#im so interested in the random map generation in this one i did not know the roblox engine was capable of that

[naggingatlas]

watched my friend kass play pressure on stream today n doodled sebastian n then she colored him :) super nostalgic shit. add this one to my collection of butch women on t btw

[kaiserouo]

warframe 1999 demo spoiler warning?

so it's gonna be here until the real 1999 content drops?

i mean. he looks not half bad but im still never gonna draw him

i love that they're having great ideas about the map loading thing

I NEED THIS HANDGUN RIGHT NOW

its got ACTUAL silencer and shit its perfect im gonna trade my laetum with this

idk why but feels weird that they're making a somewhat real-world looking maps. i mean like, our world. you get it.

if you're not making me interact with it why do you make it look so interactable

also why is there no mouse. does people still uses shell as their only interface

they must've had some struggles making this look recognizable

seriously, making a language in game has some interesting problems that i never thought exist. its kinda cool that everything works out

i mean. i know you need something to block player's path in a quite open city but this is kinda. um. unnatural?

but this is the first time they have an open world and can't just shut doors off in their procedual generated map so alright i'll take it. maybe they're gonna make some maps in closed building as well?

so did the time actually freezed or what

also you can get somewhat high

the cabinets are actually flat btw they drew that with perspective already applied. they SHOULD do this to save vertices but what a design choice to not make literally every window not transparent

yes that is a room with only walls

people have new things and medias to translate now. this time a full fucking ad of some dvd players or something

also found one about computer and... i guess a website? idk. and some firework stuff that i literally can't figure out what they're selling

i swear their armor and shield is as annoying as d2 cabal

ok that's it. don't know why this post is THIS long but you're probably used to me rambling about random shit anyways

[dausy]

Ok, so Im using a doodle I drew of Cloud just to represent video games in general.

I finished Xenoblade2. It was on my list of games to entertain me while my husband was deployed. Honestly thought Id make a bigger dent in that backlog but alas, my spouse has been gone for 9 months and I only played 1.5 games. I started Zelda:totk prior to him leaving and it took me half his trip and 220 hours to finish. Been playing XB2 since finishing Zelda. Well, I lie I haven’t been counting Disney Dreamlight also which has an absurd amount of hours on it too.

Other games on my list to play are Octopath Traveler 2, Xenoblade 3 and possible Red Dead Redemption 2 (my only one for the ps4)and I had another possible for the switch also. I didn’t necessarily want to play XB2 and in fact the internet suggested to skip it but I felt guilty having played 1 and skipping to 3, so I gave it a try. For the record, my spouse returns home within the month and I’m not making it through my backlog.

So I have thoughts about XB2. In a way I don’t know if it was as bad as the internet says it was. Probably seems ok because I haven’t played 3 which is apparently one of the best modern jrpgs so my opinion will probably change. My biggest gripe was traversing the map. I enjoy a good, open world and stumbling upon hidden nooks and crannies but this game did not make it easy to get to certain locations. I was trying hard not to google information but sometimes I had to just to get to some of these tunnels. Particularly in Gormott. Nothing pissed me off than trying to get around main Gormott area and then if you weren’t just lost the game punished you by having random level 90 monsters swoop down and murder you. I guess the murder isn’t exactly new. XB1 had similar but exploring was so much easier. It may have also been a switch problem but keeping the character in auto run was a challenge itself. I almost quit this game because of it. Rex would be in a sprint and then get stuck walking stupidly slow.

That reminds me too of the controls. It took me a long time to get used to opening the correct menu. I kept accidentally opening the settings/save screen instead of the main menu or the map screen. Also on the world map I would keep accidentally opening up controller help button. This is fine except they don’t make it super easy to back out of them. You have to click through multiple screens. Again, some of this might be because I was pushing certain menu buttons for Zelda for so long it took a while to get used to backwards controls.

Other control problems were my fault. I do not want to read a manual to play. I don’t like tutorials. I feel like the buttons should always be obvious. I did not read any instructions. It took me far too long (90 hour mark) to realize if I press start, a chain attack would occur. I learned this while trying to pause during a boss fight, which I don’t even know if you can pause still. Also, around the 120 hour mark I learned that each blade had little mini quests to unlock power ups. I just assumed you used them to level them up. I never actually clicked around in the screen (which also had stupid controls) lmao. /failgamer/. This one’s kinda annoying because I had to run around the world again to excavate and open all these chests I couldn’t before because nothing was leveled lol.

All of these things were very frustrating when trying to set and perform regular quests and missions. Some of the quests were very vague and difficult to follow without a guide.

Then we have the story and characters. The giant boobs I could ignore as they usually come with jrpgs but the story and characters lost my interest almost immediately. The gameplay being more fun despite being clunky. I honestly don’t know if I could name every character. The final boss was also just meh. I don’t necessarily need a challenge but he was no more amazing than any regular fight. I felt nothing when the credits rolled.

I will say I liked the atmosphere of the game and the voice acting except for tora. Dude..shut up..the mini game tiger tiger wasn’t so bad either. Thought that was going to be painful but they were pretty lenient.

Overall I think it was maybe just under Tales of Arise. I played SEs Harvestella last year and XB1 and 2 are both far superior than it. I wasn’t expecting to get almost 140 hours in this game tho and I didn’t even complete some of the side quests. I tried to go for completionism but I just couldn’t get lost on the maps anymore.

I’m considering dropping immediately into XB3 but the new FF7 is about to come out. I don’t know if I should get invested when I’ll have to stop in the middle to play another game. I won’t be able to play ff7 until my husband comes home next month tho because he has the ps5. I also never got to play ff16 and I’m considering baldurs gate…all the cool people played it already tho and I’m behind.

But ff7. Rebirth has sparked a resurgence in an old obsession.

[soythelb]

So, i have played most of the age of empires 3 campaing recently, i have many problems and a lot of questions(specially act 2 of the warchief: shadow) but i will start with the bonecloset.

Now dont miss understand, i love age of empires 3 and i consider it the best of the series since it has destinguishable civilizations with unique units and not only diferent pictures but also avoids being slow like the age of empires 2 granpa (you may like it i dont)

That said rant ahead

My first question is why in the DE they didnt change the fucking story!!! Like so many things are fucking wrong.

Like they are willing to change almost all the story in the second act of the expansion but not the original campaings that were a mess.

You start in malta defending against ottomans, so all good till just after the second mission we get introduced into "an ancient stone library" that talks about the fountain of youth in america. Ancient stone library. IN THE 1500S the end of that campaing is in 1566, ancient my ass. Who the hell carved that? Alain Magnain's mother?

So you get sent by Alain Magnain (leader of the maltese knights and probably ficticious) to the new world to persue the Ottomans and stop them from getting to the fountain. Okay i can get going after the ottomans since you are part of a cristian knight order and most likely recently kicked from rhodes so yeah i could turn a blind eye. But then...

Then you get to the bew world and gets interesnting... fight a spaniard called Francisco Delgado, who despite sounding historical he isnt. And the only one that comes close to the name (and time) is a spanish monk that never visited the new world. Then defend the aztecs, and some incas for some random reason that i dont understand since you never reach the andes in this campaing

Capture the Ottoman and well it turns out that the circle was in the new world. AND WAS LEAD BY ALAIN. So intead of you know, telling morgan that Alain was part both of the maltese order and the boneguard, they fight. Morgan a man of principle decides to betray his commander.

I dont know what is more out of caracter, Alain being dumb and not telling Morgan, or Morgan Black going against his order.

And yes i know they spin it into Alain betrayed the order but makes no sense.

So you have scotman, a (presumably) british pirate and one ottoman fight against the leader of the Forever knights.

If Alain wanted to betray the order he could, i dont know, give temporally the grand master powers to Morgan (or someone else) abd lead the circle to the new world. Clearly he was important since he did lead the circle to the new world

Dialogue is not bad though i like it.

My favorite part was "im an ottoman. i have more gunpowder you could ever use."

You do also get interesting mision desing that keeps teaching stuff in small steps, the first is in creating units and some unit counters, the second is more rounded towards get economy going and more general siege, the third into the naval part of the game, etc. And also one that teaches you about the experience system that is completly new to every player. And secont to lat one where you dont get gold mines but instead need to capture the spanish fleet that makes only gold and makes you contest the map.

So tldr; dumb story, dumb caracters, decent dialogue great gameplay 9/10 just ignore the story.

[crescentfool]

after a year of on-and-off playing, i finally finished persona 3 fes (the journey) and it was a very lovely experience! so i thought i’d write a post compiling some of my thoughts about it!

first things first, p3p or p3fes:

i enjoyed fes a LOT but for people who are looking for a smoother game experience and fun social links, i would suggest playing femc’s route on p3p, and then watch the p3 movies to see minato’s journey.

that said, if you feel that 3d models are important to help immerse yourself in the setting and storyline (like me!), i would still recommend playing fes!

and if you are not entirely sure if you want to commit to an 80+ hour long game… the movies are a very good starting point!

where im coming from:

before i actually get into Some of My Thoughts™, a lil’ precursor  i did go into fes with the general gist of p3’s plot (i watched the movies).

p3 fes was the second persona game i played (after p5r), but i have seen a good chunk of gameplay of the other games (p1, p2is, p3p, and p4g).

i can say that playing the game definitely heightened my appreciation for the characters and setting in a way that the movie couldn’t. soufhglkhdf i loved it. 

but anyways. some More Thoughts™ under the cut, mostly just about fes’s gameplay and Some Spoilers!

on the gameplay:

i think that playing fes after p5r was really interesting! i felt that i could see the foundation of what makes up the ‘modernsona’ games. it’s not as streamlined as p5r (no baton passes 💔) but i think it’s still playable (though that might be because i played on easy, lol).

tartarus, i found it… oddly calming? but i understand if people feel it’s repetitive, and not as interesting as the dungeons in p5r. i enjoy that tartarus isn’t as segmented since the story beats didn’t have to be tied to it.

i think the worst part of the gameplay to me was anything to do with the golden hands…. it’s very annoying to get into a battle with them on the map, and once you DO get into a fight they can just run away before you can do anything? so i’m glad that their appearances in p4g are much more fair and feel more rewarding bc i had to abuse so many save states just to hit the fuckers.

in regards to the ai, i think they’re alright unless you’re trying to pull off a more elaborate strategy that isn’t “knock down enemies and all out attack them.” i think the directions that you can give SEES are fairly straightforward but there have been times where their decisions are questionable (no mediaharan or… attacking when the final boss activated their reflect barrier… lol).

i found fes to be tolerable but i do think that sometimes enemy advantage attacks combined with the ai can be rather punishing when party members heal people that aren’t the leader (given the if protag dies = game over). totally not speaking from experience haha what do you mean (volume warning)???

if you’re playing on emulator i highly recommend keeping save states! i used them a lot for hands and the (groans) random skill mutations and. shuffle times. im cheap. i know. but don’t b afraid to make it easier for urself ✨ 

there’s also the new moon difficulty mod for anyone who’s concerned about the game balance, but i haven’t played it myself.

on the characters / story:

i liked sees when watching the movies, but gosh, playing the game really heightened my appreciation for them! especially yukari, i loved her social link and i really enjoyed getting to know her better.

that said. anyone who’s been in the p3 fandom long enough probably has heard that minato’s social links are… lackluster. there are a few good ones (that weren’t SEES) that i really liked- bebe (XIV), mutatsu (XVI), and akinari (XIX)! but all of these are… available in femc’s route and she gets a lot better options. i don’t want to sit through nozomi and kenji’s social links again </3

even if i feel that minato’s SLs are a bit meh, i really appreciate how SEES’s social links are handled and that their development does not hinge on minato DOING things- i think it allows for stronger and more believable character arcs and i loved seeing the different dynamics among the cast!

