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the-widow-sisters · 2 years ago

Note

Hello!!

Could it be one where we see Kate demonstrate some talent that she has hidden from everyone and is accidentally discovered by Darcy?

A/N: Thank you so, so much for this request!!! 😊💕

Gosh, I'm sorry I've been gone from this fandom for so long! I've been seriously lacking in inspiration for anything lately 😅 No matter how hard I try, nothing in terms of writing has been working for me too well regardless of the fandom😬

Idk, hopefully I haven't lost my touch! This felt a little weird when I was writing it, but it was kind of lighthearted and fun, so hopefully it worked well! And maybe it could classify as Halloween-ish? Like they are dressing up, so... 🤷♀️

Btw, if I do much else anytime soon in the way of writing for this fandom right now, it’ll probably be slow, so y’all just be warned, lol 😅

I hope y'all enjoy! 😊💕

Word Count: 2866

When Darcy had tracked Kate via FRIDAY’s emergency tracking system for the Avengers that triangulated their cell phone coordinates, Darcy herself breaking a ton of rules in utilizing it without true emergency, she had truly not expected to follow Kate and find her doing this of all things.

Throughout last week, Kate had not really had much time to hang out, and Darcy had been busy as well. The both of them had been really wanting to spend time with one another, but their schedules had just not lined up at all.

However, this was all fine until Darcy managed to get some time this week for several days. The first time was in the early afternoon, and she had caught Kate heading out of the compound. She had been confused, but when Kate assured her that she was very busy and had to go to something important, she had been somewhat willing to let it go.

But when Kate had not been able to really tell her what those important things that she had to do actually were, Darcy had quickly grown suspicious. The next day, Kate had left at about the same time, and her excuse had been just as flimsy and unstructured. After the third day of Kate’s mysterious disappearances at the same time of day, Darcy was ready to get to the bottom of things.

Which was how she ended up here in Central Park, currently looking upon the most horrifically terrifying battle that she had ever witnessed.

She had managed to get through the fray as best as she could, stepping over bodies. And when she had finally managed to find Kate and get near enough to her, she called out loudly.

“Kate?!”

Kate froze in the midst of stabbing someone, the person falling over with a loud cry, and she gaped at Darcy for a solid minute.

“Darcy?!” Kate yelped, and Darcy looked around the battlefield slowly, taking it all in. Kate sputtered for just a moment before finally speaking up.

“This isn’t what it looks like!” Kate cried out desperately, her eyes ridiculously wide. Darcy just furrowed her brow, narrowing her eyes a little as she looked at the insanity taking place around them.

“You broke character!!!” the guy she had freshly killed accused loudly, and Kate jumped out of her skin, looking down at the person and shouting a quick apology.

“Sorry!!!” Kate yelped, and Darcy looked at her uncertainly as Kate cleared her throat and straightened a bit in an attempt to seemingly recollect her sense of character. She then hardened her gaze and pointed the absurd foam sword at Darcy as if it were actually truly threatening. It was well-made, but it was still obvious foam given the slightly blunt end on it.

“This, peasant, is not what it appears!” Kate declared boldly, and Darcy just raised an eyebrow.

“So you’re not out here LARPing like all the rest of these fruitcakes?” Darcy asked, and Kate paused for a moment before laughing somewhat nervously.

“Well… It might kind of be what it looks like,” Kate admitted. However, just as she uttered her statement, one of the crazies came up behind her with a foam axe. Before Darcy could even make a move to point to them or say anything, Kate turned quickly and stabbed them in the side under their arm. They cried out dramatically and fell to the ground.

Darcy huffed in surprise. Kate was honestly amazingly good at this, and Darcy had not even been there long enough to see her fully in action.

“Wow…”

“Yeah… Probably an inefficient use of my combat skills, but it’s fun, so why not?” Kate somewhat breathlessly told her, and Darcy nodded slowly, not sure how to react but finding it quite entertaining that Kate was this into it. She herself did not want any part of it and was honestly creeped out by the other people on some level, but she was happy that Kate was happy.

“Hey! No interrupting unless you’re going to join!” one of the people nearby declared, hurrying over to Darcy where she was standing on the sidelines. Kate looked at the woman in surprise, and Darcy raised her hands.

“No worries! I was just—”

“About to sign in!” Kate quickly interrupted her, and Darcy looked at her as if she had lost her mind. If Kate seriously thought that Darcy was about to participate in all of this insanity, then she definitely had lost her mind.

The woman immediately raised her eyebrows, and she nodded happily.

“Alright, then. Come on this way,” she beckoned, starting to walk off to the nearby tent.

Darcy narrowed her eyes before looking at Kate quickly.

“Look, hear me out—"

“Hear you out?! Have you lost your mind?! I’m a scientist, not a LARPer!!!” Darcy cried, whisper-yelling, and Kate shook her head as she tried to explain herself.

“No, no, no, look, it could be fun! We could spend time together like we’ve been trying to do this whole week!” Kate told her, and Darcy furrowed her brow.

“Look, I’ve been trying to get time to have coffee and talk or watch a movie together, but I did not sign up to come to a place where a bunch of middle-aged people that are way too old to be doing this and should be getting jobs are out here slapping each other with glorified pool noodles!” Darcy cried, somewhat running out of breath in the midst of her rant.

Kate shook her head, stepping just a little closer as she lowered her voice just enough so that she was not necessarily speaking at a volume where very many people could overhear.

“These people have jobs. Most are policemen and firemen, and we’ve even got veterans here coming in on the fun. It’s just a fun hobby,” Kate explained, and as they stood there for a moment, Kate suddenly squinted a little, studying Darcy carefully, and Darcy uncomfortably looked back at her, worrying about what Kate was thinking.

“You’re scared,” Kate suddenly declared, and Darcy’s eyes widened, Kate seeing right through her.

It was unfortunately true. Even though this was a ridiculous fest of insanity, something in her just was terrified of the thought of insane cosplayers running at her. While their weapons could not hurt her, she definitely did not want to be crushed by them or something.

Plus, who really knew how far they would take their cosplaying? She had even seen something on her way there that looked a lot like an authentic guillotine replica that they must have put together. The last thing she wanted to do was become one of the roleplay execute-ees.

But nevertheless, she knew how ridiculous it would likely sound out loud, especially to Kate who was so obviously immersed in this insanity, and she did not want to look stupid or weird.

“No! No, I’m not! I’ve faced portals and an insane dark elf man and never flinched,” Darcy proudly proclaimed, and Kae laughed incredulously with a wide grin.

“You’re totally scared,” Kate pointed out, far too pleased with herself for her discovery.

“I’m totally not scared! I’m—”

Kate suddenly moved forward, pushing her shoulder as she shoved her out of the way and sliced with her foam sword across a man’s throat. He fell to the ground with a loud cry of dramatized anguish, and he just laid there.

Darcy’s eyes were wide, and Kate looked back at her with a grin.

“I’ve got to get back to the battle. But seriously… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about this, and that I hid it from you. It’s a little embarrassing to tell people because they don’t usually understand,” Kate admitted, and Darcy felt her chest squeeze a little for the girl.

“And you don’t have to sign up but… at least consider it maybe? It really is fun,” Kate told her with a lopsided grin and that sweet glint in her eyes that she had when she wanted something but was not going to ask for it in favor of making the other person comfortable.

As Kate turned to go and reengage in battle, Darcy groaned deeply, rolling her eyes. She looked down at the guy lying falsely dead at her feet and she sighed tiredly.

“Wanna trade spots?” she questioned. At his lack of a response, she just huffed and shook her head, walking over to the tent that the woman disappeared in.

The things that she would do for her friends…

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Darcy narrowed her eyes as she headed out into the field. She was now clad in ridiculous armor and she had one of those ridiculous swords that looked like a far less cool version of Kate’s. It was more like something that one would find in the clearance section of Walmart.

She groaned deeply, and she tried her best to spot Kate. She was not about to get killed. If she was going to play this game, she was going to make sure that she won. And Kate was good enough at it to win.

“Good day, my fair friend! Art thou ready for battle?!” a familiar voice questioned suddenly from behind Darcy. Darcy turned toward it quickly, sucking in a swift breath as the nervousness crept upon her and the thought of the guillotine came to the forefront of her mind all over again.

To her utter relief, it was just Kate, and Darcy could not help but let out a deep breath of relief. She finally nodded tiredly, pinching the bridge of her nose and adjusting her glasses before responding to her question.

“Sure,” Darcy agreed with a shrug, and Kate stepped closer, almost bouncing in place in the midst of her excitement.

“Thank you for doing this. I really am excited to do this with you,” Kate confessed, and Darcy’s gaze softened as she shrugged with a small smile.

“It’s okay. I know you’d do the same,” Darcy told her, and Kate smiled as she straightened, pointing her sword toward the air as she stood next to Darcy.

“Come! Let us gloriously bathe in the blood of our enemies!!” Kate called loudly, and Darcy could not help but wince a little at both Kate’s volume and the insanity of the statement.

These people really did take this stuff seriously.

Kate took off, running in the midst of the battle as she effortlessly took on two or three sword-wielding looneys. Darcy hurried after her, pausing a small distance behind her as she looked around uncertainly. She did not have a clue what to do.

Kate quickly eliminated them, using some fancy sword moves as she efficiently took care of the group. She then charged forward, knocking off a few more of them with her unexpectedly swift moves.

She then found someone that was far better with weapons that Kate’s previous foes and she went at it, fighting the person valiantly. Darcy could not help but raise her eyebrows, utterly shocked at how fast that Kate was with her sword. She was seriously talented, and training with Clint must have taught her quite a lot. Quite a few of the moves she was pulling had nothing to do with what little that Darcy knew about fencing.

Finally, Kate fake-killed the guy, and she turned toward Darcy. However, as she did and in the midst of Darcy being completely shocked at Kate’s sword fighting skills, Kate’s eyes went wide, and she pointed behind Darcy.

Darcy immediately realized what Kate was trying to tell her.

Darcy spun around with the sword clutched in her hand, unintentionally whacking someone in the head with it in the midst of her haste to turn around and see what was behind her. He cried out and fell to the ground, and Darcy’s eyes were ridiculously wide as she looked down at the person she had successfully taken down.

She was quickly shaken as Kate ran up next to her and wrapped her arm around her, squeezing her in a joyful side-hug. She laughed happily, and Kate grinned at Darcy. Darcy’s eyes were wide and she looked at Kate uncertainly. However, Kate’s energy quickly rubbed off, and she could not help but laugh a little with her.

“Oh, my gosh, you really kicked his butt!” Kate joyfully cried, and Darcy grinned incredulously.

“I guess I did.”

“Carry on, my fellow soldier! Let us vanquish more foes!” Kate happily yelled, and she ran off again. Darcy looked down at the guy she had taken out, and she chuckled softly before taking off after Kate.

Maybe this was not quite as bad as she thought.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

At some point, only the most experienced LARPers were left behind, and Darcy was only alive as a result of Kate saving her on multiple occasions.

Currently, they were hiding and trying to strategize. They were lying down on the ground in the dirt surrounded by the bushes, and they were whispering amongst themselves.

“Okay, so I think there’s a group of them on our left flank and to the front of us. We’re going to have to decide which ones to take care of, and figure out a plan,” Kate softly explained, and Darcy shrugged.

“I don’t know. Why don’t we pick them off one by one? Like one of us go and distract them and the other of us stab them from behind?” Darcy suggested, and Kate grinned, looking at Darcy happily.

“I think you were made for this,” Kate complimented, and Darcy rolled her eyes, knowing that Kate had likely already come to the conclusion on her own. She scoffed in reply to her.

“And I think you’re patronizing me,” Darcy replied, and Kate shook her head quickly, quick to deny it as she tried to keep her voice quiet as she could.

“No! I genuinely think you’re good at this. And honestly, I’m really glad you decided to join in. It’s been really fun getting to do this with you,” Kate confessed and Darcy shrugged, smiling gently.

“It’s been nice getting to see you have so much fun. You’re actually extremely talented with a sword. And not like in the usual fencing kind of way. Like in the super awesome hero kind of way,” Darcy complimented. Immediately, just as Darcy had expected, Kate puffed up ridiculously with the praise. Darcy could not help but feel her heart warm at the sight of Kate’s happiness.

“Nah, I’m not that good… I mean… I’ve learned a few things, but I’m not that good,” Kate self-deprecatingly declared, and Darcy shook her head.

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re super cool,” Darcy assured her, and Kate took in a breath to speak and reply to her.

But just as she did, people suddenly jumped through the bushes and tried to stab them. The both of them just barely managed to dodge, and they stood up, starting to try to get away as they tripped over the bushes together.

They almost fell, but just as they thought that they had managed to get out the people’s sword range, someone threw an axe and hit Darcy in the back with the foam bouncing off her back. One of them managed to jump out far enough to stab Kate in the back with a sword.

Kate paused and let out a horridly agonized sound. Darcy just stared at her as if she had completely lost her mind, and Kate fell to her knees dramatically.

“I think I see a light… Mother? Dost thou beckon me?” Kate questioned aloud before hacking aloud in a dramatic cough. Darcy just stared, honestly shocked at the theatrics as she watched her.

“The world… It is fading,” Kate declared, straining as she spoke. She clutched at her throat.

“Goodbye, cruel world,” Kate cried before falling the last bit of the way to the ground, splaying out. Darcy just looked down at her, completely unimpressed.

However, as she looked back at the people, she realized they were staring at her expectantly. Darcy let out a deep sigh, rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all.

“Oh, I am slain. Dead for a ducat, dead,” Darcy complained aloud before very slowly and carefully lowering herself to the ground. She slowly laid down on her back, trying to position her beanie so that it covered some of the back of her hair. She laid there with her hand on her stomach and remained still.

After watching her for a moment, they eventually left to go and eliminate the other groups, and as soon as they were gone, Kate opened her eyes and looked at Darcy.

They were quiet for just a moment before laughing heartily.

“A ducat? What was that?” Kate asked in shock.

“I was quoting Hamlet,” Darcy shot back in defense, unable to keep from laughing in spite of herself. Kate chuckled along with her, shaking her head.

“You’re breaking character!” one of the dead people yelled suddenly, and they both went silent. They slowly looked at each other, and as soon as they made eye contact, they burst into laughter again.

The dead person just groaned in irritation.

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exovapor · 3 years ago

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The Adventure - TMNT Bitches: Chapter 6

(Reminder, this story has been I the works since early July so any recent changes aren't in here...but I promise to make it up to my two loves not present)

CHAPTER 6: Crossing Paths

· It is here! It is FINALLY HERE! Valerie can barely contain her excitement as she drives through the semi-familiar streets of the city she hates, except for one weekend out of the year, Dragon Con weekend!

· It is Thursday, the official start of Dragon Con, or ‘con’ or ‘DC’, as it’s fans often referred to it as. Dragon Con is the largest comic book/sci-fi/fantasy/horror/cosplay convention on the east coast and it happens every Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, GA.

· DC is always a cause for excitement for Valerie; however, this year is extra special! Not only is she going to con, which is always the highlight of her year, but this time she is meeting up with some VERY special ladies that have helped her explore the fandom world of TMNT and who have become very close, dear, cherished friends.

· While everyone from their close knit group couldn’t make it this year, Lucy living in the UK and Kyla having prior commitments, she is still going to get to finally meet and hug the extraordinary talented fandom writers Holly, Kassie, and Kari! Life just can’t be better!

· Well…maybe it could if TMNT actually existed…but…she couldn’t complain too much because these special ladies can bring the guys to life almost like no other person can!

· Valerie’s tummy twists and tumbles as she pulls into the familiar parking deck just one block away from one of the main hotels to host the convention, the Marriott of Atlanta. Valerie is antsy and anxious!

· She just wants to park, grab her suitcases and rush in to the hotel to join the other three women, whom have flown and driven into Atlanta from other parts of the US, and start their 4 day long party!

· As she rounds through the parking deck she’s not finding any available spots on the first few levels, looks like it’s going to be another crowded year at con! As she driving up into the open air of the top level, she’s hoping to find one spot left or she’ll have to drive further away and she really hates navigating Atlanta’s one-way streets. She may be from Georgia, but she detests Atlanta’s crazy crowded maze with a passion.

· Valerie is so focused on finding that one elusive empty parking spot that she isn’t fully aware of her surroundings. As she rounds the corner of one row of cars, and angles to turn up the next aisle, her heart drops to her feet and she slams on the breaks in her SUV trying not to flatten the four MORONS standing in the middle of the driving lane.

· Cussing like a sailor, laying down on the horn, and hoping to all that is holy that the silver, 4,000lb, vehicle will stop in time to not kill the guys playing some form of LARP game in the middle of the parking deck.

· Her ire flares like a campfire doused with kerosene!

· She was riding a high of anticipated fun bit now is jerked down to earth with a body-slam! What the HELL are these guys thinking??

· Sure, pretty much all types come out at con, the gamers, the goths, the cosplayers, the kinks, the through and through nerds/geeks, and even the LARPers…but JEEZ GUYS…don’t do it in the middle of the roadway!

· Four sets of shocked eyes stare back at her from the middle of the lane. And they just stand there…not moving! She throws her hands up in the air and says out loud in the car, “What?!! Don’t just stare at me like that! Fucking move!”.

· Valerie starts shooing them out of the way with hand signals and they slowly back out of the way. If she weren’t in such a tizzy and pissed off, at nearly being indicted for vehicular man-slaughter, she may have noticed and admired the handsome quartet. After all, most LARPers don’t have bodies like these...muscles busting clothes at the seams and height on all of them; no, most LARPers looked like mommy still did their laundry for them and feed them too many Hot Pockets.

