#its a pretty effective strategy all things considered

[wormsontoast]

i dont get why soulmates has to have romantic connotations.

to my knowledge there's five meanings for mate and thats: a) the scientific one, where animals partner up generally for the purpose of having lots of babies, b) the british/australian one, which is just a synonym for friend, c) the nautical one, which i cant really define but its a rank on a ship d) the one at the end of roommate or cellmate, which is just sharing something e) the chess one, which i think is exactly the same as checkmate or i have check and mate mixed up and its where you could get their king but they still can escape.

so the possible meanings are as follows: our souls are having sex, our souls are friends :), my soul would be subordinate to yours if we were on a soul pirate ship, we share a soul, and my soul could easily kill yours

none of those are inherently romantic!

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[losing-dog-art]

I just drafted all of this then lost it I'm going through a wall

Finished murderbot concept!!!

With bonus version with clothes 🎉

I have been making a lot of art lately (this is because I am procrastinating other things 😶)

Explanations below the cut (there was going to be a video but tumblr decided to fuck that)

So I have this old post about some head cannons for MBs appearance, but doing this full body design involved more thinking

I find it interesting that MB really only ever describes it's appearance when it's relevant to the plot/fight/scene, so anything that isn't relevant is left to our imagination. That being said:

MB says all it's inorganic parts are covered by a long sleeve shirt with a collar, pants and shoes. This means no inorganic parts on its face or hands

MB says it has no organic parts on its feet.

Slightly deeper cuts but MB mentions that it has inorganic and organic parts around its knees (I believe in exit strategy) and that it has an accessible company under its ribs (artificial condition)

People are often surprised when they see MB out of armor -- people who aren't familiar with secunits don't expect it to look as human as it does

MBs skin is canonically clear af (network effect I think)

Based on those handful of canon details, you can imagine Mb a lot of different ways -- this is great! And I've said before I think Martha Wells does this very much intentionally. So, that being said, here is some of my thoughts in this interpretation:

Based on that last point, MB looks surprisingly human. For me, this means soft facial features, eyelashes, and more organic parts than you might expect. Also, the inorganic parts are also round and nice looking -- this is partly just me thinking in a fun sci-fi way but also secunits are designed to be comforting

I've seen some people give it mechanical legs that are kind of bird-like or resemble running prosthetics. I think this is super cool and it makes a lot of sense-- those legs are basically a better form of bipedalism and let you run faster etc. BUT they would significantly change your gait. And thus be something MB considers when it is trying to pass as human. So I gave it more human feet, with the important toes and everything

I'm no expert on robotics or anatomy, but I really tried to think a little bit functionally. How would a secunit fold? How would it bend over, squat down, etc? I tried to give the look of some kind of shock system in the ankles, and conical-axis based joints. the hip area is probably the weak point in my design in this areas, idk, imagine ball bearings or something

For clothes, it's pretty straightforward. MB describes this more than a few times, but I tried to give some slightly fun sci-fi decoration bits

I tried to think about how androgyny might be generated in a silhouette in an unintentional way -- androgyny that is the result of functional design decisions and not aesthetic ones.

Idk. I had a lot of fun with this. This took about 4 hours (I've been trying not to overwork stuff lately and let the process show through) I might try and post the speed-draw video later? As a reblog perhaps. Idk Tumblr didn't like it the first time

Also a girl on bumble mentioned reading all systems red and I had to act so normal

[pastelvelvett-2nd]

Yandere!Harper x Female!Reader

[♡] Last chapter

Chapter 2: Only human

Summary: A week has past, and your second tutoring session with Harper is today. It's rather inconvenient that the entirety of the night, her mind is far too preocuppied with thoughts of you to sleep, even the slightest bit. The perfect mask she built slipping in front of you would be her worst nightmare, and in all likelyhood, it probably would happen today, given her current state.

Word count: 5,230 words

Note: Hello again! This will first of the two promised version with male and female reader. The fact that I took a while to post this is made even more hilarious by the fact that I literally had to edit exactly one word in this whole thing, considering this story is in second person. I was about to decide to not post these at all, but then I realized that there will be more mentions of the reader's gender as the story goes on so it's worth posting this one too so we can have the full set. ...Okay I ramble a lot even for Author's notes, cool, good to know. Anyway hope you enjoy re-reading or reading for the first time! Here's to hoping I won't take another year to post the next chapter (haha dw I totally won't guys)

What did Harper truly care about in the world? It wasn’t directly related to what she was doing, like it tends to be for a lot of people. She couldn’t think of many things she did at all that came from mere enjoyment. The girl did everything she did not for the act of it in itself, but what she would gain from going through with it. Often, it felt like even small decisions and actions on her day to day life were strategies, as insignificant as they may have looked to those around her. Small actions and decisions that build up to make a portrait of herself others could enjoy. That’s why, her newly found, constant thoughts didn’t make sense to her. For nights in a row, she’d tumble and shift in bed incessantly, thoughts burdened and confusing. They didn’t start off as something she was bothered by, though. First, she had a fuzzy feeling inside of her as she thought back to your first tutoring session. Your entrancing frame and beautiful face burrowed itself in her mind, laid their eggs that would lead to more, to the point it was the only thing she could see whenever she closed her eyes. Your words, your tone, soft and comforting like a lullaby, replayed themselves in her head. Except, of course, unlike a regular lullaby, it just had to have had the exact opposite effect on her, about as damaging as three cups of coffee back to back would be at this hour. That’s where her pleasant thoughts started seeming to be more concerning, than anything. Why was she considering something so intently, when she didn’t have any real conclusion to these thoughts? Harper had gotten obsessed with things before, it was pretty much an integral trait to her already, but it was always for the sake of gaining something. The fact she didn’t understand what was happening to her was concerning in its own right. The girl let out a shaky, unnerved sigh as she, in a brisk movement, got up to a sitting position on her bed. Harper peered downwards at her soft blanket. It had a childish print; A repeated pattern of a cute, chibi cat sleeping, the whole thing being colored in varying shades of pink. Thinking back at everyone she talked to on a regular basis, it was clear as day they’d think she’s immature for secretly liking this sort of thing. How would you react, though? Would you be disappointed that she’s not truly a mature person, or would you be okay with that? Something told her you weren’t like them, preoccupied with what looks socially acceptable. 

“Oh, crap…” Harper gritted her teeth, leaning forward as she covered her scrunched up face the second she realized. She couldn’t believe it. Her mind wandered to something other than you for one second, and that thought was so quick to turn right back to you. This clearly wasn’t something she could push out of herself by just laying down in bed, maybe if she did something, she could take her mind off of it. The girl looked up, her lavender eyes rapidly darting from her left to right to identify where on Earth she left her phone before she started sleeping. Or… Trying to, anyway. Ah… On the end table next to her, of course. Did she ever leave it anywhere else? Why did she even ask herself where it was to begin with? Harper stretched her body to the right to grab onto her phone and pull it from her charger. It was still warm to the touch from having charged for- she didn’t know for how long. Her eyes, used to the darkness of her room, tried adjusting to the bright, unnatural light the phone gave off as soon as she turned it on. Admittedly, the overly cutesy brightly colored wallpaper didn’t help much with this achieving this.  

Oh… 

Crap again.

Harper cringed at the sight of the time, 5:49 AM. It took her a full hour drive to get to college, so really, she only had an hour at her disposal. She couldn’t remember the last time that she stayed up the whole night without realizing it, if it ever happened to begin with. Normally, she goes to bed at 10PM sharp, and falls asleep only a few minutes later. Just what had you done to her?

Surely it wouldn’t be surprising to say that Harper couldn’t sleep in the one hour she had left. Instead, she worried incessantly about how that day was the second tutoring session she had with you, and the only thing she was running on was anxiety that kept her more or less alert. Still, the lack of sleep made her nowhere near as sharp as she’d hope to be for it. If anything, in her current state, you’d be the one able to teach her. Still, she had to put her best foot forward. She managed to get through the school day, yes, with a few weird looks from people that knew she was behaving strangely, but she was still able to jot down notes with… Some readability to them. 

As Harper waited for you to join her in the back of the library, she lowered her face to get a better look at what she now recognized as being hieroglyphs that were intended to represent the English language in her notebook, coming to the morbid realization that she was deluding herself into thinking she’d been doing better than she actually was. She supposed she didn’t do very well with lack of sleep… Maybe because she was always strict with herself on getting a full night of rest, like her parents were with her while she was growing up.

—

Second week, second tutoring session with Harper. You had to admit that you were incredibly nervous, but thankfully less so now, since you noticed how approachable she was to you the last time. A part of you was fully expecting her to be the type of popular person to act incredibly sweet to some people, and horribly nasty towards those that have a less than stellar reputation, like you did. If anything, she seemed even more genuine and brighter when you talked to her one on one than in a classroom setting.

You inhaled then exhaled, paused in front of the library door, trying to remind yourself of these things. You’re fine. Just focus on learning, she wouldn’t judge you for being incredibly stupid (even though compared to her, you clearly are).

The library was very quiet, which was certainly a good thing for you. You could only see one person reading in a chair relatively close to the door. Not someone you recognized, from what you could tell. The guy gave you a weird, slightly judgemental look for just a second, which was enough to make you shrink and wonder if you did something strange. You weren’t sure if you were just being paranoid, it wouldn’t be the first time you imagined someone judging you. God, just focus… Find Harper. She’s chill. You’ll be fine with her. You hurriedly went deeper into the library, the stacks of books you needed for today held tightly against your chest. You were quick to spot her, sitting at the furthest table and staring down a notebook. Her face was pale enough that she looked like she saw a ghost, and unlike you, it didn’t seem like she spotted you nearly as fast.

She narrowed her eyes, nearing her face to the paper to get a better look while also lifting it. You had to wonder what made reading what’s there so difficult. It kind of looked like someone else’s handwriting, from what you could see, so maybe she borrowed someone’s notebook for some reason and was having some trouble reading it because she wasn’t familiar with the way they wrote. Another thing that was interesting to you- Harper tended to be… How should you say this without sounding rude (because though you’re obviously the only person listening in on your thoughts, you still would feel guilty if you thought something mean about someone that only treated you with kindness so far). She was always more attentive to the world around her than this, let’s call it. While you were 100% the type of person to look around disoriented when you go to meet a friend at any location, you always thought people like Harper were exempt from having those kinds of moments. Well, Harper is human, afterall… Like anyone else, she can get distracted.

You guessed that calling out to her would be a better idea, since you were starting to feel a bit creepy just looming over her. You didn’t doubt it would look suspicious if anyone saw you, they’d most likely think you were stalking her (and doing a pretty bad job at it, honestly).

“H-Harper, hel-”

The second you spoke out with a shaky voice and an awkward smile, she jumped up from her seat with a dramatic gasp and looked up at you wide eyed like you’re about to attack her. She dropped the notebook on the table in time with the gasp, making it fall and slide further to the other side of the surface, where you were. You looked down at the notebook that was just in Harper’s grasp briefly, which was enough to make her panic further and take it, sliding it in her backpack hastily. That was… Strange of Harper. You never once saw her like this, or heard of anyone seeing her like this. It looked like she was hiding a murder plot that she wrote about or something, though that was obviously not possible. Plus, you doubted the notebook was even hers to begin with. Maybe she wanted to copy someone’s notes or homework and she was ashamed she’d get caught…? But then again, why was only this mystery person’s out, and not Harper’s, too?

“OH! Y/N!” Harper exclaimed, a bit too loud for something she’d say in the library. “Hi! You’re…” She looked up to the clock with squinted eyes. …Maybe she needed to get new glasses, and that’s why she was squinting at that notebook, too? “Oh. Exactly on time.” Ouch.

“Haha… Surprised? I wouldn’t want to waste your time making you wait for me, Harper.” You laughed nervously, pulling out a chair to sit down next to her, careful to not place it too close to hers. She was already pretty jumpy, by default, the last thing you’d want to do is worsen her emotional state. Something… Clearly must’ve happened to cause her change of behavior. You didn’t think you had it in you to pry. The two of you weren’t terribly close or anything, afterall. That would probably make her uncomfortable. Harper was much quicker to reply to this than she was in noticing you.

“Oh, wait, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that… I meant I thought it was earlier than it actually was, so when I checked the time, I got surprised!” The pink haired girl tried her best to explain, as fast as humanly possible, so you wouldn’t have a misconception about what she meant for much longer. You eyed her in concern, studying her face. Upon closer inspection, beneath her eyes were dark bags that certainly weren’t there the day before. It didn’t look like she slept one bit last night, or if she did, she had very little. Maybe something was bothering her, and she couldn’t sleep? You didn’t know her personally at all, so you had no clue what could’ve happened. Interrogating her about it couldn’t be a good idea, so maybe giving her an easy out from having another tiring thing to do after uni would be the kindest course of action.

“You look��� Pretty tired, Harper. Do you want to change the tutoring to tomorrow, or maybe some other day of the week? They should allow that, it’s still a tutoring session a week-” You couldn’t properly brace yourself over how immediate her response would be, even if you somehow knew about it ahead of time.

“No. No, we can do it today.” Harper’s voice was strangely firm, almost as if it was an order, rather than a confirmation. A few seconds of eerie silence passed before her different, frankly unusual demeanor melted away. “S-Sorry, I meant… I’m not really one to put things off. It’s a vicious cycle.” Oh, how nice it would’ve been to be her, and not your procrastinating self. It seemed like Harper was putting a genuine effort in pulling herself together, as evidenced by her straightening her back and clearing her throat. Her nervous, taken aback expression was turned into a calm and composed smile. Just how can she flip so quickly from one way of acting to another? It seemed like she’d be fairly good at something like improv acting or playing DnD, but you weren’t sure she was interested in either, or would be if she gave it a try. “Okay, sorry for the delay! We can start!” Realizing you still hadn’t sat down, you awkwardly shifted and moved towards the seat next to her, fighting off your immediate instinct to sit across from her instead. You supposed sitting right next to her was a lot more nerve wrecking of a concept, it was closer to her after all, so it made sense. 

With Harper even closer, the marks under her eyes seemed far more pronounced, making your guilt over putting her through this deepen. Still, she was obviously doing this for the extra credit, so it was her own decision if she wanted to sacrifice her own comfort to get that week’s session out of the way. Harper was the type to take everything she did seriously, which was incredibly respectable to you.

As she introduced the subject of today’s focus (still under math, because God knows you needed it), you could see the energy and brightness she put forth just a few minutes earlier dissipate gradually. Harper’s speaking was slower, her pauses more frequent, and eventually, she even struggled to have her eyes be any wider than half lidded. Even more distracting was that her writing seemed a lot sloppier than I saw it be last week, enough for it to be very possible that the notebook she had in front of her earlier was actually hers. This wasn’t something you could commentate on openly, at least not if you pointed out the specific telltale signs she had of being sleep deprived. But maybe if you insisted you end the tutoring session early after a bit of time had past, she’d be more likely to accept it.

