#it's much much less a default i just fall back on automatically the way it is in fanfic

[marinsawakening]

Been thinking lately about the Fanfic Writing Style(TM) and how incredibly restrictive it is because any deviation from a fairly paint-by-numbers third person POV tends to be wildly alienating to the average fanfic reader, and will actively be avoided.

This is especially obvious when you look at how first person POV fics are treated; they are automatically associated with bad quality, and people will immediately turn away from a fanfic the moment they see it's written in first person. There are reasons for this; firstly, it is true that beginning writers will often use first person because it feels a little more accessible than the other options, and most beginning writers are of course not very good yet on a technical level, especially not if they are also children, which many fanfic writers are. So the association between first person and bad quality is not entirely baseless (though, y'know. definitely at least a little mean spirited, if unintentionally so). Secondly, and this is a personal sentiment but one I've seen some people echo: first person can read weird when combined with fanfic, because fanfic often does not benefit from a closer connection with the POV character. We are here to watch blorbo do thing, it can feel a little weird when it is instead I doing the thing, y'know? This is personal preference, of course; no accounting for that.

However, regardless of the reasons, kneejerk avoidance of first person POV fics is probably one of the driving factors behind the homogenization of the fanfic writing style. It's difficult to put into words to me, but especially if you read a lot of fanfic, at some point it's obvious that most of these stories are written in the exact same way, with the same sentence structure, cadence, and metaphors. The often-mocked italicized Oh, usually used in its own paragraph, usually used in a romantic context, is an example of this: a writing quirk turned universal enough specifically in fanfic to be singled out and ridiculed for its frequency.

This style isn't inherently bad, many authors pull it off very well, but it's certainly restricting. Essentially banning the usage of the first person POV alone is already severely limiting, but even just a slightly different usage of the third person POV is discouraged if everyone is writing the exact same way.

This leads to an overarching problem in fandom, namely that all characters tend to sound the same. The style of writing is the same whether writing about a jaded 40-year-old man or a peppy 12-year-old girl. A story set in 1940's France will have more or less the same writing as a story set in 2010's America. Writers do often try to add little details to their narration to distinguish different characters, and success with this varies, but is usually limited. Narration in fandom is rarely personalized to the character, and instead falls into the homogenized fandom style more than anything else.

I don't have a specific goal with this post. I'm not necessarily saying 'we need to STOP big fandom's writing style' or whatever, I don't think that's productive or feasible. I do think that we should all, as readers, be a little more open to stuff like first person POV fics or stranger prose experiments rather than skipping over or closing out of a fic as soon as we encounter them, and as authors (if you actually care about improving your writing) I'm encouraging you to take a look at the prose style used in your fanfic and see if you could diversify it because oftentimes readers do respond positively when they see it, so I guess if there's anything to take away from this post as a call to action, it's that. But mostly this is just me musing on something I've noticed in my own fanworks recently that irritates me.

[dirt-piper]

On the origins of Not So Seecret Saturday, and its future

When I first found Minecraft I was roughly 10 years old.

I can’t precisely identify how I found it - through some kid at school, or a friend of my sister, or randomly on the internet - but I remember falling in love with it.

I loved the aesthetic, I loved the dopey Minecraft music parodies, I loved the let’s plays, I loved the classic multiplayer servers, I loved the dumb jokes the community made, but most of all - I loved the game itself. It was weird, beautiful, simple, terrifying, serene, and hilarious, all at the same time.

I spent hours not only playing the game itself, but also watching videos about it, reading forum and blog posts, and poring over the Minecraft wiki - my favorite articles of which were the ones regarding the removed, unused, and planned features - aspects of the game that I could know about but never experience for myself.

Over time the game I fell in love with started to fade away - the aesthetic changed as biomes were added (though not that much, and it still looked nice), the gameplay began to suffer (a fast travel hell dimension with nothing to do in it, beds that let you sidestep the entire challenge of the game), but it was still largely the game I loved.

After Beta 1.8, the game I loved ceased to exist.

Okay, that’s a bit too dramatic. I still played the hell out of the game during the early release era - but I notably stopped playing survival singleplayer altogether after Beta 1.8. Multiplayer in any game is fun, and the newly added creative mode gave me hours of mindless entertainment blowing things up with TNT and making useless redstone contraptions. But to a large extent I stopped playing the game itself - survival singleplayer - and every time I did I found myself having a very hard time enjoying it.

Now, kid me didn’t really know why I suddenly lost all interest in this game I loved - I could kinda grok that stuff like the new hunger system and terrain system were less than stellar (likely helped by the fact that everyone seemed to hate these two things at the time - the massive open letter to Mojang begging them to add beaches back to the terrain generator springs to mind), but the nitty gritty specifics of what exactly made the game less fun for me were not yet apparent.

Luckily for kid me, I managed to find something to help me alleviate the problem - Exalm’s OldDays mod. This mod allowed you to tweak Minecraft’s features to your own preferences, literally undoing changes from various updates on-the-fly to permit you to hand-tune your personal “perfect” version of Minecraft. I used it to tear out all the changes I didn’t like - gone were the biomes, hunger system, nether, sprinting, new terrain generator, stackable food, potions, enchanting system, etc. Now, suddenly, I could play (and enjoy) singleplayer survival again - and this was the ‘default’ way I played Minecraft up until the mod stopped getting updated in 2013, around release 1.6.4.

By this time a brand new Minecraft launcher had released which allowed you to (officially) go back and play previous versions of Minecraft - with OldDays gone, I picked the version of the game closest to my hand-crafted ideal and dove right in. Thus, the primary version of Minecraft that I played became Alpha 1.1.2_01.

Flash-forward 5 years to July 18th 2018, and I’m not a kid anymore. I’ve just graduated high school, and I’m on vacation with my family in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. It’s a rainy day, so I’m playing Minecraft on my laptop. By this point I had a singleplayer world with damn near everything a player could want in 2010 - an automatic cactus farm, a mob grinder, a minecart system, vast underground mines, an automatic boat dispenser, a hulking storage room - you name it. But deep within I felt a twinge, a feeling that something was missing. I don’t remember what originally set me off, whether it was being by the ocean, or the nascient release of the update aquatic, or a memory of Minecraft classic, but somehow I started getting a bit upset that sponges were unobtainable in the version of the game I was playing.

Very conveniently, I had taken a class on Java my junior year of high school.

I dug up an ancient version of the Mod Coder Pack for a1.1.2_01, decompiled Minecraft and started poking around the codebase. After a bit of digging, a realization slowly began to dawn on me - why stop at sponges? Why not fix more things? Like fix axes not breaking workbenches? Or redstone ore taking an eternity to mine? Or boats exploding when you sneeze on them? Or, better yet, fulfill my childhood fantasies by implementing all the removed/unused/unimplemented features I used to spend hours reading about on the minecraft wiki. Realizing I could use some guidance, I asked my friend Vulpovile (creator of Minecraft Classic Creative Revived) if he might like to help me out with my new project.

side note: I planned on adding the ambient loops a full two years before getting around to implementing them... and my method was essentially the same as what I schemed up on the first day. Most NSSS features bounce around my head for a year or two before I finally implement them.

We managed to get sponges done within a day, and banged out the rest of the little QoL fixes I wanted not too long after. Soon we began going haywire - adding singleplayer commands, trying to fix the outrageously janky alpha multiplayer, optimizing the game, making food stack, making trees drop apples, underwater dungeons, whatever we wanted to do, we did it. We had already numbered our new ‘fork’ of Minecraft as ‘Alpha v1.1.3’, but didn’t actually have a name for it - the original working title was “Minecraft Redone” - a very literal description of our goals, but not that catchy. After 4 days I finally coined the name.

By the 28th, our first release was out: Not So Seecret Saturday’s Minecraft Alpha v1.1.3. We ended up released one update every other week straight on into october - in 1.1.4 we tried to beat the server code further into submission, in 1.1.5 I reimplemented the score system from survival test and added floating worlds, in 1.1.6 I tried (and failed) to improve mob AI and made sponges redstone-sensitive, and in 1.1.7 we polished our work a bit and added two more world types. Then September hit and Vulpovile and I were sucked right back into college. During winter break we managed to release some more patches to 1.1.7, as well as 1.1.8 to add McRegion and running... before the first gap.

‘The gap’, as I’m dubbing it now, is a fairly common occurrence in NSSS development - it’s happened roughly 3.5 times now, and each time it’s the same thing:

Development on NSSS is interrupted by something IRL (at first this was always college, but now it’s health conditions and other boring responsibilities of being an adult. And a bit of depression.)

I don’t get right back to working on NSSS.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the then-current state of NSSS. A LOT of time.

The more I think, the more I determine needs to be done to NSSS before I’d be satisfied enough to do a new release.

Every time I open eclipse I either get so overwhelmed by the massive backlog of work that has to be done that I either only manage one tiny portion or I give up and do something else.

Steps 2-5 are repeated ad nauseum, until...

A sudden, miraculous wave of motivation occurs. I get everything I’ve been planning over the past [weeks/months/year(s)] done in the span of 2 weeks, release the update, and finally return to making semi-regular NSSS updates.

This routine is so predictable to me now that I can nearly time my watch to it. But that first gap after 1.1.8 was special - as I sat and thought about NSSS, and what I really wanted to do with it, my goal slowly shifted. At first I had just wanted to ‘fix’ Minecraft alpha by cramming a bunch of shiny toys and knick-knacks into it to satisfy my inner child, but now I wanted something... more. I didn’t just want to make a better alpha than alpha, I wanted to make a better Minecraft than Minecraft.

Let me preface this by divulging that I’m a massive fan of Team Fortress 2.

The development history of TF2 is utterly fascinating, and if you’re at all interested in game development I urge you greatly to play through the entire TF2 developer’s commentary, but the relevant parallel is this:

The original Team Fortress was a mod of quake made by a trio of Australian teenagers who went hog-wild with QuakeC, the super powerful Quake scripting language, to invent the class-based shooter in 1996. At first they were just adding things to have fun, but over time started paying more and more attention to the actual design and balance of the game they had created. Eventually, the entire team was hired by VALVe in ‘98, and after porting Team Fortress to GoldSrc as ‘Team Fortress Classic’, they got right to work on Team Fortress 2.

Team Fortress 2 didn’t release for another 9 years.

During that time, TF2 went through a multitude of totally different designs and ideas, at some points being nearly unrecognizable gameplay-wise to the original Team Fortress, until ultimately VALVe decided to stop trying to invent something wholly new and unknown and instead to improve on what they knew - and so they essentially rebuilt Team Fortress for the third time, now in the Source engine, and with a cartoon-ier art style. And then they started playtesting.

VALVe had learnt from making half-life that playtesting often and early is utterly invaluable as a tool to aide game design. After all - how do you know how something is gonna play until you’ve played it? And how will it play for people who are totally unexposed to it? A developer already knows all the game’s mechanics and how they work - how would a lay-person discover them all for themselves? Which mechanics would a normal player use in ways the developers never intended? There’s no way to find this stuff out until you hand your game off to a stranger and wait to see how they break it.

And so VALVe, through constant playtesting, tweaking, and fiddling, honed TF2′s design and gameplay to a point where, while not totally perfect, was absolutely better than the original Team Fortress. And aside from the new artstyle, the omission of grenades and bhopping, and the medic becoming... well, an actual medic, very little had changed of the core gameplay beyond little tweaks and nudges.

That’s what I wanted NSSS to become.

I wanted to make Minecraft into a better game than it already was through little tweaks and nudges - an adjustment here, a rebalance there, and a few new features where a gap exists to justify them.

During the first gap I did manage to release some moderate patches to 1.1.8, fixes for things like the busted FastRender port and proper textures for all the dye colors, as well as the first release of the NSSS launcher. But all of these were just tide-overs for what I really wanted.

In summer of 2020 the first gap-and-a-half concluded with the release of 1.1.9, which added Creative mode, Sponge Armor, and Ambient loops. All of these features were things I had spent years brainstorming, tweaking, and revising before I was finally happy with them - and when they finally released to the public... they were good. By now NSSS had started to accumulate some following, and the positive feedback to 1.1.9 was notable - it turns out that people like things that are carefully thought-out and designed! Two weeks later I released 1.1.10 to patch over some more things and finalize gold touch, and then I set my aim on the largest hulking problem NSSS has faced since day 1:

Multiplayer.

The original ‘legacy’ NSSS server was accidentally based off of a version of hMod for Alpha 1.1.2_01, but our problems with it would have occurred regardless; the Alpha server SUCKED. Within a day of poking around the code Vulpovile and I came to the conclusion that Notch had taken the Classic server and stapled infinite worlds onto it to create a horrible abomination.

Mobs would randomly turn invisible, Redstone would only work at certain Y levels, Doors would open halfway, you would randomly die of fall damage for no reason, you couldn’t eat food unless you were looking directly at the floor, if you checked a furnace while it was smelting something it’d break the timer and waste fuel, you could dupe items in chests by clicking on them fast enough, tools could be repaired by dropping them on the ground and picking them back up - it was a nightmare.

Vulpovile and I both, quite rightly, came to the conclusion around 1.1.8 that the legacy server was unworkable. We started trying to write our own , new server from scratch, but that went nowhere - too much of an uphill battle. Once 1.1.9 came along, I decided to do it ‘the easy way’ and just take a later version’s server and downgrade it to alpha - the winner was beta 1.7.3. I had hoped to finish by 1.1.10, but found myself in a deeper hole than I expected, so 1.1.10 was shipped with no multiplayer and I made 1.1.11 into the “fix multiplayer” release.

1.1.11 took over a year to finish.

God what a nightmare. It did not take me very much time to get simple interoperability between the NSSS client and the Beta server, but certain bugs quickly emerged as gordion knots: if someone sneaked they would crash all connected clients, opening a chest crashed the game, crafting recipes were one slot to the left, your armor would shift one slot down at random times, and vehicles were possessed by demons. The sheer amount of bugs I had to work through to get this update out was mind-boggling, to a point where I actually opened 1.1.11 up to a limited group of playtesters for several months before full release just for the sake of trying to eliminate every bug possible. Ultimately, the pre-planned release date of September 18th, 2021 (exactly eleven years after Alpha 1.1.1, the first seecret saturday) snuck up on me, and I panickedly released what I hoped was a relatively bug-free 1.1.11: it wasn’t! While multiplayer was far, far better than it had been in 1.1.9 and prior, singleplayer had become riddled with bugs, namely pertaining to inventories and creepers. I quashed most of them in later patches, but the armor shifting bug still isn’t totally fixed in multiplayer - if you die and relog without completely closing and reopening the game, your armor still shifts one slot down. I have no clue why the hell this happens.

Something that started happening during 1.1.11 that would foreshadow the next 2 years of NSSS’s development was a trend wherein I would gradually feel more and more trapped by the feature set of the update I was working on, and would increasingly wish I was working on the next update instead - this sucked for motivation and made 1.1.11 take even longer. That next update was going to be one that would add Seasons and Dynamic Weather to NSSS - an update which has been in progress for almost two years.

1.1.12 is still coming along, don’t worry, but I can guarantee you that once it’s out, I am never doing another massive, year-long-wait update for NSSS every again. Updates will return to being smaller and more frequent - the way it should be! Expect further ranting in a later post.

-DirtPiper

[sepublic]

Tamara’s Power

            A few days ago, I asked a physics question for a story I was writing, and after receiving some answers that seemed to share a general consensus, I’m happy to explain the context!

         Remember Tamara, an Arkley’s alumnus I introduced a while back? I’ve been workshopping on what her ‘abilities’ are, and I’ve finally figured it out: Tamara has the power to change the direction of gravitational pull on whatever she touches, including herself by default!

         I’m not sure yet how she obtained these powers through the help of the Arkley Gang, but I do know that she’s fairly devastating with them. If you can’t fly, which is most people, you’re automatically screwed as soon as Tamara makes physical contact with you; Ever wanted to know what it’s like to skydive, but never had the patience to go through the whole process of getting setup, knowing it gave one too many chances to chicken out? No worries! You can skydive from the freaking ground now, thanks to her!

         Tamara makes for a fairly effective assassin and deadly combatant, as a result; She can cherry-tap you once, and watch as you suddenly start plummeting into the sky like you jumped out of a plane. And you keep spinning and falling, reaching terminal velocity… until Tamara’s effect finally wears off; At which point, if you haven’t suffocated from thin air (I haven’t figured out the exact time it takes for this effect to wear off, much less how long it’d take to free fall into altitudes too thin to breathe), well. What comes up, what comes down; That’s a philosophy Tamara lives by.

         That’s if you’re outside, of course; Inside, you ever look up at a ceiling and think how far up it is, like if gravity was suddenly reversed, you’d go splat? Well, now you don’t have to imagine it! And Tamara can change the direction of gravity to whatever she pleases, not just reverse it… So imagine you’re just standing there, and suddenly you’re falling sideways for several feet until you crash into a wall and break every bone in your body.

         Tamara’s power is fully three-dimensional and she’s embraced this fact; She can apply her ability to objects as well, so imagine there’s a car between you and her. One tap, and the car is hurtling towards you, with the force a car normally has when it’s been dropped in the middle of the air. This ability to let gravity do all of the work in lifting and carrying objects gives Tamara the impression of having super strength, but not quite!