i think that playing the game and living out each day brings out the inherent strength of the persona calendar system- i really felt a stronger attachment to the characters and their individualized storylines than i did in the movies, which in turn enhanced my enjoyment of the themes portrayed in the narrative. which. i already enjoyed a lot (gestures a lot at ryoji mochizuki who everyone probably knows that he’s my favorite character ever).

if it’s not readily apparent! i really! enjoyed playing FES! im glad i chose it over p3p bc :) i like to look at minato and smile at his silly little animations. but uh. i think that’s all i have to say!

if anyone wants any specific thoughts™ on the characters / gameplay, feel free to leave an ask !!! i would be happy to answer it whenever i have the chance to~

 TL;DR: p3 GOOD i loved it a lot

[lord-shitbox]

magi and juhaku nyeheheh

MAGI

Favorite character: masrur and judar and kougyoku and hakuren and

Least Favorite character: whatever that onna-girai lookin dude that beats morgiana up right after zagan in sindria.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): uh juhaku, sphintus and titus, hakuren x happiness, sharryamu, ja'far x a fucking break and all the fanalis x ME bro i

Character I find most attractive: masrur

Character I would marry: so many. yam hi kougyoku hi masrur hi sinbad get fucked no hakuren hi sphintus h--

Character I would be best friends with: kougyoku (id bully ka kobun) koumei would b my buddy we would not speak ever but we'd Get Along like that. but also i want to make him infodump at me i bet he knows cool things

a random thought: i avoided this fandom years ago because everyone was thirsty and simping but ykw i am not better

An unpopular opinion: idk whats unpopular i stay blissfully ignorant

my canon OTP: (guy who flips back and forth in the kou civil war arc and forgets the rest of the series) whats canon again

Non-canon OTP: aside from juhaku.. uhh... idk i multiship a bit . many notions are entertained in my head... i do think myron x kougyoku is very nice

most badass character: myron amd kougy and tbh belial hakuryuu

pairing I am not a fan of: most of them r...Fine....... ren family incest get lost tho.

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): hakuei why does she vanish off the map :( where is hakuryuu and hakuei making up scene

favourite friendship: alibaba and kougyoku and judar and kougyoku and basically kougyoku and everyone. my baby

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: sinbad . i would be the best son id make fun of him alll day. sindria is cool the generals are cool id get money and cool friensd and to Make Fun Of Him All Day

JUHAKU

when of if I started shipping it. uhhh. always thought it was neato especially after i read the manga but the real jh brainworms did not occur until i acquired magi liker friends

my thoughts: judar and hakuryuu fucking shit up arc is my favorite in the manga. for Reasons. "i know what the right thing is. i know i should put aside the hurt and anger i feel and move forwards towards a better world for everyone. i know i should do it but i cant im too fucking upset" is so vibes with me i love characters being rightfully resentful

What makes me happy about them: they get each other... the mutual devotion..... the certainty that the other will be with them.. domesticity postcanon.......

What makes me sad about them: YUU AND RENREN WILL NEVER SEE THEM HAPPY TOGETHER AND

things done in fanfic that annoys me: maybe like. not enough Stupidity. both are comedically dumb at times and i am a verified stupids liker. but tbh so far jh fanfics have been to my likings so not much

things I look for in fanfic: ......trans judar... or other tropes id like. and. low word counts. i cant read

My kinks: not particularly interested in this regard

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: 

My happily ever after for them: THEM LIVING IN JUDAR'S TINY VILLAGE POSTCANON HAVING A NICE QUIET LIFE COMING TO TERMS WITH MUNDANITY AND DOMESTICITY AND

[depressedstressedlemonzest]

hello lem!!!!!!!!!!! Some nursing home mickey things;

his boss finds out that mickey can play guitar and dead serious asks if he can play acoustic.

mickey: its really just agressive strumming and no finger work

his boss: im desperate for someone to do live music i dont care

so mickey and ian team up to learn some basic guitar shit so mickey can help the activity folks out

Tami starts doing a free hair-do night for all the ladies

Debbie starts volunteering as well, remembering aunt ginger

Mickey gently kisses the knuckles of every female resident when he helps them stand up

he memorizes some random facts about the years and general eras when his residents were born

hes so shameless when he asks residents about cool historical things they witnessed like the moon landing, various sporting events, etc.

He learns more about baseball after he starts working there than he ever did in his entire life. he starts calling kev whenever theres a cubs game on and watching it with his adoptive dad buddy

Ian loves picking mickey up from work he comes hours early so that he can say hi to everyone, even though hes not technically sipposed to be let in there the residents just like him so darn much

Alicia, all of these are fucking phenomenal and I love them and you.

The music Mickey and Ian plays for activities is all like crooner Frank Sinatra, or Elvis, or Patsy Cline, all the stuff the old people love. The old ladies almost WEEP when Mickey starts singing Doris Day sweet love songs to Ian.

YES TAMI WOULD DO THEIR HAIR AND THEY WOULD ALL LOVE HER! Especially on days when she would bring Freddie and New baby along so they got in baby fixes while their hair dried or while their curls set.

AWWW YES Debbie and Franny would come and do shit with the ladies like painting their nails or learning to crochet from them.

AND THEY ALL ADORE MICKEY AND FLIRT WITH HIM. "Oh Mickey if that handsome husband of yours wasn't around and I was sixty years younger..."

"Mickey you need to teach my husband some things, ALBERT COME TALK TO MICKEY! HE HAS SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU!"

He also does a little dance with them when he transfers them, "Okay Scarlett, just a little dance with me while we go to the chair."

"Mickey these old bones can barely stay upright anymore let alone dance."

"Could've fooled me Doris, just need a step, a step, and we're good."

Doris then pats his cheek affectionately.

He'll ask about things that they have special interests in too. Like the old man with maps all over his room he'll ask about where he's travelled in life, where he would travel if he could, bring him maps of different places to get his opinion. Printing out a map of Middle Earth because it doesn't matter what kind of map it is the guy just likes maps (one of my old men still had the middle earth map i printed him when he died)

He'll do a fast food friday or sundae sunday and go to wendys or some shit every week and bring back food or frostys for everyone.

YES AND HE AND KEV WILL GO AND SOMETIMES INVITE IAN BUT MAINLY IAN DECLINES BECAUSE HE KNOWS MICKEY NEEDS TIME WITH KEVIN HIS DAD.

Ian will talk to all the oldies, but find a special kinship with the veterans, and they'll all talk to him about it and tell him how great of a soldier he would've made, but it's okay that he didn't enlist.

He'll take each of the ladies out to the flower gardens in the courtyard and help them water everything while Mickey watches from inside all heart eyed.

[spacedikut]

i tried to write this down earlier in my notes app to make sure i got everything how i want it to be, but— it just didn’t feel natural. so here we are!!

i reached the last fic in your masterlist. and read it. and cried. and read it AGAIN. so i could fully appreciate it, because the very first time i read it back in december my blood was buzzing and my brain was alight (because kudi posted!! kudi posted something she wrote!! :DDD) and now the second reading was just filled with thoughts of ‘oh, this is the end of this little tradition i’ve built with this wonderful person i’m lucky enough to call my friend (and fiancée).’ so i read it a third time and gave it my full undivided attention.

i just feel sad?? and like crying?? and it’s all nostalgia, i know, i’ll still have you to send voice messages to and weird clips that’s meant to be us jamming together, but— this whole little odyssey is coming to an end.

and what a glorious end. i’ll have to say that “the blessing of a blizzard” is my favorite fic of yours so far. while i have special places in my heart for “touch move” and “fun fun arcade”, this holiday special is my favorite. because i love christmas no matter the time of the year, and the almost kiss trope is truly what will end me one day.

the way you built up the tension??? the description of it all happening??! it really did feel like the world slowed down for a few moments and like time was at a standstill and that’s magical. you just pulled the world’s best magic trick!!

now, we “agreed” on a fall wedding, but it’s on such short notice that all i could do was salvage some dried leaves from my pressed flowers and smack them on my desk with a candle.

however i have arranged for a special friend to bring our rings:

💍 💍 🦊

he’s not rabid, i promise, just very excited to be included!!

somewhere along the lines these asks have become more so about you, than about your fics, but how could it not happen when you’re so INFURIATINGLY BEAUTIFUL INSIDE AND OUT I WANT TO HOLD YOUR SHOULDERS AND SHAKE YOU GENTLY UNTIL YOU SEE IT FOR YOURSELF GOD HECKING DAMN IT!!

you’re such a talented and skilled writer, such a good friend— n a y, a good human and i will forever be thankful to this hellsite for bringing me to your proverbial door.

and now that we’re tumblr wives, may we proceed to our hut for some tea and so we can exchange pointy hats too.

love you so so much!! thank you for writing so generously and so openly, for putting it all on a map— this was by far my most favorite trip of my life up to date.

💖💕💞💕💖💞💕💞💕💖💕💕💞💕💖💕💕💞💖💖💖💞💕💞💕💕💞💖💖💞💕💕💖💖💖💞💕💕💖💖💞💕💖💖💖💖💖💞💕💕💞💕💕💕💞💕💖 (because the post was already long and i couldn’t miss out on the chance) 💖💕💞💖💖💞💕💖💞💖💕💕💖💕💖💕💞💕💖💕💕💞💕💕💞💖💖💕💞💖💖💞💕💕💞💖💖💕💕💕💖💕💕💞💖💕💕💖💕💕💕💖💖

OH MAN oh boy oh man prepare for a cheesy thank you message

ever since you first messaged me (and to now) ive wondered why the Fuck you chose to talk to Me and KEEP talking to me because i wholeheartedly believe you are one of the best people on the planet. you’re fun, funny, interesting, and so OPEN to me and my awkwardness and sometimes invasive questions because i don’t know how to be a human and. in the cheesiest way possible you feel like a gift from some god or fairy godmother or SOMETHING ethereal that thought Hey! maybe spacedikut should have a little friendship. as a treat

i suck at conversations, like truly, so i cherish you and your traffic jam of thoughts so much because every time you bless me with a voice message or random headcanon they’re always so entertaining and ALWAYS SPOT ON? i will never get over the dream team chip and toof

i say this as much as possible but thank you! for being my friend and talking to me and READING MY FICS. THIS ENTIRE JORUNEY FEELS LIKE A DREAM i am so so glad an anon sent a tag we could use for this because i Guarantee you im going to reread every ask whenever i feel terrible about my writing (which...ahem....you know is a lot)

i hope you never felt pressured to continue reading my fics :( and if you did im sorry However i will remember this odyssey forever and ever and will remember you forever and ever because really. you really make me want to be a better, kinder, more (socially) open person who just...has love pouring out of every pore like you do. you’re so filled with love and a kind of loveliness that ive never encountered before and it makes me !!! you are a One of a Kind miss jo

i have nothing to bring to the wedding except my undying love and HAPPINESS THAT A FOX IS JOINING US BECAUSE THEYRE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE ANIMALS

as always you are too kind to me and my responses will never match up to the level of creativity and pure happiness your messages bring me but pls know i cherish these so much !!! so so much !!! you are so talented yourself and i feel so lucky to not only know you but be a witness to your photoshop abilities and writing abilities and super angsty music taste

i love and appreciate you more than i can put into words so 🥺 happy friday thank you for spending time on me i love you very much