“Okay, so now that you know the formula to that, let me just write down an example before you try one on your own.” The pink haired girl slid her math notebook closer to her side of the table and began writing down a math problem, tired eyes deeply focused. Then she started solving it, her mouth twitching slightly at some point, followed by her eyebrow doing the same. It really seemed like Harper was unsure of what she was writing down. You knew she probably meant for you to look at it after she was done, and peeping would be a bit mean, but your curiosity simply couldn’t wait. You scooted closer, making Harper’s body freeze like a deer caught in headlights the second that she finished writing the final result. Your eyes narrowed and studied each line of calculations. It… Didn’t really sound right. At all.

”Oh… I kinda thought it would be something like this.” Harper allowed you to take the notebook from under her and watched you attentively with no readily apparent emotion. You quickly wrote down the solution that you thought would be correct right below hers, looking to her when you were done for some sort of feedback. Harper seemed the slightest bit horrified, her mouth opening wordlessly and her eyebrows furrowing in concern. “Is it… That wrong?” Harper blinked a few times, looking bewildered as she took the notebook back and read through my solution several times over rapidly.

“No… It’s correct. I…” Harper gulped nervously, seeming not so eager to continue her sentence. She looked up towards her own solution, silent for a bit longer. “I was completely wrong. This… Is completely idiotic, what’s wrong with me? It’s like if an elementary schooler tried to solve this!” Harper’s tone raised, and her breathing quickened. Her concern from earlier was a bit more than you expected, but this state of panic was way beyond that.

”Harper, it’s okay, really! Everyone makes mistakes-“

”Not me!” Harper’s head was lowered in shame, hands shaking to the point she was barely able to hold the notebook properly. Tears quickly welled up in her violet eyes, and it took no time at all for them to drip down her face and for her to close her lids, probably from the stinging effect her tears left in their wake. She sobbed and sobbed, leaving you speechless. “I… Can’t. I’m not allowed to.” Her voice was weak and quieter this time, the slightest bit rapsy from having raised her voice earlier. You had no clue how to comfort her properly, not knowing her well enough to know what worked and what didn’t. Everything you could try would be a shot in the dark.

You were so caught up in Harper’s emotions that you didn’t notice that the librarian had walked up to her. The middle aged brown haired woman placed a hand on Harper’s shoulder in a motherly way, and you could only hope that would be enough to make her feel at least a little bit better, because then you would know what you could do. “Honey, are you okay…?” Then, to your surprise, the woman moved her gaze from her to you, now far less compassionate and more pointed, more accusatory. “You didn’t say anything to her, did you?” Did it… Look like you were an awful person? You had no clue why so many people here expected the worst of you. Even the staff, apparently. Still, you felt an insane amount of guilt for not doing something to comfort her up until now. You wouldn’t be surprised if Harper would come to resent you for seemingly not caring, despite her trying to tutor you every week, even when she was so exhausted.

”No, t-they didn’t.” Her current state made the fact that she actually responded for you even more shocking. It was noble of her to think about how you were perceived, even when she seemed to be going through a panic attack. “I-I’m sorry for making a scene. This is a library, I s-shouldn’t disturb-“ 

“No, no honey. Please. Don’t think about that right now. Just focus on feeling better.” The librarian let go of Harper’s shoulder and looked towards me. “Y/N, was it?” You felt pretty bad that you didn’t remember her name, despite her remembering yours. “Please take Harper here to the counselor.”

”It’s a-alright, Mrs. Moore, I can go on my own.” Oh well, at least you knew her name now, that’s something. Harper stifled her sobs, making occasional sniffing the only obvious sign of her crying, besides of course, the tears streaming down her face. The girl took her notebook and stuffed it in her backpack quickly, slipping it onto her back. It seemed like Harper was trying to rush away before either of you could have the chance to protest.

“Wait.” You got up too, and grabbed onto her hand after she took just a few steps away. Immediately, as you looked down at her hand that was stiff from shock, a result of your sudden and probably socially unacceptable action (given how little time the two of you spent together), you came to regret that decision. Then you looked up, which was perhaps even worse, because you saw her staring at you with a confused, teary face. “Sorry for that, I just…” You tried taking your hand away from hers. This time, it was your turn to be shocked when Harper refused to let you go, holding your hand tight. You’d feel rather awkward bringing that up now, especially with Mrs. Moore being right there still, so instead, you decided to continue what you were meaning to say. “I really want to do something to help. Taking you to the counselor is the least I could do.” Harper just stared at you in shock for a few good seconds that might as well have been an eternity, given how bad your perception of time was after her sudden show of emotion earlier. Then, she chuckled, smiling. Her eyes brightened, and her breathing seemed to be steadier than it was before. It was pretty interesting, because she didn’t give Mrs. Moore this look of gratitude and happiness after she tried to comfort her. First, you assumed maybe Harper just didn’t feel that okay with physical touch, so her putting her hand on her shoulder didn’t help. Still, she talked to her, too, and she had a more gentle tone that should’ve had more of an effect, yet it didn’t. Maybe Harper didn’t much like Mrs. Moore? That was your best guess.

”Thank you. I-If… You’re okay with that, I’m okay with that too.”

You didn’t really expect Harper to immediately say yes, but needless to say, it made you relieved. You weren’t really one to insist with anything, it was too nerve wracking to demand something of anyone. Still though, you were pretty sure that demanding to go with her, a grown adult that barely knew you, was an objectively morally wrong thing to do that you wouldn’t have done even if you had a backbone.

—

You started leading Harper to the counselor’s office, the both of you incredibly quiet. It honestly felt a tad bit awkward for you to be leading her somewhere on campus, when you barely started going here a few months ago and still get lost sometimes, even now. You weren’t sure for how long, but Harper probably had been going here for a significantly longer time than you. It seemed like she knew the layout pretty well, even now, in her sleep deprived state. If anything, you were there for emotional support. You felt rather useless for not being able to give that emotional support, and instead be completely quiet.

“I’m sorry for-“

”I’m sorry for-“

Much to your shock, you both apologized at the same exact time, causing you and her to stop dead in your tracks. After a few seconds of bewilderment, the two of you laughed a bit at the coincidence. Not in a boisterous way, it was rather impossible to be too cheerful with the things weighing on both of your minds. But it was a soft, content laughter. You didn’t know about her, but it made you a bit more comfortable at that moment. This and her show of emotion earlier made you realize that as different as she may look to be from you, you may have more in common than you first assumed.

“That was interesting. …What are you sorry about?” You asked her, smiling and beginning to walk again. Harper began stepping forwards immediately, herself. You looked to your left and saw her looking downwards at the white, well cleaned tiles of the hall. You supposed what she wanted to say made her uncomfortable enough to want to avoid eye contact.

“For ruining today. For all I know you could’ve had a normal, happy day, and I just ruined it for you. Or, possibly even worse, maybe you had an awful day and I made it even more horrible.” Harper breathed out, seeming to be even more tired out by her own emotions. “I stood in the way of things being normal.”

”Harper…” You eyed her with sympathy, initially unsure of what to say. “It’s not your fault. You must’ve gotten no sleep at all, and there has to be something in the back of your mind upsetting you that was worsened by how tired you are.”

“It is my fault. Who else’s fault is it that I didn’t sleep last night like a normal person?” It looked to you that Harper was trying so very hard to maintain “normal”… Her idea of what a normal person was seemed to be pretty warped. 

“Normal people have bad days, sometimes you can’t get sleep. Some things just… Aren’t anyone’s fault at all.” Harper’s brows knit together, and she searched your face for an answer to a question you weren’t aware of. A few seconds later, she smiled, humming softly and looking forward again. 

“I appreciate that… Um… What were you going to apologize for?”

For a moment, you forgot you even apologized at all earlier. You got far too caught up with her apology to continue thinking about it. Her apology was about something pretty complex actually, as simple as her opening for this topic was. It made you realize that your reason for apologizing was so much smaller, to the point it would be fairly accurate to say that it was pretty much for filling dead air. You chuckled a bit. “For being quiet.”

”Oh no, there’s no reason for you to apologize for that. I understand why you’d be quiet… You probably don’t know how to react properly after my outburst.” Harper looked downwards with a subtle sadness. Earlier, she seemed to have liked when you held her hand… Would she feel better if you did it again? Before you could argue yourself out of doing it because of your anxiety over making her uncomfortable, you just did it, reaching out and gently holding her hand. That time, Harper didn’t seem quite as shocked. Instead, she welcomed the touch immediately, even holding onto your hand tighter as if she was afraid of you letting go. The very same way as she did previously. She smiled, though she still refused to make eye contact.

”It’s okay. Really. I’m not judging you for being human.” Harper’s smile dropped, and you immediately began to worry you did something to upset her. Even worse, that was the moment that she chose to look at you. In her eyes was a strong, burning emotion that you couldn’t pin down with any real certainty.

”Y/N…” Harper still faced towards you, but her eyes darted elsewhere. “I have to tell you something.” She paused, and built the courage to look back to me after a bit. “I wasn’t going to go to the counselor’s.”

”Huh…?” You raised an eyebrow at this and stopped walking again, Harper deciding to do the same. Why on Earth didn’t she say so? She could’ve told you the second the two of you left the library, if she was just worried about the librarian pressuring her about it.

“I was going to walk with you until the beginning of the hall the counselor’s office is in and tell you I can walk to it from there. Then I’d wait for you to leave. I was going to go out to get some fresh air on my own, get everything out of my system and continue with our session.” Would that… Really work? What if you decided to stand there and wait for her to get in before you left? Your face was marked with confusion as you tried to make sense of why it would be a big deal at all for her to refuse to go somewhere.

“I… Understand that you probably didn’t feel like you needed to go to the counselor anymore, but I just don’t know why you wouldn’t tell me. Did you think I’d get disappointed with you if you didn’t go?” Harper paused, biting her lip uncomfortably. You weren’t her mother, and even if you were, you would’ve understood that she didn’t need it.

”I don’t know if I really need it or not. I just don’t want it, and that’s all I was thinking about. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but… My parents put me through therapy at some point growing up, and I can’t say it helped much, to say the least. Anything that reminds me of that could only make me feel worse.” It seemed like she didn’t want to respond to your question, but from what you could tell based on her reaction, you most likely hit the nail on the head. “You must think I’m a pretty awful person for wanting to lie to you like that… But I realized how little you deserved to be lied to, and how uncomfortable I felt about doing it to begin with, so I just had to tell you.” Harper sighed out, body language seeming a bit more agitated now than before. When she noticed you weren’t responding immediately, she looked towards your eyes with unmistakable panic. “I’m really sorry.”

You shook your head. “It’s okay, really. I’m not mad.” After you gave her an encouraging squeeze of the hand, her eyes lost some of the anxiety it held in them. You were incredibly relieved to see her calm down a bit. “Let’s go together.”

”Outside…? Oh.” Harper blinked in surprise. It seemed like she didn’t think you offering that would be a possibility. “Yeah, we can go... I’ll be honest, I’m a bit surprised you still want to spend time with me after the way I acted.”

”Acted like what, a normal human with emotions? I get it, I’m human too, regardless of what some people may say.” You tried to joke around to brighten her mood, hoping it would work, as admittedly awkward as your attempt felt. Thankfully, she giggled, marking this mission as a success.

Oh, how did Harper wish that other people could be like you were. You were understanding of her faults and mistakes, her humanity, something she never felt from someone else. At the very least, not in a sincere form. Memories of the fake kindness she received back when she went through therapy flooded her mind, and it made her want to vomit. Actually… Maybe she preferred this. Maybe she preferred it because it made you so much more special. It felt like in her eyes, you started growing more and more, and she realized what a unique, beautiful person you were. She was deeply terrified that unlike her, you began seeing her as pathetic, as the small, scared child she saw herself as every single day. Maybe if you knew about the way she thought about you last night, you wouldn’t be so kind any longer. 

But surely, you weren’t fake. Your empathy was a sincere one, and finally, she found someone she could trust. Still, Harper was afraid. As much as she already trusted you, she knew she shouldn’t be hasty, especially when she didn’t even fully understand her own feelings quite yet. Not only that, but it wasn’t exactly normal to get attached to someone so quickly, she was certain. Letting the relationship develop naturally would be for the best, before she could voice this part of her. It was a shame that keeping these obsessive thoughts to herself was already becoming irritating to her.

[felixstudios]

Random Corporate Clash Headcanons, Playing Corporate Clash Edition

Let's ignore how long it's been since I made these, okay? And ignore the massive 4th wall breaking

ALSO special appearance from some mgrs I normally wouldn't write for

Duck Shuffler

🎰He doesn't really know how to strategize, so he picks random stuff and hopes for the best

🎰Absolutely LOVES the trolley

🎰Loves to talk to basically anyone he comes across and try to make friends with them

🎰Often gets indecisive about what to do next, so he spins his slots to decide

Prethinker

🧠Okay, usually his intelligence is laughable and fun to make fun of, but this guy is a professional no life. He knows EVERYTHING about the game

🧠Tries to reach 150 laff as soon as possible and has absolutely ZERO fun with the game

🧠 Doesn't make friends and only talks if he's giving out battle strategies, which is... basically every round of battle even if it's just a 2 story building in Barnacle Boatyard

🧠He's kinda elitist, too

Derrick Man

🛢️Doesn't really play that often since he's not a gamer

🛢️I can't ever imagine him getting much further than The Brrrgh cause he just. DOESN'T PLAY.

