#like there is NOTHING about this game except they reveal trailer

[calicobel]

Honestly, at this point legends za feels like a fever dream

[stervrucht]

[AO3]

David Bowie plays on the radio and Steve drums his fingers along the steering wheel of his car as he contemplates. He is truly too good for this world. Now he is running errands for Dustin like some common soccer mom. The kid only had to give him one pout – one! – and Steve felt all his resistance crumbling. So, there he is on a Friday evening, seated in his still-running car in a Hawkin’s trailer park.

He stops his car in front of Eddie’s trailer and listens to the music as he gathers the willpower to leave the car.

Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace, Bowie sings on the radio. 

How fitting

Outside, dusk is setting in and the world colors purple. Closing up Family Video had taken longer than he anticipated due to a difficult customer who couldn’t decide between The Thing and The Nightmare on Elm Street and had asked Steve extensive questions to make up his mind. 

Steve used to be fine with horror movies, but given recent developments (give or take his life the past few years), he isn’t into horror anymore. Out of the two, The Thing is probably the worst offender. Those crazy fleshy monsters hit a bit too close to home. Although, Freddie Krueger does have some vague Vecna vibes to him.

Steve is so lost in thought he doesn't notice the door of the trailer open until Eddie knocks on his window with his knuckle. With a jolt, Steve turns to roll his car window down. Once it is fully open, Eddie leans forward, his arms resting on the car.

“Sup Harrington.” Eddie’s hair falls forward and the low-cut tank top reveals his chest, framed by the silver chain of a guitar-pick necklace. 

Shaved, Steve notes.  Then, realizing he is staring, he tears his eyes away, coming face to face with Eddie Munson who gives him an amused look.

“Oh uh, right” – Steve coughs nervously – “Dustin asked me to give you this…” he unbuckles his seatbelt and leans over to the passenger seat where he grabs the cardboard box of some nerdy game.

“Here–” He hands the box to Eddie’s outstretched hands.

“Hell yeah, Talisman. Took Henderson long enough.” Eddie pushes himself away from the car and inspects the box for a moment. When he turns back to Steve, his eyes move towards the car radio.

“I didn’t take you for a Bowie fan.”

“Oh, I’m not really … Robin must have left it in. It’s … alright, I suppose.” 

“And what type of music does Steve find more than alright?” 

Eddie flashes him a cheeky smile and Steve finds himself somewhat intimidated. Whatever his answer, someone like Eddie will probably find it lame. Steve isn’t all that passionate about music anyway and mostly listens to whatever is on the radio.

“Maybe Queen, The Bee Gees…” he lists in no particular order.

Eddie tuts. “Such a proper boy.”

Although he expects it, Steve still winces.

“I should introduce you to some real music,” Eddie says thoughtfully, then – “Wanna come in?”

Steve takes a moment to think. His parents are out, so it isn’t like he’s expected at home. He has nothing to do tonight except watch some movies (perks of the job). Although the prospect of hanging out with Eddie doesn’t thrill him, it might be the more interesting option.

“Sure,” Steve turns his car off, rolls the window back up and opens the car door. Eddie takes a step back, giving Steve some room to get out. 

Eddie’s eyes move to his chest and Steve realizes he is still wearing the stupid Family Video vest. He quickly takes it off, crumples it and unceremoniously throws it in his car before shutting the door again. With a quick turn of his key, the car is locked.

Steve follows Eddie towards the trailer. It is a warm summer’s night and the shadows of the trees grow long under the purple sky. The trailer park is surrounded by ample woods and fields from which the sound of crickets flares up.

“You coming?” Eddie waits for him at the door. Steve doesn’t realize he stopped moving and quickly makes his way to where Eddie is standing.

“After you, King Steve,” Eddie says, holding open the door with a dramatic bow.

Damn, Eddie is kind of annoying, isn’t he? No wonder Dustin gets on so well with him. Two peas in a pod. Steve lets out an unamused scoff.

Once inside, Steve stands in the middle of the…living room? Kitchen? He isn’t sure what to call such multifunctional rooms. He crosses his arms and shifts his weight from one leg to the other as he waits for Eddie to put the game away.