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

so i’d really like to finish my guardian takedown lore analysis, but honestly the game isn’t really fun to play at the moment anymore (even with the health debuffs they added) so I think im going to be taking a break for now because I’m just not having fun anymore.

this game has a lotta mechanical problems i think need to be addressed so im gonna summarize it as bullet points below. I’ll play the new dlc when it drops, but idk if i’ll be on more than that (grinding, end-game stuff) until they make some serious changes. I’ve been playing (near) daily since launch, followed the patch/hotfix notes every single week, and my patience has finally, FINALLY run dry, especially with that really disappointing Phase 1 Patch and then the hotfix this week not adding anything else. What is the balancing team doing??? 😩

tl;dr: FIX THE VAULT HUNTERS!!!!

anyway. That’s all I needed to get outta my system. I might log on to this blog every now and again to post some random shit that pops into my head (probably with regards to my AU), but I’m not going to be actively playing and posting for the time being. Goodbye (for now), and here’s hoping the new DLC is good!! 

guardian takedown only problems:

there’s a lot of waiting around, and sometimes it’s not explicitly stated that you’re waiting for something, so you’ll be lost on what to do next (not sure if that’s a dialogue glitch or not)

the crystal charge insta-death is bull. just. what the hell. at least make it so you just have to start over. killing ur players for failing a “puzzle” that they then have to fight all the way back to is so infuriating.

dying because you fell off a platforming puzzle is also bull. 

i remember playing the first DMC on my playstation in middle school and having a conniption over the part in the observatory(? it’s been a hot minute since I played DMC 1) with the disappearing/invisible platforms. I h a t e jumping puzzles. why are they in a section of the game where death is semi-permanent and a detriment to your teammates. i tried the takedown 2x with friends and both times one friend didn’t make the first big jump to the temple and had to wait for our inevitable deaths. that’s so unfair to them.

there’s absolutely no reason for a boss to have 12 fuckin immunity phases. 4 per health bar with 3 health bars? Who the fuck designed this? *pumps shotgun* i just wanna talk. 

i appreciate a tasteful immunity phase every now and again (the ones in the Valkyrie fight are actually p reasonable), but christ. that is overkill. I don’t mind the main boss fight, since u can end those early through certain actions, but jesus. the mid-boss fight is annoying as hell. you spend more time running from the immunity phases and finding the damn boss than u do actually shooting it.

drop rates are crap, which I guess should be expected given what happened with the Maliwan Takedown and the handful of months it took for them to fix that, but also you think they’d have learned.

in the maliwan takedown there’s a sense of progression thru the facility after you kill each area’s batch of enemies, but in this one it’s... dampened by the crystal charging sequences. you kill all the enemies in an area, press a button, and now you have to kill 3x that number of enemies in the same area, expect you’re just standing there motionless. It’s not fun.

the crystal charging stuff is just not fun in general. standing in a square is not entertaining. it’s worse that it was clearly designed for 3+ players when a majority of people play/grind solo

i gotta admit the boss fights just aren’t as fun as the Maliwan Takedown fights overall. I felt like a real badass fighting Wotan for the first time, but the main boss for this Takedown is kind of a bitch. Wotan’s fight is chaos, there’s so much shit happening at once and you don’t really have time to process everything and I love it. This one is p meh...

This would be fine and I’d 100% not care that much if there weren’t all these OTHER problems

General Issues with the Game

There’s no endgame stuff to play outside of the takedowns. 

I assume they’re working on the first raid given some stuff I found in the Guardian Takedown files, but I really wish they’d keep the seasonal events/areas. They give us the option to disable/enable them while they’re ‘active’, just give us the ability to do it whenever we want.

when i hop on i either run through Athenas (my favorite map), or farm a boss or two. I have all the loot i really need from the maliwan takedown/elsewhere, and the guardian takedown just... isn’t fun atm, so i have nothing to do.

I’ve reset my playthru multiple times to play the main story at m10, but u can only play it (and the dlc) so many times

Mayhem levels and modifiers are a hot m e s s

a majority of the modifiers just aren’t fun to play with

they incorporated like 2-3 fun modifiers (from the community), then added a bunch that straight-up aren’t. I’m fine with the game being more difficult, but at least give us modifiers that make it more entertaining to play at a higher level instead of more annoying. I like the ones that have trade-offs or add new ‘enemies’, but I hate the ones that just straight up reduce your damage output.

a majority of the weapons with the mayhem 10 anointment (scaling) do not work on mayhem 10 (we’ll go more in-depth with this later)

Player Characters (Vault Hunters!!!) are also a hot mess and a lot of problems plaguing them haven’t been fixed SINCE LAUNCH

theyre literally the basis of the game and its balance. why havent you guys fixed them yet. stop adding new content until they’re fixed. no new skill trees until the base 3 trees work ON EVERY CHARACTER.

seriously. Why is amara p much limited to using Phasegrasp. Why does Iron Bear not matter to Moze except to proc anointments. MAKE ALL ACTION SKILLS EQUAL AND HAVE HEFT.

i wrote an essay here about it bc i feel that strongly about this

SERIOUSLY FIXING UR VAULT HUNTERS WILL MAKE BALANCING SO MUCH EASIER PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU THEY ARE THE BASE OF UR BALANCING WOES

ZANE IS STILL UNUSABLE WITHOUT THE SEEIN’ DEAD CLASS MOD!!!!!!!!!!!

MOZE IS SCREWED BC HER DAMAGE IS TOO RELIANT ON ASE ANOINTMENTS!!

AMARA DOESN’T HAVE A FUCKING MELEE BUILD AS THE ADVERTISED MELEE CHARACTER???

FL4K’S HEADCOUNT SKILL IS S T I L L BROKEN EVER SINCE THE RELEASE OF THE MALIWAN TAKEDOWN

ARE YOU GUYS LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY *PLEASEEEEEEE*

BUFF AND FIX THE GODDAMN VAULT HUNTERS

Anointments were a mistake. Damage end-game is wayyyy too reliant on them

anoints should have a maximum of, like, a 20% damage bonus. the damage necessary to kill enemies *should be coming from the VHs themselves*. i don’t care if you have to revamp every single Vault Hunter’s skill trees and buff them all by 9000%. THEY DESERVE IT AT THIS POINT

at the moment in m10 there really isn’t much build diversity *even between Vault Hunters*. We’re all using the same 5 guns (OPQ System. Kaoson. idk. fuckin brainstormer? is that still a thing? jesus fuck) with the same 3 anointments (100% on ASE, cryo while SNTL, and 300% while 90%).

you want to diversify builds like you said during the gameplay reveal???? you want our choice in Vault Hunter to actually fuckin matter???? FIX THEM!!!! THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEAL DAMAGE WITHOUT STUPID POWERFUL LEGENDARIES AND ANOINTMENTS!!!

Anoints also shouldn’t be common. At all. They should be, like, Pearl rarity. To let that happen, their damage needs to be tuned way the fuck down (again, 20ish % bonus MAX) and ALL ANOINTS NEED TO BE USEFUL IN SOME WAY

NOBODY IS GOING TO USE THE AIRBORNE OR SLIDING ANOINTMENTS JUST REMOVE THEM ALREADY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

obviously these changes can’t happen because they fucked up and buckled down with everything being anointed in m10, but still

imagine a world where the VHs actually did damage on their own without anointments and the damage buff from them was just an incentive to grind for the 100% perfect weapon and NOT A REQUIREMENT TO DEAL DAMAGE

>:(

A majority of gear is borderline worthless at M10

I’m fine with the difficulty of M10, i should let it be known. The enemy health isn’t really the problem IF ALL GUNS ACTED THE SAME AS THE OPQ SYSTEM

ffs.

you know, if you fixed ur vault hunters so they all did damage with just purple weapons (abt the same damage as legendaries w/o special effects) and removed the anointment requirement from late-game play, balancing your guns would be sooo much easier. you know. just saying.

right now only 10% (im being generous) of guns in the game are viable. 90% are worthless. We need AT LEAST 60-70% viable at M10. WHERE IS MY BUILD DIVERSITY. WHY ARE ALL LEGENDARIES NOW JUST “HEY THIS GUN IS STRONGER THAN THE LAST 4 WE RELEASED. HAVE FUN”

how to fix this problem? do as above: BUFF YOUR PLAYER CHARACTERS. MAKE ANOINTMENTS LESS STRONG.

then, at least the 10% already strong weapons would be stupid strong and OP as fuck, BUT AT LEAST WE COULD HAVE BUILD VARIETY!!! I don’t care if other people are dummy strong one-shotting everything in sight. I don’t! so long as they don’t play with me, I couldn’t care less!!! I want to be able to play with the unique, interesting legendaries. instead of the OPQ System. which, by the way, I dislike compared to the normal Q-System. let me use the frozen heart shield and the infiltrator mod. I don’t wanna be chained to the Seein’ Dead anymore :(

honestly at this point im starting to think removing slag was a mistake bc then at least we could use guns that aren’t solely damage-based guns. you know how fucked up you’ve got me that im thinking maybe slag wouldn’t be so bad this time around??? YOU GOT ME FUCKED UP B A D.

FIX THE GAME

IM TAKING A BREAK

MAYBE I’LL BE LESS UPSET WHEN I COME BACK FOR THE DLC BUT HOT. DIGGITY. SHIT.

[unforth]

A Non-Exhaustive and (In)Frequently Updated List of Resources I’ve Used while Writing MDZS/CQL/Untamed Fic

I did so much research for The Vermillion Ribbon that I decided to make a doc out of it. If I’m bored sometime (ha) I might go farther back through my google search history but for now this is MDZS specific and just what I used for TVR. I’ll try to update it periodically as I write other things, though, so it’ll get more complete.

In most cases, I go to Google and type in what I’m trying to find out. This might be a question - “were there barrels in ancient china” - or it might be an idiom - “origin ‘barrels of fun’” - or it might definition - “define pusillanimity”  or it might be that I’m trying to find out if a reference is appropriate - “china mosquitoes” was a search to make sure there were, in fact, mosquitoes in China. Each of these searches only take a few minutes at most but doing them can really enhance a narrative. 

Here are some other examples of searches I used to get utterly random pieces of information I needed - all of these produced the results I was looking for:

domesticated geese in china

traditional shanghai food

history of sandpaper

traditional peaked hat china

how to help someone who is having a flashback

parts of a day bed

wang yibo height

shades of green

is dumbfoundment a word

bland chinese food

flowers native to eastern china

how were ancient chinese homes heated

does chinese hair tangle

when do gentians bloom

popular alcohol in hebei

how does baijiu taste

history of use sinkers for fishing

does rain damage silk

what are the dots in go called in chinese

perception of snakes in china

do people kneel or sit cross legged at chinese tables

history of our understanding of cancer

common bushes near tianjin

necrotization vs gangrene

chinese formal letter opener

I’m including these so you see...basically if an issue comes up while you’re writing, and you’re not sure...just check. The information is out there. Looking at it gives the FBI agent spying on all your internet usage something interesting to read!

General Writing Resources:

Behind the Name and Behind the Surname (https://www.behindthename.com/, https://surnames.behindthename.com/) - definitely more a resource for Western names but if you care about name origin and meaning, extremely handy.

Encyclopedia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/) - I use it much less often than Wiki but it’s still helpful sometimes.

Google Image Search (https://www.google.com/imghp) - not sure what something looks like? GIS is your best friend. There’s no better way to make sure you write a compel a description than to actually look at the thing you’re trying to describe.