🛢️Despite his inexperience and infrequently logging in, he's actually pretty decent at the game

🛢️Collects manager rewards and hoards them. He needs them all

Deep Diver

🫧He's the kind of person to not leave Toontown Central until he's maxed all of his activities, has overpowered gags, and also started a club that's now at level 100 and has like 50 members

🫧Very slow and methodical with her gameplay- she explores every little nook and cranny before moving on. Has all racing, golfing, and fishing trophies kinda thing. Gets all achievements kinda thing

🫧Loves to set up in battles and take his time with them. Yes, he will struggle a lot with Pacesetter

🫧She LOVES fishing, by the way

Rainmaker

⛈️Doesn't really enjoy combat very much and prefers to play Toono and such

⛈️Also really likes the trolley and makes tons of trolley groups

⛈️Wouldn't progress much further than Mezzo Melodyland, probably

⛈️Tries to make friends, but others tend to find her annoying or even rude so she doesn't make very many

Land Acquisition Architect

🚦Tries to get some friends together to play with him

🚦Behind the screen, he is absolutely having a temper tantrum over EVERYTHING. Be it a gag missing or someone doing a less optimal play, he's screaming

🚦But in the game he's like SUPER DUPER NICE and makes no outward show of how angry he actually is

🚦If you befriend him, you're getting constant invites to like everything he does

Gatekeeper

⚔️Tries to max in the most efficient way possible

⚔️Will try to show off all her boss loot, but of course only in stylish ways

⚔️Kind of an elitist, definitely pretty rude

⚔️Likes to sit out of bounds doing nothing. Alternatively, she sits in front of the CFO doors or in DDL doing nothing just to show off her TTR elitist roots

Witch Hunter

🔱He says he wouldn't play such a childish game and says he's just gonna uninstall it

🔱Five minutes later he's in an OCLO. Also, he has 150 laff so clearly it's not too childish for him

🔱He's an elitist

🔱Would 100% quad Toon and try to act like they're not his alts, even going as far as giving them their own "typing quirks" and having fake conversations

Public Relations Representative

🧱Can't really use SpeedChat+ effectively since he glitches around and makes lots of typos

🧱Frequent misclicks and missteps

🧱Will not survive OCLO or Pacesetter very often

🧱Surprisingly loves to play the game and accidentally no lifes to 150 laff

Bellringer

🔔Loves to destroy Cogs with perfect damage whenever possible, for some reason

🔔His estate would be VERY cozy, which is honestly a huge feat considering its current in-game state makes it... very lonely and desolate by nature

🔔Super fashionable Toon, but he's also a little modest with his outfits

🔔He's ALWAYS gossiping in at least 3 people's whispers at any given point in time

Multislacker

🥪Is usually too lazy to push buttons himself, so he watches someone else play his Toon most of the time

🥪He is 100% never doing a Pacesetter himself

🥪Whenever he DOES play, it's usually easier boss fights and things that don't require much user input

🥪Sometimes gets enough motivation to play with his dad

Vice President

💡Started playing the game because he noticed his son really seemed to like it and he wanted to spend time with Cathal

💡At first, he doesn't really see the appeal of the game. But once he finds out there's a lot of strategy involved, he decides it's "like trying to find that perfect sales pitch!" and keeps playing out of personal interest

💡He'd apply to the Clash team to manage their social media accounts

💡He'd try to convince his coworkers to try out the game

Mouthpiece

☎️She doesn't really get the appeal of the game, but she'll play it anyways because her grandchildren wanted her to play with them

☎️Literally just does whatever her grandchildren wanna do

☎️She'll max her Toon... eventually

☎️She doesn't fully grasp battle strategies, but she knows enough to get by

Major Player

🎹Constantly suggesting things to be added to the allowlist so he can say ridiculous stuff {i.e. he was probably the one who wanted skibidi to be added... yes this is actually something you can say in the game}

🎹This guy would be the kind to accidentally time out in battle because he was typing a long message

🎹If you whisper to him, good luck getting him to whisper back. He... will probably forget to respond

🎹Constantly saving his teammates with PREFECTLY timed unites

Chief Financial Officer

💵Plays because Allan convinced him to do it

💵Surprisingly, he finds it enjoyable right off the bat. He especially likes battles

💵He feels a bit alienated since he's the only one who seems to find it weird and creepy that he can fight against himself in the game, so he just doesn't mention it to anyone else

💵He will have like 148 laff and the last 2 laff boosts he'll need will be his Cashbot suit LOL

Firestarter

🔥Mostly only plays because Graham wanted him to

🔥Wants to take his time with everything and try to actually figure out how to strategize, but he's usually too soft spoken to ask questions to anyone but Graham {who gives vague answers because he doesn't really know how to strategize}

🔥But if he makes a friend... TONS of badmouthing others in whispers happens. Much shade will be thrown and more tea will be spilled than was spilled in the Boston Tea Party

🔥Once he finally figures out how to play the game, oh you bet he's gonna use it to secretly make fun of others who don't know how to play. He knows he was once just like them, but he doesn't care

Plutocrat

🌑He makes his satellite investors play with him so he doesn't have to wait for groups

🌑Also bosses them around from what gags they need to bring to what everyone's outfits look like {they all match and they're all in a club together}

🌑Because of all the help, he reaches 150 really fast

🌑Only helps his investors if it benefits him as well and doesn't really play with many other people

Chief Legal Officer

📚Plays because Allan suggested it to her

📚Is SUPER detail-oriented with her gameplay, so she always knows if she's in kill range. Also, she's very good at assessing the best strategy to use

📚Very no nonsense type of Cog, so she doesn't really do anything unless it's to advance in the game somehow

📚Has like 500 of each type of unite, like 7K C&Ds, 3K pink slips....

Treekiller

🪵Genuinely finds it VERY fun to destroy Cogs

🪵He'll convince Chip to play with him

🪵Don't think he'd ever max, but he'd get close. Like... 130-140 laff kind of close

🪵Loves to spam rewards in boss fights

Chainsaw Consultant

🪚Only plays the game because Spruce wanted him to

🪚Although he won't say anything in the game about it, he gets pretty mad when people make bad choices in battle

🪚Usually plays with music turned off and sound effects still on, which many others have told him is very eerie

🪚Doesn't seem to enjoy battles very much, but he won't outwardly admit that

Chief Executive Officer

⛳Plays because Allan suggested it to him

⛳I don't think I'm surprising anyone when I tell you that the first thing he's doing is maxing golf. He'd be scary good at it too, like he'd get a perfect 9 in the hole kit and kaboodle

⛳Doesn't actually get very far in the game since the rest isn't all that interesting to him

⛳He finds it... interesting how C.O.G.S., Inc. is portrayed in the game.

Featherbedder

💤Tends to prefer shorter playing sessions

💤Makes slow progress over the course of years

💤Also hangs out with friends quite often

💤Falls asleep at the keyboard... a lot. Like, a lot. It's just a known thing they do

Pacesetter

👟Tries to basically speedrun the entire game

👟If he goes sad {which will be a lot since he's so under leveled}, he will blame it on anything but his own fault

👟Once he unlocks his own fight, he will spam it over and over. He's... not really sure what to think when he goes sad to himself. Did he win, or did he... lose? Is he awesome, or...? Okay, yeah, thinking about that is stupid and for losers

👟Shows off all his manager loot in a way HE thinks looks good. Whether or not it actually does... I'll leave for you to decide

Chief Operating Officer

📋Seems to genuinely enjoy playing the game

📋Doesn't really have many friends and tends to multitoon so he's "less burdensome" sometimes

📋He'd 100% apply for Clash support team {whether or not he gets in I'll let you decide} because he'd just like the game that much

📋SUPER kind and always willing to help other people out

Scapegoat

🐐He's the one who suggested the entire Litigation Team play it

🐐He's either REALLY pissed off or super calm about battles with no in-between

🐐Tends to make a lot of... less optimal choices in battle or needs to be told what to do. He just struggles a little with strategy sometimes

🐐100% he spams forges in like every fight so he can do more damage with that extra level 8. Oh, he also loves to set up with IOUs and uses a lot of those too

Case Manager

💼You'll think this guy is muted because he won't use SpeedChat+ like, ever. I mean, he doesn't really use SpeedChat either, but he at least USES it.

💼Has gags set up to play more of a supportive role in battle, always tries to pick gags last, and generally has a somewhat more passive play style

💼He does communicate a decent amount with stickers, surprisingly

💼Already has a maxed Toon and is just working on his alt

Stenographer

⌨️She would play on any control scheme EXCEPT a QWERTY keyboard {or even AZERTY, Colemark, Dvorak... basically any common layout}. I feel like she'd be pretty much allergic to it lol. And yes, she does think she's better than you for it. [Author's note: I use Dvorak on my phone and my only advice is don't.]

⌨️She's the kind of person to talk on and on and on and on and... oh my Cog how is she typing this essay so fast anyways?!

⌨️During segments like the final OCLO round, she ABSOLUTELY sweats it with like pixel perfect movements. And if she had a mic, you would hear intense keyboard pressing {or whatever she's using to control her Toon}

⌨️A little rude sometimes, but she's USUALLY pretty nice. Oh, and if you befriend her then she gossips a lot

Litigator

🐊He's an elitist LOL

🐊He would get soooooo mad and start cussing people out over one "mistake" and also be the kinda person to straight up leave a boss fight because of an argument

🐊Sorry, but I genuinely cannot see this guy being fun to play with

🐊Also I feel like he'd have a super old YouTube channel from TTO days of him greening people

[sinuswar]

CLASSPECTING 101: INTRO TO RPG CLASSES

Back in the beginnings of the RPG genre, before game cartridges had the storage space for "dialogue" or "characters" or "personality," games were written entirely in shorthand. Characters were unnamed units whose entire identity revolved around their particular moveset.

This was referred to as their job or their class.

(Early Final Fantasy leaned into this especially hard, as playable characters had no names or unique designs. Their only differentiating factor was their Class.)

For a while, this worked.

RPGs on the (S)NES didn't have the storage space to write actual personalities for each of the party members, so when introducing a character, they simply say: "You are a hero. You must save the world from giant evil shadow skull. This is your class. Have fun!" Classes were designed to abstract/imply the illusion of character.

This is because writing characters (even when you aren't confined to a 1MB cartridge) usually comes down to what a character can/would do, and what a character can't/won't do. Characters are actions.

We call characters that fight monsters and save the day "good guys," and characters who burn down villages and slaughter innocents "bad guys." Characters are choices. Choices are actions.

A character that fights monsters using their giant sword feels different from a character that fights monsters by shooting fireballs. Characters are methods. Methods are actions.

Classes abstract all of these above character components by saying "every character of this type can do these things."

All Warriors are very buff, but lack magic. All Mages have magic, but are pretty scrawny. A White Mage uses magic to heal, whereas a Black Mage uses magic to harm!

The above list isn't what we'd currently consider "personalities," it's just a list of actions that characters can choose from, but it tricks the player into imagining personalities instead. They hand you a list of actions, and ask you to create a character that would do them.

If characters are actions, then Classes are "pre-built characters."

(The player characters never speak. They quite literally have no personality. Their only method of communication/individuality is their specific list of spells/skills.)

So, why does this matter?

Homestuck, at its core, is an RPG pastiche. A deconstruction of themes inherent to the genre. Analyzing RPGs can help us analyze Homestuck.

Classpecting is one of the more obvious examples of deconstruction, as Sburb Classes are very clearly derived from genre classics (Dungeons & Dragons, Final Fantasy, etc.), all recontextualized to ask the hard hitting questions:

"Isn't it kinda fucked up to be assigned a generic label that describes all the actions you've ever done/will ever do?"

Yeah, kinda! It speaks to a larger "dehumanizing" effect that Sburb tends to have on players, abstracting them into units with certain roles, functions, and responsibilities.

Wouldn't it suck to be a character in one of these RPGs, with a whole backstory, personality, and rich inner world, all to have a "higher power" reduce you down into what you can do (moveset), how good you are at it (stats), and what they'll use you for (player strategy)?

This is one of the main pillars of Homestuck: Being a video game character is an inherently degrading experience.

"Does 'what you're good at' decide your Class, or does your Class decide what you're good at?"

Homestuck is a mess of bootstrap paradoxes, so you can argue this either way and probably be right. The answer is probably a constantly looping "both."

But, now that I'm thinking about it, I personally lean toward "Class decides what you're good at."

If Skaia decides what your Class is at "inception," then it could be argued that you excel at certain things to help prepare you for the role you were (literally) designed for. Your hobbies and interests are off-screen coaching for your on-screen role.

To bring it back to RPGs, think of the (oftentimes generic) backstory you pick for a TTRPG character to justify them having the skills Talk To Animals and Explode Undead. You create what they did before the game as justification for actions they can do during the game.

Except Sburb does this on a cosmic scale, crafting your entire life up until the game to prepare you for playing it. Sucks! More on this in a future post.

"Are all characters of the same Class the same guy? Or at least the same type of guy?"

In early RPGs? Yes!

In a quite literal sense, all characters of the same class were essentially the same exact "person." Same design, same role, same methods. With no dialogue or personality to differentiate them, if you made a party of four White Mages, they'd essentially all be clones!

(This isn't entirely true, though. More on that at the bottom.)

In Homestuck? No!

This is partially because Classes are only half of Classpects, a more complex idea where your RPG Class is paired up with a "metaphysical element" known as an Aspect. With 12 Aspects, that means there's 12 versions of every Class.

Basically, you can have two Knights in the same party, but they can still be incredibly different (albeit similar!) units under this system.

(Dave and Karkat, on top of being a Certified Premium Yaoi Stock™, are a great case study for the similarities/differences between same Classes of differing Aspects.)

Yet, even if we ask this question again with Classpects instead of Class, the answer remains the same: you can have two characters with the same exact Classpect, and they'll still be noticeably different people.

How the hell does that work? Well, for starters, Homestuck is a story that does actually have character writing.

You can have two characters that perform similar actions (ex: Dirk and Equius are designed to have very similar traits, interests, and habits, even down to exact actions) and their Classpects will still be completely different (Prince of Heart vs. Heir of Void).

Likewise, you can have characters of the same exact Classpect (and identity!) perform incredibly different actions.

(Calliope and Alternate Calliope (CAL and AL, for short) are one of the best examples of completely different characters with the same Classpect. And they're even the same character, technically!)

This is where the crux of Classpecting as an artform is. Mechanically, if heavily differing characters can be the same "thing," and very similar characters can be different "things," then what is it that Classes and Aspects decide?

We're going way overtime, so I'll answer a question by rewording an earlier question:

"You have a Pokémon team made up of, let's say, six Dunsparce. Are all these Dunsparce the same exact thing? What could be different between them? What would always be the same?"

If you read this far: Sorry! Didn't mean to get this carried away! Thanks, though. Marrying two topics I care a lot about (game design and Homestuck) is a pretty good way to pass the time, it turns out.

If you think you know the answer to the above question, feel free to chime in. I'll give my two cents whenever I follow up on this topic.