The main room is crowded and messy. It is the complete opposite of his parents’ living room, which is kept meticulously clean and organized – with the help of their cleaning lady of course. The coffee table is stained with water circles from mugs and the like. Something unthinkable to Steve. If he ever puts a glass down without a coaster, he will face his mother’s wrath.

“Beer?” Eddie calls from the kitchen. He already turned his back to him to make his way to the under-table fridge.

“Sure.” 

Steve is getting sick of standing around and decides to move to the small beige sofa. It is littered with clothes and after a moment of hesitation, he shoves them aside and sits down.

“You’re fucking tense,” Eddie says as he hands Steve a can of beer. He looks down at the pile of clothes and without hesitation grabs them and throws them in a different corner of the room. Then he lets himself fall onto the sofa next to Steve, which objects with a loud creak.

The sofa really is quite small and granted, a bigger one probably wouldn’t fit. The middle of it sagged considerably too, dragging its occupants to the center.

Steve feels the warmth of Eddie’s jeans-clad legs against his own. They are probably sitting a bit too close and Steve shifts uncomfortably in his seat. 

The can lets out an audible hiss as Eddie opens it and takes a quick sip from his beer. Then, he puts it down on the table and jumps up again.

“Fuck, I was gonna play you some music.” He hurries past the kitchen into a separate room. 

Steve opens his own can – cheap store-brand beer – and takes a nervous gulp as he waits for Eddie to return.

He is starting to reconsider his choices this evening. Perhaps he should just have watched Back to the Future again. Instead, he is in the trailer of some guy he kinda-sorta knows because they have shared custody of some annoying kid (one of Steve’s best friends).

“Oh yes, this will be good.” Eddie re-emerges cradling a few cassettes in his arms like he is holding a baby. He squats in front of the coffee table and releases the collection of plastic cases on top of it. Steve eyes the contents, but he recognises none of it. Then he looks over at Eddie – the flesh of his knee peeks through the hole of his jeans and Steve wonders if Eddie made it himself or if it had naturally torn by use. 

Eddie shifts through the cassettes with ring-clad fingers, picking a few up and turning them around to look at the back of the plastic cases.

“Let’s start with Rainbow,” he mumbles to himself, grabbing the cassette (a hand holding a rainbow over mountains on its front). He walks over to a small side table next to the front door where an old-school cassette player stands.

With a loud click, the front of the cassette player opens and Eddie puts the cassette in and closes it again. Immediately, music starts playing.

“Fuck, hold on.”

Eddie rushes over to the kitchen, rummaging through some drawers until he finds what he is looking for.

Victoriously, he holds up a pencil to Steve and clicks his tongue. Steve takes another gulp of his beer as he watches Eddie move through the trailer with a skip in his step. He is actually excited to let Steve hear his music. Steve feels strangely flattered and he lets himself fall back on the sofa. 

The music stops and Eddie takes the cassette out. Using the back of the pencil, he rewinds the tape. Steve looks at Eddie’s hands as he works. The rings are kinda cool. Maybe he should let Robin pick out a ring for him too. Although perhaps not with skulls and crosses like Eddie wears. Maybe something more simple, like a signet ring or something.

Steve is pulled from his thoughts when he hears the cassette player click shut again. 

“Your player doesn’t rewind?” Steve asks.

“Steve” – Eddie puts the pencil behind his ear and turns to look at him – “I live in a trailer…”

Steve feels heat rise to his cheeks. 

Shit, sometimes he forgets his parents are very well off and some things are considered luxuries instead of the default. He made the same mistake with Robin too – multiple times – but it was hard to prevent. He thinks back on his car – not particularly expensive, but also not as beat-up as Jonathan’s. Does Eddie think he is some spoiled rich boy?

“Right, sorry.” Steve takes another mouthful of beer. Eddie turns around again to put the cassette in the cassette player. 

A song begins to play, the sound reminds Steve of something alien – not really like music at all. Once the drums kicks in Eddie begins to bob his head on the beat, his hands hitting an invisible drum. He dances across the room, drumming his invisible drumsticks along the wall before falling back onto the sofa, stringing his fingers as if playing a guitar.

“Shit, I should really learn this on the guitar.” He leans forward to grab his can of beer. Condensation forms on the outside and when he picks it up, a wet circle is left on the table.