Google Maps (https://maps.google.com/) - if you’re writing about a real place, it’s always helpful to be able to look at it, especially on satellite or street view.

Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/) - should you rely on it? God, no. But if you just need something basic and you remember you might get garbage back, it can still be helpful.

Online Etymology Dictionary (https://www.etymonline.com/) - an excellent source for word origins, especially slang (like if you’re trying to figure out if a word or phrase is time period appropriate).

Onomatopoeias (http://onomatopoeialist.com/) - need just the right sound? Here you go.

Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview) - this is the only writing software I’ve ever used and while I honestly don’t use it for writing fanfiction (I just write in gdocs and wing it), I still support it and I use it to organize my research for original projects.

Thesaurus.com (https://www.thesaurus.com/) - my preferred thesaurus. I use a thesaurus constantly - both for synonyms and antonyms - while writing and find it infinitely more useful than, say, the lists of words I sometimes see circulating as rebloggable Tumblr posts. If you find a word you’re not sure of listed, always check the definition before using it.

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) - maybe I should be embarrassed by how often I rely on Wiki but fuck that, because Wiki is an invaluable source for random obscure information. On major topics it’s sometimes unreliable but on most historical matters aside from those that are most fraught (ie, the causes of the US Civil War) you can generally trust that the information is reliable, and if you need more information the included references can help a lot. 

Sources for Information on English Idioms (asterisk denotes ones I like best/use most):

The Free Dictionary: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/

*The Grammarist: https://grammarist.com/

Know Your Phrase: https://knowyourphrase.com/

Merriam-Webster “Words at Play” Blog: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play

*The Phrase Finder: https://www.phrases.org.uk/index.html

Word Histories: https://wordhistories.net/

MDZS/CQL-Specific Resources:

LIST OF OTHER REFERENCE SOURCES: https://wangxianfics.tumblr.com/post/617467597810778112/mdzs-resources-references

Characters Ages: 

Novel-specific: https://mihanada.tumblr.com/post/176537120295/are-there-any-actual-or-speculated-ages-for-the

Character Ages When Specific Events Happen: https://wang-xians.tumblr.com/post/190805604377/ages-of-wei-wuxian-and-peers-during-key-events

Character Birthdays: https://klashta-neali.tumblr.com/post/183922824954/tdp-and-mdzs-character-birthdays-masterlist-im

Character Heights: https://bigbadredpanda.tumblr.com/post/181326045966/mdzs-character-height-chart

Character List and Ship List (the only one of these resources I made…): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/3/d/1qtE4KXAcLfdEEBv-JHznf81Uoo8gZzrI_ID-kn9B6BU/edit?usp=sharing

Character Names and Titles: 

A list of names and titles: https://bonibaru.tumblr.com/post/187163138846/mdzs-character-names-and-titles

Some info on who calls others what, and why: https://bigbadredpanda.tumblr.com/post/182713668731/hello-can-you-pls-explain-it-to-me-why-mdzs

Some breakdown on relationships relating to what people call each other: https://bigbadredpanda.tumblr.com/post/182811566041/hi-theres-something-i-was-a-bit-curious-about

Event Timeline: 

https://somanyjacks-writes.tumblr.com/post/190555900555/mdzs-rough-timeline

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GsYRs4V5ZpfTTQ3fHaPOd-6f_cnFMB6upoH6A6Gwsw/edit#gid=0

Honorifics Guide: https://nomadicism.tumblr.com/post/185554769582/cleyra-i-made-a-mdzs-honorifics-guide-for-one-of?is_related_post=1

Lan Clan Rules: 

https://twitter.com/BigBadRedPanda/status/1170675728750469125?s=19

https://my-otp-list.tumblr.com/post/178014806440/so-i-heard-youve-been-wondering-what-are-the

Locations/Map: https://childe-wei.tumblr.com/post/190288325910/mercyandmagic-mdzs-locations-sects-are

Modao Zushi Fandom Wiki (https://modao-zushi.fandom.com/wiki/Grandmaster_of_Demonic_Cultivation_Wiki) - MDZS has one of the most exhaustive and well-done fandom wikis I’ve used to date.

Swords (these are images, with the name, of each weapon in Untamed): 

https://linglynz.tumblr.com/post/187228990951/the-untamed-weapons-part-13

https://thirteenyearsofslumber.tumblr.com/post/187243506239/linglynz-the-untamed-weapons-part-2

https://linglynz.tumblr.com/post/187245850321/the-untamed-weapons-part-33

What Each Character Calls Each Other Character: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NEL1WU6NU3rzuLgTjJYDDGNu2XW0DZLQYlJGJhcz9IU/edit?usp=drivesdk

What the Heck does Er-Gege Actually Mean: https://boat-full-of-lotus-pods.tumblr.com/post/182490910183/this-is-a-really-stupid-question-but-what-is-the

General History:

The Tiffany Problem: https://medium.com/swlh/the-tiffany-problem-when-history-makes-no-sense-703b86522627

Chinese Culture, History and Language:

Alcoholic Drinks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_drinks_in_China

Architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_architecture

Breakfast Foods: https://www.thespruceeats.com/traditional-chinese-breakfast-694158

Common Cooking Ingredients: 

Pantry Essentials: https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-pantry-essential-ingredients/

Spices: https://spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/12-common-chinese-spices

Confucius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius

Creation Myths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_creation_myths

Clothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Chinese_clothing

Desserts: https://www.echinacities.com/expat-life/6-Traditional-Chinese-Desserts-You-Have-to-Try

Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms: http://mahajana.net/texts/soothill-hodous.html

Diyu (Hell): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyu

Etiquette Guides: 

http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat4/sub19/item114.html

https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/guidebook/etiquette.htm

The Five Punishments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Punishments

The Five Virtues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Virtues

The Five Virtues: http://www.goolevalve.com/news/news-detail-195.html

Furniture: https://www.chinese-furniture.com/c_furniture/history.html

Go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

History of Chinese Gardens: https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/architecture/features-garden.htm

How Names Work: 

https://avenuex.ca/blog/2019/8/24/how-ancient-chinese-names-work-learn-from-the-untamed

https://twitter.com/chiharuzushi/status/1125436481638629382

Jade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_jade

Literary Conventions: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20426162/chapters/48456785

Music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_China

Musical Instruments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_musical_instruments

Musical Instruments: https://www.cchatty.com/Traditional-Chinese-Musical-Instruments-g-100163

Mythology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mythology

Numbers: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chinese_(Mandarin)/Numbers

Pet Names:

6 Terms of Endearment: http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/chinese-terms-of-endearment

200+ Chinese Nicknames for Guys and Girls (With Meanings): https://www.findnicknames.com/chinese-nicknames/

Random Chinese Name Generator: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/chinese_names.php

Symbolism in Chinese Embroidery: 

https://augustphoenixhats.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Stitchery4-Chinese-Symbolism.pdf

https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/discover/stories/blog/2015/the-language-of-chinese-embroidery

https://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/arts/embroidery.htm

Symbolism in Chinese Porcelain: https://china360online.org/?property=228-park-ave-s

Swear Words: https://ltl-school.com/chinese-swear-words/

Taoist Alchemy: https://www.goldenelixir.com/files/The_Way_of_the_Golden_Elixir.pdf

Time (and how to tell time): https://www.reddit.com/r/noveltranslations/comments/4az3tg/ancient_chinese_measurements_of_time/

Titles for Family Members: https://www.italki.com/article/183/complete-list-of-titles-for-family-members-in-chinese

Titles and Honorifics: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_titles

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/page/wuxia-xianxia-terms-of-address

Underwear: 

https://www.thoughtco.com/chinese-clothing-dudou-687371

http://chinesehanclothing.blogspot.com/2016/01/underwear.html

https://wedriveeast.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/history-of-chinese-undergarments-part-1/

Units of Measurement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement (includes multiple historical systems, sorted by era and with their metric equivalent)

Weapons:

Siege Weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_siege_weapons

Weddings:

Basics: https://pearlriver.com/blogs/blog/your-guide-to-chinese-weddings

Overview: https://www.topchinatravel.com/china-guide/chinese-wedding-customs.htm

Overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_marriage

Order of Events: https://www.char4u.com/content/chinese-wedding-day-order-events/

Tea Ceremony: https://www.teasenz.com/chinese-tea/chinese-wedding-tea-ceremony.html

Wuxia World: https://www.wuxiaworld.com/

Wuxia World: “Cores” in Chinese Cultivation Novels: https://www.wuxiaworld.com/page/cores-in-chinese-cultivation-novels

Wuxia World: What is Dao? https://www.wuxiaworld.com/page/what-dao-heck

Wuxia World Glossary: https://www.wuxiaworld.com/page/general-glossary-of-terms

Sex Stuff:

The History of Lube: https://getmaude.com/blogs/themaudern/the-history-of-lube

It’s Literally a Picture of a Dick: https://slideplayer.com/slide/3858701/13/images/15/Reproductive+System+Visual+1%3A+External+male+views.jpg

Prevalence of Circumcision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision

Sex with Uncircumcised Assigned Male at Birth People: https://www.asstr.org/~Kristen/learning/uncut.htm

What Does Semen Taste Like: https://www.healthline.com/health/mens-health/what-does-sperm-taste-like

Pain and Trauma:

Helping Someone with PTSD: https://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/helping-someone-with-ptsd.htm

List of Methods of Torture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methods_of_torture

[timetogoslumming]

I want to write a summer camp au but I don't know where to start or how to make the camp part good. Any advice?

ooh, yes. okay! i have many, many tips. im going to be talking specifically about aus where the characters are camp staff but most of these tips could also go for ones where the characters are campers.

im putting this under the cut because i got carried away and it got a bit long. 

anyway, if you do end up writing your summer camp au, send it to me! id love to read it. (that also goes for anyone who might be reading this.)

1. draw from life

if you worked at a summer camp, youve got a leg up. you can really take what its like to be a counselor from that. if you were just a camper, you can write about the sort of spirit of camp, but you may not know about behind the scenes stuff. there’s a lot of background to being a camp staffer, including lots of training and paperwork. if you dont have a specific camp in mind that youre inspired by, find one and research it. look up videos on youtube about what its like to work at a summer camp but realize that everyone’s experience is different. also, take a look at the american camp association guidelines. that will tell you the different rules that your camp and your counselors had to follow. there may be things, like camper to staff ratios or safety guidelines, that you werent aware of.

2. that said, dont draw Too Much from life. 

if you just want to write about your own camp experience, write a memoir. camp mountain ridge, for instance, was based on my camp, but i made lots of alterations for story purposes. one of the first things i did was remove camp traditions and camp songs. all summer camps have their own traditions, and theyre great, but no one cares about a tradition at some random camp they didnt go to. same with camp songs: some are universal, but there are generally a billion different versions of every camp song. (one year, a new staff member who used to work at a different camp tried to sing The Moose Song and her lyrics werent the same as the ones we used and it was really weird.) in my opinion, the best camp aus are the most universal and generic ones where your readers can focus on the story, rather than getting bogged down in comparing how your camp is different from theirs. 

3. before you even start writing, map out your camp. 

make a literal map. give everyone a job description. if youre not sure what jobs there are, look up job listings for different camps. keep in mind, sometimes staffing is weird so you might have certain positions without anyone covering them and certain people fulfilling multiple job descriptions. figure out cabin assignments. at my camp, we switched cabins and staff groups every week. for mountain ridge, i put the same group of counselors in the same cabins every week. it made the story easier to tell and helped focus the narrative.

pro tips: CITs (counselors in training) are there to help, but they are not staff. 

some staff positions have age or training requirements. keep that in mind. an 18 year old is not likely to be head counselor.