         If Tamara maintains contact with whatever she’s touching, she can also change its direction of gravitational pull as she pleases; So, say she applies this to a giant axe on the ground. By pointing its gravitational direction up, and then turning it like the clock of a hand as it ‘falls’ in her hands, Tamara can effectively swing heavy weapons over her head like they weigh nothing, and by that same logic, spin them around. Gravity does all of the work for Tamara.

         She doesn’t have to attack up-close either; As mentioned, Tamara can make objects fall towards opponents from a distance. The farther, the more force is built up until it reaches terminal velocity, so either Tamara attacks you from afar with makeshift meteors, or taps you on the shoulder and sends you spiraling into the atmosphere like a balloon you let go. It’s a painfully lose-lose situation, but like the original context for being stuck between a rock and a hard place, there IS a better, or rather less-worse option; The ‘rock’, or rather being attacked from afar. Because you can theoretically move out of the way or even defend yourself against speeding objects, but if you can’t fly…!

         Attacking from a distance is how Tamara deals with people who can fly; While initially disoriented, they tend to be fairly hard counters to her ability. But they’re not the only ones who can fly…!

         Remember what I said, about Tamara’s ability applying to herself by default? Remember that weirdly specific physics question I asked a while back? This is why; Tamara can change the direction of gravity’s pull on her to not only walk on walls and other surfaces, but ‘fly’ too; Although to quote Toy Story, it’s more technically akin to ‘falling with style’. By changing her direction of gravity as she falls, Tamara can soar through the skies, and quickly reach terminal velocity; Which for reference, is about 120 miles/200 km per hour. And it takes about twelve seconds to reach that, too!

         So if Tamara wants to get someplace fast, she’s flying; No traffic AND the top speed of the average car! If she needs to land, Tamara can reverse the direction of gravity, causing her to slow down until she reaches a temporary stopping point; By doing this just above the ground, Tamara can revert gravity to normal just as she stops, and safely land! And yes, I, or rather everyone I asked, did the calculations to see if this would kill Tamara or give her severe whiplash. So far, the forces seem akin to a roller coaster, so Tamara is probably fine! Also it’s fiction, so y’know.

         Tamara doesn’t always need to travel long distances at top speed, however; if it’s a short distance, Tamara can briefly point gravity’s pull in the direction she needs to get, and as soon as she begins moving, reverse it to slow down as she lands perfectly at her destination. Don’t bother trying to outrun Tamara, she’ll always cut you off and be much faster at it, too.

         As mentioned, Tamara can turn off her gravitational effect. While she needs to maintain contact with a victim/object to change their pull, she can always turn it off from a distance, reverting them back to regular gravity. This allows Tamara to alter something’s trajectory like an arc, albeit once, upon changing its gravity and letting it leave her. So yeah, she can hurl a car over a fence, so remain vigilant!

         Tamara can even combine her ability to ‘fly’ with her ability to send objects ‘flying’, in a very terrifying maneuver; By latching onto something, she can change its gravitational pull and her own in the same direction. Tamara could grab onto a boulder, and make it fly just as she does, swerving and turning multiple times in the sky, making passes as they swoop down in an attempt to hit a target. In practice, it looks like Tamara is Superman, flying and pushing a giant object through the air before she slams it directly into someone.

         As mentioned, the imagery of Tamara’s abilities can give a skewed perception of what they even are; If Tamara isn’t inclined to explain them to an enemy (so every time, basically), they might be under the initial impression she has super strength, and/or flight; Able to freely soar and send large objects careening into the sky like they’re nothing. Casually jump incredible heights and somersault over obstacles, before gently landing like a cat on its feet. But again, it’s all gravity doing the work, it’s all just ‘falling with style’.

         Naturally, it takes a VERY intimate understanding of physics to wield this ability to the fullest, and safely. When Tamara received her power, she devoted as much time as possible into experimentation, learning physics and how to calculate trajectories, and had advanced lessons from Frared and Arakchos on math and physics. She practiced frequently, wearing a parachute and cushioned armor to protect herself in the case of crashes. But as Tamara perfected her ability, she eventually didn’t even need these things. Likewise, she became a professional skydiver of sorts, learning how to optimize speed, airflow, and posture in order to maneuver mid-air.

         Tamara can be terrifying. It might look unusual and occasionally goofy to see someone in the air, skydiving but somehow sideways… But then she sets sights on you and swoops down like a bird of prey diving towards its prey; And when Tamara grazes her hand against you, to onlookers it looks like she just whacked you into the air. It’s like seeing an object in a videogame get hurled, but there’s no gravity effect so it just falls in a completely straight direction; Uncanny and also hilarious. If Tamara misses, she just soars back into the air and circles around, waiting for the right time and angle to strike.

         It should also be mentioned that if Tamara doesn’t want to break her hand while flying at high speeds, she needs to slow down as she grazes you with arm or leg to activate her ability. This is admittedly not that much of a help, since Tamara can always switch to walking and running on the ground like normal, but it is a window of relative safety!

         When it comes to mundane usage of her power, Tamara likes to hang around at odd angles, sometimes sitting sideways, upside down, with her stuff similarly beside her; It’s not uncommon to see Tamara stand upside down on your ceiling, or sit sideways on some railing as she sips a drink without a lid, with zero spill or struggle. 

         While exploring her power, Tamara admittedly got cocky once and had a bunch of other stuff around her in such an odd angle; But got absent-minded and forgot to regularly refresh her ability through contact, which led to something of hers falling back in the direction of normal gravity after a while. Hence, she makes sure to always hold onto something, as much as possible when Tamara takes it with her.

         As mentioned, Tamara also uses her power to travel in short bursts, and she’s admittedly cheated a bit when it comes to roller skating, briefly pointing gravity’s pull forward, albeit slightly angled downwards; And then letting it move her along before reverting it back to normal, enabling Tamara to build up some impressive speed that isn’t too ludicrous! She’ll do this periodically to refresh and maintain momentum…

         In general, don’t play sports with Tamara; Even if she promises not to use her ability, you can’t always tell with how she can cleverly return gravity’s direction to normal to restore an arcing motion. And if you accuse her of still using her power, Tamara will jokingly accuse you of downplaying her natural strength and capabilities.

         Unsurprisingly, Tamara can be a bit of a prankster, and take her tricks to malicious extents; She can set up traps by making objects stick to the ceiling, and then turn off the effect so they fall back down afterwards onto someone. Tamara has also made people quickly realize just how unaccommodated for multi-directional gravity most architecture is. But if she’s with you, expect a lot of fun exploring rooms and buildings at angles you never imagined; Though there might be a learning curve when it comes to landing properly, and especially in training yourself for dizziness.

         Luckily for Tamara, she wasn’t totally blind-sided when exploring the secondary effects of her powers; She made sure to test it plenty with… other people, particularly victims, targets, and enemies she was assigned to take out. Tamara toyed with people, and if they weren’t killed in the process of experimentation, she’d just collect the data and THEN apply a straight-forward, conventional method. This is how Tamara figured out how to slow herself down safely, after all… She’s the mastermind behind some fairly bizarre murders; Crime scenes where it looks like a victim was somehow launched into the corner of a ceiling, went splat, and then fell back to the ground after a few minutes.

        Ultimately, Tamara’s philosophy when it comes to her power can be boiled down to two phrases, both of them quotes; Again, “Falling with style” and “Gravity hurts.”

[meruz]

i was gonna draw tonight but i dropped my tablet pen and the barrel of the pen broke off and flew somewhere underneath (??) my bed (?) and now i cant find it so I’m just gonna answer asks before bed instead. just some art asks and more mentions of infinity train LOL

What program and brushes do you use when making your art?

@ravki hi! part of this is in my FAQ but i’ll say it again anyways LOL: I use photoshop CC and have used photoshop for pretty much....my whole art career. I’ve dabbled in clip and paint tool sai in the past but photoshop is my true wife, we eloped away from her awful father adobe many years ago and are very happy together. 

as for brushes... I should prob put this info in my FAQ too lol,... my default brush set is actually free to download here! Tho I will say I also use steve ahn’s storyboarding brush sometimes and lately i’ve been using shiyoon kim’s brushes A TON. Shiyoon’s cost a couple bucks but they’re super worth it imo

How do you choose colors?

This is kind of a difficult one to describe from scratch but hmm.... I’ll put it this way. Generally when I go into coloring or painting something I already have some colors in mind. Like for a certain piece I know I want a bright green, or a magenta, or a dark blue in certain areas. A lot of the time I know a mood I want. So I’ll start with that core color tone and build around it. I’ll use an example from a recent piece

So you can see here that the first color I accessed was that bright cyan. So I start with that bright cyan and then bring in its “friends” in the form of analogous colors (shown below on the far left)

greens greys etc. THEN I know I want the characters to stand out against all the blue so I start laying down warm contrasting colors for them (middle group). the mat under them is orange, skin tones are warm, ryans flannel is red etc. then to get them to work together I work more cool colors into the shadows and slightly warmer (not too warm because its a cool img overall so in this case, greener LOL) colors into highlights. 

hope that makes sense? for me choosing colors is a lot about story and composition. If you know what you want to say, the mood you want to create, where you want to go, the path to get there becomes a lot clearer imo.

Have you ever considered making an art book?

I have! But I don’t think I currently have enough...original illustrations for one LOL? Not that an art book has to be all original work but if I were putting fanart in an art book...at that point I’d just make a fanzine. I’m making more original work lately though so maybe this year....? Who knows. For now, I do have a sketchbook up on gumroad. Hoping to do one of those next year too.

Any tips for keeping background drawings from getting super stiff, especially since things like interiors have a lot of straight lines?

This is a really interesting ask. Really great question that I don’t think gets asked enough - forgive me if I get a bit art school here but I drew up some examples.

First I think we have to investigate the assumption that straight lines make things stiff. That seems true on an instinctual level and certainly proves to be true very often But I don’t think its actually the straight lines themselves but the sort of arrangements and compositions they tend to dictate. Take this for instance.

pretty big difference, right? there’s a couple things that make a composition feel stiff and one of the most significant is lines that are perpendicular and parallel to the frame. it feels locked in and solid, like bricks. but the moment you shift these angles even a little the composition instantly becomes more dynamic because our innate senses of weight, gravity, and directionality can sense movement.

But it’s not just diagonals let’s take this one step further

when lines meet and terminate together those tangents can flatten and lock space so the best way to solve this is with overlap and complete intersection, forms continuing past or behind each other feel more layered and less like a flat mosaic... again, even in the simplest line drawings. So how do we apply this to a background?

ok I drew this really fast so its potentially not the best example but I think the idea is there. This space isn’t even particularly deep, it’s basically a room, a doorway, and a hallway behind it, and we’re not seeing that much of any of those things LOL. but when you draw an environmental object like a doorway in a way that lines up with the perpendicular and parallel lines of the canvas you’re automatically flattening it and making it look rigid.

and when you create tangents with objects and characters you flatten the space around them and make it difficult to tell what is actually in front or behind or if they’re on the same plane.

GOD I HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE. Anyways. avoid those things and you’ll instantly have less stiff bgs no matter what kind of bg you’re depicting.

I wanna mention however that this isn’t to say a stiff bg with flat space doesn’t have its purposes.

sometimes you want to create parallels and tangents. it can make characters feel closed in, trapped, regimented, part of a routine, etc. it’s also great for making a composition look ornamental (especially combined with symmetry).

directors like wes anderson can even use these compositional elements to make images feel uncanny or harrowing! its very versatile. I think the important thing is to just be aware of when you are making something rigid and when that’s the last thing you want to do. conscious choices.

Can you speak Tagalog?

@lemuelzero101​ I can! BUT NOT VERY WELL LOL ;;; both my parents are from Visayas! but they met and had me in the states lol so I’m pretty American born and raised. We go back to visit family on occasion but not regularly. My tagalog is mostly absorbed from listening to relatives at parties lol and my parents speak bisaya at home so I’m marginally better at that. Sorry to any filipinos out there hoping I’d be better educated, I’m like a little baby...

I do love meeting and talking to other filipinos online though, I grew up in an area that was relatively diverse but the asian population was small and the filipino population basically non-existent. I was like one of maybe 2 filipino kids in my highschool of 2000.

Apart from infinity train what shows are you watching now? Have you seen jujitsu kaisen?

Man this is gonna sound so boring but I haven’t watched a lot of tv lately.  It’s not really part of my daily routine. Let’s see... I was sort of watching Amphibia, Craig of the Creek, and the new Digimon Adventure 2020 but I keep falling off watching those for one reason or another. Also there’s a lot of episodes, it doesn’t feel like something I can just binge and be done with.

The last thing I binged was Succession. I want that show and Euphoria back so bad, when I’m done forcing all my friends to watch Infinity Train im cancelling my HBO subscription until Succession and Euphoria return so they know exactly what I’m on their list for LOL. 

I have not watched jujitsu kaisen but I’ve kept up with some of the sakuga news (I keep up with anime industry news and production info like x5 the amt i keep up with actual anime) for it and their compositing/editing looks dope. I’ve read the manga actually LOL or at least part of the beginning. I wasn’t super keen on the whole finger eating thing. Also to be honest I kinda feel like its the new Bleach and I never particularly cared about Bleach. Characters look nice enough tho. I wholeheartedly support jjk fans.

Thank you! Thank you @keznodzieja​! <3

And thank you anons who don’t watch infinity train LOL...it’s always nice to hear when people enjoy my fanart despite not knowing the source material because it lifts a little bit of the “oh god am I being annoying???” fear off my chest. But also I think you should watch infinity train because it’s really good I have no reservations recommending it.

[jakeyp]

“I don’t know why I’m crying I-I’m sorry” // angst and fluff ♥︎

hi... i kind of wrote a small fic with that prompt. you can read it here or on ao3! thanks for this i really needed the motivation. i decided to write something about what happened after 8x06! <3 

—

Amy arrives home a little later than usual that night, overwhelmed with the events of the last few days. There are so many things to process, though the only thing she can focus on at the moment, is her husband’s suspension. She knows Jake very well, and most likely he’ll try to hide his sadness and pretend he’s fine, not because he thinks he’s weak but because he doesn’t want Amy to worry about him. Yet, she can’t help to wonder how he’s taking it.

Not knowing what to expect as she enters their apartment, Amy tosses her keys onto the couch sadly, too distracted to place them on the key hook. Jake is nowhere to be seen, so she figures he must be putting Mac to sleep, since it’s past ten already, and there are no toys scattered around the floor.

Indeed, she finds Jake whispering to his son, who lies in his crib, babbling and very, very awake, even though the lights are dimmed and it’s quiet in there.

“Hey,” Amy says softly.

Despite her tone, Jake startles, turning around, but immediately relaxes when he sees it’s just her. “Ames,” he breathes, looking down at Mac and then back at his wife, guilt taking over his features. “I kind of let him take a nap earlier and now he can’t sleep…”

“It’s okay,” Amy says, shrugging. She wants to add something else to reassure him, but her mind’s entirely blank, so she settles for a casual question. “What did you two have for dinner?”

Jake smiles. “He tried scrambled eggs for the first time. I know it’s technically breakfast food, but I read he can eat them now, plus it’s what I cook best.”

“And?”

“He loved them, duh.”

Amy chuckles. “Of course. Did you have some too?”

“I… wasn’t really hungry.”

“Oh. Well, I haven’t eaten either. We can heat some leftovers if you want.”

Jake nods with a weak smile, which widens as he turns to check on Mac. “Hey, he’s asleep! Maybe he just needed to make sure mama arrived home safe.”

Amy leans over to look at her sleeping son. Mac looks so much like his dad, when he laughs or smiles—which he’s been doing recently a lot—but especially when he’s asleep and completely peaceful.

She turns to see Jake staring at their baby with a proud smile and it warms her heart. Perhaps he’s forgotten about the suspension.

“Leftovers, then?” she whispers after a while, grabbing him by the wrist to pull him a little closer to her.

“Sure,” he says, throwing a last glance at Mac before following Amy out of their room and closing the door behind him. They’ve learned to make as little noise as possible in the last ten months, so their voices are barely above a whisper by default whenever Mac is asleep.

As it’s routine, Jake turns on the TV, not choosing a channel, and mutes it before joining Amy in the kitchen, while she gets the food from the fridge and puts it in the microwave.

From the corner of her eye, she can see Jake leaning against the counter in an awkward pose, staring at her almost anxiously.

Amy has no idea how to ask the question she’s been wanting to ask him since she got there, so she takes a deep breath and turns to him. “Babe, are you… okay with it?”

His expression tells her he’s been dreading her to ask. Yet, he plays dumb. “With what?”

“With everything that happened. Your suspension…”

“Oh,” Jake spats after what seems like hours, as if every emotion he was supposed to be feeling before was just settling in. Amy’s stomach drops. These subjects might not be her thing. “It’s fine. I suppose I can talk about it, but is it necessary?”

She shrugs. “Just tell me.” Her voice is as soft as it can be. “How do you feel about it?”

