#i would actually fucking die laughing if that's how my pc died

[aqours]

imagine surviving the death house, old bonegrinder, the feast, a dun full of werewolves, a fucking evil-ass giant tree, all of strahd's minions, motherfucking baba lysaga, and even a giant man-eating bird only to meet your end because a goat yeeted you off a bridge at Tsolenka Pass

[maruneia]

Okay so. Any opinion on any Asura's Wrath character outside of Yasha and Asura, GO-

the moment i read "outside of yasha and asura" i immediately knew i was going to fail ALSKLLKFLSDFKLKLFS LMFAO /HJ BUT OK HERE WE GO????? BTW THANK YOU ANON PLS ASK ME MORE 😭

durga: i love her so much SHE MOTHERED!!!!! i absolutely love her design tbh i should draw her more.... i really adore her relationship with asura and i cant blame her for marrying him tbh cause asura is also 10000000% my type. if i were her though i would simply not die at the beginning of the game cause im simply built different /hj

mithra: baby girl 😭😭😭 i also love her so much!!!! its just that i cant help but laugh over the fact that she gets kidnapped every 5 minutes

augus: hes one of the realest. hes such a fucking icon quote on quote "he spent his last days swimming with bad bitches and ended it with a fight on the moon"... i want what he has tbh ALSO he is actually very fun to draw.. its just like drawing asura but x100 angrier/more mischievous. i would climb him like a tree

i want nothing more than a pc port/remaster of the game so everyone can experience his absolute banger of a boss fight

sergei: ....homophobic homosexual???? LOOLOOLOLOL i like his design + moon motifs. hes just completely unhinged and good for him. im also trying to draw him but my artstyle cant seem to do him justice yet

i still really want a boss fight against him cause i wanna learn how he fights :( i guess ill make my own lore.... such an underutilized character

olga: SAME WITH SERGEI i really want a boss fight against her and based on her scenes, i guess she'd fight using ice abilities/her sword and its really sad that shes also underutilized... reduced to a mere simp for deus

deus: not much actually??? i actually died to him a lot in my first fight against him LOL cause my monkey brain kept button smashing and i would charge towards his lightning attacks like a complete moron... i admire deus fans tho like seeing people fawn or make content of him is so awesome

wyzen: "THAT WAS ONLY THE FIRST BOSS?????" anyways since my only means of playing asuras wrath is by emulating it, i kept dying to him (his gongen form) during my first playthrough cause i had no idea how to do those spinning gyroscope QTEs on a keyboard (i figured it out eventually though after like... dying straight for an hour or two..........)

kalrow: ehh.........

[small-boy78]

facts about my ocs part 1:

- Chiawase is Chiru and Saiko’s lil sister

- Chiru is second vilain’s crush (My bestie is going to die of laugh ig- but none cares-)

- Saiko ever wanted to kill someone only for someone (like a yandere would do... LOL XDDDD)

- Saiko had a immortal wolf (don’t ask how and why, i don’t even know why i decided that), named Okami...

- Chiawase is litteraly the most mature

- Saiko forgot all of her family after she locked herself with her siblings

- Tsuki actually never locked herself with Saiko, Chiru and Chiawase, they got seperated after an explosion, who made her searching them for 5 WHOLE FUCKING YEARS

- Saiko got somehow kidnapped by her own PC after started playing dangaronpa, who made her participate the game... (to the Trigger happy havoc, Goodbye despair, and Killing harmony, so the scenario change a bit//My AU), she got stuck for 3 whole fucking years, she knews how yo guide everyone to survive, even if not everyone is alive actually-

- Saiko was supposed to be dead since she is 12... (and a half) during the explosion.

- The second vilain was manipulated bybthe main vilain

- The second vilain (Hernos/Herna) is trans (Male to Female), for being respected by his family who thought "she" was a cisgender girl...

- Hernos loves being called Herna, because "her" supportive sister called her like that when she was a kid...

- Saiko and Chiru are autistic

- Saiko’s backstory was based on a alternative version of mine

- Saiko made new friend while she was stuck in her pc with danganronpa (Ibuki Mioda [two idiots met :0], Kazuichi Souda [Soda’s protectors, also the third idiot], Chihiro Fujisaki [Saiko clearly knew everything about that buddy], Kokichi Ouma [She knew that he will end up alone one day], Celestia Lundenberg [don’t ask how and why, i have the power of the winx])

- Chiru was abandonned because he was ugly

- Iniky somehow exists

- Saiko still remebers her bestfriend

- When they go out for the first time, the world was destroyed

- Saiko somehow managed to make appear all the danganronpa carather to the real world (the one who died are inclued) and then despair and hope had to team... (why, i don’t know !)

[thedeadhandofseldon]

The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and  worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

[owaowabetch]

Minecraft pt. 1 (Sykkuno x F!Reader)

Oneshot (maybe part of a series??? idk we’ll see): Even though you’ve never played minecraft, you still manage to build a great house with your basement buddy. Friendship with a hint of romance. This is season 1 of the OTV ftb server (Pre-relationship; part of Uh-oh & Impasta)

“Ok guys, so today’s stream is going to be a lil different” You chat to your stream “We are going to be playing Minecraft with the OTV gang and other people we’ve played among us with!” Waiting for Minecraft to load on your pc, you continued on chatting “We will be playing GTA later on in the stream, we have a few jobs lined up with some people, so hopefully we get a lot of money from that” 

You minimized your face cam into a corner as your character appeared in a random spawn area near quite a few people. You saw multiple boxy players run around and hitting each other. So, you walked around picking up flowers  and with the help of some members of your chat, you managed to collect wood.

“OH! HEY Y/N!!” A loud crunchy voice yelled terribly into your ear causing you to cringe visible and immediately start hitting them with the wood in your hand.

“Your mic is dank man” You continue hitting them, which turned out to be Leslie and she starts to hit you back with a laugh. You guess her flowered hand overpowered your wood and hungry state, because you died and respawned to where you first showed up.

“Ah fuck” You complained before another boxy figure showed up infront of you and you recognized the blue shirt and green striped scarf, so you cheered. “Sykkuno!”

“Hey, Y/N!” His character moved his head up and down “What happened? How did you die?”

“Leslie’s mike was..crunchy?? And then she killed me!” You jump around

Sykkuno laughs “What? I’m surprised mobs havent got you. I’ve been killed many times by them” and in comedic fashion poki ran by screaming for help as she was being chased by a giant spider. You both watched as she would turn and hit it before continuing on her run.

It killed her. She puffed into smoke and in her place was a grave.

You both laugh as Sykkuno gasps out her name and you both run to her grave.

“Is this part of the mod? Or is it part of minecraft” You ask crouching on her grave and read her name.

He jumped around you with an answer “ Uh no it’s a mod that abe put in. If you break it the stuff you died with will spawn out”

“Oh” Continuing the crouch and uncrouch “What now?”

“Well i was going to find some of my graves, but I’m gunna find wood to make tools and find food” He answered and with that you decided to follow him

You collect the fruit from the near by trees and kill some of the animals with an axe that Sykkuno made you. Along the way you collected flowers and wood.

“We should find a house before it gets dark and more mobs come and kill us” Sykkuno walks to you then throws a stack of wood on the floor “Or maybe you build us a house. I’m not good at that type of thing”

You stare into your cam and do the debbie ryan “Oh my god, living together?” You pick up the stack of wood and start building a small house “Is that good?”

“Ya, that’s great! I’ll put the door down and I got us some beds, so we now have a spawn point. So when we die we just end up here” He explains doing so

Nodding along to what he said, you start putting the flowers you collected around the house before entering the house. He put the beds down next to each other. Making sure to mute yourself, you do the finger point and with a ‘tch’ sound you smile “ Oh my God Chat! Our beds are next to each other !?! How crazy. Heehee”  

The house was lit up with torches. “Click on the bed” He tells you and you do so. Your characters laid there side by side and your chat was hearing you make embarrassing noises. “Chat better not be telling him how embarrassing I’m being please. This is a desparate plea for you guys not to tell him!! Like Im joking guys please” With a laugh, your character gets off the bed and you walk out.

“Oh!” In Sykkuno’s hand was a flower “I noticed you picking up flowers and I know that [Flower/Name] is your favorite, so i picked some up for you”

You can’t stop the smile that appears on your face nor the flush on your cheeks “You are so fucking cute”

“Wha-?” You interrupt him “This is so sweet, honestly Sy.”

He throws them on the ground “It’s no problem. Just saw them and remembered how much you liked them “ and you pick them up, putting them at the entrance of the door “I love it!!! Thank You Sykkuno!!”

He hums and jumps around. You check chat, when a donation comes in telling you to check it, and read that he was purposefully was looking for the flowers because he knows how much you would’ve loved them. You don’t believe them at first, telling them that while he is nice, going around looking for a flower doesn’t seem like a productive thing to do. So, someone from your chat sent a clip of him telling his viewers that he was looking for your favorite flower to give to you. His excuse was that this as your first time playing minecraft, so he wanted you to enjoy it and thought it would be a great present until he can find diamonds.

“Guys! No!! That is so sweet!” You cry out blushing even further

“Hey guys!” A voice called out. A voice you immediately recognized to be Liliy’s “Come look at my house!” Looking up you see her stood further up from the both of you. She started making her way down and gasped “Are those [F/N]!?! Where did you find these! The look so pretty!”

“Yea” You jumping once more “Aren’t they cool?”

“YES! Can I have one?” She asked standing next to them “Is this your house? I love the flowers around them”

“I guess this is where we live now” You respond

“Both?” Lily questioned “You and Sykkuno are living together!?!”

“Yea! He actually gave me the [F/N]s, so you can’t..have them..” You respond to her awkwardly

Lily turns to Sykkuno and hits his character “You fucking simp”

He gasps “Lily” but she ignores him “I’ll take a different flower as a housewarming gift. Now follow me!”

“Y/N, why don’t you go see it while I gather up more materials” Sykkuno told you

You follow her up the small mountain? And there laid her pink house and you gasped “There is pink wood!?!”

“Yea, you just need pink dye. I have a bunch left if you want some” She offered you

“I don’t know if Sykkuno would want to live in a pink house” You enter her house and notice chests and peak into them

“He’d want what you want so just go for it.” She places the flower she took from your house next to hers. “Those chests belong to other people, but here’s mine.” She hits the chest in her house “I think i have like 20 of the pink wood left, so you can just take the rest”

You took the stack from her chest “Awesome! Your house is nice! It’s big too! I’d have to remake our house into something bigger”

“Yea, it’s kinda ugly since it isn’t pink” She tells you causing you to laugh

“It was a last minute thing to hid in during the night” Holding the pink wood in your hand “I’ll probably look up some building tips and stuff later to make a cool place, but thanks Lily!”

You hung out in her house talking with people as they came and went as Lily went to find more flowers to surround her house in. Though someone interesting came in, wearing the generic steve skin with a slightly creepy face.

“Hey Miyoung!” Lily called from out her house

“Hi Lily” She responded “I’m just letting you know I’m putting a death trap in your home. Please don’t tell the victims”

You snorted in amusement “Can I help with that?”

She moves towards you in her crouched state, so you respond in kind. You both just stared at each other in your crouched position circling each other “Okay, so I have a bucket of oil, so I want to dig a hole in the ground and push people into it”

Nodding your head “Clean, my chat was telling me that there is a trapped door, so why not put one on the ground above it and just have people walk in it?”

“We should also put a sign down there, so as they’re slowly sinking to their death, there’ll be a sign that mocks them” Nodding her characters head “I have some signs already, I’ll make the trapped door”

Taking a shovel from your hotbar, you dig a hole 6 blocks down, digging the other side as you make your way down. You then walk to the other side and start to make your way up.

“You should leave an open space for the sign, maybe 2 blocks open?” Miyoung tells you as she eyes you from above. You jump out of the hole you created and shovel 2 dirt blocks. She places a sign down and covers it up with a wood plank that matches the floor of Lily’s house “Wait I need to put the oil down”

So, she breaks the floor once more and jumps in to put the oil in before making her way back up. “I just put RIP on the sign, I think it’ll help them realize that they will die, so..”

“Alright clean clean” You jump around and watch as she places a trap door on the floor above it and placing a sign in front of it.

“We should probably look for victims” Miyoung tells you

You make your character swing their arm around towards the chests in Lily’s home “Well people have stuff in here, so maybe we should wait for someone to come in to grab something and lure them”

“Sounds good” She says and as she says this Sykkuno comes barging in.

“Hey y/n!” He cheers “Oh hey Miyoung! Lily told me that she has a bucket in her chest that she’ll let me borrow. So, I’m just trying to find her chest. Don’t mind me” He rifles through them “Can’t seem to find them “

You open the trap door and look at him before he turns to you two “Oh is it in here?” and down he goes. “Oh!? IS THIS A TRAP”

You start giggling as he starts to panic laugh “y/n? miyoung? Help!”

You both just crouch above him and stare as he slowly sinks “Guys, any help? please? y/n?”

Miyoung just closes the trap door and walks away and in the little chat says that Sykkuno died in due to [Sticky Dipping], so you type in an apology as you make your way back towards the house. You meet him and apologize to him once again.

“It’s no problem. It was actually kind of funny, but check in the chest I have in the house. I got some more stuff for you for the house” He tells you  “I’m gunna go back to get my stuff and the bucket, so i’ll catch you later!”

“Alright, see ya Sy!” You cheer back to him and make your way into the house.”Alright chat, let’s see what he gave us! I’m not reading what you guys, say so no spoilers~”

You open the wooden box and inside were more pink wood planks, glass, stairs, torches, other house materials to make building easier, and some more of your favorite flowers.

You feel your chest tighten as the butterflies appear in your stomach. You smile largely and giddy, opening and closing your mouth trying to gather the words to express how you felt, you were pleasantly surprised by the things he left you.

You wanted to squeal at how nice he is. It is hard to come across a genuinely nice guy that wanted nothing but friendship with you. So, it was easy to fall for Sykkuno; but it was hard to admit to yourself your growing feelings for him, because love is scary and being in love with your friend is even scarier. Once those feelings come out, you can’t take them back and things just become different. So, it is safe to say that you’ll be keeping them to yourself.

“By the way” Sykkuno starts causing you to jump in real life, as you were sat pondering to yourself “The server is making a town square a few blocks away, so why don’t we move the house there?”

You start collecting the items in your inventory “Yea! Are you going to need help carrying the rest of the stuff there?”

He starts breaking the items in your old home “If you have the room for some that’ll be great! yea!”

Once you both gathered the things you wanted to take, you guys bound towards where the Town Square was being made.

“Oh! By the way, can I request you build a basement for me in our house?” Sykkuno asks

The thought of him referring to the house as ‘ours’ made you smile “Yea, but can I ask why you want one?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t build anything that’ll blow up our house” Sykkuno dodges the question

‘Our’ house. Maybe one day that can be a real life possibility. You couldn’t contain the smile growing on your face even further. Maybe one day you’ll have the courage to tell him how you feel.

As you start building near Leslie’s house, a thought suddenly pops into your head ‘Sykkuno there is a girl into you’

[ssamie]

epilogue. “your girlfriend’s kinda hot”

kozume kenma x fem dazai!reader

(bsd x hq)

tw: mentions of suicide and suggestive themes + dirty jokes

masterlist.          suicide freak!

"hey uh, welcome to my stream i guess" he said as he spared the camera a quick glance "im not really playing tonight because an incident has recently occurred in this household" kenma said with a tired sigh 

nobody else knew it, but the said 'incident' was y/n accidentally setting half of their living room on fire 

the reason? apparently, she wanted to try burning herself to death in the furnace. obviously, it didn't work. and all that's left from that is more shit for kenma to clean up and a trip to yosano-san. 

kenma is stressed. and y/n is still alive. both of them are facing problems. 

"can you please wear a maid outfit- no."

kenma shook his head as he continued playing, glancing at the chat once in a while to read the veiwers' questions and comments

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: how about cat ears?! 

user: ^^ cATBOY CATBOY CATBOY 

user: u suck at this game wtf

kuroo.tetsu: hey kenma ;) 

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

"first of all, i do not suck at minecraft thank you very much" kenma scoffed 

"second of all, go away kuroo. im still mad at you" 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: LMFAOOO kuroo what did u do?? 💀💀

user: he probably broke kenma's pc 

user: PLSS he's the one kenma’s throwing shade at on twitter 

kuroo.tetsu: STOP THE SLANDER 😔✋🏼

user: rooster head lookin ass 

user: ^^ NOT THE HAIR 

kuroo.testsu: 😃😃

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

kenma sighed as he continued building a cute little cottage. he was currently vibing, just building y/n a cute cottage for her to probably burn later on. 

and he decided it would be nice to go on stream since his oh-so-lovely girlfriend was still out for work. 

ah yes, kenma has somehow kept y/n alive all those years. 

barely. 

hence why his phone was being bombarded with messages from her, all of which being blurry selfies. 

the photos had her sporting a huge grin while atsushi panicked in the background. 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: ayo, ur phone's blowing up 

user: do you have a girlfriend? 

user: KODZUKEN LET ME SUCK UR TOES 😋😋🤩

user: ^ ayo chill 😃

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

kenma simply ignored them and continued on with his task. all was going well until a loud slam was heard. his cat-like eyes widened as he heard a familiar voice singing from downstairs, it was undoubtedly y/n. 

kenma chuckled nervously and muted his mic. 

but of course, cute dumb catboy didn't actually mute his mic. haha <3

he ignored all the questions in the chat, all of them being  speculations that he has a girlfriend. which he does, but they simply did not need to know that <3

"kenma~" she yelled out "i have a surprise for you!!" she said, followed by menacing giggles. 

kenma glanced at the camera before hopping off his gaming chair and peeking his head out of the door. 

"y/n, im streaming!! stay down there!" he yelled out in panic 

"aw, you're playing hard to get aren't ya?" she chuckled 

kenma deadpanned as he saw her limping up the stairs, with her bandages torn and unravelled, same with her clothes. he didn't really think much of it since this is usually how she comes home. 

its most likely just due to work and/or another suicide attempt.

"so, kenma.. you'll never know what just happened to me today" she started off with a goofy grin 

"im streaming, atleast let me turn it off first-" 

she paid no mind to him as she peeled off her ruined coat and pointed to her poorly bandaged stomach

"i got stabbed!" 

"you got what?!"

kenma furrowed his brows as he immediately rushed over to his side, cradling her face and waist as he inspected her injuries

"are you okay, kitten?" he asked worriedly 

"yep, apparently it wasnt deep enough to be fatal" she sighed dejectedly 

"please don't be sad about that." kenma groaned "can you undress?" 

"ara ara~ whats this?" she cooed "you're getting real bold, kenma" she smirked at him 

she unbuttoned her shirt and started pulling down on her skirt "but since you asked so nicely-" 

kenma simply sighed and shook his head. "i was gonna prepare you a bath but now im considering leaving you here to die" 

"but the second option would've been better though" she smiled at him 

"oh my fucking god." 

kozume kenma. (22)

╰─▸ university student, stock trader, pro-gamer, youtuber, ceo of bouncing ball lpt. 

