#i will literally start playing the game again if the kit is good

[v0id-echoes]

this is horrifying wtf

I need this kit to be good istg please give me fizzy

[ashthewaterghoul]

Can I get some slightly spicy Mountain/Rain? 🙏🏻

I don't write a lot of spicy stuff so I hope this is okay. It was going to be a few hundred word drabble, but in true Ash fashion, I yapped.

"Good" - A Mountain/Rain One Shot

“Your little innocence act doesn’t work on me, Rain.” Mountain said, his voice finding residence low his throat.     “S- sorry, sir, I didn’t-“     “Didn’t what? Didn’t meant to drag yourself to my kit and start playing? I thought you were going to be good for me?” Mountain taunted, standing behind Rain and encasing him in his shadow.     “No! I am! I am good! Please, I’ll show you-“ Rain went to spin around, but Mountain’s hand locked firmly around his throat and stopped him from moving.

Words: 1452

Tags: Praise k!nk, like a smidge of choking, dom!Mountain, sub!Rain, instrument practice with a happy ending, spoiler it's fade to black bc I'm not up for writing full blown scenes yet but there is plenty of spice to make up for that (I hope), ends on a really corny joke so I'm just going to apologise for that now💀

For the love of Satan, MDNI

~~~

    Water and Earth got along like a house on fire. Water nourished the plants and the Earth carved out spaces for rivers and lakes and ponds. It was a glorious relationship in which they helped each other out.

    The same can be said Mountain and Rain.

    Not only did their Elements call to each other, but Mountain was the one who nutured for Rain after his summoning. Not only was if from necessity, but because Mountain’s stomach dropped at the skinny Water Ghoul shivering in the summoning circle. It ending up a happy coincidence that the two both were in the rhythm section of the Ghost project, and Rain’s spot on stage being one right next to Mountain. They were each other’s everything and often made their appreciation known to each other.

    But right now? Rain was bored.

    In fact, he was starfished out on the music room floor, his bass laying somewhere near to him. He’d been staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours as the little squeaks of Mountain’s tuning keys filled the room, where music once had.

    They often had little practice sessions with just the two of them. It was important that drum and bass locked in with each other so their music sounded the best it could. And they were never going to say ‘no’ to a bit of alone time.

    They were just going through the songs from Impera but they weren’t even halfway through Spillways before Mountain stopped, saying something was wrong with his kit. And so Rain sat down to wait. Then he slumped. Then he started lying down.

Read below the cut or on ao3

    After Satan-fuck knows how long, the Earth Ghoul put his hardware down and sighed.

    “Done?” Rain asked, lifting his head and, yes, maybe he had his fingers crossed.

    “Yeah, I gotta go to the bathroom though.” Mountain replied as he stood.

    Rain groaned and flopped around so he was face-first into the ground.

    “So dramatic.” Mountain muttered, his eye-roll practically audible.

    “Fuck you.” Rain said, albeit muffled by the carpet.

    “Maybe later.” Mountain said.

    Rain was about to say something else but his voice was cut off into a groan as Mountain threaded his fingers into Rain’s waves and pulled his head up by his hair.

     “Is this the game we’re playing?” He whispered, low and almost threatening into Rain’s ear, “Because I can take as long as I want in the bathroom. Hell, I could go to the Clergy ones on the other side of the building. After that, maybe I want to try a new layout with my kit. Maybe my drums will fall out of their tuning again as I move them around and I’ll have to fuss with them all over again. So, I’ll ask you again, are we playing this game, Lilypad?”

    Rain’s brain was short-circuiting, and he mentally cursed himself for falling this easily. The two usually loved to fight over who (quite literally) came out on top and earn the submission of the other. But all Rain’s brain could think of right now was wanting to be Mount’s good boy.

    Rain shook his head as much as the strain on his neck would allow, biting back whimpers at the hold Mountain had on his scalp.

    “That won’t do, baby. Words. Let me hear my Syren’s gorgeous voice.” Mountain said in that same husky whisper.

    “No, sir.” Rain replied shakily.

    “Good.” Mountain said, purposefully avoiding the full phrase and gently lowering Rain’s head back down, “Wait in this room until I get back.”

    Rain had no chance to respond before Mountain was out the room. He groaned again as he curled in on himself, internally cursing how responsive his body was to Mount’s brief action. He also cursed himself for wearing the tightest pair of jeans he owned because now they were even tighter.

    He did his best not to palm his bulge, Mountain may not have said it but he knew there was the extra demand of “No touching”. It was always there and Rain didn’t even want to try so much as ghosting his pinky over his zipper. Somehow, Mountain always knew.

    What he didn’t say, however, was that Rain couldn’t move. So, he sat up and groaned as his back ached. There may be a carpet, but it was thinner than Rain’s patience and rough stone floors laid beneath it. As Rain stood, he caught sight of Mountain’s drum stool. He sat down on it and gave a few obligatory spins before facing the kit properly.

Well, Rain was still bored and now he was frustrated too. Mountain had taught Rain some drums over the years and so the Water Ghoul’s deft fingers reached out for the two sticks and started playing the simple grooves, fills and the like that he knew. He lost his shirt at one point and didn’t notice Mountain watching in the doorway.

    “Having fun?” The Earth Ghoul shouted over the noise.

    Rain froze like a deer in headlights and he scurried to put the sticks down where Mountain had left them. The Earth Ghoul chuckled and his unreadable expression made Rain shiver. Rain put his hands in his lap, carefully avoiding where he was still painfully hard, somehow even harder than he was before, and fixed his eyes firmly to the ground.

    “Your little innocence act doesn’t work on me, Rain.” Mountain said, his voice finding residence low his throat.

    “S- sorry, sir, I didn’t-“

    “Didn’t what? Didn’t meant to drag yourself to my kit and start playing? I thought you were going to be good for me?” Mountain taunted, standing behind Rain and encasing him in his shadow.

    “No! I am! I am good! Please, I’ll show you-“ Rain went to spin around, but Mountain’s hand locked firmly around his throat and stopped him from moving.

    Mountain’s fingers wriggled and adjusted slightly to make sure he had a safe hold on Rain’s gorgeous neck. Ghouls may be a lot stronger than humans, but there was still a right and wrong way to do this. And when Rain gave his signal of two taps of his tail against the ground, telling Mountain he was green, the Earth Ghoul got right back into it.

    Not loosening the hold Mountain had on Rain’s throat, he sank to his knees behind Rain and put his mouth right by the shell of the Water Ghoul’s ear, “You think you’re so good? I’ll need you to prove it.”

    “Please.” Rain got out, quite literally choked off, “Wanna be so good. Your good boy.”

    “One good thing, I suppose, is you’re already prepared for me.” Mountain said, running a hand along Rain’s dick print. Rain could feel his smirk as the Earth Ghoul squeezed Rain’s neck and cock at the same time.

    He wanted to moan or say something, but the hand on his throat simply forbade it. Rain was starting to see sparkles and gave one harsh tap with his tail to tell Mountain he needed to let go, and the Earth Ghoul did so immediately.

    “Fuck.” Rain gasped as he took lung-fulls of air. His jeans somehow grew even tighter and he was sure that the button was about to pop off them.

    “Stand up.” Mountain commanded as he did the same, again enveloping Rain in his shadow.

    Rain did so, wobbly slightly as he got his breath back. He tried to turn and face Mountain but a rough hand shoved his shoulder.

    “I didn’t tell you to do that, did I?” Mountain nearly snarled, “I thought you wanted to be good?”

    The push from Mountain made Rain nearly fall straight into the drum kit. But he managed to catch himself, hands braced on the high tom. He shuddered and knew he’d played right into Mountain’s hand when the Earth Ghoul let out a chuckle at the stance Rain had landed in.

    “Maybe you are good.” Mountain said contemplatively, kicking his stool out the way and pressing his own clothed bulge against Rain’s clothed ass, “You look so eager like this. Practically begging for it.”

    Rain was close to fully begging. But thankfully he didn’t have to as saw Mountain’s t-shirt land in a heap over one of the cymbals. Mountain used a hand on each of them to get both of their flies open and pushed Rain’s jeans down with his underwear before his own. Rain groaned in anticipation when that heavy appendage landed with a slap on his lower back.

    It was definitely going to take them a while to get back to their practice session. But of course, it’s important for drum and bass to properly lock in with each other so their music sounded the best it could.

A/n: Syren herself has picked up and wrote a chapter 2 where we do indeed see Mountain wrecking Rain over the drum kit…

[babytarttdoodoo]

Jamie’s afraid of making a big deal out of being hurt after everything that happened in season 1 - he doesn’t want everyone to think he’s being a prick again. But then one day either in season 2 or 3 he actually is genuinely hurt badly (the reason is up to you) but doesn’t tell anyone and shows up to practice anyway. It’s bad enough that he collapses on the field and that’s when everyone finds out.

I could have made this so much easier on myself and literally just written the conversation at the end. As it is, I started hating this about a third of the way through.

I hope that's just hyper-criticism of my own work and that this is still an enjoyable request fill.

---

It wasn’t like he’d done it on purpose.

A lack of sleep, a dark hallway, and a half-forgotten set of steps had all converged into a little tumble in the middle of the night. That was all.

A bruised side. A knock on the head. No big deal.

That’s what Jamie had told himself as he’d inspected the damage in the mirror. He would be fine. He could put his kit on at home and wear a beanie to cover up the dark smudge of skin at his temple.

No one would notice. No one needed to know. It would be fine. Hardly the first time he’d pushed through an injury to stay in the game, was it?

He didn’t need to miss training. He didn’t need to turn up at Nelson Road and tell Ted he couldn’t play. Just the thought of trying to do so sent a thrill of unease through Jamie that he wasn’t keen to examine too closely.

So he took some ibuprofen, slowly and stiffly got changed into his Richmond gear, and called a taxi to get himself to the training ground late enough that no one had time to question his appearance.

(Driving was out of the question. He could admit that.)

Roy all but sneered at him when he stumbled in - that wasn’t anything to write home about, though. He caught a few looks from the others and had to wave Dani off on their way out to the pitch but, otherwise, Jamie was able to keep his head down and not draw attention to himself.

Drills were awful. Just stretching out his legs had him biting his tongue against making any pained sounds. When they started lunging, the hot-sick pain in his side necessitated swallowing down bile.

Sprints weren’t the worst, though Isaac definitely noticed he wasn’t starting from a crouch as he normally would. Then Nate had them doing a coordination exercise, hopping sideways and throwing balls between each other.

Lifting his arms was bad enough. Then each hop jolted Jamie’s whole body and made his head throb.

He managed, somehow, but Jamie wasn’t sure how much more he could take. He was being slow and clumsy. He was being useless. Fuck.

Panting, sweating, and trying not to throw up, he hovered at the back of the group and prayed no one called him out. No such luck. 

“You alright, mate?” Colin had sidled over while Ted called out their scrimmage teams. He was speaking quietly, which Jamie appreciated, but frowned at him with an unusual level of seriousness. Shit.

“Course I am.” Jamie forced himself to straighten up and smile. It felt wrong on his face. Too many teeth. “Just got a stitch. Didn’t drink enough.”

Colin looked doubtful, like he was about to question him further, but Jamie pushed forward to accept his yellow vest from Beard and positioned himself as far away from the Welshman as he could.

He was careful to stay in the formation they were practising, though. No sense in fucking up training for everyone more than he already had.

Roy hollered “WHISTLE!” from the side of the pitch and everyone lurched into action. Running around wasn’t so bad and Jamie soon lost himself in the game, following the movement of the ball and players with a preternatural instinct, ignoring any pain as the inconvenient distraction it was.

The few times the ball came his way, he took control of it as if by second nature, barely having to tell his feet what to do as he passed to Dani, then to Sam ten minutes later.

He was being a good teammate. He was playing like he was supposed to. And then he heard someone shout his name.

Jamie didn't need to look around to know that the ball would be sailing through the air towards him. He didn't need to deliberate about what to do. He would catch the ball on his chest and send it to Sam again before Richard could make it close enough to tackle. It was the only option to get it in the net.

He didn't need to think about it. He just did it.

And his sore, battered ribs only crossed his mind when he jumped up and twisted mid-air.

The yelp of pain was completely involuntary and Jamie would have been horrendously embarrassed by it if he hadn’t immediately crumpled into a heap on the pitch.

Something had grinded in his torso. It fucking hurt. It felt wrong.

He distantly registered the sound of an actual whistle over the rushing white noise in his ears as he lay gasping on the damp grass. A hand grasped his arm and Jamie realised Richard had skidded to his knees beside him, ball forgotten.

“Jamie? What’s wrong?” More hands were on him, trying to turn him over, but the slight pull sent another wave of sick pain through his side and he keened, curling up further to stave off the harm. “Merde, get the medics.”

“Colin’s already gone.” That was Isaac, a lot closer than he’d been less than five minutes ago, defending the box on the other end of the pitch. “He’ll need a stretcher if we can’t move him ourselves.”

“Fuck.” The notion of needing to be carried out of training brought Jamie back to himself. “I don’t need… Fuck it. I’m fine.”

“No, you are not.” Sam was standing over him as well, Jamie realised as he tried to force himself up to his knees at least. Most of the team were looming around, actually, and Ted broke through their little huddle right as a spike in pain brought up the vomit Jamie had been desperately holding back all morning.