[waywardsalt]

small little thing abt botw/totk and the future of zelda games considering it seems likely that future zelda games might be in the same style as those two and how i feel like botw/totk don't actually feel like zelda games (kind of messy i just typed this out in a kind of informal or whatever way) (this post is long af btw so uhhhh yeah)

im part of the group that claims that botw/totk aren't 'real' zelda games but... i guess they are technically 'real' zelda games, but... they sure as fuck don't feel like it, and because of that, i'm not at all excited with the idea of future loz games being in the same style, especially with the pitfalls these last two games have fallen into having been things that past zelda games did especially well, it feels like things have been sort of flipped on their heads in terms of what's being valued or whatever

like... the best parts of older zelda games were things like the story and the characters and the puzzles and the dungeons and stuff like that... the best parts of botw/totk right now are just the gameplay. people enjoy these new characters, but they dont have the narrative backing that older games do, they don't have the same impactful arcs or roles allowed by a more linear story

the point i want to get at though is how botw/totk honestly don't feel like direct evolutions or steps up from past zelda games but rather just... entirely different game styles (open world games) with the zelda flavoring and worldbuilding and story styling slapped on top.

i mean... i feel like a half-decent example of some other well-known franchises that have jumped on this (honestly kind of thoughtless) open-world bandwagon are mario (mario odyssey) pokemon (sword/shield and scarlet/violet) fire emblem (kind of. with some free-walking segments in 3 houses and engage) and the soulsborne type games (elden ring), these are all other well known and storied game series' that have somewhat made the move to open world, and i think that switch was a bit smoother, kept the core and integrity of the games that came before much better than botw/totk did

elden ring is the easiest to explain- the gameplay loop and core mechanics are the same and build upon past games' you just have more room to run around and get killed in with some little open-world flourishes like material gathering.

fire emblem is... a bit less flexible in terms of changing up the core gameplay, and the addition of open-world segments are added to add bonuses to the strategy gameplay and allow for more support-building oppourtunities and little minigames, and its more or less evolution from echoes' dungeon-crawling bits and the customizable castle in fates. the core gameplay still effectively works the exact same, just with some little class or mechanic tweaks and additions.

mario odyssey, though each world was pretty massive, still had your typical 3d mario platforming, and the new hat stuff fit in pretty well with olderpowerups and gimmicks, and the boss battles feel and work pretty similarly to the way they used it- odyssey does feel like an evolution from past mario games (ps. playing two-player with one person as cappy snaps the game in half. its the secret easy mode lol)

the new pokemon games are pretty much just the same as past pokemon games, theyre just open world and buggy as fuck rip have extra little open-world flourishes that build on what past games set up. the battling works the same as ever and the progression is the same with a number of powerful trainers you have to battle to continue forward.

with botw/totk... the progression is dramatically different in terms of power-scaling, world presentation, item-gathering, puzzle-solving... pretty much everything in the established zelda format. i get that it was pretty much the aim with botw to have a fresh start and throw out a lot of the old standards but it just makes them feel so dramatically alien to past zelda games; theyre completely different experiences in pretty much every single way, and as such they dont feel like what we've (well, people who have started with and spent a lot of time with other loz games) learned to associate with the zelda titles.

with open world games in general it's a bit harder to have a truly impactful narrative akin to those in past zelda games, anyways. i will admit that botw was a good execution of trying out something entirely new, and the narrative and gameplay and world actually complement each other very well, so despite what i've said in the past I can't really fault it's narrative too much since it's a less traditional sort of narrative and effectively does what it aims to do very well.

totk, on the other hand, proves that this style of game does not mesh with the old style of storytelling at ALL. linear games can have proper narratives with coherent stakes, developing characters, twists and reveals and building emotion and mood- and all of that is thrown out the window with totk when they decided to try and have both a more linear story with actual reveals and development and emotion, while also letting you literally spoil it for yourself out the gate.

you can't really have a well-executed story when players are capable of doing things drastically out of order and of jumping into story beats without the prior buildup and straight-up ruining what could be otherwise emotional reveals, and players being capable of doing this is hard-baked in how the game fundamentally works. I honestly feel bad for people who found the fifth sage by accident before anything else.

you can't effectively have a linear story with character growth and plot developments and impactful moments while also allowing it to be experienced out of order and with massive time gaps in between; with this kind of stuff, you can't really have your cake and eat it too. say what you will about the linearity of past zelda games, but i bet you that midna wouldn't be as beloved as a character as she is if it weren't for the linear order of the story and its events. certain parts of storytelling may demand for a linear manner of telling that story.

botw's story works because none of the memories reveal anything groundbreaking taht you don't already know; they are optional and merely give you more information about these characters from link's past and simply inform you about the girl keeping ganon at bay. if you find a late memory first, that's fine- it technically doesnt reveal anything too important to you, it just fills in some gaps for you and your player character. it makes sense within the story itself for the world to be so open and for you to be able to do what you can; the story is not the focus, nor is it even needed to beat the game. the story was made with the gameplay and what you are allowed to do in mind, and as such doesn't include things such as in-depth character development or important plot-twists.

on the other hand, you can easily spoil totk's biggest plot twist in a handful of different ways completely by accident, just by getting curious about the world around you. this can shatter a lot of the mystery or tension in the plot and this can happen completely by accident to someone playing the game organically and blindly. the story itself doesn't take this into account, it reads more like a linear story that would be more suited to a linear style of play, coming across things in order to ramp up the stakes and let things be revealed at the best possible time. (tbh totk's story doesnt seem to take the player into account in general, if the game forcing you to watch basically the same long cutscene four fucking times says anything, jesus christ)

narrative pitfalls aside, botw/totk put heavy emphasis on gameplay, but not in the same way older zelda games did, and as such trade away the unique items and gimmick-y game-specific mechanics for a small toolset handed to you out the gate. what botw/totk do- giving you everything you need from the start and having very little true varation in the gameplay from then on out- make sense and works just fine for an open world game. there is, however, a lack of actual depth to that gameplay that other open world games do have (off the top of my head, the ability to unlock and upgrade abilities and have general character upgrades in fenyx rising as well as the impressive depths of elden ring's combat and character customization system). the most depth botw/totk has to the actual gameplay is just the fourish different weapon types and the ways you use your fourish abilities (saying fourish bc for real ultrahand and fuse are fundamentally the exact same thing). there is also just raising the little defense numbers on your armor and getting more stamina and health, but that does absolutely nothing to the actual gameplay but make link more durable.

i mean, sure, health in past loz games just makes link more durable, too, but thats how health upgrades in any other game work.

the gameplay switch makes sense, considering the switch from a linear puzzle-adventure concentric game to a more sandbox-esque open-world game, but it does not mesh with the former loz formula at all, so while the shift in style makes sense, it makes me think that you can't have a previous-style loz experience in an open-world sandboxish sort of game. especially with how in totk you can very easily bypass most of the fire temple just using the mechanics handed to you at the start. you can't have the same type of zelda dungeons in a game where you are allowed to do it 'wrong' and the game itself does not allow for the same kinds of puzzles.

i am of the opinion that so long as future zelda games work the same way botw/totk did, we will not get old-school zelda-style dungeons again.

the loss of a variety of items used for specific puzzles and environment switches is the loss of a varied dungeon experience and the loss of the same kind of world and character progression as past zelda games.

you are handed everything you'll ever need at the start of botw/totk. the only thing that will meaningfully change is how much damage you do. there are no alternate strategies opened up by new items that can double as weapons, no new traversal options or routes opened up by things such as grappling hooks or clawshots or whips or specific wands. even the battle system is drastically different, instead of being enemies that take specific amounts of hits to die while you can obtain progressively stronger swords, enemies are just damage sponges and you can get all kind of weapons that just do different numerical amounts of damage.

the bosses themselves- big staples and draws of zelda games- also work extremely differently. instead of having to leverage specific items to expose weak spots or having to fight in a specific manner to do damage, you are just asked to... do damage. even in totk's bosses, where sage abilities are most certainly helpful, the only boss i found to truly require a sage ability was the lighting temple's boss; the others i either hardly used the sage at all (i didn't use yunobo at all in the second phase of the fire temple boss and hardly had a need for tulin with the wind temple boss [esp considering i was using a 3-shot lynel bow to make the poor fucker a cakewalk]) or found that alternative solutions felt better, like resorting to splash fruit on repeat water temple fights instead of wrestling with having to activate and use sidon's ability. the sages are honestly fairly poor replacements for dungeon specific items.

this kind of causes botw/totk to play more like a poor man's dark souls or just like any other open world rpgish game. i don't play botw/totk for the experience of a zelda game, i play it because it's an open world game that i can walk around in for five minute before switching to something else because i liked something in that other game better.

the combat in botw/totk isnt designed in such a way that makes it feel good. mineru's mech is fucking dismal, but since it's just either shooting with a bow or attacking with one of three types of melee weapon with some timing for a dodge, it can get stale fast. it doesn't necessarily even feel good, since there's not enough variety for it to get really engaging. (this is def an uneven comparison, but elden ring's combat feels considerable better with the different dodges you can do and the amount of attack options you have with just one weapon, not to mention the amount of control you have over your general fighting style.) combat in botw/totk at hour 1 is the exact same as combat in botw/totk at hour 100, the only different being the amount of damage you do or how much of a beating you can take.

it just... the styles of botw/totk can't allow them to feel the same as older zelda games. the shift in style was clearly a good move to draw in series newbies and shake things up, but it comes at the caveat of making them feel distant from their predecessors and uncomfortably similar to other games like them. it's hard to avoid comparisons with elden ring when on the surface they are very similar games, one just feels more true to its core identity

this all is said without mentioning the way in which botw/totk lore feels almost dismissive of past series staples and seems intent on not looking back while also taking every fucking attempt to nudge you and say 'hey, remember that zelda game' and honestly all that shit does is make me want to play a different zelda game.

botw/totk seem altogether very desperate to distance themselves from past zelda games while also being unable to really tear itself from what came before and it just culminates in me spotting linebeck island on the map and going 'damn i miss linebeck' and turning the fucking game off to play phantom hourglass instead. say what you will about phantom hourglass, but it certainly handles its story progression and character development infinitely better than the game that lets you accidentally shatter the impact of the story by deciding to check out that cool temple in the distance of the depths

[dustedmagazine]

Leathers — Ultraviolet (Artoffact)

Leathers’ music melts the crystalline precisions of darkwave with the warmth and sweetness of dreamy synth pop. But just when you start to really feel pop’s embrace of sunny vibes on Ultraviolet, the dream fades, and darkwave’s characteristic thematics (borderline social spaces, BDSM eroticism, anxiety and depression) start to prickle your skin. It’s a compelling combination, sonically and emotionally, and Leathers’ songs materialize it to great effect — a pretty good trick for a first LP to pull off so consistently.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Shannon Hemmett has been releasing songs under the Leathers band name since 2016, and she has been making music with Vancouver post punk act Actors for even longer (her Actors bandmate Jason Corbett does some work on songwriting and production for Leathers). She’s had time to clarify and refine Leathers’ aesthetics, and her professional work as a graphic designer and tattoo artist suggests the extent to which craft and image are important to her. It shows. Ultraviolet is a considered record, shaped and presented with thought and care. If all that sounds a little too heady, don’t worry; the record’s strong libidinal charge invests it with life, hard, passionate and sometimes dangerous.

See “Fascination” — and yes, “see” is the wrong verb when what you really do is listen. But the indicative meaning in that usage of “see” has additional significance here. Hemmett intones, simultaneously cool and hot, “We could stay together / For one last Polaroid.” Is this a photoshoot? Or lovers at more informal play with a camera? The lyrics don’t really clarify: “The camera flashes light / Licking at your skin / Coming into focus / Strike that pose again.” “Licking” is figurally powerful, and its parallelism with “coming” eroticizes the lyrics. Certainly someone is turned on, and the song’s power in part derives from its refusal to locate the arousal precisely — in the photographer, the subject, the singer, the listener. The moment remains maximally open, and Hemmett sings, “Elevate / Penetrate / Fascinate.” “Penetrate” feels at least a little gratuitous, until you clock the tune’s imaginary gambit. Everyone, all those aforementioned parties, wants to get inside the situation, to be the focus of the song’s energies.

Hemmett’s interest in the power of image is expressed repeatedly on Ultraviolet, from the cinematic metaphor of “Day for Night” to the more bitter treatment of illusory desires in “Highrise” (“Like a page from a magazine that’s come to life / … Living your best life / You’re never satisfied”). We’re smart enough to know that chasing images of the “best life” is seldom the way toward sustainable satisfaction, but we can’t seem to stop, as a culture or as individual psychologies. We are charmed by excesses, we chase, we go too fast. One of the best songs on the record, “Crash,” dramatizes the excitements of the chase and the disaster that frequently ends it. A synthy bass throb dominates the song, a tense pulse that sets up another flirtation with darkwave gratuity when Hemmett breathily intones, “Punish me for wanting more”; near the song’s end, that gets truncated to “Punish me,” plaintively.

That’s another instance of an ostensibly titillating surface doing some substantive work. The full lyric for the couplet is “Punish me for wanting more / I’m the one you can’t ignore.” There’s a smartly compressed articulation of the two-way play with power that informs a lot of dom/sub relationships, and darkwave is at its best when it opens a song’s erotics to wider representation of social forms and to more public dramatizations of power’s flow. The record’s title track pursues a different strategy for expressing that, projecting a dream of desire into a “prison made of glass.” Maybe that’s a reflective surface, or a camera’s lens, but it seems more likely that it’s a phone — the thing we use, perhaps more than any other tool, in our ceaselessly scrolling chase for something akin to happiness, or at least the charge of arousal. To feel alive.

But our relations to our phones are indeed a prison. And the truncation in the refrain of “Crash” — to the bare plea, “punish me” — is another way to express the way desire can get converted into a portable carceral space, a deformation of desire that we carry around in our heads, keeping us trapped in unfulfilling pursuits. Leathers proposes an implicit means of escape in the songs themselves, which are exciting and emotionally laden. They provoke, in the best meaning of that word. You’ll want to dance, and not to escape feeling, but to move further into it, as a body feeling real things in real space. That’s the mark of good music.

Jonathan Shaw

[blackjackkent]

I'm actually going to start making more of an effort to keep some of the big spoilery things under the cut of my liveblog posts because we're getting to the point where some of the Big Reveals and Twists are happening and I don't want to ruin that for anyone who happens to just wander by. (Obviously also please feel free to block "#bjk plays baldur's gate 3" which this stuff is always tagged as. :) )

So anyway yeah uh. Second half of this fight against uh. Large Boy. is decidedly not what I expected. XD

Unsurprisingly (I guess) this isn't technically Myrkul himself, but an "Apostle of Myrkul", a big floaty bone boy with a scythe and "Myrkul's Presence":

This is more than a little scary because Bone Chill prevents healing from any source, and Karlach (and Shadowheart's spiritual weapon, less significantly) are right in the thick of it as the fight starts.

On the bright side, it has a lower AC than Thorm did. XD According to its stats it is considered only a medium size creature, also, which seems strange given that he is, shall we say, imposing.

I actually ended up resetting the whole fight back to the beginning of the part with Ketheric, and focusing a little on taking out more of the adds before Myrkul even came out. That actually went pretty well (as Ketheric doesn't try to leave the platform, so a lot of his really devastating attacks waited until we were ready to deal with him). Aylin, however, did not do so hot; for as much of a badass as she seems in cutscenes, she's kinda struggling and spent most of the fight in downstate.

On the bright side she seems to be able to revive herself with one hit point when she goes down, which is convenient and saved me from spending rez actions on her. Counterpoint to this is that it takes her whole action, so she kept getting up, shouting things like "STAND AND FIGHT!" and then doing nothing else before getting downed again.

Pls don't tell Selune I said her daughter was weaksauce on the battlefield. o.o;

One thing that was interesting was that at one point, the apostle called out:

And it was definitely Ketheric's voice. So I suppose this is supposed to be his ascension at Myrkul's hands in return for his service.

Hector's bludgeoning damage and Karlach's reckless attacks were the big MVPs on this fight; Wyll was mostly cleanup duty on all the necromites and Shadowheart was kept busy trying to keep everyone from falling over. As I mentioned before, I'm really starting to discover the importance of support buffs in this game; in the past I've taken a very damage-heavy approach (this is also my strategy in Pokemon XD ) and it is starting to be considerably less effective.

Very long process of a fight (and then I had to redo a chunk of it because Karlach rather than Hector got the spotlight for the cutscene >:| ). But we got there in the end!

Narrative post to follow.