╰─▸ y/n's struggling boyfriend. definitely needs a pay after all he's been through.

╰─▸ currently panicking because his girlfriend got stabbed.

l/n y/n. (22)

╰─▸ operative/member of the armed detective agency. 

╰─▸ kenma's girlfriend. kinda dumb, very hot to compensate for it. still hasn't died yet. 

╰─▸ currently bleeding and wounded. also hoping for severe blood loss.

"kenma, did you know" she mused in a teasing tone "lack of sleep and too much stress could possibly lead to poor memory and lack of awareness" 

kenma looked up at her with a look of confusion. he was currently kneeled down before her while she was sat on the bed as he cleaned her wound up with a damp towel. 

"why are you telling me this?" he asked 

"i just thought it probably applied to you" she snickered 

"why? i didnt forget anything-" 

he cut himself off with a huge intake of air. he slowly turned his head to look at the screen which still had his stream going on. to make it worse, the camera was on and they were both clearly in the camera's field of view. 

to make things worse worse, his mic was on the whole time and the live chat was in shambles. 

"i hate it here" he sighed 

kenma laid his head on her lap as he continued on patching her up, honestly not caring that this whole scene was being recorded for thousands or millions of people to see. 

"well, atleast the internet could finally see my beauty before i die" she laughed 

she ran her fingers through kenma's hair as he grumbled under his breath. kenma was a pretty private person. he made sure not to overshare, given his current 'influencer' status. and he was planning on keeping his relationship a secret, though it seems he can't do that anymore. 

"might as well say hi" she shrugged 

so of course, she then decided to walk up to the camera looking utterly dishevelled and roughed up. 

for context, the newly wrapped bandages around her stomach was being stained already by a crimson red hue and it was only getting worse the more she moved, undoubtedly messing up her wound. 

"hi, im kenma's girlfriend and if i see you flirting with him i will make you regret it" she grinned 

"y/n!" kenma groaned from the bed "you're close to dying right now, turn the stream off" 

ignoring him, she proceeded to read the veiwers' comments, laughing at some of them while she joked around. 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: heLLO?!?! 

user: GE HAS A GIRLFRIEND NOOO

user: bruh, did i just hear that right? were you fuckin stabbed? 

user: ur kinda hot tho

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

kenma furrowed his brows as he reluctantly walked up behind her, reading the comments with varying reactions 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: well damn, hot bloody girl comes in and suddenly im lesbian

user: kenma looks so done

kuroo.tetsu: hi y/n ;) 

user: HER NAME IS Y/N

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

"jesus christ shut up, kuroo" kenma grumbled out with a sigh 

"yup! yup! im y/n, and no, i am not a criminal. i swear." she shook her head 

"i got an injury from my job, that's all." she cleared up 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: tangina nyo sana ol

user: MSKAKAKKA

user: THIS IS LOWKEY ICONIC

user: time to scratch another gamer boy off my possible bf list 😔

user: girl wtf happened to u

user: that's wack bro 🚶‍♀️

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

"great question, random person from the internet!" she beamed "see, what happened was.." 

"i went on a certain mission and got severely injured. though, when i called for help nobody responded" she said 

kenma furrowed his brows at her words. "why didn't anybody respond?" he asked. she sighed and fiddled with her torn bandages, pouting her lips as she does so. 

"well, when i told them that i was finally on death's door, all they said to me was 'congratulations!' and all that.." she said "what's your take on that, hm?" she asked kenma 

"im not surprised" he said 

she grinned at his words and leaned in for a kiss. "you're so mean to me, kenma~" she whined 

she licked her lips as she held his blushing face in her hands, she nuzzled their noses as she leaned in closer to him. 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

kuroo.tetsu: oh shit 😳

user: we all know where this is heading ;) 

user: sana ol talaga punyemas 

user: AYO CHILL 

user: why we goin so fuckin fasstttt 😳

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

kenma hastily turned the camera off as soon as y/n's lips touched his. 

"kitten, were still- hmph-" 

he was only silenced as she slipped her tongue in his mouth, smirking lightly as she ran her fingers through his hair 

"thanks babe." she said as she pulled away, giving him a soft peck on his cheek and a nod "anyways.." she hummed as she turned the camera on once again 

she looked through the chat while kenma slaps his face to get rid of his blush. 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: ur fuckin freaky 

kuroo.tetsu: oya oya 😼😼

user: MS MAAM I JUST MET U AND I LOVE U ALREADY WJABSJSJJS

user: not me blushing chiiilllleeeeee 🏃‍♀️

user: KENMA IS FLUSTERED

kuroo.tetsu: kenma, i didnt expect this from u 😼

user: im so fucking JEALOUS GRR😡

user: girl r u bleeding rn 😃

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

upon reading a certain comment, she subconsciously grazed her fingers against her bandaged wound. her eyes slightly widening as she felt a concerning amount of wetness seeping through

she glanced at kenma who was still calming himself down and inspected her wound 

"oh my.." she muttered, though she couldn't help but let a smile slip through 

so like any normal person would do, she simply ignored her bleeding wound and the fact that she was getting a bit lightheaded. haha <3

"anyways, let's answer some questions!" she beamed 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: what's ur full name

user: what's ur job miss girl 

user: are you possibly looking for a gf, because i am more 

than willing to take the spot 🚶‍♀️

user: how did you meet?? 

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

"alright, those are all very nice questions" she chuckled. kenma, who's now calmed down, sat down beside her to look at the chat. 

"first, im l/n y/n" she mused "nice to meet ya" 

"second im a detective! mhm, im cooler than your fathers" 

"third, it depends, belladonna" she cooed as she sent the camera flirty smirk "are you perhaps willing to join me in a double suicide?" 

"oh god.." kenma grumbled. he pouted at her and shook his head in disapproval. "don't flirt with random girls" he whined 

"why not?" 

"uh- because i am your beloved boyfriend, is that not good enough of a reason??" 

"... anyways, we met at a cafe way back in high school" she said with a smile "also, i asked him to join me on a double suicide" she said 

she was smiling and nodding as if it was the most normal thing in the world, all while kenma nods along 

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: wtf are u okay 🗿

kuroo.tetsu: teenage romance 🤩

user: cute ❤️

user: im concerned ❤️

user: ur a detective?? cool

user: LMAOO I'LL GO ON A DOUBLE SEWER SLIDE 

WITH U MOMMY 😩😩😋

user: ^^ SAME 😩

user: CHOKE ME WITH THOSE BANDAGES MOMMAE 😩

user: u r still bleeding 🚶‍♀️        

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

kenma was simply glaring at the chat as more compliments and flirtatious comments came flowing in, all of which were directed to his girlfriend. 

"this is why i didn't wanna let people know about you.." kenma grumbled 

"aww, why not?" she asked with a playful pout 

"people are flirting with you." he sighed "also, stop asking for my girlfriend's onlyfans! she doesn't even have one!" he snarled

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

user: LMAOO CATBOY IS ANGRY 😩

user: y/n-senpai spit on me 😡😡

user: drop the onlyfans 

user: chupapi munyanyo 😩

╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

"anyways, i'd hate to ruin the mood" she chimed in with a sluggish giggle "but im so wet kenma" she whined out 

a menacing smirk was etched on her lips as kenma spluttered in response, a bright red hue covering his face almost instantly as he faced her with widened eyes 

"y-y/n! why would you say that?!" he whisper shouted 

"cuz i am" she whined out as she grabbed his hand and trailed it down her abdomen 

she faced the camera and gave them a shit-eating grin as kenma mumbled out incoherent words 

"y/n we should-" he cut himself off as he felt the concerning amount of blood drip down his whole arm 

kenma's face paled as he looked up to see her smiling like a kid in a candy store, completely unbothered. 

"y/n, you idiot! why didn't you tell me!" kenma exclaimed 

"um- my girlfriend is bleeding. excessively. so uh- bye i guess" it was all he said before hastily ending his stream and turning off his computer. 

"y/n, let's get you to a hospital" he said as he reached down to carry her away. though she simply slapped his hands off and closed her eyes. 

"nope. this is my time, kenma. don't ruin it for me" she said 

"you're fucking dying!!" 

"well, would you like to join me?" 

"no"

"damn." she muttered in response 

"so...wanna fuck?" she asked sheepishly 

"for the love of god-" 

this was so messy :/

[badass-at-fandoming]

Just Little Ventrue Things ~

I finished a Camarilla Ventrue run of VTMB. Mostly, the only thing Ventrue these days know how to do is Dominate, run screaming, eat hot chip, and lie, and [high falsetto voice] here’s a list of other nonsense I discovered:

PC’s name is Christina; she’s a Dominatrix because I’m bi. Her sire was one of her clients, and she’s actually very, very angry about his death. She doesn’t mind being a vampire. She’s Wiccan and part of a coven

In this Camarilla run, I decided I would only do quests given by Camarilla members. My justification was that, while Christina is intelligent and curious about lore, she focuses on tasks that immediately relate to her and her goals. She’s not curious about others; won’t go out of her way to talk to them. She’s not a bleeding heart, like my other PCs, and she believes in the Camarilla’s laws. She just hates LaCroix for killing her sire. Her plan during the game is to curry as much favor within the Cam as possible and cozy up to LaCroix so she can stab him.

Enough backstory

Nonsense time

Smiling Jack laughs at you if you don’t eat a rat in the tutorial. LOL. The Ventrue dialog is like “I could barely choke down the homeless man: please don’t make me eat a rat!”

The blood in the Santa Monica haven’s fridge is now blue blood. Does regular blood make Ventrue sick? I was too scared to experiment.

[spots Mercurio] I am going to steal that ghoul

Rosa: The people you’re looking for are up there. Christina, assuming Rosa is a Cam agent: Okay, thanks, bye

Never spoke to the Thin-Bloods again (sorry Lily baby ;-;)

Everyone except Julius still leaves when the PC reaches Hollywood

If you try to feed on Julius, he WILL kick you in the head and you WILL glitch into the fire, be on fire; run away screaming in Prada

You can skip the whole basement of the Ocean House Hotel if you manage to jump over the hole in the staircase???? Like?? You mean the spookiest fucking level has been optional this whole time I”M

[ghost appears] [Christina smacks it with an axe] None of that.

Club girls speak to Christina and I’m on the FLOOR

Therese “kills” Jeanette, even though I had enough oompa to make that not happen.

Therese joins the Camarilla and says she’s in good position to be the next Prince??? Hello??? Where is our Prince Voerman ending????

Went straight to LaCroix, called him “sir,” and he name-dropped Napoleon.

LaCroix tells Christina to go visit the Anarchs. She blows the Anarchs off (Nines made a growly face, Damsel dialog yowl-exited out after I asked if she wanted to join the Cam; Skelter threatened to murder me twice). When LaCroix told Christina that, while he admired her Cam loyalty, she must listen to her enemies to understand what they wanted, it felt like he was actually being a good sire and mentor.

That’s weird.

When Christina asked for his history, he very carefully explained his lineage, like the important part of Ventrue culture it is.

Overall, I found LaCroix-being-nice-to-me extremely unsettling.

Sir. Stop smiling at me, sir. Stop being impressed I don’t ask for money. STOP MAKING ME UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE LIKE YOU, SIR.

In contrast, LaCroix sounded genuinely betrayed at the end

Also made it more obvious when he started to lose track of his marbles

Ventrue PC seems juuuuuuust tall enough for her forehead to glitch into the ceiling of literally any confined space

The dirty Elizabeth Dane policeman didn’t psspspspsp at Christina so the whole ship was 15 white-knuckled minutes of making police dance and scuttling about

There is!!! A lot less!!! Talking in this game!!! Than I remember!!! She is only good at talking and ordering people around i am bEGGING

All EXP goes to Dominate and making Christina extremely charismatic and buff.

Ventrue himbo????

Beckett un-himbo-ifies her

She insults Beckett on their first meeting, spitting out “What do you want, wolfie?!” I thought this was appropriate because she died like, 4 times on that warehouse mission and was Extremely Stressed And Under Duress

Beckett’s response of “Oh, you’re too young to have mouthed off to the truly old ones yet.” makes his later snide remark of “the young ones are so temperamental” 900% funnier. Yeah, LaCroix! Beckett thinks I’ve grown and am now more mature than you! XD

Missions involving sex workers hit different when you’re a sex worker.

Christina was incandescent with rage at the Brotherhood

Grout’s mansion mission was a lot of “I have no interest in this nonsense.”

For the first time ever, I didn’t kill anyone during the Museum quest! This is because Christina ran very fast and Dominated every guard as quickly as possible. Every single fucking guard knew she was there, but could do nothing about it, because they were dancing. The door to the sarcophagus locked (it will do this if too many guards are agro), but locked doors are no match for noclip hack.

Entertaining image of a tall woman absolutely blasting into this museum room and Beckett tackling her to the floor like wait! I must snark at you! You are legally obligated to speak with me!

Isaac is still somehow a pretty chill guy to work with if you’re Camarilla.

Christina didn’t visit VV or Ash. Interestingly, Ash didn’t show up at the hunter monastery later. Did he just die in his club? Is he still there, waiting, deciding?

Christina @ Andrei: what the fuck is this shit

“I don’t care. It’s ugly. Clean it up.”

SEWERS.

Not as bad as I was expecting

Did take shortcut, run away from fights, ducked out in the middle for a snack, and bring 7 blue blood packs tho

Gary threatened to shred her face with a cheese grater, which I thought was Toreador only dialog?? It must be connected to the Appearance Stat. Which Christina has maxed out.

When Heather became Christina’s ghoul, I was delighted because I thought this meant Christina would always have fresh blood.

No

If you ask to feed on her too soon after the last time, Heather says she feels light headed and wants to lie down. The dialog exits out

I love you, Heather bb

Perfected the art of nudging NPCs into corners

Mitnick’s quests now feature Enforced Nap Time for all guards

Seriously, Dominate is ridiculously powerful, hooooly shit. I get why people like it. I also like it when people do things I ask them to do.

Christina can’t sneak, but she CAN strongly encourage everyone to choke on their own tongues.

Very high contrast in the beginning of the game: 2 punches would knock her over, but anyone she spoke to would obey immediately and without question

Chinatown goes by ridiculously fast if you can’t sneak and don’t do any sidequests besides Mitnick’s.

For the first time ever, Zhao survived! This is because Christina made him take a nap.

He just told her to leave

You’re welcome, my good dude

IDK if it’s a game glitch, but Christina would vocalize? In battle, she grunts with effort and pain.

Got to the point where I kept expecting Dominate dialog in every interaction and would get disappointed if it didn’t show up. What do you mean I have to actually convince people? That’s lame.

Christina was polite and charming to Ming Xiao, who also conveyed a deeper betrayal than normal at the end. ;-;

I promise to give you a Ventrue boy toy soon, Xiao

Finale arc quests went by VERY FAST because Christina can’t sneak for shit. Just run in, Dominate blazing

You can skip the outside bit of the Hallowbrook Hotel if you find the open door on the top level what the fuuuuuuuuuCK

[“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody” plays while Christina wipes out the Sabbat in 10 minutes]

Andrei disappeared mid-fight and didn’t come back until I complained that only I was allowed to run away from boss fights

I’m categorizing “triggering the interaction to save Heather” as something quite difficult to do. The timing has to be just right. I’ve missed it twice now. BUT hacking into the game to save her is easy.

I love you, Heather bb

Final Beckett talk had the vibe of “You’re a very different person than me, but you’re also High Humanity and trying to do good. You don’t deserve to die.”

Damsel threatens to kick the shit out of Christina and is extremely reluctant to tell her where Nines is

“Out of all people, they send you? All right, let’s just talk terms.” - Nines because Christina was short with him one (1) time

WEREWOLF HARD

You can just?? Walk out of your haven?? Without speaking to Jack at all???

I didn’t do that

But I could have

[”Dust in the Wind” plays while Christina kills entire Camarilla hit squad in 3 minutes]

You can visit Mercurio and Trip on your way out of Santa Monica??

Mercurio makes no comment on the blood hunt. Business as usual with him. This is fine.

Christina: I’m SO going to adopt that ghoul. And perhaps Isaac can be convinced to part with Romero...

(For the first time ever, my PC boinked Romero. Twice, to receive the break up email)

This is definitely a glitch, but Christina brushed up against Caine, and a worried voice said, “Are you all right?” It sounded like the same voice actor, but a higher pitch?

Always nice to think about Caine demonstrating care

Christina asked Caine who he is, and Caine replied that he “gets people where they’re going. [He’s] a driver,”  which is a nice nod (lol) to both his literal job as a driver and as a shepherd/creator/god to Kindred. Caine creates and makes fate.

Caine triple checks with Christina that she’s sure Strauss won’t betray her. Thanks, Vampire Dad. :’D

For some reason, only other Ventrue guarded LaCroix’s tower. I wonder if this is intentional. Like all the other Camarilla Clans backed Strauss and left? So only LaCroix’s Ventrue lackeys remain? Anyway, it created some weird moments where Christina fought her double.

KILL YOUR DOUBLE

Sheriff laughed in haughty joy that he was to kill Christina. I don’t remember him laughing in other playthroughs.

Christina ruining Caine and Jack’s prank oh noes

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: The Maw, First Visit

So our Shadowlands journey starts with the Maw. You know what? People hate this scenario now because you can’t skip it and have to go through it on every character, but the first time through, this is actually really good. You’re kicking in the gates of Hell with a platoon of Death Knights and then everything goes tits-up and you don’t have a beachhead and you’re lost and wandering and there are awful, awful things everywhere and you’re hiding and isolated and need to learn how to escape. You just need the option to skip it on your alts.

Plus the aesthetics of the Maw are great. They sell what it is -- the hostile architecture, sinister crystal formations, the way everything seems swept and shaped by a windstream of souls. We’ve seen plenty of environments that look like a Hell of flames. This is a Hell of pure suffering. Pain is what lives here. Pain is all that enters and pain is all that is produced. It’s only after you went farming Stygia for a while that the pain gets inflicted on you.

So we assemble the crew, get the exposition while we put together the Helm of Domination, get given a portal stone to establish a beachhead, and we bust in to find the four captives: Anduin, Jaina, Baine, Thrall. We rally the Death Knights into enough of a formation to make it in and find the evidence of Jaina, and I like that, I like how you track her by the huge formations of ice -- it shows you her power and the mark she leaves. Finding her is mostly the same although her dialogue is less generic and content-free (from now on assume I apply this caveat to all dialogue). She’s more confused and disoriented and even though she’s fighting it’s with a resignation that she knows it won’t work and she’s starting to think she’s only hurting herself by trying. She acts like she has been there for years. But you say you and the DKs are here to save her and she follows against her better judgment and agrees to try and find Thrall, who she struggles to remember, but seems to be trying very hard to be able to remember.

Then the Mawsworn Kyrian show up and laugh about her hopelessness, and you fight them. And they kill the shit out of you. 

