#ive been enjoying developing him the past few weeks and love writing these up cause i havent given him much exposure so here goessss | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blondecarfucker · 6 years ago

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Bed of Roses (Last Chapter - 21)

Roger Taylor x Reader

BoRhap!Roger Taylor x Reader

Fic Summary: It's 1971. You just moved to London to study, and you find a band on a local pub after a bad date. The encounter doesn’t go the way you expect it, and neither does what follows this evening as you try to deal with loving Roger Taylor.

Fic Note: So I’ve had this story in my head for the last three weeks and finally decided to write it down. It’s completely planned. It will have 21 chapters and it’s divided in three acts: Dusk, Night and Dawn. It’s will be a bit angsty in the future, and it will most likely have some smut as well. I hope you guys enjoy it! Tell me what you think about it in the asks/comments/messages. If this is your first time stumbling upon Bed of Roses, thank you for stopping by! The rest of the story is in my masterlist, the link is in my bio - can't put the link here or else the post will disappear from the tags.

Chapter's notes: THE LAST CHAPTER. I CANT FUCKING BELIEVE. i feel like before i start my thank yous i could give you some weird trivia on the story. i wrote the entire outline for the fic at a weekend shift at work, where i always have free time. i had some smaller ideas - them meeting at a bar and not seeing again, the whole kensingon-taxi-class thing from the beginning - but there was a sudden burst of inspiration and in like twenty minutes the outline was done, and very little has changed, i mostly just added some more details. also, i imagine the reader as alicia silverstone in the 90s?? idk. i just do. also, the reader thing with new york comes from the fact that i lived there for a while and i miss it so much, so thats why theres so much detail about places and stuff - its my form of revisiting my favourite spots there. also, will (REMEMBER WHEN) was written with sebastian stan in mind, and liv tyler (in her lord of the rings days) was poppy. i did too much research for this fic on queen history, and everytime i had to change something (especially in the first act) so the dates made more sense, it KILLED ME.

anyway, now the thank yous: SHIT THIS FIC IS SUCH AN IMPORTANT CHAPTER ON MY LIFE. its my first time writing such a long story without abandoning it, and my first time writing fiction in english, so i learned so much!! i was doing some research the other day, and the great gatsby is like 47k words long, and the first harry potter is around 70k words long - bed of roses is around 60k words long. this is crazy.

it's also my first story to get this many readers interacting with me, and i'm so grateful for you all!! i thought about thanking you all by name, but i dont want anyone to feel left out so i just want every and each one of you reading these words to know: if you read my story, thank you. thank you for giving me your time of the day, thank you for connecting with what i wrote, thank you for telling me in any way possible that you've enjoyed it. thank you. a writer must write, but theres not a lot of joy in talking to an empty room. you filled my small room with warmth and love and there's not enough words to express my gratitude for you all. thank you.

about my writing: i plan on FINALLY DOING THE MANY REQUESTS I HAVE IGNORED OVER THIS FINAL ACT OF BED OF ROSES - requests are still open, too! i'm also outlining a smaller roger x reader fic where she's one of the videographers on the news of the world documentary, so keep an eye out for that! i'm gonna open a permanent taglist for the requests (and eventual new fic), so if you want to be added, hit me up in the ask box/comments/inbox!

anyway i'll finally wrap up this chapter's note cause you have the final chapter to read. enjoy my loves

Words: nearly 4k

Warnings: none??? part of their dialogue is inspired by some of my favourite movies and books like her and the wife and almost famous and before sunrise and the fault in our stars and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and maybe more I DONT KNOW ITS BEEN AN EMOTIONAL RIDE OK I CANT EVEN REMEMBER WHERE DID I PULL THIS FROM EXACTLY. some errors too cause i didnt revise it completely my bad im crying ok

ACT 3 - DAWN

"It's the moment night time seems weaker and everything seems easier to figure out"

Chapter 21

Roger lit a cigarette in the train cabin, and tried to open the top window, the one you can usually pull open.

"Rog, it's not gonna open, you know", you told him as you watched him fiddling with the glass.

"I guess you're right. Hope you won't be bothered by the smoke", he said, taking a puff.

"I won't if you share it with me", you answered, and with a half smile on his lips, Roger lifted the cigarette to your lips, and you breathed in the smoke while looking at him through your lashes.

"Don't look at me like that. Especially if the cigarette smoke is going to leave the cabin sultry and hot", he told you, and you laughed.

"Yeah, and we won't do anything about it", you said, trying to make yourself more comfortable in your seat.

"And why is that?", he asked, batting his lashes innocently at you, you you lightly elbowed his ribs.

"We need to do something else, something we've been ignoring the whole trip", you said, and he raised his brow. "We need to talk about us", you told him, and he breathed out, smoke coming out of his nose.

"I guess you're right again", he said, then slid a bit down on his seat.

You didn't think much about talking about your future with Roger while in Paris, so now has to be the time, on a train that will take you to London and to a whole month of Roger being away, promoting News Of The World.

While in Paris, you never talked to Roger about the future, and talks of the past where subtle - you talked about how you felt with the development Doctor Who took over the years, but didn't think much about the fact that you were separate during years of the show.

You enjoyed the city, but most of all, you enjoyed each other's presence, not only going to museums, churches and castles around you, following them up with fancy dinners and walks along the Seine, but you also spent time inside the room, in your pajamas, ordering take out from restaurants you found on the phone book, having a hard time trying to speak french as Roger tickled the sole of your feet and kept trying to distract you.

You would always remember the peace you felt as you ate cheap chinese food on Roger's shirt on the balcony at night, the Eiffel Tower shining over your meal and Roger's electric blue eyes as he hummed early David Bowie's songs under his breath, or how at home you felt sitting on the couch, Roger on the floor with his head on your lap, his soft strands on your fingers as you tried to braid them while watching re-runs of I Dream of Jenie, Roger focused, trying to understand the french dubbing until he noticed what you were doing.

"Babe, are you trying to braid my hair? Think I'd look better if I'd look more girly?", he said, moving his head back so he can look at you.

"Yeah. Always thought so, but I'll have to keep imagining, since your hair is too short to braid", you pouted, and he laughed.

"Don't you like my new hair, then?", he asked, pouting back, and you moved your head to his level so you could press a quick kiss to his lips.

"I love it, Rog. Especially cause since it's shorter, it looks even messier after I pull it", you said, and he smirked. "My favourite look of yours is when you're all dishevelled after sex", you winked, teasing him.

"That's my favourite, too", he said, turning completely around and pulling you in for a kiss, his hand on the back of your neck.

But now, while in the smoke filled train cabin, you needed to make a few things clear.

"I've been avoiding this for a reason", he said, looking out the window, and you raised your brow, waiting for him to explain. "I have this weird, innate fear of you telling me it's all good but you don't want to see me again, or something", he said, and you gave him a half smile.

"I don't want to do this, Rog. And I won't do it", you told him, and he sighed in relief.

"Even though loving you is a bit complicated, I'll admit. Especially if you're me", you shrugged, and he turned to you, confused.

"Let me explain. I loved your idea for a bed of roses, a few days ago, cause it can exemplify our relationship so well. The roses feel so good against the skin, the smell is so intoxicating, it looks so beautiful - maybe too beautiful, ethereal, even. But then there's always a few thorns here and there, and they hurt so much when they lodge themselves on my skin, but I'm so intoxicated by the whole experience that I don't mind - I convince myself that it's nothing, and even that it's already part of me already, cause the thorns fit so perfectly on me, on my little stabs made by myself, by my own insecurities", you say, and he stares at you.

"What I'm trying to say is that every minute that I'm with you always distract me from the issues that come with being with you - the fact that there's a few expectations that come with being your serious girlfriend, be them always travelling with you while we're young, or eventually staying home once we have kids, knowing that you'll eventually cheat on me with a younger version of myself, while I'm too tired of taking care of the babies to even think about my sexual needs", you said, and you watched him frown.

"I'm not sure where you're going with this-", he started saying, but you cut him off.

"Let me finish, I promise it will get better", you said, fixing your posture as you start again. "But the thing is, I love you. I always have, ever since I started talking to you, you always trying to outflirt me, always seeing me as your equal. You desire me, but you also listen and see me as another human being, you never back down or ignore me if I challenge one of your beliefs, and you never treat me as a trophy-wife-to-be", you say, and you can feel your eyes fill with tears, but you're smiling. That's what you always loved about Roger. He smiled back at you.