· As she pulls up next to them, she lets down her window and growls out in her southern-ass-whoopin’-accent, “What the HELL do you think you are doing? You idiots, stay out of the road!”. Two sets of baby blue eyes, a set of emerald green, and a set of amber-green hazel stare at her dumbfounded and silent. She doesn’t give the stunned group enough time to respond before she rolls up her window and drives on up the aisle and parks half-way up.

· She sits in her front seat fuming, trying desperately to regain her composure. She talks to herself, a normal thing out of habit, “Val, let it go. Just let it go. Forget about it, you are about to meet your wonder ladies in person and y’all are about to bring Atlanta to it’s knees over the next four days. Ommmmmm…..(yoga centering…zen baby zen)…let it go.”.

· Finally, feeling SLIGHTLY less murderous, she steps out of her truck and moves to the back and lifts the hatch to retrieve her suitcase. She has most of her costumes and items packed in bags and her rolling suitcase; however, the katanas for her Leonardo costume would not fit in any of the bags, so she slings the holster, with the twin sheathed blades crisscrossed, onto her back. She straps her green turtle-shell backpack onto the extended handle of her rolling suitcase, she locks up her truck and starts rolling her suitcase down the aisle head towards the parking deck staircase.

· As she gets close to the end of the car aisle, she can see the LARPing quartet still standing where she left them. ‘Ugh, morons’, she thinks to herself.

· As she walks past, the quiet conversation they were having suddenly stops and they all stare at her with mild confusion, amusement, and interest. Valerie isn’t one to accept blatant staring. She doesn’t like to be ‘seen’. She is the wall-flower type, the one who likes to stand in the back. She’s the Observer, not the Observee…so she becomes irked by their stares and stops and faces them, “WHAT?!!”, she asks staring challengingly back at them.

· No answer comes from the quiet group, just four sets of eyes staring at her in…what is that? Shock? Amusement? Their expressions are such a mixture that she can’t quite pin-point the expressions playing across their handsome faces.

· So she stands there, with the blue tendrils from the hilts of her katanas whipping in the wind, staring back at them.

· One set of eyes stares with more intensity than the others. They are discerningly more intense; like they are searching, evaluating, noting qualities and vulnerabilities. It makes her uneasy. However, she isn’t one to show a predator weakness, no matter what they threaten her with, so she stares back just as intently, refusing to turn her back on them.

· In staring, Valerie becomes acutely aware of their size. These guys are all tall, two of them VERY tall, and all of them are well built. Actually, one of them is a fucking monster. Forget eating his Wheaties for breakfast; that red haired one looks like he ate the whole damn Wheaties truck, tires and all! This would not turn out well if they decided attacking the alone girl in the parking deck was more fun than LARPing in the parking deck.

· Valerie wants to get to the safety of the crowds below, but she doesn’t feel safe retreating into a closed stairwell with these guys fixated on her presence.

· ‘Maybe yelling at them earlier wasn’t the best idea, me and my temper…shit! What are they talking about and WHY does that one keep staring at me so hard? Jeez, dude, get your own life and stop trying the stare me out of mine’, she thinks to herself.

· The staring match goes on for an uncomfortably long time, finally they start to move backward as a group, putting more space between her and them.

· Just as Valerie is starting to consider how fast she can out run all four of them, another car, searching for its own elusive parking spot, comes rolling through the driving lane. Thankful for the distraction, the active presence of witnesses, and a reason to move on, Valerie leaves the LARPing group watching her rolling her suitcase towards the stairwell.

@turtle-babe83 @tmntspidergirl @nittleboo @kokokatsworld @the-second-circle-of-shell

#tmnt fanfiction #tmnt bayverse #tmnt x reader #tmnt smut #tmnt #tmnt 2016 #donnie #tmnt leo #tmnt donnie #tmnt donatello #tmnt leonardo #tmnt raph #raphael #tmnt mikey #tmnt michelangelo #exovapor

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blackmissfrizzle · 5 years ago

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Characters: Dean Winchester x black!reader, Geralt x black!reader

Summary: When on a case, the reader bumps into a familiar face.

Warnings: None

A/N: This idea has been in my forever. I’m happy its finally out.

Between the store clerk trying to stare down your blouse and him giving you, Sam, and Dean unnecessary details of the attack here, you were gonna blow your brains out. Dean noticed your frustration and smiled at you. He loved the little pouty look you would get when you were annoyed. It was the same look you gave him when you wanted something from him.

To get away from the clerk’s stare you roamed around the gas station, still intently listening to his story.

“Then some dude who looked like he came straight from Game of Thrones came inside. I thought he was LARPing.”

“LARPing?” Dean repeated looking up from his notepad.

“Live action role playing,” you explained, your fingers dragging over the chips.

The clerk looked at you adoringly. “You know what it is?”

“Yeah,” you sauntered back up to the counter. Time to tease this little sucker. You took a cherry blowpop and unwrapped it. “I do it all the time. My favorite is the professor and the naughty schoolgirl.” You fluttered your eyelashes as you stuck the lollipop in your mouth.

Dean squeezed your hip in warning to cut it out. He didn’t need more reason to knock the kid out. You paid him no mind though. You just continue to smile at the clerk in which you had no doubt probably jizzed in his pants.

Dean slammed the countertop to get the young man’s attention. “Hey, eyes over here. What happened when Jon Snow came in?”

“Umm, he umm, went crazy.” You couldn’t hide your smile as he stumbled over his words. Serves him right for being a little creep. “He started swinging some blade around and killed the three other guys that were here. I thought I was next when we made eye contact, but he walked right pass me.”

Sam asked for the footage for the fight, but just our luck the camera was busted, it was only there for show. Now you had to be here longer listening to the clerk ramble.

“Uh, he’s as tall as you,” the clerk pointed at Dean, “But he’s ripped. More ripped than you,” he pointed at Sam while Dean murmured, he was ripped. “Oh, and his eyes, they were freaky man,”

The three of you traded looks. Maybe you were just dealing with a demon.

“What color were they? Yellow? White? Black?” Sam questioned.

“Yellow, well more like a golden color. You know kinda like Twilight vampire eyes.”

That was odd. None of you dealt with anything with those kind of eyes before. Guess this means this wasn’t gonna be as easy as you thought.

“Oh, and he had long white hair which is weird because he did not look that old at. Maybe it’s a new hipster trend.”

Your head popped up at the mention of the white hair. It couldn’t be him. He’d be dead by now.

Losing all jokiness, you grabbed the clerk by the collar and pulled out the necklace he gave you that you always wore. “Did he wear something like this?”

“Yeah, the same thing, just bigger.” You let him go and smoothed his collar in apology before walking out. You needed air asap.

Sam and Dean soon followed. Neither have seen you get rough with a witness before. “Y/N/N, you okay?” Sam rubbed your back as you tried to catch your breath.

“Yeah, I think I know who our killer is.”

“Kinda figured that out. Care to share with the class?” Dean knew just how to pull you out of that state, being a dick. You couldn’t pass up hitting him.

“Remember when those witches sent me to the past? I think the guy who helped me is the killer.”

Dean snapped his fingers trying to remember the man’s name. “What was his name. Geral- Gerald? No. Geral-”

“Geralt.” You finished for him.

Dean didn’t like how you said his name or how your eyes lightened up. The two of you weren’t a couple, but you were his.

“Wouldn’t he be dead by now?” Sam questioned.

“Time travel.” You simplified for him.

Dean shook his head. “Man, I hate time travel.”

—

The three of you ended up at an abandoned house. You used a hair tie Geralt gave you as a conduit for a tracking spell.

“Geralt, do you have an extra scrunchie?”

“A what?” He asked, looking up at you on Roach as he walked alongside you.

You forgot they didn’t know the term scrunchies. “A hair tie.”

“Why didn’t you just call it that?” He complained.

You rolled your eyes at his grumpiness. “That’s what we call them in the future.”

“Ah. No, I don’t have an extra one. Why do you ask?”

“Because mines broke and I don’t want my braids in my face in this heat.”

Geralt sighed as he undid his. “Here,” he handed you his hair tie.

When you got into town, you bought a new hair tie at the market and you tried to give Geralt’s his, but he insisted on you keeping it. Instead he took the new one.

You surprised it work since it was so flimsy, but you couldn’t use the necklace he gave it to you, because technically it wasn’t his. He had it made for you. It was for his ‘little witcher.’

You opted to lead with your sword instead of your gun. Geralt wouldn’t be shooting at y’all. Plus, the only time you could use it was when you were hunting vamps and you missed swinging this baby through the air.

Quietly, you entered the home. Geralt would be on guard and you didn’t feel like fighting him off.

The three of you split up, in search of him. You really hope that you would find him first and not Sam or Dean. He wouldn’t trust them as easily.

Your hopes were crushed when you heard Dean yell, “Son of a bitch!” Racing down the hall, you and Sam arrived at the same time only to see Dean dodging Geralt’s sword.

“I thought you said he was some sort of hunter?” Sam pointed out Geralt’s black eyes.

“He’s not!”

You screamed out the Witcher’s name, but he didn’t respond. He had to be under someone’s control.

“Don’t shoot him!” You yelled at Dean, who was letting out rounds.

“Well, tell him to stop trying to impale me!” Dean rolled to his side to dodge the sword once more.

The witcher had the hunter backed into a corner with no room to miss his strikes. Before Dean could get stabbed, you blocked Geralt’s sword with yours.

“Geralt! Stop! It’s me!” Geralt’s black eyes held no recognition. It was as if you were another monster.

You’re a total badass but fighting Geralt proved to be exhausting. He was a much better swordsman than you and it didn’t help that you learned from him.

While you were trying to stay alive, a book barely missed your head. Looking in the direction it came from, you saw Jaskier being hemmed up by Sam and Dean.

“Jaskier, did you just throw a fucking book at me!?”

“Y/N?” The bard squinted his eyes, trying to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating you. “It’s you! Thank the heavens! Geralt is in dire need of your help.”

“I can see that!” You gritted, while Geralt had you backed against the wall with your swords crossed.

“Geralt, look it’s Y/N, the woman’s name you’ve been saying in your sleep is here.” He’s been saying your name in his sleep? You were sure he be too caught up with Yennfer.

It didn’t matter though. Geralt still was on attack mode. You were talking to Jaskier, trying to figure out what was happening when Geralt stroke your sword out of your hand with the tip of his near your neck.

Jaskier was forgotten by the boys, now that you were in imminent danger, but you told them to stand down. You knew you could get through to him.

“Geralt, it’s me!” The sound of distress in your voice broke through Geralt. His eyes reverted back to normal, well, normal for him.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The one that got away. Geralt dropped his sword, shortened the distance between you two by leaning his forehead against yours while cupping your jaw gently. “Y/N,” he whispered against your lips.

His lips took you by surprise. You haven’t felt them against yours since you came back your time. This time it was different. It was more passionate. The eagerness from Geralt let you know that he was seeking familiarity and you were willing to give it.

A throat clearing broke you out the kiss. You turned to see a pissed off Dean, a smug Jaskier, and an uncomfortable Sam. Taking in that sight, you stepped away from Geralt’s embrace.

“Um, Sam, Dean, this is Geralt of Rivia.”

Despite his immediate disdain for the man, Dean introduced himself. “Nice to meet you. I’m Dean Winchester of Lawrence.”

Geralt ticked his head to the side before shaking Dean’s hand. So, this was the idiot that Y/N would groan on about. He never quite understood why the idiot didn’t want to be in a relationship with Y/N. She was smart, beautiful, and a hell of a hunter. He would’ve taken her for himself if only time didn’t separate them.

With introductions over, you got to the meat of it. Geralt explained that someone plucked him, Jaskier, Ciri, and Yennefer out of time, just to use him as a weapon. The rest were used to keep him in line, but after one too many fights with his abductors they found a way to spell him under their control.

“Then why are you with him?” You asked Jaskier.

Jaskier’s face flushed and he looked towards the ground. “They said I was annoying, so they sent me with him.”

You had to contain your laughter, but Geralt did not. Leave it up to Jaskier to annoy his kidnappers to the point they couldn’t stand being around him.

You were getting into the backseat of Baby when Geralt just stood there a little confused. “What are you doing? Get in!” You patted the empty seat and he hesitantly slid in.

“This is small,” Geralt commented as his eyes roamed the vessel. It sort of reminded him of a carriage without the horses.

“Faster than Roach. How is she?” A smile graced your face as you reminisced on the stead. She was the most beautiful horse and as protective over you as Geralt.

“She’s well. She misses you though.” Not as much as him though, Geralt thought.

Nuh huh. This was not gonna happen on his watch. Dean let the freakazoid get one free kiss because he was disoriented, but he be damned if he let him make moves on his woman. “Who the hell is Roach?” Dean asked, looking at the pair of you from his rearview mirror.

“My horse.” Geralt met Dean’s eyes in the mirror but for only a moment.

Dean quirked an eyebrow. “Really? you named your horse after an insect.”

“Dude, you literally named the impala Baby,” Sam slapped his shoulder.

Sam’s comment launched the brothers into an argument about Baby’s name origin. While they were having their silly argument, you leaned up and turned on the radio to drown them out.

Immediately, Jaskier was intrigued by the music coming out. You told him all about the advancements in music and promised him to show him some good music.

Dean caught the tail end of your conversation and asked Jaskier why not start his music lesson now.

Sam and your eyes went to each other. Both of you knew Dean was about to go through his expansive cassette tape collection. Sam put in his headphones while you leaned your head back, getting comfortable for your nap.

You didn’t feel Geralt pull you off Jaskier when your body slumped over on him. You didn’t feel Geralt wrapped his arms around your waist as he leaned your head on him. And you definitely didn’t feel Dean’s hot gaze staring at your conjoined bodies.

Tagging: @deansblackbeauty @dark-night-sky-99 @brownsugarcoffy @jinaaaannnnn @amethyst09 @titty-teetee @deanscroissant @deansbbysblog @thickemadame @arizonalovesher @harrywujj

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nobodysuspectsthebutterfly · 4 years ago

Note

Hello! If you don't mind me asking, are you planning on watching House of the Dragon? I'm personally unsure about it. I was cautiously optimistic about it since D&D are not involved, but the recent casting news have been ugh disappointing imo. What do you think?

Hey anon! Sorry to say I kind of mind you asking because my inbox is still closed (to everyone except my secret Santas, which is why the ask page is accessible at all), but then I realized it’s possible if you’re on the mobile app only, you haven’t seen said note in my askbox, or my FAQ, or anything of the sort. And with older metas of mine being reblogged recently, it’s possible you may be confused. (I hope you’re on mobile only and not just ignoring my requests.) So I wanted to inform you of that... but also, y’know, I kind of wanted to make a post about the HotD cast anyway? And this ask is as good a prompt as any... so, you’re lucky, but please don’t push your luck. ;)

So, straight up: I currently have no plans to watch House of the Dragon. HBO is not getting any of my goddamn money, I don’t trust like that. And hunting down illegal livestreaming sites is a pain in the ass and I regret ever doing it for GoT, as well as regretting getting drunk every weekend enough to dampen my senses to ever tolerate that show. Yeah it’s different showrunners and writers, I know. It’s still (mostly) the same executives at HBO and even if the pervert producer is gone (or is he?), you know they still just want to sell sex and violence and dragons to an audience that thinks fantasy is for geeks.

Also, considering that Fire & Blood’s story of Dance of the Dragons has very little actual narrative or dialogue, and the historical record is deliberately untrustworthy, that gives them pretty much full rein to do whatever they like with the story and characterization and words without even being slightly obliged to GRRM at all. Furthermore, since the story is wholly political with virtually none of the magical side of ASOIAF (excepting dragons), and honestly does not have much in the way of themes or depth that main ASOIAF or even D&E has, I think it will be very hard for an adaptation to show even those brief sparks of quality that used to make me wistful GoT couldn’t be that good all the time and eventually just made me frustrated and depressed. Note I do like the history and characters of the Dance despite myself, despite its many many many textual issues, but I don’t need to see an adaptation, I have a very visual imagination. I don’t watch a lot of television to begin with, I don’t see why I should start again with this.

However, I’m not going to avoid spoilers or discussion, and I’ll probably follow the show the tumblr way, through gifsets and video clips and people bitching on their blogs etc. If, somehow, by some miracle of good screenwriting and acting, the show manages to transcend its source material, I’m sure I will be informed. And then, if and only if then, I may try watching. (Without, of course, giving HBO any of my goddamn money.) We shall see.

(Though I certainly don’t know why anyone in Targ standom would ever watch a Dance adaptation considering almost every Targaryen and everyone else in the story is terrible except Helaena and the kids, and considering how the story ends, unless y’all are gluttons for punishment? (I do not comprehend hatewatching, sorry.) It’ll probably be fun at first to see the adventures of those “precious silver douchebags” (to borrow a friend’s tag), but eventually rocks fall, everyone dies, including the girlboss you know you’ll hope the story will be changed enough that she succeeds. Just letting you know now, she won’t.)

That said. I’ve been following the casting news and I think the hate/fear/wild screaming is entirely overblown. Yeah, I know, but wait, just listen. On Friday I officially welcomed @naomimakesart to the “favorite character is now played by an actor who looks nothing like most fanart and is mostly known for wildly different roles” club. I still remember that day in September 2009 when my brother texted me “yarp��... and that right there is the thing. Yeah. Rory McCann looks very little like most pre-GoT Sandor fanart... but many fans grew to love him anyway. (There are some who never did, of course. And yeah the character went off the rails by the end, but truly, who didn’t. Having seen his audition, having spoken to him and heard him wistfully talk about book scenes he loved, I’m convinced if Rory had only been given Sandor’s actual scenes and such, he would’ve killed it. Sigh. Deep, deep sigh.)