4. tell the story but remember the setting.

youre going to want to tell a fun story. it might be a love story. i dont know. but your characters are at the camp to work. if they skip work, they might be bad at their job, and that will have consequences. if theyre good at their job, they might have limited time to have their summer camp romance. that doesn’t necessarily have to be a roadblock to telling your story. let it enhance things. 

5. create more plots than just the love story.

this actually goes for all fics. just like your personal love life, if you have one, is not the only thing going on in your life, its not the only thing for your characters. let them interact with people who arent their love interest or other main characters. show them interacting with campers. show them dealing with parents. show them hiking up a mountain, even though they hate hiking. we always complain about characters like sarah jacobs being shoehorned in just to be a love interest. dont do that to your own story.

6. have fun

if you’re bored writing a scene, then your readers will probably be bored. either fix it or skip it. if you feel like things are getting a bit heavy, throw in a comic relief scene. have someone flip a canoe and get into a bunch of mud. have the campers pull a prank on the counselor. have raccoons sneak into your art hut. 

a few nearly universal camp truths:

never let your counselor characters be alone with a camper

never ever ever let your counselor characters date your camper characters, no matter how old any of them are. i dont care if junior counselor jack is the same age as camper davey. dont do it.

the number one job of a camp counselor is safety. they ensure safety first and everything else comes after.

rules are broken all the time. you and your counselor characters need to know which ones to break and which ones need to stay in place. in mountain ridge, spot and race sneaking off to go swimming wasnt going to hurt anything. blink and mush smoking weed on camp property could have become a real problem, so they had to stop. 

most camps require first aid and cpr training for all staff, but ALL lifeguards have specialized training. lifeguard training is like first aid and cpr on steroids. your lifeguards know more than your counselors. you can use that in your story.

even if a camp has a program like junior counselors, if theyre under 18, they will not have full responsibilities. a 17 year old junior counselor =/= a 19 year old counselor. most camps have an age limit of 18.

most camp counselors are in college.

summer recreational staff is not legally required to be paid minimum wage. that includes lifeguards, amusement park staff, pool staff, camp staff, etc. these people are not making much money. again, you can use that.

i mentioned the american camp association before. not all camps are accredited by the ACA, which means that they arent held to high safety standards. imma be honest with yall. if i had a kid, i would never send them to a camp that wasnt ACA accredited. there are periodic inspections where the ACA comes out and checks to make sure that all of their requirements are being fulfilled. 

[zombiequincy]

THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all had witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

MUN NAME: Hela     AGE: 21       CONTACT: IM

CHARACTER(S): Giselle Gewelle, Yumichika Ayasegawa (inactive)

CURRENT FANDOM(S): Bleach

BLEACH FANDOM(S) YOU HAVE AN AU FOR:  I have gory Bloodborne au but that one just exists in my head on my lonesome.

MY LANGUAGE(S): English and one very specific Middle Eastern dialect.

THEMES I’M INTERESTED IN FOR RP: FANTASY / Science fiction / Horror / WESTERN / ROMANCE / Thriller / MYSTERY / DYSTOPIA / ADVENTURE / MODERN / Erotic / Crime / MYTHOLOGY / Classic / HISTORY / RENAISSANCE / MEDIEVAL / Ancient / WAR / FAMILY / POLITICS / RELIGION / SCHOOL / ADULTHOOD / CHILDHOOD / APOCALYPTIC / GODS / Sport / MUSIC / Science / FIGHTS / ANGST / Smut / DRAMA / etc. 

PREFERRED THREAD LENGTH: one-liner / 1 para / 2 PARA / 3+ / NOVELLA.

ASKS CAN BE SEND BY: MUTUALS / NON-MUTUALS / PERSONALS / ANONS.

CAN ASKS BE CONTINUED?:   YES / NO    only by Mutuals?:  YES / NO.

PREFERRED THREAD TYPE: CRACK / casual nothing too deep / SERIOUS / DEEP AS HECK. (i love it all sorry I am quite the mixed bag lmao)

IS REALISM / RESEARCH IMPORTANT FOR YOU IN CERTAIN THEMES?:   YES / NO. i gotta know what certain human body parts taste like u know

ARE YOU ATM OPEN FOR NEW PLOTS?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.

DO YOU HANDLE YOUR DRAFT / ASK - COUNT WELL?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. it’s SO BAD FOR ME RN ASGLDKJDJKA i’m very inconsistent i’m so sorry.

HOW LONG DO YOU USUALLY TAKE TO REPLY?: 24H / 1 WEEK / 2 WEEKS / 3+ / months / years. / a lot of it has more to do w my general writing mood and if the thread im writing catches my interest, and rn im writing a TON of really wonderful and fascinating threads so they’re all super captivating for me and i try to reply asap

I’M OKAY WITH INTERACTING: ORIGINAL CHARACTERS / a relative of my character (an oc) / duplicates / MY FANDOM / CROSSOVERS / MULTI-MUSES / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / CANON-DIVERGENT PORTRAYALS / AU-VERSIONS.

DO YOU POST MORE IC OR OOC?: IC / OOC. (i have a lot of stupid shit sorry) 

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WITH FOLLOWING OTHERS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.  

BEST WAYS TO APPROACH YOU FOR RP/PLOTTING: just send me a tumblr instant message, i know it sucks shit but im not comfy releasing my discord w everyone just yet cause i use it for personal use as well. i check tumblr on the daily so if you send me a message chances are i’ll see it and respond!

WHAT EXPECTATIONS DO YOU HOLD TOWARDS YOUR PLOTTING PARTNER:  i guess just be able to put up with my rambling and stopping and starting, a lot of characterisation choices i do go through various stages and its pretty messy so when i communicate that with others it usually ends up equally messy. just be patient with me please.

WHEN YOU NOTICE THE PLOTTING IS RATHER ONE-SIDED, WHAT DO YOU DO?:  i don’t mind! sometimes ppl have more ideas that they want to share first and i’m always super happy to listen to those ideas !! sometimes its nice to have someone with a clear guide or structure and be able to work around that rather than trying to fumble through a plot together.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY PLOT WITH OTHERS, DO YOU GIVE INPUT OR LEAVE MOST WORK TOWARDS YOUR PARTNER?:  i try to map out some basic info abt their characters that i otherwise don’t know from their bio or verses and try to pick out points of confrontation or similarities to expand on with giselle that can be used as points for like a starter to happen. its either that or sometimes i have really stupid ideas i just toss out there like ‘LMAO THEYRE BREAKING SHIT AT DISNEYLAND’ and go buck wild from there if the other person is down. i also always try to warn people or get a gauge for what subjects to avoid and steer clear of considering that giselle is a bit of a Freak(tm) and will say and do bad things.

WHEN A PARTNER DROPS THE THREAD, DO YOU WISH TO KNOW?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: if there’s something giselle did or said that upset you, i would love to know not to repeat it again (since i do still feel pretty new to the rp game, theres still plenty of time for me to make stupid mistakes). if its just a general lack of interest or uncertainty of where the plot should go, then you dont have to tell me i wont take it personally i promise ! 

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY LEAD YOU TO DROP A THREAD?: sometimes i can be made uncomfortable by certain things mentioned... it happens but its rare 

- WILL YOU TELL YOUR PARTNER?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. i don’t want to upset anyone personally and sometimes explaining the ins and outs of my discomfort make things ten times worse so i just. would rather not.

IS COMMUNICATION IN THE RPC IMPORTANT TO YOU? YES / NO.

- AND WHY?: i am the most nervous person you can meet and my brain is always giving me misinfo abt paranoia and random shit so i having clear concrete communication between two parties abt if something is going wrong or is being received poorly means the world to me.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH ABSOLUTE HONESTY, EVEN IF IT MAY MEANS HEARING SOMETHING NEGA1TIVE ABOUT YOU AND/OR PORTRAYAL?: i need it !! i still feel relatively new to all this and i need to know whats going wrong to improve !! 

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE SUCH SITUATION IN A MATURE WAY? YES / NO.

WHY DO YOU RP AGAIN, IS THERE A GOAL?: to help with my confidence in writing! i have v bad anxiety when it comes to sharing my works and i write a lot of other pieces alongside this blog on ao3 and i want to develop my writing skills just in general. when it comes to like the nuts and bolts of why i rp giselle specifically, its mainly to just have fun and have a laugh w my friends who are really awesome quincy writers

WISHLIST, BE IT PLOTS OR SCENARIOS:  OH SO MANY! ive managed to fulfil a lot of my wishlist threads with like, giselle talking to characters she’s already zombified and i love all that angst but i want to do more stupid shit. i want to make it my personal goal to bully every quincy man and woman on sight. although a REAL dream would be if i got to write a thread zombifying a character who managed to escape giselle’s clutches. and more fighting! i want to get better at describing action and fights and i love to write giselle getting beat up and beating people up! more more more!! 

THEMES I WON’T EVER RP / EXPLORE:   hohoho theres a LOT... uh r*pe/dubcon threads for one, even if yeah i know writing it doesnt condone it, it makes me intensely uncomfortable to put my muse in that scenario, i feel like i have an obligation to like, protect her from that shit you know? racism is one i don’t want to transgress, even though i’m a poc, its not really cathartic or groundbreaking to write abt racism in threads its just... really fucking upsetting. also i know the quincy’s have this very close parallel to the whole n*zi imagery and ideology thing going on and i am not about to start even daring to thread that into my writing or bring those allusions and references of real life tragedies into giselle’s threads. i’ve already talked at length abt exploring giselles trans identity in rp and why im not comfortable doing so, so.... yeah! all those i guess.

WHAT TYPE OF STARTERS DO YOU PREFER / DISLIKE, CAN’T WORK WITH?: i like starters where giselle can just immediately get right into being a piece of shit. mise en scene and all that! cut out the build up and just get to the intense horror !! i don’t like starters where its not immediately clear where the characters are standing and what they’re doing and what’s happening around them. those really disorientate me and leave me kinda floundering because i always need some allusion or mention of a setting to ground giselle in a time and place other wise i cant tell what her response should be

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE MOST?:  EVIL WOMEN EVIL WOMEN EVIL WOMEN. also just characters i can wholeheartedly clown on, or also characters who have hidden depths to them and have a single panel of screentime. honestly it’s just all over the place!

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE LEAST?:  angry old men GSADJDKSJA i could never rp yhwach for example or yamamoto because idk. theyre just so crummy and boring to me. i also couldnt rp characters who always have an upper hand in battle like aizen. i like my dumbasses and i like them stupid and adaptive not just, ‘yes i know this because i Know this.’

WHAT ARE YOUR STRONG ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: i think im nice...? FKSJDKDJSA idk i hate trying to toot my own horn. sometimes i also think i make funny jokes and im pretty chill and laid back

WHAT ARE YOUR WEAK ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: my writing style is inconsistent and adapts to whatever i’m reading so sometimes it’ll be really good and i love it and other times it reads like really bad fanfic and i get carried away far too easily and write novella lengths for threads which should be much shorter. i also get shy a lot and dont think i communicate very effectively but HEYO we’re working on it!

DO YOU RP SMUT?:  YES / NO/ DEPENDS. haven’t had anybody brave enough to try yet lol

DO YOU PREFER TO GO INTO DETAIL?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH BLACK CURTAIN?: YES / NO.