"And because I love you, I don't want to deny myself the pleasure of being with you. I'd rather be in a bed of roses than in an empty bed - or worse, a blank bed, someone being there just so it's less cold at night. I want to be with you, Rog", you say, and he pulls you in for a hug, and you hold him back for a few moments before pulling away and looking at him in the eye.

"But also because I love you and I want to be with you, Rog, I don't want us to try to fit into this type of relationship I just mentioned. I don't want you to make me the other woman, either, when you eventually find someone so you can settle down, if it's not me" you said, rubbing your nose. "I guess I want to settle down with you, eventually, as we planned before, but this whole thing - living together and cheating if we're away for too long - it kills me, and I think it kills you, too. I respect you too much to want to cheat on you again, cause if I ever do and you never find out, I'll lose respect for you, and the same thing will happen if you cheat on me and I don't find out. And these are ugly truths, but this isn't our first time together; we know each other, we need to think about this", you told him, and he nodded.

"And I need to make it clear that I'll never be a simple rockstar housewife - I'll never be able to quit my job and look out for the kids while you travel the world and I make them lunch. I'll never be able to sit down on a dinner table on some award show with you and when someone asks me what I'll do, I'll smile as I say I'm a king-maker. I'm not", you said, firmly.

"And I'll never be satisfied with dumb spa and shopping trips as you do the actual work when we travel. If I have to live this life, I'll resent you, and I don't want that. I like being domestic with you, but this type of forced domesticity will poison us again - we're both too wild, too career-focused, for this. We've always been similar", you said, and he gave you a smile as you sighed. "I guess that's all I have to say", you shrugged, and he laughed. "Not much, right?", he said, running his fingers on his hair, pulling the strands back.

"Guess it's my turn now", he said, and you nodded, encouraging him. "When I saw you again, at the pub, there was so much that I wanted to say. I mostly wanted to apologize - it got lost as I got infatuated with you again, and tried to get you in bed - you know, usual stuff", he winked, and you laughed.

"But yeah, I kept looking at you while you updated me on your life, your skin glooming under the stars and the moonlight, and I couldn't stop thinking about all the things I wanted to apologize to you for. All the pain we caused each other. Everything I put on you. Everything I needed you to be or needed you to say. Cause no matter what - even if you had decided on never seeing me again after all this - I'll always love you, because we grew up together. And you helped make me who I am", he said, moving strands of your hair behind your ear.

"I just want you to know that there will always be a piece of you in me, always. Whatever someone you become, wherever you are in the world, however this" he said, pointing his finger to the two of us "works out, in whatever form it might take", he said, sighing "I'll always send you love. Before being anything else to me - and I hope to God you're always something more - you'll always be my friend, to the end", he told you, and the tears were already streaming down your cheeks. His cheeks soon mirrored yours.

"And now, after you so eloquently told me all your fears about our future, I need you to know something else, too", he said, as you wiped the tears under your eyes. "I always loved you for being the way you are. You always challenge me, you always make me work harder, try harder, to be better. And it's not even something you force me to do; I just follow your lead. The way you look was what first got into me, I won't lie, but the way you are is what made me stay. It's what will always make me stay", he said, a genuine smile on his lips. He made you feel warm, like the sun.

"You're the smartest person I know, you're funny, you enjoy sex, you're unapologetic, you're proud of who you are, even proud of your insecurities. And you have such a huge importance in my life: you made me who I am. Whatever way you want to make us work, I trust you. I just want to be with you, in whatever form it takes", he said, smiling, and then getting up and opening his bag.

"I forgot to give you something", he said, pulling a string out of the front pocket. You recognized the red glimmer. It was the heart necklace. "It's still yours to keep. Even though it's not in its original glory, it will always be yours. The necklace and my heart", he said, and you couldn't help but smile at him.

"Always so cheesy, Taylor", you said, joking as you moved your hair to the side so he could put the necklace on.

"You always loved it", he winked, and you laughed. "I do", you said, smiling.

"So, what does it all mean? Where are we?", you asked, and he shrugged. "Wherever you want us to be. I just hope that you keep me around", he told you sincerely.

"I will. So, we're not going back to our old ways, right? We're not back at sharing a flat and stuff", you said, and he nodded. "Sure".

"And you're going to spend a month away, all around the world. I don't want you to feel pressured not to cheat", you said, and he nodded again.

"Yeah, and you're back in London, starting a new job. I don't want you to be worried, too", he said.

"So, maybe no exclusivity, this time? At least not now. This is still debatable, in the future", you said, and he agreed.

"Makes sense. But I'll have a hard time desiring anyone but you", Roger said in a low voice, and you laughed to break any mood that might have settled. You needed to get things clear before making out in the train cabin.

"Me too, Rog. But I don't want to create any expectations of loyalty because we know each other too well, and I don't want a stupid fight to break this thing we're building together", you said.

"It's a good idea. So, no titles, too? I can't call you my girlfriend?", he said, and you laughed.

"You can, if you want to", you told him, and he pulled you closer to him.

"Good, cause I want to call you that on the News of the World launch party, that I'm hoping you'll go as my date", he said, pressing a kiss on top of your head, breathing in your fruity smell.

"Of course I'll go. I need to see the boys again", you told him, and he laughed.

"So you're not going for me, then?", he pouted, and you laughed again.

"No, I'm just going so I can meet Deacy's kid", you told him, and it was his turn to laugh.

Once you got to London, Roger offered to go to the airport alone - he had to get on his flight, and he was late. He knew you had to go home and get ready for work tomorrow, but you wanted to spend as much time with him as possible.

He looked relieved when you got on a cab with him to Heathrow.

"Big day tomorrow, huh", he said, rubbing your arm.

"Yeah, I still can't believe I'm finally going to work at the British Museum. It's so surreal, it feels like a dream. Like I'm living someone else's life", you said, looking out at the window, the early sunday morning reminding you of fresh starts - you were in the middle of one.

"Well, it's your life, and it's your job, cause you deserve it, babe. I never met someone who worked so hard to get where they want", Roger said, smiling, proud.

"I did. You and the boys", you said, and he huffed. "Guess you're right. Me and that pack of idiots, we turned out okay", he joked.

Once you got to the airport, you followed him to his gate.

You were feeling nervous - you had him for a week, and now it's time to say goodbye again.

You're both aware that the rest of the band is already waiting impatiently in the jet, but you can't help it - you hug him, dropping your luggage on the floor, and he does the same, the hug soon turning into a kiss as you rub your hands on each other's body, as if you're trying to remember how every inch of the other feels like, as if you're both about to disappear.

But the airport worker clears her throat, and you break the kiss, looking at each other longingly.

"Don't say goodbye", you beg Roger, putting your hand on his lips as he opens his mouth.

"See you soon", he says between your fingers. You smile at him, grateful he found a way with words so you're not repeating the same old goodbyes.

"See you soon, Roger", you say, hugging him again for a few seconds, just trying to capture every detail - his smell, the feeling of his arms around you, his body against yours.

And once he has to go into the jet, you go to the glass wall, and you can swear you see some familiar faces from the windows of the jet.

But before you can focus, soon Roger's well known face takes over the window you're watching, and he puts a hand on the glass.

You can't help but think about the last time you did that with him, him being on your place as you were inside the plane, moving to another country, your heart weighing down on you, filled with doubts.

But now your heart warmed you up, filled with joy and love, and you could feel Roger's crystal heart on top of your chest. He was right. There would be always a piece of him on you, too.

Epilogue: News of the World Launch Party

"Y/N! You're back!" Brian's voice welcomed you to the ballroom.

You squeezed Roger's hand - it was the first time you saw the band in years, and you couldn't help but feel a bit nervous about it.

"Darling, you're really back! We thought Roger was getting high too often and hallucinated a week in Paris with you. But I guess you did come back to him", Freddie said, hugging you by the side as he held a glass of champagne on his other hand.

"I'm back with him only so I can see you all again, of course", you said, winking at Roger as he pretended to be offended.

But then you heard Deacy and Veronica scream your name in unison, and you turned to see them.

"So you're really back!!" Deacy said, but your eyes were on the baby boy on his lap.

"This is the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life.", you said, trying to get his attention. Roger looked at you, adoringly, as you moved your eyes to Veronica.

"Ronnie!! You're so big!" you said, trying to hug her through her belly. "It's coming out in a few months! It's a boy, Michael. Someone our young Rob can play with", she said, and Roger frowned.

"I could swear it was a girl", he said, and John smiled. "Maybe next time", he said.

"Hey, Bob. Do you want to play with me? C'mon", you said, and he motioned to go to your arms. You picked him up as he started playing with your hair.