[aeide-thea]

this tolkien meta points out some parallels i'd never particularly considered before, but the main thing it made me realize, which is tangential (and also negative) so i'm sticking it in its own post, is—why is tolkien so obsessed with niblings?

thorin has nephews. bilbo has a nephew. théoden has niblings. and with both thorin and théoden we know they're the children of a sister who gets no screentime. (denethor's sons via a long-dead wife get an honorable mention in this category also.) and part of me thinks: isn't this basically, conscious or not, a strategy that lets tolkien write about dynasties while effectively eliding the sex and marriages—and women!—that produce them?

which is easy to shrug off with the argument that those things aren't the stuff of Adventure, but rather of the society the adventurers leave behind them; but at the same time, it's all of a piece with the deeply sexist, deeply catholic ('sex must occur only within the confines of marriage, which becomes a euphemistic container for it') sensibilities that permeate tolkien's work more generally. like—look at homer. look at vergil. the domestic and familial can absolutely appear in epic. women can appear in epic.*

and of course you can say, well, tolkien's work is really more in dialogue with anglo-saxon and germanic traditions, and i'd have to admit i haven't read those stories since i was a preteen (watch me now get really into the nibelungenlied/völsunga saga/eddas…); but iirc even those featured fewer women who were always-already-dead!

⸻ * obviously éowyn does in fact get significant screentime in lotr! and even in a way where she's involved in Actual Affairs and not, like goldberry and galadriel, just a pretty symbol of the adventurers' temporary reentry into a settled sphere. but you notice that she both has to take on a male role in order to take part—she can't just fight, she has to become 'dernhelm' to do it—and that she's restored tidily to proper wedded femininity by the end of the story (hoo boy can we talk abt faramir literally wrapping her in his dead mother's mantle). anyway. loved éowyn growing up and also very vehemently think people (often women!) who claim her narrative isn't in fact sexist because it's about tolkien ~valuing healing~ are closing their eyes to how that narrative functions when it's applied to a woman specifically.

[sillovn]

Kin’s Reflections: Making your own builds

Wanted to put this out before Shadow of Erdtree - here’s some thoughts on making your own character builds. Hopefully you find it useful.

Finding a Style

The most common advice given when starting a build is – what are going to use it for? Sure, sounds obvious since Duels/Co-op etc. have differing character needs. Im going to suggest that it’s also important to know your personal taste – ie. how you like/are able to approach the game.

Let’s say you want a strategy focused on stance-breaking bosses. This requires 3 things – (1) applying constant pressure. (2) a plan to exploit said stun window. (3) enough experience to know where the openings are. How effective this gameplan will be depends on both – do you like constantly putting in hits? and do you know how to? Its where enjoyment + ability interact.

Going further, you can also think about the kind of mistakes you tend to make – does your build make it better or worse? if you enjoy mashing, is your weapon good for that? Ultimately, your plan and ability to execute on it define everything else – so keep that in mind.

What do use something for? And how important is it?

Unless you plan for an extremely high level, it is difficult to optimize all parts of a build equally. Consider how often you are going to use any weapon/spell, and how key is it to your build. Theres 2 aspects to this – optimization (do you build around it?) and access (do you need to access it often/quickly?).

Stat optimization wise, it may be possible to create a ‘perfect’ setup for single weapon. But, if you use a variety of weapons, they often have varying ‘optimal scenarios’; even if scale the same stat.

Example: For INT, softcap 2 is different for weapons (50) and staves (60). Are spells a ‘sometimes’ ranged option (ie. Spellsword)? or is it your main damage source (ie. Wizard)? If it’s the former, then having a less optimal stats (>60 INT) for staff damage is more reasonable.

Then, there’s also which part of a weapon/spell you use, and what is it used for? There are many weapons where swing damage and ash of war scale off differing stats (see. Death’s Poker). When it comes to access, something like swapping to a crit-dagger needs to be done fast and often reactively – therefore it pays to have it as a main-hand swap. In contrast, if your only spells are pre-combat buffs – then having quick access to your casting tool is less important.

Let’s put all this together with Example: Black Knife. This weapon’s attack scales DEX+FTH, the weapon art damage is FTH-only, and the ‘health burn’ debuff works the same regardless of stats. Thus, ‘using Black Knife’ can mean Melee weapon (DEX+FTH), Ranged weapon (pure-FTH) or Debuff stick (Min stats and go).

How much damage do you *really* need?

I find that in ER, damage is pretty damn free. Reaching 50/60 damage stat (aka. Softcap 2) will net you *most* of your damage on *most* weapons (backloaded casting tools are one the major exceptions).

Example: Zweihander (magic infuse): 50 INT + min STR/DEX = 773 AR. Pushing to 80 INT = 813 AR. Spending +30 levels to go from softcap 2 to 3 nets just 40 AR on weapon that has well over 700. You can try this test with other weapons and find similarly marginal gains.

This isn’t to say maximizing damage is bad - rather, what else could +30 levels get you? The answer is ultimately up to you, but below are some ideas.

Embracing Flexibility

Essentially, flexibility vs specialization. ‘Empty Stats’ that are currently not used still enable a wider variety of equipment. Every infusable weapon has a STR/DEX requirement (>20 for most) – thus, having some amount of both STR+DEX gives you more options (this is basically the foundation of ‘vagabond starter meta’). For STR/DEX users, one can flip this around and treat the caster stats (INT/FTH/ARC) likewise. Theres a ton of unique weapons that are functionally “single stat + caster tax” (eg. Starscourge Greatsword).

Smoothness

Another option is to spend those levels on supporting mechanics - make your build function smoother/be less clunky. Some common examples…

Leveling END to wear more poise armour. This isn’t simply about becoming tougher overall – if your build is likely to staggered out of it’s attacks, then such protection also becomes about making sure your attacks go through.   

Having enough mind for a specific spell combo. Its also nice to have a round Fp number, so that your spells will always spend to 0.

Floating bonus END to support swapping to heavier equipment. A Zweihander may not be your primary weapon, but it really sucks to suddenly heavy-roll if you decide to swap to one.

Run supporting spells. If your plan is to burst down a boss, then perhaps some FTH for ‘Flame Grant me Strength’ is better than those last ~5 points in STR/DEX.

Accepting imperfect scaling

This is just to say - don’t obsess over achieving the absolute best stats. If running the armour/spells you want means only reaching 49 FTH instead of the full 50 – its probably fine. Also, theres many weapons where the difference in “most optimal” vs. “less optimal, more versatile” is >20 damage. For example? the entire next section….

On Status Infusions

This is a PSA to say: its fine to use status infusions on pure STR/DEX characters. Most weapons retain significant physical scaling when status infused (especially weapons with default STR/DEX bias).

For Cold infusion, optimal damage stat tends to either be (20 Int + STR/DEX) or (no Int + pure STR/DEX). Even for weapons where 20 INT is *technically* best, the difference in 20 INT vs. base INT is small. (note; this part is very oversimplified, so always check a build planner).

For Blood/Poison there is the addition of ARC also improving status buildup. For most weapons; 50 ARC vs base ARC nets ~(30) buildup. That said, ARC contributes almost no damage for Blood/Poison infusion, with most weapons losing almost ~40% damage if you go pure-ARC over STR/DEX.

Status effect itself deals good damage (blood/cold especially).

All this just means that on status weapons, consider that the important bit is whether you can trigger status well (ie. moveset). Given that status damage is always good and immune enemies are rare - why not always use status infusion?

I think you absolutely can, but there 1 consideration - delayed damage changes your strategy in fights. Having to work for and wait for a status to trigger affects how aggressive you play, even if the damage seems ‘free’ in the long term.

THE URGE TO BUFF

ER allows for absurd levels of buff-stacking, with no shortage of ‘boss 1-hit montage’ videos. Knowing this, it seems really tempting to try and fix bad weapons/spells using damage buffs. The 2 problems you quickly encounter is that (1): buffing is clunky (ie. difficult to do mid fight) and (2): The main power of damage buffs comes from stacking them.

When the strategy is burst focused, these weaknesses are less of a problem – you can powerup outside the fogwall and then end a fight before said buffs expire. But once your strategy isn’t burst oriented, longer fights means that buffs will expire – and you will need to find openings to reapply them. Openings that could be used for other things. Thus, I find using buffs to fix low-damage builds often ends up creating a “Double Weakness” character - being weak when buffs are off + needing to find openings to buff up.

Of course, there are some caveats to this. Some buffs can be pulled off very quickly (eg. RKR) or double as attacks (eg. Flaming Strike). Others can be activated via. regular combat and need little management from the player (eg. Millicent’ Hand). Probably the easiest damage amplifier for any build is the Frostbite status.

Bonus Tips

Consider how an attack/spell affects your movement. Being able to shuffle, even slightly, lets you maintain good positioning (eg. hp/fp flasks). Being able to change your character’s direction near instantly is similarly good (eg. Piercing Fang weapon art).

Don’t forget consumable items. Do you really need a frost weapon? Or can you just throw frost pots?

-----

Thats all, wish you all good adventures in Shadow of Erdtree.

[formulatrash]

hi hazel!

i think it’s been since baku now that we last saw a safety car (i might be wrong, this is off the top of my head). do you think this is because this year’s grid is particularly strong compared to previous years? Or is it just a random coincidence? (because i know f2 didn’t have safety cars either so it could just be something else)

because even through a dry-wet monaco, they managed to make it with no safety cars.

Chris Medland also said something along the lines of that it’s now two out of the last three races where there have been no yellow flags or retirements. Is it also just a testament to the reliability of these cars?

I feel like this would maybe have to affect their strategies as well for the future, that they can’t just wait for a safety car to make a strategy work like teams take into account I would assume since there just seems to be less safety cars in general at a few tracks now.

Could all just be a fluke but still, its just that it’s quite noticeable enough that you start to question it in your head.

mmm, yeah, it's a good question. Bernd Maylander getting bored these days. Nico Hulkenberg actually commented on it on his in-lap after today's race ("We don't get many Safety Cars these days, no?") and it's definitely striking that there weren't any in Monaco and only one in Jeddah.

2020 and 2021 had a lot of safety cars. 2022 had a fair number of them, too. obviously if I was a dude on YouTube I'd say something about Nicholas Latifi having left but since we're somehow the more reasonable end of things on Tumblr, I don't think it's anything to do with the field.

reliability is definitely something teams have been working on up and down the grid. Alfa Romeo have taken a huge step backwards this year, in terms of pace but their car now reliably finishes races rather than catching fire in P7. Red Bull's gremlins from the start of the 2022 season seem to have been eliminated. Ferrari's car is extremely unpredictable but seems to do whatever it is it does from the start to the end of the race.

the only car with mechanical problems seems to be the McLaren but even they've got a better grip on them relative to the start of the season. sudden, dramatic failures are happening less, at least for now - by the end of the season that might change, as parts are under more stress.

what definitely has changed is that teams do not want their drivers to risk crashes. Q1 in Spain was actually fairly unusual for the number of drivers who actually or nearly binned it, lately. even last year drivers were coming pretty spectacular croppers relatively regularly but this year you'll notice them backing out of maneuvers if there's a collision on the cards.

if they break their car, there's a direct consequence in upgrades. every crash limits the development and most teams are desperate for development. rebuilding cars is costly but also has a knock-on effect of needing to manufacture new spares or losing new parts; consider the scrapbooked carbon fibre assembly Merc strapped onto their cars last race; there just isn't the money to worry about making it pretty.

re-fashioning a developed part takes less time than upgrading to a new one. but the time that part is being moulded and machined and baked will be time that nothing else can be. and it all costs money. so drivers are under serious orders not to break anything; if you're McLaren and holding on for possibly Austria, possibly Silverstone upgrades you can't risk pushing that back.

outside of mixed conditions, like in Q1 or the rookies being rookies, drivers are protecting their cars. some of them (Lando, Lewis) are relatively un-crash-prone anyway but drivers like George and Charles haven't mysteriously lost their enthusiasm for pushing over the limit, they've been told to rein it in or risk losing an improvement.

there's something to this year's grid being fairly uniformly sensible about that, without any real on-track hazards but there's something more to it when it comes to racing.

a lot of people have noticed the racing feels bad this year. there's more overtaking than previously but it just seems flat. that's because the field is very spread out for a lot of the races. I'd need to get some data and do my best Brrrake impression to prove this conclusively but a lot of cars are having very lonely races, especially in the points-paying positions and even more so the further up those you get.

as a consequence the exciting battles are tending towards being for P16 or something, which isn't worth wrecking your car for. when there's a big speed difference cars aren't fighting, even if that's two that are on the same pace but one has fresher tyres. a lot of the moves that count as overtakes are more the on-track consequences of undercut/overcut and so there's no extended, risky, defence-attack sequence.

[lefluoritesys]

Hi! Random question but what's the funniest/most awkward situation you have ever been in with a headmate/headmates? Also, I love your Tumblr. It helps us through a lot of system denial :)

Thank you so much!! We're glad to hear that, we try our best to make it a safe and positive space!!

I don't think we have stories that people would count as incredibly funny, however, we have a few that stand out to us as at least amusing, lmao. And awkward... don't even get me started.

I (co-host) keep texting people trying to make friends, and don't ask nor tell anybody. And then I just dip. I think it's a pretty effective strategy. :D

The amount of times somebody told us something that we know we would have memorized by hard. Like when we're supposed to have our lessons. And then we'd switch, be asked about it, and don't know the answer as to what that thing was. It puts us in such awkward situations IRL cause of our parents.-

Today, remember the couple that went on a date? One of them had to front to take our sibling to their classes, and they were sulking, so our co-host & persecutor-caretaker had to keep their composure when their partner, from the inner world, said our sibling looks like an offended ostrich.

We got berated for eating the host's chips. We now have a policy about eating chips. Because people ate their bag of chips...

One of the funniest stories were probably with one of our alters who went mostly inner now, though. They once purchased a premium on an app we use a lot without telling anybody, and at the time, we could buy a whole McDonald's meal for that amount of money. Then, we put them in charge of English classes, and they were definitely working, but their way of working was roasting everything and cracking some of the most hilarious jokes we've ever heard. That same alter then offered our mother cyanide.

Some of the things we say are so fucking funny that we made a quote book. For ourselves. And our partner systems. There, we not only have hilarious quotes, but some of the funniest roasts we've ever seen, one of our favorites being:

Host: It's kinda funny how I can do everything alone at front, and y'all have to do it collectively when I'm not around.

Co-host: Nah, we're just healthy.

Our co-host sprained our foot. And called the bandage on it "foot prison." I am not elaborating on their behalf. /laughing

In the inner world, we have this thing where we can track people and where they are at that point in time (especially our robots can do that), and sometimes people decide to play tag. And since our inner world is our inner world, what we basically see is a dot (that represents a person you're watching) telelporting from point A to point B to point E in a matter of seconds. Which doesn't sound funny, but picture it, lmao.

The number of posts we made that were purely targeting each other is insane. And you will never know that they are targeted unless we say something, we are sneaky like that.

At some point some people in the inner world discussed fucking Jesus?? And I mean doing the deed, not the "fucking Jesus." We still have no idea who or why.