And Rory isn’t the only one. Neither of the actors for Jaime and Cersei were considered “beautiful” enough at first. I recall very clearly people bitching about Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (about his nose particularly?) because they had wanted Tarzan-era Travis Fimmel to be Jaime. (Seeing people bitch because current-Fimmel isn’t playing Daemon made me laugh out loud for both BEYONCE?! meme -type “why would you ever cast him omg he doesn’t fit my headcanon Daemon at all”, and amazing amounts of fandom flashbacks.) Lena Headey was “too square-jawed”, “too mean-looking” (since at the beginning you should never be able to guess she’s evil), “too dark-complected”, “too mannish”, not at all attractive enough. (Tricia Helfer was the most common “but I wanted” for Cersei, btw.) And of course “they don’t remotely look like twins, ugh!” Note, there’s receipts for all of this, none of it is made up. (Unfortunately.) Those two actors are just the ones whose casting wank I recall most clearly, particularly because oh how the turn tables.

Also. You know, there’s a post with Matt Smith and Mark Simonetti’s TWOIAF Daemon going around with shrieks of horror... and I’m finding it maddening in a “am I crazy? am I the crazy one???” way, because Matt looks like the painting. Their features are not that dissimilar.

Same deepset eyes. Same cheekbones of doom. Same thin lips. Same protruding chin. Same high forehead. Same invsible eyebrows ffs. Matt has a squarer jaw, and a longer more rectangular face, and a wider nose, but considering that Daemon’s features are not described in the text, and this is the only official ASOIAF artwork that shows Daemon’s face straight on, I can for sure see why he was probably shortlisted to begin with. And that’s not even getting into to his role in The Crown, which I’ve heard is very well played with politics and palace intrigue... and if you doubt Smith can play seductive/roguish and/or evil (depending on how you LARP as a Westeros historian), or look good with long hair... well. I do not want to watch the movie, but this trailer is disturbingly enlightening.

And as for Rhaenyra... y’all know this show is starting at the beginning of the story, right? When she’s a teenager? Not a voluptuous MILF? Yeah, Emma D’Arcy doesn’t look like a Magali Villeneueve painting (though who does, good lord), but you know who she does look remarkably like? Harry Lloyd.

Same jawline. Same nose. Same thin lips. Same sharp cheekbones. Notably, same kind of sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes as Matt Smith. HBO evidently has a concept of a “Targaryen look” that’s a little bit quirkier than supermodel-Greek statue-gods on earth, yeah, fine. But it’s consistent, and they look like family, and that-- that is good casting.

And yeah, in a few months to a year or so, you’ll see them in costume and wigs and makeup, you’ll see them in motion and speaking lines, and go Oh. That’s different. Never mind. And while people will make fanart of the show depictions of the characters and those will probalby get popular, they’ll also keep doing fanart of their pre-show headcanons, and those too will be popular. (God knows when I draw or visualize book!Sandor, Rory does not come to mind, lol.) Either way, there’s no reason to panic. We’ll live.

(Though will we live well? Got to wait on the writing and showrunning for that, alas.)

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angelgrace003 · 5 years ago

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sanders sides, a summary

ep 1

thomas: i’m complicated

logan, roman and patton: yeah

——

ep 2

thomas: i don’t wanna grow up

patton: adultery

——

ep 3

virgil: hey

thomas: what, why

roman: eww nooo afgsjdgkafafh

lily: heyo

——

ep 4

thomas: new year new me

patton, roman and logan: lie

virgil: agreed

patton, roman and logan: actually-

——

ep 5

thomas: i wanna talk about disney

roman: yeah!

virgil: me too

roman: unyeah!

——

ep 6

thomas: i was on disney!

roman: agsjdkdha

logan: clickbate is good

virgil: *is good accidentally*

——

ep 7

thomas: you too need to stop

patton: wat

logan: wat

——

ep 8

thomas: valentine’s day, i’m lonely

roman: let’s practice

valerie: *appears*

patton: *ships prinxiety*

——

ep 9

thomas: i don’t wanna

logan: larp time

——

ep 10

thomas: qna time!

roman: yes!

thomas: *asks logan patton and virgil*

roman: unyes!

——

ep 11

thomas: ideas pls

roman: cReAtIvE mOdE

logan and virgil: ??

patton: ur doing great kiddo

logan: *insults virgil*

virgil: *is actually hurt this time*

——

ep 12

thomas: i messed uupppp

logan: eh

virgil: u did horrible

logan: debate time

thomas: *ships analogical*

——

ep 13

thomas: i don’t wanna grow up.. again

patton: we’ve been over this

logan: have u tho

——

ep 14

thomas: i miss my friends

roman: shape shift time!

patton: should be fun!

logan: if it will help

virgil: literally just call them, i’m begging you

——

ep 15

thomas: cartoon!

sanders sides: *is a cartoon for less than 10 minutes*

——

ep 16

thomas: ahhhhhhahahaha

logan: what

roman: he’s fiiiinnneee

patton: WhErE iS aNxIeTy

thomas: i don’t fear death

roman and logan: fine let’s go get him

——

ep 17

virgil: wHaT aRe YoU dOiNg In My RoOm

thomas: to get you

virgil: but y’all don’t want me

logan: yerkes dodson

patton: spooder

roman: u can like, actually be good too

——

ep 18

thomas: harry potter, and unity

roman: *stereotypes everyone*

thomas: no

roman: project runway!

logan and patton: k

(virgil: i AcTuAlLy DiG tHe PuRpLe)

——

ep 19

thomas: i’m thinking about guys

logan: what else is new

thomas:.... and dolls

logan: patton, u need to let go

patton: no!

——

ep 20

virgil: *is not ok*

patton: *is not ok*

thomas: *is not ok*

roman: i on’t wanna be part of the problem buuut...

——

ep 21

thomas: christmas!

roman and patton: and sweaters!

virgil, and logan: noooo- actually not bad

roman: song time!

thomas: oh lord

——

ep 22

not patton: sup

virgil: somethin wrong here

thomas: wat

logan: dEcEiT

janus: why hello there

thomas: who tf are you

——

ep 23

thomas: ahhhhh

roman: nerd!

logan: prep!

——

ep 24

thomas: logan u have ur own jam now

logan: *dies*

roman: ... i like jam too

thomas: no offense, but stfu

——

ep 25

thomas: confusion

patton: puppets!

roman and logan: no

virgil: tf, he’s already made a good point today, listen to him

——

ep 26

thomas: christmas!

virgil: no! halloween!

virgil: *uses thomas’ phases to be all deep about his past n shit*

——

ep 27

thomas: guys! i got the call back!

patton: but wedding

roman: but call back

janus: i’m back bitch, ur morals are fucked

(logan: listen to meeeeee)

——

ep 28

thomas: tf was that dream

remus: hey bitch

virgil: y’all really just gonna keep letting the dark sides in?

——

ep 28

thomas:.....

roman:...... disney?

everyone: sure

also everyone: ......

——

ep 29

thomas: god the wedding sucked

patton: but like,, we did the right thing right??

thomas: idk ur my morality

janus: looks like back again bitches

——

(i would say i’m sorry but i’m really not lmao)

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #deceit sanders #janus sanders

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quousque · 6 years ago

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11 Tag

(Rules: Answer eleven questions, make eleven questions and tag eleven people)

Thanks @forgetting-how-to-breathe for tagging me!

What’s your favourite genre of music?

I like a lot of stuff, tbh, but my favorite is stuff I can sing along to. I listen to a lot of classic rock (first radio station I found when I moved to Missoula and I never changed it), and old country music (Kingston Trio, thanks mom)

What’s your favourite kind of book to read? (This doesn’t have to be restricted to genre answers)

I read a lot of fantasy books, but lately I’ve been gravitating towards informative nonfiction, like books on Roman/Greek history and culture, or books about specific topics (e.g. history of spinning, weaving, and fiber crafts).

Do you prefer TV series or films?

Series, because there’s so much more material for the fandom to work with, so there’s usually a greater variety and abundance of ships, headcanons, etc. And the fandoms stay more active for longer, because of the extended release of content.

Do you have a favourite place?

Interlochen, Michigan would have to be high up there. My grandparents have a cottage on a lake and my family visited every summer when I was a kid.

Do you have a fairly set day to day routine or do you fly be the seat of your pants?

A mix of both. I have a set routine for getting ready in the morning, and a set routine for getting ready for the next day (if I don’t pack everything I need for the next day the night before, I am 100% guaranteed to forget something AND be late). My going to bed routine is a mess, but better than it was. If one tiny thing in the sleep routine goes wrong, all of my routines fall apart and it takes weeks to put it back together. So I work really hard to safeguard my routines, but I end up flying by the seat of my pants a lot anyway.

What’s one thing you wish you could change? (About yourself, the world, the universe, whatever)

I would want to not have ADHD. If someone offered to snap their fingers and cure it instantly, literally reform my brain so it worked properly, I would say yes with no hesitation. It’s a debilitating disability that affects literally every aspect of my life, and is indirectly responsible for a lot of emotional and physical pain.

How would you describe your sense of style?

mix of form-fitting (ish) athletic wear because I do some form of sports 6 days a week, graphic tshirts from when I was dressing exclusively in loose, baggy men’s clothing, and beginning to branch out into more standard women’s clothes (for instance, I own one (1) pair of jeans. Sure they’re men’s skinny jeans, but they fit me better than any women’s jeans I’ve ever worn). The unifying factor is that everything I wear has POCKETS.

How would you describe the aesthetic of your living space? Is it different or the same from your goal aesthetic?

nonexistent, as I’m between places currently. But judging by my last place, the aesthetic is Workbench in the Corner, Knick-knacks on the Shelves, Lots of Stuff, and also Where is the Floor, Why is your Room Carpeted in Clothes and Piles of Paper?. I’ve been working really hard on not having a constant mess, and though no one would call me neat, I’ve improved a lot. Hopefully one day I’ll have a lot less stuff (keeping the knick-knacks tho), and I won’t leave a whole bunch of shit on the floor all the time.

Do you have any odd hobbies or skills? (Odd here can be defined in a broad sense, or in a “I’m the only one of my friends that knows how to__” kind of way)

I’m a fencer, which isn’t too common. I also like to construct costumes, but, like, out of random shit I find lying around and almost always last-minute. Last-minute costuming on the cheap is my jam. I’m also into storytelling, LARP/roleplaying (improv acting, even though I’ve never actually taken an improv class), and solving random problems by building something. I often see something and think “I could do that better” or “No one does this in a way that’s perfect for me, so I guess I will”. Thus, I’ve made my own shoes, sports bras, fencing chest protector, fencing test box socket adaptor, extra tall workbench so I can stand while I work, etc.

What is your dream job?

Maybe a therapist? Or an ADHD coach. Something that involves helping people, in a teaching kind of way, but where I’m providing the environment and coaching for them to figure it out themselves. I want to help people non-neurotypical people who struggle with things that other people don’t struggle with, because I know that struggle, I know how hard it is. And I’m pretty good at listening to people and making them feel understood, which is a skill I’d like to build on. I also want a job where I can set my own schedule, take large chunks of time off, leaves room for lots of hobbies, pays well enough, and is engaging so that there’s always a new problem to solve, but not so demanding that I end up dedicating all my time and energy to it.

Another dream job would be designing gear- for fencing, hiking/backpacking, travel, etc.

What would your dream home look like?

Small and easy to maintain, with a small work out area and a large workshop. Far away from traffic noise, with a nice view and a nice yard. Preferably next to open space. Walking distance from grocery stores, job, most places I’d need to go. Not more than 20 minute drive away from friends, work, etc. Any color except beige.

I’m tagging @olofahere , @terpsikeraunos , @persian-slipper , @freeformtarsier , @bee-fabulous , @punk-lucifer , @oddchelonian , @lost-in-pink , @shadowmaat, @aethersea , and @anexperimentallife !

Questions for y’all to answer:

1. Would you rather have ripped arms, or really jacked legs? Why?

2. If you could instantly become pretty good (like, won state high school championships good, not olympic good) at any sport or other activity, what would you choose?

3. Ideal living situation, in terms of people you’re living with. Alone? Nuclear family? Just significant other? Roommates? Platonic life partners? Three generations of family? Polycule? You and 500 cats?

4. If you could change one thing about your town/city/place of habitation, what would you change?

5. If your current country of residence were to decide to move its capitol, where do you think they should put it, and why?

6. What thing have you done this past week that you are most proud of?

7. What was the most confusing, perplexing, or befuddling thing that happened to you in the past week?

8. What are you most looking forward to in the coming week?

9. If you are in any fandoms, what is the fandom you are currently most active in? What do you like best about it? What would you change?

10. stupidest reason you’ve ever decided you like something?

11. A unicorn bewitches you such that every time you hear someone snap their fingers, you turn into a certain animal (and back when you hear another snap). What animal would you choose to turn into?

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mynameisdreartblog · 7 years ago

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Fish 1

Aries: Clownfish. God, wouldn’t it be so cool if, at a party, the piñata would just burst into a bunch of blood and guts instead of candy? Wow, how dark and grim of a concept is that? I bet you’ve never seen someone with a fucked-up imagination as much as me. I was born in the flesh mounds and the darkness embraced me. I’ll get my new idea pitched to Fox and they’ll air it right next to The Simpsons. I’m gonna be so damn famous with my original dark comedy with intense shock value. I don’t care about anyone’s feelings, aw yeah. This is how we make it in this brutal world where everyone prioritizes their feelings over facts: by showcasing the ugly truth of our current society on the big screen. You might say that I’m an ignoramus that lacks any semblance of self-awareness, but I say that you’re underestimating my ability to make the momentous connections that’ll blow the current consensus out of the water. One thing we all assumed to be true was that you’re staunchly against your argumentative opponent, but the truth is that you’re secretly just like them! I have no claims to back this up, but the sheer dramatism of such a statement makes it bound to have some form of truth within it. It seems as if y’all can’t handle my sheer intellectualism. I don’t blame you, ‘cause it takes a lot of mental effort to project this much.

Gemini: Cuttlefish. Have you ever thought about how much an asshole Batman is? I mean, the dude’s a bourgeois playboy who only accomplishes maintaining the status quo in his form of “justice”. Like, what a dick. Not only that, I also question the dude’s mental state. Are you gonna tell me that the person who, after witnessing his parents’ murder, decides that the best course of action is to dress up like a bat and kill people is a rational person? I think not. To be real here, I’m not even a big fan of Batman, I just think that it’s pretty obvious that this moral complexity to Batman’s actions should be discussed more, if it’s not already a hot topic in the fanbase. I grew up and thought that Bruce Wayne was a hero, and that I should emulate his way of thinking, until somebody called me out and then I realized that Batman is actually the perfect example of how helpful corporate philanthropy actually is: he thinks he’s aiding a population by using all of his fancy toys, but he only makes things worse as he doesn’t use his power to solve overarching issues affecting Gotham. Sure, he may defeat the Joker one time, but locking him up in an asylum only stops him temporarily; he doesn’t try to solve what caused the Joker to come into existence in the first place. Honestly, you have to be a little crazy as well if you work or contribute to asylum.

Scorpio: Anglerfish. Recently, there’s been a phenomenon of battle royale games taking over the market and getting into the facet of every teenager’s life. It’s more like a disease than a craze at this point. Pretty much every dork at your school comes, with snot dripping down their face, asking you whether or not you play Fortnite or whatever it’s called. I think there’s some activism that needs to be taken against this wave of crap flooding the ever-so-precious video game market. Since I have literally nothing else to do with my life but become over-concerned with the state of video games, I guess I should take this up as a noble cause. It is now decided, by the order of gaming, that I must defend video games against themselves. But wait a minute, there’s a dark and authoritative presence that looms over us. It’s not too much of a hunch to believe that it seeks to halt us in our plans to stop PUBG or whatever. Oh no, how dare they put gaming culture at risk? Don’t they know how important preserving the integrity of gaming culture is to us? Do you feel something grab you from behind? Oh God, it’s your parents, and they’re very concerned about our sincere passion for criticizing battle royale games. They say it’s been destroying our lives, but I disagree, for it’s this genre of games that’re destroying the lives of players! And… I can’t LARP like this anymore; screw this.

Capricorn: Seahorse. A furred creature shows glimpses of itself when you make haste for your car in the exposed garage. It occasionally pops out the corner of your eye and you confuse it for a stray cat. After first sighting it, you start developing more hallucinations (well, more than usual): ones of greater and deranged variety. It creeps up ever so subtly in the unchecked rooms you glance past while grabbing a bite to eat. There’s nothing there, but it doesn’t feel that way. The sink was left running last night. It goes on like this for nine days. [...] You decided, one day, that you’re sick of these illusion and the consistent sound of running faucets; guess it’s time to actively look for trouble now. You take up your rifle and you search for it in your yard: where you think you last saw it. [...] To your dismay, it never showed its face that night. This morning however, a woman dressed in olden garbs ran down your driveway, with a look of absolute fear on her face. She was squealing at you to move, but move from what exactly? We could be interpreting this situation wrongly, because, for all we know, she may’ve been referencing what’s been boggling your mind for the last nine. It’s irresponsible of you to act like this current situation had nothing to do with you. You’re the one who went into your yard, with a loaded gun, to try and hunt down something that may or may not exist. She’s probably terrified of you more than anything. [...] It lingers.