"You'd be a good mom, Y/N", Veronica said, and you got tense. "God, Ronnie, don't even joke about this", you said, and Roger chuckled. "It's a sensitive topic at the moment", he explained.

"The moment will take quite some time, you know", you told him, the youngest Deacon pulling your earring before playing with the crystal heart on your neck.

You talked to the boys and Veronica for a while, updating each other, but no one brought up how you and Roger got back together. It just felt natural - no need to question.

You stayed with Roger for the whole night - behind the cameras as he did press, by his side during dinner - where he was back at his old ways, teasing you lightly with his hand under the table. You felt good in his arms, getting back into his life.

He was interested in getting back into your life, too. He came back to London last night, and went straight to dinner with you. You were trying different food, and now was time to try Indian food.

As he ate his Chicken Tikka Masala, dipping the naan in the sauce, you invited him for a party your bosses would be throwing next month to celebrate a new exhibit.

He gave you a bright smile. "I'd love to be your date, my love", he said.

And after the Deacons went home - Robert was asleep on his father's lap - the party got louder, the dance floor more full. You could swear you saw an angular face that could only belong to Bowie pick someone to dance - was this Princess Leia? - but before you could process the whole situation, Roger pulled you to dance.

"Thought you didn't dance, Mr Taylor", you told him, wrapping your arms around his neck as you tried to slow dance to All The Young Dudes, by Mott The Hoople.

"I don't dance very well, indeed. But it's just an excuse to be so close to you in public, and God, I'm dying to call you Ms Taylor", he said, and you chuckled.

"Take it slower, Rog", you told him, and he leaned in to rest his head on the curve of your neck. "And why do you want to be close to me in public? Is it still one of your weird fetishes?", you joked, and you felt him laugh against your skin.

"No, it's just that you've been killing me with this dress of yours, and you've been killing a lot of the guys here, too. Could swear I saw Bowie checking you out", he told you, and you gasped.

"Taylor, don't even joke about this. I'd have a heart attack", you said, and he laughed. "You'd leave me here for Bowie, is that it?", he asked, and you laughed.

"Of course not. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that he might acknowledge my existence", you said, and it was his turn to laugh. "The only eyes I really like to feel on me when I look away are yours, Rog", you said, and he gave you a quick kiss.

"Okay, had enough of trying to dance. Let's get some fresh air", he told you, and you followed him to the balcony.

As the cold, fresh air brushed against your exposed skin, you heard the first notes to Tiny Dancer, by Elton John. You walked to the balcony, leaning in and taking in the view of London at night.

Roger soon took you into his arms, hugging you from behind, and you felt safe, his body heart making you warm in the cold evening as he jokingly whispered "Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man" into your ear, and you scoffed. "Slower, Taylor", you told him, and he laughed.

"However you want it, babe", he said, now paying attention to the view, focusing on the feeling on you in his arms again. Finally.

But oh how it feels so real

Lying here with no one near

Only you and you can hear me

When I say softly, slowly

"I could die right now, Y/N. I'm just... happy. I've never felt this type of happiness before. I'm just exactly where I want to be", Roger said in his husky voice, and you nodded lightly in agreement.

Because in Roger's arms, you feel home. You feel what you hoped to feel for years - what got you to move to London in the first place. You feel like you belong.

---

1988 Special

Taglist:

@taylorroger-s @sarai-ibn-la-ahad @its-nessi @anamcg317 @frenchieswiftie @queen-danielle-dani-dan @minihemo @shutup-sorry @theyrealllegends @killerqueenisthebest @ashagracelove @hardy-s @fuckinghurricanesoul @secretsweetscollectionblog @mrswinterhater @11mb0 @tamtam-go92 @derptatosaur @brianandthemays @phantom-fangirl-stuff @the-hysterical-queen @rogerofmylife @notevenlxvely @discodeakyy @x1975sos @16wiishes @jennycidesstuff @partydulce @melros-e @onevisionliz

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littlebitoffanfic · 7 years ago

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Experimental Relationship

Fandom: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Character: Donnie Relationship: Donnie/reader Request: Can you write a Donnie oneshot where hes upset cause the reader isn’t speaking to him but its because they love him and they had a dream about Donnie and the reader being together. But the reader wants that but thinks Donnie doesn’t feel the same. Sorry if its confusing, but could it be from Donnies perspective as well? Donnie paced in his lab, his mind racing as he thought back over the last couple of weeks. You had been acting weird around him, not properly speaking to him and avoiding him where you could. It was strange because Donnie had always had a good friendship with you. Granted, you had your disagreements but nothing to weren’t this sort of behaviour on your part. He picked up his phone off the counter and pulled up your last messages before typing. “-Can we talk?” He sent the message to you and placed the phone down. It felt like an eternity past before it buzzed with a response from you, but not one he hoped for. “-this isn’t really a great time.” You wrote back. “I really need to talk to you. Please.” He only added the please at the end in case he sounded like he was demanding your time. Donnie couldn’t put into words how much this was killing him. You were his best friend but you were more. You were his sanity, his world, his light, his everything. Donnie only recently realised how in love with you he actually was. It killed him that you couldn’t even talk to him. Donnie wondered if it was because of his appearance. When the thought first ran through his mind, he was nearly sick. He had such a hatred for his appearance and how it effected himself and his brothers that the thought of having someone he loved loath him made him hate himself even more. But you maintained a friendship with the others. Mikey even said you text him every day. So it couldn’t be because of that. “Okay.” You finally texted back. But it was enough to give Donnie hope. He quickly wrote a response that he would be up to your flat in 5 minutes before taking off, not even telling the others where he was going. It was a chance to right whatever wrong had happened between you two, and that was enough to make Donnie want to climb every building in new York just to get to you. When he got to your flat, the window was already open, so he was quick to get inside. It was dark out, so he knew he didn’t really have to worry since no one would see him anyway. you were sitting on the couch, worry in your eyes as you avoided his gaze. You looked like a child who was about to be told off for something. But then Donnie saw the small glisten on your cheeks, a tell-tale sign you had been crying. the soft light of a lamp behind you and the darkness outside drove him towards you as he kneeled in front of you. He had expected you to be angry at him. To tell him he had said something that had offended you or that he had ignored you. But to find you so upset. Donnie knew he would rather you be angry at him that upset like this. “Whats wrong?” he asked in a soft voice. “I-I-im sorry.” You mumbled, coving your eyes and sobbing. You looked like you had been holding back the tears when he’d come in but now you couldn’t hold back anymore. Donnie rushed to wrap his arms around you, hushing you softly but not saying anything directly. You started to cry against his chest, craving the warmth and companionship it offered you, but quickly caught yourself and pushed yourself away. “Im sorry. I just cant.” You mumbled, turning your back on him. “Whats wrong, please. You know you can trust me, right?” He asks, coming closer to you, his heart breaking. He never imagined in 1000 years to find you like this. “That’s exactly it, though. Ive got too close to you.” You mumble to yourself but Donnie managed to hear you. “What do you mean?” He walks around you so he could look in your eyes. “I-I cant tell you.” you finally managed to say, sounding like whatever was going through your mind was killing you. “You can. I promise!” Donnie nodded, urging you to tell him. There was a moment where all you could do was look at him before you signed and went to sit on the sofa, Donnie at your heels. He took a seat beside you, patiently waiting. “I-I seem to have developed… feelings for you.” You finally confessed after taking a moment to find the words. But these words made Donnies heart stop in his chest. Feelings? Perhaps similar to the ones he felt for you? A million questions raced through his mind but he knew he couldn’t ask them all so quickly, so he chose a broader one. “What do you mean?” he asks, sliding a little closer to you. “I-i-uh.” You shook your head, burying your head in your hands but before Donnie could comfort you, you sat back up. “This all started with that stupid dream.” You shook your head, not knowing what to say. “What dream?” Donnie asked you. “I dreamt that we were together.” Your voice was soft, like you were remembering a fond memory. But then you jumped slightly and looked at him for a brief seconds. “nothing… bad, I promise. It wasn’t even like we did anything. But we were sitting together and you had your arm wrapped round me and we were reading. I’d never thought of us like that before, but in my dream, I knew we were together. And when I woke up, I was so confused.” You buried your face in your hands. “Confused about what?” Donnie asked, his voice almost failing him as he tried to resist the urge to confess fully to you. at least just yet. “About, about us. I don’t know. I just- it was so hard whenever I saw you because I felt like I was o deeply in love with you but I couldn’t do anything but it hurt so bad. I thought it would be easier if I distanced myself from you. but its been hell.” You threw your hands in the air slightly. You didn’t know why it was so easy to tell him all this right now, but you did anyway, and Donnie was glad. “Me too.” He managed to say, in a small voice, one which just managed to reach your ears. “What?” You asked, turning to look at him. You had been expecting him to freak out, to maybe even run away. But he was here still. “The last few weeks have been hell for me, too. I cant tell you how much ive missed you. but I can tell you that I know how you feel.” He smiles a little as you turn to face him a little more, your face etches with curiosity and confusion. “Ive loved you since the first moment I saw you. I tried everything. I tried pushing the feelings away, I tried shift my focus, I tried burying myself in work, but then you’d walk in and I couldn’t do anything but try and make you happy.” His confession. His true confession. he had always imagined it, and like this was one way. Well, without you in tears like this. But sitting beside you in your living room was correct. He had always been so nervous when he thought of it. He thought he would stumble over words and mess things up, but after hearing you out, it made him feel brave, because he knew you felt the same. “Donnie?” You trailed off, staring at him with those big eyes that he adored dearly. “I never thought you’d ever see me as more than a friend.” Donnie looks away from you, suddenly unable to hold your gaze. He heard a small and breathy chuckle come from you and looked up to see you were staring straight ahead. “I thought the same.” You smiled a little. The two of you sat in silence for a moment, taking in the full confessions, until you jumped a little with an idea. “I have an experiment I would like to try with you.” you suddenly said and the two of you turned to each other. “What sort of experiment?” Donnie asked, a little confused to your sudden change of subject but intrigued none the less. “Us.” You said, short and simple. “Us?” He repeated with a raised brow. “Yes, like an experimental relationship…” You offered, trailing off, suddenly nervous for using the word relationship. But Donnie couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds intriguing.” He nods. “And how would we carry out such a complex operation?” He asked with a small smile on his face. “We could do some smaller experiments and we’ll call them ‘dating’ experiments.” You offered and Donnie laughed at your ‘subtle’ hint. “Ah yes, and we could gather the data we collect from that before moving on, I guess?” He grinned widely at you. “Exactly.” You giggled, tears now long forgotten. For a moment, the two of you laughed at yourselfs, as you fell forward slightly, your stomach now hurting from laughing. Both your laugher died down after a moment as you realised how close you were. You raised your head and saw Donnie face was only a couple of inches from your own. He licked his lips, his nerves settling in now. “Can, can I kiss you?” He suddenly asked, his eyes darting to your lips which caused you to subconsciously lick your lips like his. “Only if it wont throw off our data.” You said with a small smile. Donnie let out a chuckle before he leaned down, pressing a chase kiss to your lips. The second his lips met yours, there were fireworks between you both. In that moment, you couldn’t work out why you two hadn’t done this sooner. Donnies hands found your waist as yours found his shoulders and the two of you moved closer together, leaning against the couch as you made out. Donnie didn’t know for how long the two of you stayed like this, occasionally stopping for a breath before diving back in. he couldn’t help but smile into the kiss as he felt you moving against him, showing him you were enjoying it as much as he was. ‘This was certainly going to be an interesting experiment’ he thought to himself as your hands massaged his shoulders. interesting indeed.

#tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #Donnie #donatello #donnie x reader #donnie/reader #donatello x reader #donatello/reader #request #reader insert #angst

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renaroo · 7 years ago

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Wednesday Roundup 15/6/2017

So this is a day late but in my defense I had a ridiculous amount of comics to get through with no one to blame but myself here. And you know what? I genuinely enjoyed almost everything. But does that mean every comic was good this week? And even so what did I think was the best?

Honestly I don’t know how to write these intros for people who wouldn’t be here to read my opinion anyway so let’s just jump into it.

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine, Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, DC’s Detective Comics, DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester, DC’s Justice League of America, Image’s Motor Crush, DC’s Superwoman, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, DC’s Titans, IDW’s Transformers: Salvation, DC’s Wonder Woman

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine (2015-present) #21 Tom Taylor, Leonard Kirk, Cory Hamscher, Terry Pallot, Michael Garland

Okay I need this issue to reread a million times over because there are just so many things I love all at once. Like, oh my gosh. I was almost in tears multiple times because relationships! Healing! Supporting each other!

Wade and Gabby alone could just about make this issue perfect, but then you have Laura and Daken hugging and worried about each other, and Old Man Logan being likable for the first time in any of my readings of him. There’s so much I enjoy, though I find the cover rather deceiving. This is much more of a Howlett family reunion than anything else, though I did enjoy Riri’s parts in it.

I just eriously adore these characters and it meant a lot to see them all come together like they have here and that cliffhanger HURT so much more for it.

I will nitpick the art a bit because we’ve been doing so good about keeping Laura in the Wolverine costume which is much preferred to her X-23 wardrobes, for sure, but this issue it pretty much looked exactly like one of her old costumes without the midriffs and it was kinda weird. I know she took off a lot of her armor for skin contact but it’s... idk. It was weird.

The main thing I’m happy about though is that as we go on, I realize that literally all of the Marvel books I’ve kept are going out of their way to not involve themselves in Secret Wars and it’s kind of beautiful. Laura and Gabby are stuck on an island that’s quarantined (and I can pretend Wade’s there with them instead of whatever’s going on since I dropped Deadpool for the summer crossovers, thanks Tom Taylor!), Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are literally off world, and the rest are non-616. So yay me!

Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows (2016-present) #8 Gerry Conway, Ryan Stegman, Jesus Aburtov

For those who don’t know, Mary Jane Watson is genuinely one of my favorite Marvel characters and is easily one of the reasons I ever stuck with the Spider-Man comics for as long as I did was because of my interest in her and wanting to see her and Peter.

I can also thank her for my genuine attraction to redheads probably.

But one of the main reasons that I’ve loved this book so much is because, as written by Gerry Conway, this is the Peter and MJ of my dreams. I love them so much, and the complications that comes from their relationship and from growing older, raising a daughter, and MJ’s desire to continuously be the glue to keep both Peter and Annie together logically causes her to seek out a way to continue being Spinerette without syphoning off Peter’s powers.

It’s almost like growing old, having a stable relationship, trying to keep things fresh while raising a kid, are all dramatic and worthy of good storytelling in their own right or something HMM.

Anyway, yes it’s completely on the nose where this is going and it’s a little curious how MJ’s not immediately aware of the connection between what’s going on with her right now and the horrible, arguably traumatizing experience she and Peter had, but who knows what’s canon anymore lol

Basically, I sideye a bit from a story point of view, but this series continues to make up for it with the real thing that matters to me: these characters and their development.

DC’s Detective Comics (2016-present) #958 James Tynion IV, Aluaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson

Honestly I really love the slower issues where Tynion takes more time to make moments for the relationships between the characters and give us interractions we didn’t know we wanted -- Kate going with Luke and Jean Paul to a basketball game, Cass and Clayface being adorable by reciting a play, Bruce at a poker game with a bunch of assholes in homage to Almost Got ‘im!? It was a lot of fun honestly.

...

Okay I take issue with Cass’ dialogue. I know she was repeating lines from a tape and such but it’s weird to see her make so much progress when just two issues ago she was almost monosyllabic. Like... I want to see Cass gradually learning, I want to feel her frustration with hitting walls, I want to see her struggle and achieve despite the struggle because that gradual progression was honestly something we weren’t delivered in the former canon. We have a great opportunity for it here.

But y’know. I’m particular with Cass and it’s hard to say where her baseline for reading and speech even is in this canon because her dyslexia may be in tact but her circumstances growing up are completely different. So I don’t know.

Now. I’m a sucker for Bruce and Zatanna team-ups because I’m a schmuck but I’m really excited for next issue. Had a lot of fun with this one. This feels like a decent pace for Tynion -- at least in my opinion.

DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester (2016-2017) #10 Brenden Fletcher, Becky Cloonan, Karl Kerschl, Adam Archer, Massyk, Sandra Hope

This comic is speeding toward an end and I’m not sure if I’m ready!

From the beginning, for me at least, the selling point for Gotham Academy has been just how much these kids felt like real teenagers and real friends with all their various relationships and connections, platonic or romantic or something in between. And it’s powerful to see that coming to play as an advantage to completing Olive’s arc, but also as a disadvantage since the consequences of many of her actions hurt that much more.