And then another two people, whose names we know, discussed our partner system's semi-sentient hotel and what its type would be. In detail. And who they could pair it up with.

Our host is still salty at one of our prosecutors because they bought them cocoa instead of coffee, didn't tell them, and our host couldn't figure our why the coffee was sweet but tasted well, considering we hate coffee with sugar. And then they realized.

Our host address purple so much that now all of us gotta keep up with the idea what "we, a singlet, definitely a singlet (/s), love purple so much" because explaining to our bio family that we don't like it anymore but we also do but also don't would be too difficult for a number of reasons.

One of us can just decide that it's chicken nuggets day, and we will have chicken nuggets for lunch. Not because we don't want to upset this somebody by refusing but because we'd literally switch on the streets halfway to chicken nuggets, stare at the distance for a couple of seconds, and accept our fate.

We generally talk to ourselves in public constantly, we have no shame about that, especially since it's mostly in English, which is not our first language. That got us a lot of looks. We also do that in VCs with our partner system, and we openly switch in front of them and talk about inner world shit.

Hope that gave you a few laughs. /g /pos

-host, co-host & persecutor-caretaker, sexual persecutor

[fzzr]

The most iconic Magic: The Gathering cards.

What does it mean to be iconic? I think it's pretty simple - it's whatever you think of first. This is to be independent of any particular format - so for example Sol Ring's overwhelming popularity in Commander doesn't make it an automatic winner. These will not be controversial opinions, I just want to talk about them.

White: Wrath of God

White is the color of fairness, and what's more fair than the equality of the grave? The transition from regeneration to "indestructible until end of turn" as protection against board wipes has robbed Wrath of God of some of its power, but it's still the standard for mass destruction effects.

Runner up: Swords to Plowshares - Pinpoint removal, with due compensation paid to the owner of the removed creature. Fairness in a different form, even if it's too efficient to be printed today.

Blue: Counterspell

"Counter target spell." Or, even more succinctly: "No". Blue is the color of magic itself, and no spell demonstrates that more than Counterspell. As with Wrath of God and board wipes, Counterspell is the standard against which all countermagic is judged. Nearly every set gets a Cancel - "Counter target spell" plus some set-specific upside, costing one and two blue. When it comes to simplicity and efficiency (and ignoring the broken Mana Drain) Counterspell is the go-to way to make your objections known.

Runner up: Ancestral Recall. Blue is the color of knowledge, and Ancestral Recall is what happens when that is taken too far.

Black: Vampiric Tutor

Black is the color that can get anything it want... for a price. Every color has some ability to search the library for one mana, but only Black can get anything it wants and be guaranteed to keep it. In exchange, it costs more than mana - you also pay in life. Between the functionality and the flavor, nothing so simply demonstrates the essence of Black.

Runner up: Necropotence. When you discard the simplicty of Vampiric Tutor, this is what you get: As much life as you wish to spend, for as many cards as you need - and one of the most busted cards in all of Magic.

Red: Lightning Bolt

"Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target." One sentence, eight words, infinite possibility. What could represent Red better than mana for damage? As of March of the Machine, there are four things Lightning Bolt can target: Creatures, Planeswalkers, Battles, and Players. Anyone who thinks Red is all about chaos and smashing rocks together is invited to consider the subtleties of Lightning Bolt. Turn one, bolt their Birds of Paradise - it puts back their whole strategy. You chump blocked their 7/4 - it has one damage marked on it - finish it off with a bolt. Lightning Bolt to the face when they have 20 life - a waste. The same thing at 3 - that's the game. Do they have a huge field of blockers, but you want to take down some 'walkers or battles? Bolt! Did you block something that would die, but they pumped with Giant Growth? Bolt in response! Lightning Bolt might be the best-designed spell in Magic, and the better you get at the game the more you can do with it.

A note on the flavor text: For a long time, Wizards stopped reprinting Lightning Bolt due to concerns that it was too powerful. When it did return, they gave it the flavor text you can see above in reference to that delay. Today it is considered too powerful for Standard, but does show up in supplemental sets.

Runner up: Wheel of Fortune: OK but red *is* still about chaos.

Green: Llanowar Elves

Green is the color of creatures. Green is the color of growth. Elf is the characteristic creature type of Green. Llanowar Elves is an Elf creature that makes your mana grow. It's really that simple! Llanowar Elves is so fundamentally Green that they printed two functionally identical cards (Elvish Mystic and Fyndhorn Elves) due to needing the effect with different flavor.

Runner up: Giant Growth. This was very close. Giant Growth or some variation of it is printed in virtually every magic set. It represents the essence of Green in a different way, by making a statement that for one green mana, my creatures will beat yours.

Colorless: Skullclamp

This was tricky. Colorless, by definition, doesn't really have an identity of its own. An artifact can do almost anything, but shouldn't do things too efficiently or it would be able to undermine the weaknesses of the colors. Skullclamp was first printed in the Mirrodin block, while design was using Equipment for the first time. They looked at a card for one mana that was making a creature stronger and decided no, that's too good. Let's make it a tradeoff by reducing toughness. As a result, if you equip Skullclamp to a one toughness creature it dies instantly and you draw two cards. Oops, we created one of the most efficient card advantage pieces in the game's history and made it available to every color. By any standard, Skullclamp is a design mistake, but it represents exactly why and how artifacts and colorless cards in general can be so powerful, and so dangerous.

Runner up: Black Lotus. It's probably the most iconic Magic card, but one doesn't necessarily think of it in the same category as other colorless cards. It sorta exists in a category of its own. I put it here anyway, to recognize its overall impact.

Land (without a basic land type): Strip Mine

I decided to specify lands without basic land types because otherwise the answer would be the basic lands and if it was just nonbasic lands the answer would be the ABU duals. That's boring, so let's look at utility lands.

The only true identity lands have is "produce mana" (there are a few lands that don't produce mana on their own, but they don't print new ones). Strip Mine is one of the first utility lands ever printed and it stands as a symbol of just how powerful and important lands actually are. Lands don't cost mana, and you almost always get at least one a turn. Strip Mine's lesson is just how scary that "almost" is. No format allows for more than one in your deck, because if you could play more than one it would allow you to lock down any opponent with more expensive cards than you, by effectively unplaying their land from the previous turn. The land that hates land is a lesson about why land, and Magic's mana system in general, is so precious.

Runner Up: Mana Confluence - When looking at lands without basic land types that just produce mana, nothing hits quite like Mana Confluence. Legal in nearly every format, generically good but not broken - this is the true neutral of nonbasic lands, and arguably a baseline against which all others can be judged.

Conclusion

So, what do these iconic cards have in common? For starters, they're often very old - several were printed in Alpha. Indeed, between the main list and the runners-up, three of the five original boons (one mana for three of something) are represented. They're all powerful, probably because bad cards don't see play often enough to become iconic. They're usually cheap to cast - though this tracks with power, because low cost and high efficiency is a classic way to make a powerful card. Most of them are simple - often one or two lines. This leads to them being the baseline (or the ceiling) for what the color can do.

[pastelvelvett-2nd]

Yandere!Harper x GN!Reader

[♡] Last chapter

Chapter 2: Only human

Summary: A week has past, and your second tutoring session with Harper is today. It's rather inconvenient that the entirety of the night, her mind is far too preocuppied with thoughts of you to sleep, even the slightest bit. The perfect mask she built slipping in front of you would be her worst nightmare, and in all likelyhood, it probably would happen today, given her current state.

Word count: 5,230 words

Note: this version of the chapter is with gender neutral pronouns and terms. I'll be posting versions with male and female pronouns soon, so please keep an open eye for that! Also, I'll be adding all my Harper works to the 'Yandere!Harper chapters' tag, so search for that on my blog to read the previous chapter for the clinically depressed people pleasing cinnamonroll (aka Harper). Juuust one more thing, if you wanna give it a listen, here's a playlist I made for her. Anyway, enjoy!

What did Harper truly care about in the world? It wasn’t directly related to what she was doing, like it tends to be for a lot of people. She couldn’t think of many things she did at all that came from mere enjoyment. The girl did everything she did not for the act of it in itself, but what she would gain from going through with it. Often, it felt like even small decisions and actions on her day to day life were strategies, as insignificant as they may have looked to those around her. Small actions and decisions that build up to make a portrait of herself others could enjoy. That’s why, her newly found, constant thoughts didn’t make sense to her. For nights in a row, she’d tumble and shift in bed incessantly, thoughts burdened and confusing. They didn’t start off as something she was bothered by, though. First, she had a fuzzy feeling inside of her as she thought back to your first tutoring session.Your entrancing frame and beautiful face burrowed itself in her mind, laid their eggs that would lead to more, to the point it was the only thing she could see whenever she closed her eyes. Your words, your tone, soft and comforting like a lullaby, replayed themselves in her head. Except, of course, unlike a regular lullaby, it just had to have had the exact opposite effect on her, about as damaging as three cups of coffee back to back would be at this hour. That’s where her pleasant thoughts started seeming to be more concerning, than anything. Why was she considering something so intently, when she didn’t have any real conclusion to these thoughts? Harper had gotten obsessed with things before, it was pretty much an integral trait to her already, but it was always for the sake of gaining something. The fact she didn’t understand what was happening to her was concerning in its own right. The girl let out a shaky, unnerved sigh as she, in a brisk movement, got up to a sitting position on her bed. Harper peered downwards at her soft blanket. It had a childish print; A repeated pattern of a cute, chibi cat sleeping, the whole thing being colored in varying shades of pink. Thinking back at everyone she talked to on a regular basis, it was clear as day they’d think she’s immature for secretly liking this sort of thing. How would you react, though? Would you be disappointed that she’s not truly a mature person, or would you be okay with that? Something told her you weren’t like them, preoccupied with what looks socially acceptable. 

“Oh, crap…” Harper gritted her teeth, leaning forward as she covered her scrunched up face the second she realized. She couldn’t believe it. Her mind wandered to something other than you for one second, and that thought was so quick to turn right back to you. This clearly wasn’t something she could push out of herself by just laying down in bed, maybe if she did something, she could take her mind off of it. The girl looked up, her lavender eyes rapidly darting from her left to right to identify where on Earth she left her phone before she started sleeping. Or… Trying to, anyway. Ah… On the end table next to her, of course. Did she ever leave it anywhere else? Why did she even ask herself where it was to begin with? Harper stretched her body to the right to grab onto her phone and pull it from her charger. It was still warm to the touch from having charged for- she didn’t know for how long. Her eyes, used to the darkness of her room, tried adjusting to the bright, unnatural light the phone gave off as soon as she turned it on. Admittedly, the overly cutesy brightly colored wallpaper didn’t help much with this achieving this.  

Oh… 

Crap again.

Harper cringed at the sight of the time, 5:49 AM. It took her a full hour drive to get to college, so really, she only had an hour at her disposal. She couldn’t remember the last time that she stayed up the whole night without realizing it, if it ever happened to begin with. Normally, she goes to bed at 10PM sharp, and falls asleep only a few minutes later. Just what had you done to her?

Surely it wouldn’t be surprising to say that Harper couldn’t sleep in the one hour she had left. Instead, she worried incessantly about how that day was the second tutoring session she had with you, and the only thing she was running on was anxiety that kept her more or less alert. Still, the lack of sleep made her nowhere near as sharp as she’d hope to be for it. If anything, in her current state, you’d be the one able to teach her. Still, she had to put her best foot forward. She managed to get through the school day, yes, with a few weird looks from people that knew she was behaving strangely, but she was still able to jot down notes with… Some readability to them. 

As Harper waited for you to join her in the back of the library, she lowered her face to get a better look at what she now recognized as being hieroglyphs that were intended to represent the English language in her notebook, coming to the morbid realization that she was deluding herself into thinking she’d been doing better than she actually was. She supposed she didn’t do very well with lack of sleep… Maybe because she was always strict with herself on getting a full night of rest, like her parents were with her while she was growing up.

—

Second week, second tutoring session with Harper. You had to admit that you were incredibly nervous, but thankfully less so now, since you noticed how approachable she was to you the last time. A part of you was fully expecting her to be the type of popular person to act incredibly sweet to some people, and horribly nasty towards those that have a less than stellar reputation, like you did. If anything, she seemed even more genuine and brighter when you talked to her one on one than in a classroom setting.

You inhaled then exhaled, paused in front of the library door, trying to remind yourself of these things. You’re fine. Just focus on learning, she wouldn’t judge you for being incredibly stupid (even though compared to her, you clearly are).

The library was very quiet, which was certainly a good thing for you. You could only see one person reading in a chair relatively close to the door. Not someone you recognized, from what you could tell. The guy gave you a weird, slightly judgemental look for just a second, which was enough to make you shrink and wonder if you did something strange. You weren’t sure if you were just being paranoid, it wouldn’t be the first time you imagined someone judging you. God, just focus… Find Harper. She’s chill. You’ll be fine with her. You hurriedly went deeper into the library, the stacks of books you needed for today held tightly against your chest. You were quick to spot her, sitting at the furthest table and staring down a notebook. Her face was pale enough that she looked like she saw a ghost, and unlike you, it didn’t seem like she spotted you nearly as fast.

She narrowed her eyes, nearing her face to the paper to get a better look while also lifting it. You had to wonder what made reading what’s there so difficult. It kind of looked like someone else’s handwriting, from what you could see, so maybe she borrowed someone’s notebook for some reason and was having some trouble reading it because she wasn’t familiar with the way they wrote. Another thing that was interesting to you- Harper tended to be… How should you say this without sounding rude (because though you’re obviously the only person listening in on your thoughts, you still would feel guilty if you thought something mean about someone that only treated you with kindness so far). She was always more attentive to the world around her than this, let’s call it. While you were 100% the type of person to look around disoriented when you go to meet a friend at any location, you always thought people like Harper were exempt from having those kinds of moments. Well, Harper is human, afterall… Like anyone else, she can get distracted.

You guessed that calling out to her would be a better idea, since you were starting to feel a bit creepy just looming over her. You didn’t doubt it would look suspicious if anyone saw you, they’d most likely think you were stalking her (and doing a pretty bad job at it, honestly).

“H-Harper, hel-”

The second you spoke out with a shaky voice and an awkward smile, she jumped up from her seat with a dramatic gasp and looked up at you wide eyed like you’re about to attack her. She dropped the notebook on the table in time with the gasp, making it fall and slide further to the other side of the surface, where you were. You looked down at the notebook that was just in Harper’s grasp briefly, which was enough to make her panic further and take it, sliding it in her backpack hastily. That was… Strange of Harper. You never once saw her like this, or heard of anyone seeing her like this. It looked like she was hiding a murder plot that she wrote about or something, though that was obviously not possible. Plus, you doubted the notebook was even hers to begin with. Maybe she wanted to copy someone’s notes or homework and she was ashamed she’d get caught…? But then again, why was only this mystery person’s out, and not Harper’s, too?