“Hoo boy.” An American accent could really cut through the crowd, apparently, since Jamie had no problem hearing that low exclamation over twenty or so sounds of disgust.

Someone stopped him from pitching forward into his own sick and Jamie finally, limply, accepted help back upright onto his own shaky legs. Ted’s hands were one of the several pairs supporting him and Jamie could feel the humiliation and shame rising up in his gut like another bout of nausea.

“Sorry, coach,” he mumbled, even as he let Isaac put a secure arm around his waist. Sam tried to prop up his other side but Jamie shied away with an apologetic shake of the head. “Ribs. Don’t- Can’t lift me arm right now.”

He silently begged the younger player to understand, to not take it as yet another personal slight. Because Sam Obisanya was a much better person than Jamie would ever be, he only took a firm hold of Jamie’s elbow instead, face belying nothing but concern.

“Okay, folks, let’s give him some room.” Ted shooed gently at everyone not currently vital to keeping Jamie vertical. “You fellas got a good hold of him? We can get a stretcher out here, tout sweet.”

“Don’t want a fucking stretcher. I can walk.” Jamie bit out, choosing not to acknowledge how heavily he was still leaning on Isaac and Sam.

“Well, son, I’m not all too keen on taking your word for that right now.”

Ted’s tone didn’t change at all from the pleasant, practical way he’d just addressed the others. He didn’t raise his voice even a little. Jamie still felt the admonishment like a physical blow and hung his head with a wince.

“We’ve got him,” Sam spoke up. “Treatment room, right?”

They made an awkward threesome, hobbling off the pitch behind Ted and down the tunnel. Colin jogged out to meet them with a medic in tow and (surprise, surprise) Roy peeled off from the other coaches to join the entourage hustling Jamie towards the now-not-haunted medical suite.

Settled uncomfortably on the edge of the reclining bed, with a hovering audience whose eyes he couldn’t meet if he tried, Jamie numbly answered the medic’s questions about his pain level and location. He allowed her to gently remove his hat and examine the bruise underneath, went through the concussion tests without complaint, and was even honest about when he’d last eaten or drank anything.

When she pulled up his shirt, there was more than one sympathetic wince around the room. A quick look down confirmed that the bruise, though still quite small, had deepened in colour since he’d last poked at it and his skin looked oddly swollen around the area.

Even the barest methodical prodding with careful fingers made Jamie flinch and hiss through his teeth. The medic (Jennifer, Jamie vaguely recalled) hummed thoughtfully.

“Two are definitely broken. You’ll need to stay off the pitch for a few weeks, at least.”

The prognosis tightened Jamie’s throat like a hand was clamped around his neck. 

“Weeks? Nah, fuck that,” he choked out. “I were playing fine until I took the chest ball. I can still score.”

“Are you actually thick?” Roy demanded, loud and angry as per usual. There was something wild in his expression as he stepped closer to the bed. “How fucking stupid do you have to be to try and play with broken fucking ribs.”

“Fuck off, you won’t even coach me,” Jamie snarled at him, all attempts at mending bridges forgotten in the wake of pain and frustration. “Don’t act like it matters if I play hurt or not. I’ve done it plenty times before.”

“Alright, alright!” Ted cut in between them before Roy could retort with whatever words had conjured up that twisted, outraged look on his face. Nothing good, Jamie was sure.

“Roy, why don’t you take five, okay? In fact, let’s clear the room. Y’all got things to do, I’ll stick with Jamie while the good doc here gets him set up with what he needs.”

Even with Ted partially blocking his view, Jamie could see Roy was about to argue. Surprisingly, it was Isaac’s hand on his shoulder that seemed to take the wind out of his sails.

“Fuck! Fine!” He shrugged the hand off and pointed damningly at Jamie’s face. “But you’re not putting a toe out on the grass until I say so, you bloody fuckwit.”

With that, Roy stormed out of the room, sending the door bouncing off the wall with the force of his exit. Jamie’s teammates followed much more sedately, all with looks back over their shoulders and quiet murmurs Jamie couldn’t discern.

“Here.” He jumped slightly when maybe-Jennifer reappeared at his side with a bundle of items. “Drink this and take two paracetamol. Hold the ice pack to your side for twenty minutes. If the swelling hasn’t gone down, I’ll send you home with a few extras, okay?”

“Thank you kindly, doc,” Ted answered for him. “I’ll make sure he stays put for a bit.”

“Not a doctor,” she corrected mildly but gave Ted a smile and nod. “I’ll need you to sign an incident report and there’s some insurance paperwork to go through. I’ll go get the ball rolling on that and check in later.”

Jamie didn’t really like the way they were talking around him, rather than to him. He liked the idea of being alone with Ted after having caused a scene and an extra load of work for him even less. Still, he couldn’t think of any reason for the medic to stay and just watched her walk away, gently closing the door in her wake.

“You should probably do as she says,” Ted said softly after a moment of quiet, indicating the bottle of water and packet of tablets. “Doesn’t strike me as the ‘take it or leave it’ kind of advice. Rarely is, from those of the medical persuasion, even if they don’t have a fancy title.”

Moving like he was underwater, braced for the other shoe to drop, Jamie silently went through the motions of taking the painkillers. He tried not to move in any way that would agitate his injury but his hands were still shaking by the time he reached for the ice pack.

“Oh, here, let me…” Ted stepped in closer, his own hands outstretched, and Jamie flinched violently. The sudden jolt caused his abused ribs to make themselves known all over again and a small shout fell from his mouth unbidden.

“Alright, okay, no touching, got that memo, loud and clear,” Ted rambled on while Jamie waited for his vision to clear from the haze of pain. When it did, he noticed his coach frozen in place, hands still hovering in midair and significantly less threatening than moments before.

“Sorry,” he croaked, embarrassment and discomfort robbing his voice. “Didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

“Now, hey, no. That one’s on me.” Ted glanced around and pulled up a chair to sit near Jamie’s knees. “How’s about you get that ice where it needs to be and you and I have a little heart-to-heart, that sound okay?”

Jamie nodded and gingerly wrapped the frozen pouch in the towel provided before applying it to his side. The relief was almost immediate and he felt his shoulders relax from the tense position he hadn’t even registered amongst everything else.

Ted clearly noticed too, since he smiled up at Jamie. There was still a furrow between his eyebrows, though.

“Ain’t it great when stuff helps the way it’s supposed to?” he started and Jamie tried not to let the dread of what was coming show on his face. “You know, when you’re sure that, in theory, something should do you good but you’re not quite bought into the reality yet? It’s a damn good feeling when the bet pays off.

“Course, sometimes it goes the other way. The thing that’s supposed to help you doesn’t do anything at all. Or, hell, it just makes everything worse…”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie blurted out again in a panic. “I weren’t trying to do that. I swear, I know I’m not supposed to mess up training or nothing. I�� I…”

“Whoa, whoa, Jamie!” Ted’s smile had dropped clean off his face. “I think we’ve got some wires all muddled up here, somewhere. I’m not fishing for an apology. Matter of fact, I’m kind of wriggling on the end of the hook, myself.”

Jamie really, honestly tried to wrap his head around that one. He failed. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Jamie,” Ted told him firmly. “We all knew something wasn’t right with you out there today and let you play on through anyway. That’s no bueno. If you can’t rely on your coach to help you out when you need it, well, then, that’s not a sign of a very good coach, is it?”

Jamie stared at him, dumbfounded. “But… I didn’t tell you I were hurt.”

“There is that,” Ted agreed easily, nodding and settling back in his chair. “And I’d sure like to hear how you got knocked around so good in the whole twelve hours you were out of our sight. Any particular reason you didn’t share that with the class this morning?”

“I…” The hand that wasn’t holding the ice pack to Jamie’s ribs started picking at the disposable paper sheet on the bed. “I fell. Down the stairs at me house. Last night. I. It didn’t hurt too bad, I thought.”

Ted hummed. “Well, you see? Accident like that, it ain’t anybody’s fault. And you felt okay after?”

The excuse hung there so temptingly that Jamie was almost inclined to think they were back to mind games. He could tell Ted that he’d been sore, but fine, up until he got out on the pitch. But that would be just another lie, wouldn’t it? And all lying had done for him today was drag more and more people into his shit.

So, instead of agreeing like he so desperately wanted to do, he shook his head slowly.

“No, no I weren’t okay.” He swallowed and looked down at his shoes, dangling just shy of the floor. “Couldn’t even drive myself in, could I? But I thought being here and acting normal was better than… better than saying I couldn’t train today. More important.”

“Oh. Now, that’s another thing to chalk up in the ‘no bueno’ category, I’m sorry to say.” Ted’s voice had softened again but Jamie couldn’t bring himself to look up. “Jamie, if you’re hurting, ever, practice or no, I’d really rather you say so. Nothing’s more important than that.”

“Team is,” Jamie objected quietly. “Being here is. I don’t got anywhere to get sent back to now, do I?”

That sullen admission hung in the air. Jamie heard Ted suck in a breath.

“Okay. Alright. Could you do me a favour and try to lift that handsome as all heck face of yours up, just a smidge? I’m getting the feeling eye contact is going to be real important here.”

With very few options of avoidance available to him, Jamie forced himself to meet Ted’s gaze. His expression bore a startling resemblance to Roy’s wild-eyed reaction before, which did nothing to set Jamie’s mind at ease.

“Jamie, when you turned up to practice last season and said you weren’t going to train, I assumed you were mad because I benched you. That sound about right?”

The player nodded, ready for the familiar prickle of shame that clawed through his chest at the memory.

“So you weren’t actually hurt? Or did I get that wrong?”

Jamie shook his head this time, then clarified: “Were being a prick.”

“Alright, that’s fine. Water under the bridge.” Ted scrubbed a hand over his face, looking relieved for some bizarre reason. “Can we agree, though, that there’s a difference between someone pretending to be hurt, for whatever reason, and someone actually being badly injured? That a middle ground we can settle on?”

“Yeah…” Jamie agreed cautiously.

“Outstanding.” Ted took a deep breath. “So, let’s just take a little hop, skip and jump from there to how things might’ve played out a little differently today than they did last year?”

“Oh.” Jamie blinked a few times, processing. Slotting that bit of logic into the missing gaps of the day. “You’re not angry at me for missing training?”

Ted’s face broke back into a genuine, if tired, smile. “No, sir, I am not angry at you for that. Or for any other reason, while we’re on the subject. I am… mighty disappointed that you didn’t feel like you could come to me, or even call when you took your little tumble. But I think maybe we can both agree to do a little better next time, how about that?”

He held out his hand for a shake - his left, in deference to Jamie’s occupied right. That small concession alone was enough for Jamie to wordlessly grasp Ted’s palm with his own in a firm hold.

“Alright. I’ll try.”

“I know, Jamie,” Ted assured him. “That’s all any of us can do.”

[conundrumsofphilosophy]

I seriously don’t know how this “ask” thing works, but what do you think the mercs would do on a beach day? Beach days for fictional characters are always so silly

i love this i freaking love beach days. i had so much fun writing these

scout

- he is beelining for the water. he loves swimming and doesn't get to often so as soon as they get there he is in the water splishing and splashing

- refuses to put sunscreen on (that's for wimps) so he gets sunburnt to hell and back and medic has to slather him in aloe vera gel when they get back to base

- will not be waiting 20 minutes after eating the sandwich engineer packed him before he gets back in the water. will get a cramp and will act like it doesn't even bother him to impress miss pauling (she's here in my beautiful mind) she is not impressed and will try to get him to get out of the water

- accidentally destroys some random kid's sandcastle so he'll sit down with them to help them rebuild it

soldier

- trying to catch fish with his bare hands. hoping to catch a shark

- getting buried in the sand and a sexy mermaid body sculpted on top of him. likely demo is the one burying him

- swims over to the others as sneakily as he can (not very) and tries to jump them (they heard him coming but they play along)

- eats sand /j

pyro

- brought ALL of the sand toys. water is not their thing so they're building masterclass sandcastles with engineer

- after too long in direct sun he gets really uncomfortable so he's laying face down on a towel under a big umbrella. melting

- walks along the shoreline looking for jellyfish. they have a stick to poke them with. also picks up shells and brings them to people

- he helps with the sexy mermaid body sculpting for soldier

demoman

- goes way out into the water and just floats in one spot. staring

- he's wasted obviously so pauling and heavy are keeping a very careful eye on him. him getting caught in a riptide could really ruin the beach day

- enjoys laying out in the sun. will probably lay his towel out beside sexy mermaid soldier and they'll stare at the sky until one or both are asleep

- WILL start a game of beach volleyball with the others and WILL be on the losing team

heavy

- sitting with medic and miss pauling. he's not much for swimming, and he feels responsible for making sure the other mercs don't die (demo) (soldier) (scout)

- he and engineer prepared the picnic. they got up so early and made. so many sandwiches

- will be coerced into volleyball. absolutely fucking dominates and his team wins every match

- actually applies sunscreen like a normal rational person because he burns BAD. medic does his back <3

engineer

- second person in the water when they get there. scout screamed at him while he was running there to join him and he will always cave to scout pressure

- the water is really nice on his joints and swimming helps his back so it's a good time all around for him. i think he is in pain all the time btw

- makes sure everyone eats something and has plenty to drink. papa

- literally keels over laughing at sexy mermaid soldier. it catches him so off guard when he sees it and it makes him lose his shit. he'll think about it a week later and start laughing again. and nobody brought a camera so he only has the mental picture

medic

- swimming is sensory hell for him so he opts out. but he still enjoys the beach because he gets to watch his peers being idiotic

- referees the beach volleyball match. he doesn't know anything about volleyball (neither does anyone else really.) he's just happy to be here

- delights in the shells pyro brings him and he keeps all of them forever. he has a little jar of them in his office

- he and miss pauling had a miscommunication error in the planning and they both brought the same overpacked first aid kit so the team is. doubly prepared

sniper

- swimming very leisurely. i think he is a chronic pain sufferer so he takes it easy but it definitely helps ease some aches

- helps pyro get wet sand for his sandcastles so he doesn't have to keep getting up and down. brings him a couple pails of wet sand at a time and replenishes when needed

- absolutely falls asleep and gets a heinous sunglasses tan line

- absolutely terrible at volleyball but he plays anyways. he's on heavy's team so he gets to gloat even though he barely contributed

spy

- i really love the image of him being at the beach still in full suit. lounging on a beach chair with sunglasses on and a mimosa and one of those sun reflectors

- couldn't be bothered. he does not participate in any activities whatsoever except graciously receiving seashells from pyro (which he does appreciate. they're very pretty)

- might fall asleep a little bit. scout wakes him up to ask him if he should try some move on miss pauling. he tells him absolutely not and immediately falls back asleep

- somehow he doesn't overheat despite being in layers in the sun. magic man

~

keep the requests coming :3 love you guys

[creativesplat]

Do you have any head cannons for Alfred, Alear, Etie, and Veyle?