I’ll save a lot of my thoughts for a complete wrap up of the series but overall, very happy and very grateful for the continuously good read that is GA

DC’s Justice League of America (2016-present) Volume 1: Road to Rebirth Steve Orlando, Jody Houser, Ivan Reis, Andy MacDonald, Stephen Byrne, Jamal Campbell, Mirk Andolfo

WE GOTTA GET THE BAND BACK TOGETHER. WE’RE ON A MISSION FROM GAD.

In all seriousness, I’m a huge fan of Vixen and Ryan Choi as well as a big fan of Justice League International, as it was in its 80s glory. So my interests with this particular lineup were piqued from the beginning and I made myself wait for the first volume to dive in.

For the most part, this is a team gathering exercise. Characters that have lacked the spotlight in the last few years -- Vixen, Ray, Killer Frost, and the Atom -- were given whole issues to reintroduce them to this continuity. And honestly those issues were great. I really, really love the updated origins for them and feel that they’re a good blend of honoring the past of the characters as well as adapting them for a new world.

Lobo, Batman, and Black Canary took back seat, but considering that there were already tensions showing within the group, I think it’s safe to assume that giving the spotlight to the rest of the team won’t always last this long. Things are nothing if not explosive among these members.

I really did mean it when I said this is a team gathering exercise, because there’s no first case to unite everyone. There’s not any real antagonists or team-ups we see to speakof. It was just getting hte jLA together.

And for me it’s enough to get me intrigued, though I’d completely understand if people told me it was far from enough for them.

Now they just need to add Big Barda, Booster Gold, and Ted Kord and I’ll be satisfied.

Image’s Motor Crush (2016-present) Vol. 1 Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart, Babs Tarr

I was not the biggest fan of this team’s Batgirl team though I appreciated the aesthetics and what not. There just never seemed to be a storyline that really interested me and I couldn’t be sold on the characterization for Barbara. So I kept hearing about Motor Crush for the last year and was really itnerested in it so I wanted until this volume came out and.

Well, quite simply, I’m in love.

Tell you what, those biker gangs that kept coming up really confusingly out of place in Batgirl make a hell of a lot more sense now that I can see this team’s actual passion project.

So I love Motor Crush a lot, I’m really invested in Domino, the mystery that is her origins and the powers of Crush itself. I love her relationship with her ex, Lola, I love her father -- I love just about everything and the cliffhanger really surprised me.

I will say that while I love having a world that speaks for itself rather than constant narration, it’s a little hard to follow this world entirely, I’d like a bit more explained than what has been, but at the end of the day I’m very excited to see more.

DC’s Superwoman (2016-present) #11 K. Perkins, José Luís, Ray McCarthy, HI-FI

You know, I have made it clear that I’ve been worried about this title for a while now, really just hoping it was going to find its direction and wow us with the great potential that is the Super Family outside of the main Kent triad. And I feel like that’s for good reason -- the end of Jimenez’s run let a lot of people feeling justifiably scorned, there was a mishandling of a lot of heavy and important subjects that were raised, and at least the initial stuff with Perkins taking over kind of left one wondering if they had a fully formed direction to go toward next.

But I am really glad that I stuck it out for this long because the family of John, Lana, Nat, and everyone else is so important and so fundamentally different from the dynamics found elsewhere in the new familial renaissance of the DCU that I needed it. And I hope it continues to emphasize these relationships and how important they are to each other.

I’m still unhappy with how anxiety and mental illness is being handled in the title and find it lacking since it was brought up to begin with and now being ignored. That subject alone is making me rethink my disinterest in Green Lantern books as a whole because I have loved and felt inspired so far by what I’ve seen of Jessica Cruz and their handling of anxiety, and it’s why I picked up Silk at the high recommendations of a close friend.

So I’d like for mental illness to be treated better in this title -- the least it can do after bringing it up and treating it the way it did at the end of Jimenez’s run, but there’s so much value in the non-nuclear family dynamic of the Irons household and of the uniqueness of Lana’s powers and her approach to fighting crime that it’s worth it. For me anyway.

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011-present) #70 Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Mateus Santolouco, Ronda Pattison

I knew the end of this storyline was going to be, at the very least, explosive but wow, WOW I had no idea how many twists and turns it was going to take in that time. That was a phenomenal ending to the Mutanimals storyline for the time being, and I just feel so bad for Slash, down to my core. I’m so worried about him, and whenever he will be allowed to recover.

At least I hope he’ll recover.

This series is seventy issues strong and i’m just so blown away by the way they still manage to keep me on the edge of my feet while so many different storylines and character developments are happening at the same time.

I mean, I even feel for Old Hobb here!

I do suppose a complaint I could hold here is that the titular turtles themselves have ultimately not been very front and center throughout this storyline, and that really showed in the conclusion, where for the most part they were lost to the colorfulness of the huge, colorful supporting cast that has been developed over the years.

For me, personally, I think that’s honestly okay. We can’t have the same story over and over again with only the main four characters driving the narrative, and it’s been a long standing tradition in TMNT for a good 30 years now to sort of embody the concept that our main guys don’t really look for situations to get involved with but sort of fall into them naturally.

Not to mention it’s probably a strength that 70 issues in, we haven’t once repeated plots or stories or put any of the characters on a loop of development to end up right back where they started. I don’t think the achievement of that can be understated, especially as we near that landmark #75!

DC’s Titans (2016-present) #12 Dan Abnett, Kenneth Rocafort, Dan Brown

Bleh. BLEH. I was holding out judgment on the twist of Wally and Donna and Roy ending up in some kind of love triangle because I wanted the context but honestly the context is kinda... bleh. It would be awesome if we lived in some world and time where Donna’s origins were not constantly retconned and thus the source of her characterization in every run of every thing she showed up in. Which is by no means a new problem but still.

And my opinion is... Wally and Donna are both going through a hard time and Wally is having to accept that his life is fundamentally different from the previous world he knew, that he can’t just badger people into returning things to the way they were -- especially Linda, who he loves but it’s a very one-sided relationship as a result of the parallel universe paradox and stuff. It makes sense to me that in a ploy to gain some sense of control over that, he and Donna both would try to take fate in an unexpected direction, into their own hands.

But making it a love triangle with Roy just kinda keeps my eyes firmly rolled into the back of my skull.

I overall like Lilith, Dick, Garth, and Karen’s development and characterization in this issue. I think they’re taking Lilith in interesting directions and I’m really curious about what her omen means for the future, since apparently there’s a traitor among them. And they set up plenty of reasons for various members to be that traitor in this issue but I can’t help but assume already that it’s going to end up being a twist. Good twist or not remains to be seen.

IDW’s Transformers: Salvation (2017) John Barber, Livid Ramondelli

I’m going to be completely “original” here and say that I’m not a fan of Ramondelli’s at for the various Transformers comics. i know! I know. Shocking, never said before, completely going against the general fandom consensus. I’m such a brave soul. I know.

Okay, joking aside though... I didn’t think the art was bad in this one-shot. Actually! I’d argue a lot of it was even good. He may not be my favorite artist and I’ll think that his colo gradients are butt ugly most of the time, but there was better handled action sequences than usual, the characters looked like they had weight, and we even got a range of expressiveness in the characters that is... well, frankly, not usual for Ramondelli.

So other than that shocking revelation, I thought Barber performed good once more on tying the TF universe together again, answering some prior plot points and nicely knotting off loose ends. Trypticon being a Titan is not the biggest revelation in the world, but the development of Sandstorm and the Dinobots was great, and I loved just how devious Starscream truly is under Barber’s pen even though I’ve fully been enjoying the characterization for him in Till All Are One.

But the most important thing of all: SPARKLINGS. SPARKLINGS. All I’ve wanted for years is baby transformers so I am HAPPY BEYOND BELIEF. THEY’RE NO LONGER A DYING SPECIES AND THESE PRECIOUS BABIES COULD BE BORN WITHOUT EVER KNOWING THE CIVIL WAR AHHHHHHHH

DC’s Wonder Woman (2016-present) #24 Greg Rucka, Bilquis Evely, Romulo Fajardo Jr.

WOW! I mean, just wow! What a resolution to everything. I have so many emotions for Diana, for Barbara Ann, for even Veronica Cale of all people. Etta and Steve were great, the art was amazing.

It’s just such a relief and such... honestly just an amazing feat that Greg Rucka is beginning to wrap up this just phenomenal run of Wonder Woman

I really enjoyed how everything turned out and it was so remarkable to see Diana’s resolution to save Veronica but also to not turn her back on her friends and loved ones as well as the torment it is for Barbara to not be able to get into Themyscira after all her life’s work.