#zodiaccupuncture #Aries #Gemini #Scorpio #Capricorn #zodiac #horoscope

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amanda-teaches · 7 years ago

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LARP and the Real Girls

Summary: What would Episode 8x11- LARP and the Real Girl have been like with another cop around to catch Dean’s eye?

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 8745 (I know, I know. Blame the wordy SPN writers).

Warnings: Canon-level violence, some swearing, near-death experience/angst

A/N: This is my first time doing an episode rewrite and it’s of the Season 8 episode: LARP and the Real Girl for @wi-deangirl77’s Fave SPN Episode challenge. It’s an exact rewrite of the episode with a reader character added in, so that’s why it’s so long. I hope y’all like my twist on it! Caveat: much of the dialogue in this fic was taken directly from the script. All credit goes to the Supernatural writers!

Before you’d worked in Farmington Hills, Michigan, you’d been a detective in New York City. If anyone had asked, you would’ve sworn you’d seen it all- every grisly way to murder someone known to man. But this, this one was new.

Even to you.

Ed Nelson, a seemingly mild-mannered nerd of an insurance-claims adjuster had literally been torn apart - in his own bedroom. You and your boss, Sheriff Jake Miller, had been the first on scene, but that hadn’t lasted for long. Not after the arrival of two incredibly sexy FBI agents.

You were immediately on guard. “So, Agents Taggart and Rosewood, what exactly brings the two of you to our small-town crime scene?”

“Now, hold up there, Y/N,” Sheriff Miller drawled out. “I’m sure these boys just want to help. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir,” the taller one, Agent Taggart, said respectfully. “We’re just here to help.”

You snorted derisively. “Yeah, I bet.”

The slightly shorter, yet still towering man, let out a quiet chuckle under his breath. When you shot him a glare, he had the gall to wink at you.

“And, you can call us Sam and Dean,” Agent Taggart continued, before he turned to your boss. “So, Sheriff, how about that tour I asked for?”

“He can do that,” you answered qucikly. “But, only if I keep your partner company while he does.”

“I work better on my own,” Dean replied, that cocky smile still gracing his face.

“Well, good for you, Agent, but as long as you’re in my crime scene, you’re going to be staying with me. Got it?”

His smile widened as he dropped his gaze to the ground. “Whatever you say, Officer.”

Sam and the Sheriff took off to the bedroom, while you followed Dean into the kitchen. You paused for just a second to admire the way he walked, his legs slightly bowed in the middle, before you noticed the strange device he was holding. It had a long antenna and bright flashing lights on it.

“What in the world is that thing?”

He looked back at you for a brief moment before answering. “Oh this? It’s just one of those high-tech FBI things.”

You laughed softly as a smile spread across your face. “High-tech, FBI things, huh? What does it do?”

“It measures, um, EMF.”

“Like from thunderstorms?”

“Yeah,” he said, agreeing a little too easily. “Thunderstorms.”

“Mmhmm….” you whispered, moving to stand by him. “And, that’s relevant how?”

“It’s, uh, it’s not,” he stammered, quickly closing the device and shoving it back into his suit pocket. “Let’s go meet the others.”

“Whatever you say,” you whispered under your breath as you followed him out the room. That was a little weird.

As you joined Sam and Sheriff Miller in the victim’s bedroom, you saw Dean discreetly shake his head at his partner, but you tore your attention away from them to listen to your boss share what he’d learned about the victim’s last call with Lance Jacobsen. “The two of them talked together for 15 minutes, and then Lance sent Ed here all kinds of angry texts. Some of them were your typical threat stuff, but some were a little weird.”

“Weird how?” Sam asked.

“Like, uh... ‘You shall bleed for your crimes against us,’ followed by the emoticon of a skull. And, uh, this beauty – ‘I am a mage. I will destroy you.’ These kids today with their texting and murder. My men just brought Lance into the station for questioning.

Sam started to open his mouth to speak, but you beat him to it. “Then, let’s get down there and talk to him.” You started to walk towards the door before turning back to the men. “You coming, Agents?”

Dean smiled again, making your heart instinctively skip a beat. “Oh, we wouldn’t miss it for the world, Officer.”

Once you’d made it back to the station’s interrogation room, you let Sam and Dean take charge. If the FBI agents so badly wanted to run this case, then you’d let them. That was, until the point where they inevitably messed up and you had to take over.

Like, right about now, when your suspect was blubbering all over your interrogation table.

“Lance?” Dean asked, in a gruff attempt to calm him down. “Lance, just – just breathe. Just breathe. You're fine.”

“We just need to ask you a few questions,” Sam added. “Try to calm down.”

You smiled comfortingly at Lance as he somehow managed to take a deep breath and wipe his eyes, but you mostly stayed quiet while Sam and Dean questioned him about his texts.

“No,” Lance yelled antsily. “I mean, they were from me, but they weren't from me me!”

Dean frowned at him while you struggled to hold in your laugh. “Did you really think that sentence was gonna clear things up?”

“I'm sorry,” Lance said with a sigh. “This is all a big misunderstanding. Those text messages were from Greyfox the Mystic to Thargrim the Difficult.” When he noticed the confused looks on your faces, he elaborated. “Our characters in Moondoor. Moondoor is a game that Ed and I play. We're LARPers. Live-action role-playing?”

“Right,” Dean muttered. “LARPing. Good times.”

“We play Moondoor every other weekend at Heritage Park. All the info about it is on our website.”

You suddenly stood up from where you had been leaning against the wall. “Wait a second. Did you say Moondoor?”

“Uh...yes,” Lance whispered, clearly a little freaked out by your abrupt interest.

“Your queen at this Moondoor wouldn’t happen to be Carrie Heinlein, would it?”

Lance visibly brightened at the sound of her name. “Why, yes! That’s our beloved queen.”

Your heart dropped. “Dammit,” you whispered before fleeing the room without another word.

Once you’d made it out into the hallway, you pulled out the phone and speed dialed your friend’s number as fast as you could. “Carrie, it’s me. Call me as soon as you get this please. It’s important. Seriously important.”

“Everything okay?” Dean asked as he closed the interrogation room door to join you in the hallway. “You seemed pretty upset just now.”

“It’s fine,” you mumbled. You started to wave him off but then reconsidered. “It’s just, Carrie, the queen, she’s my roommate and best friend. I knew she did this Moondoor thing on the weekends, but I didn’t know exactly what it was all about.” You paused for a second, a hitch coming into your throat. “If she really knew the victim, she’s going to be devastated.”

Dean reached out and placed a gentle hand on your arm. “Y/N, I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” you said quietly. “It’s just, if she knew these guys, I want to be the one to tell her about Ed’s death before anyone else can. I owe her that.”

As you felt Dean squeeze your arm gently, you looked down at his hand and then back into his warm, comforting eyes. There was just something about him, something different, something magnetizing.

FBI agent or not, he was impossible to resist.

Just as you opened your mouth to speak, Sam exited the interrogation room, breaking the two of you apart. “You two okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” you muttered, trying to wet your suddenly dry mouth. “What now, Agents?”

“Let's check out the Moondoor website,” Sam said. “See if Lance's story checks out.”

Dean cleared his throat and looked away from you quickly. “Good plan, Sammy. Let’s do that.”

“Okay…” Sam whispered hesitantly, clearly sensing the strange vibe that hung between you and Dean. “Let’s, uh, let’s go then.”

You all but ran to your desk computer and pulled up the Moondoor website. Sam and Dean took up positions on either side of you, with Dean leaning just a little too close for comfort. “So, uh, here it is.”

Sam leaned down to read over your shoulder. "Welcome to Moondoor, Michigan's largest LARPing game."

Dean scoffed slightly, his breath right next to your ear, sending shivers down your body. “And I thought we needed to get out more.”

You clicked on the picture gallery, scrolling through until you found pictures of Lance at last night’s feast.

“There's our guy,” Sam stated.

“I guess that officially means he couldn’t have killed Ed,” you mumbled, scrolling through a few more pictures.

“Huh,” Dean chucked. “It actually looks kind of awesome.”

Sam shot Dean a look, but you couldn’t help but agree. Carrie had been begging you to join Moondoor for months, but you’d never had the time. Looking at the pictures now, you kind of regretted that choice.

“All right, there's a video,” Sam said. “Let’s watch it.”

You pulled it up and let it play, pausing only when it got to an image of your roommate.

Dean stared at the screen in disbelief. “Wait, is that…”

“Yeah,” Sam whispered. “It’s Charlie.”

“Charlie?” you echoed incredulously. “No, no, that’s my roommate. That’s Carrie.”

Dean and Sam shared another look before turning back to you. “Y/N, I think we need to have a little talk.”

“Wait just one second,” you yelled as you paced back and forth in the small break room that was the only place in the entire station where the three of you could have some privacy. “You’re saying Carrie’s real name is Charlie?”

Sam shrugged slightly. “Well, that’s not technically her real name, but that was her name when we worked our case with her.”

“I don’t believe this!”

“Well, it’s true, Y/N, whether you like it or not,” Dean said, a bit of an edge coming into his voice. “Charlie helped us out with a case about a year ago and then she disappeared. I guess she came here.”

“Why would she lie to me? I’m her best friend!”

“It’s complicated,” Dean admitted. “The case we worked together was...unusual. After it was over, Charlie couldn’t use her name anymore.”

“So, what? She’s like in witness protection or something?”

Sam smiled and flashed Dean a knowing look. “Something like that.”

Before you could ask them what the hell they meant by that, Sheriff Miller burst in the room. “Y/N, Agents, come quick! It’s Lance. He’s dead.”

By the time you, Sam, and Dean had seen the body and watched the surveillance video, it had become abundantly clear that the only thing that connected these two deaths was Moondoor and the strange tree tattoo on both of the victims’ arms. There was only one course of action left to take: head to Moondoor and talk to Carrie, or Charlie, or whatever the hell her name was.

The three of you arrived at the Moondoor Camp by late morning. You’d been there a few times before, but only ever briefly and with Carrie. Darn it, Charlie.

By all outward appearances, it was like your basic Renaissance fair, except all of the people there were pretending that they actually lived in Medieval times. Dozens of people were milling around, but your attention was drawn to a man standing in front of the stocks. You rolled your eyes once you recognized him. “Gerry…”

Dean looked over at you and then back at the man standing in front of an imprisoned Shadow Orc. “What, you know that guy?”

“I guess you could say that. He tries to pick me up every time I’m here. Fancies himself a real ladies man.”

Dean laughed. “He’s not, I assume?”

“You assume correctly,” you agreed with a soft smile, earning another heart-stopping wink from Dean.

After concluding his business, Gerry began to walk away, but Dean stopped him. “Excuse me. Hi. Uh, you are a LARPer, yeah?”

“I prefer the term ‘interactive literaturist,’” Gerry said before he noticed you. “Ah, Lady Y/N! You have returned.”

You frowned. “Hi, Gerry.”

Gerry flourished his hands dramatically. “I do not know this Gerry of who you speak. My name is Boltar the Furious!”

You rolled your eyes while Dean continued. “Right. Uh, I’m Special Agent Rosewood. This is special Agent Taggart.”

“Hold!” Gerry yelled. He pulled down the hood of his costume and dropped the pomp and circumstance in his voice. “Um, guys, we're not doing the whole genre-mash-up thing this weekend. We only do that every third month.”

“It’s not a genre mash-up, Gerry,” you groaned. “This is serious police business. We need to see Carrie.”

“Serious police business?” Gerry scoffed. “With those fake badges?”

“These aren't fake badges,” Sam said quickly.

Gerry smiled smugly. “Uh, yeah, they are, and they're very good, but, um, well, the I.D. number shifted to 10 digits with, uh, two letters mixed in at the end of the year, and, uh, the seal's from last month. Really good work.”

You looked questioningly at Dean as Gerry continued. “It’s just – it’s a tournament weekend, okay guys, so you got to follow the rules. If there's no rules – chaos. Resume!” he yelled, before pulling his hood back on. “If you would like to join the army of Moons, the queen is always on the lookout for new squires.”

“Yes,” Dean said. “Right. Uh, we would like to see your queen now, please.”

“Well, the queen's calendar is booked up months in advance. But if you wish to witness what's in store for you in her army, her highness is overseeing new squires on the pitch as we speak.”

Sam and Dean nodded and started to walk away, but you grabbed their arms and pulled them aside. “Woah, woah, woah, Agents. Is what he said true? Are those fake badges?”

Sam looked down at the ground while Dean smiled at you sheepishly. “Uh, kinda, but we’ll explain everything, I swear.”

“I can’t believe this!” you yelled. “Did you know I could arrest the both of you right now for impersonating an FBI agent?”

“We know,” Dean said, holding up his hands. “But, just give us a chance to explain, please. I promise, once we find Charlie, everything will make sense.”

“It better,” you growled. “Or I’m going to haul the both of you right back down to the station, this time, in cuffs.”

You led the way up to the practice field where Charlie was overseeing the swordfighting. You recognized her right away, easily defeating all of the other squires with her favorite sword, but you didn’t make a move towards her. A part of you wanted to cheer for her, but, with the uncertain place that everything stood, you didn’t really know if you should.

So, instead, you, Sam, and Dean decided to wait by the edge of the field for Charlie to finish her fight. As soon as she defeated her opponent and removed her helmet, the crowd broke into cheers.

She began to address the crowd about the missing men. In the middle of her address, she spotted you and flashed a smile, but, the second she saw Sam and Dean, her face fell. “Oh, blerg,” she muttered before turning back to the crowd. “Uh... The queen needs some royal ‘we’ time. Talk amongst thyselves.”

Charlie stalked away to her tent, signaling you to follow her, but you stopped when Dean bent down to pick up the foam sword. “Nice balance,” he muttered in awe.

“Dean!” you chastigized, drawing his attention. “Two dead men, remember?”

“Right,” he whispered, still holding onto the sword. “Let’s go.”

Once you reached the tent, Charlie turned to you with a plastered-on smile. “Y/N! What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you, Carrie, or should I call you Charlie?”

“So, they told you,” she moaned as she sent Sam and Dean a glare.

“Yeah, they told me. Why didn’t you?! I thought we were best friends.”

“We are, Y/N! That’s why I couldn’t tell you. It’s...it’s…it’s...”

“Complicated. I know, I know.”

“It’s way more than complicated! Those two,” she yelled, gesturing at Sam and Dean, “are the reason I had to become Carrie Heinlein. They killed Charlie Bradbury and now they’ve killed this identity too.”

You started to say something, but you were lost. “Wait what?”

Charlie turned to glare at Sam and Dean, her hands on her hips. “I guess you didn’t tell her everything.”

“No,” Dean said with a sheepish smile. “We figured we’d leave that to you.”

“Would someone just tell me?!” you exploded before the energy suddenly drained out of you, making you plop down into a nearby chair.

Charlie sat down in front of you, a look of compassion on her face. “Y/N, these two aren’t actually FBI agents.”

“Well, I knew that much. Who are they?”

“They’re monster hunters.”

You dropped your jaw. “They’re what?”

“Monster hunters. And, if they’re here, that means monsters are here.” She turned to face Sam and Dean. “Why do I have such bad luck? What am I – some kind of monster magnet? Is there such a thing as a monster magnet? You know what? Don't answer that. I don't care. What I care about is not getting my other arm broken... or dying.”

“I’m so confused…” you whispered.

“Well, you won’t be for long,” Charlie vowed. “Because we’re leaving before these two get us wrapped up in whatever monster hunt they’re on. I'm dropping my sword and walking off the stage, bitches. Have fun storming the castle.”

“Charlie. Charlie!” Dean yelled, drawing her attention. “You can’t leave. Neither of you can. Greyfox and Thargrim – uh, Ed and Lance – they're not missing. They're dead.”

Charlie turned to look at you, and, despite the lies, your heart went out to your best friend. “They’re right, Charlie. I have no idea what the hell is going on, but I do know this: two men are dead and it’s my job to catch their killer. I need help.” You stopped and looked at Sam and Dean. “From all of you.”

“Drawn and quartered and bleeding out?” Charlie shuddered at the table the four of you were sitting around. “Please stop talking again. So what do you think did this?

Dean frowned. “Well, aside from the, uh, mark, and them both being LARPers, there's really not much else to go on.”

Charlie picked up the picture of the tree symbol on the victims’ arms. “Wait, I've seen this before. It's a Celtic magic symbol. At least it was in my favorite video game. Does that help? Can Y/N and I go now?”

Sam shook his head. “It's a start, but no. Um, listen. What can you tell us about Ed and Lance?”

Charlie shrugged. “Good guys. Two of the best members of the queen's ever-shrinking army.”

"‘Ever-shrinking’?" you asked.

Charlie nodded. “My kingdom has had a lot of bad luck lately, probably 'cause of me, but maybe it's tied to this. A month ago, one of my guys had both her ankles broken before battle. Before that, I had three people have hospital-worthy accidents while at home. You think there's any connection there?”

You and Dean looked at each other and shared a subtle nod while Sam continued the questioning. “Did they have any enemies in common?”

“In real life? No. Everyone gets along famously. In the game, though…” Charlie got up and walked over to the map of Moondoor. “...they had tons of enemies. Red reps the followers of the Moon – my peeps. Green's for Elves, blue's for Warriors of Yesteryear, and black's for Shadow Orcs – total d-bags. This weekend is the Battle of the Kingdoms to see who wears the Forever Crown. This weekend, each faction is definitely an enemy of me and mine.”

Dean stared at the board in excitement. “You know, if you, uh, move your archers back and your broadswordsmen to the west...

Charlie stared where he was gesturing, her excitement growing to match his. “Huh. Fight the warriors.”

“Yep.”