“OH! Y/N!” Harper exclaimed, a bit too loud for something she’d say in the library. “Hi! You’re…” She looked up to the clock with squinted eyes. …Maybe she needed to get new glasses, and that’s why she was squinting at that notebook, too? “Oh. Exactly on time.” Ouch.

“Haha… Surprised? I wouldn’t want to waste your time making you wait for me, Harper.” You laughed nervously, pulling out a chair to sit down next to her, careful to not place it too close to hers. She was already pretty jumpy, by default, the last thing you’d want to do is worsen her emotional state. Something… Clearly must’ve happened to cause her change of behavior. You didn’t think you had it in you to pry. The two of you weren’t terribly close or anything, afterall. That would probably make her uncomfortable. Harper was much quicker to reply to this than she was in noticing you.

“Oh, wait, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that… I meant I thought it was earlier than it actually was, so when I checked the time, I got surprised!” The pink haired girl tried her best to explain, as fast as humanly possible, so you wouldn’t have a misconception about what she meant for much longer. You eyed her in concern, studying her face. Upon closer inspection, beneath her eyes were dark bags that certainly weren’t there the day before. It didn’t look like she slept one bit last night, or if she did, she had very little. Maybe something was bothering her, and she couldn’t sleep? You didn’t know her personally at all, so you had no clue what could’ve happened. Interrogating her about it couldn’t be a good idea, so maybe giving her an easy out from having another tiring thing to do after uni would be the kindest course of action.

“You look… Pretty tired, Harper. Do you want to change the tutoring to tomorrow, or maybe some other day of the week? They should allow that, it’s still a tutoring session a week-” You couldn’t properly brace yourself over how immediate her response would be, even if you somehow knew about it ahead of time.

“No. No, we can do it today.” Harper’s voice was strangely firm, almost as if it was an order, rather than a confirmation. A few seconds of eerie silence passed before her different, frankly unusual demeanor melted away. “S-Sorry, I meant… I’m not really one to put things off. It’s a vicious cycle.” Oh, how nice it would’ve been to be her, and not your procrastinating self. It seemed like Harper was putting a genuine effort in pulling herself together, as evidenced by her straightening her back and clearing her throat. Her nervous, taken aback expression was turned into a calm and composed smile. Just how can she flip so quickly from one way of acting to another? It seemed like she’d be fairly good at something like improv acting or playing DnD, but you weren’t sure she was interested in either, or would be if she gave it a try. “Okay, sorry for the delay! We can start!” Realizing you still hadn’t sat down, you awkwardly shifted and moved towards the seat next to her, fighting off your immediate instinct to sit across from her instead. You supposed sitting right next to her was a lot more nerve wrecking of a concept, it was closer to her after all, so it made sense. 

With Harper even closer, the marks under her eyes seemed far more pronounced, making your guilt over putting her through this deepen. Still, she was obviously doing this for the extra credit, so it was her own decision if she wanted to sacrifice her own comfort to get that week’s session out of the way. Harper was the type to take everything she did seriously, which was incredibly respectable to you.

As she introduced the subject of today’s focus (still under math, because God knows you needed it), you could see the energy and brightness she put forth just a few minutes earlier dissipate gradually. Harper’s speaking was slower, her pauses more frequent, and eventually, she even struggled to have her eyes be any wider than half lidded. Even more distracting was that her writing seemed a lot sloppier than I saw it be last week, enough for it to be very possible that the notebook she had in front of her earlier was actually hers. This wasn’t something you could commentate on openly, at least not if you pointed out the specific telltale signs she had of being sleep deprived. But maybe if you insisted you end the tutoring session early after a bit of time had past, she’d be more likely to accept it.

“Okay, so now that you know the formula to that, let me just write down an example before you try one on your own.” The pink haired girl slid her math notebook closer to her side of the table and began writing down a math problem, tired eyes deeply focused. Then she started solving it, her mouth twitching slightly at some point, followed by her eyebrow doing the same. It really seemed like Harper was unsure of what she was writing down. You knew she probably meant for you to look at it after she was done, and peeping would be a bit mean, but your curiosity simply couldn’t wait. You scooted closer, making Harper’s body freeze like a deer caught in headlights the second that she finished writing the final result. Your eyes narrowed and studied each line of calculations. It… Didn’t really sound right. At all.

”Oh… I kinda thought it would be something like this.” Harper allowed you to take the notebook from under her and watched you attentively with no readily apparent emotion. You quickly wrote down the solution that you thought would be correct right below hers, looking to her when you were done for some sort of feedback. Harper seemed the slightest bit horrified, her mouth opening wordlessly and her eyebrows furrowing in concern. “Is it… That wrong?” Harper blinked a few times, looking bewildered as she took the notebook back and read through my solution several times over rapidly.

“No… It’s correct. I…” Harper gulped nervously, seeming not so eager to continue her sentence. She looked up towards her own solution, silent for a bit longer. “I was completely wrong. This… Is completely idiotic, what’s wrong with me? It’s like if an elementary schooler tried to solve this!” Harper’s tone raised, and her breathing quickened. Her concern from earlier was a bit more than you expected, but this state of panic was way beyond that.

”Harper, it’s okay, really! Everyone makes mistakes-“

”Not me!” Harper’s head was lowered in shame, hands shaking to the point she was barely able to hold the notebook properly. Tears quickly welled up in her violet eyes, and it took no time at all for them to drip down her face and for her to close her lids, probably from the stinging effect her tears left in their wake. She sobbed and sobbed, leaving you speechless. “I… Can’t. I’m not allowed to.” Her voice was weak and quieter this time, the slightest bit rapsy from having raised her voice earlier. You had no clue how to comfort her properly, not knowing her well enough to know what worked and what didn’t. Everything you could try would be a shot in the dark.

You were so caught up in Harper’s emotions that you didn’t notice that the librarian had walked up to her. The middle aged brown haired woman placed a hand on Harper’s shoulder in a motherly way, and you could only hope that would be enough to make her feel at least a little bit better, because then you would know what you could do. “Honey, are you okay…?” Then, to your surprise, the woman moved her gaze from her to you, now far less compassionate and more pointed, more accusatory. “You didn’t say anything to her, did you?” Did it… Look like you were an awful person? You had no clue why so many people here expected the worst of you. Even the staff, apparently. Still, you felt an insane amount of guilt for not doing something to comfort her up until now. You wouldn’t be surprised if Harper would come to resent you for seemingly not caring, despite her trying to tutor you every week, even when she was so exhausted.

”No, t-they didn’t.” Her current state made the fact that she actually responded for you even more shocking. It was noble of her to think about how you were perceived, even when she seemed to be going through a panic attack. “I-I’m sorry for making a scene. This is a library, I s-shouldn’t disturb-“ 

“No, no honey. Please. Don’t think about that right now. Just focus on feeling better.” The librarian let go of Harper’s shoulder and looked towards me. “Y/N, was it?” You felt pretty bad that you didn’t remember her name, despite her remembering yours. “Please take Harper here to the counselor.”

”It’s a-alright, Mrs. Moore, I can go on my own.” Oh well, at least you knew her name now, that’s something. Harper stifled her sobs, making occasional sniffing the only obvious sign of her crying, besides of course, the tears streaming down her face. The girl took her notebook and stuffed it in her backpack quickly, slipping it onto her back. It seemed like Harper was trying to rush away before either of you could have the chance to protest.

“Wait.” You got up too, and grabbed onto her hand after she took just a few steps away. Immediately, as you looked down at her hand that was stiff from shock, a result of your sudden and probably socially unacceptable action (given how little time the two of you spent together), you came to regret that decision. Then you looked up, which was perhaps even worse, because you saw her staring at you with a confused, teary face. “Sorry for that, I just…” You tried taking your hand away from hers. This time, it was your turn to be shocked when Harper refused to let you go, holding your hand tight. You’d feel rather awkward bringing that up now, especially with Mrs. Moore being right there still, so instead, you decided to continue what you were meaning to say. “I really want to do something to help. Taking you to the counselor is the least I could do.” Harper just stared at you in shock for a few good seconds that might as well have been an eternity, given how bad your perception of time was after her sudden show of emotion earlier. Then, she chuckled, smiling. Her eyes brightened, and her breathing seemed to be steadier than it was before. It was pretty interesting, because she didn’t give Mrs. Moore this look of gratitude and happiness after she tried to comfort her. First, you assumed maybe Harper just didn’t feel that okay with physical touch, so her putting her hand on her shoulder didn’t help. Still, she talked to her, too, and she had a more gentle tone that should’ve had more of an effect, yet it didn’t. Maybe Harper didn’t much like Mrs. Moore? That was your best guess.

”Thank you. I-If… You’re okay with that, I’m okay with that too.”

You didn’t really expect Harper to immediately say yes, but needless to say, it made you relieved. You weren’t really one to insist with anything, it was too nerve wracking to demand something of anyone. Still though, you were pretty sure that demanding to go with her, a grown adult that barely knew you, was an objectively morally wrong thing to do that you wouldn’t have done even if you had a backbone.

—

You started leading Harper to the counselor’s office, the both of you incredibly quiet. It honestly felt a tad bit awkward for you to be leading her somewhere on campus, when you barely started going here a few months ago and still get lost sometimes, even now. You weren’t sure for how long, but Harper probably had been going here for a significantly longer time than you. It seemed like she knew the layout pretty well, even now, in her sleep deprived state. If anything, you were there for emotional support. You felt rather useless for not being able to give that emotional support, and instead be completely quiet.

“I’m sorry for-“

”I’m sorry for-“

Much to your shock, you both apologized at the same exact time, causing you and her to stop dead in your tracks. After a few seconds of bewilderment, the two of you laughed a bit at the coincidence. Not in a boisterous way, it was rather impossible to be too cheerful with the things weighing on both of your minds. But it was a soft, content laughter. You didn’t know about her, but it made you a bit more comfortable at that moment. This and her show of emotion earlier made you realize that as different as she may look to be from you, you may have more in common than you first assumed.

“That was interesting. …What are you sorry about?” You asked her, smiling and beginning to walk again. Harper began stepping forwards immediately, herself. You looked to your left and saw her looking downwards at the white, well cleaned tiles of the hall. You supposed what she wanted to say made her uncomfortable enough to want to avoid eye contact.

“For ruining today. For all I know you could’ve had a normal, happy day, and I just ruined it for you. Or, possibly even worse, maybe you had an awful day and I made it even more horrible.” Harper breathed out, seeming to be even more tired out by her own emotions. “I stood in the way of things being normal.”

”Harper…” You eyed her with sympathy, initially unsure of what to say. “It’s not your fault. You must’ve gotten no sleep at all, and there has to be something in the back of your mind upsetting you that was worsened by how tired you are.”

“It is my fault. Who else’s fault is it that I didn’t sleep last night like a normal person?” It looked to you that Harper was trying so very hard to maintain “normal”… Her idea of what a normal person was seemed to be pretty warped. 

“Normal people have bad days, sometimes you can’t get sleep. Some things just… Aren’t anyone’s fault at all.” Harper’s brows knit together, and she searched your face for an answer to a question you weren’t aware of. A few seconds later, she smiled, humming softly and looking forward again. 

“I appreciate that… Um… What were you going to apologize for?”

For a moment, you forgot you even apologized at all earlier. You got far too caught up with her apology to continue thinking about it. Her apology was about something pretty complex actually, as simple as her opening for this topic was. It made you realize that your reason for apologizing was so much smaller, to the point it would be fairly accurate to say that it was pretty much for filling dead air. You chuckled a bit. “For being quiet.”

”Oh no, there’s no reason for you to apologize for that. I understand why you’d be quiet… You probably don’t know how to react properly after my outburst.” Harper looked downwards with a subtle sadness. Earlier, she seemed to have liked when you held her hand… Would she feel better if you did it again? Before you could argue yourself out of doing it because of your anxiety over making her uncomfortable, you just did it, reaching out and gently holding her hand. That time, Harper didn’t seem quite as shocked. Instead, she welcomed the touch immediately, even holding onto your hand tighter as if she was afraid of you letting go. The very same way as she did previously. She smiled, though she still refused to make eye contact.

”It’s okay. Really. I’m not judging you for being human.” Harper’s smile dropped, and you immediately began to worry you did something to upset her. Even worse, that was the moment that she chose to look at you. In her eyes was a strong, burning emotion that you couldn’t pin down with any real certainty.

”Y/N…” Harper still faced towards you, but her eyes darted elsewhere. “I have to tell you something.” She paused, and built the courage to look back to me after a bit. “I wasn’t going to go to the counselor’s.”

”Huh…?” You raised an eyebrow at this and stopped walking again, Harper deciding to do the same. Why on Earth didn’t she say so? She could’ve told you the second the two of you left the library, if she was just worried about the librarian pressuring her about it.

“I was going to walk with you until the beginning of the hall the counselor’s office is in and tell you I can walk to it from there. Then I’d wait for you to leave. I was going to go out to get some fresh air on my own, get everything out of my system and continue with our session.” Would that… Really work? What if you decided to stand there and wait for her to get in before you left? Your face was marked with confusion as you tried to make sense of why it would be a big deal at all for her to refuse to go somewhere.

“I… Understand that you probably didn’t feel like you needed to go to the counselor anymore, but I just don’t know why you wouldn’t tell me. Did you think I’d get disappointed with you if you didn’t go?” Harper paused, biting her lip uncomfortably. You weren’t her parent, and even if you were, you would’ve understood that she didn’t need it.

”I don’t know if I really need it or not. I just don’t want it, and that’s all I was thinking about. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but… My parents put me through therapy at some point growing up, and I can’t say it helped much, to say the least. Anything that reminds me of that could only make me feel worse.” It seemed like she didn’t want to respond to your question, but from what you could tell based on her reaction, you most likely hit the nail on the head. “You must think I’m a pretty awful person for wanting to lie to you like that… But I realized how little you deserved to be lied to, and how uncomfortable I felt about doing it to begin with, so I just had to tell you.” Harper sighed out, body language seeming a bit more agitated now than before. When she noticed you weren’t responding immediately, she looked towards your eyes with unmistakable panic. “I’m really sorry.”

You shook your head. “It’s okay, really. I’m not mad.” After you gave her an encouraging squeeze of the hand, her eyes lost some of the anxiety it held in them. You were incredibly relieved to see her calm down a bit. “Let’s go together.”

”Outside…? Oh.” Harper blinked in surprise. It seemed like she didn’t think you offering that would be a possibility. “Yeah, we can go... I’ll be honest, I’m a bit surprised you still want to spend time with me after the way I acted.”

”Acted like what, a normal human with emotions? I get it, I’m human too, regardless of what some people may say.” You tried to joke around to brighten her mood, hoping it would work, as admittedly awkward as your attempt felt. Thankfully, she giggled, marking this mission as a success.