And I liked Diana’s assessment of Veronica at the end, it was true and also blunt to the point of cruelty. But fitting also.

It’s amazing what a turn around I’ve personally felt when it comes to Veronica’s character because in all honesty I was not a fan of her most of the time in the preboot, but Rucka really has fleshed her out and done something unique with her perspective now. There is tragedy but there’s also less deniability for her fault in all of it.

I’m sad to be coming toward Rucka’s end on the run, but I’m also so happy to see the love and passion he’s put into everything culminating to what it is now.

This is a genuinely hard choice but I think if I go by what tugged on my heartstrings the most, what gave me the most joy overall and just feelings unrelenting from start to finish, I would have to say that my pick of the week is All-New Wolverine. I adore this series and I couldn’t be happier with this issue and how they’re keeping my precious Marvel girls faaaaaar away from Secret Empire. A close second would be Wonder Woman but really I would happily recommend my entire pull this week. It was a geat week for comics.

But that’s just my opinion! I’d love to know your thoughts. Agree? Disagree? Think I missed something I should’ve picked up this week? I’d love to hear from you!

#Rena Roundups #SPOILERS #Wednesday Spoilers #All New Wolverine (2015 )#Amazing Spiderman: Renew Your Vows (2016 )#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011 )#Detective Comics (2016 )#Gotham Academy: Second Semester #Justice League of America (2016 )#Superwoman (2016 )#Titans (2016 )#Wonder Woman (2016 )#Motor Crush #Transformers: Salvation

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years ago

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Planet’s Edge: One Line in Three Dimensions

One of several stitched-together mini-quests that I encountered this session.

Planet’s Edge is not shaping up to be what I thought it was going to be, which was a New World take on Starflight. I think that the developers perhaps started with an intention to imitate Starflight; certain similarities between the games are too stark to be coincidences. But they removed one of Starflight‘s most attractive traits–the joy of exploration in an open universe–and replaced it with something that I’m not convinced is better. Specifically, there’s a lot more emphasis on axonometric exploration of the planets’ surfaces, which could have been done well, but so far is a bit silly and trite.

When we left off, I was headed for Sector Algieba, as I had a couple of hints that it would be the best place to start. The sector consists of seven star systems–Subra, Talitha, Regulus, Algieba, Alphard, Koo-She, and Miaplacidus–any of which would also serve as the next Nissan model. Talitha was the closest to where I was coming in, so I explored it first. The system had six planets. As with all the systems with multiple planets, it’s hard to keep track of which ones you’ve already visited since they don’t stop whipping around their suns, fast enough that a year might pass while you take a sip from a soda bottle.

The stars of Sector Algieba.

In Starflight and Star Control, there was a certain joy to exploring even random planets because you might find useful and valuable elements. That’s sort-of true in Planet’s Edge except that it’s very rare to find a planet that has them, you can mine them near-instantly when you do, and at the beginning of the game you can only carry 5 units of any cargo at a time. If you get rid of all your weapons, you can carry 8. So clearly element recovery isn’t going to be a big thing until I can build a ship with more room. I’m not 100% sure if I could do that now or if I need to find some plans.

Each planet has a nice textual description (when you “scan”) regardless of whether it has any utility. I was enjoying these a lot for a while, but then they started repeating. Ultimately, it turns out there are only about 9 common descriptions:

A molten, superheated surface giving off toxic fumes.

Lots of organic life but no intelligent life, “a nice place to have a picnic.”

A small rock with a thick layer of gases.

Incredibly hot, unstable, with constant volcanic activity.

A “jelly world” with large crystal formations.

A surface only recently cooling down from volcanic activity, no vegetation or atmosphere.

One of the “generic” planet descriptions.

A desert planet.

A planet of grasses and plains with no intelligent life.

A snow and ice planet.

All but one of Talitha’s planets were one of these. On Talitha II, however, my scan revealed a castle, “the seat of Avian government.” Oddly, the scan screen was titled “If Love Be True,” which made no sense at the time but later turned out to be related to the mini-quest that I found on the planet. Thus, it seems that if you scan a planet that has such a quest, you know it immediately because you get a title.

I’m not sure that the game needed to be so explicit about each quest.

We found ourselves in an Earthlike castle with guards stationed at just about every intersection. The game repeatedly referred to them as “avian,” so I guess they were bird-like. We never got a close-up portrait. Most ignored us, but a guard at a section of the castle that was clearly an arena told us that the queen had canceled all spectator sports for a few weeks. We would later meet the queen, and her two princess daughters, but let’s pause for a moment to note that these aliens are the first non-human sentient life forms that my characters–perhaps humanity as a whole–have ever encountered in-person. They apparently look like birds and live in castles and have the same type of social structure as a past Earth society. And we’re able to speak their language I guess because of information from the crashed Centauri Device? In any event, my characters managed to jump right in to palace intrigue while in real life they probably would have still be staring open-mouthed at the alien guards. For their part, the aliens didn’t react to us at all despite presumably never having seen humans before.

Exploring the castle.

From dialogue with NPCs, it transpired that Princes Jhenna was being forced to marry a reptilian alien from another sector. She naturally didn’t want to do this and was hoping to escape Talitha II to find her true love, a former palace servant who came from the planet Henresia, also known as Subra II. Meanwhile, some faction was planning a coup and had placed a bomb in a fountain near the wedding site, intending to kill both the queen and the princess. We agreed to help the princess. I don’t think this was a role-playing choice so much as something that you have to do to as part of the main plot. She said that she could escape through a hidden door if we could move a heavy piece of furniture. This required us to find a “levitator,” which was on the other side of a navigation puzzle so annoying that whoever designed it should be hunted down 30 years later and forced to make it through a real-life version.

The princess’s sister, who I guess is also a princess, explains the situation.

The puzzle required the party to wend our way through a roughly 6 x 10 matrix of bushes, only some of which could be walked upon, and some of them had mines planted within them that would damage the party members for about half their health if they were within the one-square explosion radius. Unless I missed something, there was no way to tell which bushes had bombs without setting them off.

You can S)earch for them, which is the subject of its own annoyance. The reference card that comes with the game doesn’t mention “search” as a function when exploring on land; it only mentions “look.” (It does mention “search” later in a master list of commands, but not in the list specifically within the ground movement section.) For most of this session, I didn’t even realize that “search” existed, which means that I missed a lot of loot in various chests and barrels in the palace and probably on the Centauri outpost, too. But even when I reloaded and checked, “search” just caused the bombs to go off.

Thus, through trial and error, I had to make a map of the safe route through the bushes (this reminded me unfavorably of a level in Wizardry IV), only to discover that it still wasn’t safe. You only really control the movement of your lead character. The others do their best to follow, but they often go blundering off in their own directions, get trapped behind closed doors, get lost in mazes, and so forth. Even when I had the right path mapped, I couldn’t necessarily stop my trailing characters from wandering off it. I eventually just had to accept the damage and move on.

My moron party members set off a bomb despite my best efforts.

In due course, we found the levitation device, used it on the bureau, and hustled the princess through the secret door. The passage led to a courtyard where one of her friends waited with a spaceship. As she rushed aboard, she tossed something at us and told us to take it to “He Who Speaks” on Henresia, presumably her lover. The item was a “trinket.”

Man, this would have come in handy in the Bolingbroke household over the last month.

I tried to explore more, but the palace guards all turned hostile at this point, and without any experience gain or any place to sell looted equipment, you’re basically fighting for no reason. We ultimately beamed back to the Ulysses and moved on.

The crew has a Star Trek-like transporter chamber for beaming up and down.

The closest next star was Subra, presumably home of the Subra II that we had to visit to find “He Who Speaks.” We warped to the system and scouted a few planets before we were contacted by a ship. It had the same thuggish-looking alien who’d defeated us in combat before, demanding 3 “units of cargo.” I hadn’t saved in a while and wasn’t confident in my ability to win in combat anyway, so I offloaded 3 units of heavy metals we’d brought from Earth.

Transferring cargo.

The transfer screen above comes up at the warehouse on Earth, while you’re in orbit around planets, and when you’re trading with aliens. You hit + or – to add or subtract cargo from your ship. It’s not quite as fun as taking a lander down to the surface and looking for signs of ore deposits.

The next quest begins.

On Subra II, we hit the next quest, titled “Gift of the Magin.” The planet was far more imaginative and alien than Tanitha, covered with swamps, ferns, mushrooms, tall trees with sprawling root systems, and biting insects. We were attacked several times by some kind of bear-looking beast which left meat behind when we killed it.