“Hey, good call.”

“Thanks,” Dean said with a smile.

“What about the southern wall?”

“Guys!” you and Sam yelled at the same time. “A little focus please?”

“Right. Sorry,” Dean said, while Charlie looked down sheepishly.

Sam took over the talking while Dean and Charlie continued to quietly move the figures around on the map. “So maybe, uh, someone from one of the other kingdoms got ahold of real magic and started using it to weaken your army.”

“But why not just come after me?” Charlie asked. “And why the escalation?”

“We don’t know,” you responded. “That’s what we need to find out.”

“And by we,” Dean announced, “you mean Sam and me. We will canvass the kingdoms. The two of you should get out of here. We don't want you to get hurt.”

“Whoa, wait,” Sam said, holding up his hand. “Charlie knows Moondoor a lot better than we do. We need her. And, Y/N’s a cop. She could help.”

“Sam, I think we can take care of a bunch of accountants with foam swords.”

“We need all the help we can get, Dean,” Sam argued back. “People are dying.”

“My point,” Dean stressed, “which is usually yours, is that they should get somewhere safe and get back to a normal life.”

You decided to push back. “Hey, wait just a minute, Dean. This is my case. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I want to leave,” Charlie admitted, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Thank you,” Dean announced triumphantly.

“Wait second, Winchester. I want to leave, but the queen, she has to stay. I mean, Sam is right. People are dying. That can't happen on my watch. And you know what? I am tired of running. I like my life here.” She moved to stand by you. “I like my life with Y/N. I'm gonna stay and fight for it.”

You smiled gratefully at her as Sam’s phone rang. He spoke briefly on it before hanging up. “So, the toxicology report came back on Lance. Nothing. But the medical examiner said his body showed clear signs that he was killed by belladonna.”

“The porn star?” Dean and Charlie asked simultaneously.

“No, not the porn star,” you groaned with a roll of your eyes.

“The poison,” Sam added.

“Oh,” Dean and Charlie said, again shrugging simultaneously.

You rolled your eyes even harder this time as Sam continued. “Um, however, they couldn't find a trace of it in his system.”

Dean nodded. “Just like they couldn't find ropes in Ed's apartment.”

Sam turned to look at Charlie. “Charlie, I'm gonna need to borrow your laptop.”

Charlie shook her head. “There are no laptops in Moondoor.”

“I knew I didn’t join this thing for a reason,” you muttered.

“What?” Charlie yelled. “There are rules.” She sent a wink your way. “But there is a tech tent four tents down.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “How about you guys go canvas, and I'll dig into these accidents and this mark?”

“Okay. I'm gonna need the full wiki on where you guys have been. But first,” she added, turning to Dean and you, “you're gonna have to ditch the suits if you're gonna walk and talk with the queen.

A little less than half an hour later, you were standing in a small alcove off of Charlie’s main tent, adjusting the pleats on your long, medieval dress. “Why does Charlie get to wear pants but I have to wear a dress?” you grumbled.

You took a deep breath before walking back out into the main room where Dean and Charlie were waiting. Dean had his back to you, but he still took your breath away in his outfit.

His form-fitting pants hugged his lean legs, highlighting the muscles he built up from years of physical activity, or hunting as you’d learned. Your eyes travelled up his toned, tunic-covered back and swept over the chainmail and arm guards that somehow made him seem even more ruggedly handsome.

You let out a labored breath as you continued to stare at him. Boy, were you in trouble here….

Before you could think anything else, Charlie noticed you and smiled. “Y/N, good! You’re ready.”

Dean turned to meet your eyes and you could hear him breathe out a strangled wow the moment he saw you. Well, at least you were having just as much of an effect on him as he had on you.

You flashed him a smile. “Hey, Dean. Nice outfit.”

“Right back at you,” he said with a grin.

Charlie moved her gaze between the two of you with a sly smile and a raise of her eyebrow. “Wow, you two, get a room!”

“CHARLIE!” you yelled, while Dean smiled and looked down with a blush. “What the hell?!”

“Oh, come on, like it wasn’t obvious,” she mumbled under her breath.

You shook your head and gave her a pointed glare as the two of you followed Dean out of the tent. Dean stopped briefly to pick up a wooden sword before the three of you continued on with Charlie as your guide.

You hung back a little during the walk, scanning the crowd as you listened to Dean and Charlie catch up. You kept your face neutral, smiling only when you overheard Dean call Charlie a hero. You knew that even though the only thing you knew for sure about Dean was that he had lied to you, you instinctively trusted that he was a good man. Moments like this just reinforced that.

Charlie stopped frequently on her way around the camp, asking people here and there if they recognized the picture of the tree symbol. She seemed to be hitting all the major groups: the followers of the Moon, the elves, and the warriors. The only group she hadn’t asked were the Shadow Orcs.

“The Shadow Orcs,” Charlie said. “Last group on the list, impossible to find.”

“Wait,” Dean said, suddenly remembering something. “I know where we can find one. We met him on the way in, Y/N, remember? The guy in the stocks.”

“Yeah,” you answered with a smile. “The guy with the fake teeth.”

Charlie grinned right along with you. “Perfect. Maybe he can tell us what the frack this thing is.”

You, Dean, and Charlie took off towards the stocks where the Shadow Orc, Monty, was still locked up. “Death to the queen! Death to the usurper!” he yelled forcefully.

Dean drew his wooden sword and hit the stocks with it, earning a growl and a “Death to her manservant!” from the Orc and a surprised look from Charlie.

“What?” Dean asked, looking at Charlie. “Well, there's no laptops in Moondoor, there's no Geneva Convention, either.”

“I’m with Dean,” you agreed with a nod, leading him to flash Charlie a self-satisfied smile before he turned back to Monty and held out the picture of the tree symbol. “Hey. Have you seen this?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said quickly before realizing what he’d said and trying to backpedal. “No. No, I haven't seen it.”

Dean immediately put his sword under Monty’s chin, causing Monty to let out a startled cry. You leaned down and looked him right in the eye, offering him a small smile. “Hey, I’d answer his questions if I were you. He doesn’t exactly respond well to being lied to.”

“Okay,” Monty yelled in a panic. “It's the Shadow King's family crest.” Then, he remembered his role, getting his Shadow Orc bravado back. “You'll never find him in the Black Hills.”

Dean turned to Charlie. “Black Hills?”

“The forest behind the playground. Come on,” she answered, tapping Dean on the arm before walking away. You threw Monty a whispered ‘thank you’ before you and Dean rushed to follow her into the forest.

Once you were partway down the path, Gerry, the man who had helped you when you’d first arrived rushed over to the three.

“My queen. There you are. I've been searching everywhere for you.” He turned and looked at you with another appraising smile. “Ah, Lady Y/N. It brings me pleasure to see that you have decided to stick around.”

“I’m sure it does, Gerry,” you muttered indifferently.

“The name is Boltar the Furious!” he shouted angrily before he realized who he was talking to. He paused to regain his composure and turned back to Charlie, nodding his head in Dean’s direction. “Has this... oaf attempted to harm you with his blasphemous metalworks?”

Charlie frowned and brushed him off. “Boltar, he's with me. This is my new... handmaiden. We seek an audience with the Shadow King.”

Gerry dropped his mouth and shook his head in surprise. “Uh, these hills are not safe. I beseech you, my queen, you should return to camp.”

Dean nodded and turned to face Charlie formally. “He's right... your worshipfulness. Uh, may I have a moment before you take your leavings?”

Charlie agreed and the three of you walked away from Gerry so Dean could drop the act. “Handmaiden?”

“He was suspicious. I panicked,” Charlie insisted as you broke into laughter.

With a long sigh, Dean ignored you and kept right on talking to Charlie. “All right, look,” he growled. “You take my phone. Find Sam. Y/N and I will find the shadow dorks.”

“But I can help!” Charlie assured.

“Yeah, you are helping by finding Sam. Y/N and I will handle this. Now, go.”

You waited for Charlie to walk away before you and Dean turned back to Gerry. Dean flashed him a smile. “Lead the way to the Orcs, Bolty.”

Gerry frowned. “Speak when spoken to, handmaiden.”

“Shut up, Gerry,” you snapped, earning a laugh from Dean and a grimace from Gerry. “Just take us to the Orcs.”

An hour later, you, Dean, and Gerry were on your way back to camp, having made no progress in your search for the Shadow Orcs.

“Well, that was a bust,” Dean groaned. “You sure the Shadow Orcs are even out there?”

“For a handmaiden, you certainly ask many questions,” Gerry chided. “Yes, I am positive. They're just very good at hiding themselves.”

“So, what do we do now?” you asked, brushing the forest dirt off of your dress.

Gerry smiled triumphantly. “A plan has sprung to mind that will draw the Shadow King to us. We shall take the Shadow Orc held in stock, offer him up as a prisoner exchange.”

Dean grinned. “Draw him out and beat him down. I like your style, Boltar.”

“Y/N and I shall retrieve the prisoner. You,” he added, gesturing at Dean, “tend to the queen's laundry and chamber pots, and then meet us back here.”

“Um,” you interjected, holding up your hand, “I think I’ll stick with Dean.”

Gerry frowned. “If you must,” he acquiesced before walking away just as Sam was walking up.

“Nice outfit,” Sam remarked with a laugh as he took in Dean’s costume.

“You love it.”

Sam turned to smile at you. “Y/N, you look beautiful.”

“Why, thank you, Sam,” you replied with a blush.

Dean immediately frowned and stepped closer to you. “Stop flirting and get on with it, Sammy.”

“Right,” Sam said, smiling and backing off. “Well, while you were, uh, playing dress-up, I found out that the mark…”

“Belongs to the Shadow Orcs,” Dean finished with a smile.

“Yeah. And they're using fairy magic.”

“What, like real fairy magic?” you asked. “Are you guys serious?”

“Deadly,” Sam answered. “Whoever gets marked with this ‘Tree of Pain’ gets magically ganked.”

“Oh my gosh...” you whispered, holding your head in pain. “I’m gonna need a serious drink when this is all over.”

Dean placed a comforting hand on your shoulder before turning back to Sam. “All right, how do we stop it?”

“Find whoever cast the spell, and take them out. No more whammy, no more marks. No more marks, no more dead bodies.”

“Okay, well, perfect,” Dean announced. “Our, uh, pal, Boltar the chatty, is getting the, uh, Shadow Orc prisoner. We're gonna do a little prisoner exchange, try to draw the king out of hiding.” He stopped to smile. “It was my idea.”

“Yeah, sure it was,” you scoffed, earning a surprised glare from Dean.

Sam, on the other hand, ignored your comment and looked back and forth between the two of you, as if only just realizing that someone was missing. “Where's Charlie?”

“What’re you talking about?” you asked, suddenly alarmed. “Isn’t she with you?”

“She was with you.”

Dean shook his head emphatically. “No, I sent her to you.” Noticing Sam’s blank expression, he began to walk around frantically, calling out for your friend. “Charlie? Your highness?”

He checked her tent before turning back to Sam. “You know what – she's got my phone. Try it.”

Sam pulled out his phone and pressed a button, shaking his head when there was no answer.

“Well, then where the hell is she?” Dean yelled, looking at you with a worried expression.

What had happened to Charlie?

Gerry and Monty the Orc had rounded up some flashlights in exchange for joining your search through the forest for Charlie. Gerry, knowing the terrain, led the way, while Monty, Dean, Sam, and you followed.

“I swear, if anything's happened to her…” Dean declared threateningly.

“It’ll be okay,” you whispered to him. “She’s strong. She’ll be okay.” Without thinking, you reached out and grabbed his hand for comfort. He looked down at it in surprise, but, before you could rethink your decision and pull your hand away, he returned your squeeze, interlacing his fingers with yours.

You were too startled to do anything more than put one foot in front of the other as Sam took over the talking. “Dude, we checked all the tents. We'll talk to these guys. We'll find her.”

As Gerry and the others stopped in a small clearing, Dean released your hand and straightened up. He opened his mouth to speak until he was interrupted by Monty, the Shadow Orc, cawing like a bird.

“Uh...what is he doing?” you asked softly, but before anyone could answer, similar bird calls echoed back through the trees and three Shadow Orcs stepped into the clearing.

“Well, that answers that question,” Dean muttered with a laugh as Gerry took the lead with the questioning.

“Greetings, heretics.”

“You should kneel before me, cur,” snapped the Orc with the Tree of Pain crest on his tunic.

Dean stepped forward, clearly growing annoyed with the play-acting. “All right, why don't you let me...”

“Silence!” Gerry yelled, making Dean stop in surprise. “Now, before we exchange, a few announcements.” Gerry dropped his exaggerated voice as the Orc removed his fake teeth. “Um, there is a peewee-league soccer playoff game tomorrow on the alpha field. We don't want to freak out the mundanes, so we got to move the Battle of Kingdoms to the beta field.”

“Seriously, Gerry!” you yelled. “My best friend is missing! Could you focus?!”

“All right. That's it,” Dean growled, drawing his gun. “You know what? I'm gonna do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Dean, don't,” Sam warned.

“What?”

“Come on...” he pleaded.

Dean frowned, clearly past annoyance. “No, I'm –”

Gerry stepped forward to diffuse the situation, ignoring your signal to stay out of it. “I told you there are –”

“Shut up,” Dean snapped before stepping forward and pointing his gun at the Orc. “All right. I need real answers. This here is a real gun, see?”

To emphasize his point, Dean shot at the ground.

“Whoa! Whoa!” the Orc cried, holding up his hands. “Hold! Hold! Geez!”

You stepped up and put your hand on Dean’s back. “Okay, Dean, I think he gets the point.”

Dean lowered his gun slightly but kept his eyes on the Orc. “Now, start talking. Where's the queen?!”

“I don't know!”

“Yeah, well, your little family crest there tells a different story, pal.”

The Orc looked down at his shirt in disbelief. “This?”

“Yeah,” Dean said sarcastically. “That.”

You stepped forward, ignoring the appreciative stares from the Orcs as you did. Dean, on the other hand, growled at them in warning. “Where did you get the design for that crest?”

“Uh, I got sick last month after this thing just appeared on my arm. I thought it looked really cool, so I turned it into my family crest. I mean, after my dermatologist said it wasn't malignant.”

Sam stepped forward to join the two of you. “Dean, he's not our guy. He's just another vic.”

The Orc nodded vigorously. “My name is Max Hilby. I'm an attorney. I have no idea where the queen is, but if you let me go right now, I won't press charges. I promise. Um…” He paused to take of his fake ears and hold them out to Dean. “Here. Uh, take them. Please.”

“That won’t be necessary,” you replied. “You can leave now. This is official police business.”

When the Orcs hesitated, Dean waved his gun to the side. “Go. Go! Go!”

The three Orcs took off running and you and Dean turned to face Sam, Gerry, and Monty. Monty took out his fake teeth, his face falling when he met your eyes. “Is the queen really in danger?”

Dean nodded, leading Monty to straighten up with resolve. “Okay, we got – there was something odd down by the creek. It's this weird tent. It's not one of ours. It's kind of creepy.”

“Why are you being so helpful all of a sudden?” Sam asked.

“Look, I harbor an epic crush on the queen,” Monty admitted. “Maybe you could put in a good word for me when you find her.”

“I don't think you're her type,” Dean said with a smile as you laughed in agreement.

“What?” Monty asked, clearly confused. “You mean she's not into Orcs?”

You rolled your eyes and drew his focus back in. “Monty, this creepy tent you mentioned. Where exactly is it?”

A few minutes later, you, Dean, and Sam, had ditched Monty and were well on your way to the tent. Unfortunately, unlike Monty, Gerry wasn’t so easily deterred.

Dean glanced back at him, a frustrated look on his face. “Why don't you take off, Bolty? We got it from here.”

“Yeah,” you added. “We can handle this.”

“A handmaiden and a time traveler rescue the queen? I think not, kind lady.”

Sam grimaced. “Look, this isn't a game, Boltar. The queen, our friend, is in real danger. You could get hurt.”

“I will not leave my queen in peril!” Gerry announced, but, before you could argue any further, the four of you arrived at the tent: too late to turn back now.

Dean and Sam pushed the flap aside and entered the tent quickly, leading the way with their guns drawn. You were expecting to see Charlie tied up, or worse, but you definitely weren’t expecting what you saw: Charlie sitting on the bed, full-on making out with her captor.

Dean loudly cleared his throat, breaking them apart.

“Dudes. If the tent is rockin', don't come a-knockin'.”

You stepped forward. “Charlie! You’re hooking up?! What? We thought you were in danger.”

“I was,” Charlie insisted as her companion got to her feet.

“No, it's him! My master! Run!”

“What are you talking about…” you whispered as the three of you turned back to look at Gerry, who was removing his hood. Too slowly, you realized what the woman meant: Gerry was the one behind all of this.

Dean and Sam raised their guns, but Gerry acted faster. “No guns in Moondoor, gentlemen. Gilda, if you please?”

The woman’s face fell, but she quickly moved her hand, turning the guns into feathers that fell to the ground.

Dean lifted his hands up and moved to step in front of you. “Well, now what, Gerry?”

Gerry’s face scrunched up in anger. “My name is Boltar the Furious! My plan was, after getting rid of all of my competition, to win the battle tomorrow, convincing the queen that I should be her king.”

Charlie sighed and rolled her eyes before looking at Gilda.

“But then Y/N and you two idiots showed up, and I was forced to improvise. Rescue the damsel in distress from Orcs, become king, kill you both – that'll work, too.”

“What about me, Boltar?” you asked, stepping past Dean to turn on the charm. “You gonna kill me too?”