Eddie kicks his feet up, white sneakers hitting the wood of the coffee table and the cassettes rattle. He takes a deep swig of his beer and audibly sighs. 

Steve leans forward, arms resting on his thighs and can between his knees. Once the music actually began, it wasn’t too bad. He didn’t understand the long intros though, and preferred it if music would just start.

“So, what do you think?” Eddie asks.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad” – Eddie scoffs – “You, my friend, have not been exposed to nearly enough good music.”

Steve chuckles. “I thought Bowie was pretty acceptable by –” he looks Eddie up and down demonstratively, “ – your kind.”

“My kind, huh?” a smile plays at the corners of Eddie’s lips. “And what would that be, exactly?” 

Well, shit. Steve drove himself straight into possible-insult town. Eddie eyes him curiously, one elbow resting on the sofa’s backrest and his hands holding his can in a way Steve could only describe as cool. 

“Well, you know…” he trails off.

“I know…?”

“Eh, metalheads, I guess?”

“Ziggy Stardust isn’t metal, you know that right?”

Steve sighs exasperatedly. “I know, ugh. I mean he’s–”

“Weird?” Eddie finishes.

Steve takes another gulp of beer, desperate to compose himself. “Yeah,” he answers lamely.

“I suppose he’s pretty weird, huh?” Eddie eyes the ceiling of the trailer while taking a lazy sip from his beer. “Did you know he used to be gay?”

Steve looks to Eddie, who is still eying the ceiling, head lying back against the sofa’s backrest. 

“Used to be?” If Steve is to believe Robin, there is no ‘used to be ’ when it comes to being gay. You either are or you aren’t. Now he thinks about it, Bowie seems somewhat queer with his tight suits and styled hair, but that is what girls dig, isn't it? He has heard countless girls swoon over men just like that.

“You never had a gay phase, Harrington?” 

Steve nearly drops his can.

“Gay….phase?”

“You know, live a little, try some shit, see what sticks –”

“I can’t say I have,” Steve mumbles, his eyes now firmly fixed on the can in his hands. He plays nervously with the lip, pulling it in tandem with the music before taking another sip.

“With a pretty face like yours, you might actually get some good ones.”

Steve chokes on his beer. Actually chokes, and he hits his chest with a fist to get himself to breathe again.

“W-what?”

“How can you know what you like when you never tried it?” Eddie sits up straight, pulling one leg to his chest as he turns to Steve. His dark eyes seem like a bottomless lake and Steve feels small under his gaze.

“H-have you?” Steve stutters and it is utterly embarrassing. Why is he so rattled by some stupid revelation? 

Wait, did Eddie just call him pretty?

Eddie smirks at him like they are sharing in a secret, and perhaps they are.

“Fuck yes, if someone tells me not to do something you can bet your ass I will do it. Besides, humans are humans, big fucking deal.” 

“So – was it a phase? In your case?” Steve asks carefully. He isn’t really sure why he asks. Maybe it is part curiosity. He never seriously considered relationships with men. Some are nice enough to look at, sure, but marriage, a house, children – that is only meant for a man and a woman right? A world in which someone just casually tries homosexuality seems…foreign. 

“Hm, I guess so … Wow, don’t look at me like that Harrington. Are you disappointed?”

“W-what, no!” Steve really doesn’t know why he is getting so flustered. He suddenly feels self-conscious under Eddie’s piercing eyes and runs a hand through his hair – a nervous habit.

“Fuck, you are – well, alright, maybe for you I can arrange an encore.”

Before Steve has time to respond, Eddie pushes himself upright and leans one knee on the sofa between Steve’s legs. He feels the cold metal of Eddie’s rings under his chin as he lays a sprawled hand on his throat and tilts his head. 

Steve freezes, air caught in his chest as Eddie leans over his face, his breath hot on his lips. Steve’s right hand uselessly holds on to the near-empty can – afraid to spill it – while his left hand digs into the sofa next to his thighs. Then, Eddie leans down, capturing his lips with practiced ease. Steve feels his long hair tickle his cheeks and the scruff of a five-o-clock shadow grace his chin. 