Firing at, and killing, a beast.

The intelligent species was a fungus-based biped with no eyes or mouth. To communicate with them, we had to first find a writing tool called an “imastyl” which the aliens could use to write messages in the muck. One of them wanted the meat we’d collected from a beast to allow us to cross a bridge.

The party approaches the Magin on the weird planet of Subra II.

Living in the hollow of a dead tree, we found a woman named “She Whose Steps Are Wise,” otherwise called “The Magin.” She asked us to kill a mutant named “He Who Speaks” who lives on the other side of the river and apparently sets traps for his fellow Subraites. We fell victim to more than one of them.

We found “He Who Speaks” in a cave. He was so-named because of a genetic mutation that allows him to talk with a mouth, and he claimed that the deformity left him persecuted by his people. We declined to kill him (again, I don’t know if we had any other real option). He thanked us and asked us to go rescue Princess Jhenna. When we gave him the trinket instead, he thanked us and suggested that if we took the Magin the Talking Stick that he previously stole, she’d prize it more than his death. Jhenna hadn’t arrived yet, but he seemed confident she’d be along. I’m not sure how an anthropomorphic bird mates with a talking mushroom, but I guess that’s for them to figure out.

I guess maybe this is a real choice, and I could have killed him to solve the quest.

We found the Talking Stick in a cavern nearby. There was some creature called the Bladderclaw–an underground beast whose bladed tentacles came bursting out of holes and attacked us. We tried to fight it for a while, died, reloaded, then remembered we had no reason to keep fighting once we had the stick. (Perhaps there was a cache of better weapons and armor past him or something.) We left Bladderclaw in the cavern and returned the Talking Stick to the Magin. She said that since she had it back, she would be “too busy to deal with the Algiebian issue” and thus appointed us as her envoys to . . . something.

The crew wastes time trying to fight a monster.

The next star was Koo-She. It had only one planet, Koo-She Prime, where a scan promised a quest called “Solitaire.” We beamed down into some structure beneath the surface of the planet. That’s as far as we got. We were blocked at the first door with a message that “only envoys of the President are allowed in the facility.” I guess the Magin isn’t the president because that didn’t do us any good.

I swear to you, Sy Sterling sent us!

The Miaplacidus system also only had one planet, and it was guarded by two ships and an orbital platform. When we communicated with them, they turned out to be staffed by the same species of goon who had previously extorted us for cargo. Here, he just demanded that we leave on pain of death. I decided I was sick of being pushed around and chose to attack.

Space combat in the game is disappointing. Basically, you just maneuver around the enemy, point your nose at him, and shoot. You can even turn on automatic firing if you want the game to shoot for you, which makes it almost just like Starflight. I assume that once I have a ship with cannons and missiles on the wings and such, I’ll have more things to shoot, but nothing really will change. Numbers show the status of your shields and your opponents. I honestly found it easiest to stay in one place and just rotate to face the foes. In the first combat, I destroyed both alien ships but then got killed by the orbital platform. I figured that was close enough to try again, and I achieved victory on my second attempt. My ship was repaired automatically afterwards, requiring no inventory of elements to do so.

Destroying the alien ship. I have no idea why the GIF is so slow in the beginning. I have issues with GIFs.

Miaplacidus Prime turned out to be uninhabited, but the planet had 27 units of “alien metals” to mine. Of course, after jettisoning the heavy metals we’d brought from Earth, we could still only take 5.

The Alphard system had mostly generic planets. One of them, Alphard Six, had 107 units of inert gases available.

Those gases do not look inert.

That left the Algiebian system. It had several generic planets and something called Ishtro Station. As we approached we were contacted by an alien who said that the world is “under the Great Protection Treaty signed by affiliates of the Galactic Enclave,” and that I would have to pay a fee of 6 cargo units before being allowed to contact the world. I tried giving him just 5, but he wouldn’t take it.

What would you say he look like? A horse?

Random notes:

One denizen of Talitha II did recognize us as “humans” and said that he hadn’t seen any of us “since the Concierge locked up the Izor system.” This suggests that humans live in the Izor system and perhaps that its ruler even is one.

There is no consideration of fuel in this game, nor does there seem to be any kind of timer.

The inability to move diagonally is really annoying.

I didn’t talk much about ground combat, but it has so few options that the game might as well have offered autocombat.

I got stuck in He Who Speaks’s cave for a while because although there was an obvious ladder, apparently the command needed to climb it was “search.” The game has a lot of weird interface quirks like that.

Since my ship is only capable of carrying 5 units of cargo, I leave you heading back to Earth to either build a new space ship or remove my only weapon from my current one to make more space.

My suspicion is that I’ll find some quest that leads me to the first artifact and that the other seven systems will have other batches of extremely linear, named, interrelated quests. But with no open exploration and no good RPG mechanics (there’s no character development and combat tactics are minimal), everything is going to hinge on the quality of the stories that make up those quests, and I find their quality mixed so far.

Time so far: 8 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/planets-edge-one-line-in-three-dimensions/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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2slowgoers · 5 years ago

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back, 2 years later

dear W,

wow, what a spontaneous decision and day that we decided to come back to this tumblr. i had basically given up before because i didn’t remember the log in information, but realized it was surprisingly easy to figure it all out once i did some digging. it just required me to do some digging, and i managed to do it at my desk this morning at work, lol! anyways, as mentioned earlier, i’ll spend this post writing about some reflections of the past two years, but first i’d like to start with my thoughts from today and what i want to share with you.

i originally wanted to go to ymca after work, i usually cycle on wednesday nights (like this would have only been the 3rd wednesday since i joined the ymca in september). i remember a few weeks ago we had this very very very old black man as a sub teacher, he must have been in his 80s. i could barely understand him because his voice was very hoarse and not clear, cuz he was old, but boy were his legs FIT and boy, could he CYCLE. but i had to poop way too bad today by 6pm because jetlag, and i had 1 cup of coffee (to combat jetlag), so I decided to walk home. the walk home was very meditative. i listened to some korean ballads. i love walking lake merritt as my commute, i actually recognize the dogs and humans now! and notice the many birds in the dirty water and the sky is so pretty. there are a lot of runners. and a lot of dogs, the dogs make my day. i love observing the similarities of the dogs with their owners.

work has been relaxing so far because i have learned not to take it too seriously. i appreciate my coworkers because many of them are like me, and are chill and good human beings. though there are the few narcissistic people, ugh. but i like taking the slow pace i do at work and still perform pretty well, and be a team member people appreciate having around. i shadowed an in person interview today of this white guy who went to uchicago and he had a patagonia vest and was bad at verbal communication. it was a bad interview, i feel bad for him, because he seems so smart. i realized i wanted to like him so bad, but just couldn’t? then i remembered how hard it is to interview and how stressful it was. i can’t believe we are now at a point in our careers where we are interviewing others haha.

okay, that’s enough tangents.

reading our posts from 2 years ago was very “awwwww, my heart”. it sounded like we both had our anxieties. you were getting impatient at home and frustrated with family, i sounded like i had a HORRIBLE time at my internship ha and was so anxious about jobs. i’m so happy to see the progress we have made since then. a lot has changed, but a lot also hasn’t. my dreams/bucket list goals from back then have not changed :) and i still haven’t gotten my permit yet, but I have my DMV written test scheduled for THIS SATURDAY!! Yay! we have hit some of our goals, like the fact that you’re currently enrolled in painting class! anyways, i think it is quite funny that my goals have not changed much. blogging is still a #1 goal of mine. and though i’ve been quiet about it in general, i have been thinking and planning and strategizing a LOT. and i have some things in the plans, that i am not quite ready to reveal to the world yet. in the past i revealed things too quick and that made me struggle, so this time i am going to prepare behind the scenes a bit before sharing. i will let you know once i feel a bit more confident/comfortable.

speaking of, i have been studying a lot of the people i follow on social media and their ages and see that people get comfortable and confident in their creations the older they get, like late twenties. ive been finding that pretty reassuring and inspiring, knowing that we will settle into ourselves the older we get. tbh i feel like the 3 years after college is like freshman year for adulthood all over again, and afterwards, we go through the same kind of development as we did in college, and slowly mature and know ourselves better. having turned 25, i just hope that this year will be that for me. i mean the fact that i started this year off already with a broken friendship with T has already helped me better realize what i want in my life anyway.

i know it’s easy for me to look back and feel like i’m still a failure. but i try to remember that each of the past years, full of struggles and challenges as they were, there was also a lot of growth. i appreciate you being there for me all this time. it’s also interesting how time seems to both slow down and speed up, speed up as in time passes faster but less change occurs. i notice that in my older roommates that 1 year is not a lot of time and waiting for things to happen in 1-2 years is not a lot compared to 1-2 years at this point in our lives, so much change can happen. i am hoping for my 25th year to be one where i can finally speak up about myself, my thoughts, openly to the public and not feel like i have to repress any part of myself. which i have been doing for so long. slowly, but surely. 23 was a year of intense transitions, 24 was a year of more minor but lots of transitions, but i ultimately got to where i wanted to be. so that is reassuring.