“I could never do that, Y/N. I’ll just wipe your memory, right along with the queen’s. Then, you can return to Moondoor at our side! Every king needs a mistress.”

“Ew, gross…” Charlie muttered as Dean grabbed you and pushed you back behind him.

“You can’t have her,” he growled menacingly.

“You won’t have much of a say when you’re dead, now, will you, handmaiden?”

Dean glared and stepped forward, but Sam stopped him with a raised hand. “So why did you go from hobbling to murder?”

Gerry refocused his attention, flashing back to his plan. “Greyfox and Thargrim became part of the honor guard. They got close to the queen, but they did it by breaking the rules – paying off other players with real money, rather than Moondoor currency. They were cheating.”

“Oh, and using magic isn't?” Dean snapped.

“Magic is a part of Moondoor.”

Charlie stepped forward, suddenly angry. You tried to grab her arm, but she evaded you. “What is your problem? Why would you hurt people? This is just a game.”

“There is no game!” Gerry shouted. “There is only Moondoor! I came here to be different, to get away from my crappy life, to be a hero, and guess what.”

“What?” Dean asked sarcastically. “You were a loser in the real world, and you're a loser here? Shocker.”

Gerry glowered at him. “Would a loser track down a real book of spells and compel a fairy to do his bidding?”

“It depends,” Sam muttered. “How'd you get it?”

“eBay.”

Dean rolled his eyes and leaned down so only you could hear him. “You got a gun on you?”

You shook your head slightly. “Nope. This dress wasn’t exactly made for packing.”

Dean sent a silent head shake to Sam who nodded and cleared his throat. “Look. It doesn't have to be like this, Boltar. Just hand over the book of spells. We can work this out.”

“This will all work out…” Gerry muttered as he bent down to pick up a fake sword. “After I remove you from the playing field and wipe Lady Y/N and the queen’s memories.”

“And, what?” you asked, stalling for time. “You’re going to kill them with that thing?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Gerry said with a smile. “Gilda?”

Gilda sighed and closed her eyes, only for the fake sword in Gerry’s hand to turn very, very real. Sam and Dean immediately began to move, Sam going for Gerry while Dean covered you.

Gerry looked almost bored as he gestured at Sam. “Gilda, the big one.”

In an instant, a suit of armor came alive, grabbing Sam from behind. Charlie took the opportunity to charge at Gerry with a fake sword, but he easily threw her on the bed.

“Y/N!” Dean yelled, picking up a fake sword of his own. “Get Charlie and get out of here!”

He rushed forward, swinging at Gerry, but Gerry’s real sword easily cut Dean’s in half. You and Gilda ran to Charlie while Sam continued to struggle with the suit of armor and Dean did his best to block Gerry’s attacks with a metal shield.

“Gilda!” you cried. “You have to do something. He’s going to kill them!”

“We can't stop him. The book – you must destroy it.”

You looked back to where Dean and Gerry were still fighting. A book had fallen to the floor by their feet. “Charlie, the book!”

You both moved in an instant, with Charlie reaching the book first. She lifted it off the ground and held a dagger over it. “Hey, Gerry. I'm the one who saves damsels in distress around here.”

“No!” Gerry yelled. He turned to stop her as she raised the dagger over her head, but you moved to block him, standing right between his sword and Charlie. At the exact second that Charlie’s dagger hit the book, Gerry’s sword pierced your abdomen.

“Y/N! NO!!!!” Dean screamed, running to you as your body buckled, bathed in the bright light from the book. He reached out his arms and caught you, strong and steady, pulling you into him in one fluid motion.

“Dean…” you whispered softly, the pain in your abdomen spreading quickly.

“Just hold on, Y/N,” he pleaded. “You’re gonna be ok. I got you. Just hold on.”

“No!!” Gerry yelled, blanching when he’d seen what he’d done. “No, Y/N, no…”

In an instant, his blood-stained sword turned back into a fake one, only for a freed Sam to immediately snatch it and use the butt to knock him out. Charlie dropped the book and rushed to your side.

“Y/N! No….”

“Charlie….” you breathed out, unable to say much more. Dean’s arms tightened around you. You were fading fast.

Tears started to gather in Charlie’s eyes as Sam dropped to his knees by her side. “Y/N, I’m so sorry I lied to you about who I was. You’re my best friend, I should’ve told you the truth, I should’ve…”

“Shhh...It’s okay. I don’t blame you, Charlie. I love you.”

“I love you too,” she cried as you turned your eyes to meet Dean’s.

“Y/N, please, don’t…” he pleaded, his voice coming out gruff and labored with unshed tears.

“It’ll be okay, Dean. I wish we had more time, but it’ll be okay.”

“No!” he yelled. “You can’t die! Not now, not like this.”

“And, die she won’t,” Gilda announced, moving to stand by Charlie. “Allow me.”

Charlie moved aside to let Gilda hover her hands over your wound. As you and Dean watched in awe, your wound healed magically, taking all the pain away in an instant.

“Thank God,” Charlie breathed out while Dean hung his head in obvious relief, his hold on you decreasing slightly but not breaking.

With Dean’s help, you carefully sat up and looked at Gilda. “Thank you,” you stammered, your voice full of sincerity.

Gilda smiled. “You are the one I should be thanking. Thanks to all of you, I'm free of the spell. You saved me. This was the least I could do to return the favor.”

Dean helped you stand up while you returned her smile. “So, what now?” you asked, leaning into Dean as you regained your strength.

“Now, I return home. The Hollow Forest is forever in your debt. I must return to those green hills now. I will take my former master with me. He must face a fairy tribunal for his sins.”

“Wait,” Charlie yelled as she grabbed Gilda and pulled her into a heated kiss. “Thank you.”

Gilda smiled one last time before disappearing in an array of twinkling, shimmering lights. Gerry’s body disappeared right along with her in a puff of smoke.

“Call me... maybe?” Charlie shouted into the air, inducing a laugh out of you, your body shaking softly against Dean’s.

“Come on,” Dean said, taking your hand and gently leading you out of the tent. “Let’s get out of here.”

By the time you made it back to the Moondoor camp, it was nearing midnight, and you were exhausted.

Despite your assurances that you were healed, Dean had insisted on carrying you the last half mile, only letting you walk when you hit the edge of the forest. He accompanied you to the tent Charlie had procured for you, only truly letting his guard down once you were safely inside.

“Y/N, are you sure you’re okay?” he asked tentatively.

“I’m fine, Dean, I promise. Gilda healed me completely. I’m as good as new.”

“Okay, but…”

“Dean,” you whispered, stopping him with a feather light touch to his chest that immediately quieted him. “It’s over. I’m okay.”

“Okay…” he breathed back, matching your whispered tone with one of his own.

“So, what happens next?” you asked. “I mean, I’m assuming you two leave again, right?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, stepping closer to you and gently placing his hand on your cheek. “But, I’m sure we’ll be back. I mean, with both you and Charlie here, why would we stay away?”

“Right,” you muttered quietly. You tried to look down, but Dean held your chin firmly.

“Y/N, this is not going to be the last time we see each other. Not even close. Trust me, now that I’ve met you, I have no intention of letting this go.”

You could feel your face brightening. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he echoed with a smile. “But, promise me one thing.”

“Yes?” you asked breathlessly as Dean moved even closer, until his lips were just inches from yours.

“Promise me you won’t go around getting yourself stabbed anymore.”

You started to laugh lightly at his words, but you sobered up when you saw Dean’s intense expression. “I’m serious, Y/N. I know we just met this morning, but I care about you. I don’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if Gilda hadn’t been there. If you died…”

“Shh…” you murmured, holding one finger up to his lips. “I promise.”

Before Dean could say another word, you leaned up, closing the short gap between the two of you, and claiming his lips in a passionate kiss. He wrapped his arms around you, walking you backwards to the bed before lifting you up slightly so you could wrap your legs around his strong thighs. You fell together onto the bed, a tangle of legs and arms coming together as one for the first of you hoped would be many times to come.

The next morning, you, Sam, and Dean were back in your street clothes, walking through the camp with Charlie, you and Dean hand in hand.

“So what's next for you, Charlie?” Sam asked. “New town? New identity?”

“No way,” Charlie laughed. “I’m staying right here, with Y/N. If the last 24 hours have taught me anything, it's that escaping isn't what it used to be. No more replacement characters for me. I got to face reality from now on. Sadly, reality actually includes monsters, but what are you gonna do?” she added with a smile. “If I can ever be of help to you guys, let me know.”

“Will do,” Dean said. He glanced down at you. “Especially since we’re going to be coming back here pretty often.” You smiled as he turned back to Charlie. “And you, uh... you're good?”

“Apart from the fact that you blocked me from banging a fairy, and I'm about to go lose my crown in battle, thanks to my army being decimated? Yeah. Totally good.” She turned around, holding her hands up in a Vulcan salute. “Smell you later, bitches.”

You laughed as Charlie walked away and Dean snaked his arm around your waist. “You know, I might have an idea of how to help Charlie keep her crown.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean asked. “And what’s that?”

You pulled away from Dean and extended your hand back to him. “Follow me.”

He followed you with a laugh, Sam close behind, and twenty minutes later, the three of you were standing on the battlefield, dressed in full army garb, ready to help Charlie defend her throne.

Dean, with the long-hair of his wig fluttering in the wind and his face painted red and white, stood in the front, addressing the army with the speech from Braveheart.

“It’s the only one he knows,” Sam muttered, his hair in a ponytail as he stood next to you and Charlie.

“And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance. Just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they will never take…”

“Hold!” yelled a squire, interrupting Dean’s speech. A frisbee sailed onto the field, followed by a man running after it.

“Uh, my bad,” the man yelled before running away.

Dean rolled his eyes and turned back to the squire, getting the signal to continue. He raised his wooden sword and shook it in the sky. “...our freedom!”

“Our freedom!” you echoed, holding your sword up in solidarity as you took off running at Sam and Dean’s sides. You knew that, while this battle might be fake, it wasn’t going to be the last you ran into at Dean’s side.

You couldn’t wait.

Forevers- @hamartiamacguffin @mrsdeanfuckingwinchester @katymacsupernatural @impandagrl @cyrilconnelly @impala-dreamer @castielhasthetardis @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @shotgunintheimpala @be-amaziing @jalove-wecallhimdean @there-must-be-a-lock @mysterious-398 @hannahindie @emoryhemsworth @ohmychuckitssamanddean @wi-deangirl77 @carryonmywaywardcaptain @ericaprice2008 @just-another-winchester

Dean Tags- @akshi8278

#jess hits 700 #fave spn episode challenge #dean x reader #supernatural rewrite #larp and the real girl

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king-switch · 3 years ago

Text

“Swish, swish, vyoom!”

After a long week and an even longer social interaction with a nerdy man looking for directions, you celebrate with plenty of booze. And why not? It calms you down, and it’s not like anything important would happen tonight. It was either drink or watch sci-fi movies again. Well, really, you did both. You got through one Star Trek movie and one and a half bottles of wine, then got fed up with sitting still. You needed action, adventure, just something to happen!

This led to your current state: walking down an empty street with a long stick cutting down imaginary aliens.

Your expert swordplay slice through the invisible monsters with ease. It glowed bright blue in your mind’s eye, and deflected any blaster bolts coming your way. Three goofy aliens would waddle up with green fingers and silver lasers, only to get their long heads cleaved in half. They would disappear immediately though as you turned your attention to the next group of made-up deadly beings.

It was a good thing that it was past midnight, else someone might see you making a fool of yourself.

“Wowwow- bzzt! Bleh- vyoooom!” say the noises from your mouth, imitating the fight in your head. You dramatically charge ahead, imagining yourself surrounded by guns. The stick sweeps around you as you Beyblade through aliens. However, your sword handling was as bad as your social skills, and while you stop and pose, the stick flies out of your hand and cracks in half against a nearby tree.

“Oop- shit,” you say to yourself with a painful cringe, as if you killed the stick in front of it’s mother. But you weren’t done with these aliens, so you ran—or rather, stumbled—into the small forest by the road.

You find the shortened stick. But you also find people. Lots of people.

There must be a hundred people there, all sitting on the ground and now looking up at you in silence. People of all creeds and appearances, all with the same unreadable face. All faces were somewhat unreadable to you though, but they almost looked hopeful. Stressed, but hopeful.

The strangest thing is their clothes. Some of them are in T-shirts and jeans, but others are in shiny latex suits, heavy suit jackets, and there’s even a man looking like Marco Polo his clothes are that ancient. And they all had props of some kind, whether little boxy devices, clean, circular headgear, or fake guns from Halloween costumes... hopefully fake.

You, in all of your drunken genius, figure it out quickly. You throw the broken stick over your shoulder like a sword and click your free hand with a finger gun.

“Oh- uh, shit y’all, sorry. M’fuggin’ dr-r-r-runk right now. Keep on LARPing, you chads!”

There is a murmur among the crowd. Some of them look confused, others whisper explanations to neighbors, and a few just start laughing. They all sound different too. Like English, but not quite. Like when you hear a fake language in a movie, or you’re not listening to anything in particular in a Café.

You blink the haze of alcohol from your eyes for a brief moment of clarity. Right in the front of the bunch was the man who asked for directions! You narrow your eyes at him, recognizing his incredible nerdiness. He wore clothes nearly right out of Star Trek, the fine pants and tight red shirt getting dirty on the forest floor.

Of course, you lose the clarity really quick. “Yo, dude, I love your shirt! Love Star Trek!”

“Um. Yes,” he answers back.

“Wha’ ya mean ‘yes,’ s’a compliment!” you fire back, using the end of your stick as a threat.

The man’s eyes cross to focus on the point, but quickly look up, past you, and into the night sky. “...Guys- guys! It’s time!”

“Wheh-” you make a small noise as the crowd of LARPers spring to life and begin chatting excitedly. You turn to follow the nerd’s eyes up to the sky, nearly falling down in the process.

It looks like there’s a plane above, a few lights traversing among the black sea of stars. It’s tricky to make out, no doubt even harder with fuzzy vision, but it’s moving, as if searching for a place to land.

The crowd of people cheer and gasp, only to go quiet in electric anticipation. They hide in the trees, the dead leaves, the bushes, anywhere that is away from the road. While they do that, you stand in the open and understand absolutely nothing about what’s going on. “Heyy, hello? Whatcha’ll doin’?”

“Go!” whisper-shouts the nerdy man. “Go! It’s time! This is why we’re here!”

The rest of the crowd nearly disappear they are so quiet, and the nerdy man hides in the undergrowth, leaving you alone. You walk forward gullibly and stand in the middle of the road, still staring into the sky.

Soon enough, the lights get bigger and brighter. And then, it’s not just lights, but an object too. As it comes closer, it grows from a speck, to a dot, to a full circle like the moon. And it keeps growing. It’s like something out of a movie!

It descends to the road and stops 6 feet from the ground. It’s dead silent. It’s wide too, touching the treetops on each side of the road. Pure metal plates shine with the glow of the machine, as if it was fashioned from a single block of aluminum. Green windows display ovular silhouettes, moving with frantic excitement inside.

This is... history in the making. And you drop your stick and stare up with eyes the size of Jupiter.

“Damn...” you mutter, staring up at the hovering spacecraft. “Y’all LARPers got a hell of a budget!”

#382

Hundreds of time travellers from all throughout history have gathered to witness the most important moment in human history. However you, drunk and swinging a branch around that you found at the side of the road, are wondering why all these people are staring at you

#writing #prompt answer #i wrote this instead of doing schoolwork #i wrote this in an hour #larpers #time travellers #first contact #spoilers: ALIENS

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savrenim · 7 years ago

Note

I'm so jealous of your gay elf murder bachelorette campaign that I now desperately want my own. Any recommendations on how to find people to play D&D with? I have several friends who are interested, but none of us have any questions experience (between my secondhand experience of reading about your adventures) so we don't know how to get started

oh gods so apparently I have A Lot Of Opinions and it got really long, so under the cut, also thank you for reminding me that I should probably properly type up the finale of Gay Murder Elf Bachelorette Campaign Book 1 because it was freaking epic and this is the one campaign that I can properly rant about on tumblr without worrying about spoilers

(I’m in three campaigns right now) (by complete accident) (on the one hand it’s a bad life decision in that I have zero free time anyways with grad school, but on the other hand it has become my sole social interaction with anyone ever and also coping mechanism for the stress and one good thing I do for me and, like, they’re not all weekly campaigns, so hours-per-week I’m devoting isn’t ridiculous) (and I miss my friends and it’s re-connected me with them and also has introduced me to upperclassmen in the department) (but sometimes there are character secrets and people who potentially follow me on tumblr so I can’t post the super long dramatic things about a character that I really want to)

OKAY SO HOW TO GET INTO PLAYING

I will be real, the three campaigns that I am in right now are the first time I’ve played DnD for anything that lasted longer than a week and a half at a summer camp type deal, like, arguably, this is my real first time playing DnD….ever. That being said, I’ve worked at gay theater camp for….six years now? And they do super intense super in-character LARPing that is far more roleplaying-heavy than mechanics heavy and has trained me to both have very good story instincts of, like, “this is how you make decisions that both fit with your character and support the narrative instead of oppose it, and either do not tear the party apart, or tear the party apart but for a very good and fitting narrative reason (i.e. if there’s going to be strife, make it mean something)” and in my opinion it is when you bring those sorts of instincts to a DnD game that you get the most satisfying story out of it. Character creation, team cohesion, and story and world development are all things that I do feel super comfortable speaking about because that is my literal jam outside of my math jam which is paying for me to be alive and stuff. So here we go.