Jake puts on a poker face now. She’s usually good at reading him, but she can’t tell what he’s thinking. Amy knows how much he enjoys his job. Everything had happened so fast, though, at some point she’d lost track of it all. One second he was very excited about his ‘Speed’ situation and then, suddenly, he was in too deep.

To sum it up, it hadn’t gone well.

“I feel weird,” Jake finally admits, looking down. “It feels weird to know I won’t be going back tomorrow. But I’ll… adapt, I guess.”

“I’m sure you will,” she automatically replies, hesitating a little before placing a hand on his chest.

He seems to attempt a smile, but it vanishes right away. “I feel stupid too. Why can’t I listen? Holt told me to stay out of it and I screwed up. I screw up a lot.”

Amy frowns. “Of course you don’t. Sometimes you can be silly, yes, but there’s nothing wrong with it. This time it just… it got out of my hands too. I was really drunk.”

Jake chuckles. “Yeah,” he says shortly, and then swallows. “So five months, huh? It isn’t that much, is it? There are like thirty days in a month so it would be like a hundred days which have twenty-four hours each, so it would be like twenty-four thousand hours.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head with a smile. Math is decidedly not Jake’s strength. “It’s only like… three thousand and seven hundred hours.”

“Oh. That’s… still a lot.”

Amy sighs. His eyes are red, probably with exhaustion, and she can’t recognize the emotion behind them. It might be just deep, deep sadness.

“Ames,” he says huskily before she can talk. “What am I gonna do?”

Her eyebrows shot up, but before she can even think of an answer, Jake cuts her off again. “Things were so well yesterday. It makes me think… I can mess everything up so quickly. And it’s always my fault. What am I gonna mess up next?”

“Don’t say that,” she says, her throat knotting. “It’s okay to make mistakes, babe. And you are great at dealing with the consequences. You learn from your mistakes, you’ve always done.”

“Yeah, I keep pushing things until something goes wrong,” he argues in a trembling voice, “and until then I stop, I—” and suddenly that trembling voice breaks.

Amy’s stomach drops again as his eyes tear up, becoming redder. He immediately looks away when he realizes himself.

“Hey,” she says soothingly, cupping his face to make him look at her. “Don’t beat yourself up over this.”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes. “I know it’s a dumb thing to cry over, I just—” once more he’s unable to finish his sentence, pinching his lips shut before his voice can get any louder or high-pitched.

A single tear streams down his cheek.

“It’s not dumb,” Amy says. “If it makes you feel like this, it’s not dumb.”

“Well, I got myself into it—”

“And as I said, you will learn from it. That’s what matters.”

“I’ve been suspended like a thousand times already,” he counters, his tone bitter. "What makes you think it won’t happen again? What makes you think I couldn’t get fired?”

She shrugs, trying to stay calm even though she wants to cry as well. “I wouldn’t be less proud of you than I am today,” she says. “You’ve grown up so much and whatever you have to deal with, I have to deal with too, because I love you and I’m willing to. So please, don’t beat yourself up over this because it’s going to be fine.”

He sniffs. “How can you know that?”

“Because I’ll make sure everything’s fine. You’re not alone, babe. You have me.”

Jake stays in silence for a few seconds, and she thinks he’s going to start sobbing, but his lips curl instead. “I love you so much,” is all he says.

“I love you too,” she mouths back, afraid she’ll begin crying if she talks, and then pulls him into a hug.

They stay like that for a while, maybe five seconds or ten minutes, sinking in a silence that they don’t really mind. She pulls away from his embrace only to wipe his tears away. Jake looks so tired. Exhausted, even. She feels the same way, when minutes ago they were going to watch some TV and have dinner, though now she’s not sure she’s up for it.

Jake must have been thinking the same thing because a small laugh comes from his lips all of a sudden.

“What?” Amy asks, amused.

“I just realized we never even heated the food.”

Amy chuckles, and it only causes him to laugh a little harder. She wonders if it’s the exhaustion making such a simple detail seem so funny, and rests her head on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. It’s calmer now, it could be matching hers.

“Babe,” she says softly.

“Yes?” Jake hums.

“It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

He doesn’t answer right away, and Amy separates, afraid she said the wrong thing, but Jake’s only bowing his head like she said the cheesiest thing in the world.

“I know. Thanks, Ames,” he says, and then adds, “I love you.” Even though she hears those words coming from him at least ten times a day, he manages to make them sound like it’s the first every time.

“I love you too,” Amy whispers, leaning in to kiss his cheek.

Jake is about to return a much longer kiss on the lips when Mac interrupts the moment. Amy squeezes her eyes shut with a knowing smile—this has happened many times before. However, Jake immediately becomes alert and rushes to attend to his son.

Amy chuckles to herself, finally heating the food which is still inside the microwave and turns off the TV, because they are definitely not watching anything before they fall asleep, worn off with the events.

Like Jake would say, they’re sort of an old couple now, but she couldn’t care less. To her, so far, it’s meant that things can be so easy now.

Her husband doesn’t join her back in the kitchen so she goes and checks on him and Mac. The room feels so warm and quiet still, as Jake rocks his son softly, lulling him, again not realizing Amy’s watching. It always seems like he drifts away from reality when he’s trying to make Mac stop crying—and he’s good at it. She doesn’t know what it is, but Jake is great at it.

“I have to admit,” Amy says, startling him of course, “I’m a little jealous of you. You get to spend five months with him, all by yourself.”

Jake gives her what looks like an automatic smile, and then realization hits him. “I hadn’t thought about that before,” he huffs, stroking Mac’s soft curls and looking down at him. “Did you hear that, bud? Five months for only the two of us.”

Mac babbles, and Amy tries to ignore how awake he still sounds. “Careful, Ames,” Jake tells her. “That sounded a lot like ‘dada’, and with these five months? It’s definitely going to be his first word.”

Amy rolls her eyes with a playful smile. “Not if I train him every night.”

“Challenge accepted.”

An hour later they’re both in bed after eating dinner and Amy has already changed into her pajamas. Jake hasn’t stopped rocking Mac, who woke up once more, but his father doesn’t seem to mind, and Amy has the feeling that his suspension doesn’t sound so bad to him anymore.

—

[baya-ni]

SHADOW’s Queer Coding

I first started exploring this idea of Sk8′s implicit queer rep (as in stuff other than explicit same sex intimacy) in this post.

I know we like to joke that Hiromi is the Token Straight of the protag gang, but I argue that he’s as much an example of queer rep as any of our main characters, albeit in a less conventional and fanservicey way.

So that’s what this post is gonna be, an analysis of Hiromi/SHADOW as a queer figure, how his character fits the Jekyll/Hyde archetype as a metaphor for queerness and The Closet, the similarities between SHADOW as a skatesona and early drag, and how his character represents a larger problem of exclusion within queer fandom spaces.

The 1886 Gothic novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is the origin of the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde”. What I’m calling the Jekyll/Hyde archetype, refers to the same thing; it refers to duality, to a character who is “outwardly good but sometimes shockingly evil” (as described from the novella’s wiki page).

And the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic has also long been associated with Queerness. The antagonism between Jekyll and Hyde as two sides of the same person resonates with many people as similar to the experience being in the closet, and many many scholars have written about this queer reading of Jekyll and Hyde. Do a quick google search if you don’t believe me.

Hiromi experiences his own Jekyll/Hyde duality through his SHADOW persona, which seems to entirely contradict with Hiromi’s day to day personality.

Whilst Hiromi is sweet, romantic, and generally very cutesy, SHADOW is mean-spirited, sadistic, described as “the anti-hero of the S community.”  And though these two personalities seem entirely at odds, SHADOW doesn’t exist in a vacuum, he’s very much a part of Hiromi. In the show, this manifests as SHADOW’s sabotage moves being all flower themed, as Hiromi works in a flower shop, and how he’ll “step out” of character when playing babysitter to the kids.

Below is passage from an essay titled, “The Homoerotic Architectures of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” which reminds me a lot of Hiromi’s character, such that I think his character arc can be read as an allegory for coming out and self acceptance.

The closet, here, is a space not only for secrecy and repression, but also for becoming; it is the space in which queer identities build themselves up from “disused pieces” and attempt to discover the strength needed for presentation to the world. The closet is both a space of profound fear and profound courage—of potentiality and actualization. (Prologue)

Unlike the kid/teen characters, the show’s adult characters all lead double lives. When they aren’t skating, they have day jobs. Kaoru is a calligrapher, Kojiro is a restaurant owner, Ainosuke is a politician/businessman (but tbh his job is just being some rich dude), and Hiromi works in a flower shop.

But of the adult protagonists (so not Ainosuke), Hiromi compartmentalizes the most.

Kojiro leaves his face totally exposed such that he can be recognized both on and off the skate scene. Kaoru at least covers his face, but his trademark pink hair and constant use of Carla doesn’t make it very hard to connect the dots between him and CHERRY. He’s also always with Kojiro in the evenings, so if you don’t recognize him as CHERRY when he’s on his own, you certainly will when you see him interacting with Kojiro/JOE.

Next to these two, Hiromi seems the more adamant at separating his Work from Play.

Even when he’s been clearly found it, he still tries to deny that he and SHADOW are the same person. Miya even uses this to coerce Hiromi into helping him and the boys:

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the separation between Hiromi and SHADOW can be interpreted as a metaphor for being in The Closet. As SHADOW, he leads a secret life, one characterized by an tight-knit underground community with a vibrant night scene, where he behaves in ways typically frowned upon by larger society. He worries about being found out and judged by the people close to him.

But in Ep 4, the walls of his Closet begins to come down, or in this case is literally imposed upon by other members of his community, by its younger members, who don’t feel the same need to hide their passion for skateboarding or lead the same kind of double life.

We then see the line between Hiromi and SHADOW begin to blur.

He becomes less of an antagonist, and instead the audience sees him become a mentor and “mother hen” figure for the younger skaters. Later on in Ep 4, we see him casually interacting with the other protags in full SHADOW mode, not as an “anti-hero” but as a friend.  In Ep 6, he acts as a babysitter for the kids, and we see him totally comfortable appearing both in an out of his SHADOW persona throughout their vacation.

And I think that this gradual convergence of Hiromi and SHADOW will culminate in this tournament arc.

There’s something more personal that’s driving SHADOW to do well in this tournament. It’s not just for bragging rights or his pride as a skater, but the results of this tournament is going to have some kind of greater impact on Hiromi’s personal life. Personally, my theory is that Hiromi is using this tournament to prove to himself that he’s worthy enough to ask his manager out on a date.

Hiromi is no longer compartmentalizing, his two lives are overlapping and influencing each other. Recall the essay quote I cited earlier:

The closet... is the space in which queer identities build themselves up from “disused pieces” and attempt to discover the strength needed for presentation to the world... of potentiality and actualization.

This is exactly the case for Hiromi. Through skating, he is piecing together the disparate parts of him such that he can present himself to the world as a more unified and confident being.

And the show presents the very skating community that Hiromi has been working so hard to keep separated from his personal life- Reki, Langa, Miya, Kaoru, and Kojiro- as the catalyst for that becoming.

That, my dear readers, is queer coding if I ever saw it.

But there’s probably gonna be people claiming something along the lines of “But SHADOW can’t be queer rep because he’s Straight!” And I assume that’s because he shows romantic interest in his female manager.

First of all, Bisexuality. Also Ace/aro-spec people. And second of all, SHADOW is Hiromi’s drag persona.

And before anyone can say anything about how Hiromi can’t do drag because he’s straight (assumption) and cis (also an assumption) uhhhh no, fuck you.

Drag didn’t start with RuPaul’s Drag Race, that’s just how it got mainstream. And it’s also how it got so gentrified and transphobic. You heard me. But anyway.

Drag is, and has always been, first and foremost about exaggerated, and oftentimes satirical, gender presentation and performance. It’s about playing with gender norms through artistic dress and theater, not so much to do with sexuality or gender identity.

Literally, what’s the difference here?

SHADOW is a persona of exaggerated masculinity with a punk aesthetic. Regardless of his sexuality or gender identity, Hiromi’s gender performance as SHADOW is drag- that makes him queer representation, change my fucking mind.

Queerness is more than same-sex romance, and by extension, good queer representation is not limited to canonized gay ships. The very word Queer, in it’s ambiguity, is meant to encompass the richly unique experiences of everyone within the LGBTQ+ community.

In my opinion, Queer =/= Gay. I mean, they’re colloquially the same yes and even I use them interchangeably. But for the purpose of this post, they’re not the same, and that’s to argue that Hiromi/SHADOW’s lack of acknowledgement as queer rep illustrates a larger issue of exclusion within fandom.

I mean, this is something we all kinda been knew, but in the case of Sk8 specifically, there are a two main reasons why I think Hiromi is rarely acknowledged as queer rep.

1. He’s not shippable with another male character

Fandom favors mlm ships when it comes to what’s considered good queer rep. And the ultimate mark of good queer rep is explicit acts of romance or intimacy between two male characters. Unlike with any of the other characters in the show, we can’t point to Hiromi and automatically clock him as gay, especially because he expresses romantic interest in a woman.

So by default, he’s less popular, because “Ew Straight People” amirite /s.

2. He’s not attractive

This is really interesting, because like JOE, Hiromi is a beefcake.

But fans don’t thirst over him the same way they do over JOE. Granted, the show really plays up JOE’s muscles in a very strip-teasey way that literally encourages viewers to find him attractive. By contrast, Hiromi is pretty much covered head to toe and he paints his face in theatrical makeup- the point is to look scary, not attractive.

In essence, even though Hiromi engages in “queer behavior” through his SHADOW persona, his queerness isn’t palatable.

But I also think there’s some pretty insidious undercurrents of fetishization going on here, of both Asian people AND gay men. Which is... a whole other thing I really don’t have the capacity to unpack completely.

But basically, Hiromi doesn’t fit into any of the popular BL archetypes so he’s less likely to recognized as Queer. Relatedly, he’s also less often subjected to a fetishistic gaze as other characters. I mean...

So again, fans just don’t find him as appealing. Attractive characters are always more popular than ugly ones.

And I’m sure there are a lot of people who just don’t care for Hiromi’s personality, that’s fine, he does act like an asshole sometimes. But this post is meant to illustrate that queer rep takes multiple forms, and unfortunately I think a lot of media just tends to fall back on stereotypical portrayals of queer people for the sake of broader appeal. And by consequence, the fandom’s idea of what constitutes queer rep narrows to same-sex romance, usually between two cis gay men.

With the release of Ep 9, I know a lot of people queer people are going to find representation in the Kojiro’s whole “unrequited love” thing. But personally, I feel more represented by Hiromi, his journey of self-acceptance and subversive relationship with gender- that’s what resonates with me as a trans person.

And I think it’s important to see that kind of less palatable type of queer representation more acknowledged in fandom, and in Sk8′s fandom especially, because I know the demographics of this fandom lean heavily queer.

But that’s all for now, lemme know what you guys think :)

[that-blue-vault-dweller]

<3 that baby react was so f*ckin cute i got a little teary eyed. and whats cuter than babies? puppies! would you have the companions react to seeing dogmeat found a lady friend and now has some kids of his own?

I'm really glad you enjoyed the baby react! 😊🥰💖 And thank you for this ask! It is absolutely adorable!!! I decided to add a little more context to it to sort of set the scene, and I hope it works for you!

Dogmeat finds a new lady friend, who happens to be one of the dogs that hangs around and guards Sanctuary Hills. Therefore, all the pups automatically belong to F!Sole by default since she bought the female dog from a man travelling through. F!Sole naturally makes a place for the dog to stay inside with the puppies so that they stay safe and sheltered.💙💛

Cait - Is somewhere between moderately fond of them and disliking them. Most of her negative feelings toward them are due to her ongoing feud with their father and his habit of annoying her. Of course, she is extremely protective of them and makes sure to pop in and check on them occasionally throughout the day.

Piper - Is deeply in love with every one of them and feels like her heart might bust from the sheer adorableness. As soon as she finds out about them, she's picking each one up and talking in a sweet, high-pitched voice to it before trading it for another puppy to talk to. She practically begs F!Sole to let her have one when it's old enough to leave its mother. Of course, F!Sole agrees easily to the request.

Curie - Immediately and suddenly feels an overwhelming fondness for the little creatures. She spends quite a bit of time just sitting nearby their big box and watching them nurse and sleep. She weakly claims that it is for science, but everyone knows that she truthfully just wants to marvel over them since she loves them so much.

MacCready - Falls in love with them as soon as he sees them. He is not really sure what made him like them so much, but he just knows that he cannot help how much his chest warms at the sight of them. He wastes no time in asking F!Sole if he can have one, but quickly specifies that the pup would be for Duncan. F!Sole informs him that he can have one... For Duncan, of course.

Deacon - Immediately starts naming them. Some of the names include Dogmeat Junior, Pupmeat, and Herbert Nenninger. Whether or not F!Sole agrees to all of the different names does not faze him. He just loves coming up with names for the little roly-poly pups since they're so, so cute.

Codsworth - Is thrilled with the new life around the house. It is so uplifting, and he finds the puppies to be so, so adorable. He happily coos praising words to them as they make noise and wallow around on the floor. However, he does wish they did not make quite such a big mess...