Thank you for the ask! :)

Alear: 

Has a massive scar where Sombron fatally wounded her, it occasionally still twinges, particularly when she’s stressed 

Likes almost every food under the sun. She's not the biggest fan of meat for breakfast, but aside from that, she isn't fussed. She loves practically everything.

She sometimes has nice dreams about children playing with her, or a sweet woman talking to her. These are vague half-heard things from her time asleep, like Queen Eve keeping her company when Lumera wasn't able to, or Alfred playing make-believe beside her bed when he was too poorly to go outside.

She never fully understands why the corrupted scare her so much.

Is the biggest sommie lover ever. She’s the sort of person to carry round photos of him and show them to everyone and then herself. She loves Sommie. So. Much.

Sleeps with Sommie on her bed when she’s frightened, or feels like she’s going to have nightmares 

She hates cooking but can. Like. Sort of. It’s bland and kind of meh, but at least it’s not what Alfred cooks. 

Sleepy. Always sleepy. Just a very tired bean. 

Only exercises and trains out of necessity, if she had it her way, she would do less of it. She is not the biggest exercise fan 

Slowly gains a few more memories after the war ends

The nightmares she gets are mainly memories that she repressed or half-forgot 

Enjoys playing with Veyle’s hair. She sometimes does haircare days with Seadall, Celine, and Veyle. 

She hated her red hair at first, but tries to start liking it, after Veyle mentioned struggling with accepting her Fell heritage. 

Plays the piano and sings well, that and polishing weapons and jewellery are some of her favourite hobbies 

If she was in a modern au she would be a bit of a gamer

Alfred: 

Literally a menace of a brother. Has stolen Celine’s makeup, hair kit, and perfume before, but also buys her the best teas ever so, she doesn’t complain (too much!) 

When he was sick as a child he cuddled Sommie a lot (because his family visited the Somniel and Lumera was a family friend)

Very fussy eater, he only eats ‘healthy’ food, and also crepes on occasion. He does like crepes. 

The WORST cook ever. Absolutely disgusting. 0/10 never let him cook

Picked up the flute to strengthen his lung capacity, and has become rather good at playing

He didn’t have many friends as a child, because he spent long stretches of it bed ridden, so he would play imagination games with Alear the Dragon princess, and Alfred the cool-and-strong prince. Most of them involved playing tag together but sometimes he would imagine them battling against evil armies (there was always a bad wizard who caused sicknesses in those) 

As a child he needed mobility aids, and particularly liked his wheel-chair (which he used with a hobby-horse sometimes) and later in life, when he had attacks of his illness, he had to use mobility aids again

Like the Pinterest of the Somniel. If Rosado is ever art-blocked he’ll just go and sketch Alfred 

He’s canonically a very handsome guy (Sharina’s intro etc) but he’s fairly oblivious to it. 

With such muscular retainers, and people like Seadall around, he can sometimes feel quite insecure 

Etie: 

Buff as heck. I don’t care about the character model. She’s ripped

Quite intense as a gym friend. She and Alfred sometimes egg each other on too much, and Boucheron has to step in to make sure they don’t hurt themselves via overexercising 

She has given Alfred food poisoning before with one of her ‘muscle stimulants’ 

Can jog for longer than Alfred. He is very jealous. 

She can almost lift the same weight as Boucheron, if she really pushes herself, and is working up to beating him in deadlifts 

Veyle: 

She keeps pieces of Alear’s dragon stone with her always, and eventually makes some of them into two rings, so she and Alear can always be connected 

Her spice tolerance is higher than anyone in the army

She doesn’t like milk or cream that much 

She needs her hair trimmed a lot, but mainly the black bits. She gets a lot of split ends. 

She really likes swimming, and is regularly at the pool 

Plays tactical RPGs with Robin and Lucina’s emblems. 

Sometimes imagines what life would have been like growing up with Lumera as her mother and Alear as her big sister.

[haloguyfttp]

Welp after giving at a try after at least 5 years, I have now re-quit HI3rd.

That's about it. I never mentioned it because I was never sure if I'd even continue and sure enough here I am. I started because of the HI3 X HSR thingy, and thought it was a good time to try it out again anyway. If you're curious why I dropped it, under the read more. Time to get all this out of my system.

To put it as shortly and simply as I can, the main issues for me were (and for the love of god this is all in my opinion. With how some more "hardcore" HI3 fans are I feel obligated to remind you of that right now at the top)

Lack of future direction. Nothing to build or farm that I can see, and while there's weapons and stigmatas I did not find how to get them besides gambling. Either way, the next point is why i didn't even bother looking.

Lack of content. Specifically, a lack of any reason to want to build anyone. Allow me to mention my favourite one, Star Rail's progression. In HSR I wanted to build characters to survive the increasing Equilibrium Level. After that, wanted to tackle Simulated Universe, then the endgame modes like MoC PF & the new Apocalyptic Shadow. Even after all that, I just wanna build characters because I want to use their unique kits and play around with them. Clear progression of targets. "I need ST DPS", "I need AoE", "I need Harmony". HI3rd just had trial characters for every story quest, and no real goal outside of spamming the Main Story. Sure there's other modes but the game never even tries to ease you into them, they're just... there. Besides that, there's nothing much to build. Every character you have is ancient so unless you skip straight to Pt 2 story there's no reason to build anyone except maybe the free Herrscher of the Void. Anyways next point.

Story didn't connect. I'm gonna get crucified for these last two points anyway, but to be brief, the only character I was interested in (especially in Ch 9) was Fu Hua. And upon starting the game you are greeted with "You can spend some money and get a Herrscher of Sentience", which you promptly find out is Fu Hua. On top of that the remaining Fu Huas are all mild variations of her basic form. Pretty obvious what happens. Kiana and the rest's story never connected with me, a lot of it just felt like I was missing a chapter between every... well chapter (eg. Bronya talks about Seele in a few parts despite Seele literally never appearing in the story until AFTER these reminiscing mentions are long forgotten). While WuWa suffered from too much exposition, HI3 did the opposite and threw every term and faction at you and never explained any of it. By Ch 9 with That Part, it just felt like anything fucking goes. Yes it was emotional, but on a greater view like... Who cares if a Herrscher is super OP if apparently someone in a really strong Battlesuit can take them out anyway. Why do I care about any stakes if the universe lies in the hands of macguffins. Gives me bad shonen vibes where there's like infinite power scaling.

And finally, the gameplay was mid. Ch 10 - 12 was just... so incredibly slow because the combat was just spamming left click until it finally ended. Punishing Gray Raven was way more fun.

These last 2 in particular suck, because HI3rd fans have been universally praising how good their story and combat is (and often trying to dunk on the other games simultaneously), but really HI3rd had combat only mildly more complex than Genshin, while HSR provides far more interesting teambuilding and progression. ZZZ is far closer to the difficulty I expected from HI3rd. And this is obviously personal preference but I much prefer HSR's story over all the others.

Maybe my expectations were too high thanks to how much the HI3rd loyalists praised it to the moon. But that's that. I tried to stick around but I just... don't have any reason to. The only character I like has no other versions, and out of everyone combat wise I only like Dreamweaver cause her Ult is extremely cool to me.

HI3rd does have 1 advantage, which is it has the flashiest in-game animations of all the Hoyos. But that's the only thing I concede. Anyways that's my ramble over. Sorry HI3rd fans, it just didn't hit right.

I should mention I did not play Part 2. I want to do shit chronologically, but even if Pt 2 is super good, having to skip almost 40 chapters from the 1st chunk "to get to the good part" doesn't exactly sound like a good pitch.

[lost-technology]

Dear My Brain, I do NOT need to do another massive Trigun AU right now. However, just to make you happy, I'll toss out my ideas here for "maybe someday." Okay, I'm on a Fallout-kick lately. Good show for my games, yes? A rare pretty decent live action adaptation of a set of video games. Definitely nods to fans / players there. Also been doing a little playing of Fallout 4. (Fallout 3 is the only game of the series I've played all the way through main quest sadly (maybe I'll download the classics from Steam...) Anyway, I've played with this notion for Trigun before - but only in the "if they were players." I made perks / gameplay styles for the main characters. So, what are you doing, brain? Why are you starting to come up with ideas for an actual story for me to write as a crossover?!!! Especially when I do not know if there are enough people who like both properties AND read fanfiction to be interested in a crossover AU / fusion fic - then again, I tend to write things primarily for my own delight, anyway. I was telling myself "no, these two things are already too similar, there's really no need," but then came the idea that "no, there are some things unique enough to the Fallout setting that you could really have fun with the Trigun characters wandering a post nuclear North America rather than Planet Gunsmoke / No Man's Land." I could even interchangeably refer to the Wasteland as No Man's Land... Okay, Brain, so you're telling me that in this fusion universe, Vault-Tec had a subsidiary that worked closely with the budding U.S. space program, which if I am not mistaken, is canon (that satellite-dish quest in Fallout 3 and that experimental for space-colonisation front Vault concealing the real experiment in the Nuka-World expansion for 4). SEEDS was sort of its own separate thing, more benevolent than the Vaults and free from their wild secret experiments. Their mission was open: Developing a new, yet profitable, source of power for the cooperate overlords to profit from, being a failsafe for re-terraforming the Earth in the event of a nuclear war, and being a study for close-quarter scientist-living for potential space colonies. SEEDS Vault 05 (as distinct from Vault 5, SEEDS gets a different class) saw the successful bioengineering of life forms they called Plants. They were actually developed shortly before the war of 2077, but were not considered perfected. After the bombs dropped and the doors sealed, further study showed the Plants' potential as essentially living G.E.C.Ks (Garden of Eden Creation Kits). A living answer to the G.E.C.K, water-chips, cold-fusion... Even a potential way to divest from the atomic energy that America had been depending on since the end of WWII. (Fallout, for non-players, is an AU of reality diverging at WWII's end). And then Independents are born. Rem Saverem, a rogue scientist who rebels against Vault-Tec's lack of ethics managed to smuggle out the first Independent. Poor Tesla, being a little girl she had to send out, but the Hell of the Wastes were literally a better shot for her survival than for her to stay in the SEEDS-Vault. Sometime later, a pair of twin boys are born and Rem manages to convince the crew not to make them into test subjects. Until she can't. Cue big escape scene where she gets Vash and Nai out of the vault and dies in a hail of bullets right before them as guards cut her down and come after them... And so starts the journey of pair of living McGuffins who can either save the world or destroy it in search of their lost sister. Nai eventually becomes Millions Knives, a brutal Wasteland warlord bent on the destruction of humankind. Vash is on the run with bounties upon bounties upon him. He meets a ghoul named Wolfwood, dependant upon a certain kind of Chem to heal his wounds and to keep him from going feral and a couple of reporter-ladies from one of the larger settlement-cities intent upon uncovering Wasteland mysteries.

[boringbones]

What do you think The Sims 4 should have been? How should they have looked? I see people say they have the best graphics in the series and damn, that's a slander. I think The Sims 4 should have been an evolution of The Sims 3 and instead it looks cartoony and the shadows don't even catch the sims. I even think The Sims 2 looks better than The Sims 4, I think the sims can look great with a lot of custom content but that's the only thing because the world looks so papery and so green. I'm asking you this because I think you're one of the most objective simmers right now and I think you really appreciate The Sims 3.

Objectively, this is what The Sims 4 should have been. A significant evolution of the 3, keeping everything the 3 brought, without the performance issues of that period. That at least was what I expected when the first image came out. It sold us mystery, it sold us the idea of interconnected narratives like in ts2, it sold us the idea of a game that would bring everything that was left out in ts3, but that was in 2!

It's very kind of you, thank you for seeing me that way. My take on Ts4 is that the game is in the condition it is in and part of that is the fault of the extremely "positivist" community. Who celebrates Patch who brings class to the kit, and is happy with considerably superficial and insignificant deliveries.