- WHEN DO YOU RP SMUT? MORE OUT OF FUN OR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?: more for fun i’d imagine because that’s just giselles own attitude to sex and relationships where she doesnt want anything deep. it might show character development in one way of just showing how she regards others in a romantic sense to be used rather than actually appreciated as their own person and show how selfish she is but yeah, more out of fun

- ANYTHING YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO RP THERE?:  theres a few kinks and such but i dont think they’d ever really come up. again, just mainly no r*pe/dubcon.

ARE SHIPS IMPORTANT TO YOU?:   YES / NO lets hope this doesn’t make me sound like an asshole, but its more like a fun little side thing than anything important to giselle’s actual development and characterisation. 

WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BLOG IS SHIP-FOCUSED?: YES / NO. again, hardly anyone is brave enough to try to romance this evil cannibal.

DO YOU USE READ MORE?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES WHEN I WRITE LONG STUFF.

ARE YOU:  MULTI-SHIP / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship  —  MULTIVERSE / Singleverse.

- WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO EXPLORE THE MOST IN YOUR SHIPS?: more how giselle likes to give over her power or dominate in different circumstances depending on who she’s with and what’s being done. BUT AGAIN, not a whole lot to explore yet.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS?: YES / NO. - i mean im down for p much anything if it vibes w giselle.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOUR MUSE INTERESTING TOWARDS OTHERS, WHY SHOULD THEY RP WITH THIS PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF YOURS NOW, WHAT POSSIBLE PLOTS DO THEY OFFER?: if you want an evil woman to taunt and mock and hurt your muse, she’s your gal. you want her to zombify and ruin your muse, shes also your gal. you want her to insult and maim and injure, she’s also YOUR GAL. basically, if you want to do anything fucked up or sad or scary, she can help with that.

- WITH WHAT TYPE OF MUSES DO YOU USUALLY STRUGGLE TO RP WITH?:  uh muses who get really angry quickly or don’t rise or respond to her jabs and are just kinda like a flatline. theres only so much pestering and annoying she can do until realises its not working and just wanders off

- WHAT DO THEY DESIRE, IS THEIR GOAL?:  to find a goal worth living for.

- WHAT CATCHES THEIR INTEREST FIRST WHEN MEETING SOMEONE NEW?:  appearance she always takes an interest in girls almost right away. age as well because she judges old people. 

- WHAT DO THEY VALUE IN A PERSON?:  a good set of guts to ruin and strong muscles.

- WHAT THEMES DO THEY LIKE TALKING ABOUT?:  women, gore, murder, herself, music, stupid memes, gossip.

- WHICH THEMES BORE THEM?:  politics, history, quincy ideology, soul reaper ideology, hollow physiology.

- DID THEY EVER WENT THROUGH SOMETHING TRAUMATIC?:  her family tried to force the burden of upholding the quincy lineage onto her shoulders, she was thrown into the wrong prison and held in isolation, then pressured to become an undying monster in service of a god and then was nearly killed by that same man and left wandering without guidance or purpose. so, yeah?

- WHAT COULD LEAD TO AN INSTANT KILL?:  transphobia. even a whiff of it in her direction and she’ll gut you like a fish.

- IS THERE SOMEONE /-THING THEY HATE?:  the twink soul reaper who outted her.

IS YOUR MUSE EASY TO APPROACH?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?:  if you’re smart, you’ll bring a big bone for her to chew on and distract her while you ask whatever you want.

SOMETHING YOU MAY STILL WANT TO POINT OUT ABOUT YOUR MUSE?: i love my evil queen!

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by:  @bazzardburner​ cheers chicken boy !!

Tagging: @hyouketsu​ @blooming5th​ @viciousvizard​ @glacies-tempestatem​ and whoever else wishes to do this!!

[neverheardnothing]

Winston Programming Headcanons

hi I’m here to dump WAY too many headcanons for how Winston works. please talk to me about them. i beg of u guys,,,,

he's one of those people on stack overflow who marks your question as duplicate, closes it, and links you to another post that doesn't answer your question. and it's instantaneous because he has a Fuckload of points on that hellhole site.

he likes Matlab :/

but he also definitely is in the arrays begin at 0 camp like any sane person is

he's on the spaces side for tabs vs spaces, but he'll use soft tabs (tabs that turn into spaces)

brackets on the same line kinda guy (he’s wrong but that’s who he is)

he uses all the languages he mentioned in the math meetup scene but his favorite language is python because of its hella Dope math library (shoutout to math.py, i never fuckin use it)

second favorite is C. he loves the power of direct memory manipulation for getting into the Nitty Gritty. and he's not afraid to bust out assembly.

but because he switches between those two a lot, semicolons (or the lack thereof) fucks him over frequently

he uses vim. like he really uses vim. he's got one of those colored keyboards with the popular shortcuts and commands on it. his vimrc file is something he custom wrote and he’s Very Proud of it. he’s got the whole custom highlighting thing going on.

this man cannot survive without his Multitude of bash scripts. 

watching him try to work on someone else’s computer is like watching a baby try to walk. his setup is so specific to him and what he needs to work that anything else just Doesn’t Work for him. he’ll try to do one of the shortcuts he’s set up that he’s so used to and nothing happens and he’s just :o

at least one of his six monitors is always just playing random youtube/netflix stuff in the background as he works, but as soon as he really really needs to focus he turns it off so he can figure stuff out. 

frantic whiteboard pseudocoding as he tries to map out what he sees in his head for other people to understand or before he loses it. his handwriting is messy and barely legible. there are 5 expo markers laying around on his desk, all of which are shitty and out of ink, but he forgets to get new ones. he loves those white board desks and he’s shoved everything off a desk before so he can write on it. 

writes down bits of code on whatever he can when he figures out how to do something that he’s been stuck on

if he’s having a particularly hard time on something at the moment, he tries to take a break but it still Consumes his thoughts. he angrily paces around the Quant Dungeon a lot, trying to calm down but Failing.

spends Hours Not Reading The Documentation and then getting angry when he finally resigns looks at it and it solves all his problems

he likes watching those videos on youtube that visualize all the different sorting algos (i really,,,, really,,,,, like doing this) ((idk maybe he does this as a visual stim maybe))

favorite data struct is leftist heaps. he likes the organized balance.

favorite sorting algo is merge sort because he likes seeing all the elements being broken down and then coming back together, in an organized order.

he uses Arch, btw. (im sorry please don’t kill me for this im very sorry)

he judges you based on what Linux distro you prefer, all while knowing people judge him the Most for using Arch.

he goes to meetup.com programming meetups and tries and fails to make friends

he’s in the ACM special interest group for econ and computation

if god forbid he has to pair program, he’s the most MISERABLE motherfucker to work with. if he’s the one driving, he won’t listen to any suggestions and if he’s the one watching, then he’s backseat programming the entire time. 

he's not into hacktivism personally but he likes reading about it and knowing the Lore as well as reading about cybersecurity/penetration testing

he definitely submits memes to r/programmerhumor and then also complains that the subreddit is too general

he likes what he does but he doesn't usually program off the clock. but sometimes he'll get an idea for a personal project!!

his has exactly one personal project at a time. it either gets finished or it doesn’t before he moves onto the next one.

his personal GitHub is silent for months and then suddenly for a week straight it's dark green before fading into silence again

doesn’t like working from home. he really needs the separation between his work space and his living space.

very cryptic and unhelpful commit messages. when trying to roll back he hates himself because he has no IDEA what him in the past meant by “node updated,” because WHAT IN THE NODE WAS UPDATED??? he didn’t write it down and now it’s been two months since he’s looked at this code and he has no fucking clue.

names his variables funky things, also causing trouble for himself down the line. 

sometimes leaves a dangling else statement when he writes an if, as if daring the if statement not to execute

leaves funny comments for himself in his code and other non helpful comments for whoever has to work on his code/maintain it after him. literally all sorts of remarks except for describing what his code actually does. job security! until he forgets how the fuck he did something, which is honestly only like two months later.

has definitely done the “//don’t touch, this works by magic” comment and the “//don’t refactor and come crying to me when it breaks” comment

this is probably his second real job out of college. he reads early-mid 20s to me, and so he’s definitely doing that comp sci thing where you hop around companies every few years to get a massive pay raise. 

i think he only has his bachelor’s degree, but he definitely went to cornell. double major in comp sci and math. or comp sci and econ. definitely possible he has his masters though. i think if so he went to upenn for it and focused on the econ side there.

his internship during college is at a place that works with the math behind computer graphics. he loves matrices. he’s working for the fun of it before he gets down to business after he graduates.

his first job out of college is as a data analyst. 

likes writing code to make fancy/fun graphics for his statistics/results in presentations to his bosses. if he has the time. which he usually doesn’t.

"blockchain is just a fancy linked list" he says, as he makes a killing investing in cryptocurrency so he graduates with minimal debt.

he has a "the cloud is just someone else's computer" graphic t shirt

he's very into getting the most optimal run time for in his code, which is part of what makes his algo for tmc so Good. everything needs to run as As Fast As Possible in that algo. Time Complexity Is His Jam. idk what to tell u. the dude loves math.

but also he just wrote a quad nested for loop and this is the comment above it: //This is O(scary), but seems quick enough in practice

space complexity? not so much. he doesn’t care about how much space his algos take up. 

he hates maintaining code. he’s itching to create new things and he views programming as a sort of art and creative expression sometimes (im right on this. programming is creative and ill fight to the death).

[thetourguidebarbie]

For @itsnotacrimetoloveyou’s birthday/her starting med school/bribery reasons, etc! Hope you enjoy! Warnings: Smut, possessive!Klaus, mentions of bdsm but no actual bdsm, anal sex, soulmate-adjascent.

Klaus groaned softly as the girl’s blood hit his tongue, his hands easily holding her hips in place on his lap as she struggled for friction against him. Her heartbeat was slowing, her breathing ragged, and he pulled back once she began to go limp, just shy of passing out. She was rather pretty, her eyes dark brown and heavy-lidded, cheeks flushed with arousal and fear. He knew he should probably feel temptation, but whenever he thought of physical satisfaction all he could see was Caroline’s bright blue eyes and teasing grin.

She’d flitted in and out of his life for the last half-century, but never seemed to leave his fantasies. Generally she hung around a few months, less often for more than a year, but their accidental run-ins had been getting less accidental on both their parts for the better part of a decade.

She was close to staying now. He could feel it.

Currently Josh was tailing Caroline and her magically-immortal-witch friend on their third trip through the Andes (he’d been subjected to several group selfies that his hybrid and the Bennett girl were unceremoniously cropped out of before they were saved on his phone), and though he itched to meet her when she was done, his instincts were telling him to wait for some reason, and trusting his gut hardly ever failed him.

Trying to put her out of his mind for now—if only so that he could get some work done—he called for a hybrid to come give his afternoon snack some water and blood and watch her until it left her system to ensure she didn’t turn. He had business to attend to and Josephine got rather testy if he was late. It was best to stay on the powerful witch’s good side if he needed more favors.

The hybrid who came to collect the girl seemed troubled, and he spoke as soon as he entered.

“We picked up a vampire loitering at the edge of the property. She’s in the dungeon.”

Klaus hummed disinterestedly. It was a common occurrence, vampires turning up to either kill him or wriggle their way into his good graces. Neither succeeded of course, but it was occasionally amusing to watch them try. “And?”

“Judging by how weak she was when we brought her in she was probably only turned a few decades ago. She said you’d know her. That you’d want to see her.”