Hancock - Loves them immediately. He likes to give the mama dog plenty of pets and he wastes no time in congratulating Dogmeat and telling him what beautiful pups he has. Asks for one to bring back to his office in Goodneighbor since he thinks it would do the town good to have a friendly dog running around the place. It would certainly lift spirits and (if Fahrenheit survived F!Sole's run-in with her) Fahrenheit would not mind the company of a dog.

Danse - Thinks that they are the tiniest, most precious things he's ever laid eyes on. But he does not want to seem too attached. So when no one is looking, he quietly slips in and picks up the little pups, petting them and holding them close before returning them back to their mother. He secretly sort of wants to keep all of them for himself.

Preston - Loves the babies and is always making excuses to go see them in-between duties. He did not know that baby animals could be this cute and he always feels so much happier whenever he visits the little pups. He loves to reach down and carefully pet them, a big grin on his face the whole time.

Valentine - Always smiles when he sees them. He points out that several of them look like they've inherited their father's fighting spirit with how they shove each other out of the way for a place to nurse. He ends up asking if he can have one to bring to Diamond City for Ellie since he knows how lonely it can get when he's out and about for days. However, he also likes the idea of having one for just the pleasant, adoring company of a dog for its own sake.

X6-88 - Honestly could not care less. It matters nothing to him that the dog had puppies. He finds them to be very annoying with their cries. Especially since he gets the strangest urge to go over and check on them when they cry.

Dogmeat - Is as proud as can be of his pups and cannot wait for when they're big enough to play and run around. He will have so much to teach them. Like how to hide Danse's underwear, how to steal Piper's sweet rolls from under her nose, and even how to leave special surprises in Cait's shoes!

Strong - Is strangely happy. When F!Sole questions him about it, he gladly explains that he is excited for them to grow up so that he can make mutt chops out of them. Everyone from then on keeps a closer eye on the pups when Strong is nearby.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Tommy Boy

[STORY SOURCE]

It was one of those sleepovers, just me and my bestie, when we got bored and had a dumb idea. Well, she got the brilliant idea anyways.

Apparently, she thought it would be “fun” to try and perform one of those summoning rituals, even though she knew anything and everything paranormal gave me nightmares for weeks. Which is why I think she wanted to do it so bad.

Of course, I wouldn’t willingly go along with the ritual, so my friend had to persuade me by offering her Darkrai plushie which I had coveted for a few weeks now. I remember wondering if the risk of eternal damnation was worth it for just a toy...

Apparently the answer was yes, since I eventually went along with this freaking idea.

The requirement for the ritual was paper, pencil, a candle, 6 random dolls, and 60 minutes of your time.

It had to be in a dark house, or in the middle of the night. We did it around midnight, after everyone else was asleep.

The first step was to put the 6 dolls in a circle.

Then draw a summoning circle on the middle of the paper and put it in the center of the circle of dolls.

After placing it on the floor, recite, “Any entity, you may enter.”

Wait for a while, around a minute, then prick your finger and put your bloody fingerprint in the middle of the summoning circle.

Recite, “By blood we are bound.”

You then turn off all the lights, if any are still left on, then light your candle and recite, “Whomever loses may never leave.”

Afterwards, you stumble around in the dark and play hide-and-seek with whatever you just summoned, if you even successfully summoned anything.

You must switch the room you’re hiding in every 10 minutes or else you will automatically be found by default. If you candle doesn’t blow out within and hour, then you win, and allegedly whatever spirit you summoned will be bound to your eternal service.

If it does blow out, then you’ve been found and you lose. Whatever happens afterwards depends on whatever spirit, peaceful or malevolent, that you summoned.

While me and my friend were huddled in the laundry room whispering and giggling about stupid things, the candle flickered out. I promptly flipped and hid in the corner with my hands over my head waiting for the worst to happen, while my friend laughed at pathetic little me.

After about five minutes of trying to convince me I wasn’t going to die, she told me she had blown out the candle herself. That made me feel a little better, even thought I still didn’t believe it.

Though, the Darkrai plushie I received the next day helped wash my worries away.

Though it wasn’t enough to wash away everything else that was about to happen.

Later on that day after my friend left, my little sister had begged me to let her play my Pokémon Emerald. I let her, since all she did was pretty much give free training to my Pokémon.

I was watching TV, and was a bit peeved when she ran into the room and started nagging me about a green Trapinch, so I waved her off. It took me a few seconds before I realized my grave mistake, so I quickly snatched my GameBoy back.

I was pleasantly surprised to see my sis had somehow managed to find a shiny Trapinch.

I told her to back off and let me handle this, since I wasn’t about to let her try to catch it. Although, things looked bad as my Pokémon were all too strong to weaken it.

But I was feeling confident with over 40 Ultra Balls in stock along with a few backups, so I kept throwing and throwing until one of them worked.

The trouble was, this stubborn Trapinch didn’t want me as its trainer. 

I might not have been able to weaken it, but it still chewed through nearly every one of my PokéBalls.

I was awash with horror at the thought of failing my first ever shiny. That’s when my sister offered to catch it for me.

I didn’t want to hand it over to her, but then my mind rationalized it by thinking that if she failed it, losing the Trapinch would be her fault, not mine.

I was shocked again as she handed me back the GameBoy less than a minute later with a brand new shiny Trapinch in my party named Tommy Boy.

The only response I could think of at first was, “Tommy Boy? Why name it that?”

“Because, it’s a boy and I wanted to name it Tommy, so Tommy Boy!”

I didn’t even want to know what went on in my sister’s head, but I quickly stopped caring and all I could do was just stare at my newfound shiny.

I went to immediately test him out and see what he could do against a wild Sandshrew.

“Tommy Boy refuses to attack!” 

I tried to fight, but I got this refusal instead. I tried to attack the Sandshrew again, but I just kept getting the same message.

“This is a load of crap.”

“Oh, I can make him attack!” My sister stole the GameBoy back and then proceeded to defeat the Sandshrew with no further issue.

“What the... How did you do that?!” My sister gave me a stupid grin, “He listened to me because I’m his mommy!” Sure, whatever, I thought privately to myself.

I was happy to let her train this Trapinch into a Flygon for me, anyway. I was puzzled by its behavior, to say the very least, and decided not asking anything would be better for my health and just kept watching TV.

I thought she would grow bored of training the Pokémon, but no. For the rest of the day and deep into the night, she worked tirelessly to gain experience for Tommy Boy. I wondered how someone could stand training the same Pokémon for so many hours without getting bored at all.

Finally, around 11 PM, she had to go to bed. Unwillingly, she saved the game and turned it off, but not before saying good night to Tommy Boy and kissing the GameBoy goodnight.

I was still allowed to stay up longer, so as soon as she was in bed, I quietly grabbed my GameBoy out from under her bed sheets. Emerald was already in, so I simply switched the game on.

Once the game was loaded, I saw that Tommy Boy was the only one in the party, for some reason.

But he was already evolved into a Flygon, and at level 66. Too bad she only had interest in training Tommy Boy, so much that she decided to stuff all my other team members in the PC.

I started to leave the desert where my sister had last saved when I ran into a wild Baltoy. I lovingly sighed as Tommy Boy came out sparkling. Then, my expression became a bit more serious.

That freaking pixel better listen to me this time.

I clicked on “Fight”. He had new moves: Crunch, DragonBreath, Sandstorm, and Hyper Beam.

I selected Hyper Beam, and desperately hoped that he would obey. I held my breath.

“Tommy Boy refuses to attack!”

“Dang it!!” I yelled at the screen.

Tommy Boy got hit with and attack, which didn’t do too much damage. I kept cursing at the Pokémon. I couldn’t believe I had a shiny in the palm of my hands and it wouldn’t even listen to me!

I selected DragonBreath, despite knowing he wouldn’t obey anyways.

“Tommy Boy wants his mommy!”

I gawked at this line of text. I surely hadn’t seen any Pokémon do that before. I almost wanted to laugh, the way that line was written almost sounded funny, but I was off-put and confused. Tommy Boy got hit with another attack.

“Come on, can’t you at least show some pity for your aunt?!” I spoke aloud to the game, like my sister had started doing. Tommy Boy offered me no pity and kept refusing. I didn’t want to deal with him getting knocked out, so I just turned the game off and begrudgingly went to bed.

The next morning, I found my little sister leaning back in a chair contentedly playing the GameBoy. I realized she snatched it from my room while I was asleep, which I guess was an equal exchange. I asked her if anything weird was happening with the GameBoy, but she said all was fine.

Then she asked me why I was playing on the GameBoy last night.

“Uhh... because it’s my game? I should still be able to play it too.”

She eyed me. “Just don’t mess with Tommy Boy again. Just because you’re his aunt doesn’t mean he likes you.”

She immediately changed her threatening disposition by cheerily calling out, “Oh, good boy, Tommy! You showed that Sandshrew! You make mommy so proud!”

I decided to shrug it off. I wasn’t about to get into an argument with my sister about a video game.

A few days into this, I was over her shoulder watching her play.

She was in the desert, and kept battling the Pokémon there over and over again. Tommy Boy acted like a normal Pokémon, and did nothing unusal.

“Why do you only battle Pokémon in the desert?” “Because, Tommy Boy only likes to battle Pokémon here.” She kept playing, as if everything was normal. After a moment, I thought of another question, “Why will he only obey you and not me?” “I told you, he’ll only listen to his mommy.” “It’s my game he’s on, so I should be his mommy, shouldn’t I? How does he know YOU’RE his mommy?” My sister paused for a moment. After a minute she responded, “Tommy Boy says screw you.” She giggled, while I gave up and left, fuming.

However, days turned into weeks, and my sister had been spending our entire vacation so far just sitting in her room. Apparently, she had started neglecting to eat or drink anything, and would only ever fall asleep when she passed out, GameBoy still in her hands.

It started getting so bad that my mom told me at one point she threw up blood. We’d tried taking the game way from her, but she’d screech at us like she was possessed and tear the whole house apart trying to find it.

Mom said they were arranging for her to see a therapist and get an opinion on what the heck we should do, but for the meantime she was allowed to keep the game, to make things easier for everyone until getting an appointment.

But I wasn’t satisfied with that. I needed to intervene.

One night, I decided to work up the nerve to confront her about her addiction. I found her in her room, as always. She was on the bed with the covers over her head. One would think she was sleeping, but the quiet sounds of the GameBoy gave her away.

I pulled the sheets away from her and she hissed briefly at me before continuing with her eyes glued to the screen. I hardly recognized my happy-go-lucky sister. She looked half dead. I tried holding a conversation with her, but all I got were distant “Mm-hm”s and “It’s fine.” The only way I could get her to talk to me was to attempt to take the game away, to which she immediately responded.

“NO! He’s my baby!!! He NEEDS me!” My sister screeched at me. 

“IT is an inanimate object! It doesn’t NEED anything!” I yelled back at her, clutching her arm that was holding the GameBoy. I managed to rip the Emerald cartridge out of the game while it was still running, causing it to let out horrible screeching sounds. I then pretended to throw it out an open window into the darkness outside of our house, to which my sister immediately pushed me onto the floor and jumped out into the yard after it. 

Picking myself up, I noticed she had dropped my GameBoy, too, so I discreetly plopped the game back into the system and stuffed it into my pocket.

I spitefully closed the window behind my sister. She could come back inside once she realized what this game was doing to her.

What... WAS this game doing to her, I wondered?

Once my sister had collapsed from exhaustion and been carried back to bed by my confused dad (to whom I lyingly explained I had no involvement in this), I decided I would find out for myself.

When I booted up the game, I was in the middle of my secret base in Route 120.

I checked my party to find only Tommy Boy, at a whopping level 100. Since it hand only taken her a day to get him to level 66, she must’ve reached 100 long ago, but she’d still been playing this all month.

Was she seriously doing the same battles over and over, despite him not being able to go any higher...?

When I exited the party screen and was back in the base though, a circle of six Pokédolls were around me that I hadn’t noticed before, which quite frankly creeped me out.

When I tried to move, a text box popped up saying, “Any entity may enter.”

“By blood we are bound.”

A strange red circle appeared in the middle of the circle of dolls, and I quickly realized I didn’t want anything to do with whatever was about to go down.

I tried to step away again, but another text box appeared. 

“Whomever loses may never leave.”

I tried running for dear life out the exit, but I was stopped.

“You may never leave.”

A shiny Flygon appeared in the middle of the circle and let out what I assumed was its cry, albeit I was too horrified for my life at that moment to care much for details, and the game froze.

I shut the game off, stared at it for a second, then suddenly every memory of what I had done earlier in the summer came flooding back at once. I knew exactly what Tommy Boy was now, and I was absolutely terrified.

I wanted to hold myself, cry my eyes out and throw this game into the woods where no one would ever find it, but then I thought about my sister. I thought about how if I didn’t get rid of Tommy Boy now, things would probably get worse and soon I’d wake up to find my little sister stabbing herself to death, or me.

Through my tears, I turned the game back on.

“It’s just you and me now, Tommy. Rematch. Double or nothing.”

If he won, he could take us both. But if I won, he would take his sorry demon hide back to wherever it was he came from. He seemed keen on my offer, as the game started up with no problems.

Once the game was up and running, I found my character in the middle of a dark cave. 

I instinctively went to my party to make someone use Flash, but then I remembered more than likely Tommy Boy was going to be there.

I braced myself...

But I was pleasantly surprised to find there were just some random Pokémon instead.

Of course, I didn't have the HM for Flash. Or the TM for Dig. Or any Escape Rope.

...

Wonderful.

So I stumbled around in the dark, trying to find my way out of this mess.

I kept bumping into walls and rocks, climbing up and down countless ladders, but there was no exit in sight. Or any trainers in sight, for that matter.

In fact, I hadn't run into any wild encounters either, until I came to the conclusion that there was only one Pokémon I would be running into here, and that I should avoid it like the plague.

Was spamming Super Repel going to protect me from a level 100 demonic Flygon? Probably not, but I couldn't be too careful.

After some time nowhere near an hour, I found myself in a small room that had nothing in it. I tried to go back the way I came, but I was stopped. My character wouldn't move. I started to tense up again.

The light surrounding me in-game was snuffed out, and all that could be seen was darkness. I was about to turn the game off before something happened, but before I could, something happened.

“Found you.”

The text in red popped up with a Flygon cry to accompany it, and the game froze again.

"No!" I yelled desperately, flickering the game off and on again. "One chance, give me one more chance!"

Instead, when I loaded the file, I was met with a glitchy, pixelated mess of a screen flashing multicolored lights while blaring the loudest beeping noise I'd ever heard in my life that sent my ears and eyes ringing. I quickly shut off the game and stared at the empty screen in disbelief for I don't know how long.

Had I lost the game?

I couldn't accept that. I was going to play this game all night if I had to. One of us would be leaving tonight, and it wasn't going to be me. Bracing myself, I tightly closed my eyes and powered the game on again. I expected another cacophony of buggy sounds and flashing lights, but surprisingly, I was able to boot up my save file just fine.

But, unfortunately, I didn't get the Round 3 of hide-and-seek that I had vainly asked for.

Instead, I was at the bottom of Mt. Pyre.

I still had the same team as before, unable to Fly or Surf away from this nightmarish set of circumstances that I'd been put in.

I don't know what Tommy Boy was getting at, or what he wanted from me now, but I knew the only way to understand exactly what I was dealing with would be to play along, just for now.

My only option left was to climb Mt. Pyre.

I felt a mounting suspense that kept rising each floor I went to, although I didn't know why. Maybe it was because every floor, even indoors, were all unusually foggy.

However, the wild Shuppet started to make quick work of my low leveled Pokémon.

I then got the sudden idea that maybe this wasn't such a bad thing after all. If my entire party fainted, I could get sent back to a Pokémon Center and escape the boundaries of Tommy Boy's "game."

When they all fainted though, I didn't get sent back. Instead, I was still trapped on Mt. Pyre.

All of the Pokémon that were protecting me were gone now.

I still ran into Shuppet, except I kept sending out a large "?" where a Pokémon should've been.

I kept whiting out, only to return to the position I'd started the battle in.

After a nerve-wracking climb though the graveyard, I reached the top.

Surrounding the pedestal at the top were six PokéBalls.

As I checked each one, a picture of a Pokémon would pop up.  They seemed really familiar, and soon I realized all the Pokémon here were part of the team I was just using.

After I checked the sixth Pokémon, I found my character to be trapped in the center of the pedestal with no way out.

I frantically mashed the D-Pad in hopes of finding some way to escape.

In the midst of my panic, a glowing red circle materialized on the ground, connecting all the PokéBalls surrounding the pedestal, with me still in the center.

I remember at that moment thinking, I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die, and I wholeheartedly believed I was going to.

Then, a large text box in all red with a Flygon cry popped up...

“YOU MAY NEVER LEAVE.”

That right there sealed the deal.

I wasted no shred of time pulling out that Emerald cartridge and cutting it into an unrecognizable pile of green plastic with my scissors.

In my desperation, I brushed the remains of the cartridge into my trash can, wrapped up the trash bag, and went to the extent of escaping through my window and throwing it into the woods. Screw littering, screw the police, I didn't want that thing in my house.

