, 2019)

And we’re off! Tonight’s guests are the long-awaited Ashley Johnson and Matt Mercer! “Tonight, Ashley’s back, Ashley’s back, and Ashley’s back... we’ll break it all down tonight with my guest, Ashley.”

Announcements: Pretty new dice and pinup calendar now in the store! The recording of the Austin live show (The Adventures of the Darrington Brigade!) will be streaming on Twitch on Friday at 7 PM Pacific, and the VOD will be available on YouTube on Sunday! The fundraising campaign with OSD is still live! There will be no episode of Critical Role this week and no episode of Talks Machina next week because of the holiday.

Even a brief Meat Loaf digression can’t stop us, so it’s time for...

Episode 86: The Cathedral

Stats for this week’s episode: Yasha was under Obann’s control for 59 days. Obann is Yasha’s 14th HDYWTDT. Caleb set the campaign record for most damage dealt in a single turn: 449 damage. Matt rolled his 120th Natural 20 this campaign against Cad’s Blight spell on the caedogeist.

While Ashley was away, there were a few different paths that could’ve dictated how things would’ve gone while she was away: being under Obann’s sway meant she mostly got updates from Matt about what was happening, and Ashley would give her reactions to those experiences (Matt references the Purple Man in Jessica Jones for how twisted her perception was). Ashley: “Matt gave me a breakdown of things that have been happening in our world, Obann and the caedogeist and the Laughing Hand and Yasha. It’s heavy, but I feel like it really was the best way to leave the campaign, it felt a little bit more organic than even the last time, with Pike.” Matt and Ashley both emphasize that there’s a connection between Obann and Yasha pre-campaign.

Matt knew from the beginning that there would be a Tharizdun-based narrative, but he let the tie-ins to this particular story evolve naturally. “I knew there would be an aspect of Tharizdun essentially catfishing a bunch of other cults.”

How aware was Yasha of what she was doing? “I believe she was fully aware, just no control of her body or the things that she was doing.” But having Obann as her only companion for so long was definitely a factor. Matt: “It wasn’t like he took control of you and was like, do my bidding. He was very, trying to talk her up. ‘You’re chosen for a reason, you’re special, you’re one of the harbingers chosen for the angel...’ It’s a very fucked-up relationship.”

Based on who the group spoke to in Zadash, they could’ve had some help from the Gentleman, Dolan, the High Richter... but things happened to throw down in Pumat’s shop. “You know, he’s already been pulled into this fray a bit. I already have the minis painted...” Dani points out that his presence brought some much-needed levity. Until the end of the episode, at least...

Whose reactions are Yasha most worried about? Beau, after the way the fight went. “That was one of the most stressful moments I’ve ever had in a game.” Ashley texted Brian in the middle of the game: “If I’d killed Beau I’d have just killed myself.” Especially after what happened with her wife, and all the lives she’s taken, that would have been the last straw. She’s also aware that there’s tension with Fjord. “I think even before there was some distrust that Fjord had with Yasha a bit. But I think still with everybody, it’s knowing what she’s done at this point, and just playing against them and fighting them. She’ll deal with the weight of that for a while, and just be like, how can I make it up to you?” Ashley does want to find a way to turn it around to make Yasha a little bit happy in there. “I was just like, oh, I’ve made something very sad!”

The dispel wasn’t a sure thing by any means. “I had set it as a fifth-level domination effect for the purposes of dispelling. There was a chance that they were going to succeed and destroy the shackle and continue on to wherever the next one would be, in which case Yasha would carry on with them.” In that case, Ashley could’ve played an ancillary character in the meantime. Even if Obann had been killed, that connection would’ve remained, but his fear at the end of his life was the Chained Oblivion’s punishment awaiting: the removal of his fiendish form.

Cosplay of the Week! Ashley sings a new theme song: “Sew it all together! (deadpan) Take a picture.” This week’s winner was an amazing Vax, WittyWyndi on Twitter!

“I think, of course, being herself again and being in control of all of her actions, I think there is an element of wanting to run because you’re not wanting to deal with the problems, but I think she’s been doing it for so long... I think she’s very afraid to be alone. And that was one of the things that kept coming up in all the games and things Matt was telling me. Man, if I think about the future of this character, and if she comes out of this, what would you feel, being under someone’s influence and then being around your family? I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want to be alone.” Brian: “Isolation is an incubator that turns mistakes into habits.” Ashley: “I feel like I relate to that, because as a hermit and a very introverted person, I feel like my go-to is to run away or say I’m not going to deal with this. So maybe that’s a little therapy in the game, can I sit in this and still be with people who are upset with me? Obviously it’s being in a community and dealing with people, that’s a much better way than to deal with something alone. I’m going to try to tackle that in the game and see. Who knows, she might freak out and just run.”

Ashley, on coming back to the west coast for good: “I feel like I’ve been away at sea.” Brian: “Yeah, NBC.”

Gods are more present in this campaign only because there are much more deity-connected characters. Matt tries to avoid too much divine influence in his campaigns to make sure players still have the majority of the agency and don’t tend to use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card. 

Comcast is installing fiber in my neighborhood and brief service outages may occur. This fun fact brought to you by the little spinning wheel that just interrupted Matt for a minute. Thanks, Comcast.

More gods in a campaign means more complications on Matt’s end. “There are a lot of deities in the Pantheon, and there are lesser idols in the world, entities that aren’t gods per se but that hold elements of some divine power. Playing in that space is fun, but I don’t want to overcrowd it necessarily.”

On getting the kill on Obann: “It was just so exciting to come back to the table, and you love the HDYWTDT moment from Matt, but I think for Yasha there’s a lot of weirdness to it. Just because you kill the thing that has been torturing you doesn’t mean you’re free from that trauma. I don’t think she’s satisfied yet.” But it was super satisfying for Ashley as a player!

There was a part of Matt that wanted Obann to survive a little longer, because there was “more shit he could do.” If he’d managed to get four people into place, it would’ve immediately started the ritual, those four would have been paralyzed and their AC would have been dramatically boosted, and the M9 would have had one round to try to stop it by killing one of the people in the square before everyone involved in the ritual would have been instantly killed. Brian: “You’re a sick and twisted and terrible man and I want to kiss you.”

Fan Art of the Week: an amazing Yasha in the cathedral by Neverdraws on Twitter!

If the party had revealed who Obann was really working for (he was unaware up until the very end), that was potentially a different direction things could have gone. Ashley: “Yasha doesn’t know yet.” Matt: “The only thing Yasha knows about the Angel of Irons is what it did to Obann.”

Ashley asked Matt whether Yasha would know whether the other members of the party were controlled, and Matt had her roll to see what she picked up on. Matt: “It may come out in the game.”

The description of the new breastplate was just to emphasize that Obann had kitted her out to help her be a stronger ally for him. Whether she keeps it is up to her.

Which of the changes in the M9 are going to take the most getting used to? “This feels a little bit like me coming home, where it’s like you’re away for a while, then you’re like, things are so different. I think it’s just adjusting. She’ll see the relationships, the tattoos, Fjord’s-- the accent thing we didn’t get into in game the other night, but Yasha noticed. We’ll see how it plays out in game and how everyone treats Yasha and how everyone responds to that, whether it’s positive reinforcement or negative. I feel like the positive reinforcement’s going to be tougher.”

On people getting emotionally attached to NPCs: “It catches me off-guard sometimes. I’m just excited that people are as invested in them as I am. With that particular Pumat moment, it made me excited that everyone else was as OH GOD NO at the table as I was.”