More and more and more of them keep coming and they’re level 60 when you’re level 50 and if you do some bullshit to survive eventually one of them will grab you by the neck to Silence you, lift you into the air, and do the ol’ Val’Kyr Special and fatally drop you. You unavoidably die.

This is necessary early to establish what dying in the Shadowlands means. Play a special graphic effect when the player dies, something more drawn out and grasping. Play a sound effect appropriate to race/gender of the PC of them struggling against great pain and gasping. Then you appear next to a Spirit Healer (yes normally in the Maw you just respawn alive so you have to pick up your Stygia like in Dark Souls, we’ll explain the discrepancy later), a Mawsworn Spirit Healer, who says “No. Your suffering will not end. The Maw claims you.” and then starts to chase you the fuck down with a bunch of shades. You need to run, as a ghost, to claw your way back into your body. Obviously, if the shades catch you, you get dragged back to the start and the Spirit Healer fucks with you a bit. 

Your body has been dragged over to the area where Jaina and the rest are hiding; they fled while you were being merced. Jaina sees you stir. And she says “I’m sorry, champion. Death is no respite here. It is so hard to fight the pull… I struggle to even remember my body when I try to return.”

Jaina has been brutally killed over a dozen times. This is not her first rodeo. This is not her first escape attempt. This is not the first time she’s killed that particular Mawsworn tormenter whose name I don’t recall. It doesn’t end. It never ends. She doesn’t know why she tries any more, when she knows it will fail and she will die and suffer and claw her way back to her flesh and every time it gets harder and harder. All it buys her is the ability to offer futile resistance and maybe that isn’t even worth it.

Mood: established.

From there it goes mostly the same. You try to pump the shades for info about how to escape and they don’t know, they can’t know, they can’t even want to escape. The info you get is a memory of spitefully hating someone who fled to the waystone. You rescue your buddies. You see the Jailer fuck up Baine, only instead of giving him a spirit poison, he fucking snaps the dude like a Kit-Kat and drops his lifeless corpse, and you drag it to safety. You don’t need to find a poison dagger to counteract the spirit poison; you need to keep him safe and clear a path for his spirit to flee back to his body. Thus reinforcing what the danger here is and how it’s different and what they fear.

And while you do this, at some point, you run into Sylvanas. Maybe she just walks up to you while you’re all collected around Baine trying to help him revive. Since the Jailer won’t be saying “it’s not like you won anything b-b-baka, it was just a temporary setback,” you need to establish that feeling that he views your victories as completely meaningless. Sylvanas knows you’re here saving Baine. So does the Jailer. It does not matter. You cannot accomplish anything. 

Thrall kills her dead. She just gets back up. She has an escort for her soul to go back to her body. “How many times are you going to try that before you learn it’s futile? Come now, Thrall. I know you’re smarter than this. I know you respected me more than this.”

And then stuff like “How could you do this, Sylvanas? How could you betray the Horde?” Thrall is incredibly angry and offended at her. He thought he knew her. “Neither of us had any illusions you were not a monster, Banshee Queen. But I trusted you anyway because I knew you wanted what was best for your people. You were a monster, but a loyal one. How can you now turn your back on what little principle you had?” Sylvanas is hurt by this, but she doesn’t linger on it.

Jaina, however, is desperately trying to flatter her. Do this to sell the kind of impact this has had on Jaina, and what this suffering drives her to. “Please, Sylvanas. I know you were my enemy but you were an honorable one. It isn’t too late. Someone as cunning as you must know that this will end in ruin. I promise… I promise… I will surrender if you let me return. Kul Tiras will become servants of the Forsaken. Just, just let them live… please, you could rule our world, not slaughter it…”

Jaina breaks down in tears. Yes, she just tried to surrender her people to the enemy for mercy. Jaina is breaking. All of them will. The Maw is a Bad Place and makes them give up hope. That’s how we sell the threat. Not by making the enemies bigger or spikier, showing how they have broken these heroes. Less screaming anger. More pain.

Sylvanas scoffs at her offer. “It doesn’t matter where your people’s loyalty lies, Lord Admiral.” And then she says the phrase that will become a motif: “Nobody escapes the Maw.” She leaves. She doesn’t care what you do. It doesn’t matter.

But you have to still hold on to that sliver of hope that maybe the waystone is a way out. So you get Baine up and you sneak past this big-ass Maw army that can fuck 31 flavors of your day up. The jailer notices you and sends out a force to stop you at the waystone, and he repeats the phrase when he sends out the order: “Nobody escapes the Maw.”

So there’s the event, you fight off the army while the waystone charges, the army gets bigger and bigger, the charge meter gets stuck at 90%, you go to kick it and it teleports you to Oribos.

The mob descends on the other captives. Sylvanas and the Jailer look completely unconcerned with your escape. After having clearly seen you physically leave the Maw, Sylvanas brushes it off with “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Dun-DUNNN! Cutscene end.

You appear in Oribos. The Protectors stop you because you stink like the Maw and what the hell dude, yada yada. This is when you get a tour of the city, here’s the profession trainers, the bank, the transmog. Only secondary details need to be changed here. One, this is an instanced version of the city where no other players exist (you are the first one there, nobody else is). Two, Lich King Bolvar (hashtag #notmylichking) arrives from Azeroth and says SOMETHING to justify other players coming from the Maw but being less important than you. Something like, he saw what you did, there are other adventurers from Azeroth still in the Maw, his DKs are hunkering down in defensive positions and will try to make their way to the Waystone once it cools off because you already activated it, since you are the more special one, and there might be a chance that a couple others might have an echo of your power because they have had similar adventures. You are the True Maw Walker, and the context of the massively multiplayer element is “for your story, all those other guys have shitty Maw Walker powers that only work once you opened the pickle jar for them.” They can’t bring passengers, either.

Third, not the most importantly but yes the most importantly, if you are Forsaken or a Death Knight or Mechagnome or whatever you get a special dialogue where you say “Why do you keep calling me a ‘living mortal’? I’m not alive. I’m undead / a machine / maybe something else like maybe I missed the fact that vulpera are made of rocks and string.”

So Tal-Inara or whoever can be like “Oh, THAT’S what that is. Something was odd about you, mortal, that I couldn’t quite place. I call you ‘living’ because your soul is still tethered to a body. To us in the Shadowlands, to be bound in a vessel like this is far more important than the nature of the vessel itself.” That’s why people keep calling you “living”, to them you’re easy to mistake for one.

Kyrian in the Maw is disturbing news, and also WEIRD, because as Tal-Inara reminds us, “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Why would the Kyrian go down there when they can’t come back? It is terrible but not unheard of for mortals to try and speak to the Jailer but they never GO there because they can’t get out. And yet Sylvanas just walked in there? And he is mustering armies? Better go to Bastion and find out what is up. Let’s crank open this gateway, and...

[scoopsgf]

can i get a good night’s sleep? can i PLEASE get a good night’s sleep?!

or: five times peter parker doesn’t sleep + the one time he does

my contribution to the @friendly-neighborhood-exchange! this is for @snarky-drabbles - I hope you enjoy it! 

1. 

The first time is actually just the first in a while. Peter’s had problems sleeping ever since he was a little kid; it was just one issue of many that stacked up on top of each other, resulting in his personal belief that he must be the most difficult kid to look after on the planet.

Asthma meant hundreds of dollars spent on inhalers, covering what their shitty insurance didn’t. His poor eyesight was the same story and the bullies that used to break his glasses had never helped. But it wasn’t just physical crap, of course: he’s had anxiety for as long as he can remember.

There are cute side-effects like panic attacks and nausea, not to mention the constant sense of impending doom he’s been nursing since… well, birth, probably. When he was younger he’d worry about whether or not the taxi driver had enough gas in his car to get them where they needed to go, or maybe Ben would get shot at work (ironically enough, he’d never worried that Ben would get shot off-duty, and there is a teeny superstitious sliver of him that believes maybe if he had considered the possibility it never would have happened, like some kind of a reverse jinx or something).

One of the other cute things that comes along with it is insomnia.

So here he is, pacing in his kitchen at three in the morning because May isn’t home yet.

Her shift ended at two. She’s usually back within a half hour considering the hospital isn’t far, hence his agitation.

He’s tried calling and texting to no avail, and he keeps telling himself that everything is fine, that she probably just got held up; meanwhile his subconscious provides a great slideshow of mental images that speak to the opposite—her getting kidnapped because somehow someone links her to Spider-Man, her getting hit with a car, mugged, shot, slipping on black ice—and that’s actually not far-fetched considering it’s January, there’s a lot of it, and so he pulls out his phone and types, You didn’t slip on black ice and die did you? to May.

No little dots appear to signify that she’s typing. The message doesn’t even change from ‘delivered’ to ‘read’.

She has her read receipts on. She’s promised him. There’s no reason she’d change that, right? But maybe she accidentally switched them off when she was scrolling through her settings.

He calls her.

“Hi, this is May Parker, I’m unavailable at the moment but if you leave me a message I’ll get back to you as soon as—”

Peter hangs up with a dissatisfied grunt.

It’s only then that he realises, to his great dismay, that he’s paced all the way onto the ceiling.

In his shock he loses concentration and falls. “Ow, fuck.” He pulls his aching knee to his chest. It’ll no doubt be bruised soon. “God has forsaken me.”

He picks up his now cracked phone and texts Ned:

I just fell off the ceiling at 3 AM in the morning

Don’t ask me what I was doing on it

Every bone in my body is broken :(

No reply comes which is pretty typical; Ned probably passed out in front of his PC like, hours ago. Peter can picture it: the light of his computer screen casting a blue glow over everything in the room, his head probably tucked into his arms to muffle his snores (and there’s also probably a bowl of stale popcorn spilled across his floor at this point), his creepy mother lurking in the doorway—or worse, trying to find out how to snoop through his laptop while he’s out of it.

Peter could totally go swing down there and help the guy out. It would be something to do anyway.

But no. The door is too far. His suit… too much work. It’s definitely better to just stay here curled up under the table like a little turtle.

But wait—a blanket.

Is it worth the effort? Probably. Peter scans his immediate surroundings and, oh boy, Lady Fate is actually on his side tonight because there’s a gigantic purple fluffy one hanging off the couch and it only takes a little bit of physical exertion to yank it down and wrap it around his body.

He burrows deeper into it and scrolls through Instagram. MJ posted a picture of a banana today. Literally like, just a banana. No caption, no explanation on her story, nothing.

Peter double taps it and comments: i hope u asked before u took his jacket

No like. No reply. That makes sense. It is three in the fucking morning, after all.

No. Three thirty. It’s been an hour and a half.

What had May said once? That it was okay to call someone if she was two hours late?

Peter tries texting and calling one more time and then just sits there, staring at his home screen and watching the minutes pass. At exactly four AM after much deliberation and stomach churning, he calls someone else.

Three rings later: “I’m in Vienna right now so this better be good.”

Peter feels even more nauseous than before. “Oh,” he says. “I guess—never mind, then. Sorry.”

“Wait, wait, that was just for show and I’m greatly intrigued as to why you’re calling me so… early? Late? Anyway I’m out of the conference room now so lay it on me.”

Against his will, Peter’s lip quirks up. “Um, it’s kind of stupid—”

“Nothing is ever stupid,” Tony says. “Especially when it’s coming from the brain of a kid with an intelligence quotient of 260.”

He feels his cheeks heat up and then it all just comes tumbling out, “It’s really late and May was supposed to be off at two and home by two-thirty, but she’s not and I don’t know what to do. I tried calling and texting but she’s not replying and I know that I’m probably just building it up in my head but I can’t help freaking out because like, what if she got stabbed or slipped on black ice or—”

“Hey Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“Breathe.”

Tony’s voice has softened immeasurably. Something uncoils in Peter’s stomach. He flops onto his side and closes his eyes. “I’m breathing.”

“That’s good, kiddo. Now just hang on a sec, I’m gonna call the hospital.”

“What? Why?”

“Well she works there, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“And you haven’t tried calling them yet, correct?”

“...Correct.”

“Ergo,” Tony says.

“But I—”

“Yeah?”

Peter bites his lip and then he just blurts it: “I don’t want you to hang up.”

He feels like such a child but the thought of losing connection with Tony is literally making his heart palpitate and his palms sweat. He needs someone. He needs an adult.

“Well lucky for us both I have two phones.”

Peter cracks an eye. “You what?”

“I’m Tony Stark, don’t question it. Hang on, let me just—hello, hi, um, I need this room. No, it can’t wait. Yes the whole room. Yes locked. I don’t know, five minutes? Ten? An hour? No, I’m not joking. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. Bye now.” Something slams shut—the door to the office Tony just stole, probably. “Okay, just a sec, I have the number for the reception desk she works at in my phone.”

Peter, for some reason, feels immeasurably comforted by that. He sits in silence gnawing on his lip while Tony has a somewhat muffled conversation he can’t hear the other side of. Then, “You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay, well, they said she’s covering for someone and can’t get to the phone because a baby had to have emergency surgery so she’s literally in the OR as we speak. Pretty badass and not bad as far as excuses go. Now that you know she’s fine and not dead by ice, how about you get some shut-eye, okay kid?”

Peter swallows. “Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Tony.”

“No Mr. Stark this time, huh?”

“It’s too late for formalities.”

“I see,” Tony replies. “Sleep, okay?”

“Okay.”

The line goes dead. Peter, slightly relieved but not fully consoled, rolls over to face the door. He doesn’t sleep at all that night and is still there when May comes home at six in the morning with bagels and apologies.

—

2. 

The anniversary of Ben’s death is always super weird.

This time it takes him a few minutes to remember what day it is: he’s in the middle of brushing his teeth and then it hits him like a train: oh, it’s been three years.

Then comes May. She usually tries to cook something for breakfast but like always it burns. He leaves the bathroom to the sound of the smoke alarm and fans a cookie sheet at the screeching little device while she swears up and down in Italian.

“It’s okay, May, really—”

“No, it’s not!” She snaps, tossing a batch of blackened cinnamon rolls into the trash. “I just want this day to be easy for you!”

Peter goes over to her and, after kicking the oven door shut with his foot, pulls her into his arms. May starts to cry even though she tries not to; sniffles turn into barely stifled sobs. He knows that it’s harder for her than it is for him. Ben was her husband and they’d been married for thirteen years when he died. Sometimes he still catches her looking to see if he’s laughing too when they watch TV, only to find an empty recliner.

“It’s okay for it to be a bad day,” he whispers. “You know that, right? I mean, I love you to pieces, May, but I don’t wanna see you bending over backwards for me.”

“But that’s my job, doofus.”

Peter pulls back. He’s an inch taller than her now. “No it’s not. We take care of each other, okay?”

Then comes school. Ned usually hovers nervously like an agitated gnat, too afraid to say anything, not sure if he should act normal or be sad in solidarity, which means it’s kind of Peter’s job to set the tone. As he’s putting his combination in for his locker he asks, “So did you beat that level of Obra Dinn last night?”

Ned, shoulders slumping with relief, starts to ramble on about how hard it was to do and how it took him like, thirty whole tries.

They go to class. Peter zones out. He doesn’t bother making more web fluid or ditching and he gets so inside his own head that Coach Wilson compliments him again during gym class. Peter deliberately slows down after that, even if it’s kind of irritating; being physically active actually helps work off his anger.

Because that’s what he is more than anything else: angry. At the mugger, yeah, but at himself more than anything else. It was his fault that they were out that night, anyway. It’s a wonder that May doesn’t hate his fucking guts.

When school is up Peter comes home to an empty house. He thinks about going on patrol but doesn’t really feel up to it, and then he feels bad for not wanting to do it because like, what if someone is dying?

So he puts on the suit and swings from rooftop to rooftop, but there’s no action today. Peter eventually settles on a fire escape with a burrito. A stray cat hops up after a while and, despite his matted fur and crazy eyes, Peter decides he has a kind of quiet dignity about him and names him Charles.

“Do you like beef?” He asks, holding some out for Charles to sniff. The cat yowls and, without any warning other than that, nearly chomps Peter’s fingers off to get the meat.

“Ow, jeez!” Peter shakes his wrist. “I was literally giving it to you for free, but go off I guess.”

Charles blinks his big brown marble eyes and then literally jumps off the fucking ledge. Peter leans over and watches him scamper across the street, somehow not getting hit by any traffic. Sometimes he thinks his spidey sense is more like feline sense in that way: he could probably manage the same thing with his eyes closed.

After a while the sun sets and all of the streetlights turn on. Peter does another patrol around the immediate vicinity but again, nothing. He stays out anyway though because he’d rather do his Chemistry homework behind a dumpster than sit alone in the apartment with nothing but the quiet for company. At least out and about there are sewer rats and mangy dogs and shady characters who actually just turn out to be skateboarders.

Peter is almost done with his assignment when the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

He looks up and finds Iron Man himself coming in for a landing. The suit drops with a barely audible clunk; it’s Mark 54, the sleekest and most lightweight model yet.

“Oh thank God,” says Tony’s voice, “you’re not dead.”

Peter frowns even though Tony can’t see it. “No,” he agrees slowly. “Why would I be dead? What are you doing here?”

“Well, your aunt called me in a panic at around four when she got home and you weren’t there, and then I checked the scanners and saw that you’d been here, completely stationary, for like five whole hours—needless to say I had a little bit of a heart attack and here I am, relieved and also mildly infuriated. Care to explain, young padawan?”

Peter opens his mouth to speak. Closes it. Opens it again and, “It’s four AM?”

“Four fifteen,” Tony corrects.

“I didn’t even—I didn’t know! Shit, May’s totally gonna kill me, I might as well be dead—”

“Woah woah woah,” the faceplate lifts, “calm down, okay? No one is mad. Just, uh, concerned, I promise.”

Peter is still frantically packing up his school supplies and not really listening. He only stops when Tony gently touches him by lightly gripping his elbow. “Kid?”

Peter stares down at the older man’s hand. Behind the mask his eyes start to burn. “Ben died.”

“Pardon?”

“Ben died,” he repeats louder. “In this alley. Two years ago.”

All at once Tony’s face falls. He moves to sit by Peter on the grimy floor of the alley while the suit hovers nearby, a hollow shell, just the way Peter feels now.

“Kid,” Tony says, “take off the mask.”

“What? No, I’m in public—”

“No one’s around,” Tony says. “Just take it off, okay?”

Peter does, reluctantly peeling it back to reveal his tear-stained cheeks. Tony stares for a second and then, almost hesitantly, he wraps his arms around Peter. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“I—” he chokes. “I’m just so tired. I’m tired of having to watch May be strong for me when I can’t be strong back, and I’m tired of Ben not being around. I miss him and it—it’s not fair.”

“Of course it’s not. It’s never fair. That’s why it hurts, kiddo. You’ve got all this love and no place to put it.”

Peter bites his lip to stop it from quivering and looks away, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I just feel pathetic.”

“Don’t,” Tony says firmly. “I felt the same way after my mom died and it… In some ways I don’t think the feeling ever actually went away, but uh, take it from someone who’s had a lot more time to process: no one is expecting anything from you, okay? And I can guarantee there’s not a single human that thinks two years is long enough to be perfectly fine again. You’re allowed to still be upset about this.”