That made Klaus pause, frowning. Very few vampires he knew of fit that description. Though the youngest doppelganger was most likely stupid enough to think he’d be interested in anything she had to say (or anything about her at all), he had no doubt that both Salvatore brothers were invested on ensuring that they remained on separate continents.

His curiosity was piqued, and he pushed his still-swaying snack into the hybrid’s arms. “What did she look like? Do you have her name?”

“Blonde. Tall-ish? She said her name was Carrie. Carly, mayb—“

“Caroline,” Klaus interrupted, already pushing past the hybrid. “Call Josephine and tell her the meeting is cancelled.”

It didn’t take him long to reach the cell, and he winced when he saw Caroline glaring at him from her chains, which bound her wrists together and above her, her toes brushing the floor as she swayed.

“Did you seriously give them orders to cuff me on sight? You should tell your minions it’s rude to tie guests up.”

“I’ll have words with them,” Klaus said, taking a few steps towards her, his eyes dragging up and down her body, looking for injuries. “Though I must point out that you didn’t object to it last time.”

“Yeah, well, last time I wasn’t being dragged from the front gate to a dungeon by random minions. I was on a bed.”

He grinned, stopping to stand so that they were chest to chest, his hands reaching to cup her ass, squeezing lightly and grinning when her breath caught. “And you were a bit distracted by other things as I recall.”

She huffed, her cheeks pinking as she squirmed against his hand almost instinctively, perhaps not realizing she was doing it. “I mean, I’m okay with you doing the tying. Speaking of, how about you untie me. Well, uncuff me.”

“Mmm, I think I like you where you are,” he said, nosing her jaw and grinning when he heard her soft whimper as his blunt teeth dragged down her jaw before he nipped her ear. “Though if you insist I’m happy to oblige, of course.”

She swallowed, shifting slightly so that he caught the scent of the wetness gathering between her thighs, and just as he took his hands away and reached to pull the manacles out of the wall she spoke, the words breathless. “What did you have in mind?”

He smirked, his hands stilling against the chains as he held her gaze. “I've had a great deal of time to come up with an extensive list of all the things I want to do to you, Caroline. However shall I decide?”

“Klaus,” she whined, shifting as he popped the button off of her jeans and slipping his hand beneath the fabric, pressing his finger against her clit through the thin cotton covering her center.

“Best test them all, I think,” he murmured, watching her face for any sign of discomfort, needing to be sure that she wanted what he was offering. She was wet already, and he groaned as he slid his fingers under the fabric and against her folds. “Fuck, sweetheart.”

“I want,” she breathed, trailing off as she rolled her hips against his hand, and he immediately pulled his hand away, hungry for her to admit how much she craved his touch.

“What do you want, Caroline? Tell me.”

He’d spent countless hours exploring her body, mapping her skin to find the places that made her take shallow gasps of air and fall bonelessly into his arms. They’d experimented after the first few times, Caroline bright red as she asked him to talk to her, to tell her everything he fantasized about. Being tied up and teased to the edge was one of her favorites, watching him stroke himself a close second, and he never shied away from giving her what she wanted. He loved having her entirely at his mercy, the absolute trust she gave him heady and precious. He made her beg for his hands, for his mouth or cock, and the way the words passed her lips was immensely satisfying. Even when he was rough, when he broke skin with his fangs or nails or she let him tie her on her knees and fuck her hard and fast from behind, she wanted it, asked for it. There was nothing more satisfying for his wolf than seeing her in sheets covered in his scent, head bowed between her elbows with her wrists tied and her legs spread, all for him to take.

“I want you,” she said, staring at him with big blue eyes.

“And how do you want me, love?”

“I thought you wanted to be in charge.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“I want you to claim me,” she whispered, her breath shallow, and he stilled.

They’d only talked about it once, the process of a werewolf claiming its mate. It was permanent and intimate, a mark of him invisibly inked by magic that she’d carry for the rest of her eternal life. It meant she was his.

He wanted to so badly, just the words coming out of her mouth making his cock throb as he imagined how her back would feel against his chest as he filled her, the break of her skin against his teeth as he marked her as his. He wanted his scent to cling to her skin, for his name to be the only one to fall from her lips.

“Caroline,” he said slowly, his voice rough. “That’s not a....a claiming isn’t something to take lightly.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a decade, Klaus. I think I know that I want it.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, trying to resist the urge to yank the chain from the wall, his breathing shallow, his cock aching at the image of her on her knees with her cheek against the stone, her clothes shredded, hands behind her back to part the cheeks of her arse for him.

She nodded, moving her head slightly so that she could catch his lips in a drugging kiss, her tongue lightly stroking his lower lip as she sighed in contentment before pulling back to rest her forehead against his. “I love you.”

He felt like his throat was clogged, his breath stalled in his lungs. He hadn’t expected that, for her to admit her feelings for him so easily, and it was slightly overwhelming to hear it when he wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘Love’ had never seemed like quite the right word for how he felt about Caroline, after all. It had always been passion and obsession, protectiveness and need. It was something so much more than such a small word could describe. She was everything and she was his.

It was close enough for now, though, especially when he saw the way her eyes lit up when he repeated it back to her, the brightness of her smile almost blinding.

“But Caroline,” he continued, needing to press, to be absolutely certain. “You do know that if you do this...if you agr—“

“I just told you I’m yours,” she interrupted, slightly breathless, eyes dark. “Klaus, there is literally not a single other person in the world who I’d trust enough for this. I wanted some time to really think it through and decide, and I did. I want to be with you. I want to be yours the way that you’ve always been mine.”

“Caroline—“

“Please,” she breathed, and he swore, his forehead falling against hers.

She squirmed against his fingers as he stroked her hip before moving to cup her ass, her back arching as his other hand gently tugged at her nipple, and he pulled back, watching hungrily as her eyes grew hazy, her lips parting with a soft moan.

“Bed, then,” he murmured, reaching for the manacles and yanking them from the stone with a cunch before snapping the steel that held them closed. “I want to see your nails rip our sheets.”

She seemed pleased at his use of ‘our’, shaking out her hands when the manacles fell with a crash to the floor. “I’m okay with that.”

“Perhaps you’ll let me shackle you again later, to rub your clit until you’re lingering on the edge while I trace the mark I’ve left on your skin with my tongue.”

“Perhaps,” she drawled, making him grin. She’d picked up some of his habits and word choices over their intermittent meetings (and admittedly he a few of hers, most notably the eye-rolling, though he thankfully had never started inserting unnecessary ‘likes’ between clauses), but her penchant for making fun of his ‘old person britishness’ nonetheless remained, including his choice of ‘boring’ teas and use of words like ‘perhaps’ and ‘perchance’.

He looked forward to seeing what else they’d share, what other little habits she’d show him.

He pulled her close to speed his private wing of the compound, not bothering to be subtle when he buried his nose in her hair, savoring the feel of her pressed against him.

She pulled back, pressing her lips against his, swiping the roof of his mouth with the heat of her tongue, hands curled around his biceps. He let her take what she wanted for now, to taste him and explore his skin with her hands the way she had a hundred times before.

When she finally pulled back with dark eyes and puffy lips he was achingly hard. Her breathing was slightly laboured, the scent of her want rolling off of her only tempting him to feel her wet and tight around his cock.

Perhaps later, when they were tangled in their sheets and she was pliant and sated in his arms, he’d slot himself between her thighs and watch her quiver underneath him, flushed and hazy-eyed. For now he just craved her on her knees, his wolf itching to claim now that his mate had freely offered.

“Do you have lube?” she asked, kicking off her jeans and beginning to pull off her blouse. She stilled at the low rumble in his throat as her creamy skin was revealed and grinned, her movements slowing down as the fabric creeped up her body. “I brought some in my purse just in case, but—“

“You planned this,” he interrupted, his lips twitching, and she nodded easily, unclipping her bra and shrugging it off. “Tell me sweetheart, do you think about it often?”

“All the time,” she admitted, sliding her thong down her legs and kicking it away. “Where do you want me?”

He swallowed, taking in the sight of her standing nude in front of him without a hint of self-consciousness.

“Bed,” he ordered, his voice hoarse. It took effort for him to tear his eyes away from her getting comfortable against his pillows, to ignore the breathy sigh when he turned away to pull the toys they used when she was in town from the top shelf of the closet and looking through it for the bottle. “Don’t touch yourself. I can hear you.”

He grinned at her huff of annoyance, turning to walk back and taking the opportunity to admire the view. She was spread for him, her thighs shining from the way the light hit the slickness of her arousal, her cheek pressed to the pillow so that she could look at him, the practiced innocent expression on her face undermined by the barest hint of a smirk on her lips. “I thought you liked watching me touch myself.”

“Not today. Be patient, love. Good girls get rewards, after all.”

She bit her lip at the tone of his voice, her eyes darkening when he stripped off his shirt and began to undo his belt. She’d never been shy about her enjoyment of his more possessive instincts when they were alone, had freely admitted to preferring a rougher touch and liking the way he took control. He saw her eyes follow his fingers as he unbuttoned his jeans, how her tongue darted over her lips when she saw him hard for her.

“Keep your wrists where they are, sweetheart,” he warned, brushing her spine with his fingertips when she murmured her agreement and climbing on the bed behind her.

The way her breath caught when he spread the slick liquid over her back entrance made him grin, and he was unable to resist stroking the skin of her arse as a light tease, her low whimper of complaint making his cock twitch. He stroked himself with one hand as he got her ready with the other, whispering praise about how well she was doing and how beautiful she looked that he’d learned would make her melt.

She was panting as he stretched her with his fingers, rolling her hips in an effort to find a rhythm with his fingers. He pulled back when she was finally ready, slickening his hard cock with lube and positioning himself at her entrance.

“Good, sweetheart?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “Go ahead.”

He could see her eyes go hazy when he pressed inside of her, his hands squeezing her hips. “I love the way you look on your knees like this. Bent over in my bed, offering yourself to me for the taking.”

She moaned his name when he began to move, her breathing growing harsher when his thrusts sped up. He watched her face when he reached around to rub her clit in tight circles, committed the sight of her parted lips and flushed cheeks to memory. It had been years since he’d done this, his wolf side unlocking having made him reluctant to risk an accidental bond. Waiting for Caroline to choose him for good had been torture, the rush of pure, primal need in his veins whenever he laid eyes on her difficult to control. He wanted nothing more than to let his wolf’s magic unfurl from his skin and cloak her, to scrape his teeth against her neck as he came and leave the scar visible as a warning to any who might mean her harm.

“That feels so good,” she gasped out, arching her back to give him a better angle. “Talk to me.”

He grinned, bending forward. “Talk to you?”

“Mmhm.”

“What about, sweetheart?”

She huffed, the sound making him grin. “Have you thought about me when I was gone?”

“Of course,” he said, his voice almost embarrassingly hoarse with need, his breath hitching when she clenched around him. “Every day.”

“Tell me.”

“About how much I craved you tangled with me at night? The rhythm of your breathing? Your scent clinging to my sheets?” he asked, purposefully avoiding what she’d requested between the lines of her question, wanting her to ask.

“Did you think about me when you touched yourself!” she clarified, shooting him an exasperated look that changed to a gasp when he pinched her clit.

“Every day,” he repeated, moving faster, savoring her moans, his nails digging into her hips. “I have so many fantasies of the things I want to do to you, sweetheart. Things I want to try. I do love the way you look bound to my bed with a toy in your pussy, compelled not to come but trying to find friction, begging for me to indulge you. It’s a common fantasy I go back to, the memory of your pretty lips parted and your eyelids fluttering.”