Oh, how did Harper wish that other people could be like you were. You were understanding of her faults and mistakes, her humanity, something she never felt from someone else. At the very least, not in a sincere form. Memories of the fake kindness she received back when she went through therapy flooded her mind, and it made her want to vomit. Actually… Maybe she preferred this. Maybe she preferred it because it made you so much more special. It felt like in her eyes, you started growing more and more, and she realized what a unique, beautiful person you were. She was deeply terrified that unlike her, you began seeing her as pathetic, as the small, scared child she saw herself as every single day. Maybe if you knew about the way she thought about you last night, you wouldn’t be so kind any longer. 

But surely, you weren’t fake. Your empathy was a sincere one, and finally, she found someone she could trust. Still, Harper was afraid. As much as she already trusted you, she knew it wasn't a good idea to be hasty, when she reconized it wasn’t exactly normal to get attached to someone so quickly. Letting the relationship develop naturally would be for the best before she could voice this part of her. It was a shame that keeping these obsessive thoughts to herself was already becoming irritating to her.

[bloomboxygo]

Melodious: Suddenly Sublime Scripts!

So, with the new support out for a while now, the scripts and music sheets properly written, and the composers quieting down, I believe I can put out a Deck Update of sorts, how it has changed and how faithful it was to its original strategy, as well as how the viability of each Card has changed.

Ah, let's be clear, it's way too soon to see where we're going to be in the meta at large if at all. It's more than likely that this is not competitive. Still, it's so much better than before. As such, I won't really get into the matchups against Meta decks.

All right, the stage is set, so let's share our scripts!

The main Endboard

Refrain or 1st Movement + a discard -> Aria/Elegy/Etoile

The examples I'll show are considering JUST the Cards shown. With additional Cards, more magic and scripts can happen!

This is the fairly standard thing you want to do with one of the non-Ostinato starters, and what furthers the playstyle Melodious was known for. It's... Not too much of an upgrade at first glance. But the mere fact of having versatile disruption, even if it's pretty light all things considered, is so much better than the admittedly nothing we had in the past. The disruption aided by the protection of Aria and Elegy becomes so much stronger because it's harder to be forced out early. So if the opponent combos instead, you can temporarily have Etoile and Co, or even just Etoile, bow out of the stage for a moment to disrupt them. The board is also reusable like this after the effect, and Etoile can float into any Melodious other than herself if you can't get her out of there before your opponent can. More Monsters in hand means you can get more Monsters to have as Etoile disruptions or, better yet, more setup opportunities or an earlier Etoile (which is inportant if there's a certain counter...)

How you build it is, starting from a Refrain summon: Refrain add Couplet -> Couplet add Melodious Concerto -> Fuse both into Bacha and SS Shopina, set scales due to Pend Effects -> Refrain send Aria from Deck to GY -> add back with Shopina -> Link Maestras into Harmonist, Summon Soprano and Elegy, Bacha summons Shopina back -> Fuse Harmonist, Shopina and Soprano for Etoile -> Pend Summon Aria

Ostinato -> Aria/Elegy/Etoile/Schuberta/Bacha

A NS Melodious + Sonata or Canon + a discard -> 1 Melodious/Aria/Elegy/Etoile

What's this? The Combo without the 1 Card starter can produce more?

Well, yes, and that's due to the fact that you need more Melodious in Hand, and the Refrain search is moved on later, when Harmonist is Summoned; that way, you can also take advantage of Couplet's Hand effect to retrieve more material. If that material is someone like Tamtam or Soprano who were the Normal Summon, you can go even further. However, the combo is more immediately vulnerable because Harmonist is still the chokepoint.

Now we're composin'. Let's just say Ostinato combos have a lot more potential than ones without it. So much so that writing the entire thing would be kind of a mess so if you may, please take a look at Melodious Maestro's video. This is the full potential of Ostinato.

Now... This is the Deck version which has Tamtam the Melodious Diva. I'll talk more about it later, but that version is quite contested. If you're not using Tamtam, the combo will have 1 less card in Hand (making it a 1 + Discard combo) and you won't have one of the Maestra Fusions.

However, your deck will be made more compact and consistent. The important thing about an Ostinato combo is getting Etoile earlier than a certain turn. That doesn't change.

Well, that does it for the endboards. More members add more stuff and possibilities, but this is the gist of what you should do.

Bonus: World Tour through other archetypes

Melodious doesn't really have any hybrid builds, it prefers to be played pure because of a lack of synergy with other archetypes. However... The sheer power of Ostinato is too good to pass up. To have a little Melodious in any Deck, you need these components minimum.

1 Concerto

3 Ostinato

3 Refrain

1 Couplet

1 Soprano

1 Shopina

What you'll end up on will be 1 Etoile + 2 Schuberta with Ostinato, and an Etoile without. Light disruption that won't take up too much space.

The fun thing about it is that you can tag out the Melodious to give space as you're setting up with whatever else. And also... It gets Etoile under 5 summons!

Which means if you avoid a certain Monster and tag out as it's about to crash... You can get away with stuff like this.

Is it optimal? No. Is it fun? HECK YES.

The ascending and descending scales of the Melodious

This is going to be a segment mentioning every single Melodious card, or those associated, and divide them into sections on how much they've improved.

I could also say something about each new Melodious Member... But I already did. My opinions on them haven't really changed from before, they're overall a miracle.

Still Scales (no change)

The Cards which didn't receive any relevant change in viability IN COMPARISON TO OTHERS IN THE DECK. It's not about raw power level, more like how you'll use the Card if at all.

Ostinato: still remains the big Fusion playmaker it's always been. Its power has drastically increased, and it's especially evident outside of the archetype. But when it comes to the Archetype? Always been run 3 and never looking back.

Sonata/Canon: Who'd say no to free Special Summmons? Always there in case we need to go to Harnonist.

Harmonist: Speaking of, she has changed quite a bit in scope. Before this, she was the linchpin for any strategy which either made up for Ostinato not being there or worked well alongside it in more offensive turns. Now she's become the "Plan B" for the archetype, but her range of options has quite increased just by having Refrain alone, as you saw. If the 1-card starters fail, then she'll gladly put in the effort to make it up. She's still as vulnerable as ever though, albeit chainblocking is easier. If Etoile needs to get her out of her position before she can Special Summon, you might have saved her, but she worked for nothing.

Bloom Prima: Another case of a role strengthened, a role weakened. Or in this case, lost. Before the support, she was Harmonist's most reliable chainblocker, protecting her from effects such as a delayed Ash or a Gamma. Now with Bacha and Concerto making up the bulk of the combos, Bloom Prima has lost her place there. However, Refrain's pend effect does help Prima strike even harder, albeit the ATK boost won't be too much because of a lack of high level Melodious still in deck by that point. Still useful because Etoile clearing the way also weakens your offensive power.

Opera/Solo/Serenade: Yeah these ladies won't get to enjoy the spotlight sadly. Didn't have a role then, don't really have it now. It's all a matter or redundancy or not being effective enough at their roles. The Melodious deck has enough Special Summoning and is still so pure that Serenade's extra Normal and tribute foddee for any Fairy won't be of much use or would be too clunky. Had Bacha also allowed generic Fairies to be sent as material, she could have had something.

Pianissimo/Fortissimo/Melodious Illusion: Same as above, really. Lack of applications, contrasting with Aria, and weak effects meant they were unusable back then and are so now.

Crystal Rose/Brilliant Rose: If only they were Melodious Monsters... Brilliant could have a cute effect of sending Bacha directly to the GY to activate her effect, but it's just not worth it. It's better to have Bacha perform first on the Field.

Descending Scales (worsened)

Unfortunately, as new Cards come in, some older ones must make way for them and diminish, or give up, their position. That really is only relevant to the Deck's optimal strategies though. The Deck's overall still a "for Fun" one so don't be too discouraged by this. Even so...

Mozarta: The new wave of support actually hurts her the most out of anyone. She's unfortunately not played anymore in an optimal build. Simply put, her niche role of Fusion Material for the Choirs and Special Summoning Monsters that you wanted in your Deck but were in the Hand, as well as building offense, are rendered entirely obsolete. Especially the Pendulum Scales, which now Fulfill Mozarta's effect. Scratch all that, and she simply becomes a brick.

Bloom Diva: This one just hurts morally. The superstar of the Melodious has to fulfill now a back role of last resort and nothing else. She was the only souce of non-battle removal (and it still involved battling) but Etoile is so much better at that because of how versatile she is. The good thing is, Etoile can bring her out instantly at least so she works if everything else goes awry. She wasn't the main plan before, but a somewhat reasonable alternative.

Elegy: This is just weird to say after emphasizing the Aria/Elegy lock being a thing that's signature to Melodious' gameplan. Thing is... Aria is easier to Summon and more applicable in protection, while Elegy depends on the kind of removal that's threatening the Melodious. Destruction isn't super relevant except for Fire Kings' case, and she's not easy to get into the Field if you hadn't set up prior. As such, it's debated whether or not to go for Elegy in favour of allocating other members in such as Schuberta (in non-Ostinato cases). I'd keep her personally, but if not, she's a Side Deck option.

Score: Well, she didn't do THAT much before, but she was still a cute battle trick which was hard to stop due to being activated in the Damage step. With higher removal and... Just less space in Deck, she struggles to fit in more than before.

Ascending Scales (improved)

Well, there's nowhere to go but up now! We can finally get to the one that can now shine even brighter on the stage!

Tamtam: What a glow-up. Those who knew the Deck before but not after... Would you believe me if I told you Tamtam is the hottest debate of the Melodious community now? Before then, she was the worst designed Card of the archetype because her effects were either asininely hard to take advantage of or didn't help Monsters as much as it should (AHEM BLOOM DIVA). As the Melodious Maestro showed before with the video, Tamtam now raises the ceiling of a Melodious endboard and gives it more advantage thanks to her non-once per turn effect of searching Fusion Substitute (treated as Polymerization and only other card she could search), she is able to gather more Monsters on the Field with Ostinato combos and also more Card advantage due to Fusion Substitute also serving as discard and an additional draw. And the burn damage is nice. However, by including Tamtam, you have to include a Poly (or Sub), which does lessen consistency. That is the core of the debate: more power vs more consistency. Still, it's so nice that Tamtam gets to play on the stage well now. You love to see it!

Soprano: Well, previously she was the better alternative to Tamtam, but now they can work well together. Even without Tamtam, she's still integral to the Melodious' combos now, with the Fusion also being played multiple times in a good turn. I have to mention her amazing synergy with the Pendulum Songstresses, as their effects work so well with one another. I'll just picture a brief scenario:

Ostinato fuse Refrain and Couplet for Bacha, SS Soprano -> Soprano add back Couplet, Couplet SS Refrain from grave -> Refrain search.

It can even work with Soprano being put to GY alongside another, and Refrain being Summoned off Bacha to add Couplet and Summon her, retrieving the other Melodious used as Fusion Material. These make just a heavenly trio.

Shopina: She's now become the Main Deck Maestra of choice because of her effect not only working well with Couplet, again, but also because it comes up more often (not a HOPT) and can search the only particular non-melodious Card we have, Herald of Orange Light. An amazing backup for our concert which only improves our control capabilities.

Aria: Well, she was the linchpin of the Deck before and what made it so (in)famous in the first place. So what exactly improved for her? More applications. Because of the numerous starters and extenders you now have access to, she can serve as an early Summon off of 1st Movement to protect the other Melodious from targeting Handtraps such as Impermanence and Effect Veiler. Also, while it looks like she conflicts with Refrain's Pendulum Effect, it's actually no issue at all because the latter is either done before Aria is Summoned or Etoile can temporarily have her bow out of the stage to allow Refrain to use her effect. Also she's just easier to Summon in general.

Schuberta: Before now, she wasn't actually that likely to use her own talents because of how hard it was to put her alongside Aria without a stacked Hand. Her role was moreso being a Melodious Fusion who didn't require a Maestra, so that Aria and Elegy could be sent off Ostinato and then revive at the End Phase with her destruction. Not an exciting role. Nowadays, she's not only very likely to be used for her actual effect, but it's repeatable now: while an "only while face-up on Field" effect, it can be done again with that same Schuberta if you banish her with Etoile's effect and have her come back later. This makes that effect go from non-existent to persistent.

1st Movement: Can Summon Refrain now, making it lead to combos alone. It needed other Melodious in Hand before doing anything that wasn't just passing with Aria. Now it can either Summon her for protection or Refrain for starting combos, making it more versatile.

Concert Crashers (staple answers and threats)

Well, we now see what the Melodious can do and how they're faring. Sure, there's variations in all of these depending on preferences, but they will all lead to a now good board which can outlast quite a bit.

So... What about those who excel in interrupting them or shutting them down? I'll only list the few relevant ones, the others should be understandable once I cover them because the situations are similar.

Ash Blossom remains as she was before, more or less. She's likely to be used against the Spells or Refrain if there's no other Handtrap alongside the Yokai. Harmonist and Bacha are poor choices to Ash: the former will be chainblocked most likely, while the latter can't be negated at all.

Impermanence or Effect Veiler are useless if Aria's Summoned first, but that's rare. Harmonist remains the prime target if she's open, but Bacha isn't immune either because her protection effect gets negated first. Though it's likely that it will be used right away against a Refrain. Hope you have extension from Hand if that happens.

D.D. Crow or Bystials are somewhat effective at disrupting the Melodious combos. They use the GY quite often also thanks to Bacha, and they all target their Melodious to bring out before being able to do so. Either can just snatch them away.

Now... For Nibiru.

I had alluded to its presence in the past but the rock is a really important counter to discuss, because Melodious is quite particular in how they deal with it. They... Kinda don't, but can prevent their members from getting crushed by it. That's all because of Etoile. Etoile before the 5th Summon is the difference between a rock crashing into the stage and demolishing it or not coming out at all. If all Melodious are banished by Etoile and no one's on the Field, Nibiru won't trigger the Summon at all and will resolve with no effect. Depending on whether or not you have anything else in Hand though is where you either have to end on what the board was before the Nibiru, or can do some other plays. Remember that second endboard I posted? The result of Ze Amin continuing where the Melodious left off. A pure version likely won't have much to do afterwards unless it has an Ostinato still in Hand for any reason. Also Nibiru us more effective if used while Harmonist is using her on Summon effect: since she 100% will leave the Field unless you have a negate, she cannot Summon afterwards because the Melodious need to be Summoned to where she points to.

Forbidden Droplet and Dark Ruler no More are the hardest answers to counter, if possible at all. Mass non-targeting negation Etoile simply cannot respond to. All the Melodious have afterwards is her floating effect. Which can be at least something. Also, it's funny that theoretically we have an in-archetype, searchable answer in Melodious Illusion but it's simply not being able to be activated because Aria's going to be on the Field 99% of the time and she clashes with it, and Melodious Concerto is a better search overall. It's just not worth it passing up on both.

Conclusions:

Overall, while overlooked by the majority of the players, this Melodious Support is a blessing from heaven for the fans, as it finally solidifies their most likely intended playstyle: a high defense, low oppression Deck which can then switch to offense via strong battle effects and attacks.

Sure, we're likely not going to be considered in the major meta at large, but we're back and ready to have fun after so long. Some more well done support would do the trick to make it somewhat competitive, but we're overall very happy with what we got.