I've been playing The Sims for 19 years. I criticized The Sims 3 a lot in its time, for (compared to ts2) presenting sims so robotic and with "hard" animations. This has improved over time and HAPPY is fixable. My idealization is that I wouldn't complain about this in ts4, however, 4 went the complete opposite way, giving us goofy sims that look more like they were made for kids than adults. They are literally silly. There is no significant consequence, there is no risk.

What made Ts1, 2 and 3 special was not in 4. However, I cannot deny that The Sims 4 was perhaps one of the games that best managed to represent the original idea of The Sims: House Building Simulator. Houses and Sims. But that alone doesn't sustain what The Sims franchise has become. That goes far beyond these two concepts. By the way, it's not because the ts4's CAS is push and pull that it's the best. It's easier to work on sims in ts2 and 3 with sliders than in 4, especially if you decide to change "ethnic" traits. Since, if you choose the wrong eye, and spend two hours editing it, you'll have to start all over again on the next swatch (model) you choose.

The Sims 4 needs to end. But if it's approaching 10 years, the community is responsible for that. Every time someone annulled themselves, every time someone stopped criticizing, every time someone accepted it and thought it was normal, it corroborated for that. It is worth remembering that it took almost a "third war" on twitter, to give us more variation of skins. And I ask: Do we REALLY deserve to go through this? Should we really lower the bar to charge for essentials?

The Sims 4 is so popular for embracing diversity, but TS3 did it without show, and the mainstream media never applauded it for it. Why? Because he was performing a natural evolution, it was his destiny. In 4, however, it seems that they program evolutions, to be applauded, handing us first a piece of dry bread, then a nice sandwich and…: "Aren't you going to applaud us? We're doing everything you asked!" In exchange for what?

The Sims 4 didn't even have a family tree in the base game. This is a bad joke. To those offended, I can only apologize, I'm not talking about you, I'm giving my opinion about this generation of almost 10 years. As a longtime Simmer, I've never seen maxis deliver so little, charge so much and still be idolized for it. This was not the maxis that revolutionized the industry 20 years ago.

And Yes!! Nothing beats the sims 2 even today.

In addition to having extremely malleable graphics that can look amazingly good 20 years later, it has the best lighting system in the entire franchise and the CRAZIEST sims (WHICH I LOVE)

By the way, do the poles light up the roofs on the ts4 too? (I really have no idea)

[tekdecksmtg]

Bloomburrow Launch Party: Sealed

While I’ll have some Standard updates soon (refined Rabbits deck, updated Orzhov Midrange deck, and new Bats deck), I decided last minute to take part in another Bloomburrow Sealed event.

I was led into Rakdos Lizards considering I had 11 different lizards in my pool along with some removal in my colors and an anthem. Again, I already learned my lesson with this set to stick to two colors. When I had lizards last week, I had tried three colors and in one game couldn’t cast anything and in the other I got flooded.

Rares and Mythics included The Infamous Cruelclaw, Hired Claw, & Hearthborn Rattler. Deck as follows:

Match 1: W 2-0 (BYE)

This event was at the same place where I had my bye in round 1 last week; crazy it happened again. 8 players in the event but one had dropped, so got a lucky free win.

Again, I’ll take the free wins in events like this as first place was a Prerelease Kit.

Match 2: W 2-1

Opponent was on Golgari raccoons. I got out to a blistering start to win Game 1 with Hired Claw, adding a +1/+1 counter on turn 2, followed by Hearthborn Rattler into Thought-Stalker Warlock. Game 2 he got out an early Innkeeper’s Talent to add counters, combined with squirrel synergies to get a bulky board that I couldn’t get through and wore me down. Game 3 we were exchanging some early removal and I was able to get out my Blacksmith’s Talent and level it all the way up. Any creature I drew became a threat and he was forced into chump blocking whatever came in with double strike and haste. He did get out a Rottenmouth Viper, along with an attack. I decided to take 14 damage from it, down to 6, as I had no choice but to go all in to kill him next turn, and that’s exactly what I did with my Junkblade Bruiser.

Match 3: L 1-2

Prior to the match we agreed to split the packs in the prize pool and play for just the promo card from the Prerelease Kit. So we each got 4 packs no matter what rather than a 6/2 split, so no real pressure going in.

Opponent was on Dimir with discard, threshold, and unblockable goals. Game 1 he got out an early Gossip’s Talent, leveled up, along with an Azure Beastbinder which enabled him to attack in unblockable while shutting off one of my creatures each turn. It ended up being a slow 4 damage per turn death as I couldn’t get through. Game 2 I had some early removal to hold him at bay until I got my Blacksmith’s Talent out again eventually leveled up. I was able to play continuous threats, swinging in with haste and double strike, including whatever their evasive ability was (trample, menace, flying). Game 3 was a mucked up board until his Wick, the Whorled Mind started going off, enabling him to sack snails to destroy my creatures while getting card advantage. I did get my Blacksmith’s Talent out again but his board was too massive with all the advantage and he was able to ultimately swing in with everything for the kill.

Overall: 2-1-0 (5-3-0, 2nd Place out of 8)

Happy to have come in 2nd place of course with a chance at winning the event. I didn’t get blown out in either of my matches, so I’m getting better at understanding the synergies between the colors while building a deck with a good curve. Brutally important to lay out the cards by ‘turn’ when deck building - it really lets you see what the potential plays are as you move through the game. It’s an aggressive set, so having a good curve is a necessity.

Reflection: The classes were broken in Limited. In 4-5 of the 6 games played, a class had a major impact, either straight up winning the game or getting someone far enough ahead to close it out. If you get a nice class with some synergy, get it out and level it up as soon as possible.

I literally only drew The Infamous Cruelclaw once and it was discarded in Match 3; really would’ve liked to see what it can do.

My next focus will be on Draft and Standard; hope my Sealed experience with Bloomburrow will help me progress in those other formats.

[northwest-cryptid]

This shouldn't be nearly as much of a controversial opinion as it is; but I miss when games were literally and firstly designed to be fun experiences. That fun can absolutely lean into the demographic of the intended player; but the entertainment and fun used to be very clearly emphasized for the common player.

And see this is where I lose people. They get too caught up on the first part of that and ignore the last 2 words. I've heard people tell me "you're just salty because you're bad" but at the risk of sounding arrogant, no I'm actually salty because I'm better than the average player and if I'm getting frustrated and struggling to ENJOY the game then there might be a problem here.

Sure you can wave this off saying "you're arrogant if you think you're literally better than the average player" but honestly I see this issue a lot of in the communities of actually difficult games, where the difficulty is part of the fun. People treat it like a dick measuring contest and refuse to hear anything bad about it; as well as anyone saying they're actually good at it.

Thing is, I actually do enjoy difficulty in games. When I played ULTRAKILL I made a point to start the game on Violent. Even when I was told to go get all the weapons first; I found that I enjoyed a challenge that was designed with what I had available to me in mind. Sure I didn't P rank everything on my first go of it; but soon after I not only felt motivated, but enthusiastic to go back and P rank those stages with my new fun weapons.

Dark Souls 3 is literally one of my favorite games, it's clear that for all it's faults; there was a good bit of care put into the difficulty to match with where the player was expected to be at the time. Even with it's branching paths I never felt underleveled for a boss encounter. Bosses didn't have over the top wild combos that they could switch up on the fly; or ridiculous AoE spam that comes out exclusively in the last 10% of the fight. They were just balanced, challenging, entertaining fights.

I think the major problem people fall into with "Difficulty Is Fun" type games is that devs fail to understand who they're making the game for and when they're making the game for them.

Again going back to ULTRAKILL here, because it's a GREAT example of how a difficulty is fun game can be done right.

See the game starts very slow with a firm understanding of your basic weapons leaving you to figure out how to parry fairly early on and use it alongside your guns without thinking of it as something that's difficult to pull off. It's not this high risk high reward thing, it's just another tool in your kit.

But the dev/devs clearly understands this game is made for the Difficulty Is Fun crowd; so they don't just give us a difficulty option for the game; they additionally make sure the difficulty ramps slowly.

Throughout the first half of the game you're more than allowed to get used to how things work before being expected to use them well; and when you clearly have more experience and confidence with the game it begins throwing harder stuff your way.

But you know what's cool? The ultra-hard content that's made for the dick measuring contest elitists? That's locked behind getting Perfect rank on all the stages in an act; doing so unlocks the super hard boss mode stages and if you beat all of those you unlock the like ultra-hard masochist gauntlet stage.

Did I mention you can do this on any difficulty? Or that different difficulties actually change up how the game plays? With easier difficulties allowing you to counter your way through the whole fight but at Violent and higher you can't parry throughout the second phase? This means if I enjoy getting into the thick of it and scrapping by on 1 HP and a dream, I totally can; but my friend who wants a stress free fun time with the game can actually experience all the same content on an easier mode and guess what; we're both happy?

Like I'm sorry I'm not saying every game needs to have an easy mode; that's an argument in a totally different ball park. This isn't about "easy mode" because that's not what I want from games. I don't want my Difficulty Is Fun game to have an easy mode; I just want it to be fair and enjoyable.

People shit on Dark Souls 2 for a lot of stuff, but you know the one thing that has always bothered me?

There's this really pretentious achievement you get the first time you die, it's literally titled "This is Dark Souls" and you know why that bothers me?

Every SINGLE time I see someone unlock that the reaction is roughly "oh no, I'm not going to enjoy this game am I..." Which all the "hardcore Souls fans" laugh at and say "yea get ready to die for 40 hours lololol"

I'm sorry but like, that's the dumbest shit I've ever seen; go wank off to difficulty somewhere else. Did you hear what they fucking said? They're not going to ENJOY the game they paid for? What's the point of doing the thing that's supposed to be entertaining if they're not entertained?!

Are these games meant to be "rage games"? No that would seem almost insulting to call them that.

Why do I like Dark Souls 3? Because the game doesn't feel like it's looking down on you, the whole game is designed to cheer you on, to coach you. Every time you get knocked down the game is telling you "get back in there champ you got it this time." If you're not sure what I mean I should likely explain it like this,

I once watched a playthrough in which one person had never played Dark Souls and the other was a veteran player. The vet was a sort of coach to point out things about the game the newbie was likely missing.

The first boss encounter was pretty scrappy but whenever he's die the vet would ask him "did you see what happened there?" Essentially talking him through like "you dodged right but he's right handed so you dodged into the swing, try sicking by our left, his right; and dodge under his weapon instead." Or he'd explain things like attack opportunity and such. The idea of their turn and your turn, the enemy attacks; and then during their recovery you get to do an action as a reward for actually dodging the attack. This lets you heal, attack, or set up something for the fight. It's a classic back and forth that leads to players being able to play in different ways and not just build for Poise, Vigor, and Strength so they can play the most boring character known to man.

It's cool to watch because having someone there to point things out is a great way to show how a veteran vs a newbie is going to view the game. If you've played a lot of Souls before, or you've played the game longer you're likely going to pick up on the ways the game is trying to hint at you to do something.

I recently did a Dark Souls 1 stream in which I literally beat the first boss with the broken straight sword and doing so was a way for me to sorta showcase how. No the game isn't about DIFFICULTY; it's about understanding. I know that's a big meme in the souls community but I'm serious you know, if you learn the attack patterns (which they don't constantly switch up), you figure out what animations are tied to which AoEs and which attacks; and you focus your efforts on dodging those attacks and learning their timing. Now you know where your chance to hit the enemy is, you know how long you have, you can learn and gauge how you need to weave in and out of range.

There's this constant "git gud" saying that I really hate, because on one hand that explains nothing; on the other hand it's absolutely true. However when you tell a new player or even an existing player to "git gud" they're not going to know what that means, they're not going to actually take that to mean:

If you feel squishy, throw some levels into Vigor.

If you're rolling to slow, take off some gear; you won't need the defense when you learn the attack timing well enough to dodge it better; the extended i-frames will help you dodge more.

Take a moment to study the bosses movements so you know where your chance to attack comes in and roughly how long you'll have when it does come up.

Remember how scaling works, dumping 30 points into STR isn't going to do as much as upgrading your weapon to scale better. You can dump those points into Vigor and then throw a few points at whichever damage stat your weapon scales with and still deal considerable damage.

Use your estus early, if you heal for 50 HP with each estus, and you have 10 estus. With a total health of 100, you have effectively 600 health. If an enemy hits you for say, 30 damage; that looks scary, that can 2 shot you right now; but if you actually use your estus liberally you'll realize the boss needs to hit you closer to 20 times. As long as you're healing you have plenty of mistakes you can make.

When I say that games aren't made with fun or entertainment in mind anymore; and they're made to circle jerk the other top players and elitists of a community. I'm not just talking about how hard a game is to beat. I'm talking about nerfs made exclusively for PvP that effect the vast majority of PvE players who will never touch PvP. I'm talking about nerfs made to weapons that could help struggling players with specific bosses because they happened to pay attention to how damage resistance/weaknesses worked.

I'm even talking about how Elden Ring is a so called "Open World" game that refuses to tell the player the recommended level for an area. Meaning it's very much still a linear experience, just with more steps. You're not playing an Open World game, you're playing a Linear game with extra steps and longer walks between quest NPCs.

Okay so you start in Limgrave, cool; most the world isn't accessible to you until you beat some bosses; other parts are totally accessible to you, let's explore some of those first right?