(jetlag is hitting me, so apologies if my writing is incoherent)

as for future plans, and as i mentioned over text, the trip has helped me realize how much i missed learning and being in a school environment and just having readings and getting to discuss with classmates. and you know, be in this space where people care about the same things and talk about it? that’s what i really enjoyed about the decolonization panel in berlin, it was a space for people to talk, think, and just discuss for the sake of discussing. not a common opportunity for people of color in general. we could let our imaginations and questions wander and share a space. which is why i was bothered when my thoughts on the panel were dismissed and none of the actual discussion was appreciated or properly evaluated. i miss those spaces. i also envy S’s life sometimes, because he gets to work for a mission and cause that all his coworkers share and there is this camaraderie in researching global infectious diseases. it’s just a beautiful thing to observe and something i want to have for at least a couple of years. besides grad school, i want to spend my gap year traveling asia in more depth. and ideally over land, without much flying. there is so much i want to see and learn and document. i want to finally be able to spend some time on my interests like more environmental/naturey things (volunteering) or trekking & camping in mountains...etc and studying resources and how resources are used in the world. i have so many questions and so many curiosities.

sometimes i get overwhelmed by all my nichey interests and struggle to articulate them, then i start getting worried how i will be able to fit all my nichey interests into my life and balance it all. i guess the only way to know is to start doing these things and see where it goes. and i am working on it! i swear! it’s all just happening silently or i am not promoting what i’m doing very much, because a lot of it is so personal. S and I had a brief tough talk about this topic - he wanted to see me take more action and when i said i was, he didn’t really believe me because i never talk about it, and i told him i intentionally don’t talk about some of the things i think about or are working on because they are just so personal. i hope i can relax more in time with sharing the work i am putting into myself and trying to create.

anyhoo, i’m very happy we are getting back into writing and sharing with each other (not like we don’t already do it). i know this post was a lot of “I” and focused on myself. please do know that i don’t expect you to write in response to the things i write. i would love to see a post written by you, also centered on you :)

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iirriiss- · 7 years ago

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Finding a new identity

Have you ever loved someone so deep that, that person literally became part of who you were? Like, it literally felt like you were both one? One identify for two people? That’s definitely one of the best feelings in the world. The bond is even stronger when children are involved.

Maybe you feel like this with your significant right now, or maybe, you experienced it at one time in your life like me. Or maybe some other unique situation. I’m here to tell my story of how I lost my identity and literally who I was when my ex left me.

My ex and I were together for almost 7 years. We had an amazing son together, who’s now 5! I met him when I was 18. He was the best thing that had ever happened to me! At that time, I had just graduated so I wasn’t looking for anyone. I was literally doing, me. They are right when they say that love comes when you’re not looking for anything or anyone. He was different than any other guy I had dated. I played hard to get because it literally felt too good to be true! Anyways, I fell in the trap and about 8 months later, I found I was pregnant. Fast forward, we moved in together. Just like any relationship, we had our ups and downs. We weren’t a perfect couple! I’ve never met a perfect couple. Some couples have been through very difficult situations! We all know that “one couple.” No one is perfect, so I’m not here to point fingers and play the blame game or say that I was perfect throughout the relationship. Because I’m not perfect. We had arguments here and there. Some crazy ones if you ask me! But who cares? We had more good times than bad times in my opinion. I was happy with my little family!

Around the first week in January, my ex became very distant. He would spend countless hours on his phone and in his car. I asked him a few times what was wrong and he would say nothing. I just knew something wasn’t right. One time, he went out to eat, with his mom, and when they both came, he sat on the opposite couch as me. He had his head down the whole time and I kept starring at him. He kept avoiding eye contact. I knew he had told her something I didn’t know about. That gut feeling kept coming back. One morning, I had had enough and I confronted him. It was about 2 weeks before our sons bday party. That morning, I told him that I felt like something was wrong. He told me there was nothing wrong and that I was insecure. We argued and I started crying. I felt useless. I was on the floor and he was on the bed. He raised his voice and told me he didn’t love me. In that moment, I became paralyzed. A million questions arised in my head. What did I do wrong? What’s wrong with me? I kept blaming myself. I started hating myself. That’s when I lost who I was. Who I’d become. Who I was molded into. I tried to fix whatever was wrong with me, which I didn’t know what, in order to save our relationship. I tried fixing everything, which was basically nothing, to please him. I became very lost in myself. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I became a stranger to myself. Who was I? Day after day, tear after tear passed by. I was scared of the days. Another day ment another day I had to face. Days and nights became my biggest fear. Time became a stressor. I became my worst enemy. I had to start a new life.

I developed anxiety, stress and depression all in one. I would cry day and night and it would come at random times. Sometimes, due to the anxiety, the pain in my chest would cause me to drop to the floor. I lost weight and I was sick all the time. I became bipolar with myself! My world became dark! In the midst of it all, the only person I was holding onto was God. I would picture myself holding onto His arms. Crying at His knees. Hugging Him. He was the only one that was and still is, there for me. My faith became strong. That’s when I heard Him tell me, “seek me!” Thankfully, everyone around me didn’t give up on me. Everyone kept pushing me. I would call who ever popped on my phone first to just cry and talk. I felt dumb, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone! That’s when I knew I needed to change and become a new identity. I wasn’t going to carry all this guilt for the rest of my life. I had my son looking up to me! I had to learn to love myself again.

Days became better than others. Those little voices in my head became to lessen. I eventually started going to church, to recover with the help of God. To become restored. To have my heart healed again. The Christian music station became my favorite! My sons babysitter would always hug me and tell me that she was always praying for us. She always brought the right messages to me at the perfect moments! I starting picking myself up little by little and I started enjoying life! I starting realizing that with God next to me, everything was better. Thanks to God, I had my first vacation with my son and my friend! If it wasn’t for God, I’d be stuck in the past. I started smiling again.

Fast forward, 7 months later, and here I am! I still cry, don’t get me wrong. Every once in a while, I get anxiety attacks. There’s a few things in my life Im not happy about. Being a single mom is not easy! One spoiled kid for one person becomes a daily challenge! But it’s also a great motivator! I want to set a great example for my son! I want him to look up to me! I want him to hug me someday and thank me for everything I’ve done! My son is my motivation! I just think to myself of all the wonderful things God has helped me out in and how far I’ve come! I know he has more things stored for me and Damian! He sees everything! He’s held every tear Ive cried! I’ve learned that there’s a thin line between good and evil. God is all good. Evil is bad. When evil gets his way, that’s when we have to break the chain and walk with Faith. God goes before us!

I can’t say that I’m 100% content with myself. I know this is just the beginning! Life will always be a journey! I’m finally taking care of myself and I’m working really hard to become a better version of myself! I’ve become so motivated and blessed that I even got promoted at work! I see a bright future right there! My next move is to buy a house for me and my son! I know God will bring us into a home very soon! He knows I hate living with my parents! But for now, this is where I need to be in this point in life! I’m more comfortable with me and I don’t hate myself the same way I used to. Like everyone, I have insecurities. I can stay that I'm beautiful! My son tells me I’m beautiful too! I have a huge heart and I’m a warrior! How I said before, I don’t wish whatever I went through on anyone. I pray every night that God can help whoever is on the edge, to help them! I’m still seeking God! I still pray. I’m excited for my future!!!

I wrote this because I know that it can help someone out. You’re not alone! As many times and people give you advice, it sometimes doesn’t make sense. But never ever give up!!!! Seek God and I promise you that things will get better!!! I still vent out to my friends sometimes, but we all need to do that! We all need the right people to push us. Don’t let everyone in on your life. Keep certain people at a safe distance. Keep certain things to yourself. We only have one life. Today maybe our last! As dark as the days may get, look up to the sky and be thankful that you’re breathing. I’m still seeking who I really am. Haven’t found my identity yet, but i am happier! I will keep writing to detail my journey with life and God.

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