Eddie’s lips move over his, slightly chapped and rough in a way that couldn’t possibly be a girl. Without meaning to, Steve feels his own lips move against Eddie’s. 

Well, now he couldn't pretend it was just something happening to him. He had graduated to an active participant. 

Kissing Eddie Munson. Eddie freaking Munson.  

Robin was going to have a field day.

Perhaps the most surprising part is how he doesn’t hate it. He likes the feeling of stubble on his chin, the hard corners of Eddie’s jaw, the way Eddie pushes him back onto the sofa and he wills Steve’s mouth open with a sweep of a thumb and the cold metal of rings on his face. A hot tongue explores his mouth, stroking it against Steve’s in a way that makes him gasp.

Steve has never experienced anything like it. Usually with the girls he dated, he took the lead. Kisses were usually shy and timid. Eddie is completely different. He knows what he wants and he isn’t afraid to get it. Steve feels something stir in him as he presses back.

Eddie bites his bottom lip, taking it between his lips, and breaks away from him. Steve feels breathless and blinks up at Eddie. His hand reaches over to Steve’s right side, gently taking the can from his hand and setting it away on the coffee table. He turns back, eyes dark and Steve wills his mouth close as he regards him. 

Was he gay? Shit, he doesn’t really want to think about it now. Humans are humans was what Eddie had said right?

Steve reaches out, sliding his hands behind Eddie’s neck, and pulls him back. Eddie moves himself into a more comfortable position, placing a knee on either side of Steve’s thighs and straddling him. Eddie’s hands reach for Steve’s temples, threading themselves through Steve’s hair – rings catch on the strands but Steve doesn’t mind the painful sting as it pulls. He just wants to get Eddie’s lips back on his – and so he does.

Their lips meet, fiery and hot. Open-mouthed Steve explores every corner of Eddie. He lowers his hands to Eddie’s back, playing on the edge of his tanktop and the hot skin underneath. If it works for girls, surely it works for guys too right?

He runs his hands up the side of Eddie’s chest, a thumb over a nipple, and Eddie gasps into his mouth. Steve feels heat settle in his crotch and he is glad he chose to wear jeans made of thick fabric rather than thin trousers. Steve’s hands move over Eddie’s chest, feeling the smooth muscle of it and the roughness of regrowing chest hair.

Eddie’s fingers reach the hair on the back of Steve’s head and yank it back, exposing Steve’s throat. He lets out a surprised yelp when he feels Eddie’s mouth latch to the delicate bow of his neck and suck. 

Steve is learning a lot about himself in the span of less than an hour. The way Eddie tugs his hair, and has his way with him is sending a pleasant jolt straight to his cock.  And Steve can’t help but moan under the ministrations of Eddie’s mouth as he sucks and bites. 

“Y-you’re gonna leave a mark,” Steve breathes.

“That’s the plan,” Eddie mouths against his neck. Then, he licks his way up into Steve’s mouth again.

Shit, he is kinda into this. Steve isn’t sure how he could ever go back to girls now he knows what it feels like to be touched by calloused fingers and kissed with such force. 

Eddie’s hand leaves his hair and travels down to the rim of his jeans, pulling out his shirt in the process. Steve feels the ghost of fingers running along its edge and the muscles in his stomach tense pleasantly in response.

Eddie breaks away from him, his breath ghosting over his lips as he searches Steve’s eyes. 

“You wanna take this further?” Eddie asks, his eyes flitting over Steve’s face.

Steve feels drunk, even though half a can of beer isn’t nearly enough to even get him close to being buzzed. He is also turned on. Ridiculously so. But fuck, what does taking it further even mean in this context. Steve feels like a virgin all over again and shifts uncomfortably in his seat, trying to hide his arousal from Eddie.

Not that they are not actively engaged anymore, anxiety hits Steve like a bag of bricks.

“Uhh…” is all Steve manages to utter.

Eddie throws himself off Steve’s lap onto the empty spot next to him on the sofa. He puts his feet on the table again, hands behind his head.

“You’re right, maybe that’s enough for tonight.” 

It doesn’t escape Steve that Eddie’s jeans look a little tighter than usual.

They sit in silence for a moment, only the voice of Rainbow’s singer cutting through the tension. 