Now if we assume you're a common everyday player, maybe new to Souls games because you've been hearing all the Elden Ring hype and want to try it out. You're probably not good enough to immediately go and fight the first real boss of the game. You're also likely not going south, because the game doesn't point you in that direction.

In fact, one of the early game paths leads straight into a level 60 area. How would you know this? Surely the game has some form of a warning right? Like you know, maybe an NPC along the most common path that will tell you that you're not ready yet. Maybe a message left at a grace warning of powerful enemies ahead; this isn't uncommon for Souls Games having little messages around to clue the player into things.

But no, it doesn't; it just lets you go in and attack something and see you're dealing no damage and then when you inevitably get 1 shot you go "guess I'm not supposed to be here" right?

Well no.

Remember, This Is Dark Souls, you're gonna die fucker; you better get back in there and keep trying until you get it, because THIS IS DARK SOULS.

That's when they inevitably get fed up and if they're smart, they go somewhere else. So let's say you try to skip over the first remembrance boss of the game; you finally got passed Margit. You do not want to have to fight another big boss right now. You just want to explore the open world, maybe get a few levels; see the sights.

Well I hope you're already level... 40-50?

See this?

This is the wiki's recommended level per area, do you notice anything about it? A sort of linearity? Now you might not at first, you might say "but Cryptid there's multiple areas with the SAME recommended levels!" Sure there are, and accessing those areas may require you to beat a boss in another area, or travel through an area to get to that one. In other words; it's still a linear path, and while more than one of these is accessible to you. If you're not already a vet who might have over-leveled or who may be skilled enough to fight enemies significantly higher level than you; then it's possible to go from say Liurnia of the Lakes to Siofra Aquaduct and get your ass handed to you.

That's all well and good but the issue here is that it creates a sort of metronome of frustration.

When you know where the game wants you to go, and you're on par with it's damage output and such; you feel fairly confident even when the game does some genuinely bullshit AoE spam. However when you ping-pong between higher level (but technically "accessible") areas getting killed repeatedly and always having that core philosophy of "this is Dark Souls stupid, get used to it" in the back of your head where you can't tell if this is the intended path or not because sure it's hard but, and say it with me now; This Is Dark Souls.

You might be thinking "but Cryptid, even the cult classic Fallout New Vegas does this!" Which is wrong, they do in fact use high level enemies to dissuade the player from attempting specific paths and essentially railroad them into the intended route. However, there is one key difference; the fallout community doesn't pride itself on the difficulty of their games. The fallout community doesn't use the saying "git gud" in place of real advice. The fallout community is very open about cheese, breaking the game; and how this is a fun and acceptable thing to do. Not that if you cheese a fight or make something easier for yourself you're somehow "playing the game wrong."

So more often than not, if the player encounters a field of 50 Deathclaws they think "yea I'm not meant to be here yet" and move on. With many NPCs telling the player safer routes, the player actually not only has options if they want to leave, but actually knows where to go to progress as intended. They're still allowed to try to break that progression and do things their own way but you can't say they weren't literally warned by the in game system designed to make sure they understood the difficulty of what they were undertaking.

Dark Souls 1 and 3 feel like flawed, but enjoyable games; If I found myself frustrated with them; it was often because I was frustrated with myself for making the same mistake multiple times when both I and the game had been telling me not to do that again.

Elden Ring felt like a hot mess until I started paying more attention to things like recommended levels. Then it felt like a bit less of a still hot mess because I'm sorry but that's what it is.

Now I'm on the DLC and I hate that every time I get into a boss fight I begin to enjoy myself; I think you know, it's fun it's cool this feels fair but challenging. Then in the last like 10 - 25% of the HP bar they have to pull out some extremely spamming AoE that locks you into multi-hit and can 1 shot your entire health bar; or heal them for their entire health bar; or both!

Which you know, if I was a squishy glass cannon build or something then I wouldn't really complain. But I'm not, I'm literally playing the boring Vigor Poise Endurance heavy armor fucking bleed build ass piece of shit mimic tear summoning HP talisman + defense talisman build. I'm still getting consistently through most of the boss fight and then suffering because there's some cheap shit they pull out last minute to ruin the fun.

It's still impossible to know if you're on par with the area you're in, I don't want to look up a guide; sometimes everything leading up to a boss feels really solid; I dish out as much as I take; I'm feeling good about it. I go into the boss room, nope 1 shot. What, is the point?

Okay so now do I throw myself into the brick wall 40 more times or do I go grind? Or do I explore somewhere else? I don't know man I think I'll do the first because I got pretty close that time. Oh wait no I didn't not this time because I didn't really get to learn any of the moves. My camera is a mess, sometimes they can hit through walls, sometimes their hitbox extends outside their actual model; and sometimes they have a multi-hit AoE that launches so if you even get hit by 1 part of it then you're hit by the whole thing. Hope you somehow knew what this boss was and already preemptively built resistances to it or else you're not going to have fun dying to the last 5% of the HP bar repeatedly because oh yea it can still do other attacks while doing the bit multi-hit AoE bullshit. Fuck off.

I hate the feeling of "this is a fun boss fight I'm actually enjoying this; that's pretty solid I feel like I'm enjoying this game again." Being met with "oh no can't have that; let's throw some absolutely bullshit mechanic at the last 5 seconds to make sure you're here for 3 hours longer than you should be."

Look if I were particularly bad at these games I'd honestly shrug it off, but I'm not. I'm sorry if you think I'm fucking arrogant; I can't sit here and justify my confidence to you; if you think I'm arrogant there's no telling you otherwise. The truth is I used to speedrun DS3, I've done full no-hit runs of DS1 for fun; I actively enjoy getting P ranks on the fucking Prime levels of ULTRAKILL on Violent and fucking Brutal difficulty.

Not only am I actually good at "difficult is fun" games; but I genuinely enjoy them for it. I've not had a single boss fight in the DLC where I've won and still been excited about it. It's always a "fucking finally done with that bullshit" never a "WOO YEA BABY" is that what you want your players to experience?

There's absolutely a sort of bell curve in my opinion when it comes to the enjoyment of Difficulty Is Fun type games; they're the sort of thing you likely will be frustrated with a lot up front; but then as you spend more time with the fight you're going to learn it's mechanics and it's attack timing. So you begin to enjoy the flow of the game, you get into the sort of groove for when you can attack and when you need to dodge; or when you need to do a specific thing; or swap to a specific weapon. It all starts to come together in this kind of fun exciting back and forth between the game and you. However that runs out after maybe 15 - 30 minutes; now you've hit the point where you're confidence is so high that you don't feel like "you CAN do this" you feel like "you should have ALREADY done this 5 attempts ago." Your understanding of the attacks isn't "oh wow I should dodge INTO this one and AWAY from that one!" Now it's just "ugh right it's this one, god I'm fucking stupid I should be able to dodge that by now- oh right, cool yea fuck it go on do the fucking unavoidable chin move right right okay I don't get a turn to attack..." You don't celebrate a victory, you sigh in relief of it being done and over with.

I don't know about you, but I'm really sick of how especially in the souls community, if you dare to say something is bad and you've not beat it on your first try and mentioned how easy it is. You're ignored, told you're just salty; told to git gud, told to go play a different game if you don't like it. Now look where we are, FromSoft acts like the worst of the community, they refuse to let their game be accessible to the common average player. You pay $40 to get mad, frustrated, and give up repeatedly until you finally overcome the problem and don't even feel happy about it. Congratulations, I hope you "enjoy" your suffering because it's just not a good fucking time.

I remember how many people refunded Elden Ring back when it first game out, and I remember every fucking elitist dick measuring contest participant out here laughing about it. Why? Do you not think those people deserve to enjoy the same fucking game we do?

[goretzkastits]

actually it was explained very well why they weren‘t taken along, and for the same reason Müller being taken (fitting in well with what Flick said about Mertesacker back in 2014) - some players who are for lack of a better word *happy* to sit on the bench (despite having been starting IX players, with great experience and great merit, but not any more) and just as important as team players there, without the expectance of fighting for first spot in their position. They‘re literally good backup and team building material. The fact that Nagelsmann understands that that‘s what’s needed and that the best NT aren‘t necessarily the individually best 23 players makes me have so much more respect for and faith in him as NT coach!

I mean. Where? Did he explain it like this? You're explaining it but he was never that clear on why Mats and Leon SPECIFICALLY weren't taken. With Leon okay fine, maybe he isn't what the nt team needs rn according to Nagelsmann (though I find it sooooo fucked up how much they used Leon in the ads for the euro kits etc. when he was never gonna be on the squad). Mats however? He is exactly the sort of player that Thomas is in the sense that he's not only super passionate but also serves as a positive presence on the pitch for younger players to sort of get a sense of security during the game. He has proven himself time and time again, just to be excluded first by Löw and now by Nagelsmann. Mats himself has even expressed that he's aware he isn't an automatic starting XI player but that he's motivated and willing to put in the work. He's done so much for the nt in the past, he's played an incredible season and imo it's so disrespectful not to take him along for what is probably the last euros during his career and a home one at that. I understand the reasoning that the best nt isn't just the best individual players but Mats has always been a team player and yes we should also give fresh faces a chance but we literally do not need FOUR goalkeepers, especially when we know Manu is most likely gonna play most matches. There was space for Mats on that squad.

[webbymom]

So, on the way to the bookstore...

Just popping on totally randomly and after many years to say a couple of things sims-related. Well, really to rant a bit, about a couple of things sims-related... ;)

I just spent over $100 CAD on a couple-or-so kits, and the two newest TS4 EP's - High School Years (since I'd passed on that earlier, and, of course, Growing Together). I was very excited for the new worlds, the new gameplay, and getting some more clutter in my game. FINALLY. After a couple of years of not really having much interest left in TS4, I was excited to get the whole, intense, deep, family mojo going - baby, infant, toddler, child, teen with high school, young adult with Uni, young adult with job/marriage/kids, start all over again...

I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed. Not really by the kits, they are what they are, but by the EP's. I played through HS Years while awaiting the arrival of GT, and it was OK, I guess. To be honest, I was hoping to explore more with a new "legacy" type of family once GT came out. But I suffered from MANY crashes once I'd finally downloaded it.

To be fair, I struggled with the game crashing due to mods - but I didn't put them in until they'd been updated. I spent four days starting over and over, testing and testing, with mods that were supposedly updated, but obviously something was wrong... I literally started FOUR FAMILIES in that time, ended up chucking all mods out the window (ooooh, the pain of build/buy without cheats!), and starting again.

It went OK - but I was so DONE by then. Sad, really.

None of THAT was EA's fault. Not at all. But here's the thing I noticed whilst starting over and over and over...

San Sequoia is barren. Empty. Lifeless. Like, you can't even search for frogs or fish there. There are no collectibles that I am aware of in the world AT ALL. (correct me if I'm wrong...)

Apart from collectibles, there also aren't that many people around to befriend/romance/marry - like, they're all adults or older and already paired up, for the most part. I don't know how I'd start a single, YA sim out and find someone to make a life with! I really don't - I tried! I had to move them to Willow Creek!

Literally, I gave up and moved my last sim from my last attempt to Potter's Splay in Willow Creek. Frick San Sequoia, I said. I can always visit the rec center just as easily by a loading screen from Willow Creek as I can from down the frickin' road!

My sim met Zoe Patel - she was serving drinks at the local bar. He romanced her REAL FAST LIKE and they got married within 24 hours and very quickly had a baby. Which then turned into my FOURTH infant in this fiasco. And we are on the way AGAIN to making some milestones.

(Poor little gal still hasn't gotten to the high chair yet, as did 2 of my other infants in this journey... )

Life was better - Zoe could trot around her neighbourhood, even while pregnant, and gather flowers and mushrooms and dug up stuffz to make a bit of side cash while hubby was off at work... And I realized that the RICHNESS of those two original neighbourhoods were never really matched in later EP's - except for Windenburg, they did a pretty good job on that one. Again, still early on.

I've heard that they are all worried about computers and how more worlds means more resources used and how they have to keep all those stats down for those who play on lower-end machines.

Well, folks, here's the thing. I've PAID for a higher-end machine. I know not everyone can, I get that. But I have one. And, for once in the last two years, I was looking forward to a pack that I now feel was hyped up beyond what it would do or give me, which was dumbed down, specs-wise, so that everyone under the sun could play the game. In the end, this long-time simmer feels shorted. I wanted to like the world. I wanted to play in it long-term. But you can't even get a decent-sized lot to build on, let alone one that faces the sun for the right times of day so you can bloody well see what the frick you're building or living in! The life has been sucked right out of it, which is sad, being as all the screenshots were so pretty. But why have an entire wharf when you don't even have a fishing spot on it? Why have parks and "empty areas" when there are no collectibles to find? No secret portals to other places to discover? Oh, and the "secrets" of San Sequoia are just folks telling you about their gender preference or how to be OK with some bad news you got???

Seriously. I can't even.

Know what I did? I opened up The Sims 3. And guess what?

So. Much. Better.