There are a couple of questions that you need to immediately answer, the first being, “do you want to play Dungeons and Dragons, or do you want to start with a mechanically less complicated system?” Because there are a lot of pretty good systems out there that are high fantasy even (i.e. Dungeon World) that are a lot more streamlined in terms of “you don’t need to be as familiar with a set of rules in order to play.” That being said, Dungeons and Dragons is classic and is fantastic and I freaking adore it. (I will be completely honest, the only other two systems I know right now are Dungeon World, which is fantasy, and Mech Noir, which holy shit you are playing noir style detectives except in a SCI FI SETTING WHERE YOU PILOT MECHAS and the entire game system is around applying “adjectives” to people like, if you successfully roll against an enemy, you get to pick any adjective you can think of ever from “grappled” to “trusting” to “confused” to “located” and it just makes for such interesting storytelling)

which vaguely brings me to my first piece of real advice: you learn how to play best by witnessing playing happening. if you are a podcast person, I highly recommend either The Adventure Zone or Friends At The Table (or, honestly, if you have the time, both). The Adventure Zone plays DnD, 5th Edition, and it is a super quality family who are goofing off and having fun together and then the plot that arises is like “oh shit I am crying about a wizard named Taako, pronounced taco, how did this happen to me” and it’s great. The Adventure Zone is 100% the reason why I reached out to friends and was like “yoooo is anyone starting a campaign because TAZ has made me want to play again.” Friends at the Table starts with Dungeon World and it is some of the best storytelling and worldbuilding I’ve ever heard? And you will learn so much about how to set things up and go with the flow and the DM talks a lot about his process as offhand comments and you will learn so much. I’ve heard good things about Critical Role, but haven’t listened myself. But get out there, listen, and then don’t be afraid of copying things that you admire. Best way to learn.

If you’re going with Dungeons and Dragons, start with 5th Edition. 0th, 1st, and 2nd are all ridiculously unbalanced, 3 is “actually everyone uses 3.5,” or a combo 3.5/Pathfinder. While 3.5/Pathfinder is a great system and is what we’re playing both in gay murder elf bachelorette campaign and in the math grad departmental campaign, and was the game that I learned on, 5e is a lot more streamlined and they’re aren’t super picky exact rules for every tiny thing you could think of doing, which means you don’t need to be familiar with a vast system full of loopholes and counters and counter-counters to know how to effectively play the game. we don’t talk about 4th edition

Decide who is going to be the DM. There are sometimes comic stores that’ll run weekly or biweekly or monthly games of DnD, but those are almost definitely going to be less story-based and usually are one-shots? And if you’ve got a good group of friends, I recommend just playing with them and not trying to find an external group that you don’t know. I’m vaguely assuming that you’re volunteering to be DM because you’re asking? But if there’s someone in your group of friends who likes writing things or likes managing things or is interested, or if people want to take turns trying stuff out, go for that. The department group rotates DMs (and rotates games) just based on who has something written that they’re excited to try out.

You also might want to ask around to see if there are any people that you vaguely know, or that are friends of friends, who play. You’d be surprised how many people do. I’ve also seen blogs on tumblr sometimes going “hey, I’m running a Skype campaign and I need two or three more players, if people are interested fill out this survey and then depending mostly on times people are free but also what you say about what you’re looking for from a game I’ll pick the players?” or if y’all are in college there is almost always a DnD club somewhere, hidden semi-secret on campus, on the register to get club funding but under the radar because nerds. But you and your friends who are semi-interested will work just fine, as long as semi-interested means they’re actually willing to commit for a bit. So how do you get started?

Get the Player’s Handbook, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and read them cover to cover. If you’re playing and not DMing, eh, skip this step, and have the DM do it instead, but the Dungeon Master’s Guide especially will walk you through how to set up things mechanically very well and if you’re going in blind it will be good to have gone through and read it all once. I’ve read the 3.5 DMG cover to cover several times, haven’t read 5e yet, I know that I didn’t like their storytelling tips, but read through it once to get an idea of what mechanics might look like, it gives very good starting mechanical advice.

1. Speed and smoothness of playing are important, which means that sometimes, if you don’t know a rule, you want to make something up on the fly and deliver it with a completely straight face. Everybody does homebrew. Rules are great because they keep things from devolving into chaos and they can settle disputes, but also, sometimes you’ve just got to make a call, and if you make it while looking like you know what you’re doing, everyone will believe you. Similarly, don’t make the same rolls, or the same number of rolls, for NPC characters as you would for PCs. For example, in gay murder elf bachelorette campaign, when Iria was both directing a full assault on a hobgoblin fortress as well as had put herself on the special strike team that was going to sneak in and open the portcullis, the DM made ~one or two rolls~ to see how successful the Caedic units were at each of the points of Iria’s plan, instead of rolling a full battle between ~40 hobgoblins and ~80 elves. screentime is important; if you’re spending too much time on not-the-players, it gets boring for the players, so roll enough dice to decide what’s going on with a tad bit of luck and so it seems like other characters have rules that they have to follow, but you don’t have to let the rules dictate every single thing that happens in-world. you dictate that.

2. Character creation is how you set yourself up for success. Do not underestimate the importance of party dynamics. You don’t all have to be playing best friends or even people who get along–in Spelljammer, Marian and Djin had the character backstory of “ten years ago we were captain and co-captain of a vessel and for Reasons got into a huge fight over nothing and split and Marian took half the ship with her and she thought she’d never see him again but now oops they’ve both ended up jobless on the same station and Marian was already pooling as many resources as she could to try to put together a new ship and Djin arrived a couple months into this and needed the work so joined this ragtag democratic crew, but there’s a shit ton of tension.” This worked because we were snippy to each other in dialogue, when push came to shove, Marian is professional enough such that her whole deal is putting personal feelings aside always no matter what, and Djin takes the passive in passive-aggressive super seriously, so it never meant that the party was sitting around arguing for hours or refusing to cooperate. Meanwhile, I’ve seen and heard of campaigns falling apart because “there are two thieves and one really wants to get to do all the sneaking so they argue all the time over who gets to do cool stuff” or “the evil fighter literally just wants to murder everyone which means everyone else can’t get stuff done.” You can have intra-party strife and have it be interesting, but only if players are doing it cooperatively instead of being at each other’s throats irl. Rule of thumb: if the party dynamics are frustrating the other players, you are doing something wrong.

2.5 That being said, if a party starts to develop into bad dynamics, it is fixable without betraying character! For example, in the department campaign, I’ve been playing a super sheltered youngest child elf wizard from a super established Elvin wizard family (of, like, oh the arcanic postlines that let mail be sent around the continent? Grandpa came up with that theory. Schools of magic identified and classified originally? That was the Maewels) so Seraph is a tad bit privileged and a tad bit sheltered and is uppity sometimes. There was a fighter in the party who liked his alcohol, once missed a huge battle that the rest of us had to cover for him because he’d seduced two women at the inn we were hanging out at before the town was attacked, and typically did things like walk around in the morning with no pants on. And he proceeded to interpret Seraph’s increasing shock and disdain for him (or rather specifically, how upset she was the first time she saw him pantless) as “yeah all women go for me.” The party was vaguely splitting into “Seraph’s side and Silas’s side” so I decided to aggressively interpret one of the battles we went through together as a bonding experience and lo and behold Seraph’s feelings started to change over the next couple of weeks to “you might be an inconsiderate asshole but you’re OUR inconsiderate asshole so only we are allowed to rag on you” and she became one of his biggest supporters esp when they got to his hometown. All you really need is one super solid, proactive player in a party to make sure that things are resolved in a solid manner, so if you’re not the one DMing? Be that player.

2.75 Okay but if you’re DMing, have the conversation with your players as they’re designing their characters about point (2) because good party dynamics are easiest when you get it from the start.

3. Design encounters around the party. You don’t need a traditional setup of “a tank, a mage, a healer, and a thief” to have an effective and fun party. Maybe everyone wants to play a thief, great, design the scenario to be “you have all been contracted by the thieves’ guild to sneak into this party and assassinate this noble, you have three days to prepare and these resources, make a plan” instead of “this is a traditional dungeon crawl where you are fighting big scary monsters despite the fact that none of you are melee fighters.” Similarly, figure out what sort of stories and settings and aesthetics your players are interested in, and then play that game.

4. Make it personal. Ask people about their backstory and then incorporate stuff in. Notice what they become invested in and adjust your plans to include more of that. Give characters individual arcs that fit vaguely into the overall story, but also that they are the semi-protagonist of. Right now in Spelljammer, we’re all dealing with “so there are weird tears in the universe that Password, this Extinct AI we found and befriended, says are reminiscent of literally the entire universe ripping apart at the seams and are possibly why the Extinct went extinct, oh and some random lady gave us this artifact called the Eye and told us to hide it from the Blind King? And now his servants are hunting us? We are literally scav elves this is so above our pay grade.” Except going on as subplots, Algol is being hunted down by this evil overseer of whatever place in Echoside he originally escaped from, Leif got a stone that gives her prophetic dreams, Kimi has been super close to Password and Leif dreamed about them stitching the universe together, and Marian is dealing with an "oh shit I’ve accidentally adopted these three kids even though I don’t do personal” along with “oh god have I literally become the captain of this ship because I AM THE ONLY ADULT LEFT” along with some old friends from her past trying to reconnect just after we got a prophecy about how the last thing the Blind King would send to steal the Eye was someone we loved turned against us. So yeah, sure, there are big Adventure Plotlines going down that involve the entire party, but we’re not doing things just to do them, everyone is personally invested in this for their own reasons. So when you plan a big adventure, both plan places where individual party members get to start both for who they are and what they can do, as well as along the way keep an eye out for things that you can tie in for them.

5. Consequences matter. And not just stuff like “Iria got stabbed really bad first session and nearly died, now every time she goes into rage at the end needs to roll a fortitude save to not fall unconscious, and whenever she rolls a one same deal.” But also consequences like “you were really rude to this person and now they don’t like you and they are friends with the owner of the apothecary, who now also doesn’t like you and marks up prices behind your back” or "you let one of the patrol escape and now the whole army knows that you’re coming” or “you saved this kid’s life even though you were in enemy territory and now five years later he recognizes you even though you’ve been captured and is making sure that the party is taken prisoner instead of killed.” Make NPCs (non-player characters, ie characters the DM controls) recurring characters instead of people that you meet once, and have the way that the NPCs feel and then interact with the players change based on how prior interactions go. Have them care about things and have them remember. It makes the world feel a lot more real.

6. Preparing for a session goes petty much "how much do you like improv”. If you’re chill improvising, you want written down the stats of the monsters/enemies your players are potentially going to encounter, and probably a vague idea of goals, and then just play it by ear. Jeremy (the person running gay murder elf bachelorette and spelljammer) has I think at this point 13 “Books” written for gay murder elf bachelorette campaign, will write long descriptions of characters, settings, has maps drawn, has customized his own random encounter tables, has made his own homebrew system for how spaceship mechanics works specifically so that we could better piece together our spaceship with fantasy duct tape during the Death Races, and overplans every last detail all the way down to “has different musical themes that he’ll swap out and play at different times.” like, Iria has a Trauma theme that is played every time her wound starts acting up. He has collected music for books in advance. He has multiple different theme songs for each of the players in spelljammer. He writes notes about what NPCs are thinking so that he can reference it later. But that’s because he knows that he prefers the things he comes up with when he has time to plan things out, instead of when he’s surprised. He knows his own storytelling style. “eh, an outline and some monster stats” would not work for him the same way that I’ve seen it work for other people. You don’t have to put a ridiculous amount of prep work and writing time into being a DM, you need to figure out how much prepared material you need to run something comfortably, and then prepare that much.

6.5 Understand no matter what you plan, bits and pieces will probably be derailed, and be okay with that. Nothing is more upsetting than when a DM does not respect player autonomy and invalidates the clever things they think of, because it goes against their own plans. I think being a DM/running a story is sort of halfway “you’re writing a novel” and halfway “oh shit except this time the characters ACTUALLY have minds of their own” and striking a balance instead of dominating the narrative makes it fun. Also, it means you can throw in problems that you have no solutions for. During the Death Races in spelljammer, our battery started running out of plasma, which meant that the pressurization was getting all wonky, Leif immediately goes over and says “I have a spell called Reduce Object, can I cast it on the internal casing to try to up the pressure of what little plasma we have left” and Jeremy goes “uummmm sure if Kimi is over there to help you rewire the rest of the battery on the fly because you are SHRINKING HALF OF ITS PARTS” and then that held for three minutes until oh shit it was still low on plasma and Marian ran over and went “wait a second guys I have a Flaming Sphere spell except Jeremy, Jeeeeremy, I’m technically a plasma variety of Light Cleric, my ~god~ that ~gives me my divine magic~ is the collective of star dryads which live in balls of plasma, we’ve established prior in this setting that some of my fire spells are actually plasma spells, not fire, Jeeeeeremly can shove my hand into the empty battery casing and cast a flaming, 10-foot in diameter ball of plasma to try to give us a fuel boost” and Jeremy went “okay fuck it, stick your hand in the battery and cast a flaming sphere of plasma to give the ship a fuel boost, Leif, make another concentration check to hold the pressure.” and it did and we won the race the end we’re the coolest space elves ever. moral of the story: your players will come up with clever things. Sometimes clever things that mess up your plans. Let it happen, it’s more fun that way.

(Iris has come up with a truly heinous but potentially really effective military tactic that gay murder elf bachelorette campaign is actually a bit more delicate because it’s set in a larger world that Jeremy is running multiple other campaigns in and I’m still not sure if Iria is legit going to be a villain that I face off as a good PC one day, or if she’s a historical figure, or even whether or not this campaign is set in the past, but either way the history of this world matters? and the idea that I came up with has the potential to re-shape history? and I told it to Jeremy and he was quiet for a very long time and then thanked me for telling him and so Iria told Talvus in-character and we’re going to see whether or not in a couple of books this ends up changing the entire history of the world that he runs multiple campaigns in or something drastic like that, but hey, player wants to do something you haven’t thought of, “I didn’t think of that” is not a good enough reason to not let them do it.)

7. Decide if you want to write your own adventure, buy/find online a pre-written one, or vaguely do something in the middle. If you’re going for something pre-written, edits bits and pieces as you go to personalize it to your characters. I have a friend who just wrote and published something for DnD 2nd Edition? And it looks great? http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/229248/War-Wizards-of-the-Wasteland Even if you don’t play a pre-written adventure, reading a bunch of them will give you an idea of what preparing for sessions is like and what sort of information you should have on hand.

8. Don’t be afraid to make up home-brew mechanics, either for the whole party or for an individual player. Jeremy ran a vignette session called “Flight of the Kalla Tukal” in which we were playing a trio of orcs that had fallen through a tear in space and had just managed to get back and were searching for our tribe, which left without us. Except in his setting, orcs are a super psionic almost hivemind race? You meet orcs outside of radiation space sometimes, but they’re usually Not Coping Very Well with the fact that they’ve been cut off from their community. But the Kalla Tukal were still all linked together so we weren’t all going mad. then the other part of being psychic orcs meant that we could at any point attempt to do telekinesis or mind-control something, and the way that it was determined whether or not that worked is roll a d20, except we’re not trying to get 20, we’re trying to roll as close to each other in number as possible. There was one dramatic moment when two of us rolled 4’s or something and it was a critical success. but it was so cool to have that weird drift-comparability mechanic, and, like, the more people in our group that wanted to contribute, the more likely two people were to roll the same number. it was just?????? so cool??????? so if you want your party to all be psychically connected and be able to throw stuff with their minds I totally recommend that.

on a more personal/one-player level, in the department campaign, it has developed that Seraph really wants to be a research wizard like her family before her, and so the DM and I had a long conversation about the topics that she would want to research and a particular narrative impetus for her to start researching, and he came up with five or six new spells that Seraph will be able to invent over the course of the campaign, except because it’s experimental magic it’s going to start out with a 40% partial-to-total failure rate that will go down the more she tries to cast the spells, because hey, she’s working out the kinks. to me, it’s more than “oh this is a cool new mechanic,” it’s the DM cared enough to take the time to work with me and put what I thought was interesting into the campaign. and you have a lot of room to do that by adding your own rules and conventions and what-not. don’t be afraid to experiment, see what works, and then keep those mechanics around.

9. Start small. Don’t try to start with a whole huge epic campaign, you want to start by running a bunch of mini-arcs in different settings so that you get a feel for how to play and how to run things. This also gives you a chance to figure out how your group of friends plays, who is going to be the person that gives you the most scheduling problems, some of them might like the fighting parts more than the “come up with clever plans” or “interact with NPCs” parts, and this will give you an idea of who you actually want in a long-term campaign. Because long-term campaigns go on for years. Like, gay murder elf bachelorette is probably going to be a year and a half if Jeremy and I keep going at this pace? and that’s vaguely on the short side for something that Jeremy runs. A proper full epic campaign can be a huge time commitment, so start out with mini-arcs just to have fun and get used to stuff and because that is something that people will actually be able to commit time to.