And especially screw Tommy Boy. Screw his little game, screw the thought of him having any sort of control over me.

The only way to win is not to play, and I made sure no one would ever play this game again.

The next morning, my much more well-rested little sister asked where my GameBoy was, and I was about to tell her she was never allowed to touch that thing for as long as she lives, but then she asked to play Mario Party Advance on it.

I was baffled, to say the least, but found no problem in it and let her play it. She showed no signs of becoming obsessed and got bored of playing it after an hour, so I was relieved and assumed that the worst was over.

You can be sure I am not, and will never, plan on performing any more summoning rituals any time soon.

Thankfully, my little sister's gone back to being completely normal. If anything, her only sign of change is that she's getting into that "girly stage". She'll get Pokémon plushies and sit them all in a circle and play tea party with them in her room. At least, that's what I think she's doing with them.

Doesn't matter to me though, I'm busy with my own things. I'm happily content with my dear Darkrai plush that took entirely too much effort out of my life to obtain. I feel really bad for neglecting him these past few weeks, but it's okay.

I won't be giving any more of my time or attention to anyone else except my little baby.

[the-paris-of-people]

Hi. This is really not a question but more of a rant. A really really long one. I apologize in advance. I honestly care waaaaayyyy too much about this show than I should. Clearly too bored🙈.

After reading people's comments on this show and the ships, there are so many things that irk me and I thought I'd share even if I might get crap for it. So here goes:

1. "Ben only wants Devi when she is with Paxton." I.e. it's about Paxton. Lol people are funny. As though Ben thinks he can compete with Paxton on a social level. He's not stupid, he knows full well he can't. It's about Devi and in part her obsession with Paxton. People don't like thinking about things from Ben's perspective because they just don't like him. He's the one that finds out Devi is cheating, she runs after Paxton at the party ( now granted before she runs out, she's intensely staring at Ben and then realises Paxton is leaving but Ben's not gonna remember that) and she was busy chumming it up with Paxton in episode 3 in front of Ben with absolute disregard for him. So his natural defence is to guard himself and have his walls go up. It is a valid response. He burries his pain (exactly what Samberg said). And does not let his guard down around her romantically until episode 10 when Paxton literally rejects her at school. At the school dance, sparks are flying between those 2. Is Paxton around at the time...Uhm no (I'll get into the whole Aneesa thing). In his mind Paxton is out of the picture and it's like he can almost trust her again. And then when Paxton shows up with Devi, he basically feels like a fool for ever thinking that he was ever something more than 2nd best or sometimes anything at all ( especially considering Devi still wants Paxton after Devi and Paxton's last public interaction that Ben witnessed- I mean he does not get to see the shit behind closed doors). But then when Eleanor spills the tea, that look on his face is disbelief, yes a little bit of jealousy but overwhelmingly heartbreak. He is essentially watching the chance he never knew he had go away. Now you could argue that he should have known that she wanted him back but she broke his trust and does not explicitly say, " I want you back". Ben's not trying to get burnt again based on some assumption/hunch. He has been wrong before.

2. "How dare Ben be upset that Devi is with Paxton when he is with Aneesa". Fair point. Just like how dare Devi be upset and lose her shit over Ben and Aneesa. But yet it still happend. Devi gets 5 episodes allowing her to be upset and Ben can't even have one moment when a firkken bomb gets dropped on him.

Aneesa and Ben should have never date. Everyone knows that. He was never over Devi. He just pushed those feelings down to make him believe he was over her. I obviously don't agree with this. Aneesa doesn't deserve that. Ben needs to go to therapy. He needs an outlet. He is similar to Devi in that he doesn't want to process what happened and would rather move on and react. However, his reactions are far less impulsive/severe as Devi's. Him dating Aneesa is unfortunately a reaction. He didn't give himself time to really process how he feels. People say he dated Aneesa solely to spite Devi which is not true. Is there an element of " you never wanted me but someone else does"... absolutely but Aneesa is also very kind to Ben, they get along really well and she puts him first. Technically what's not to like. I mean if it was just to spite Devi, could he have not tried to hustle his way back in with Shira?? Problem is that dumb dumb didn't work through his Devi feelings and let's just be honest, the same spark and chemistry he has with Devi, is missing with Aneesa. It often feels forced, especially in regards to the pace of the relationship. I so wished Aneesa remained friends with Ben. That's what he needed...not another relationship.

3. "Aneesa is so amazing, she doesn't deserve to get hurt." I agree. She absolutely doesn't deserve to get hurt just like Ben and Paxton didn't deserve that crap Devi pulled. I think Aneesa is a great addition and I like that Devi has someone within her community to connect to. I'm South Asian myself and I genuinely value this aspect of my own life. I mean she is pretty great, kind and the anorexia rumour Devi unintentionally started was pretty heartbreaking. That scene where she talks to Devi at the relay about it, is so sad (especially coz we as viewers know Devi messed up). Now that being said is Aneesa also low key shady? YES. And it's not because she dated her friend's ex. It's because she started dating him knowing that Devi started the rumour about her because she was jealous about Ben and her. How does she think Devi would go from being so jealous that she starts a rumour, to the next week becoming their biggest "Stan". Come on girl. But there was no way Devi could say no after the crap she pulled with Aneesa. Ben did ask her out so if there is blame, he absolutely gets it too but he didn't know why Devi started that rumour (based on his surprised AF face when Eleanor spills the tea). Which leads me to my next question. Why didn't Aneesa tell him? Aneesa said Ben was supporting her through the rumour. She probably told him Devi started the rumour but didn't tell him why? That is odd? Clearly if Ben had known, he may changed his perspective on Devi actually wanting him instead of ignoring his feelings.

Lastly Aneesa knows there are unresolved feelings between Devi and Ben. This is evident from that dance scene. She literally runs to cut in their pretty intense conversation. Like why you running girl? I didn't think much of it at first but coupled with another moment, it makes a lot of sense. When Ben agrees to dance with Aneesa, he looks back at Devi and lingers and Aneesa picks up on this and pulls him away. It's a blink and you will miss it moment but it is there.

Now all of this doesn't mean she needs to get hurt but they probably need to break up. Ben needs to be single for a while and work through how he feels about Devi, Aneesa and most importantly himself. Whilst I don't particularly enjoy their relationship, you never get to see it from either of their perspectives. Maybe that could change things but honestly I just prefer Ben and Devi.

Also can everyone stop acting like Ben is dating Devi's best friend. Being brown doesn't make you automatically best friends and Ben and Devi met Aneesa the same week. People are acting like he is dating Eleanor.

4. "Devi chose Paxton". Please! The only thought through decision that girl made in regards to these 2 boys is when she chose herself and decided not to be Paxton's little secret. I mean in episode 1 and 2 she can't decide so she dates both. In episode 3, she interacts with Paxton because of the whole tutoring thing. He says they don't makes sense. While she seems a bit sad she doesn't seem too upset like she is season 1 and she isn't looking for any opportunity to spend time with him (unlike season 1). Episode 4,5,6,7 and 8 she is losing her mind over Ben. Half way through 8 she knows she has no choice but to let him go. But even after that she doesn't pursue Paxton. He does that at the end of episode 9 when in all honesty she hasn't really thought about him in a while. Then of course Paxton does what he does and she finally choose herself, issuing an ultimatum essentially. Paxton does eventually show up...but it's a choice by default. She just yo-yo's between them. She also needs to be single, deal with her loss, love herself and think about what she wants.

5. "Devi loves Paxton". Sure bud. Does have Devi have feeling for Paxton? Duh! But is it love. Nope. People like to confuse infatuation for love. She has been infatuated with this boy this the 3rd (she knew squat about him). When her dad died, she turns that infatuation into an obsession. It like becomes a full time hobby in season 1. She ruins relationships over it. In season 2 you can argue there is more depth to it and Paxton does grow in Season 2. But somehow she is still fixated on the fact that it's Paxton Hall-Yoshida. I mean she smells him (totally normal), Mc Enroe's comment at the relay was, "did this hunk of beef just say he likes spending time with her", when she breaks up him she says , "you are very good at kissing" not possibly any of his other good qualities. And at the end she says , "I guess I'm Paxton Hall Yoshida's girlfriend now". This boy is so far up a pedestal that if he fell of it, he'd break something. Now granted if he fell of it in Season 1, he'd be dead. So progress I guess...

Maybe the relationship will change in Season 3 and she genuinely falls in love with him. I mean Id be sad but obviously a real possibility. But also that relationship needs to move on from being just the "Paxton project" which it was basically all of season 2. Maybe actually talk about her every once in a while.

Also people who find the ending so amazing because he shows up...bare minimum bro. I understand his perspective, how does it look to go back with someone who cheated on you. Fair point 💯. However she didn't start this shit up again. He did. He liked her so much that he had to make out with her In the middle of the night out of the blue but not enough to respect her publically. That's some BS right there. If he started it, he should have thought it through instead of guilt tripping her. But he is a teenager and ALL of them make incredibly stupid decisions (we all have). Devi messed up big time too and she apologized. The same compassion must extend to him but in no way is it a grand gesture, it's the bare minimum...like her apologies

6. "Paxton forgave Devi forgave Devi so quickly whilst Ben didn't and was so mean". He did forgive her pretty quickly. Good for him. However let's not act like circumstance didn't carve the way for that. They were pushed together because of the whole tutoring thing and he knows that they have to see each other all the time. So logically just makes sense to keep the peace. But still mature oh his part. Also he wasn't as emotionally invested as Ben. Did he have feelings? Yes. However, based on his inner monologue (Gigi Hadid) his ego took more of a hit because how could Devi, the "weirdest girl" he ever liked two time him with Ben Gross. Did his feelings deepen by the end? Yes. But at the start...it isn't that deep.

Also it's great and all that he "forgave" her so quickly but he sure did like bringing it up a lot. Like at the relay guilting her, upset at the end of 6 because he failed...I mean wtf girl you owe me- I don't really care what else is going on in your life, again in episode 8 in the car and finally we all know the mess that is episode 10.

In regards to Ben. His anger is justified for reasons stated in point 1. In fact his reaction seems more real because he is deeply hurt by Devi. Do I like some of his reaction (i.e. nose piercing-will discuss this further) ...nope but she only sincerely apologises to him in episode 8 vs 3 for Paxton. He accepts it. People acting like they would be so calm and chill about being cheated on. And yes he did cheat on Shira. He tries to kiss Devi at party twice but apologises that day and the following week. He doesn't try anything with Devi the whole of episode 10 until she kisses him. He acknowledges that it was wrong and immediately breaks up with Shira. Although cheating is not something we should condone can we actually acknowledge that Shira was the worst and doesn't even remember Ben's name. Compare that to Devi's premeditated cheating. Her Eleanor are literally laughing at how amazing they are for pulling it off and Devi didn't care about either of their feelings cause she was going to be India. Sorry but that is far worse. She also thinks she can bullshit her apology with Ben. He isn't here for that...which is fine! He kept trying his level best to avoid her but even that she wouldn't let him do.

7. "Ben is Horrible". Has Ben done some shitty things. Absolutely. People complain that he has never apologised for anything. Fair enough. He needs to apologize for the UN comment and the psychosomatic comment. It was incredibly hurtful. However, no one does call him out of it. Now you could argue he should just do it. Please... have you watched these particular set of teenagers? None of them apologise without being called out on it first(except maybe Fabiola). And you only get called out my your support system ... which Ben does not have. He practically looks like he raised himself. He doesn't have parents to put him back in line or a sister to call him out on his shit. Devi has her mom, cousin, grandmum , Elanor, Fabiola and her therapist. Does she ever listen to them the first time? Nope. And her first time apologies are such messes. She only gets it right the 2nd or 3rd time. All of them have some form of support but not really him. And it is heartbreaking. It's why I genuinely believe he needs to go to therapy. He needs an outlet to express everything he feels. He also needs to be held accountable for those comments and understand the root of it (ok let's be honest Devi even in their rivalry was probably the most constant person in his life, and fighting with her meant she stayed close by- it's a subconscious thing). He should apologize to her and also find better ways to communicate what he is feeling. The nose ring thing was manipulative. I agree. He should apologize. But I'm not gonna lie, it doesn't piss me off as much because I think it's pretty messed that it took that for her to realise how much she hurt him. Also tbh if you were willing to alter your body on a 2 minute thought out dare, you wanted to do it anyway. But again not a healthy way to emote on Ben's part. The David thing doesn't upset me because he knows how to pronounce her actual name. It's not like he doesn't know how and doesn't bother to try. It was part of their rivalry to irritate her. I honestly find it quite endearing as part of their friendship and think Devi does. I may be wrong and she may not like it and in that case he needs to stop and apologize.

I am not upset by him coming over to her house and calling her out about Aneesa. She deserved it. Also if she was that uncomfortable she could have taken him outside to talk like she did with Paxton. She is clearly comfortable enough to have him in the house. And her therapist agrees with Ben. If he hadn't, she wouldnt have known that Aneesa was leaving. Her mom took away her phone. And even then her first attempt at an apology was soooooo bad. And I don't think Ben did it solely to get Aneesa to stay so he could date her. This is Ben, he was willing to do long distance with Devi from India, I think he could have done the same with Aneesa from like the same town 🙄

I genuinely like Ben because he is a good kid. He makes mistakes like they all do. His personality is hilarious to watch but also his and Devi's relationship is so special. Me liking Ben and Devi has nothing to do with what Paxton has or has not done. I just like the dynamic between the two. They obviously care deeply for each other. Their conversations are hilarious. I love their banter. I love how comfortable they are with each and am sometimes surprised by the depth of their conversations. But also they have amazing chemistry. All the jealous looks and angst are between these two idiots pining for each other. I think she does have chemistry with Paxton but it's more because he is PHY, school Adonis. I mean let's be honest, he'd probably have chemistry with Fabiola solely cause he is PHY. The two nerds just match each other and it's so funny how often they are in sync. It's honestly adorable. They just get each other. That bathroom scene was the sweetest thing and also proves he's not this terrible person. She only comes out of the stall because of his support. He is genuinely hurt for her when technically it should have been a great moment for him.

I do believe the two have to be single for a bit before admitting their feelings for one another and moving forward. That's why my main thing for season 3 is that he absolutely cannot interfere in her relationship with Paxton. He needs to give her the space to figure that. Do I think there will be moments between them... absolutely but no cheating please. Everyone needs to move on from that. If they do it...I honestly think il be done with the show.

Anyways sorry for the really long ramble. If you made it to the end thanks for your patience 😌

Thank you for this beautiful masterpiece, I pretty much agree with everything and need to put it out there for the world to see

[kingofthewilderwest]

What's amatonormativity??

I’d encourage you to go to Google or check out tumblr tags and posts on amatonormativity to learn more!

Amatonormativity is the internalized cultural mindset that romance is default and central. It especially conceives of romance as the single most important relationship in someone’s life, to the point it should be focused upon and sought out above any other bond. It treats romance like the universal ultimate solution to any of our emotional bond problems (loneliness, intimacy, trust, support, longevity of relationships, etc.). Amatonormativity is heavily ingrained in many societies, like the mindset I find in people in the United States.

Of course romance isn’t a bad life experience! For many people, it can bring great joy. When people criticize amatonormativity, people aren’t criticizing that romance can be a great thing in someone’s life. The problem with amatonormativity is that it treats romance as the ULTIMATE thing, the ONE solution to our need for emotional fulfillment.

It’s important to understand that amatonormativity has profound negative side effects, whether you’re allo or aro, whether you’re queer or straight, and whatever gender you are. Society takes a lot of things for granted regarding romance and this can stunt our happiness. It stunts our ability to bond with other people around us or find satisfaction within our lives.

Amatonormativity underlies emotionally stunting assumptions like..... (disclaimer... I will often use language defaulting to the Western cishet perspective, because that’s the mindset of my broader society... I myself am an aroace enby and have more nuanced understandings of gender, gender expression, gender roles, sexual attraction and identity, romantic attraction and identity, etc.)

Automatically assuming that just because a man talks to a woman, the interaction MUST be romantic in nature (this of course intertwines with heteronormativity -- many of my points will intertwine with heteronormativity). It assumes there’s no such thing as “just friends” between people of “opposite” genders. This in turn can result in us losing opportunities to bond to, understand, or properly respect... literally half the human population.  

Treating friendships as secondary. Treating friendships as temporary. Treating friendships as more replaceable than romance. Treating friendships as less “deep” and important to our time than romance, even a romance you started two days ago with someone you met last week. By doing this, we lose the chance to grow deeper with someone near us. It limits the potential by which we can bond with another human soul and find happiness.  

The belief we are unlovable and not worth anything because we can’t find a romantic partner. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people disregard their own worth because of this, and it makes me deeply sad. The truth is that our worth is not at all tied to whether we have a romantic partner. We can be so deeply loved and cherished in all sorts of relationships. Of course it’s still valid if you feel single blues because you want a romantic partner, but tying the concept into “I am worthless OR I’m dating” clearly is an emotionally harmful concept. It can result in everything down to hooking up in a relationship that you aren’t ready for or don’t like as much as you pretend you do.  