“I thought you said it was a phase,” Steve asks after he finally gets his breathing under control.

“Oh right, I should have clarified” – Eddie grins up at the ceiling – “The gay thing was a phase. I figured I was into both.”

Both? Wasn’t that something only hippies preached with their free love? Somewhere, Steve feels a wave of relief washes over him. He never seriously considered someone could like both. He has some serious soul-searching to do once he gets home.

“Huh,” is all Steve replies. Eddie’s eyebrow quirks in interest as he side-eyes Steve.

“I, uh…probably should get going.” Steve puts his hands on his thighs and pushes himself up. Eddie doesn’t move from his position, but his eyes follow him with interest.

“If you’re ever in the mood for a sequel, you know where to find me.” 

Steve nods, because what else can you do in reply to such a comment? He is baffled at the ease with which the words escape Eddie. There is no shame or self-doubt.

As he lays his hand on the door handle, Steve looks back one final time. Eddie’s feet are bouncing in tandem with the beat of the drums and his eyes are closed. He looks so absolutely unshaken by their encounter that Steve feels almost jealous.

Steve is anything but unshaken.

“See you around,” he offers.

“See you, Harrington,” Eddie’s voice is playful, even though he doesn’t move.

When Steve is safe and sound in the driver’s seat of his car, he leans his head against the steering wheel and stays there for a moment. 

What the hell just happened?

He turns his mirror to his neck and traces the hickey that Eddie left on his throat with a finger. He would have to ask Robin for some make-up to cover that up. 

She is going to love this story.

Steve sighs and pushes the mirror back into its original position. When he starts the car, Bowie continues to sing like nothing happened.

Yes, he was alright, his song went on forever, Bowie sings and Steve groans as he hits the gas.

***

It is Saturday morning when Steve walks up to the Buckley residence. He passes the garden fence and walks around the house to the backdoor.

Hawkins was struck by the beginning of a heatwave and at this point, the temperature was bearable as long as one didn't move too much. The perfect day for a visit to the pool, but too hot for videos. 

Which is why Steve is sure today won’t be too busy at Family Video. Fine by him. 

The quiet days he works with Robin are always his favorite. Sometimes Henderson comes over – either with his friends or alone – and they mess around with the cardboard cut-outs or watch a movie on the little TV screen hanging from the ceiling. Steve has zero regrets about missing out on college. Everything he loves is right here in Hawkins.

He pulls at the red handkerchief around his neck. It is against company policy to wear scarves (and probably too hot too) but Steve needs something to cover up the damage of his little adventure with Eddie. At least, until he gets his hands on some skin paint stuff – or whatever girls call that type of make-up.

He enters through the backdoor straight into the kitchen, where he finds Robin’s mother clearing the table of breakfast plates. The room smells faintly like toast.

“Morning, Ms. Buckley!” he calls, already moving towards the hallway. Steve hears her respond, but he's halfway up the stairs by then.

“Rob!”

“Just a second!” Her voice is muffled. She opens her door, fixing an earring. Her eyes flick to his scarf before meeting his gaze.

“Geez, you’re early.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve walks straight past her and throws himself on her unmade bed.  Robin pays him no mind and she walks over to her dresser again. From his spot on the bed, Steve can see Robin's face reflected in the mirror as she fusses with her hair. When she reaches for a pouch, Steve is suddenly reminded of why he is early to begin with. 

“Do you have that face-stuff?” he asks as he sees Robin pull a pencil from the pouch.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific than ‘face stuff’.”

“You know, the skin-colored goo.” Steve makes motions over his face as if he’s painting.

“Concealer?” Robin’s mouth is open in concentration as she lines her waterline with black.

“That’s it!” Steve throws himself off the bed and walks over to Robin.

“Sure, I’ve got some,” Robin puts down her pencil and rummages through the pouch again. She pulls out a small beige bottle and holds it up for Steve. He reaches for it, but Robin pulls away.

“Does this have anything to do with your avant-garde fashion statement today?” She looks at his scarf again.

Steve laughs sheepishly and pulls his scarf aside. Robin’s eyes widen at the dark hickey on his neck.