I interrupt this long list of advice for another list of advice of potential ideas for miniature campaigns you could run for your friends. or one of your friends could run, if they’re interested in DMing:

COOL IDEAS FOR ONE-TO-FOUR SESSION MINI-CAMPAIGNS THAT I CAME UP WITH RIGHT NOW OR STOLE FROM FRIENDS WHO CAME UP WITH SUPER COOL THINGS

—as mentioned in a previous bullet point, “you’re a group of thieves planning an assassination. this is how much money you have. each of your characters has one character connection in the city who can help you get items or forge a document etc etc. this is what the castle looks like. this is what you’ve figured out about guard shifts and security for the party. you have a week to plan. go” and then, like. somebody wants to try to pretend to be a noble to get in? fantastic. someone wants to try to seduce a guard? fantastic. sneaking in the traditional way? fantastic. all three at the same time. faaaantastic. it’s fun, it’s short, the way that you would prepare this is you would think about guards, defenses, patrols, maybe some of the nobles at the party are trained in magic or have weird special teams of guards and maybe have agendas of their own, and then what the actual ball itself would look like and maybe make a castle map, but the fun part of this scenario is the players get to be as creative as possible and I guarantee they will think of the coolest things and then you get to figure out how to react to those things in interesting ways to figure out whether or not they work.

—okay this is a one-shot I have only heard legends about but everyone was playing a rock band of monsters who were about to give a super huge concert in monster city and I think someone had stolen a drum set or a guitar or something and they were trying to dodge paparazzi and get their instruments back but it was also ridiculous sex drugs rock & roll culture and a comedy one-shot that apparently was the coolest thing in the world, but you can’t go wrong if you start with “crazy monster rock band superstars”. during the sequel they went on tour to the human lands and I think wrecked a couple of cities.

—this one is stolen from TAZ but fantasy WWE, the intro plot setup that is exposition in the first 10 minutes was “a friend of yours who is a famous wrestler just had her partner assassinated before the biggest match of the year, one of you has been asked to fill in for the match, another as the manager, and then the rest of you are trying to solve this murder mystery super quick because your friend is worried she’s the next target”

—honestly any sort of “huge gladiator/fighting tournament but there’s drama and foul play going down behind the scenes” makes for a really good short arc. there’s a game that actually Jeremy invented that is played irl at gay theater camp called “bloodrush” which is such a ridiculous game, it’s….vaguely fantasy football except everyone also has daggers and swords and stuff and you are allowed to stab members of the other team but only when they’re holding the ball, although cheating is basically a requirement when the refs’ backs are turned, oh, by the way, the refs are vampires. there have been cases at camp where teams waiting in the bleachers for the next match enemy teams have crept up behind them and slit all their throats with foam daggers while the refs were watching the game, or poisonings, or just. anything you can think of, it’s gone down. my little brother once jumped on the biggest baddest counselor’s back, stabbed him in the shoulder, snatched the ball from him, did a front roll, and ran off, and scored a goal and that is one of his proudest moments of his life to this day, basically what I’m saying is you can’t go wrong with “bloodrush tournament” or whatever your own crazy fantasy sportsball game you want to make up and play.

—“we are a bunch of archeologists who have a little bit of combat or magic training but not too much because mostly we’re archeologists and someone poked a button in a pyramid and oh god we’ve accidentally summoned an ancient race on monsters that feed on human souls, which also apparently there’s a secret military conspiracy that has been watching this site to try to stop these monsters and have come here to contain them but oops also are ready to murder ALL OF US because WE have human souls, now we’re trying to run and hide from both groups and figure out if we can find anything to banish the monsters again” (this is 100% stolen from a LARP written by a friend of mine) (I’m pretty sure same one who wrote the monster band one-shot, actually) (they’re a really good writer, okay)

—PRISON ESCAPE. Think Guardians of the Galaxy 1. You can’t go wrong with a prison break game. character design will be so fun. I swear I thought of stuff like this separate from Jeremy. Jeremy’s writing a prison break game and has promised that I get to play Captain Jennijack, a genderfluid space pirate who totally woke up in this prison a week or so ago and doesn’t for the life of them know why they are here, there are, like, eight or ten possible things they could think of but they’re not sure which one they’ve technically been convicted of, and I am holding him to that.

—Honestly, you have a book that you like? A movie? A TV show? One that you haven’t convinced your friends to watch yet? (or one that you have and they will recognize halfway through.) STEAL THAT, write and run a fanfiction game, it’ll be fun.

ADVICE PART 2: PREPARING FOR A LONGER CAMPAIGN ONCE YOU’RE COMFORTABLE DMING AND HAVE FIGURED OUT THE GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE GOOD CHEMISTRY AND DYNAMICS AND WANT TO STICK AROUND. I’m assuming you want advice for getting something vaguely like gay murder elf bachelorette to run, so I’m going to talk about broad story-based things that I think are important for setting up good stories?

10. Scheduling is key and what is most likely to mess you up. Pick your players carefully, pick people who are invested and who will turn up. If there are people who didn’t get along during your mini arcs, or who just had very different expectations of what the game should be like re fighting/mechanics and roleplaying balance, don’t put them in the same party. Picking a party isn’t about picking your friends, it’s about picking people who work well together as players, and whose playing style matches your storytelling style. You’re better off with less people but who are super quality players and share a vision with you and get along, than letting someone into the game that’s going to mess stuff up for everyone because of outside-of-game social politics. It’s just not worth it. Not when this might go on for years.

11. There’s something really powerful about a story that isn’t about the Chosen Ones, but instead you’re just a group of people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and now oh shit it’s on you to save the world. Epic campaigns generally become epic, like, you invest that much time and energy into something and by the finale you usually are saving the universe, but be willing to start out not special. Let specialness develop.

11.5 There is also something really powerful about there sometimes being problems that magic can’t fix. Or that just aren’t fixable. If you haven’t read the Young Wizards series go read it and cry.

12. Write in arcs. This goes along very well with starting small, but have there be different parts of the campaign that are semi self-contained as you slowly build up to something bigger, this is also where you start dropping in personal arcs. Arcs also allow you to change up the feel of the game and keep things interesting and keep people on their toes. The Adventure Zone does maybe the best example of how to have self-contained plot-driven arcs that build to something eventually cohesive, all arcs with their own unique setup and flavor. (The Adventure Zone: Balance is a really great game and I really do advise you listen to it, it’s ~70 episodes but it will get you used to the mechanics of 5e, and holy fuck is it a story.)

13. Don’t be afraid to steal plot points from your favorite things. Hell, don’t be afraid to steal the entire plots of your favorite things. Especially if you’re worried about your own writing skills or creativity or whatever? Fanfiction is freaking great, and it’s fun; some of the best games I’ve ever played have been fanfiction of super obscure things that the writer has afterwards told me what it was fanfiction of and it was so freaking fun to go read/watch the original after I’d already played an even cooler version???? It’s also pretty easy to start out fanfiction and then through developing personal arcs and following party interest, ending up with a story by the end that is entirely original and you. So write fanfiction if you don’t have any ideas, or honestly, if your fanfiction ideas excite you more than when you sit down and try to write with a blank slate.

14. You’re not limited to a high fantasy setting. Honestly, standard high fantasy/dungeon crawl stuff has gotten pretty boring for me? (although the department campaign is pretty cool, but that’s only because it’s high fantasy but we slip in jokes like “Seraph marches downstairs in her pajamas and channels her mother to start yelling at the innkeeper about the utterly terrible customer service of getting poisoned, non-consensually, and that she would like to speak to the manager of the local thieves’ guild to lodge a complaint” because even though it’s high fantasy, it’s funny. TAZ does really good high fantasy too because of how they weave a whole bunch of other stuff in.) but, like, YOU CAN DO DND IN SPACE. you can do modern urban fantasy. you can go post-apocalypse. you can go post-high-fantasy-apocalypse. you can play a supernatural style game. it’s your world, make it whatever you want.

14.5 It is possible to play things that are mechanically the class in the book, but have a different interpretation in the setting. Or just to works differently in the setting. in spelljammer, elves don’t have gods, and I vaguely developed over the course of a couple of months an old belief system that was pretty old even when Marian was a kid that she just pseudo-learned and didn’t quite believe but is now revisiting, and the difference between divine casters and arcane casters is actually just “magic is vaguely a part of physics and most arcane casters are tinkerers who are doing it via weird cool gadgets or are pseudo-scientists/engineers in their training and approach to magic, while for divine casters it’s more of an internal, feelings-based thing.” I’m also very very excited because I have developed a super intense and specific lore that is canonically what elves used to believe and what Marian believes, but might not actually be how the world and death specifically works at all, so I’m bouncing up and down on my feet waiting to discover what’s going down behind the scenes with gods in that campaign, instead of it just being “oh yeah choose your gods from the gods in the book.” in the department campaign, Seraph is from a family of wizards and thinks that she is a wizard even though she is actually an arcanist, because the world doesn’t have words different types of casters esp niche types of casters yet. the DM and I are planning for it to be a huuuuge surprise now that she’s leveled up enough to have access to “arcanic exploits” which are at-will abilities that wizards don��t have, and it is going to be an in-character process of her discovering that she can do something that according to the known laws of magic she shouldn’t be able to do, and now oh shit she has to research it. even though mechanically, we’re going pretty much entirely by the book, the book doesn’t exist in the world! characters don’t know what players know! make it interesting to discover things that you as a player might otherwise take for granted!

14.75 make magic and fighting sound cool, and design how you describe it to be specific to the setting or the culture. in gay murder elf bachelorette campaign, the way that Caedic casting works is you first have to draw a rune in the air that then hovers there all glowy, and then you “thread the needle” which is projecting power through it in a very specific manner, I’m pretty sure that Surrians cast differently, magic works different in different parts of the world. having a melee fight scene? describe how people exchange blows back and forth or let them choose how their killing blows will look or just make them feel like badasses whenever they try to do a cool thing because it’s cool. I am used to playing magic/caster characters just because I generally am more familiar with magical mechanics than fighting mechanics and magic has always been more interesting to me but holy crud I have never had a fight scene so fun as the one when Iria had led a researcher from the Black Lotus Labs to a fae font that she’d found scouting in the woods and this seaweed creature eventually attacked them and she did a badass holding it off with her scimitar an then Vennikus, the researcher, tried to throw a cold iron knife at it but missed, and so Iria, who had been training in two-weapon fighting, saw the knife, did a front roll underneath the monster’s next swing, picked up the knife, exchanged a flurry of blows with the thing now two-handed fighting which eventually ended with her doing this super badass throwing both weapons in the air and catching them to switch hands, leaping on the things back, slashing so deep with her scimitar that it finally got through all of the seaweed and cleared it before it could get back to a weird, pulsating green heart, which then she drove the cold iron blade into all the way up to its hilt. which was so much cooler than “oh shit I rolled a crit on my scimitar hand and confirmed it and I guess that deals enough damage for this thing to die,” nah, I drove a cold iron knife into that thing’s pulsating heart and so that’ll be a scene that I never forget. Even when I miss Jeremy makes me sound cool because then when the enemies miss he talks about how good my footwork is or how well I’ve drilled to block these exact kinds of blows so the Surrian had no chance because my training kicked in type deal. it makes fight scenes more than just rolling dice, and thus easier to get engaged in.

14.8725 I swear I didn’t start out this essay as an “I’m going to sing the praises of Jeremy for several thousand words”

15. It’s always interesting when you have mechanical reasons for players leveling up. Or for what their classes are. That’s always a tricky one to balance, and it’s one that I’ve been doing aggressively as a player? And to be fair, if your players start out with young and fairly inexperienced characters, “I am gaining experience at doing a thing” is a perfectly good narrative reason to level up. You want to play an older character? One of my friends is playing a 150-year-old orc who was a Great Adventurer back in the day and retired to take care of great-great grandkids and is back in an adventuring party now but wheeee is starting at level 1 because they’re out of practice oh, and they have bad knees. There’s also always the option of “I hurt myself real bad and I’ve been recovering,” leveling up isn’t ~gaining new experience~, it’s slowly getting better through whatever your injury is. or just you can write this off as an unavoidable mechanical aspect of the game, eh, not that important, I just love it when tiny details match up. This isn’t actually an important point, I’ve kind of moved on to the “picky details that I care about” second of this advice rant.

16. Make the unexpected important. JEREMY GAVE ME THE MOST ADORABLE PET SPACE OCTOPUS AS A FAMILIAR AND I HAVE BEEN ASSUMING THAT VELO IS JUST VELO AND THEN JEREMY MADE SOME SORT OF A SIDE COMMENT ABOUT “YEAH VELO IS NOTHING LIKE YOU’D EVER HEARD OF BEFORE” AND YEAH DUH BECAUSE THE LIL’ BUDDY WAS SUMMONED THROUGH A MYSTERY SPELL IN A MYSTERY PIECE OF EXTINCT TECH BUT NOW I’M FREAKING PARANOID OUT OF CHARACTER THAT VELO IS SECRETLY AN EMISSARY OF RAT JESUS OR SOMETHING. but also just, like, nothing is cooler than “oh that tiny thing that happened when you were level 1 that you didn’t really think much of and it’s just been vaguely a thing you’ve carried with you for the adventure? turns out it was the most important thing in the world!!!!!” just. good foreshadowing. unexpected foreshadowing. it’s great.

17. Your players will invent stuff, either as a part of their backstory or as something that they’re interested in. Let them, especially if you don’t have a previously established canon opinion on the thing. This is 100% a self-serving thing of what I wants DMs to do when I’m a player of, like. I really love getting to write stuff into the setting, but also it’s because good improv means go with the flow. Someone says something? Work it in, oops, it’s canon now. This can be both on-purpose or accident; in the department campaign, I wanted to write in-character letters to an NPC in my backstory from the beginning, except goddamnit I didn’t want to have to deal with “and it’ll take a couple of months for the mail to travel across the country to get to them,” so I made an offhand reference in the email that I was sending the DM the letters of “can we say I just threw them in the arcanic postlines,” which then, like. After doing this about five times I sat down and wrote out the exact magical theory about how arcanic postlines should work considering how we’d said that they function in-game and the DM went “okay, sounds great, that’s consistent with how we’ve been dealing with these letters for the last two months” and that is why the fantasy world of the departmental campaign has a highly functional postage system. On the improv end of things, there is a beautiful moment in The Adventure Zone where the wizard just, in-character, teases another wizard about “ooooh, don’t want to burn your spell slots,” and the DM just went with it and suddenly it became canon that instead of spell slots being a behind-the-scenes mechanical thing that doesn’t exist in-world, it was a legitimate way that wizards referred to how much magic they could cast a day. Which I love so much, that’s so interesting for a high fantasy setting. Letting players add to the setting will bring in cool new things that you didn’t think of, and you should be open to it.

18. First priority is everyone should be having fun, and communication is key for that to work. Debrief sometimes after sessions. Ask people what their favorite parts are. listen to them chat about their theories. follow up on actively developing framework for the things that people think are fun. ultimately DnD is as much about friends getting together and having a good time as it is about telling a huge, epic, intricate, interconnected story, and the huge epic stories are a lot more fun if you’ve been having fun the whole way along.

All that all being said.

Don’t expect your campaign to look like gay elf murder bachelorette campaign, the way that I am playing in gay murder elf campaign is…..a bad way to play in a party? Being a conscientious player means being aware that the overall story arc isn’t just about you, it’s weaving together about everyone and there is always a part of me that is thinking about “is everyone getting equal screentime” and going “I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS NPC JEREMY SHE’S SO GOOD AT FIGHTING OH MY GODS THAT MURDEROUS LOOK SHE GETS WHEN SHE’S FACING OFF AGAINST SURRIANS AND SHE DOESN’T THINK ANYONE IS WATCHING JEREMY I AM IN LOVE” and, like, actively going over to try to talk with her any time I had the chance to ever and insisting on sparring with her any time we had free time and insisting on having a bunch of scenes with Talvus of “oh my god Talvus help she said three whole words to me what does it mean” which made all this the gay mess that it was would have been something that I wouldn’t have done if there were other people in the party with other agendas; gay elf murder bachelorette campaign gets to be gay elf murder bachelorette campaign specifically because Jeremy and I realized “….wait, there are only the two of us, we can get as ridiculous with this as we want” and have decided to commit. Fully. But that’s not the sort of shit you want to pull if there’s a whole other group of people who just kind of have to sit and watch every time you want to go over and flirt with your murder-rival-who-will-maybe-one-day-be-your-murder-girlfriend before they can do the stuff they want to do.

(As a secondary warning note if you’re doing any sort of roleplaying and are playing a fictional character in love with another fictional character being played by a friend of yours, you better be on the same page as your friend as, like, one of you not having a secret crush on the other in real life because shit gets messy and then real life and character stuff starts to blend and it’s just. I have been there and done that when I was a 17-year-old Gay Mess and I feel like it is my responsibility as a 22-year-old Slightly More Responsible Gay Mess to warn you against that. Jeremy and I know each other very well and have for years and know each other’s boundaries and talked about triggers and boundaries before starting this campaign, which to be fair was more because as a villain campaign dark stuff is probs going to happen but we have talked about fictional romance too , but I would not play this intimately with someone I didn’t trust intimately. So keep that in mind when designing things?)

ALSO THAT BEING SAID

if you want a gay elf murder bachelorette campaign, there is a game called Monsterhearts that I have never played but heard about friends playing and they all freaking love it and there are a lot of undertones about dealing with mental illness and being queer and in the closet and the entire setup of the game is y’all are monsters in high school having love life drama and everything I have heard about this game is how remarkable it is combined with stories about the most ridiculous teenage drama, sooooo possibly after I have ranted for 8000 words about how to set up a functional Dungeons and Dragons campaign which the party and DMing advice still I think applies to any game Monsterhearts might be the game that you want to start with.

BONUS: ADVICE FROM JEREMY.

#jeremy believes in you #so do I #wheeee that got long #dungeons and dragons #storytelling advice #gay murder elf bachelorette #if you stuck around through this whole thing wow congratulations I hope I wasn't too boring #I have a lot of friends who are very good at mechanics and who can speak a lot about good game design #this is what I can offer though

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