And Peter is. He’s really, really fucking upset about it and so tired of holding it in. Tony pulls him against his chest when Peter starts to cry and it sort of seems like he’ll never be able to stop. There’s just so much, so much guilt and pain and all kinds of other bullshit that he refuses to lay on May.

So he lays it on Tony. And it’s surprisingly not horrible or awkward or even the end of the world.

“You good?” the older man asks, when Peter finally sobers up enough to wipe his cheeks dry and take a few steadying breaths.

“Yeah,” he says, voice ragged and awful-sounding. “Um, sorry. For freaking you and May out and ruining your shirt, I mean.”

“You know there’s this really snazzy invention called a washing machine—”

“Oh my god, shut up.”

Tony laughs and it makes Peter laugh too, and the tension between them just sort of dissipates. “Speaking of clothes,” Tony claps his hands together, “you got any to wear in that backpack?”

“Uh, jeans and a hoodie?”

“Fantastic, incredible. Throw them on, I’m taking you out for breakfast.”

“But what if someone sees?!”

“Let ’em. I’ll have Pep release a statement claiming you as my personal assistant or head intern or something.”

“That’s totally unrealistic.”

“Do I care? No. Just—okay? Up and at ’em, make haste, come on. What do you feel like, pancakes or waffles?”

They bicker about which is better the entire way to the little diner Tony choses, and Peter comes home full an hour later. May is fast asleep at the kitchen table. He kisses her forehead and starts on breakfast for her.

—

3. 

He’s thirty minutes into helping MJ study for her AP French test when she finally gets a question wrong. “‘Il n'est pas clair que’?” Peter queries, holding up the flash card.

“‘It’s not certain that’?”

He makes a pitying noise. “Close. ‘It’s not clear that’.”

“What’s not clear, exactly? That if I see one more word in French I’m gonna blow my brains out?”

Peter snorts. “No, actually it says more clarification is required on how much you like your boyfriend. Suggestions to improve that include: a hug, a kiss, both—”

“Neither?”

He pouts. “Mean.”

MJ rolls her eyes, but she kisses him first. She tastes like the Twizzlers they’ve been eating and her hands are in his hair and she laughs when he presses his lips to her cheeks and nose and forehead.

They somehow end up in an incredibly compromising position. “You know,” MJ muses, “I don’t think I’ve been studying the right kind of French.”

Peter, hovering over her (oops), nods in agreement. “This kind is definitely way better.”

She wraps her arms around his neck and he’s so consumed with this: her and him and the smell of her jasmine shampoo—that he almost doesn’t hear it.

Almost.

Peter rips away abruptly. “What was that?”

She groans. “God, you’re such a dog sometimes.”

He ignores her, sitting alert with his eyes narrowed at the window and, sure enough, there it is again: a faint, blood-curdling scream. “Someone’s being attacked or something. Maybe four blocks away tops.”

MJ squints. “Don’t tell me you can echolocate.”

“I—” Peter’s mouth snaps shut and then opens again. “I actually don’t know. Anyway, I gotta go.”

He presses a quick kiss to her cheek, throws on his jacket, and quickly ducks out her fire escape (which happens to be the same way that he came in). He slips the mask on and tosses his hood up; it’s raining in heavy, icy sheets and Peter is drenched within seconds of swinging. He remembers the first time he’d gone out during a storm; the webbing he’d made hadn’t held up because the chemical formula hadn’t accounted for the massive amounts of water-based reaction, so the biocables had evaporated as they left his shooters. Thankfully he hadn’t jumped first that day, otherwise he would be a Peter Pancake.

Another scream sounds. Peter follows it and winds up latched onto the side of a two-story brick building. There’s an incredibly dark alley below, but a quick flash of lightning tells him everything he needs to know: one man is trying to wrestle a woman down, while another is rifling through her purse. He’s also holding a gun.

“Oh, cute,” he mutters sarcastically.

Peter tries to time it right: he takes aim and shoots a web right at the weapon with the next bout of lightning, but to his immense misfortune, the armed mugger had already seen him and was aiming right back. The bullet hits Peter in the side.

“Ow,” he says, “that was uncalled for.”

He drops. His side is throbbing and hot but he ignores it in favour of disarming the guy who shot him. It’s a brief struggle but Peter ends up whacking the gun out of his hand and webbing it to the wall opposite. Then he knocks the guy out with a solid upper cross to the temple.

Peter rounds. The assailant has already fled, leaving the woman shivering but relatively unharmed.

“You okay, ma’am?” he asks.

“Me? That guy shot you!”

Peter looks down at his side which is now stained with blood. “Oh, yeah.”

He’d actually forgotten for half a second. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, he’s starting to really feel it: a burning sensation in his abdomen, an aching that pulses from his stomach to his chest. Ah. Wonderful.

A little dazed, he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about me. Super healing. Are you good? You need me to call you a cab?”

“What? No, um—the police station is like, down the block, I can go get them.”

“Are you sure? Because I can totally do that—”

“I can handle myself,” she says sharply, bending down to pick up her purse and the discarded items within. “It’s just… there were two of them and there was a gun and—”

“I get it,” Peter says, his hand pressing harder into his side as the world grows blurrier around the edges. “You really don’t want me to at least walk you down?”

“I’ll take a taxi,” she says. “You just, um, get yourself fixed up, okay? And thanks.”

“Yeah, sure, anytime! But, y’know, preferably never again,” Peter says, and proceeds to swing away.

—

Tony doesn’t expect to get woken up at two AM after only just falling asleep five minutes before, but such is life; FRIDAY’s voice bleeds through the speakers above to inform him that Spider-Man is currently rifling through the Med-Bay and bleeding from a wound on his side.

Pepper looks at him. “You heard that too, right? That was real?”

“It was real.”

They both scramble out of bed. Tony takes the lead, throwing on his jacket as he runs toward the elevator. It’s times like these when every second stretches out into an eternity; it takes maybe five of them to get from their floor to the Med-Bay, but it feels like forever.

The doors open and there’s Peter, perched on a gurney with his shirt gone and a whole lot of blood staining his side. He’s bent awkwardly, clearly trying to feel his way around whatever wound he’s got.

“Um,” Tony says, approaching, “What.”

Peter looks up and—yeah, he’s lost a lot more blood than Tony had originally thought. His face is fucking drained. “Hey,” he says, offering a jaunty wave before returning his attention to his side. “I got shot.”

“Oh!” Tony nods. “Oh, okay. What the fuck, kiddo?”

“I know, right?” Peter glances up. “Hey, Pepper.”

“Peter,” she returns. “Do you mind if I wash my hands and take a look at that?”

“If you want. It’s kinda gross, though.”

“Believe me, I’ve seen worse.”

Through this exchange Tony was already washing up, and now he dons a pair of gloves and sits on the rolling stool. “Looks like it’s through and through,” he tells Pep over his shoulder. “Could you grab a couple suture kits and, uh, the stuff?”

Pepper makes a face. “The stuff?”

“You know,” Tony says, “The Good Stuff.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh, that stuff.”

Tony feels around the area. “Do you know what kind of gun was used?”

“Looked like your standard nine mil,” Peter replies. His voice is growing a little slurred.

That’s good though, about the gun. Means there’s probably not any bullet fragments to worry about. Tony grabs a load of gauze and presses it against the wound. He checks Peter’s pulse while he’s at it and finds that it’s slowed considerably. “We’re gonna have to get you some blood, too. A neg, right?”

“Yuppers.”

Tony excuses that because after all, the kid is bleeding out on a table. Said kid actually starts to swing his legs back and forth and, yeah, that’s not gonna fly. “Do me a favour and lay back? I’m gonna put this towel right under you for now.”

Peter doesn’t have any arguments, or if he does, he doesn’t vocalise them. Pepper comes back in with the kits and drugs and, because she’s just smarter than him like that, bags of blood.

Tony grabs the vials first and loads up a syringe. Peter is pretty numb to all of it until the needle goes in. Then he frowns. “Why are you injecting me with alien blood?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “It’s not alien blood, it’s a pain killer. A serious one at that, so you’re probably gonna feel a little out of it for a while, okay?”

Peter frowns. “Is it for Steve?”

Tony tenses, but it’s only for a second. “Yes,” he says, somewhat tightly.

“Ugh. What a turd, Mr. Stark. You’re giving me turd vitamins!” Tony scoffs while Pepper laughs. Peter notices. “See? She thinks I’m funny.”

“You’re not helping me here,” Tony says to her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Here, have some thread.”

Tony sighs. “Just stay still for me, okay?”

Peter does. Pepper passes him various supplies and they work together to sew up both ends of the gunshot wound. By the time they’re done, Peter hasn’t moved once, but his eyes are open and he’s frowning.

“How do you feel?”

“Wired,” he says.

“Seriously? Bruce never said anything about the side-effects, but I figured they’d be like normal pain-killers; make you drowsy and all that.”

“No,” Peter sits up quickly and doesn’t even flinch. “I feel like I just got steroids or something. Are you—are you actually telling me that Captain America’s drugs are infused with a stimulant? What, so he can keep fighting even when he’s in the middle of dying?”

Tony blinks. “Well that was smart of dear Banner.”

“Yeah, or insane.” Peter flexes his hands. “I feel like I need to go for a run, or like, break something.”

“Let’s avoid that,” Tony says, pushing him back down. “You need to heal, not mess yourself up even more, understood?”

Peter stares. “Is it normal to see sounds?”

Pepper bursts out laughing again. “I’m sorry,” she says when Tony glares. “Really, I am, I promise. Peter, honey, how about we get you to a bedroom where you can rest up? We’ll call your aunt and explain everything.”

—

Everything is going fine until May asks, “How did you get to the Tower so quick, then?”

Peter blinks. “Hmm? Pardon?”

“If you were at Ned’s,” May says, “how’d you manage to swing all the way across town?”

Peter opens his mouth and closes it. “I, uh… well, funny story, um… I wasn’t actually at Ned’s?”

There’s a pause over the phone. Pepper, who’s holding it, raises an eyebrow. May says: “You told me you were going to Ned’s, Peter.”

His face feels hot. He hopes it isn’t red. Both Pepper and Tony—from the doorway with his hands stuffed in his sweatpant pockets—are staring. It’s almost as bad as if May were really here.

“Well I was going to Ned’s, but then I changed my mind and went somewhere else and oh—look at the time! I think we’re going through a tunnel—”

“Don’t even try to pull that crap! That’s it, I’m coming over there—”

“May,” Peter says, serious now, “you’re in the middle of a shift, there’s people dying. Just—I’m perfectly fine, I took my Captain America drugs and everything is gonna be okay.”

“But you lied to me.”

“No, I changed my mind.”

“And went where?”

“Irrelevant.”

“Peter.”

“May.”

She groans from the other end of the line and demands to speak to Pepper one on one. Tony’s fiancé grins and switches off speaker, before slipping out with a bright laugh to finish off the conversation. Tony stares expectantly. “So where were you?”

“Oh my god, not you too. You know, on second thought, I actually am completely exhausted and—”

“Uh, nope,” Tony flops down onto the bed. “Fess up.”

Peter sighs. He squirms down and covers his pillow with a head. “No.”

Tony joins him under it. “Tell me.”

Peter scowls. He rolls onto his side so they’re facing one another. “I was with my girlfriend.”

“Oooo—”

“Shush! It’s… it’s really not a big deal and I haven’t told May yet because MJ and I haven’t even really talked about it and it all happened super fast and—” he remembers to breathe, “I just… I always tell May everything, you know? But I kind of just felt like… this was something I had to figure out first on my own. Maybe it’s stupid, but I know she’s gonna be super hurt when she finds out it’s been a month and I haven’t said anything—”

“Kid,” Tony cuts in. “Calm down.”

“I’m calm,” Peter promises, because he is. He’s also just incredibly hyper and stressed.

“It’s a normal instinct to want to figure things out and define them before you start announcing them to the world. I get that. But you’re still a kid, Pete, and even if you don’t want people prying into your love life, we still need to know where you are in case something goes wrong.”

Peter harrumphs as he turns away. “There’s a tracker on my phone and my suit. It would be easier to find me than anything else.”

Tony clicks his tongue. “You got a point there.”

“I just wanted time.”

“I know.”

“But I really like her, okay? Like she’s so smart and she’s got this really dark sense of humour and she’s actually kind of terrifying sometimes—”

“Oh, the scary ones are always fun.”

They stay up talking through the night and, when the sun comes up, Pepper joins them with a tray of freshly made blueberry waffles. May arrives around the same time and, looking too tired to be mad, simply drops onto the bed with them and steals what’s left of his food.

—

4. 

Peter is on patrol when he hears it:

a soft, quiet yelping coming from somewhere down below the rooftop he’s perched on.

At first he figures he’s imagining things, but then his ears perk again. He leans over the building’s edge to find the source of the noise.

In the dark it’s hard to make anything out, so he climbs slowly down the side of the wall, squinting. There’s another yelp and a low whine, almost pained. Peter zeroes in on the sound and creeps toward a set of dumpsters; they’re so full of trash they’re overflowing, and it’s underneath a broken down cardboard box that he finds it... 

A puppy.

Now, Peter is no liar. He’s wanted a dog since he was like, a fetus. The words ‘A dog’ have been on every birthday and Christmas list for as long as he can remember. It’s only recently, in the years since Ben’s death, that he’s pretty much given up—after all, May is so overworked and they can barely afford to feed themselves. How could they afford a pet?

But also…

This is the cutest dog he’s ever seen.

It’s tiny and fluffy and brown and has the biggest, saddest eyes he’s ever seen.

Peter kind of just stands there staring like an idiot for a good few seconds and then slowly kneels down. “Um, hi,” he says, in the gentlest voice he can manage. The puppy, who can’t be older than a few weeks and looks completely starved and exhausted, whines in response.

Peter holds out his hand for the dog to sniff. It lifts its head lazily and leans forward, nose twitching and dry. “You need water, huh? Come on, I know a place.”

—

“Shelob,” Tony greets without looking up from whatever project he’s working on. “What can I do for you at… one in the fucking morning?”

“I need your help with something, but you have to promise you won’t get mad or make me get rid of him—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, what have you done now?”

“He was just so helpless and cold and small and…” Peter swallows and reveals the puppy, presently wrapped up in his hoodie. “Meet Nugget.”

Tony’s face is the epitome of Disappointed Dad. He stares, open-mouthed, and after a second his shoulders fall. “Well, fuck.”

Peter snuggles Nugget against his chest and steps closer, but then Tony holds up a hand to stop him. “Nah-ah! Not until that thing gets a flea bath!”

Hope sparks in Peter’s chest. “You mean we can keep him?”

“I mean there’s no way I’m getting near him until I know I won’t break out in hives.”

“That’s not how fleas work.”

“Do I care? No. Come on, let’s go to the bathroom.”

—

“Why do you have flea shampoo?”

Peter’s inquiry is made tentatively. They both have their hands in the sud-filled sink as they systematically wash Nugget’s fur.

“There was… an incident a while ago. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Peter stares. Blinks. “Okay. Well, I think he’s clean.”

Nugget barks as if in agreement, and so Peter and Tony lift him out of the basin and set him on a pile of no doubt expensive, fluffy white towels. Tony takes the lead after that. He’s surprisingly gentle and patient with the yapping, impatient puppy—even when Nugget tries to claw at him and shake himself dry, Tony never loses his cool.

A few minutes later they’re sitting on their stomachs watching Nugget stomp around on a blanket. There’s water in a bowl for him at one corner and a plate of chopped up chicken at another.

“I can’t take him home,” Peter says morosely after a few minutes. “May won’t let me keep him.”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Where does she even think you are right now?”

“...In my bed.”

“Wow,” Tony says, deadpan. “Okay, well, I most certainly can’t keep him either.”

“What?! Why not?!”

Tony sighs. “I’m Iron Man, if you hadn’t noticed, kiddo—”

“Oh, what, so you’re too tough to look after him?”

“No, I’m too busy. I spend like, twenty-three out of twenty-four hours in a day in my shop and the rest of the time I’m on my knees apologising to Pepper and begging for forgiveness. There’s no time in-between to feed the pup, walk the pup—”

“I could come by,” Peter blurts. “Like, once a day, and I could make sure he’s eaten and play with him and stuff. You wouldn’t have to lift a finger—”

“Except to press ‘purchase’ on my shopping cart full of dog food—”

“Tony,” Peter cuts in, pleading, “please? I can’t just drop him off at some kennel so they can—” he covers the dog’s ears, “so they can euthanize him in a week when no one buys him. He deserves so much better, you know?”

Tony frowns, considering it, and Peter waits with his breath caught in his throat until, “God, fine.”

“Yes!”

“But! But! A pet is a serious responsibility, okay? You might as well be adopting a child—”

“What would you know about raising kids?” Peter asks, only jokingly, but Tony just stares and then, for some reason, smiles.

“You have to make sure he’s happy,” Tony says. “You have to be there for him in whatever way he needs, alright? I’ll set up a pen in the penthouse and you can make sure he works off his energy there, and if I have time I’ll even take you both to the park. And if he ever happens to pee on my carpet, I’m counting on you to clean it up.”

“Don’t you have, like, housekeepers for that sort of thing?”

“Yeah, but this is character building stuff.”

“Ugh, fine, I’ll clean up the pee.”

They continue to iron out the details for a while and bicker over whether Nugget’s last name should be Parker or Stark, and it’s only when Pepper walks in—still in her pajamas, bleary eyed and complaining that they woke her up—that they both decide it should be ‘Potts’.

—

5. (+1)

It starts with a headache.

He’s bent over his desk studying for a Calc test when the throbbing begins. It’s not so bad at first, but after a half hour or so his vision is swimming and he keeps having to take breaks to massage his temples and close his eyes. The equations are all blending together and he can’t think straight anymore.

Peter decides to give up right around then. After all, if he’s not gonna retain any of the information, why bother?

May pokes and prods through dinner. Peter tries to fool her by acting like everything is normal and okay and even manages to make her laugh once or twice.

Inside, dread is coiling through his stomach like an irritated snake. He knows what’s coming next; after all, he doesn’t really get sick anymore, so what else could it be?

Peter tries to sleep but ends up tossing and turning for most of the night. He falls into some kind of half-conscious daze at around four in the morning and rouses about twenty minutes later, soaked with sweat and aching everywhere.

Feeling like he’s gonna vomit, Peter kicks off his blankets and strips the sheets off his bed. He takes his shirt off because the fabric is too abrasive against his skin and it’s like he can feel every fibre tickling against it, grating and chafing. He curls up into a tight ball and covers his ears with his hands to block out the now amplified sounds of the city: car alarms, dogs barking, music playing.

Normally Peter loves the way New York is never silent. Now, he just wishes everyone would shut the fuck up for once.

When he stumbles out of his room a little while later, May is already gone. She’d told him the night before that she had an early shift and for once he’s actually grateful. Haltingly, Peter gets ready for school. He’s already skipped three days this month and if he misses this Calc quiz he’s gonna fucking bomb the class.