I'll write a new post about that later, since this one is long enough. ;)

[youngpettyqueen]

❓ [choose a random WIP and talk about it]

❓"Choose a random WIP and talk about it"

hohoho ok lemme look through. the fucking collection here

ok ok gonna go with "i told you not to get lost in the wild"- a WIP I do not have mentioned anywhere on here because I very impulsively wrote down some dialogue for it the other night and its gonna be pretty short

so this one's gonna take place after The Best of Enemies which is an episode that I consider to be beautiful and brutal in equal measure. I know you dont know MASH so description- Hawkeye is on his way to take 24 hour R&R when he's pulled over and held at gunpoint by a North Korean soldier, who brings him to another wounded soldier that he wants Hawkeye to save. Hawkeye, with only a first aid kit in the middle of nowhere, cant do anything to save the man, but he cant communicate to the soldier holding him hostage that he needs to move him back to camp. Hawkeye is fully convinced that if he doesnt save this man, he's going to be killed, and in the end he's helpless to do anything as his patient dies. the soldier, however, lets him go, and begins to dig a grave with his hands. Hawkeye starts to walk away, but after only a few steps he walks back and uses his helmet to help him dig. the episode ends with Hawkeye getting back to camp and collapsing in his bed, dead exhausted and still covered in dirt and blood, and his friends not noticing make some jokes about him being sleepy and lazy after a wild time on his leave- which he never got

(the B plot meanwhile is everyone goes insane over bridge. the card game. blood is almost spilled. this episode is fucking insane)

anyways all that to get to the point of the WIP which is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOMEBODY TAKE CARE OF HAWKEYE AFTER THIS. we never see any sort of aftermath for this episode and its literally never brought up again! which like, makes sense, if they were gonna do the aftermath they would've done it in the episode itself, but also I need to see my boy hugged?? cared for?? he was supposed to be getting some well-deserved rest and fun times and instead he was held at gunpoint and convinced he was going to be killed no matter what he did! its such a harrowing episode- even on my second watch of it I was still tense- but its also just. such a beautiful moment when Hawkeye turns around and helps dig the grave. its a moment where you wouldnt even blame him for just walking away entirely, but he doesnt. he turns around and takes his helmet off and uses it to help a man dig a grave. its so quintessentially Hawkeye

ok ok I keep rambling about the episode but really I wanted to see Hawkeye being cared for after all of that cause Jesus fucking Christ dude he spent an entire day with a gun pointed at him, completely helpless to save a life, convinced he was going to die at any moment. so this fic is literally just his friends taking care of him and comforting him because its what he deserves. Charles taking care of cleaning and dressing his hands while BJ holds him, letting him just. fucking cry it out. there's a bit more but I dont want to spoil the entire plan here so ill leave it at that

also ik you're not gonna read MASH fic but to any interested parties- @thebreakfastgenie has a FANTASTIC fic on ao3 with the same idea of the aftermath of this particular episodes, it's called safe travels and I love it to death and I highly recommend reading it. while my take is gonna be different, I do really love their vision of how things play out after this episode, I seriously cannot recommend this fic enough for anyone who wants some good Hawkeye being cared for content

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

Carpe Diem - Chapter 9

Pairing: Sketchbook (Kaisa/Johanna)

Summary: Carpe diem: one of the five latim mottos of the arcadist, or neoclassical movement. Literally translates to "seize the day"

Picking up where Locus Amoenus left off, this fic follows the lives of Kaisa and Johanna for a couple weeks as their feelings grow and develop. Updated weekly.

Notes: >:)

Read it on ao3 or read the first installment on this verse or read the second installment on this verse

It was barely past 6 am when Johanna got the message. True, it was probably a little inhuman to shoot someone a text before eight in the morning on a Saturday, but considering that Johanna was usually already awake at that time, it wasn’t like she could judge. That morning was only different because she’d stayed up later than usual with her friends the night before, and the dull pain behind her eyes let her know that her body hadn’t gotten its due of slumber yet.

Even though her brain told her to go back to sleep, she’d already gotten a glimpse of the name on her screen. It didn’t surprise her at all. If anyone out of all the people she knew would be awake at that time, it would be Kaisa. Save for Edmund, of course, but he was probably also still sleeping after their late game and pizza night. What did surprise her was that it was a voice message. Kaisa never sent her those.

She unlocked the cellphone and pressed play on the message, letting Kaisa’s voice, still with a morning roughness that meant she hadn’t woken up long ago, wash over her as she laid back down and closed her eyelids.

“Hey, Anna.” She began tentatively. “Good morning, I hope I’m not disturbing you. I just… wanted to thank you again. For yesterday, and for everything else. You really are very good to me. Tildy thinks so too. And Frida. So, thank you.” 

A smile spread over Johanna’s face. At the same time that she sounded sincere, she also sounded like she was reading from a script. Like she had been rehearsing what to say in her head so as not to forget once she started recording. It also didn’t escape her that apparently she’d talked even more about her to her family, and that Johanna seemed to have their approval.

Her sleepy mind did not manage to pick up on the fact that Kaisa clearly wanted her to know she had that approval, though.

“Also, Frida told me that the Scouts will be hosting a fundraiser today.” She said after what sounded like a deep breath to gather enough resolve. “They’ll be selling out picnic kits. I was wondering, if you’re free, would you like to go with me so we can spend some time together? Don’t worry about it, though, I know we’re all packed with college stuff to do.”

There was a pause. It sounded like Kaisa wanted to add something, but didn’t know what, or if she should.

“Um, that was it. Let me know when you can. Bye.” 

As much as Johanna’s eyes screamed at her to not look at a screen, Kaisa would be able to see that she’d received and listened to the voice note, and she didn't want to leave her hanging. She managed a quick text assuring her that she’d love to, but put her phone on silent before she could get any texts back about what time they’d meet. They’d sort that out later. For now, Johanna went back to sleep with a dreamy smile tugging at her lips.

                                                     ……… 

The weather closer to the town centre was radically different from that on campus. Where at home it had been drizzling slightly, there it was cloudless and the sun shone as brightly as it could for an October day.

After she’d woken up both body and soul, Johanna had made the appointment to be at the green area closest to the Sparrow Scouts headquarters at about four in the afternoon. Kaisa wouldn’t need to be driven there, she’d assured. She’d be going earlier to keep her sister company.

However, when Johanna arrived, Frida was nowhere in sight, and Kaisa was waving shyly at her from the spot she’d picked them under an Ash tree. She’d already set up their picnic, with a variety of baked goods, spreads, fruits and a couple of cold cuts, all on top of a towel that was white with a flowery pattern. There were other people sitting around the park with similar arrangements, but a quick glance told Johanna that Kaisa had brought some extra food with her to add to that which the Scouts were selling in their kits.

“Hi.” Kaisa stood up when Johanna approached her, ready to accept the hug she was greeted with. “I hope you don’t mind, I picked us a basket in advance. I thought you’d like the pattern of this towel that came with it.”

“I do.” Johanna smiled approvingly. "It's very pretty. Did you sleep well?”

“Oh, sure.” They sat down side by side, their backs resting against the bark of the tree. “I was exhausted. What about you?”

“Me too. Except I went to sleep much later than I’m used to. I had to sleep until, like, ten o’clock to get rid of the brain fog.”

After picking up a buttery biscuit, Johanna looked at Kaisa only to find that she’d gone slightly pale. Or more than usual, at least.

“Oh, shoot! I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

Laughing despite the biscuit still in her mouth, Johanna wondered if Kaisa thought most people woke up at six every weekend. Her reaction made Kaisa groan and bury her face in her hands, muttering out a coy ‘sorry’.

“That’s really okay. I found out I don’t mind being woken up by you at all.”

Lowering her hands enough that Johanna could see a roll of her grey eyes, Kaisa huffed. “I’ll make sure to remind you of that when I next need help with an essay at three in the morning.”

Johanna smirked. “Please. You and I both know you never needed my help. You just wanted to have my lovely self near you and didn’t know how to ask for it.”

“Oh, damn.” Kaisa said in the most monotone voice she managed. “Now you’ve unmasked me. Whatever shall I do?”

She shoved her playfully, and they both turned to analysing the food options in front of them. If there had been any doubt left in Johanna’s mind that Kaisa had a huge sweet tooth, it was gone as soon as she saw how her first choices were always the sugariest available. She took an entire half of the (admittedly tiny) strawberry pie as Johanna spread a heap of spiced herb butter over a cracker. The lower half of Kaisa’s face was pink by the time she finished, and Johanna handed her a napkin even if she thought the image was adorable.

“Sorry again for Abigail’s behaviour last night.” She said as she gave her the piece of paper. Since she’d come to the conclusion that the sweet biscuit had been more worth her while than the cracker, she decided to try another sweet food, a piece of the banana and apple bread. It turned out to have been the right decision, the taste rich and cinnamon-y. When she had joined her friends again after having dropped Kaisa off the night before, they had tried to pretend nothing had happened, but none of them had been pleased with Abi. Only Johanna had been truly mad, but even the rest of them had been clearly disappointed by her conduct. In the end, she’d left earlier. No one had asked her to, of course, but she seemed to have sensed they needed some time to forget about it.

“It’s no matter.” Kaisa shrugged, pretending to be more interested in the bizarre amount of pink that had come off of her face on the napkin than in the events of the previous night. “I really didn’t feel any hostility on her part. Why do you think she acted like that, though?”

Johanna took a pause, and a breath. She knew exactly why Abi had said that. The real question was, was Kaisa ready to hear it? 

She’d been giving her what Johanna sincerely hoped were hints for a while now; singing love songs with her, telling her she made her life better, texting her sweet ‘good morning’ messages filled with emojis, arranging this sweet little picnic for them… and yet, she’d never made an actual move. It could be that Johanna had severely misinterpreted everything, and she was simply excited about their friendship. But if there was even a small chance that Kaisa might be interested in her romantically, and Johanna sincerely hoped there was, she’d come to the conclusion that she would have to be the one to take that step.

Well, she better not throw away an opportunity, in that case. Carpe diem, Johanna thought. Let’s see if I actually learned anything from that seminar.

“Abigail isn’t at all mean, but she isn’t daft either. I hope it’s not too self centred of me to say this, but I got the feeling she was jealous of you.”

Her eyes opening wide, Kaisa’s lips parted in surprise as she blinked. “Wait, of me? Why the hell would she be jealous of me?”

It was impressive, in Johanna’s opinion, how someone could both be the smartest person she knew and not have a single brain cell at the same time.

“Well.” As she took a deep breath, her nerves got the best of her, and made her stare forward into the park instead of at Kaisa. “That would probably be because I’ve been trying to flirt with you since we first met.”

When there was no immediate response, or no response at all for the following couple of seconds, to be more precise, Johanna worried that she’d screwed up beyond repair. So then she forced herself to look back at her friend’s face, and try to understand if it was an ‘apologise’ moment, a ‘pretend it was a joke’ moment, or a ‘get this disaster lesbian to understand someone is into her’ moment.

It was that last one. She should have known.

The confusion was evident on her face, like half of her brain was trying to decide if it was a quip she should laugh about, and the other half was processing the implications of her having spoken seriously. Johanna bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from smiling, wishing she could snap a picture of her and then place it side by side with that confused maths lady meme.

“Not to pressure you, but could you please say something? It’s starting to worry me.”

Kaisa’s face seemed to become even more panicked when she realised she was expected to have a coherent reaction to what was happening, and her eyes shifted from side to side like a deer in headlights, looking at every part of Johanna’s face except her eyes. Johanna sighed, a lot more amused than worried now, and placed her hand next to Kaisa’s on the towel. She wouldn't touch her without knowing if she was too overwhelmed for that at the moment, but the invitation was there in case the girl wanted to reach out.

“Kai.” She said, making sure to sound as patient as possible, and thinking of a clear way to word what she wanted to say. “Sorry to put this much pressure on you all of a sudden, but I’ve been crushing on you for a long while now and I can’t actually figure out if you feel the same, or if you’re happy with us being friends. I mean, I am, but I’d love it if we could try something more romance natured. I’ll be pleased with whatever you say as long as we can still be near each other, I just felt like I needed to put this out here so we could be clear with one another.”

Whatever Johanna had been expecting to get in answer, it was not this. Kaisa actually opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before she managed to get the words out. Each time she did so, the space between her eyebrows creased further, making her look more baffled.

“You can’t figure out if I feel the same?” Kaisa ran a hand over her hair, staring at the spot between their hands because looking directly at Johanna felt like too much at the moment, and she couldn’t risk losing the minimal amount of rationality she’d gathered by making that mistake. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been mad about you for like, almost a month at this point. I wasn’t aware of it for most of this time, sure, but I have! You don’t think I go around inviting all my acquaintances for private freaking picnics, do you?”

It was most likely not how she should react, but in the face of that sudden bluntness from someone she’d spent so long tip toeing around, Johanna couldn’t hold back a laugh. She hunched forward and buried her mouth in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

“Anna, I’m serious!” Now Kaisa was looking at her, and using her hands to gesticulate too. It only made her want to laugh harder, though out of delight or nervousness, she didn’t know. “I told you I listen to music because of you! That’s the simpiest thing in the history of ever, this isn’t fun! Do you think it’s easy having a secret playlist to listen to when I want to think about you?” 

Johanna now felt her face warm pleasantly, and a fluttery feeling take over her belly. Not wasps, she noticed, but beautiful butterflies making a garden of her abdomen.

Or maybe goth moths, come to think of it.

“Okay, okay, hold on.” She breathed when she got her giggling under control, even if it was hard with Kaisa squinting at her like she was going to send her to sleep on the sofa despite them not even living in the same house. “So what you’re telling me is that, if I wanted to kiss you, that would be alright?”

“Of course that would be alright!” Kaisa threw her hands up in the air in defeat. “Listen, I’m trying to be as direct as I dare with you here-”

She didn’t have the opportunity to finish that train of thought. Before her courage could wane, Johanna leaned forward and pressed her lips against hers. It had clearly been an unexpected move for Kaisa, but apparently also the right one, because after a millisecond of being ice still and trying to process this new development, Kaisa sighed in something that was partially joy and partially relief, and melted into it. 