She moaned his name, her fingers curling in the sheets, her breathing growing more labored. “More,” she demanded. “Please.”

“But sometimes that’s not quite enough,” he continued, his hands moving to her hips to steady her, “and when I need the extra push I think of the last time you were here, how you begged for your master to give you release. You were so eager to please, so perfect. I’ve thought extensively about what else I might convince you to beg for, what pretty sounds you’ll make as I stain your arse red with my palm or fasten clamps around your nipples. How you’ll get wet from nothing but the sting of painful pleasure and the knowledge that I’m getting off on it. Would you like that?”

She nodded hurriedly. “I liked it when we did it last time,” she breathed, her words tangling as she tried to get them out. “It was really hot.”

“Good girl,” he murmured, grinning at the way her breath hitched at the words. “Now tell me, sweetheart. Is my cock filling you enough to make you come?”

“No,” she gasped out, admitting what they both already knew from years of exploring each other’s bodies. “I need you to touch my clit.”

“Ask. Beg.”

She obeyed immediately, the pleas falling quickly from her lips. He could feel his muscles tightening as he obliged her, the pleasure of her tight and hot around his cock as he took her in, bent and submissive and begging for more, for him to fuck her harder, bringing him closer to the edge. He could feel his fangs break through his gums, the overwhelming desire to taste, to claim,

He bent forward to bite her shoulder when he came, running his tongue along the mark and grinning at her sharp breath from the sensation. He toyed with her clit until he felt her shake against him as she tipped over the edge.

He rolled off of her and pulled her close, offering her his neck for the cure. He had only a brief moment to admire the face of her monster before she let her fangs pierce his neck, drinking a few gulps with a soft hum before pulling back, running her tongue along the wound when it closed.

“How do you feel, sweetheart?”

“Good,” she said, arching her back to stretch before curling closer to him, tangling her legs with his, her face buried in his shoulder. “I’m tired.”

“You must have flown quite a ways.”

“Yeah. It was a huge pain because I had to convince your minion to let it be a surprise and then deal with flying a gazillion hours being worried that you’d say no and I’d just embarrass myself—“

“I would never,” he said immediately, tracing her spine with his fingers. “I’ve waited for you to be ready for ages. You can’t imagine I’d ever turn you away.”

“It’s nice to know for sure,” she said, wriggling even closer so that her body was fully pressed against his, cloaking herself in his warmth and scent. “I love you.”

There were those words again, so human and small, but he couldn’t deny that hearing them fall from her lips made his heart lighten.

“And I you.”

“Well you’d better. You’re stuck with me now,” she pointed out, squeaking when he pinched her side. “Klaus!”

“I’ve long known that I would never be able to let you go, Caroline. My mate.”

“Good,” she said, humming contentedly as his arms wrapped around her. “Me neither.”

[rewind-reviews]

Early Thoughts on Rage 2

I was one of the many people that preordered Rage 2 and well I have some things to say. The first Rage was a game I got on the PS3 for around £5 and well I liked it enough to buy it on PC too but at the same time when I got a little older I started finding a whole lot of flaws with the game and thought it could have been a lot better to the point where I got way more enjoyment from the book. Now on to Rage 2. This game gave me so many issues when it finally came out. First off the preloading for the game was a nightmare for a lot of people but I didnt personally mind to much. What did get to me was when I finally did have the game downloaded and it released my excitement was instantly crushed because the game out right refused to launch so after half an hour of googling I got it to launch. Then came the next issue...MY GAME HAD NO SOUND!! so after another half an hour of googling I got the sound to work and luckily all it needed was a reboot, then after one final crash I finally got into the game. Now I have only played just under two hours and I will admit it does some really cool and interesting stuff but it does some really annoying stuff too. First the good. The core game play of Rage 2 is super fun, running stupidly fast around shooting countless dudes in a post apocalyptic wasteland all the while using and gaining new superpowers is extremely fun and just out right ridiculous at times. The overdrive feature adds another layer of stupid fun given the fact it makes you almost un-killable and gives all your weapons an extra boost just to make you feel even more badass. However I do have some nitpicks. This game does some really really annoying things. Every time you do literally anything in this game be it a main quest, shutting down a tower, raiding a petrol station or hell clearing a road block the game stops everything just so you can watch a bar fill up to show the progress you are making with the leader of that area. Dont get me wrong this is helpful because every time it fills you get another upgrade point to spend making yourself more unstoppable but why stop me mid flow?? Why not just put this on the hud and only pause when the bar does fill all the way?? Another gripe I have is with the “storage containers” or the collectables in general that are hidden in around the map. whenever you walk into a new location a checklist appears on the side of your screen which is crazy helpful and I love this, being able to see exactly what there is left to do so I dont miss anything is great, the issue I have is with the collectables themselves. They are horrible to find they all mostly blend into the environment especially the the storage containers which by the way play the same really loud really annoying sound every time you open one and the ark chests are always put next to random crates of the same colour that you just walk past because they are just set dressing!! I know it seems like I hate this game but I dont, Rage 2 is super fun over the top action and Im going to play more after all I am under two hours in but these little things really do just annoy me maybe they will get better who knows?? plus I found a box labeled “a bunch of fake mustaches” which is just the best.    

[babydollsmadd]

hey what's up it's me, just passing through your askbox to be super nosy and send u these for the madd ask meme: 2, 7, 17, 21, 22, 25, 40 they're a lot and probably the most invasive??? im so sorry, feel free to ignore the ones you dont wanna answer tbh 😅

You can be as nosy as you want lmao, I love doing these!! It’ll probably be super long tho so apologies for that. To make this a little easier, I’ll exclude my parame from this (also for personal reasons) and only talk about my two main paras: Zazie & Tatsu.

ENJOY MY RAMBLING 💀

2. Do your daydreams get violent? How do you feel about them? How do you respond to them?

Violence is like, one of the most common themes in my daydreams. It ranges from the occasional fight or accident to actual murder and abuse. Mostly abuse tho. This sounds bad, but after so many years of constantly having such violent daydreams, I’ve become kinda numb to it. In a fucked up way, it gives me comfort. Because in some fucked up way, I chose this. Being hella masochistic and broken and dependent on Zazie, my parame doesn’t actually realize what’s happening to her is bad and absolutely not normal. She just goes with it. She doesn’t know better. She enjoys it, to a certain degree. I’m not sure what a “””normal””” person would think of this, I just don’t know how weird it seems to others, but to me, it doesn’t actually seem abnormal to have such thoughts. It’s just how it is, I just happen to have a violent mind.

7. How do you feel about your characters/paras? Have you ever fallen in love with them?

I wish there was another word for it. Saying “I love them” feels like such an understatement. Zazie & Tatsu mean everything to me. And I know how bad this sounds, considering I actually have a boyfriend of almost 3 years (which seems to be a rarity for people with MaDD). Now, don’t get me wrong - I do love my boyfriend. I live with him and he helps me so much with everything and he’s just a great person overall. It’s just that I feel a lot different about my paras. It’s not a matter of “being in love” with them or something, it’s that they’ve been with me through everything that has happened. It’s on another level, something that goes far beyond what happens between people. People can’t see what’s going on inside my head, I can choose what part of my mind I’m showing them, they’re their own people, they can disappear at any moment. They’re temporary. My paras, are not. Throughout all my life, they’ll be with me, no matter what happens. They cannot leave me because they literally live inside my head. So yes, I do love them, but not like someone who loves another person.

17. Do your paras have tragic backstories? Will you share a few?

Achievement unlocked: The Tragic Backstory ™No but seriously, not one of my paras has had a normal or easy life. It’s always tragic and complicated, some more, some less. It also slightly changes depending on the story I’m doing. Since listing them all would just be too much, lemme tell you a little about Zazie, my favorite dickhead. His parents didn’t want him. In their eyes, he was just a nuisance to them. So they abused him. From the moment he was born, they neglected him, hit him, yelled at him and not once gave him the love and attention he needed. He was still quite young when he was taken away from them and taken in by a new family. He never understood why this super rich couple adopted him, but as long he did as he was told, they gave him everything he wanted. When he got into his teenage years, he learned that they’d do literally anything to keep him from misbehaving. So whenever they wanted him to be quiet or polite or whatever, he’d manipulate them into giving in to him. He grew up into a horrible human, always manipulating people, getting into fights and generally just being pretty rude. He started taking drugs, smoking, drinking and sleeping around a lot. The only reason he hasn’t gone completely insane is Tatsu, his best friend. Tatsu has his own problems as well, but is far more stable compared to Zazie. He doesn’t want to admit it, but losing his best friend is like his greatest fear - so sometimes he does some questionable things to make sure Tatsu doesn’t leave. Zazie is incredibly smart, he knows exactly what he’s doing and what consequences his actions have. He just chooses to ignore them because, well, he doesn’t care much about other people or the world. He’s a sadistic, narcissistic asshole and I love him, alright.

21. Have your characters commit crime? Have they been to jail? Are they legally innocent? Are they socially innocent?

I mean……. if you consider theft, murder, drug dealing and assassination a crime…… then yes lmao. They’ve done some pretty fucked up shit, and have definitely been questioned and followed by police and others, but they never actually have been to jail. I’m just not very interested in that. They would absolutely not be legally or socially innocent. You just don’t have enough proof to lock them away. 🙃

22. Do your paras often find themselves in dangerous situations? How/why? Do they go looking for trouble? Does trouble look for them?

Yes. All the time. Mainly Zazie. He gets in a lot of trouble, constantly, be it his own fault or because of someone else. He loves danger. It makes him feel alive. That’s why he’s always living life on the edge, it gives him a rush and he’s addicted to it. He loves driving too fast, taking drugs that give him that feeling, stealing things, getting into fights - whatever makes him feel good. Tatsu doesn’t necessarily go out looking for trouble, but always ends up in it because of his best friend. He doesn’t mind tho, he gets the same exciting rush from it. They especially love racing, and often fight over which one they’re gonna take - supercar or motorbike. They absolutely love racing through the city and on the highway, the more dangerous, the better. Bonus points if they have to escape from police. Being such a damn good driver, Zazie wins most of the time. 🚨

25. Has a para ever made you physically cry?

Heck yeah. Wait that shouldn’t be something good… ANYway, I’m hella emotional and even just start tearing up when I don’t get my favorite ice cream or something ridiculous like that. Now imagine me killing off a para or Zazie abusing someone again or taking too many drugs and completely losing it. Daydreaming is really intense for me, so I often just start crying (or laughing), I make weird faces and all that shit. Crying doesn’t necessarily mean I’m sad, it simply means I’m feeling too much of an emotion in that moment. I don’t really show negative emotions irl (except for frustration), I have trouble showing happiness, so I try to keep things in check and preferably far away from me. When I daydream, I can let go of that, and then I just happen to cry a lot. 🌊

40. Do you do research for your daydreams? How much? How often? How deep?

I do a lot of research, actually! It really depends on the story, but I mostly look up cities and street systems, buildings and interior. I pick what I like and what fits, and so create my own cities and maps. It goes pretty in depth, to a point where I know exactly where things stand and what objects are in the rooms, even if it’s a piece of glass that’s behind a closet somewhere. When my story involves anything that I don’t have knowledge of, I research it as well. That can be super/hypercars, certain industries like music or YouTube, how the mafia works, foods from around the world, disorders and illnesses - I’ll just research whatever I need for my story or world.

Whew!! That was long, but not as long as expected. Kinda proud of myself for not rambling on about random details too much. Thank you so much for asking! And again, feel free to be nosy whenever you want lmao.