May would kill him.

It’s better to suffer a little than die.

Brushing his teeth makes his head spin and the minute he wriggles into his clothes he feels like a caged animal about to claw his skin off. Everything takes so much longer than normal. He doesn’t eat because the mere thought of food makes the back of his throat sting with bile.

On the train, he closes his eyes and rests his head against the cool glass of the window, trying to tune out the constant screeching of the rails. One day, on God, he will make it a personal project to oil every fucking line in the subway.

At his fifth stop, an old lady boards and all the seats are taken.

Peter swallows thickly and stands. Black spots dance in his vision and he grabs onto the overhead bar—something he hasn’t actually needed to use since he was a little kid—and tries not to pass out.

He almost misses the stop to get to school, but slips out at the last second, millimetres away from getting his backpack caught in the doors. Peter is hot all over and lightheaded as he makes his way out of the station. It’s even hotter up above, what with summer coming now and all.

Peter is late and he doesn’t need his watch to tell; Flash’s car is already parked out front instead of zooming through the drop off to run him over (which, hey, silver lining), and the majority of the student body is already inside.

Peter has to stop multiple times on his way to Spanish just to breathe. By the time he gets there he’s at least ten minutes late for roll call.

“Mr. Parker,” his teacher greets, unimpressed. “So glad you could join us.”

Peter makes a noise and takes the proffered quiz. He wonders absently why some people choose to teach. What is it, like, some kind of power trip for them?

He has five minutes to finish the quiz but doesn’t make it past the first question. Ned volunteers to collect them and stops at Peter’s desk while Professor Scott outlines today’s lesson plan.

“Dude,” he whisper-hisses, “you look like complete shit. What on Earth are you doing here right now?”

“Test,” Peter mutters dully, resting his cheek on his hand and closing his eyes. “Here you go. Didn’t finish it.”

Ned takes it carefully, holding it with two fingers like it’s covered in disease. “Do you want me to get the nurse or something?”

Peter hums. “No. Just… headache.”

Slowly Ned backs away. “Um—”

“Mr. Leeds!” Professor Scott says, loudly. Ned jumps. “Is there a problem back there?”

Yes, Peter thinks. You’re the human version of nails on a fucking chalk board. Please, for the love of all that is holy, just start on the vocab.

Only he accidentally says all of that out loud.

The whole class is staring. Flash is slack-jawed. Betty Brant’s eyes are the size of small moons.

“Parker,” Scott grits out—and Peter has denominated him to just Scott now out of reciprocation and spite; “You just earned yourself a shiny new detention. I’d like you to take this slip to the principal’s office. Please.”

Oh, thank God. At least it’ll be quiet there.

Peter stands and brushes past Ned and it literally feels like flames of hell are licking against his skin. He almost vomits. This is decidedly not good.

He takes the paper. “Gladly, good sir.”

When he’s gone, there’s an outburst of muttering that his enhancements let him hear. It only makes the overload worse. Peter covers his ears with his hands again and, overcome with a sudden wave of vertigo, ducks into the bathroom.

He barely makes it to the toilet before emptying his stomach of last night’s food.

Peter sags against the wall, panting. He keeps his eyes closed and waits for the world to stop spinning. About ten minutes later, the smell of jasmine shampoo—normally welcome—causes him to lean over and retch again.

MJ pokes her head inside the unlocked stall. “Jesus,” she whispers. The second her hands touch his body he flinches and she immediately retracts them. “Fuck, sorry. Ned said you wigged out in Spanish. I looked for you in the Principal's office but you weren’t there and... What’s—what’s wrong? I thought you couldn’t even get sick.”

“Bad headache,” he mutters, spitting into the toilet. It’s easier than explaining about his freakish mutations and how they sometimes go completely haywire, leaving him on edge and nauseous and irritable.

MJ grabs him some toilet paper to wipe his mouth with. “Did you take anything?”

“Pain meds don’t work on me.”

“Does May know? You should have called in.”

“Couldn’t. Can’t miss my test.”

She sighs. “Your final is like fifty percent of your grade and you could pass it with your eyes closed. You can miss your test, you’re just afraid of getting anything lower than an A.”

Peter is silent. “You got me there.”

MJ’s hand twitches like she wants to touch him but knows she can’t. “You need to go home. Lie down, get some rest.”

“May is working,” Peter says, “and if I have to take the subway again right now I’ll die. I really will. It’s so—the smell and the noise and I can’t sit down and—”

“Give me your phone.”

“What?”

“Just give it.”

She’s holding her hand out for it and giving him a no-nonsense expression that kind of reminds Peter of Pepper Potts on a rampage. He’s seen what happens to Tony when he crosses her, so he fishes his phone out of his pocket and hands it over.

“Hold on.”

She stands and leaves. Peter closes his eyes again. He tunes out her conversation because if he doesn’t, he’s absolutely gonna vomit again and nobody wants that.

MJ slips back inside the stall. “Okay, solved. Do you still feel like you’re gonna vomit?”

Peter thinks about it. “No.”

“Good. We’re gonna go to the nurse, okay?”

“Oh boy.”

—

Tony Stark walks into Peter’s school and finds the hallways empty. The classroom doors are shut and the muted sounds of teachers lecturing are the only signs that anyone is here at all.

He finds Peter in the infirmary, sitting on the examination table with the heels of his palms pressed against his eyes.

He’s at his side in an instant. “Kid?”

It’s surprise that gets Peter’s eyes open, but the little spider baby immediately regrets it. He flinches and sucks in a sharp breath. “Tony,” he whispers, like the name is all he can manage and the questions will have to wait for later.

Tony looks him over. There are no obvious injuries. The girl on the phone had said it was just a headache, but Tony is way more experienced with Peter’s brand of bullshit and knows there’s usually something else going on beneath the surface.

“I’m gonna go talk to the nurse and then get you out of here, okay?”

A nod.

It’s always a bad thing when he doesn’t argue. Peter Parker would start a fight about what kind of pizza to order, even if you suggest the kind he really wants, just to be a stubborn little shit about things.

Tony slips out of the exam room. The nurse looks up when he enters her office. “Oh my—Mr. Stark?!”

“Yes, hello,” Tony takes a cautious step forward as she stands. He doesn’t bother to sit. “I’m here to pick up the little gremlin in there.”

Her face flushes. “I didn’t know you’d been called, I—I figured I would just let him wait it out, you know? He didn’t want to be touched, so it was hard to figure out what was up and—so it’s real? About the internship?”

“Of course. Why would he lie?”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. “Well… you know how kids can be.”

“Do I?”

She doesn’t seem to know what to say to that.

Tony sighs. “Look, Nurse—uh, Timms—Nurse Timms, can I please just sign the kid out and take him home? He’s clearly in pain here.”

She starts rifling through her desk for a form. “I mean, I can admit you to take him home, but I really suggest you talk with the principal first—Peter was given a detention before he was brought to my ward, see, and I was—” she shakes her head. “I thought he might be faking.”

Tony stares without blinking for a whole five seconds and then, “Detention? For what?”

“I heard he bad-mouthed a teacher or something. But to be fair, Professor Scott isn’t exactly what I’d call patient.”

“Well, be that as it may,” Tony takes the form she hands him to sign, “my kid doesn’t fake. He has a condition, see. Gets uh… overloaded. Sounds, smells, it can be too much for him. Probably why he snapped.”

“That… that makes sense.”

“Yes,” he says succinctly, and hands the paper back. “You’d know that if you bothered to ask. Anyway, I’ll be going. Thanks for the help, Nurse Times.”

“Uh, it’s—it’s Timms—”

The door shuts behind him.

—

MJ was forced to go back to class. She’d argued and protested but Nurse Timms was insistent. So, MJ had relented. She’d pressed the lightest of kisses on his forehead and it surprisingly hadn’t felt that bad, and then she’d gone.

Tony Stark had shown up about twenty minutes later and it’s just when Peter’s starting to think it was all just a vivid hallucination that the smell of coffee and motor oil fills his senses again. It’s overwhelming but not debilitating.

“Kiddo,” Tony whispers, “is it okay to touch you?”

Peter cracks an eye. Everything is bright but Tony’s suit is mercifully black, so he focuses on that. “I don’t know. I don’t wanna move.”

“Well I gotta get you outta here somehow.”

“But my detention—”

“I already got you out of it,” Tony says breezily. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Tony,” Peter says, cheeks flushing. “You can’t just bribe my principal into—”

“I didn’t bribe anyone. I just explained the situation and besides, Morita’s an old friend.”

Peter closes his eyes again as he frowns. “You’re friends with my principal?”

“I’m a benefactor for your school, too,” Tony says. “But don’t tell anyone, it’s a secret.”

Something shifts in the air. Tony is sitting now. “Happy’s waiting outside,” he says, “but whenever you’re ready.”

Peter thinks about it for a few seconds and decides it’s gonna have to happen at some point, anyway. Might as well rip the band-aid off now. Slowly he takes a deep breath and manages to sit up with Tony’s help. The older man tries to avoid touching him as much as possible, but surprisingly enough the weight of his hand against Peter’s spine isn’t crushing or aggravating. It doesn’t hurt.

“Baby steps,” Tony says softly. “We’ll take you out the side door, okay?”

Even getting to the door is slow going but Tony doesn’t seem to mind. Right before they open it, Tony stops and pulls his sunglasses off. “Here, try these.”

Peter puts them on. He feels ridiculous because like, they work on Tony who was literally born in the seventies, but Peter really doesn’t dig the groovy shades. Regardless they’re better than nothing and even help a little.

The halls are empty again. Most of the students will be in the gym right about now, or the cafeteria for lunch. They don’t run into anybody on the way out and as soon as they’re in the back of the car, Peter sags against Tony’s side. He feels like he’s just run ten miles.

“Drive, Hogan,” Tony says, and then the partition glides up.

For a few seconds it’s almost completely quiet. Noise suppression tech, Peter realises, and he feels like he could cry from relief. For the first time in hours there’s just… nothing. No traffic, no dozens of students talking at once. The air conditioning unit is filtered, so he’s not being attacked with the smell of body odour and clashing perfume scents and Axe cologne. There’s just Tony and beautiful, amazing, showstopping silence.

Tony shifts a little. “Better?”

Peter nods, figuring it’s still probably not safe to speak.

“We’ll be there soon,” Tony says softly.

—

Peter doesn’t remember much after the car ride. He can vaguely recall protesting getting out of the Audi, and he remembers Tony assuring him that everything would be okay, and the next thing he knows he’s lying on his back in an utterly dark bedroom. The walls are insulated just like the car had been, so there’s just no sound, and the bed sheets probably have the highest thread count of all time.

Something shifts beside Peter and he realises Tony is there, feeling his forehead.

“What—?”

“Oh, hey,” Tony greets. “I think you might’ve blacked out there. All the noise hit you at once when we got out of the car and you just…”

“I fainted?”

Tony snorts softly. “Relax. It happens to the best of us. How do you feel, Webster?”

Peter hums. “Bad.”

“Let’s try a scale of one to ten.”

“Okay,” Peter says. “Ten.” Tony lets out a little grunt at that and so Peter elaborates, “It was at like, a twenty this morning, so.”

“Ah, I see.” Tony’s grip shifts to Peter’s wrist to measure his pulse. “This okay?”

“It’s fine.”

And it really is. He doesn’t feel like burning his skin off or anything. Tony’s hands are just warm.

“Any idea what brought this on?”

Peter shifts a little. “I uh… haven’t been sleeping a lot lately.” He swallows. “Like, at all.”

“And how long’s that been going on for?”

“I don’t know. On and off for a few weeks, I guess.”

“Jesus,” Tony sighs and pulls his hand away. He rakes it through his hair. “Kiddo, what have we said about communication? Does May know?”

“....No?”

There’s a long pause where Tony just kind of sits there thinking, like he wants to say whatever comes next carefully. He massages his temples and then: “Alright, scooch over.”

“What?”

“Make room for me.”

Peter blinks and then, tentatively, scoots over a little to allow Tony room to lie down. The older man does, arching his back a little and grunting in pain because he’s like, ancient. They’re not touching, but very slowly Peter starts inching closer again. Eventually he works up the courage to try resting his head on Tony’s chest, which is terrifying not only because it’s Tony Stark, but also because he’d rather not have his brain implode.

Nothing happens. “Your fabric softener must be like, super expensive,” he whispers, because this is actually better than the sheets.

Tony snorts. “I’ll ask Pep about it.”

Peter makes a noncommittal noise and before he knows it, his eyes are closing. For once they actually feel heavy, and the steady rhythm of Tony’s heart beat is soothing, dependable.

Tony’s hands brush lightly over Peter’s hair and then thread through it. “Too much?”

“No,” Peter promises. “Good.”

And so Tony’s fingers run through his curls over and over, gently, lightly. His thumb sweeps over Peter’s cheek once, too, and then he starts muttering in Italian.

Peter cracks an eye. “Are you telling me your grocery shopping list?”

Tony laughs a little. “My mom used to do it for me,” he says. “Something about just hearing her speak the language made me feel… relaxed, I guess. Didn’t matter what she was saying.”

Peter smiles and wraps an arm around Tony’s torso. “Tell me something else.”

“You wanna hear about the time I almost blew up a Chem lab?”

“Uh, duh.”

So Tony launches into it, speaking in a low voice and absently twisting one of Peter’s curls around his finger. It feels nice and the headache is fading fast.

Peter sleeps. 

[vacation-grif]

What kinda feelings?

A LOT, ACTUALLY. Like I said before, the RTNY group was telling me to skip it because it wasn’t a good season, and I want to express how much I wanted to just form my own opinion, only to end up agreeing with them in the end. Let me break this down as best as I can now that I am on my PC. I mean no disrespect to the director and writer, as well as the cast and crew. Honestly, I’m worried that my opinion makes me feel like a boomer at this point.

First off, if anyone was going to tell me that I’m going to have headaches over bright flashing lights and colors over a Red vs Blue series, I wouldn’t have believed you. As I said before, they should’ve just called this “Red vs Blue: Epilepsy Warning THE M0VIE”. I understand that they are using the Unreal Engine, because my god the graphics on this is INSANE. But everything is...too bright. TOO. BRIGHT. Everything has a lens flare no matter where the camera turns, and with the high paced action, all the lights and colors, it HURTS.

-

Next, this is a fully CG-animated season. We haven’t had one like that in SUCH a long time, and this is the first in the 20-ish years of Red vs BLue. When I was a kid who didn’t have a cellphone, I could only imagine what Red vs Blue was like when my best friend would play it over our landline on a weeknight before we would go to school the next day. And I would come over and be like, HOLY SHIT. IS THIS FUCKING HALO?! So imagine my excitement when after 8 years of Red vs Blue using Halo 1 to Halo 3 assets, you see a Warthog just crash through the walls of Valhalla, something you’d never see in a Halo game. A fully animated scene of Grif running over Washington (hell yeah), and an angry Washington outside of his game model just climbing onto the hood of the car and shooting at Grif through the windshield at pointblank range. Then cut to episode 10 of the same season, Tex makes her triumphant return, fully animated instead of her Halo 3 game model. And in the last two episodes of the season, you get OUR VERY FIRST FREELANCER VS FREELANCER FIGHT. You find out this was the work of the late Monty Oum (rest in peace), and until Season 10, Red vs Blue was THE HIGHEST POINT OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE.

Then we go to Season 12 where the animation post Oum (he was working on RWBY at this point but iirc this was just before he died) was choppy at best and didn’t feel right until Season 13, where within the one year the animation team REALLY stepped up. And this actually carries over into Season 17, Singularity, where it became more animation and less game effects, or rather it was balanced. It wasn’t extravegant like Oum’s works, but given that these are the Simtroopers, some Freelancers, some Mercs, and time gods, it felt par for the course. It felt right.

We cut now to these upgraded graphics, which felt like when you were playing on your Xbox 360 and you jsut FUCKING SHOT into the Xbox One. It was, as you would say, unreal (lol). But it felt...off. The first two episodes, the entire action didn’t feel like what you spent 16 seasons watching. It felt like a whole another beast entirely. With the use of super powers, you would think oh the Freelancers had that! Yes, but those were all suit enhancements. These...didn’t feel like it. Zero’s and Phase’s teleportation didn’t feel like something that Fragmented AI can control. Shatter Squad’s at least felt more at home. 

The models themselves were a bit off too. Choppy at best, but understandable given that they were using the Unreal Engine. But you notice that they do a lot of hand on hip pushed out to the side type of thing a lot? Everyone does it. Except Raymond, West, and the big dude. Like the SASSY STANCE. Also, there was way too much power stance. Where if your feet were shoulder width apart, it was a bit wider, and also the pelvis was out a little more. A bit weird. Finally, everyone has an ass. Everyone. Even West. West has an ass, it was like, everyone was dummy thicc and the clap of their ass cheeks was alerting Viper.

-

Next, voice acting. I...absoultely could not stand the voice acting. It was completely over the top, overdramatic, over exaggerated. Granted, I’m a singer, a perform, but I’m not exactly a good actor myself in the few shows I’ve actually done. It felt like watching an anime. When you wtach something with dialogue of your own language, you can tell when you feel something is to over the top. If you watch something of a language you don’t speak, it’ll go over your head, unless you start to speak that language, and you speak to people who speak that language, then you start to pick up what is regular speaking and what is acting. When an anime gets dubbed, most times, the voice actors tend to over dramatacize in the same way the Japanese due, and some times it works, most times it doesn’t. This is because the Japanese way of acting comes from kabuki theater. When English dubbers do that with this weird over emphasized emotions, it is extremely offputting.

In some places, the voice acting is poorly done. Jen Brown’s performance from just getting out of a hospital to giving an expositional lecture about the new cast in literally 5 seconds of time was...off. Carolina should’ve had more time to recover, especailly after losing Washington, one of her closest surrogate family, she felt...a little too calm and normal. Not like the Carolina who was hesitant but trying her best to be a whole better person (see the Paradox Arc, S15-17). It was jsut quick shift, and now she’s making snarky remarks in that Jen Brown voice she does (my god step on me please) and also being a mother hen. Also, she really calls Washington David way more this season than she ever did before that.

Fiona’s performance was shaky at best in my opinion, I don’t know her very well outside of what everyone says. All I know is that sometimes, the way she emphasizes some of her lines don’t fit the situation very well. I think East/Phase was a lot better done than One imo. But she was mostly angry and competitive.

Raymond is the textbook definition of what I hate about taking a character’s role and making it their entire personality. Think of it like watching Power Rangers, and all of their roles is just defined by the shit they say. Jason is the jock, Kimberly is the pretty girl, Trini is......I’m not gonna lie, I don’t...know what to classify Trini, Zack was the cool guy, and Billy was the nerd (Tommy was Jock II also the rebel/loner). Raymond reminded me a lot like Billy, where Billy was defined by being so smart, half of his dialogue was just look at me, i’m fucking smart, let me use all of these big words. Half of Raymond’s dialogue was, look at me, i’m the tech guy, I’m nerdy and loveable, it felt like it was too over the top of trying to stand out. By the end of the season, after East’s big reveal, I started to like him a lot more because he knew what was more at stake. I want to say that my initial impression of him was immature at best.