The belief that we are utterly alone without a romantic partner. I notice this often ties into the amatonormative belief that we can only get good physical touch, trust, emotional and physical intimacy, etc. through a romantic partner. I feel this mindset is especially pronounced in cishet men, since USA culture treats masculinity as lacking outwardly expressed vulnerability, and ergo you might not be getting your emotional needs met through your platonic and familial relations. The one “accepted” way of getting your emotional needs met comes through The Girlfriend / Wife. This belief prevents us from reaching out and finding support through other people in our lives. We can find love and comfort in friends. We can confide about our emotional struggles and find relational intimacy (great trust!) through familial and platonic bonds. Hugs, snuggling, other acts of physical affection are what humans need, and don’t need to be relegated to One Person Only. Plus... if we assume that our emotional struggles should be fulfilled by One Person Only... that puts enormous pressure on that partner to provide for everything. No one’s that strong. We need support networks, not one designated “save me” individual. It’s pure unhealthiness to mount burdens only on one person, and bottle yourself up otherwise. I often see this fallacy pop up when people start a new romantic relationship. You might barely know the person, and yet you’re trying to rely on them for everything, and you’re trying to be the person they’ll rely on for everything. You dive deep into the expectations before you really know how to handle it, and in the process become psychologically overwhelmed because of the Huge Responsibilities this role seems to entail. Being in a romance doesn’t automatically mean you’ve reached peak intimacy! Note: it’s not to say that romance can’t be a major avenue of security. Of course it’s a great way to fulfill intimacy, trust, physical needs, etc. Of course it can become a bond full of loyalty. But romance is actually like any other relationship... a familial relation can be weak or it can be strong, a platonic relation can be weak or it can be strong, and a romantic bond can be weak or it can be strong. The fallacy is that we are treating romance as *THE* way to fulfill all these diverse emotional problems, socking it onto one individual when it might be beyond their single load to bear, and then not seeking out help from the other sources that are around us.  

The belief that the only person you can live with is a romantic partner. Living with non-romantic roommates (aka living with friends) is seen as an undesirable inconvenience and something you only do temporarily because you financially have to. It’s seen as an immature youthful thing rather than something an established adult might do. Living with friends long-term out of chosen happiness is not something that crosses the mind of many people... it’s assumed you’ll either move out to live on your own, or marry and go and live with your partner.  

The belief that adulthood progresses through a very specific sequence of events. You go to school. You leave on your own. You marry. You get a house. You have kids. There’s a reason it’s common for family to nag you  “When are you going to get married? When are you going to get married?” Because clearly you haven’t made an important step of adulthood, an important step in life, unless you get married. I’ve noticed that for many of my friends, even those who are comfortable with the life choice to not get married... they express they don’t feel “as adult” as their married peers. And many people in society won’t treat them “as adult.”  

Harmful beliefs downplaying spousal abuse, like those people who try to argue “you can’t rape your wife / husband / spouse / girlfriend / boyfriend / significant enby / significant dumbass. That’s not what rape means.” Because a sexual-romance is the GOOD thing, right?  

AND MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE!!!

Some people of course have a better handle on their relationships than others. Some people are better at ignoring what society considers most important or most default. Some of what I’ve said above is when these beliefs are treated to their utmost, rather than what some people will do (lots of people have close “besties”, for instance). But amatonormativity+heteronormativity creeps in everywhere in society.

It’s the reason why, in most Hollywood movies, the protagonist is a man and the main actress is his romantic partner. It’s the reason why these two characters might start a steamy romance even before they know each other well; who needs to write ACTUAL understanding between the two characters when they obviously are going to fall in love and fuck?

It’s the reason why advertisements are so sex-oriented (reminder note: society usually doesn’t distinguish sexual and romantic bonds). Advertisements try to make their product appealing by associating it to romance, the Ultimate Desirable. Here’s how to make you look hot so you can attract someone in a romantic-sexual relationship, because THAT’S the ultimate goal of life, right?

It’s embedded in linguistic expressions. If someone asks if you’re dating, you respond, “No, she’s only a friend.” Or. “No. We’re just friends.” Friendship is being treated as lesser. Breakups are treated as inevitably bad even if you choose to be friends afterwards -- because clearly being friends is “taking a step back”, right? Even the word “break up” -- oooo that’s bad sounding! (There have been multiple times I’ve ended romantic relationships where I’ve turned the phraseology on the head and told them it’s a step forward to better, happier, healthier, stronger bonds... and they had to think it through, because amatonormative society forgets this can be the case.) “Friendzoning” is seen as a crime in part because you’re not going to be as intimate with someone as you want to be... despite the fact that having a non-romantic and/or non-sexual relationship with someone could be JUST as meaningful and deep!

I’ve FREQUENTLY seen church study groups that offer only these options: young adult small groups, women’s small groups, men’s small groups, and married couple’s small groups. Because clearly the only “mixed” gender situations out there are when you’re too young to be married, or you’re married.

And frankly, I think it’s one of the reasons why fandom likes to play hook-up with all the characters. Shipping is SO much fun! I love shipping! This is not a comment against the act of shipping! But if everyone needs a romantic partner to be happy...... mmmmm.... yeah let’s rethink what the underlying assumption is here. It’s that default assumption that “romance=happiness, romance=ultimate goal, romance=happily ever after, friendship=lesser.” If two characters in a show don’t canonically hook up, fans can get angry... even if the relationship showed on screen is one with a lot of trust, loyalty, happiness, and intimacy.

I am aroace. I don’t know how many other friends in the aro and/or ace community have talked about how lonely and unhappy they feel, because all their friends around them are looking for sex and romance and ergo don’t treat their friendship deep enough for my friends to get their emotional needs met. It’s easy to feel left out in a world where everyone is looking for romance, and ergo you are never the bond they want to pursue.

There are many ways in which we can achieve close bonds with people. This is why I think it’s important to talk about amatonormativity. Again, I’m SO happy when my friends are happy in a good romance. That’s a good thing!!! But it’s so psychologically destructive, whether you’re aro or allo, to live in a world where romance is considered The One And Only Key to relational happiness.  

Talking about amatonormativity has the goal of helping us be aware about how society idolizes romance and/or sex. The goal is to help everyone know we have many options by which to pursue good, deep bonds in a variety of ways. The goal is to make sure we don’t treat romance as the only acceptable way to live. The goal is finding ways for humans to get our needs fulfilled healthily and widespreadly. The goal is to be more comfortable with and more accepting of people who don’t follow The One Righteous Path Of Required Romance, so that we can all be more comfortable with ourselves and the relations around us -- including being comfortable with our romances!

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992)

Ultima 7 was pretty much my introduction to RPGs, and I could not have asked for a better pair of games to ignite a lifelong passion into that genre. There is a real reason why this is still considered one of the best RPGs ever made.

While Ultima 7 is often discussed as a singular entity, it is actually two separate full-length games with one expansion each. For this post I will focus on the first one, Ultima VII: The Black Gate, as well as its expansion: Forge of Virtue.

I recommend playing the game using Exult, which adds some quality of life features (such as a feeding hotkey and a “use all keys” hotkey) as well as the option to use higher quality audio packs, implement bug fixes, and change the font into something easier on the eyes.

Summary

The protagonist of the Ultima series is “the Avatar”, a blank slate isekai protagonist from our world who has previously travelled to the world of Britannia several times and saved it from many threats, also becoming the shining paragon of the virtues meant to guide its people.

In this game, you once again cross the portal to Britannia to save it from a new and mysterious extradimensional threat. As soon as you arrive, you immediately discover two things:

1- A violent ritualistic murder has just taken place.

2- There is suspicious new organization called “The Fellowship” gaining adherents throughout the land.

It is up to you to investigate these developments.

Freedom

In terms of freedom, the Black Gate has plenty overall but there are areas where it is not quite there.

Once you can manage to get the password to get out of the locked-down town of Trinsic you are free to go nearly anywhere in the game right away and have multiple means of transportation to accomplish this, such as moongates or ships.

And there are some very real rewards to exploring like this as well, such as various treasure caches and other interesting findings. 

The world is actually very small by modern standards, especially when settlements occupy so much of it, but both the towns and the wilderness areas are dense with content.

Notably, the game also allows you to perform various activities. From stealing to making a honest living by baking bread (which is something you can do thanks to how interactive the environment is) or gathering eggs at a farm.

Where it falls short is in terms of having multiple possible solutions for quests. Generally there is only one correct option for how to complete them.

That said, there is a bad ending you might be able to find in addition to the canonical good ending.

Character Creation/Customization

This is one of the big minuses of the game. While you can select your name and gender (and with Exult also have a wider selection of portraits) that is about it for character creation.

All characters will start with the same stats and there are no character classes. You can develop your stats through training and specialize through your choice of equipment, but by the end of the Forge of Virtue expansion you will have maxed stats and the best weapon in the game (a sword) regardless, and you will definitely need to cast a few spells to progress the main quest as well.

This can make every playthrough feel much like the last, as there isn’t that much of a way to vary how your character develops or what abilities they’ll end up having. You will always be a master of absolutely everything in the end unless you go out of your way to avoid doing the Forge of Virtue expansion.

Story/Setting

While the game is a bit too obvious and heavy-handed about its villains, there are still many interesting storylines in the game that deal with mature subjects that remain relevant today, such as cults, drug abuse, workplace exploitation, and xenophobia.

However, the setting as a whole is greater than any individual storyline taking place within. With the exception of most guards and bandits, every single NPC in the game is an individual with a name, schedule, living space, and defined personality. This was not the norm in 1992 and even today there’s not many games that really implement this well. The world is also very detailed in terms of things like the services available to you, the general interactivity of the game world, and the sheer amount of things that populate every corner of it.

The initial murder is not only a strong hook for investigation but also a shocking scene in its own right. The Guardian also proves to have a significant presence as a villain, using a mental link to remotely taunt you based on the context of what is happening. For example, if your companions die he may offer you some exaggerated, mocking pity.

Immersion

There is something very interesting and comfortable about just watching the various inhabitants of a town just go about their daily lives. They work during the day, eat at certain times (either at home or at one of the many taverns in the land), and sleep at night. They don’t just strangely repeat one single action during the day either, they may do things like open windows when the weather is nice or turn candles and streetlamps on at night.

In terms of immersion, Ultima 7 is my primary example of a game that does an excellent job of it even if there’s some weirdness going on with the setting. Even after having played so many more games throughout my life, only a few are on the same level as either part of Ultima 7 when it comes to immersion.

Gameplay

There are three broad aspects to the gameplay here that I want to discuss.

The first is combat. It is actually simple enough that you can call it almost entirely automatic. You simply enable combat mode by pressing C and your party will automatically go and fight nearby hostile enemies based on whatever combat orders you have selected for them (by default, attacking the closest enemy).

This is certainly better than having an outright bad or annoying combat system as the whole process is simple and painless, but I still wish there was more depth to it. Your stats, and especially your equipment, still play a role but other than things like pausing to use items or cast spells the whole process is very uninvolved.

I kind of wish there was more depth to it, but at least the other two areas of the gameplay are reasonably good.

The next aspect of gameplay is dialogue, which uses dialogue trees for the first time in the series. Previously, it required typing in keywords, which are retained but as dialogue options you can just click on rather than remember and type.

While the keywords are not really written as natural language most of the time (requiring some imagination to determine the specifics of your dialogue), the system is very easy to use regardless. It definitely lacks depth compared to something like Fallout: New Vegas, but so do most games.

The third and most notable thing is the way you interact with the world in general. It is both extremely simple and very immersive at the same time.

Ultima 7 is a game that can be played entirely with the mouse (though keyboard hotkeys make everything much more comfortable). You can right click a space to walk there, you can left click something to identify what it is, and you can use double left click to interact.

For example, double left click over an NPC to talk to them (or attack them, if combat mode is enabled), double left click a door to open it, double left click a loaf of bread to feed it to someone, and so on.

But there is more. By holding your click over an item and dragging it, you can move it. This has various applications beyond just being how you pick things up and add them to your inventory. For example, sometimes objects may be hidden beneath other objects, or objects may need to be placed in a specific location.

There are some downsides to this system. Particularly, the issue that keeping your inventory organized can be time-consuming when it has to be done by manually dragging objects around, and this can also make looting relatively slow.

Despite this, I think this kind of interaction system has a lot of potential. It just has some clunky aspects to be ironed out.

Aesthetics

Ultima 7 was very good-looking for its time, and although modern players will not be very impressed by how it looks or sounds, it still remains easily legible in a way that some other old games are not. That, and the ability to identify anything with just a left click, makes this a very easy game to make out at the very least.

Some of the music of this game is very distinctive too, and will likely stay with you after a full playthrough.

In terms of style, the Black Gate does have a bit of an identity while still having a very familiar medieval fantasy setting with things like trolls, animated skeletons, dragons, and liches. While there are aspects that help the setting distinguish itself a bit, they are relatively subtle.

If I had to describe the feeling of playing this, I’d call it “open and laid back”. While the main quest deals with a looming threat to the entire world, the game does not follow this overly closely at first, letting you deal with it at your own pace and without having your exploration options limited by the story.

In fact, when I was young I often just ignored that and went to live in a creepy ruin in the swamp.

(Don’t expect many pictures in these reviews, but have one of my “childhood home.”)

I’d say that Ultima 7′s second part (Serpent Isle) has a much stronger and also darker and more isolating atmosphere overall and that has a lot of appeal to me in particular, but the Black Gate is definitely more open and less linear, and I also appreciate that.

Accessibility

It pleases me to say that Ultima 7 remains extremely easy to pick up and play. Even setting up Exult is not complicated in the least.

The gameplay is intuitive and simple, the UI is minimal, stats are basic (and not even that important), and the combat is automatic. I expect that this is not only the easiest point of entry into the Ultima series as a whole but also likely even easier to get into than many modern RPGs!

It does have some aspects that may be a bit clunky, like all the inventory-related dragging, but it’s definitely not obscure or complicated even to someone who has not read the manual (though I’d still recommend doing that). I literally played this game as a tiny child who could barely read or understand English and still got really into it.

The one thing I’d like to point out is that the game uses a type of copy protection where at a couple of story points (including an extremely early one to leave the first town) you will be asked some questions that require using the manual and external map to answer. You can just google the answers for these.

Conclusion

As I write more of these reviews there will be many games that are interesting, but deeply flawed. Games that are worth trying out but maybe not finishing, as well as games that had interesting ideas but that I can’t entirely recommend due to serious problems that will easily put people off.

But I do not think the Black Gate is such a game. I can easily recommend it with no qualifiers despite the fact that it is almost 30 years old. This is really a game that all RPG fans should at the very least try for a few hours, and not only for its historical significance. It is genuinely a good game worthy of its praise.

I will review its sequel, Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, next.

[cavalier-life]

Hello, dear! You've been visited by the random character question fairy! :D ~☆

What is your character's worst habit that they don't realize is a habit? How has this habit affected them? If they ever realized said habit, would they try to stop doing it?

Hmmmm.

I apologize for taking a bit to answer this, but I was mid house sale (done and new Casa de Cavaliers done as well, wooo) and it was something of a hectic week. ;)

I am going to try to answer this for a couple of my OCs across some different universes (Behind a cut, because I'm long winded). Thank you so much for the ask! <3

SWTOR - Selirah, the reluctant Empress of the Alliance forces:

Being born and raised in the Empire and its ways, Seli is often blind to the fact that she unthinkingly positions fellow former Empire denizens as people that are automatically considered more trustworthy or competent than people who are from outside the Empire.

She genuinely does value competency and merit and skill in anyone she encounters.. but she unconsciously gives a mental head start to anyone from the background she is most familiar with and personally knows and understands. Their motivations are easier for her to connect to, and she finds them easier to work with (because they are less likely to challenge her as a powerful Sith and their Empress, out of an ingrained social training to view her as above all others, of course). This has led to her needing to see more out of people from other backgrounds, particularly the Republic, in order to give them the same level of trust that she gives an Empire-aligned individual by default. She is quick to make up that lost ground once she's gotten over that initial prejudice, but she doesn't often see how her behavior mirrors the way she herself was treated initially as a Twi'lek by the Empire.

And unfortunately, most people don't want to call her on it until they know her well enough to realize she won't summarily Force choke them for it.

At least, she -probably- won't.

As a ruler, one who values merit and skill and likes to believe she is fairly unbiased due to being an alien with all it entails in the Empire, it would absolutely be something she would make an effort to stop doing, or to catch herself in the process of doing.

WoW (Moon Guard) - Dareca Silverbrook, that Frost Death Knight with the cutesy Ardenweald moths perched on her heavily armored back and the Oh I Wish You Would expression on her face:

Dareca's worst unrealized habit is that she leaves when she's happy.

She's aware that she likes her space, is a loner, etc. But she doesn't really understand that she finds it uncomfortable when she's too content. There's always a good excuse to leave, one that she can make herself believe is necessary.

Her tendency to ghost when things are at their best has cost her significantly in friendships and loved ones. To her, it seems like they want to keep her on a leash. That they don't want to give her room to be herself. That they abandon her while she's just doing her duty to her people and the Alliance. But while that may in part be true, it ignores the fact that she leaves people when she's too happy with them, either out of an unconscious desire to test their affection for her and see if it lasts, or just out of a visceral discomfort with emotional closeness. Or sometimes both.