It was a chaste brush of their mouths, but they drew back only long enough to look at one another with adoration before gravitating back to the halfway point between them where their lips met again. It felt like their blood was replaced with silver and stardust, like fireworks exploded just beneath their skin. Johanna captured Kaisa’s bottom lip between hers, amazed that it was just as soft as it looked, and was rewarded by gentle hands cradling the back of her head and threading into her hair. 

It took them longer than it should have to remember that they were in public, in a place filled with child scouts and their parents, and even longer to bring themselves to care about it. When they eventually did, they leaned back only the distance that they absolutely needed to, their foreheads still leaning against each other, in a way that they could feel each warm puff of breath from the other on their face.

Looking at Johanna like this, face flushed and smiling at her like she was some sort of gift, Kaisa felt caught between wanting to shout her feelings from the nearest rooftop and wanting to cry. Sure, the word ‘love’ hadn’t been mentioned, but she’d just made it clear, through words and actions, that she didn’t, apparently, know how far above Kaisa’s level she was. And since she hadn’t been ashamed to admit she’d fallen this far, maybe if Kaisa was smart she could persuade her to plummet even further. 

It should be terrifying. She’d always thought that she would never be close to anyone in this sense. She had thought she was too odd, too obsessive for anyone to truly be able to enjoy her presence beyond the show she put up for the outsiders in her life. But Johanna truly had. This woman had ever so gently lifted up her mask, inch by inch, and for some reason, decided that she liked what she saw. The thought that eventually she might lift it high enough and see something she couldn’t deal with should send Kaisa running, lest she get too attached and break her heart (and heavens know what else) trying to not be a disappointment. But it didn’t. 

From the very beginning, Johanna had taken everything that terrified her and turned it into something new and unexpected. Kaisa had handed her well written essays on why she was no good for a friendship, why she shouldn’t want to get close, why she was everything she was running from; and in turn, Johanna had picked them up with a smile, thanked her, and turned them into artful origamis which she kept close to herself like battled for trophies.

Kaisa was so afraid. She was afraid of disappointing, of not being perfect, of the future, and of everything she couldn’t control. But she wasn’t afraid of this. And, as long as the reason why she wasn’t afraid continued to look at her like there was something in her that was worth protecting, Kaisa was sure she would be alright.

[moon-ursidae]

SESSION #4… & #5 (this one is SUPER LONG i’m sorry haha)

as always, SPOILERS for BOTH of the last of us games are below!

i feel like i have barely made a fuckin dent in this game haha so my goal today is to really get some ground. i want to finish this before i go back to school next week.

total play time:

session 4: about 5 hours

session 5: around 7 hours

i left off in a really weird spot last time bc i ended pretty abruptly so idk where it’ll put me

but this section is called Capitol Hill

it started me back a few minutes but that’s alright!

goddamnit i knew it was too quiet. there was too much short grass around here i knew some wlfs were gonna fuckin show up

NOOOOO the halloween stuff is probably reminding ellie of riley :(

i think that’s the same frankenstein statue/figure from the mall as well?

damn.

i have a feeling this place is gonna be CRAWLING with wlfs. i literally hear them already

FUCK as soon as i used the workbench

wlfs AND infected??? jfc

i at least found a card tho

THERE’S A WHOLE STEALTH UPGRADE BRANCH????

my rogue heart is so happy

I WAS WONDERING WHEN I COULD MAKE SILENCERS FUUUUUCK YEA

there’s a bunch of pride stuff around! fuck yea!

LMAO DINA “what’s with all the rainbows?”

FUCK YEA BOOKSTORE

SORORITY SECRETS💀 “it’s us right?” LMAOOOOO

that’s so fucking funny

there’s a trans flag in here too!! FUCK YEA

lmao dina getting distracted by the gay smut

OH MY GOD THE WLF ARE FUCKING EVERYWHERE

i fucking love silencers holy shit fuck yea

this area is HUGE holy shit

anutha card babyyyyyy

what if i don’t want to go to the tv station huh? what then?

dude i gotta try ellie’s half up half down hair style. i love it so much

it’s also crazy how this is still DAY ONE for them

ellie saying how she couldn’t do this without dina and dina telling ellie she wouldn’t have let her😭😭😭😭😭😭

oh shit explosive trap

anutha card babyyyyyy

“i like you.” “i want it in writing.” I LOVE ELLIE AND DINA

oh my god ellie’s talking about bill

i wonder what the fucker’s up to rn

ellieeeeeeeeeeeee don’t say that shit

“you have a bigger burden that puts you in a worse position” ELLIE NOOOO

“feel her love?” are we entering scar territory? oh fuck

TOMMY’S HORSE OH SHIT

oh no dina

ellie, dina’s pregs dude. be patient with herrrrrrrr

she sounded annoyed with her when she asked if she was good to keep going. and it doesn’t help that ellie just said that shit about other people being a burden. ELLLIIIEEEEEE

had to break for like 20 min due to some internet issues

well what was 20 min turned into like more than 7 hours HAHA

and what turned into 7 hours turned into 2 days…

so i’m just gonna mash the two sessions into one post bc it’s easier and i can sooo LMAO

i’m sorry ya’ll shit has been wack and the anxiety is in full force haha ANYWAY

SESSION #5 BEGINS HERE!!

idk where it’s gonna put me bc i ended pretty abruptly (again.)

also i think my first tattoo is gonna be the moth on the guitar and on ellie’s tattoo? i’ve been thinking about it for over a year😯

OKAY it started me a little bit after finding tommy’s horse

i already have shitty eyes i CANNOT see these traps in the tall grass dude

i have a feeling i’m gonna get jumpscared in this fuckin furniture store

ANUTHA CARD BABYYYY

I WAS RIGHT WHAT THE FUCK

THEY CRAWL NOW???????

damn i opened this safe just to be able to grab NOTHING i am fully stocked on everything

… i spoke too soon

going back for the med kit bc i tripped a fucking bomb…

more of the “feel her love” art

radio station WOOOOO

she really did learn so fucking much about surviving from joel holy fuck

bc if she only grew up in a community and didn’t go across the country w joel i don’t know if she would have the knowledge that she does

oh shiiiit there are some dead ppl upon this balcony

i don’t think this was tommy tho

nope! there’s an arrow in this person

i also like how they subtly tell you who killed them with the arrow. there have been no wlfs with bows anywhere. they all have firearms. tommy is always seen with a rifle of some kind but never a bow. so there’s a lot of process of elimination that can be done just from this alone. i fuckin love little details like that.

so it was scars. the “feel her love” graffiti and the wlf patrols frim earlier mentioned them. i love how this group is being introduced slowly. it really builds them up and tells you what you need to know about them before you encouter them.

i already know about the scar group so i have some insight, but the way they slowly add them into the mix is cool

hopefully i get a bow soon

onward to the inside!

ohhhhhhh fuck.

i don’t care who you are, no one deserves to be hung like that. that’s horrible.

damn i can’t even cut them down. fuck, man.

and those are wlf, so it was the scars

the scar symbol in blood? jesus christ.

and i know there’s gonna be combat here bc i see that clip on tiktok all the time of this encounter

the music is stressing me the fuck OUT

found another card tho

kimimela is fucking DOPE

although this does seem like a really comfy place to set up, it’s too big to defend dude

clearly that was their downfall bc jesus christ it is a massacre in here

i’ve only seen dead wlfs. no scars.

oh shit it’s leah

ellie’s hands are shaking :(

oh fuck there’s polaroids of all of them

OH SHIT THERE’S A PICTURE OF ABBY

god the way that she stares at the picture :(

and the music AHHHH :(

the way that dina recenters her by saying “3 down, right?”

god i love them

dina pointing out how fucked it would be to interrogate leah like tommy did to the one guy, but ellie is so persistent that she doesn’t feel it’s wrong GOOODDDDDD DUDE MY HEART

RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING FOR MY LIFE

ohhhhhh fuck we’re underground. i know what’s about to fuckin go down. and i want NONE of it bro

fuckin theatre WHEN?

this subway shit REALLY feels like the last of us

the lighting from the flares is fuckin SICK

oh shit i’m just gonna make them fight clickers and just wait it out this is great

this is some benny hill shit with the way they’re running in circles w clickers chasing them

the atmosphere is fuckin horrifying

i hate the bloater sounds that i’m hearin

it just feels musty down here dude i’m sweating

GODDAMNIT i know i missed a whole fuckin section to search back there and i can’t get back now. FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

god fuckin damnit bro SHIT

THERE WAS PROBABLY SO MUCH STUFF BACK THERE I THOUGHT I SEARCHED EVERYTHINGUUUHHHH

THERE WAS PROBABLY A GODDAMN CARD BACK THERE

I’M SO PISSED AT MYSELF RN

the lighting and sound design down here is fucking CRAZY

the distant screams and infected sounds are helping to create a really tense environment

shambler?! what the fuckin fuck is that??

nope

nopenopenopenopenopenopenope

fuck that. i’ll see you guys later!

“holy fuck” is absolutely right ellie

i just dropped down. i want back up. fuck this dude. i don’t fuckin want it

fuck right off

thank fuck for trap mines. oh my god.

that cart holding open the door collapsing is a really smart way to close off the area

i want out of these tunnels bro

tbh scavenging is one of my favorite parts of the game. it’s so satisfying.

oh shit! there’s a carving of the scar woman in the graffiti. this shit is HELLA cultish bro

hmmmm this newspaper clipping about a community in the suburbs surviving seems like her origin story, whoever the fuck she is

“the community members unanimously credited their survival to one woman…” unanimously being the key word there

“she had a vision of catastrophe… ‘divine retribution’” yuuuup sure sounds cult-y to me

CARD ACQUIRED

“how’d you do that?” “magic.” “you’re my favorite.” THEY are my favorite your honor🥹

THERE’S A FUCKIN HAWAIIAN SHIRT IN HERE ELLIE TAKE IT

naughty dog yellow babyyyyyyy over the rail down below

oh fuck more bitches

again, thank god for trap mines

DAYLIGHT! THANK GOD!

but i know there’s more to come

ANUTHA CARD

bastet is really fuckin cool

i’m waiting for this train to fucking COLLAPSE dude

i feel so bad for dina

she’s leaning up against the train with hands on her knees :(

THERE IT IS

TRAIN COLLAPSE

ohhhh fuck i heard hella infected i’m gonna have to DIP

the way dina was so ready to go down with ellie too

she instantly offered to share masks

and the way she YELLS at ellie when she takes her mask off

GOOOODDDDDDDDDDD this is so fucked

OH SHIT TIME TO RUN

I ALMOST FUCKED THAT UP BUT I MADE IT

OH SHIT DINA

THEATRE!!!! MY BELOVED FINALLY!!!

there is a CONVERSATION that is gonna happen that needs to dude

the way dina looks at her arm AHHHHH

omg i do that same shit ellie’s doing w her hands during confrontation

her having to correct “know” to “knew” bc of joel🥲

oh fuuuuck dude i know i’m not gonna like ellie’s reaction to dina’s pregnancy

dina trying to break the tension w the “don’t worry it’s not yours” 🥺

ELLIE DON’T “are you fucking kidding me?”

I GET THIS IS STRESSFUL BUT DAMN

COMPASSION MAYBE?

ohhhhhhhhh shit a few weeks ago? shit dude.

i agree that it would’ve been good for dina to stay in jackson BUT that can’t change rn. ya’ll are in the fucking pnw

“well you’re a burden now, aren’t you?”

😐

🤦🏻‍♀️

ELLIE.

DINA’S FACE :(

FUCK DUDE

go fuckin walk it off ellie goddamn i love you and everything but ur bein dumb rn

and if joel did the same shit (which i’m sure he would have during the first game) i’d be mad at him too

DINA CURLED UP FACED AWAY FROM ELLIE :(

APOLOGIZE ELLIE.

seeing dina look so small from the balcony UUUGH

i feel like i’m gonna get jumpscared pt.716282

ANUTHA CARD

okay beyond is fucking dope i think she’s my favorite card so far

where’s the props table bc i’m gonna touch it and all the props that aren’t mine LMAO

the guy that was here before is definitely still here

and fuckin fried on the roof…

sorry bro

i feel like there’s gonna be at least one or two in the auditorium tho

THE LIGHTING IS SO FUCKING GOOD OH MY GOOOODDDDDDDDD

“joel. you’d love watching a movie in this place.”😭😭😭

WAIT I NEVER CHECKED MY JOURNAL

hold up journal break

her shambler drawings are fuckin cool

jesus i’m getting pit orchestra flashbacks from this auditorium

THE SICK HABIT PLAYED HERE!!!

AND ELLIE GETS THE SET LIST!!!

only $25 for a concert?????

A GUITAR🥲

holy shit this guitar is pretty

FUTURE DAYYYSSSSSSSS😭😭😭

fuck dude i’m crying

cut to black???