West was too stiff. Just.. Too stiff. I get he’s old. But show some emotion, please.

Why am I emphasizing on this more? When you listen to the dialogue of RvB, and then you listen at this, even with the return cast of Carolina, Washington, and Tucker, the direction was different. I think it’s because of the new medium with Zero being all super animated like an action, where RvB was just a bunch of net videos that you’re gonna laugh at with well timed jokes. It was super casual, but also super real. Geoff and Gus and everyone else aren’t big actors or anything, but that’s what made it feel real. That’s what made RvB feel like its own thing.

-

In terms of writing, I get that this is RvB meets FnF (Fast and Furious). But I honestly feel that it doens’t belong. The story of Shatter Squad vs Viper would have been a lot better if it didn’t have the RvB name tacked on. It’s such a cool concept, but given what RvB was before, the tonal shift is jsut too great, especially when you only have 3 of the previous cast returning.

Speaking of, what happened to Tucker?! What happened to the guy who became a leader? Responsible? Not as arrogant? Maybe playfully arrogant at best, but not stroking his ego? What happened to HIS SWORD? Did they forget how Tucker’s sword works? That it only works IF HE DIES? Tucker didn’t die, and yet Phase was able to use his sword (which by the way is now hers). One of the earliest stories/gags of RvB and they just...retconned it and threw it away! Also, Tucker’s voice acting did NOT match the scene at all. It’s like watching a video game that was localized from Japanese, and the dubbers spoke too fast before the character could finish. Tucker moves outside of his dialogue and there is this weird seconds of silence. That...that was just a BAD return for him.

-

My final thought is that, if RvB Zero is not...the RvB I grew up with. Maybe the jokes are dated, but the memories of what RvB was is still real. This just...doesn’t feel like RvB anymore. This should have just been it’s own show, it’s own story, replace Wash and Carolina and Tucker with new characters, it just wasn’t their place to be in this.

The only thing I liked about this? I’m glad Danielle (I’m assuming this is how you would spell her name) didn’t go AWOL and returned to the team. I actually really liked her the most next to Axel. She was done dirty, but she still held on to that one bond she had as East that Zero didn’t give her as Phase.

-

I know this is probably not a great opinion, and I really hope that Rooster Teeth finds the ground they want this series to go in. Sometimes, you have to try new things, or else staying stagnant will make it go stale. It’s all about trial and error. I don’t know how everyone else feels about Zero, how the new audience and the old audience feels. RvB as a whole wasn’t perfect. They had their down moments. But when you feel that way for an entire season...it’s a problem.

[andtheyweredeskmates]

Of Latte’s and Lingerie-Chapter 10

Hello friends, I have briefly surfaced from work to drop this chapter. I hope you guys like it! Let me know if anyone wants to be added to my taglist!!

AO3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Taglist: @catsssmeow @toodaloo-kangaroo

Marinette had mixed feelings about going to see Alya. On the one hand, she was excited to see what warranted an “emergency meeting.”  Alya calling for an emergency meeting usually had more to do with drama than an actual emergency. Which Marinette didn’t mind listening to. But on the other hand, when Alya had finished ranting, Marinette knew to expect a line of questioning regarding her newest friend and Marinette knew that Alya was not going to like her answers. When Marinette arrived at Alya’s apartment she knocked timidly. Alya did not respond in kind when she opened the door.

“Ohmigod get in here, now!” Alya grabbed Marinette’s arm and pulled her into the apartment.

Marinette stumbled in, eyes wide.

“What’s wrong?” Alya pushed Marinette to the couch and shut the door behind her.

“You will NEVER believe what happened to me today!”

Marinette grinned wickedly. “Oh?”

“I met my future husband today and it was in-fucking-credible.” Alya grinned back and Marinette giggled.

“Do tell.” Alya took a seat next to Marinette, facing Marinette with her legs crossed.

“Okay! So, I was at work and my manager asked me to do an interview with this new radio host at KRBE. It sounded super lame and out of my league so I was a little upset… So I show up and I’m not gonna lie, I was a little bitchy...” Marinette rolled her eyes.

“Okay, nothing new, go on.”

“Well, I meet him and he’s completely oblivious to my mood, well, that or he was ignoring it, and he’s giving me this super high energy which I was totally not expecting. And he’s talking and talking and he is talking like he’s never been happier which of course get’s me kind of excited because I love the vibes guys give off when they’re super excited about something. It’s adorable. So I kind of get lost listening to him and forget its supposed to be an interview and just have a 3 hour long conversation with him about his radio station and the music he likes to play and before I know it, he is asking me for my number. Of course, I said yes because he was freaking adorable. Mari, he’s totally tall, dark and handsome which you know is my type.” Marinette nodded, signaling for Alya to continue.

“So we’re talking via text because, you know I had to go back to work and he tells me he went to Dupont High School, which is where you went. So I tell him that my best friend went there and we started talking about you! Anyways, long story short, you totally know him and I need you to give me your stamp of approval and tell me he’s amazing so I can keep talking to him.”

Marinette bit back a laugh.

“Okay… Don’t leave me hanging here, what’s his name?”

“Nino Lahiffe.” Marinette’s eyes widened a little.

“Oh, yeah I totally know him, we were in the same class.” Alya sighed impatiently.

“Okay so what do you think?” Marinette scratched her head a little.

“I don’t know Alya, he was always super nice but that was a long time ago. I mean I’m totally different. I can’t just tell you if he’s still a good guy or worth dating!” Alya rolled her eyes.

“Ugh you are thinking way too hard about this. I’m not asking you to tell me that he’s my soulmate, I just want to know he wasn’t some massive jerk back in the day with obvious asshole tendencies.” Marinette laughed.

“Okay fine, he was a super nice guy with no obvious asshole tendencies.” Alya’s grin returned.

“Thank you. Now, I haven’t even gotten to the best part.” Marinette smirked.

“Okay, what’s the best part?” Marinette asked sarcastically. Alya’s grin widened.

“He told me that it’s totally crazy that we met because apparently his best friend just started talking to you a few days ago and he’s totally into you.” Marinette choked.

“No way… you don’t think its…” Alya nodded furiously.

“It’s totally got to be the hot guy you’ve been telling me about.” Marinette’s jaw dropped. In an instant there were about 25 scenarios going through Marinette’s head. Most notably, one where her, Alya, Nino and Hot Guy went on double dates and played video games together and had kids who were all best friends with each other, and they had little playdates and-

“Hello, earth to Mari! Isn’t this amazing?” Mari looked back at Alya with a sort of faraway expression.

“Yeah,” she said distantly, a little smile tugging at her mouth.

“Sooooo, before I can commence with planning the rest of our lives, I need you to tell about him!” Marinette snapped back to reality.

“About who?”

“About your hot guy, you blockhead!” Alya swatted at Marinette’s shoulder. Marinette smiled apologetically.

“Right… well, I got his number and we started talking and we were kind of hanging out together before you texted me-“ Alya smacked Marinette’s shoulder again.

“You were on a date!?” Marinette sighed.

“Not exactly, we’re just friends right now. But I learned a lot about him!”

“Did you learn his name?”

Marinette winced. That was exactly what Marinette was dreading. She considered briefly jumping out the window. She was only on the second floor, she’d survive that.

“Mari? Tell me you learned his name,” Alya said threateningly. Marinette cringed.

“I learned that his name is not Aiden.” Alya deadpanned.

“What the hell does that mean?” Marinette tucked a strand of hair behind her ear self-consciously and brought her knees to her chest.

“Well, it seemed awkward to ask him his name because he already knew mine so when we went to Starbucks today, I heard them call his name for our drinks, except they said his name wrong so… I’ve still got no idea what his real name is.” Alya stared at her with a grimace for a very long time and Marinette slowly brought her knees closer and closer to her chest.

“You’re an idiot.”

…

Adrien sat comfortably on his couch while he played his game. When his phone buzzed he picked it up quickly, and frankly a little disappointed to see it was just Nino calling.

“Hello?”

“I’m coming over.”

Adrien chuckled. “Okay, I’m playing Modern Warfare, want to play?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I do. When I said I was coming over, I really meant I’m here so can you buzz me in?” Adrien laughed.

“Yeah, you know one of these days you’re gonna come over here without telling me and I’m not gonna be home.” Nino scoffed.

“Yeah right dude, we both know you have nothing better to do than hang out with me.” Adrien buzzed Nino in and rolled his eyes.

“Whatever, just come up.”

When Nino came in, he had a look on his face that made Adrien cock an eyebrow. He handed Nino a controller cautiously.

“What’s up with you?” he asked. Nino sat down next to Adrien and took the controller.

“Something happened today and I don’t know how to feel about it.” Adrien glanced at Nino even more cautiously.

“Okay…” Adrien started a new game.

“Are you gonna tell me what happened?” Nino sat forward and focused his eyes on the television.

“I met a girl today.” Adrien laughed.

“Okay, that’s awesome.” Guns fired loudly marking the start of the game.

“Yeah, she is super awesome, but I found out that she’s best friends with Marinette.”

Adrien paused for a second too long and cursed as his PC died.

“That’s crazy…” he muttered. Nino glanced back at Adrien out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah… it’s weird.” Adrien scrunched up his face as he tried to maneuver his player stealthily around a corner.

“Why is it weird?”

“Well, I don’t know, I used to crush really hard on Marinette. Wouldn’t it be weird for me to date her best friend?” Adrien tensed a little.

“Do you still have a crush on Marinette?” Nino shrugged.

“No, I mean I haven’t seen her in years and its obvious you like her but… its still weird.” Adrien cursed again watching his PC die and bounced his leg impatiently as he waited to respawn.

“What do you mean its obvious I like her?” Nino laughed.

“You’re such an idiot. I know you had coffee with her today, I saw it on your story. You’ve been talking to her nonstop for days. You don’t just do that with a new friend.” Adrien pressed pause on the game.

“What the hell man?” Nino exclaimed.

“So, what if I do like her? Is it less weird for you to talk to her best friend then?” Nino shifted uncomfortably.

“I mean, I don’t know, maybe. Are you gonna date her?” It was Adrien’s turn to be uncomfortable. He pressed play on the game again.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. Adrien thought about the idea of dating Marinette. Teaching her Chinese. Getting coffee together every day. Going to shows with her, supporting her work, maybe even modeling it in the house to help her get measurements right.

“I mean, it would be pretty cool if worked out ya know. Us dating best friends.” Adrien said thoughtfully. Nino chuckled darkly.

“Yeah and it would be pretty fucking uncool if it didn’t.”

[cockbiteproductions]

all prime numbers in the Misc section and all multiples of 10 in the other sections

we shall go backwards as the question list was posted backwards...... (and also why i rbed it.... why is it backwards? i dont know but i love it. edit: now that ive seen question 1 it looks to me like one of those forum profile copy pastes where you fill out the entire thing and put it in your profile.)

200: My crush’s name is: hmm...... well. i would rather not say!!!! they could see this post!!!!!!! and we do not want that happening.......

190: My 1st job was: lifeguard in the summer after 9th or 10th grade i think? it was decently fun. i grew up swimming competitively so the swimming part was a breeze. the remembering what to do if someone is drowning part? a bit harder. memory bad. what to do if someone has a potential broken spine/head injury when they’re in deep water? i don’t know bud. but it involves 3 whole people to get them out. 2 in the water, one person at all times holding their head in line with the rest of their body, the other one strapping them to the board (these two people in the water switch off, too) and then one person standing on the side of the pool looking very concerned. also don’t tell anyone but sometimes if i had like a 6 am shift i would get really groggy and almost fall asleep on the stand.

180: Marriage is: whatever people make of it but unfortunately bogged down with like a lot of societal expectations. to me it just sounds like hanging with your “best” friend until you die but a lot of other people interpret it differently.

170: What did you do yesterday? LOL wouldn’t it be nice if i remembered. wait no i do remember. i woke up “early” and watched a dnd livestream and struggled through buffering from my shit wifi. then i took a nap. then i had a chipotle burrito that was way too spicy. and i played a lot of minecraft. and i wrote a bit. and i also did like another 2-3 pages of the codecademy html intro course im working on.

160: Soul mates: nope. [taylor mason voice] i don’t believe in the concept of a soul. you are compatible with some people more than others and that’s based on your values and interests and personality. nothing Soul about it. it’s fun in fanfic and fiction though, but that’s because it’s fiction.

150: Blondes or Brunettes: brunettes..... i like brown hair! but blonde is nice too.

140: Mac or PC: clown face emoji. mac. It’s A Unix System. more convenient for me. my current mac is a giant piece of shit though. though i think that’s my own fault for keeping all my old files from my old mac. shoulda started over. i think i might try to get this one factory reset or something.

130: Wal-Mart or Target: idk walmart. i go there a lot during college. walmart just has a larger selection. i used to go to target a lot as a kid though because my mom liked it more. i think it’s like slightly more bougie?

120: Gay Marriage: fuckin go for it pals. sad that it took as long as it did to become legal.

110: My Neighbors: they are nice i think. the ones to the right are teachers or something. the ones to the left are.... idk. their kids were like maybe 5 years older than me and my brother when we were growing up though and sometimes they would indulge in us tiny annoying kids and hang with us

100: Cried in front of someone: when the finale of the clone wars came out a few months ago and i was sobbing and i ran into the living room to tell my roommate and friend that i was sobbing. i was sobbing. i also recorded myself watching the entire eps and i Sure Was Sobbing.

90: Texted: actual sms text, yesterday in response to a friend who texted me a tik tok. instant messaging like 20 minutes ago to milo. i havent responded yet because im answering this and i cant multitask for shit.

89: Who makes you laugh the most: me obviously. i think i’m fucking hilarious. me aside, @redvsblue​ is the funniest person on this planet. also my friend holly irl who shares my incredibly dumb sense of humor. also you!

83: The most difficult thing to do is: hmm........ in general or for me personally? idk..... a lot? i am not a very courageous person. so i guess being brave.

79: First time you had a crush: >:( not appreciating this line of questioning that lines up with the prime numbers/mult of 10. i will not be saying as they ALSO follow me on tumblr. though they don’t use it often. shout out to middle school.......

73: Tomorrow: hopefully wake up around 1 pm at the latest. make a plum smoothie. play some more minecraft and get more netherite (new update slaps). do more coding tutorials. get some writing done. the same ol same ol.

71: Next Summer: hopefully i will have a job lined up for the fall and the pandemic is Over. i would like to just [do nothing] for the last summer Ever before job starts. if i don’t have a job then it’s Job Hunting Time.

67: The person that makes me cry the most is: what the fuck...... like in a bad way? good way? cry of laughter? sadness? me, probably. my own damn brain be like “well it’s time to think about Yourself and be sad!” i know. very narcissistic of me. also dave filoni (director, producer, writer on clone wars).

61: My Car: not really mine. i just use it. beige 201? toyota camery. my brother tried to convince my dad he needed it more than i did last school year. my brother, who lived on campus in boston and flies to school from nc when he goes there, needs the car more than me, who lived off campus and drove to and from school to get back to nc, thinks he needed the car more than me. what a guy.

59: The movie I cried at was: last movie huh......... when was the last time i saw a movie? idk probably the rise of skywalker when leia died. i don’t know. i sure as hell didn’t cry at cats.

53: How do you like your steak cooked: i am vegetarian.

47: Who’s your best friend: @worthyghouls​ i guess. but also concept of “best friend” is so weird. No Best Friends. just lots of people i am good friends with. feels weird to all my other friends to pick One of them and be like “well i like you more than everyone else” :)

43: Do you have a 5 year plan: only in the vaguest vaguest vaguest sense. i would like to graduate with my bs degree. i would like to live in a city (doesn’t have to be a super big one. where im at rn is fine). i would like to have my first or second job i feel comfortable doing related to the degree i am getting. i would like to live in my own apartment (with roommates)/not with my parents. i would like to not be rent burdened. i would like my roommate to know how to take care of a cat or be okay with helping me learn how to take care of one. i would like to have a cat with said roommate. and that’s about it tbh. not very ambitious, i know. i just want a simple life......

41: Have you pre-named your children: bold of you to assume i will have children. no. if i ended up with child it would be like that tag on ao3 called “accidental baby acquisition” and i would name it on the spot.

30: Actress: hmm..... lauren marcus. lauren lopez. does fiona nova count if she’s going to be in rvb zero? also lindsay jones. aubrey plaza. idk. not many actresses i follow from project to project. it’s more i will see them in something and appreciate them in that role immensely. 

20: Holiday: halloween is pretty chill. just getting candy from strangers? dope. scary aesthetic? amazing. i also like christmas just for the sole fact that i get time off from [life].

10: Restaurant: a favorite restaurant??? who has one of those???? i sure don’t. and i’m not gonna say something cringey like olive garden or mcdonalds. i simply do not have one.

[weareladyknight]

Lady Knight's Drow Arcane Archer Is Taking Some Paladin Levels!

Thought you guys would be interested and excited to hear this! It got long so everything is under the cut. Also, playing in 5e so following those rules.

So we’re playing in the Forgotten Realms. My character, Aryana, isn’t aimless but she’s not super emotionally invested in the story rn. She has A Quest and she doesn’t want Acererak (very powerful undead wizard) to destroy Faerun for the very Peter Quill reason that she’s one of the assholes that lives there. And so does her entire Drow House and her whole thing is that she will do anything for the benefit of her House to the detriment of herself and people not in her House (she is def Lawful Evil). But you know, she could go off on her own and do those things. 

So Aryana walks into the Yawning Portal Tavern with the party while investigating the disappearance of the uncle of the party’s Druid (the uncle is a former PC btw). This human woman glares at Aryana. And she’s like “what? I’ve never seen you in my life” and the woman’s companion is like “oh, she just hates you because you’re a drow.” And Ayrana finds bigotry hilarious (it’s just been a few assholes weaker than her being mean so she can laugh at it). She starts antagonizing the human woman like “come on, let’s fight, you got beef, let’s take this outside, come on, I wanna fight you, let’s do this.” And this makes the human real mad. She stands up and her form changes... 

It’s Ayrana’s commanding officer, her mentor and she’s pointing an automatic crossbow at Ayrana’s heart and yelling “YOU FUCKING TRAITOR!!! YOU DESTROYED OUR HOUSE!!! YOU ARE GOING TO DIE RIGHT NOW RIGHT HERE!!!” 

And Aryana is just like “What the fucccckkkkkk?!?” She doesn’t have gaps in her memory and she hasn’t been back home for ten years or so. But this is her CO, her captain, so she’s open to the fact that she might have. Fight breaks out. The captain’s companion teleports out. Ayrana runs outside because she def does not want to be on Durnan the Bartender’s bad side and this really can be settled outdoors. One of the spellcasters knocks the captain out (bad saving throw on her part). 

The Druid wants to take her to the party base for further interrogation because the captain is a Drow and there was drow poison found in her uncle’s house. Ayrana wants to take her captain to the guards because while she is evil, she is lawful and she wants this done properly. But practically speaking, she wants her captain under watch so she can do other shit. 