Would she change it if she realized that she had this habit? Probably not. There's old dogs learning new tricks, and then there's an old, solitary dog of her fairly venerable age. ;) She would probably try to do better, and might even succeed... she has managed to change a few very ingrained habits with her husband, to make things smoother between them, and he has learned to adjust to her ways as well.

But it's more likely that she'd just fall back into the old rut of familiar unconscious behavior after a while. That's usually how she functions, and she wouldn't see much value in fighting ingrained behaviors in herself.

She's not always very easy to live with.

[phoenixsoul13]

Alissa Hawke as a DAI Companion

I actually started working on this one before Rosalie’s, but I struggled so much with writing aer companion quest. ^^’ (template by dextronoms)

OC’s Name: Alissa Hawke (pronouns: ae/aer)

Race, Class, & Specialization: Human, Two-Handed Warrior, Berserker

Varric’s Nickname for them: Hawke

Personality archetype: Red/Blue (though you’ll only encounter the Blue side with high approval)

Default Tarot Card: The Hermit (inner strength, withdrawal, caution, vigilance)

How they are recruited: After talking with Alissa in Skyhold, ae will join as a temporary companion until Here Lies the Abyss is completed, at which point ae will automatically be permanently recruited if aer approval is high enough. “You’re not as useless as I thought, Inquisitor. I’ll help you stop Corypheus.” Otherwise, Alissa will leave for places unknown.

Where they are in Skyhold: Before Here Lies the Abyss is completed, Alissa will stay up on the ramparts, sharping aer sword. Afterwards, ae can be found next to the herb garden.

Approval/Disapproval: Alissa will approve of direct actions, getting straight to the point in dialogue, delivering justice swiftly (ae will Slightly Disapprove if judgments are left too long), and killing darkspawn. Alissa will disapprove of beating around the bush in dialogue, pro-Chantry/Templar sentiments, and the Inquisitor making presumptions about aer.

Major Quest Approvals/Disapprovals:

-(Applied after speaking to Alissa for the first time in Skyhold.)   In Hushed Whispers/Champions of the Just: Ally with the Mages (Approves), Ally with the Templars (Greatly Disapproves), Disbanding the Templars (Approves), Conscript the Mages (Disapproves)

-Here Lies the Abyss: Grey Wardens exiled (Approves), Grey Wardens recruited (Greatly Disapproves)

-Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts: Celene rules (Disapproves), Gaspard rules (Greatly Disapproves), Briala rules through Gaspard (Slightly Approves), Public Truce (Slightly Approves)

-What Pride Had Wrought: Following the Elven rituals (Approves), Ignoring the Elven rituals (Disapproves), Allying with the Sentinel Elves (Approves), Refusing to ally with the Sentinel Elves (Greatly Disapproves)

Mages, Templars, Other?: Having grown up in a family with apostates, Alissa is very defensive of mages being able to choose their own path. Still, ae can be persuaded by the argument that mages need a place to study, but only if said place is run by mages, with no Chantry interference. Ae has no respect for Templars, from the stories ae has heard and aer time in Kirkwall.

Friends in the Inquisition: Sera, The Iron Bull, Blackwall (until Revelations)

Romanceable?: No. A few opportunities will be available to flirt (for all Inquisitors), but the first time such an option is selected, Alissa will say, “Don’t. I’m not interested.” Attempting to flirt a second time will cause aer to Greatly Disapprove, with the comment, “I said no. Try again and it’ll be the last thing you say.”

Small side mission: After completing Crestwood’s main questline [closing the lake rift], talking with Alissa will prompt aer to bring up the Fifth Blight and how it’s still affecting Ferelden today. If the Inquisitor expresses interest in helping people still struggling with the Blight’s aftermath, Alissa will Approve and says ae’ll give the Inquisitor the locations of places they can help. These will include pockets of darkspawn to dispatch and places to donate supplies. If Alissa is along with an encounter, ae will Approve. Otherwise, the Inquisitor will only get Slight Approval from aer.

Post-Recruitment Cutscene: After Alissa is permanently recruited, talking with aer will trigger a cutscene that shows aer working in the garden. The Inquisitor can express surprise that Alissa is into gardening (“Why not?” Slight Disapproval.) or ask what ae’s working on (to which ae’ll reply “The elfroot needs to come out before it chokes itself”). Eventually, Alissa will stand up to face the Inquisitor and ask what they want. The Inquisitor will have three options:

-“Just wanted to make sure you’re settling in okay” will grant Slight Approval and Alissa will respond with, “I’m fine, thank you.”

-“No reason,” will not give an approval change, but Alissa will frown and appear to eye the Inquisitor cautiously.

-“Making sure you’re staying out of trouble,” will grant Disapproval and Alissa will scoff, roll aer eyes, and say “I’m not the one you need to worry about.”

Regardless of the option chosen, the conversation will move on to the fate of the Wardens at the end of Here Lies the Abyss. If the Wardens were exiled, Alissa will say the Inquisitor made the right decision. If the Wardens were recruited into the Inquisition, Alissa will reiterate aer thoughts from the end of Here Lies the Abyss, that it isn’t safe to keep people Corypheus can influence around. The Inquisitor can defend their choice, admit ae has a point, or if they were exiled, agree with aer or wonder if they really did make the right decision. No matter what, Alissa is not swayed from aer position.

At this point, the Inquisitor can ask about aer dislike of the Wardens, especially since they saved Ferelden from the Fifth Blight. “No, two Wardens saved Ferelden. Of course there are good ones; one of my sisters is a Warden herself. But over two dozen Wardens left Kirkwall to fall to the Qunari, and we almost ended up swimming in demons because they can’t think about anything but Blights.”

Alissa will then sigh, say, “Whatever, it’s done,” and turn back to working on the garden.

Companion Quest: After permanently recruiting aer and getting high approval, interacting with Alissa will trigger a cutscene where ae and Cassandra are conversing near the training dummies. Cassandra says that while she wished they could have found the Champion earlier, she’s glad ae’s here now. Noticing that the Inquisitor has joined them, she adds that maybe it worked out for the best that Varric refused to give up Alissa’s location.

Alissa is confused by this, as Varric and ae have never been friendly, and ae assumes he’d sell aer out in a second to save his own skin. Cassandra insists quite the contrary, that he was very defensive of Alissa. Alissa scoffs, saying that doesn’t sound like the Varric ae knows.

Here the Inquisitor can ask if Alissa wants to ask Varric. Alissa will ponder it for a sec then shake aer head. Either way, Alissa will say there’s no point in asking, as he would probably just lie anyway; telling fiction is one of his trades after all.

After this scene, the Inquisitor will have a chance to ask Varric about it. If they do so, he’ll say that despite the differences between them, he does have a lot of respect for Alissa, and feels partially responsible for drawing negative attention aer way. “I know Hawke hated the fact that I wrote The Tale of the Champion; I wanted to show aer and the others in a positive light, but maybe I just made things worse.” The conversation ends with Varric asking the Inquisitor to not repeat any of this to Alissa.

The Inquisitor can then talk to Alissa in the garden, where ae will admit that despite aer earlier dismissal, ae can’t stop wondering about why Varric would defend aer to Cassandra, wondering if he was up to something.

Option 1: The Inquisitor can encourage Alissa to talk to Varric. Ae sighs and says, “Fine, soon.”

Option 2: The Inquisitor can encourage Alissa to forget the matter, to which ae’ll say, “For the best, I’m sure.”

Either way, the quest will complete. If Option 1 was chosen though, after leaving Skyhold and returning, talking to Alissa and Varric will reveal that they’ve talked and made things less tense between them.

Tarot card change Option 1: reversed Eight of Swords (new beginnings) Option 2: (no change)

What Pride Had Wrought: After the cutscene where Morrigan shows the Inquisitor her eluvian and the Crossroads, another will trigger where Alissa approaches the Inquisitor, saying that ae noticed that the Inquisitor’s Arcane Advisor has an eluvian. The Inquisitor can ask how Alissa knows about them, to which Alissa will say ae knows someone that worked on one and might be of some help. Whether the Inquisitor says they could use someone with that knowledge, or says that they’ll be fine with just Morrigan, Alissa will say that ae already received a response to aer letter and aer partners are on their way.

After leaving and returning to Skyhold (or when What Pride Had Wrought is selected on the war table, if done without leaving Skyhold after this scene), a cutscene triggers where Merrill and Isabela arrive in Skyhold. Alissa will introduce them to the Inquisitor, who can be welcoming or cold (of which Alissa will Approve or Disapprove respectively). Regardless, Merrill will say she’s glad to be of assistance. Isabela will remark on the size of Skyhold, and then walk away, mentioning wanting to catch up with Varric. In Skyhold, Isabela and Merrill will change locations: both can sometimes be found by Alissa, while Merrill can occasionally be found talking with Morrigan, and Isabela can occasionally be found sitting at Varric’s table in the Great Hall.

Regardless of companion selections, Merrill will join the Inquisitor alongside Morrigan during What Pride Had Wrought as an extra companion. She will be excited at the prospect of meeting the elves of the Temple, and offer her own commentary throughout. Alissa, if brought along, will defend Merrill against any negative remarks towards her comments (and Slightly Disapprove). Merrill will insist they follow the elven rituals, breaking away from the group if the Inquisitor refuses; Alissa will stay with Merrill, meaning the Inquisitor will be down a party member if they refuse to complete the elven rituals. At the Well of Sorrows, Merrill will be another choice to drink from the well, becoming angry if Morrigan or a non-elven Inquisitor is chosen (Alissa will Greatly Disapprove); Alissa will be noticeably worried if Merrill is chosen (no approval change), saying it would be better if no one drank from it until they know more about it, but unfortunately Corypheus is leaving them no choice.

After the quest, Alissa will offer comments about it when spoken to in Skyhold, positive or negative depending on the choices the Inquisitor made and how they responded to Merrill’s commentary.

Trespasser: Alissa will not be present at the Exalted Council, but with high enough approval, the Inquisitor can find a letter from aer wishing them well.

Cole’s reflection on their thoughts: “Anger fills you up until it’s all you know. Not this again. Why must it always fall to me? It’s not fair, but you still keep fighting.”

Comment(s) on Mages: “People fight back after being driven into a corner too long.”

Comment(s) on Templars: “They claim to fight for good and then attack innocent people? Typical.”

When looking for something: “I’m sure it’s nothing important.”

When finding a campsite: “Tired already?” High Approval: “Let’s stop for a bit.”

When the Inquisitor Falls: Low Approval: “Carry your own weight for once, damnit.” Middling Approval: “Someone check on [Last Name]!” High Approval: “No! Inquisitor!”

When they are low on Health: Low Health: “I refuse to die here.” KO: “Damn... you.”

When they see a Dragon: “Not again.”

When during their small side quest: “Good.” “Ten years later and the darkspawn still keep coming back. And we’ll keep cutting them down.” “So many people still hurting from the Blight.”

Default saying: “What?” High approval: “Nice to see you.”

What do they call the Inquisitor?: With positive approval, Alissa will refer to the Inquisitor by their last name. It’s only with high approval that ae will (non-sarcastically) call them Inquisitor, as at that point ae believes them worthy of the title.

Leaving the Inquisition: At the end of Here Lies the Abyss, if aer approval isn’t high enough, Alissa will not be permanently recruited. Instead, ae’ll say, “Now that this is done, I’ll be going.” The Inquisitor can attempt to convince aer to stay, but Alissa will refuse. “I don’t have any interest in being part of your Inquisition.” The Inquisitor can ask where ae’ll go, and be met with, “Somewhere else.”

If Alissa’s approval is low enough at the end of Here Lies the Abyss, ae’ll leave without a word.

If after being permanently recruited, Alissa’s approval falls far enough, ae will not leave, but it will trigger a cutscene where Alissa is pacing the garden and turns on the Inquisitor when they appear. “I thought you were making a difference. I can’t believe I fell for it.” Ae’ll cross aer arms and be silent for a moment. “I’ll stay since I said I would, but the moment Corypheus is dead, I will leave and not look back.” All dialogue options will disappear, and interacting with Alissa in Skyhold will just have aer say, “Go away.” After Corypheus’s death, Alissa will be true to aer word and will not be present at the victory banquet.

[loominggaia]

Going back to the sexualities asks, how do lesbian, gay, and trans satyrs deal? I know we've seen ace faun Dr. Che but it sounds like satyrs have much less leeway everywhere. Are they stereotyped among themselves as much as they are by other peoples about sexuality?

Ironically, LGBT satyrs actually have it easier than other species in some cases, because in places where homosexuality is frowned upon, nobody bothers speaking up when satyrs get freaky with the same sex or expresses their gender unconventionally, because folks think “oh they’re just deviant creatures by nature, whatever”. Like the bar is set so low for their behavior, they can often get away with shit that other people can’t, just because nobody cares about them enough to stop it. It’s actually quite sad, but in a way that’s beneficial to them sometimes. Other times, not so beneficial. For example, if a human woman is passed out drunk in the street, people would likely rush to her aid because humans are expected to be “better” than that. But if a satyress is in the same way, pretty much everyone would ignore her and think “eh, they’re just like that”.

Dr. Che is actually a satyr, not a faun, so the fact that he’s asexual actually causes him more trouble than you’d think! People automatically stereotype him as this sex-crazed, rowdy maniac and treat him like that by default, when he’s 100% the opposite. A good example is how when he and Morbus worked together, Morbus would flirt with him like crazy and get mad when he didn’t reciprocate, because she has this idea that satyrs will just fuck anything that moves. She still doesn’t quite get it and tries to get him into bed whenever possible. She sends him love letters and shit, it’s bad lol. She’s an example of someone who stereotypes satyrs in a so-called “positive” way, because she makes it clear that she has the hots for them, but she fetishizes them in a way that’s honestly really gross and dehumanizing. That’s another common attitude people have towards them, thinking they’re basically living sex toys.

As for how satyrs treat other satyrs...it’s not much better than how other folks treat them. In fact, I don’t think anyone hates satyrs more than other satyrs. This attitude was explored in “Dirty Animal” and maybe a few other stories. It’s mentioned that Itchy automatically thinks poorly of other satyrs he meets, assuming they’re jobless losers or they’re going to steal from him or something. He’s totally blown away when he meets Dr. Che, and he’s so enamored by Ginger and how she subverts stereotypes that he falls in love with her right off the bat. I think there was a scene where he even tells Tomato not to trust other satyrs, but I may have cut it, I can’t remember. Even after Itchy went out of his way to save Ginger’s life, she was still paranoid that he was going to rape her when they slept next to eachother, showing that even she has negative views of her kind. Itchy’s mother expressed similar feelings too, and also Brogan on several occasions.

Actually, I think the only satyr character in the series who isn’t totally self-loathing is Dr. Che. But he was raised in an isolated village by fauns, so...I don’t think he even realized he was a satyr until later in life.

[kumeko]

Title: of enigmas, leaders, and other such mysteries

A/N: For the persona Free Time Zine, I got assigned the p3 boys, so I wanted to do a little Akihiko, Shinjiro, Koromaru, and Minato bonding. I’m sorry Junpei, you got left out.

Summary: Shinjiro doesn’t know what to make of his silent leader, with his wry sense of humour and his unreadable expression. Maybe walking Koromaru can change that.

…

…

…

…

“I’ll join you.” Even as he says them, Shinjiro can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. Can’t understand the way his body is unfolding off the lounge couch, his hand already setting aside his book. His body is on auto-pilot and he’s making his way toward the dorm’s entrance before he can comprehend it.

 Even worse is Minato’s reaction. His fingers curl around his headphones, half-way through slipping them on. With no reaction, not even that of surprise, he merely nods as he settles his headphones around his neck. Like this is an everyday occurrence, as though Shinjiro is any of the other dormmates, joining Minato for afterschool snacks and homework and weekend outings.

 Koromaru yips excitedly, making up for it entirely as he bounces around Shinjiro. His tail is on a motor, wagging furiously. Tugging on his pant leg, Koromaru urges him to walk faster before letting go and sprinting to the door.

“Time for his walk already?” Akihiko glances at the grandfather clock. The pendulum swings forward and back, the hand ticking forward by one, and he sets down his boxing gloves. “I’ll come too.”

 “Three’s overkill, ain’t it?” Shinjiro mutters as his friend grabs his coat and slings it over his shoulders, ever the action hero. The motion shouldn’t look as cool as it does. “Even two’s kinda pushing it.”

 “It’ll be fine.” Akihiko shrugs his shoulders dismissively. Already Minato is ahead of them, holding the door open, and Akihiko gestures for Shinjiro to go first. He snorts derisively when he doesn’t move. “Unless you’re backing out?”

 It is stupid, in all honesty. That sentence is barely a challenge, they are in high school and should be beyond that, and it isn’t like it makes a difference if he comes or not. Shinjiro grits his teeth and pushes his way past Akihiko. “Never.”

 It is stupid and he falls for it every. Damned. Time. Akihiko’s lips curl into a smirk as he follows him out. He doesn’t say anything and that somehow makes it worse, as though Shinjiro has lost in a different way. A more important way. He thinks perhaps with Akihiko that’ll always be the case. There is something about childhood friends, about knowing someone in a way that just settles in the bones, that makes it so. Weaknesses, desires, hopes; all of them are laid bare and impossible to hide.