OH FUCK IT’S THE FLASHBACK

NO I’M GONNA SOOOOOBBBBBBB

I’M ALREADY A MESS

once i hear his voice i’m gonna lose it.

3 years earlier😭

losing it.

FUUUUCK THERE HE IIIIIISSSSSSSS😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

I CAN SEE THE FUCKING CASETTE TAPE IN HIS TSHIRT POCKET

just seeing him standing here is making me fucking cry.

“oops.” AND HIM LAUGHING AHHHHHHH🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

“push the water with your whole arm blah blah blah” “glad to know i’m gettin through” THEY’RE SO FATHER AND DAUGHTER AND I’M GONNA LOSE MY MIND

i’m wondering if it was a choice to have joel not have any close ups during these cinematics

“i am very angry and upset.” I’M LABSLSBSKWVDKSVSOSB

I MISS HIM SO FUCKING MUCH

“you need to stop lettin people rile you up” IT APPLIES TO ELLIE CURRENTLY TOO DUDE AHHHHHH

WHEN HE’S BEEN LEADING THE WAY THE WHOLE TIME BUT THEN LET ELLIE GO FIRST THROUGH THE WOODS BEFORE THE DINOSAUR😭😭😭😭😭😭

“that’s a big boy” 🥹🥹

I’M FUCKING CRYING SO MUCH DUDE

oh i’m R E A D I N G this journal bitch

CAT MENTION!!!

omg the little 3d shape sketches w shadows and the diamond thing LMAO that shit is all over my fucking school notes

THE DRAWING OF TOMMY AND JOEL IN THEIR FUCKING COWBOY HATS😭😭

HIS CONCERN WHEN SHE WAS CLIMBING UP THE TREX😭😭

“don’t jump. CLIMB down.”

*immediately jumps*

the “HEY! HEY!” WHEN SHE JUMPED DOWN😭😭

“did you see that?” “yea i saw that” IN THE MOST EXASPERATED PARENTAL TONE UUUGGGHHHH

THE PAMPHLET THAT WAS IN HIS HOUSE😭😭

HE LOOKS SO PROUD STANDING THERE

THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HER PLEEEAAASSSEEEEEEEEEE

HE’S SUCH A DAD OH MY GOD

THE HAT!!

HAHAHAHA I LOVE HER

i know ashley said that “actually” in a kinda jokey nerd “um actually” voice on purpose💀

“pretty sure those are velociraptors.”

JOEL SAW JURASSIC PARK WOOOO

“sorry all the dinosaurs are busy right now.” “what are you doin?” “oh wait. one of the dinosaurs is here. joel, it’s for you.” “very funny.”

I L O V E T H E M

she really had to dig the knife deeper huh? LMAO “get it? because you’re old.”

“there was a sequel. wasn’t as good.” LMAOOOOOOOOO true

THE HAT ON DINOSAURS SAGA BEGINS

“is this gonna be a thing? please don’t let it be a thing.” OH IT’S A THING JOEL.

“triceratops. at least there’s one i recognize.” I LOVE JOEL.

THEM POKING FUN AT EACH OTHER

“this one’s brain was the size of a walnut.” “looks like you two have somethin in common” PLEAAASSSEEE

i’m gonna start crying more bc this is how me and my dad are i swear to fucking god

“tell ya what.. when we get back to jackson, movie night.” 😭😭😭😭

SHE PUT THE HAT ON HIS HEAD😭

THE GRUMBLE IN PROTEST HAHAHA

TROPHY BABY

A FUCKIN CARD????

“sarah was into those for a little while. or was it the tiny creatures? i forget.” KAHSKSHSKSVWKSBSKSBSKSHAKV

THE FACES IN THE MIRROR WHILE JOEL HITS THE DAD LEANING ON DOORWAY STANCE PLLLEEEEAAASSSSEEEEE

naughty dog said “LOOK AT HOW GOOD OUR FACIAL ANIMATION IS. L O O K. FEAST UPON IT WITH YOUR EYES”

“look how thick this one’s skull is!” “kinda looks like…tommy” “i’m telling him you said that.” “please don’t. catch it in the right light, boom. tommy.” I’M- 😭

“i happen to know a thing or two.” “from a movie.” “keep goin.” ASJSHAKSBSKSB HAHAHAHAHA

H A T LOCATED

now they both have hats🥹

“did you go to museums a lot?” “yea. sarah loved em. i swear that girl dragged me to every museum in texas.” JOEL PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

“looks like a giraffe” BC SHE’S ACTUALLY SEEN THEM IN SALT LAKE CITY😭😭😭😭

JOEL PUT THE HAT ON IIIIIIITTTTTTTTT😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

“i see the appeal.” IN THE SOFTEST VOICE EVER😭😭😭😭😭😭

i’m suing naughty dog for emotional damage

side note: the way the light spills in from the ceiling????? GORGEOUS

oh fuck it’s the space exhibit

i love that joel could have easily gone over the fucking cabinet next to the turnstyle but he didn’t to amuse ellie😭

“did you know this was here?!” “you don’t like it. we can head back.” “shut up!” WHILE SCRATCHING THE BACK OF HIS HEAD BC HE WAS WORRIED?? I’M GONNA-

“joel, can you name all the planets?” THE WAY HE CHUCKLED LIKE HE WAS ABOUT TO DROP THE BIGGEST FUCKIN MINDBLOWING INFO HAHAHAAAA

“my very educated mother just served us nice pizzas.” “uhhh… did you just have a stroke?”💀💀💀💀💀

“daggum girl, you are smart.” 😭😭

GOING THROUGH THIS AND KNOWING THAT HE HAD THE FUCKING SPACE FOR DUMMIES BOOK ON HIS BEDSIDE TABLE IN JACKSON MAKES ME FUCKIN- KAHSKSHSKSVSKSVS

“tell me another fun fact.” AGAIN IN THE SOFTEST VOICE LIKE HE’S GENUINELY HAPPY HERE

“why don’t you tell me what you like about it.”😭😭

“all right, kiddo. now i get it.” AGAIN. SOFTEST VOICE. 😭😭😭😭

TROY BAKER WHAT THE FUCK

hitting ANOTHER dad stance at the fucking rover

i don’t wanna go in the shuttle bc i know i’m gonna be even MORE of a mess and that this is gonna end. and i don’t want it to bc i fucking MISS joel

the way he immediately jumps in to help her open the door on the lil shuttle🥹

here come the tears

“happy birthday kiddo.” i’m gone.

THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HERRRRRR

HE CARES ABOUT HER SO FUCKING MUCH.

i fucking love how it looks like she’s actually in a shuttle to show how immersed she is🥺😭😭😭

and then it slowly fades back in GODDAMN NAUGHTY DOG

“i do okay?” JOOOOEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLL

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

THE WAY HE SMILES AFTER SHE SAYS “are you fucking kidding me?” 😭😭😭😭😭😭

THE PIN ON HER FUCKING BAG FUCK OFF 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

“whose birthday is it?” “you can’t keep doin that!” HAHAHAHA

“i want a good splash!” i love them so fucking much. oh my god.

YYYEEESSSSSSS. it isn’t a joel and ellie adventure without ye olde boost

“okay, be safe!” “you be safe!” have i said that i love them?

there’s gonna be infected in here right? has to be.

there’s an “i killed for them” written on the wall.. not creepy at all..

ANUTHA CARD WOOOO

okay jk saura is my favorite card now

“this guy needed a hug” about the i killed for them on the wall💀

“the 4 soldiers at the gate. the last one cried.” this is fuckin creepy dude

I DON’T LIKE THIS WITHOUT JOEL HERE

she has her gun out and said “oh shit” but i don’t see anything??? I’M SCARED

“the women were tortured. choked on her own blood.” this is fucking CREEPY DUDE WHERE IS JOEL

“the stragglers that snuck into camp. they just wanted food.” have i mentioned that i don’t like this?

FUCK the crashes scared me dude

“the kid who ran into the blast. i couldn’t stop him.” dude why the fuck are you plastering this shit on a museum wall

“the people in the van. we locked them in and doused it with gas.” jesus fucking christ dude.

“there is no light.” ohhhhhhhhhh were they looking for the fireflies then?

jesus fucking christ this is sad and fucked up

what a cool birthday ellie good god

THOSE WOLVES SCARED THE SHIT OUTTA ME DUDE

okay i had no fucking idea there was more to this flashback after the space shuttle like i thought it ended there so i have no fucking clue what’s next

A FUCKING BOAR???? WHAT THE FUCK???

“liars.” ohhhhhhhhhh fuck. it’s definitely the fireflies.

JOEL!! damn he looks good. SORRY

yeaaaaa there’s the logo fuck bro

AND THE WAY ELLIE TOUCHES HER SCAR AKSHAKSBSKSBKWB ASHLEY JOHNSONNNNNNNNN

THE M U S I C

and how it stays on that shot??? beautiful.

SEATTLE DAY 2 BITCHESSSSSS

YESSSSS THE ICONIC BUTTON UP OUTFIT YYYEEEEAAAAAAAA

LEMME SEE THAT TATTOO ELLIE

i’m gonna practice guitar tho

DAMN playing this is harder than actual guitar

JOURNAL check-in! how we feelin ells?

oofta. expected this though.

“i shouldn’t have said that to her.” THEN TELL HER THAT

i like that her writing reflects how her brain is going 100 miles a minute

i feel like dina’s doing all this tracking even though she feels like shit bc ellie said what she fuckin said :(

have i mentioned that i FUCKING LOVE dina? bc i very much do.

oh fuuuuuuuck it’s tommy

oh fuck HILLCREST? fuuuuuuck

i feel like dina should stay

yeaaaaaa she’s not lookin good dude

YESSSSS THE BRACELET

“i don’t believe in luck.” “i do.” I LOVE THHHHEEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMMM

a lil smooch goodbye 🥺

I START IN HILLCREST?????

FUCK.

i think i’m gonna stop here actually? this post is already super fucking long bc i’m dumb and decided to combine session posts lmao

ANYWAY i will pick back up at hillcrest… tomorrow!

this was a longer session and i feel like i got through a decent chunk today so WOOOOOOOO

[gravitywonagain]

I'm super late but if you're still doing the asking about fics thing please tell me about Gun Oil. The world needs more Sunny Bees.

not late at all! i will literally talk about any of my wips with the slightest provocation :D so thank you for the question! and a non-wx one, too!! very fun for me <3

gun oil is a slightly dark rwby au in which there's like... War going on with salem. but that's only vaguely important to the setting of the story, which i never really figured out how to write anyway. the main point of gun oil is sun and yang having a conversation and finding (non-sexual) comfort in each other even when blake isn't there with them. though they're definitely in a full poly thing, this is kind of about closing the triangle, i guess?

it's not overly polished, and like most of my rwby fics, i mostly abandoned it as the show kept coming out because it didn't really fit in anywhere anymore. but it still lives on in my heart and maybe someday i'll come back to sunny bees and fair game again :)

here's an excerpt:

The war is all around them, there's no escaping it. The air is thick with dirt and blood and gun oil. This is where Sun finds Yang, sitting at an old wooden table cleaning and oiling her arm and gauntlet.

"Need a hand?" he can't help the joke as it slips from his mouth, but he knows it will make her smile.

Her laugh is small and dry, but the curl of her lips is warm and real. She looks up at him and rolls her eyes. The lack of a retort is concerning. It's been months since she was at full punning strength, but silence has never been her style.

Sun drags a battered chair over to sit with her. The wood scrapes against the stone floor, filling the air with a rumbling screech. They both startle at the noise. Sun huffs out a chuckle, a slightly manic sound fraying the edges. Everything feels like that these days.

He settles into the chair and watches her practiced motions as she services her prosthetic and its connection point. Not for the first time, Sun thinks that she's the strongest person he's ever met. He wouldn't know what to do with himself if he'd lost as much as she had. But, then again, look at what she's gained.

"Were you looking for something, Monkey Boy? Or did you just want to watch me play with myself?"

Her voice catches him off guard as much as the joke. He starts in his seat before he notices her smirk and the gleam in her eyes. It's so good to see.

"Oh, no," he says, "I'm just here for the show." He clasps his hands behind his head and relaxes against them for added effect.

She laughs again, this time brighter. It warms him.

"Actually," he sits back up in the chair, pulling out Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang, "while you've got the lube out…"

Yang attaches her arm and flexes the metal fingers before pushing the little bottle between them. Sun digs out the small cleaning kit he now keeps on his person as she checks her arm's functionality. It's been so long since Beacon that he can hardly picture her without it anymore.

He still remembers seeing her that night.

He was searching for Blake when he found them. Yang was unconscious, blood pouring from where her arm should be; Blake was frantic, terrified, a mess of guilt, fear, and exhaustion. Neptune had stabilized Yang's arm so that she wouldn't bleed out before they got her to a medic while Blake watched through tears and so many apologies. Sun held her. He wanted to hold them both. He didn't know what to do so he wrapped his arms around Blake and let her scream at him.

"Stop looking at it like it's still bleeding." Yang's voice is tired, but it shocks him from the memory all the same.

"How do you know-"

"You get this look," she says, still cleaning Ember Cecilia. "Your eyes… your eyes glaze over and your tail curls super tight around whatever's close."

Sun sighs. He'll have to work on that.