A five minute argument ensues because out-of-character I was having connection issues and didn’t know about the Druid’s Uncle (we were playing over Discord) and in-character Aryana is so worked up she forgot why they were at the Yawning Portal in the first place. She’s not really... Emotionally invested in her party members and their problems. But that may change as things go on. She eventually decides that going along with what the other party member wants is best. 

They go back to their base, which is in a cliffside cave outside of Waterdeep. And fucking Acererak is there and he wants to talk. But he wants to see how this will go down first and even though the party is pretty eager to know why he’s here, they don’t want to fight him atm so they’re all just like “whatever.” 

They tie up Aryana’s captain, cast zone of truth (she fails the saving throw, Aryana chooses to pass). Aryana kneels in front of her captain and says “I don’t know what I did, but please tell me. If I did do what you say, I will fling myself off this cliff, I swear.”

 And so much shit is revealed. 

1. The captain claims that “Aryana” came back home, asked for some help with her quest and she got a squad of 400 soldiers. As they’re making their march “Aryana” leads them into an ambush. Seventy-five of Ayrana’s comrades die including her best friend. The captain loses an eye in the fight. The only reason they’re not all slaughtered is that their Drow Mother is able to intervene. 

2. Aryana’s like “I do not remember any of that. Also, we live in Faerun, that was probably a doppelganger, or I was mind controlled or any other thing.” Her captain is not hearing it though and they keep arguing and the druid is really eager to get back to the matter of her uncle. 

Tired of this, Acererak is like “omg, fine, it was me. I disguised myself as Aryana and tricked the soldiers into the ambush.” (The lowest INT character in the party guessed this btw BUT the player is in med school and a real smart cookie). Aryana stands up, gets in the lich’s face and is like “I will destroy your phylactery, and then I will kill you. I will not rest until you are gone from this universe.” He’s not impressed. 

3. Anyways, the druid is still pretty keyed up about her uncle and Aryana’s captain admits that it was her and her partner (the guy who peaced out at the Yawning Portal) who kidnapped the Druid’s uncle for the Red Wizards ( some more seriously bad dudes working for Acererack) and he’s probably in Thay (the city the Red Wizard’s control) right now. I s2g if our princess is in another motherfucking castle...  

4. Acererack “threatens” to leave and the party is like “whatever, we don’t actually want to talk to you or for you to be here.” But before he teleports out, Aryana puts down her weapons and unties her captain and starts beating the shit out of her screaming, “You thought it was me!!! You fucking thought it was me!!! How could you!! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” and Acererack’s like “WORLDSTAR!!!” 

5. When Aryana is done (she stops before her captain is killed or even permanently injured). Acerack finally says what he wants. He wants to trade his phylactery (the thing he keeps his soul in) for The Black Opel Crown, an artifact that’s key in a ritual to destroy the world. And the party for so many reasons says “no way in hell, fuck off!” And before they can fight him and take the probably-fake phylactery just in case (the guy we’re talking to is definitely a clone not the real deal and the party is level 14 so they can probably take him) he teleports out, counterspells the warlock’s counterspell so he’s gone. Bummer. 

I don’t think that’s the order it went down in but i’m trying to make it easy to follow here so. 

So the druid and another PC who also has a missing relative that was in the past campaign’s party are fucking chomping at the bit to go to Thay. But Ayrana’s like “no, we are not going in unprepared this time. We’ve done that too many times and our luck is running out. We need to go... To The Library.” 

More miscommunication ensues. 

Once that clears up, the party hits up our most powerful available contact, Syndra Silvane. She gives us a contract for us to sign basically giving us the authority to do whatever it takes to bring down Acererack. Being trigger happy, vengeance fueled adventurers who really like living in Faerun, we sign it. Don’t worry, there are lines we probably won’t cross. Like torture. Doesn’t work anyways. And if we do commit war crimes, I trust the DM to have it bite us in the ass. 

The warlock tells us everything he knows about Thay (he used to live there but since he was only in the poor/merchant districts and he biffs his History check... we don’t learn much). THEN we go to the library to learn everything we can about Thay and the Red Wizards. We realize that we need to fucking go, so Silvane hooks us up with one of her guys that we know and trust to stay behind and do research and send reports to us. 

Then the DM looks at the clock and is just like “this is going to go on forever, we’re gonna stop here and you guys can think about your next move and start planning properly next week.” I am very sad but very excited. 

So yeah, before she heads out to Thay, Aryana is going to go down into a cave (preferably with running water for the Sheer Purpose of Drama) and swear an oath to Lolth that she will take down Acererack and avenge her House and get the two PCs with kidnapped relatives to witness her promise and bind her to it. Then when the time comes, paladin levels. 

Ngl I was a little hesitant to actually multiclass bc Aryana’s an archer and divine smite is melee-only. But she has sickles (stated as short swords) and the idea of the last thing Acererack sees before he dies is Aryana’s hate filled eyes while she’s smiting the shit out of him with the Divine Wrath of Lolth is too good to pass up. 

So, so much credit to the Dungeon Master @blackbeanswithdice for making a great session. I am thrilled about what’s coming next! 

[small-boy78]

Saiko and Chiru’s redesign

And more facts:

Chiru and Saiko are chaotic, but Saiko is’more like mentaly unstable and Chirunis more silly

The glasses are nocturn glasses

Oka and Ako are boys, but people think that they’re girls

Herna loves having short and curly hair, it makes her pretty and attractive

Saiko and Chiru found two white shinny rocks, they took it and that how they became demons, also next gods from the darkness (i changed the beggin of the backstory, Saiko/Zia ran away from her house a monday night when she was at her mother’s house, and met Chiru/Zio, Ellia and Esmir, they found the rocks... and ya know)

Saiko gives a fuck when it’s about Kitsune, her step mom or something precious to her, otherwise, she wont give one or two fucks about it and stays chill

Jell (Ellia’s step sister) died killed by Brigitte/step-mother during the night

Saiko didn’t planned to die in Kiyotaka’s trap, but she survived

Rantaro is still the ultimate adventurer

Saiko faked her death and survived her execution at the V3

💢Izuru is still the traitor in Goodbye despair, which made Hajime and him argue for a while, and also made Chiaki depressed

If Saiko and Mondo came at time at the cafeteria, Celestia would get caught by and get killed by them, this means that they would die earlier than in MY OG AU

If Ibuki heard Nagito’s footsteps at night, she would have followed him and he would get caught and could have died earlier

If Peko didn’t got manipulated by Saiko with Mahiru’s pictures, she wouldn’t have killed Hiyoko

The dead people didn’t got stuck in another PC, they actually survived thanks to Saiko’s help

Saiko and Chiru considered Kaede as their triplet since she was born the same days as them

Saiko and Chiru (not Herna) actually got stuck in danganronpa at their 16th birtday

Herna’s hands are tough like rocks

There’s different Fairy forest in the world, and Ellia amwzs born in the British one

Kaede tried to teach Saiko and Chiru to play piano, but it was a big fail

Saiko’s execution was imagined and planned by her, she "died" laughing and smiling like a fucking psychopath

- Fun facts about my and my gf’s ✨️ocs✨️ + danganronpa stuffs AU-

Megami (Main vilain in my gf’s story) and Exeilyz (their/her persona) are mother/daughter and don’t have a great relation ship between each other

Step-mother/Brigitte has 4 kids, which one of them is Ines (my friend’s main oc)

Saiko had mentality problems since she turned 10...

Kitsune is my irl gf in the alternative future, this explains why Saiko and her/them are dating actually-

Edera had genetics problems, which is why she’s short as hell

If Saiko actually told Mondo about 👉Kiyotaka’s plan👈, Mondo could have killed Mukuro and Junko with his own bare hand and not dying by Mukuro who killed him

Hajime and Izuru are twins (Okay, i’m cursed, help-)

Chiaki was sent to the dugeon, but Izuru ✨️actually saved her secretly✨️ which made hervto fake her death to Hajime

Saiko has ✨️creeper bombs✨️

Tsumigi was an AI made by Shuichi with chihiro and Chiaki’s help

When Shuichi was revealed as the mastermind, Kokichi snapped and pulled out a gun to shot himself🔫🔫🔫, but Saiko removed all the bullets

Saiko somehow ragged at a game, which made a part of the Mario franchise, came out of her Nintendo switch (they had to buy a new one)

Saiko and Chiru since they got locked in the PC, became virus a bit like Exeilyz, but are still humans

Saiko eats butterflies, which made Gonta throws 🪑chairs at her🪑

Makoto, Nagito, Shuichi and Saiko are chaos incarnated (No way they just blew up a building while eating bodies-)

That 🤪 idiot of Hiyoko🤪 almost died by eating one of Saiko’s creeper bomb to see if it’s dangerous (obv it is !)

Fiby’s based on my childhood plushie, that explains why they already knew eachother when they met

Ryoma stopped dépression since he mets Akane (they play tennis together when they can)

Nekomaru made a sacrifice to save everyone from the Monokuma’s army, which he really died

Imposter’s real name (just bc i can) is Shagi-shi Nonemu (meaning: Imposter nameless)

Ryota didn’t made a video at all, but locked himself at his home during a whole year, trying and hoping to hide from the masterminds

The real Tsumigi was still alive, and also murdered the fake one who was Junko (this is where we saw Junko for the last time [Junko was kidnapped and forced to play as Tsumigi])

Angie is a psychopath jealous of Tenko, this expalins why she killed her at chapter 4

Saiko and Chiru’s favourite anime is Komi can’t communicate

[simkjrs]

msa asks (chap. 4  & onwards)

masterpost of msa asks that have been piling up, starting from when chapter 4 was published. thanks for your patience everyone...

answered in chronological order (first sent to most recently sent). i might have missed a couple, sorry about that

Anonymous said: IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT

Anonymous said: *INCOHERENT SCREECHING AND FLAILING*

ah, the halcyon days of innocence, before everyone finished reading the chapter

Anonymous said: *just finished chp4* uh Yeah about that what the fuck? simk whAT THE HELL DID YOU POUR GUNPOWDER ON YOUR PC? LOAD 14 BULLETS ON EVERY KEY ON YOUR KEYBOARD? SEND KILLER ZAPS TO ANYONE WHO SCROLLS UNTIL THE END OF THE CHAPTER? I WAS SO EXCITED ABT THE UPDATE THAT I COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT U WERE ACTUALLY A MURDERER IN DISGUISE? ANOTHER BEGINNERS MISTAKE, BECAUSE EVERYTHING U WRITE FUCKS ME UP ON EVERY FUCKING LEVEL? SO YEah what i wanted to say is that i love you

to date this is still one of the funniest asks i’ve ever gotten and it’s going in my testimonials

Anonymous said: me @ the new msa chapter:👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit

thank you, i do my best

Anonymous said: OH MY GOD! YOU REALLY PUT THE SNAKE FASHION THING!! :DDD :OOO

it was too good to pass up!! if you want to message me w/ ur name or url so i can credit you for inspo/the prompt, feel free :p

Anonymous said: I actually thought in the middle of the chapter that temple-dog would help Izuku escape so he would get captured by the other side of the coin and now i'm just crying

fjdlfkjsldf im sorry im like this. i do this 

Anonymous said: in just a few hours the comments went from 5 to flipping 23 25

yeah im very lucky to have so many people follow & support my writing!! im grateful to everyone who comments.

Anonymous said: I wonder how being sick works for MSA Izuku. In that odd state of not being as aware as usual and your mind being foggy, would he hear that star song easier or any other odd spirit shenanigans?

he’d just be kind of out of it and more susceptible to... things 

Anonymous said: SCREAMS?? I LOVE YOUR WRITING SO MUCH AND THIS CHAPTER WAS ABSOLUTELY STELLAR, THANK YOU FOR IMMEDIATELY BRIGHTENING MY NIGHT! I HOPE YOU HAVE A FANTASTIC TIME!!

ahh im really glad you enjoyed chapter four that much!! thank you!!!

Anonymous said: IM HOLLERIN THE NEW CHAPTER WAS SO GOOD WTF??

fjldkfsldf thank you.... 

Anonymous said: When I first commented on Ao3 I felt like looking at the other comments and I noticed all of them (at the time) had a line along the lines of "he needs a break" so I ended up imagining him just sunbathing on some tropical beach (read deserted island) sipping coconut Juice and sighing happily with noone to bother him.

that would be ideal. i think izuku also would not know what to do with himself

Anonymous said: MSA Izuku ch.4 summary: Kirishima: Hey are you ok? Izuku, literally on fire: Why, what's wrong?

GHFLKDFJLSDF IM LAUGHING!!! YOURE NOT WRONG

Anonymous said: I just finished msa ch4 and im?? Its 0 dark 00 and I have a 7 hour shift later Toda but I had to put it down and gnash my teeth over how GORGEOUS and HEARTBREAKING this chapter was before picking it up and finishing it. God im so stoked that it came out. Alright my pal, I hope you have a good time period of indeterminate length; take care of yourself yo!!

thank you im so glad you enjoyed it!! and i hope things have been good for you!

Anonymous said: ffuuuUUUUCK THAT TEMPLE-DOG YO WHAT AN AWFUL ICKY THING TO DO

correct, although in its defense, if izuku had just been another spirit, their connection would not have had that kind of effect 

Anonymous said: Uh, sorry if this bothering you, this has something to do with Msa Izuku, but not the new chapter (love it BTW, poor Izuku got captured by Overhaul. The cat is a new bar.).So, I would like to ask, just for fun, what would Izuku sees if he meets C/astiel face to face and how would the spirits react?

i think my worldbuilding and spn worldbuilding would conflict in so many terrible ways, but... izuku would prob be able to see c/astiel’s wings and true form? only for a bit before his eyes started getting itchy, and then started bleeding... dont think the spirits would like angels very much. spirits are a very prideful and arrogant bunch who don’t like to be intruded upon or interfered with

Anonymous said: who is Senshajou other than an amazing creature which I love already

senshajou is plato’s ideal cat. they are not exactly a spirit. they just are

Anonymous said: I'm suuuper curious about what the One for All spirit looks like in MSA, because my first thought is that it'd have to be this massive chimeric mutant due to the nature of it's creation and the fact it's been bonded to eight separate people.

coming back and reading this is incredibly funny because like. yeah. ofa is a chimera. not quite for the reasons you think, but yeah

Anonymous said: You know what I'm thinking right now? What of kiri and deku met in public after The Arrest™. The sheer chaos it would bring. The Confusion ™. I'm sure deku would just take one look at kiri and just. Book it. Also ch4 helped inspire me in my endavour to write about my etheral starlight dragon god for a original story i've been thinking up. You're really good at describing creatures beyond Imagination, you know.

you have correctly predicted this scenario. 

also im glad ch4 was able to help you in your writing endeavors!! best of luck!!

Anonymous said: whenever i read msa i always picture izuku wearing like, some kind of grey cloak, with the hood always up and shadowing his eyes no matter the context/location/surrounding temperature. It doesn't make any sense given the general fashion in bnha but I can't help it- msa!izuku is a cloak kinda guy imo

you’re right but msa izuku would also hate the attention that would come with wearing a cloak. he is definitely a hood-up kind of guy

Anonymous said: msa au in which Deku escapes the villain alliance, breaks into Kirishima's home, and just, fucking collapses on the couch. Kirishima gets up the next morning to see the fucking cryptid he'd hunted for days just, sleeping on his couch like a giant cat. What the fuck. What the fuck.

hold that thought

Anonymous said: So I'm reading ch 4 and listening to "I appear missing" by queens of the stone age and it works ridiculously well ngl (also like gd this chapter is so good the hype is real👍👍)

thank you!! this is a p cool song

Anonymous said: In MSA does everyone have a spirit? Have people always had spirits? Do you know how quirks started? Do even quirkless people have spirits? Why don't they have quirks? Could Izuku open their channel, or is the quirk canceling bullets different from quirkless people? So many questions!

most everyone has a spirit but not everyone, people have not always had guardian spirits, i do know how quirks started, quirkless people have spirits, they don’t have quirks because their bodies have not adapted to channel their spirit’s energy adequately, and izuku can try something with unlocking quirks, but it depends on what there is to work with already. quirk cancelling bullets rewind the bond between spirit and human but they don’t erase the adaptations to the body. quirkless people dont have that adaptation in the first place... hope that makes sense 

Anonymous said: dunno if this's been mentioned/acknowledged or asked about before, but wheres izuku's guardian spirit?

he ain’t got one. but why... 

Anonymous said: CHOO CHOO IT'S THE UNRESOLVED EMOTIONAL ISSUES TRAIN COMING IN AT 242379 MILES AN HOUR THERE ARE NO STOPS THERE ARE NO BRAKES WE DIE LIKE MEN ON THE HELL EXPRESS ~bakugous spirit

this is a joke but actually, yes. actually, this is very applicable to msa izuku himself, and so many characters i write, actually. this is an icnredibly funny ask and i love the phrases you use  and i would not be surprised if i subconsciously absorb this phrase and accidentally use it in the future. thank you for this

Anonymous said: question: if msa izuku and kirishima were in a dangerous situation and izuku almost got hurt very badly/died but he managed to escape. BUT kirishima didnt see him escape and didnt know he was okay. how would kirishima react

in typical kirishima fashion he would be very worried about izuku and would probably try to figure out a way to rescue him

Anonymous said: im ppl have been talkig abt izu's guardian spirit lately, but wht abt allm's? i like to imagine that when shimura died, she became toshi's guardian spirit

shes not allm’s guardian spirit but shes Around

Anonymous said: ok but the part where msa izuku says release it rly reminded me of cardcaptor sakura just sayin

never watched cardcaptor sakura but thats p cool 

Anonymous said: I'd like to think if MSA. Izu/ku got hit with a quirk erasing bullet it wouldn't kill him, just like knock him out for a good day or so until he wakes back up through spite and the universe just hating him and being like "man thanks for the nap gun guys gotta get me one of those"

Anonymous said: I had a dream that msa!izu/ku was standing in his cell and staring at a nearby guard and the guard is wondering wtf why is he staring like that but actually he was just really tired and fell asleep. Standing up. W/eyes open.