 The exact opposite stands outside, scuffing his shoe against the sidewalk impatiently. Shinjiro has known Minato for all of a month and he is pretty sure he will never be able to understand the enigma that is their leader. Hell, he’s certain that no one at the dorm even understands him; Junpei mentioned catching Minato staring vacantly in Tartarus’s lobby several times. Each time it’d happened, his Persona changed, and there’s just something wrong about that. It’s like he’s changing his face every battle.

 “Yip!” Koromaru barks, sitting on his haunches. The second the door clicks shut, he’s trotting down the usual path. Every now and then, he turns back to them and impatiently shakes his head.

 “Someone’s really excited.” Akihiko chuckles warmly as he watches Koromaru sprint between grassy lots and garbage cans. “He doesn’t usually have this much energy.”

 “No,” Minato simply agrees, hands in his pockets. His shoulders are slack and with his laid-back posture, he looks shorter than he actually is.

 Not that Shinjiro was any better. Slouching is his default by now, his lanky frame automatically hunching over till he’s only barely taller than Akihito. Which is still taller, and he takes a not-insignificant amount of pride in that. “Probably ‘cause of school.” When Minato glances at him questioningly, Shinjiro shrugs. “Everyone’s busier now.”

 “Now that you mention it…” Akihiko slows his step, his hands curling into fists. Quickly punching the air in front of him, he grins cockily as he bounces on the balls of his feet. “Boxing club’s started again.”

 “Did it even stop for you?” Shinjiro asks, genuinely curious. He can hardly remember a time Akihiko didn’t have his boxing gloves, the red leather polished till it shone. Even the band-aid on his forehead seems like a permanent injury.

 “Mitsuru banned him for a while,” Minato helpfully explains. There’s a light smile on his face, as though he’s remembering something funny, and Shinjiro is afraid to blink and miss the expression. “You played with Koromaru a lot then.”

 “It was training, not playing,” Akihiko hotly defends, his jaw set and shoulders rounded. Every part of him looks ready to fight, as usual, but there’s something unusually soft about him. Even his tone has less bite than normal. “He’s good at running.”

 “He’s a dog. Of course he is.” Shinjiro snorts, giving his friend dubious stare. It’s weird enough that Koromaru has a Persona and regularly shoots himself in the head in a nonsensical dungeon. If Akihiko starts competing with a dog, maybe they should just let the Dark hour take over. “Only you’d call walking a dog ‘training’.”

 “’Cause I’m the only one who’d actually train instead of walk.” Ahead of them, Koromaru disappears up the staircase to the local shrine. His paws scrape against the stone steps and Akihiko turns toward them, a competitive gleam in his eyes. “Here, I’ll show you the results. Race me up?”

 “Seriously?” Shinjiro mutters flatly. Not that it matters what he thinks; Minato’s already sprinting up the stairs, Akihiko just ahead of them, and even if they caught him off guard, hell if he’s going to lose. Straightening up, he takes full advantage of his long legs and skips every other stair on his way up. It’s late evening now, the sky a soft, hazy pink, few visitors to catch sight of three high school boys breathlessly running up to a shrine.

 Koromaru is first, as expected. These stairs are his home. Were his home. His tongue lolls out as he sits at the head of the steps, his mouth stretched into a wide grin. What is surprising is that Minato is second, pulling just ahead of Akihiko in the last ten steps. He’s hunched over, taking in big, deep breaths, and Shinjiro doesn’t even have time to feel angry at his third-place tie with Akihiko.

 Minato is second, despite his frail-looking body. There are a lot of surprises with this kid, with the people he knows and the powers he uses, but they catch Shinjiro off-guard all the same.

 “Not bad,” Akihiko pants, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Breathing in deeply, he forces his heartrate to slow down. “You improved.”

 “I knew you’d do that,” Minato heaves, his way of an explanation. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s the lack of air. He’s leaning over, his hands on his knees as he tries to catch his breath.

 Shinjiro takes the easy way out and just sits on the nearby bench. There’s no need to posture over recovery. Koromaru yawns before jumping back on his feet, his tail wagging as though it’s powered by the energizer bunny. Maybe he really did miss his walks; between school work, clubs, and Tartarus, no one’s had time to relax, let alone go out with Koromaru.

 “Alright.” Akihiko stretches his arms above him and cricks his neck. Rolling back his shoulders, he glances down at Koromaru. “Up for some ball?”

 Koromaru barks, already racing off to a corner of the shrine. Minato cocks his head. “Ball?”

 “Didn’t you know?” Akihiko stares at them blankly, surprise etched on his face. “Lots of kids come to the playground here, and they’re always forgetting toys and balls.”

 “That’s…kinda cheap,” Shinjiro mutters, watching as Akihiko jogs off to Koromaru. At least Mitsuru could have bought some dog toys. Or maybe Akihiko’s just too lazy to bring them.

 “I guess.” Minato plops on the bench next to him. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he leans back and watches as Koromaru digs in the sand for a child’s lost treasure. “We can buy something on our way home.”

 “Yeah,” Shinjiro replies lamely, not sure where to take the conversation from here. Or if he even should. It isn’t like he has a problem with silence and based on the past few weeks, it seems Minato doesn’t either. From the corner of his eye, he observes as Minato contently just sits there, his expression conflict-free.

 There isn’t a part of this kid that looks ready to fight. Even his muscle seems non-existent, despite the heavy swords and axes he picks on a nightly basis. Then again, Ken also somehow fights with a lance bigger than he’s tall, so maybe it’s part of their powers. Added stamina to go with everything else.

 Akihiko winds up his arm, chucking a ball from one end of the playground to the other. Koromaru’s already running, his head turning back for a second to gauge the ball, and then he leaps. Minato’s smiling absentmindedly during the exchange, his fingers playing with his headphone’s cords. For a brief moment, Shinjiro misses Akihiko and his big mouth; even when he doesn’t like it, it is always more comfortable with Akihiko around.

 The wind picks up slightly and Shinjiro pulls his beanie down a little more snugly around his ears.

 “Koromaru likes your food.”

 He blinks, almost missing the words. Food. Koromaru. A combination of words that is a closely guarded secret. Shinjiro stares at Minato blankly; he was always alone when he cooked for Koromaru. No, to be exact, he always made sure he was alone when he cooked. Checked the halls, checked the schedule, even set up a freakin’ bell trap.

 Reading the confusion on his face, Minato rubs his neck. “Koromaru told Aigis. He wants to thank you.”

 Shit. He’d forgotten the robot could talk to dogs. The blood drains from his face and what else has that dog told her? Told their leader? “Huh.”

 An inelegant answer but Minato takes it in stride. He wraps his headphone cord around his fingers. “The same goes for me.” A short pause. Shinjiro can feel his heart pounding. “Thanks for fixing those meals and worrying over us.”

 At this he stiffens entirely, his ears burning from embarrassment. Seriously, just what did Koromaru tell Aigis? The only witness to all of his cooking endeavours. He thinks back to all the times he’s talked to the attentive dog, mentioning Akihiko’s or Mitsuru’s diet, and it’s not too late to go back to the streets, is it? Sometimes living in the dorm feels like he’s on drugs, so it isn’t too hard to make the switch to the real things again. “J-just doing my part,” he manages. Gruffly, he hopes.

 In all probability, the stutter just makes him sound flustered. Minato doesn’t laugh like he’s expecting. Instead, he’s still playing with his headphones, his gaze directed anywhere but at Shinjiro. “If you need any help, let me know.”

 Minato looks at him now, unwavering, and Shinjiro remembers another time people looked at him like that, as though he has something to offer. As though he has value. Like three years ago, when they first started fighting at midnight and Mitsuru and Akihiko would call on him for backup. Or even further bacck, when Miki wanted to sit on his shoulders and watch the fireworks. It’s been a long time since anyone needed him for anything and Shinjiro can only avert his gaze, rubbing his neck awkwardly. “Sure.”

 The tennis ball rolls to Minato’s feet. Akihiko’s not far behind it, Koromaru trotting tiredly by his side. “Think it’s time we head back.”

 The sun’s set by now, the sky above them cloudy, and Shinjiro reluctantly gets up. It’s a warm night, the last vestiges of summer clinging before fall fully rolls in. “Guess so. It’s dinner time, anyway.”

 “Who’s cooking?” Minato asks and Shinjiro lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. It’s not so much he wants to hide his hobby so much as he doesn’t want Akihiko to know about it. He’s not sure he can handle the nonstop teasing.

 “Fuuka.” Akihiko grimaces as they head down the shrine path. “I know she’s watching all those cooking shows but…I don’t think it’s helping much.”

 “What shows?” Shinjiro asks, surprised. Then again, that would explain the fancy recipe she tried the last time they chatted. For someone with her skill level, beef stroganoff is a pretty high bar.  

 With a shrug, Akihiko jumps the last three steps, landing with a huge thud. “Not sure. Food Network is always on whenever I turn on the T.V. and she’s the only one who’s into cooking.” He has a wry expression as he turns back to them, his face illuminated by the street light. “Don’t think it’s really helping her, though.”

 Fortunately, it’s dark on the trail, the tree’s blocking out the moonlight, and if he flushes lightly, no one can see. He’ll have to remember the change the channel next time he’s watching TV. Clearing his throat, Shinjiro slowly walks down the last few steps. “It takes practice. She’s trying.”

 “She’s improving.” Minato brushes his bangs out of his face. When they look at him curiously, he clarifies, “I’m taste testing for her.”

 “Oh man.” Pity colours Akihiko’s expression and he gives Minato a sympathetic pat on the back. “Good luck.”

 Minato shrugs, waving off the comfort. “It’s fine. She’s improving.” He turns to Shinjiro, his lips curling into a sly smile. “She has help.”

 Shinjro frowns—is that teasing? From their stoic leader? Before Akihiko can catch on, he picks up the pace. “We can all taste test.”

 Maybe if he gets there fast enough, he can salvage Fuuka’s cooking. He can hear Minato chuckling next to him and on at least one thing he stands corrected: their leader is not as mysterious as he thought. No, instead Minato’s a bit of a troll and Shinjiro is never going to reveal any weaknesses to him again.

[littlebabycrybtch]

bro..... im sooo tired of ppl being whiny freaks about ppl liking fictional shit ‘~too much~’. like bitches are literally fully convinced if you prefer acting out certain ideas in fiction but not irl, thats not your normal preferential boundaries but rather your brain is a mental illness BOMB and you need to be fucking hospitalized for being imaginative and having autonomy. like yall if its not taboo or smth shut uuuuhp man you’re not ‘concerned for their health’ or w/e you’re fully just tryna get away with being a nihilistic asshole who lacks sympathetic reasoning skills. listen to me. fiction is valuable. the thoughts we have on it are important. the personal lack of value you happen to put on a media is next to worthless. its not a fuckin waste of time dude, creators are people, who live in the real world, they experience it and have ideas through it and about it, they form and tweak their ideas while still definitely existing in the real world, and then put that back into the world with a new angle and new perspective, to share with other people definitely encountering it in , you guessed it , the real world. thats not disconnected. its not nothing. these things do not magically appear from fairytale land, they are created. stories mean smth, people tell them for a reason, its ok to feel smth for any story, why would we even tell them if not with the intention to impact others emotionally somehow i mean??? fiction does not Just affect reality, it is valuable to real life society, it is a functioning thriving part OF reality. 

humans have told stories since the dawn of our existence. it is literally all but an inherent species trait for us to imagine things, its tied to each and every one of us, and to reject ‘fantasy’ as smth worthless to human life is frankly just fuckin wrong and weird of you. bitch we are Supposed to get outside the box, the fandom ppl you cringe your pants over arent thinking abt fake shit too much, you guys very often just arent exercising abstract thought and imagination enough, which actually hurts your ability to engage with it critically in all the ways its meant to be. if you dont see the value in fiction its because you put in no effort to form the analysis skills. in other words, you idiots dont get the hype bc you’re too stupid to get how you're supposed to compare a book to the real world it came from. ‘uu but cmon not everythings valuable what about [tumblr designated cringe media]-’ 1. ok! somehow you havent come to this conclusion yourself yet but thats not real, whatever ppl get to enjoy is not all abt you, your bias means less than dirt to others outside of hivemind social medias, you can keep it to yourself, ppl shouldnt care about it bc it means nothing outside of ur own space, its literally funny to me that you’re so elitist you want me to cater my interests to you, Your Standard Of Quality Isnt Universal, 2. ranking the values of fiction is the waste of time here, if you compare mlp to pride and prejudice ill dissect your teeth, different emotional impacts from tragic to funny to Just A Vibe are all able to be assessed as ‘valuable to somebody else so leave well enough alone’ if you dont have 2010+ funnyman brainrot disease that makes you incapable of reflecting on anything you can find a way to joke abt first.

i mean seriously like. whenever randos start engaging with medias you ppl dont like or in ways you dont get, the strawmans yall make up to get to be cringe culture vultures abt such benign shit, and almost Always at the expense of neurodivergent people with a deeply rooted undertone of extreme ableism might i add..... its just so selfish. u have a brain ok, you’re manipulative but we both know you dont Actually think ppl automatically default to being a waifu obsessed incel rotting away at their basement computer, stagnating their social skills and straying further and further from reality with each passing day, a poor disturbed wretch that you just HAVE to save from themselves, all bc they say they. prefer fictional porn or w/e to having sex irl. buddy thats not a big deal, theyre normal, just different from you. theyre fine, you’re just uncomfortable. as a functioning adult you’re gonna have to try and recognize that sometimes that feelings gonna be 100% on you, and you cant always just lie abt the validity of it to make ppl feel obligated into agreeing with you. this is gonna be one fragment of their personhood and your self obsessed brain imploding over how unrelatable that is doesnt fucking matter, grow up bitch like. how detached do you have to be to think thats so unstable or morally wrong.... its just a completely inconsequential preferential decision that only affects them and isnt a wrong choice at all cuz nobody has to get their dick wet if they dont wanna for any reason ever and thats gotta be that tbh.... and it kills me cuz they still inherently experience the real world and are capable of thinking abt it critically,,, even tho they... masturbate to drawings or w/e the fuck ppl think is unhealthy ???? like? imagination is just fun we dont need to moderate it anymore than we moderate other fun activities i mean lol ksdjfsd this is the DEFINITION of ‘just vibing’ no one FUCKING cares and it deosnt fucking matter the way you desperately try to make ppl think it does just so u get to be loud abt ur shortcomings as a decent understanding person. 

‘uuuuuu im sorry but thats unhealthy :///’ you sound like a goddamn maniac dude stories are not unhealthy having feelings abt them is not unhealthy thinking some anime bitch that was DRAWN TO BE HOT , IS HOT, is not UNHEALTHY and you clowns arent convincing anybody you ‘care’ abt that concept anyways !! im losign my mind here skdlsdfsd medias are literally DESIGNED TO DO THIS TO PEOPLE... WE’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL THINGS FOR IT.... IT IS WHAT MAKES THE ART WE’VE TAKEN PART IN FOR CENTURIES, “ART”.... ITS JUST... HAVING IDEAS AND EXPERIENCING IMAGINATION..... whats wildly unhealthy actually is yalls toxic obsession with ‘harsh truth’ and validating your stupid ass cwinge feewings to the point where everything that gives your underdeveloped selfish ass hives has to be a matter of health and morals and whats ‘best’ for everyone. u dont know that shit!!!! ur a petty brat and im not ur mommy ok i wont baby you so u dont feel like the shitty whiny person you are, you need to grow and do better and think outside urself already, dont put the responsibility of making u feel right for judging somebodies benign hobbies on me. i wont bc its wrong and unnecessary. you’re not a savior no ones falling for that lmao you’re just a bitch girl xoxo get over it shit truly does not matter. let them write nsfw self insert fics instead of banging !! 

to make it real do yall really not Get that basic consent kinda doesnt just mean ‘no when im not in the mood at the time’ but it means ‘no if i just dont fuckin feel like having sex ever for literally any reason at all bc i choose what i do’ and pressuring them, even with what your warped brain translates as the best of intentions, is inherently disgusting? especially with the ‘i know how to help you’ attitude like......... ohhh die soonly ew lmao! lay off this nasty shit already please it doesnt matter! stop trying to make it matter!! its not hurting you or them you stupid tumblr phd ass!! and like again yeah some media shits just truly gross but tbr now its like even That kind of shit, the Real social issues caused by Actually problematic media that ppl should discuss Genuinely without ulterior motives, is being used more and more rampantly as just a stepping stone to get to the needless mockery of other harmless things in the media they want an excuse to bag on.......... like a bitch cant just be grown and talk about problems at face value without getting a bully jab in. smhhhhh you all fuckin suck please just stop talking already. so anyways yeah being attracted to fictional characters instead of real people or w/e IS funny, funny how many boyfriends they have when u have none xoxo theyre having fun and you can die sad abt it they get to die 5 times in an angsty fantasy fic and be brought back with mouth to mouth by fuckin kakashi every time and then they go get lunch irl while ur updating tinder bitch ... different fucking strokes ig !