HEY THIS IS INCREDIBLE AND INCREDIBLY FUNNY AND IF SOMEONE WROTE A SNIPPET WITH IZUKU DOING THIS I WOULD ABSOLUTELY BELIEVE IT

Anonymous said: I'm sorry but I have to tell you “Would you like to sit?” “No.” is the funniest interaction I have ever experienced in my life I woke up my grandmother at 3 am cause I was laughing so hard and she's doesn't even live on the same floor as me

im so glad that izuku being a bullheaded and troubled teenager can bring some amusement and laughter to your day

Anonymous said: i guess you could say that in the lastest chapter, msa izuku is kicking ass... /and taking names/ BA DUM TSHHHHHHH

HGJDFKJSDLGSDF IM LAUGHING!!!! STOP THIS

Anonymous said: In the MSA verse when someone doesn't like their quirk for example like your OC Mitoki and they don't use their quirk how does that affect their spirit?

doesn’t really affect their spirit except like, psychologically or emotionally, because they would Like for their charge to be able to use their powers in order to defend themselves, but their charge Is Not

Anonymous said: What would Mitoki think of MSA Izuku?

msa izuku: says Anything msa izuku: pulls Those Stunts msa izuku: does stuff of gray legality without bothering to explain himself, ever msa izuku: also is grudgingly a good person mitoki: this guy is hilarious and a fucking RIOT, i have to adopt him immediately

Anonymous said: i imagine after hearing the music of the universe msa izuku doesn't like human music anymore, huh?

i think he isn’t very fond of any music that reminds him of that experience, and how he nearly lost sight of his sense of self. normal, mundane music with absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is probably a relief

Anonymous said: Just wanted to drop in and say that I really love MSA!!! It's a super refreshing read, and I LOVE how you write everyone. I'm so hooked, you have no idea. Thank you so much for all the work you put into it!!

thank you for dropping in and letting me know!! i love feedback like this, makes me happy to keep writing and sharing stuff. i hope you enjoy the next chapter!

Anonymous said: someone: *gives izuku positive attention* izuku: you come into MY HOUSE

yeah that’s pretty much exactly it

Anonymous said: This might be a little weird and specific, but how would MSA Izuku react to someone who does similar stuff to him? Meaning, constantly does weird eldritch shit while sassing away any attempts to figure it out. And also assuming that they keep crossing paths no matter how either party feels about it.

probably kind of uncomfortable, but if this person is reacting to said eldritch stuff the way msa izuku reacts to spirit stuff, i think he’d just recognize this person as someone else who’s going through a lot of stuff and just wants to be left alone, and then msa izuku would proceed to leave them alone. maybe quietly give them a coffee if they look like they need it, then leave.

if this person was enjoying eldritch stuff, i think msa izuku would be kind of envious of them, and resentful, because hey, this person gets a way better deal than me in terms of eldritch mysteries, why do i get stuck with all the bad stuff? 

either way i don’t think msa izuku would spend a lot of time with them, he has a lot of his own stuff to deal with.

Anonymous said: Holy hell. Did Izuku, like, frickin ABSORB afo or some shit??

Anonymous said: Did izu/ku discover afo's spirit's name? And then proceed to destroy afo

Anonymous said: If I was Aizawa, or any other clever member of the hero crew, my assumption would probably be that Izuku is the product of a quirk that makes physical manifestations of other people's quirks. The person with said quirk probably used it on themselves, thus Izuku. It would reasonably explain why he's so dodgy about his identity, can fix/alter quirks, talks strangely to nothing, and is so effected by the eraser quirk. (It's fun manufacturing wrong but reasonable theories!)

oh thats a really interesting theory!! hmm yeah... it could work, but if i was aizawa i would wonder why izuku didn’t just disappear if he was just a temporary manifestation of a quirk. i’ll deffo consider this though and if it proves useful to the story i hope you won’t mind if i use it? 

thank you for writing in!

Anonymous said: Goodness, I love your work. A part of me silently lives for the day when MSA!Izu and All Might spend time together and AM's just?? Immune to all of Izu's snark, while still being such a dad. Like "Deku my boy, where's the hoodie I gave you? It's getting cold out."/"Based on the trajectory of the moon and sun, in a garbage bin somewhere."/"Oh! Well it *was* my old highschool hoodie. It was probably getting too old to wear anyway"/*Cue frustrated-mortified screams of the little cryptid child*

frankly i don’t think msa izuku would be able to handle someone knowing About Him and genuinely looking after him at the same time, he’s only ever had one or the other at a time, if all might did this msa izuku would short circuit and have a minor crisis because he doesn’t know how to accept affection from someone who accepts him for who he is. this thought hurts me and i regret thinking about this. really good ask, thanks for sending it in

Anonymous said: Your fic ‘know what i’ve made by the marks on my hands’ is a power move in of itself.

fndlfksldkf THANKS, im putting this in my testimonials

Anonymous said: Ever since the beggining of MSA I can't get rid of a certain though. Bakugou's Quirk something horibly adorable and comepletely enamored with Izuku. Like, the moment it sees him, it just jumps at him with hugs and kisses, possibly some purrs. Izuku avoiding the duo because he's so done and tired of the vilent love and explosive heatred mixture.

izuku hates it because both of them are giving him some form of attention and he just wants them to forget about him and be done with it

Anonymous said: Idk whether this was asked but how do names come across in the second intonation?? Like if izuku was saying senshajou (?) would the name come out in japanese or does the second intonation have a way of saying names without actually saying them? Basically would listening in on their conversation reveal a bunch of static and then just "carwash" in the middle of the sentence??

intonations aren’t a new language, just a manner of speaking, where the fourth intonation takes the most energy and the first intonation (normal speech) takes the least. effectively, izuku and all the spirits are speaking japanese, but the intonation they speak in will take their words to a different energy level. if that makes sense. so, no, ‘carwash’ would not show up in the middle of a sentence

Anonymous said: SIMK IM CHOKING!!!!!! YOUR ART LEFT ME SPEECHLESS ITS SO GOOOOD!!!!

thank you so much!!! this is very flattering, and makes me very happy as well

Anonymous said: Hey have you ever played OFF?? Idk the first pic you drew for MSA rly reminds me of it

i have not! but i love the art i’ve seen for it

Anonymous said: so are the guardian spirits in msa bound to their humans in a distance sense? like can they just wander off to somewhere far away from their human or would they hit a boundary somewhere?

yes, spirits are basically bound by proximity! they can leave their charges behind and go gallivanting to another continent but it’s Not A Good Idea for a few reasons and becomes very unpractical. they can travel pretty far from their charges if the necessity arises, though.

Anonymous said: there is a lot of things i could say about your my spirit academia art but the first thing that i thought of was "wow izuku looks good with nail polish"

fjdlkfjsldf

everyone looks great with nail polish!

Anonymous said: msa!izuku's flirting: you're slightly less terrible than everything else happening in this situation right now

izuku says this stiffly and without looking at the other person because expressing emotion and vulnerability is difficult for him

Anonymous said: Honestly msa!izuku is the most relatable au Izuku. I too wish I could just fade from everyone’s collective knowledge and become the local ghost story middle schoolers dare each other to test. *izuku gets ding-dong-ditched but only because local children are too terrified to stay to see the beast that lives in that apartment*

Wait what does Izuku do for halloween anyways?

i accidentally deleted the second half of your question so that’s just a paraphrase sorry!! but yeah, i’ve infused msa izuku with some of my more cryptid-longing tendencies, i find it hilarious that this has carried through. i love the proposed scenario. it’s incredibly funny and absolutely something that would happen to izuku 

i dont think halloween is very widely celebrated in japan? but if it was, izuku would probably just shut himself in his room for the night because he doesn’t want to deal with any aspect of the holiday

Anonymous said: heya!! i just read your msa fic and i absolutely adore it! the whole idea is just awesome in the every sense of the word and ive found myself already completely immersed in it! your writing of izu/ku is very relatable for me and it only makes me love the fic more?? ahh im just head over heels for it!!!!

ahhh im really glad to hear that!!! i hope you continue to enjoy future chapters, as we explore more of izuku’s character, and possibly, his past :^)

Anonymous said: u have probs already gotten this question before, but was msa izuku (or his soul) merged with his guardian spirit at birth? Cause izuku basically says that something went terribly wrong at his birth... so I'm thinking he somehow merged with his spirit????

something like that! there was spirit fuckery involved.

Anonymous said: I cant help but think prototype!izu/ku's hair would match msa izu/ku v well

im laughing because ive actually drawn msa izuku with a hairstyle DISTRESSINGLY similar to prototype izuku’s hair. msa izuku has got that unhappy, emo vibe about him that just naturally attracts the kinds of vibes that prototype izuku’s hair gives off

Anonymous said: is izu/ku's guardian spirit like nessie or bigfoot or something? cause i swear to fuck he's such a cryptid omg

HRNGLDFLKSDF IM LAUGHING

nah, izuku doesn’t have a guardian spirit. only... himself

Anonymous said: Did All Might give Mirio One For All in MSA?

no idea, haven’t thought about it, won’t figure it out until i actually need to address it

Anonymous said: I just wanna say that I love msa and kirishima is trying

kirishima *is* trying and we are all loving and supporting him for the amazing work he does

Anonymous said: Say, would Shinsou’s quirk work on MSA!Izuku?

you will find that out in, sports festival msa au, wherein msa izuku accidentally takes his canon counterpart’s place right after he’s finished the obstacle course event in the sports festival. i need to get through the end of the sports festival before im satisfied with publishing it... but i’ve finished the shinsou fight. so! you’ll see :p

Anonymous said: Hey I sent you an ask a while ago but idk if you saw it or not, but I just wanted to say that I really liked your latest chapter of msa! The music that you described in the chapter was really amazing and it made me think of this song called “the heaven’s flock” sang by the Texas all state choir. Obviously it won’t be anything close to the ethereal other-worldly music that you describe in the chapter, but it’s what came to mind while I was reading it. You can find it on YouTube, hope you like it!

hey im super glad!! i spent a lot of time editing those paragraphs for Maximum Spiritness, it’s always gratifying to know someone enjoyed them. and yes, i checked out the song on youtube, and it’s pretty cool! choral pieces usually don’t interest me a lot but this one was fun. thanks for telling me about it!

Anonymous said: i just found your ff and I love them! Tired(tm) Midoriya is great and I love him.

thank you!! izuku who is tired of this bullshit and calls it out when he sees it is definitely very fun. 

Anonymous said: where is msa!izuku's physique in comparison to the cannon timeline? is he closer to how he was at the very start of series, or while he was training with All Might before he got One for All?

he’s pretty lean and wiry with plenty of stamina, so i’d say he’s about on par with canon izuku after training with all might pre-yuuei. he probably doesn’t have as much raw strength but i think he has more stamina

Anonymous said: Msa izu/ku escapes from the Precepts' clutches and starts booking it around the tunnels and just. Stumbles upon Eri. Stops and takes the time to fuckin wrangle her spirit to stop it from unexisting him and just books it with her "I'm taking her now bye"

this is hilariously close

Anonymous said: you used a lyric from meet me in the woods for the 4th chapter of msa and god thinking about it that song fits the au?? at least as much as i've seen about it.

thank you!! and yeah, i’ve actually got that song on my msa playlist. specifically, my msa kiri/deku playlist, because it fits so well. [sips that heart hurting juice] im happy someone caught the reference!

Anonymous said: just read the quote from Morrison 'she utilised violence in a purely feminine way' by chucking hot pokers at people and all I can think of is msa!izu/ku being so done with everything and being violent 'in a purely deadpan way', chucking his collection of spray paint cans/ art supplies/ occasional chair at the spirits because he's just so done and LET HIM SLEEP OR AT LEAST TURN UP WITH COFFEE GODDAMIT.

you are not, wrong 

thats what his scripts are for!

Anonymous said: Msa! Izu/ku's laugh sounding like a dead rustling/ raspy monotone that is simultaneously eerie and extremely concerning to the point you want to wrap him in marshmallows.

msa izuku’s laugh sounds very, very tired, which is arguably the same thing

@iamlikecain​ said: Hi ! I juste wanted to say that I love your fic My spirit academia and sassy Izuku is what I now live for. Btw, he doesn’t deserve to suffer omg that poor baby and uuugg I hope he’ll be happy ;—-;

haha thank you!! i’m glad you like msa izuku’s shenanigans!! and yeah. he really doesn’t deserve any of this. things will, hopefully, look up for him soon! i am not setting out to write a pessimistic story, eventually things will get better

Anonymous said: Your my hero academia spirit AU is super frigging interesting??? Im dying to read more :DDD

thank you! im super glad you enjoyed it

Anonymous said: What are your favorite msu!izuku headcannons?

just the fact of him existing in this unrestrained, unintentionally chaotic state of being wherein he does what he needs to and may even do what you want him to, but in a way that makes him and you and everyone else involved feel like you’re all just a bunch of clowns. heres a couple more facts about him though

his goal in life is to become a famous reclusive calligrapher who has retired to the isolated countryside to do calligraphy, where no one can bother him

secretly still really passionate about heroics but kind of embarrassed about it so if you find out or bring it up he WILL try to kill you

messy and not very good at cooking, but doing his best

knows some kind of weird trivia that you wouldn’t really expect

Anonymous said: b r u h what would inko's quirk spirit creature look like?? soft and playful and curious about all sorts of smol trinkets/objects??? would they be combative w izuku too??? ;-; or reach some sort of grudging acceptance of their presence??? smol green abomination belongs to my beloved human, so no fighting little abomination

honestly i haven’t given a lot of thought to inko’s guardian spirit, other than that it’s probably pretty small and not one of the most powerful spirits out there. it’s kind of distant from izuku, bc izuku makes it uneasy, but it cares about izuku in its own way. 

[dragonwarriorgal]

Fate: The Winx Saga Finale - A Fanatic Heart

Ok. I got my BIG glass of red wine. I am doing this in front of my parents while they are watching Miss Marple (great family bonding moment with them, mostly from my dad, chuckling at my rage of watching this show) and I am watching Teen Drama with British teenagers. Let's. Do. This.

Bloom: *gasp* I'm special? Me: What, you want a dog treat next?

Ok, it was really funny that Rosalind's next line was "you wanna learn a new trick?"

Ruh, roh! Whoopsie poodles!

I just wanna say that we have had NO INFORMATION about Rosalind, other than she maybe is a master manipulator, but BY GOD IS SHE NONTHREATENING! I keep thinking that she will knit Bloom socks as soon as she gets free. Maybe it was on purpose, but even the way that she acts is so nonthreatening, EVEN WHEN SHE IS SUPPOSED TO BE MENACING!

Even when I am in a WELL LIT ROOM, I can't see shit!

Terra's dad: *goes over the list of every bad thing Terra, Musa and Stella has done in the past half hour, including releasing Rosalind* Me: Well technically, Bloom is the one who released Rosalind...

BUT YOU STILL BROKE INTO THE HEADMISTRESS'S OFFICE AND BROKE THROUGH HER SECRET TUNNEL! YOU STILL HELPED BLOOM WITH RELEASING BEATRIX AND ROSALIND! DON'T YOU DARE PUT YOUR IDIOCY AS YOUR MAIN EXCUSE!!!!

Ah, hello escape ex machina. AKA the guy THAT CAN WALK THROUGH WALLS!

Ok, hands down, Aisha is the only good character in this show. She can see through this BULLSHIT LOGIC!!!

I keep thinking that she brought Bloom here to get her a butterscotch.

"Blood Witches" Aseduan is here??? (The Witchlands book series for those who are curious about me reference)

And also, OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE! We have witches! ARGH!!!!!!!

*sigh* After following her order she left when you were a baby to "find me", releasing her from a magical coma, following her through a secret passage way out, getting to the stone circle with her to learn just how "special" and a good girl you are, YOU ARE JUST NOW FIGURING THAT OUT????!!!!

And no mention or hurt from Sky THAT SHE DRUGGED HIM AND LEFT HIM ALONE!!!!

(I am not wasting space on my pc for this screenshot) Dane: Beatrix cares about you Riv. Me: *pretentious scoff*

Oh, sorry, he is ONLY NOW MENTIONING IT! Also you see how I CAN'T SEE SHIT! Bloom is RIGHT BESIDE HIM! ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SCREEN!

Can you imagine being the Head Grip on this show when they were shooting? HG: Director dude, we need more lights if the audience have any chance of seeing anything in this scene, other than those random background character running with flashlights. Director: No, you don't understand, we NEED that cool ass globe with the moving ocean we showed in the very first episode! It is essential to this story!

Because I can't scream right now in front of my parents:

Sums up the entire problem I have with this episode.

That was the most PATHETIC MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH IN TV HISTORY!

I would forgive this show just a tiny bit if Dowling just yeets Bloom at the Burned Ones just so they can satisfy their Bloom murder boner they have for some reason.

Apparently, according to Dowling, (in this final episode btws), water fairies are good at leadership and control.

Is this going to be the first teen drama TV show ever to have an M/M/F relationship? (I am not going on a google hunt to find out)

If Beatrix was on Rosalind's side since the beginning, WHO THE HELL WAS THIS "HE" THAT THEY MENTIONED IN THE SECOND EPISODE?????!!!!?!?!?!!

I have been constantly rolling my eyes this past minute, and I need a break.

Why the fuck should I remember Doris, AND WHY THE HELL SHOULD I CARE?

Again, I have heard little to NOTHING bout Sky's dada, we have only learned his name IN EPISODE 5! WHY THE HELL SHOULD I CARE THAT SILVA KILLED HIM! Oh, god. I get it now. *sigh*

ONLY 26 AND A HALF MINUTES LEFT?

I am absolutely livid

Me: *all of a sudden punches a pillow* My dad: Why are you forcing yourself to watch this? Me: You don't understand, I have watched and reviewed those last five episodes, I only have 23 minutes left. I HAVE to finish this, even though I only get a couple of likes for this.

Ok, I get why Aisha is there, BUT WHY STELLA?! Also sorry for screenshot every 2 minutes, BUT GOD!

PFFT- OH MY GOD! ARE THEY ACTUALLY TRYING FOR A TRANSFORMATION SCENE RIGHT NOW?!?!??!?! PFFT-HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAAHA!!!!

Ah, thank you,*wipes eyes* I needed that laugh after all that anger I felt this episode.

THANK YOU FOR GIVING MY SOME ANSWERS IN YOUR SEASON 2 BAITING!

Bloom destroys the Burned 1s after the most ridiculous fight scene/transformation scene and leaves her weak and her "friends" are now tucking her into her bed, what's next a bed time story?

And straight back into numbness...*sigh*

??????

Weirdest. Teen angst scene. Ever.

15 minutes left of this episode and the "final fight" is already over... I guess it is time for predictable season 2 baiting...*sigh*

I hate this "forgiveness and hindsight" scene with Bloom and Dowling with all my being.

"While I plan on revealing that your real daughter died and I have been a changeling and you there is a really good chance that you might kick me out and disown me and even physically hurt me?"

10 more minutes and there have already been 3 pop songs these past 10 minutes.

are you fucking kidding me? THE WHOLE SCENE WITH HER TELLING HER PARENTS THE TRUTH IS IN A FUCKING MONTAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't care if there is an after credit scene, as soon as I see any name pop out on the screen I am OUT!

Great, 8 and a half minutes of Season 2 baiting

Surprize motherfucker! Also OH. MY. GOD! 

I want to throw something

Oh my God, Beatrix's dad AKA "HIM" is Andreas (Sky's dad)*groan* (I predicted it literally 1 second before it was revealed)

Did...did Dowling just die... huh...

YEET!

Stay tuned for either tomorrow or Sunday for my thoughts on this show, because there are some elephants that I did not go into because I didn’t want this to be a long post (ironic right?), like for example: The whole modernization and the Burned 1s, the awful wardrobe and many more. The future post will be more of a cohesive review other than this live reaction series.