“Jesus, Steve! It’s massive” – she leans in closer – “Was it Rebecca? Never thought she’d be the type...” Robin reaches for his neck but Steve pulls away.

“What? No!” – Steve lets go of the scarf – “I stopped seeing her like five weeks ago. Get with the times, Rob.”

“Well, sorry I can’t keep up with your busy love life.” Robin turns back to the mirror. She definitely isn’t sorry and Steve wouldn’t exactly call the origin of the hickey ‘love’. A lapse of judgment, maybe, or something uniquely in the corner of Eddie ���the freak’ Munson. 

“Can I get the stuff now?”

“Fine,” she says and she pushes the bottle in his hands.

***

Outside the car, the world passes in a flash of yellow fields. The windows are down and the scent of drying grass fills the air. Steve turns the music up to drown out the thundering sound of the wind as it enters the car and drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he uselessly mouths along with the music. He doesn’t know the lyrics, but that can’t stop him. The fact it annoys Robin when he does so makes it even more fun in his opinion.

“You’re in a good mood,” Robin remarks while she digs through her bag.

“It’s a beautiful day and I’m working with my best friend,” Steve chirps.

“Uhuh, right,” she replies skeptically. She puts her bag back between her legs on the car floor and fiddles with something in her hands.

Steve’s eyes are focused on the road before him when the music suddenly stops.

“Hey! I was listening to that!”

“I thought you said Bowie was ‘overrated trash’” Robin says while opening the case to another cassette. 

“I didn’t,”

“You so did, and you called his pants too tight,”

“Whatever, driver decides,” 

Robin sighs and pushes the cassette back in. “When I get my license, it will be Blondie all day every day. You better prepare yourself, dingus!”

Steve hums in satisfaction as the music comes back on. Maybe he found it somewhat grating in the beginning, but it was growing on him now. That, of course, had nothing to do with Eddie Munson.

“Did you know he used to be gay?” Steve suddenly says.

“Bisexual, Steve, and of course I know that. The question is, why do you?” From his periphery, he can see Robin staring at him.

“I just heard it somewhere,”

“Somewhere…” Robin repeated. She leans over to put the other cassette back in her bag. 

Steve is relieved when he sees Family Video come into view. It’s not like Robin will forget their conversation, she is far too smart for that. And he really does plan on telling her about what happened yesterday, he just has to find the right moment. Hell, maybe it wouldn’t even be today. 

Steve pulls into the parking space and hops out of the car. He locks his door and throws the keys over the car to Robin. She fumbles in her attempt to catch it and Steve is once again reminded that Robin is a band dweeb and not an athlete.

“Let’s open this baby up,” he says as he tosses the store keys into the air and catches them overhand.

“You’re such a show-off” – she walks past Steve into the store and continues without looking back – “For your information, there are no girls around…”

“Yet,” Steve finishes and Robin groans in response.

There wouldn’t be any girls around for most of the day as it turned out. 

As Steve expected, it was a slow day. The only people who visited were those who probably wouldn’t be found dead sunbathing, nerds who never stepped outside (except to rent a video, apparently), and old people looking for something nice to watch with their grandkids. 

Somewhere between the shelves, Robin is putting returned VHS tapes into their rightful place. Meanwhile, Steve sorts through new arrivals and adds them to the computer system. In the back of the shop,  a guy has been staring at some science fiction movies for probably half an hour by now. Category basement nerd, Steve decides.

They had been working in relative solitude. Steve looks up as he hears the bell signal someone’s entrance. He is greeted with a curly head of hair.

“Henderson!” Steve stands up and throws himself over the counter. The secret handshake is a must and cannot be skipped. 

Shake, box, Star Wars sword thing, guts.

Dustin smiles wildly at him. 

Just as Steve is spilling his guts, the bell chimes again. He looks up, readying himself to apologize to the poor customer he has no doubt scared off with his wild gestures when he comes face to face with dark bottomless eyes.

“Munson,” Steve is probably gawking, at least a little and Eddie looks amused at the scene in front of him.

Dustin, oblivious to it all, immediately starts talking. 

“I was just about to grab my bike when I ran into Eddie. He offered me a ride in his van. Mom’s at the pool today, says it’s too hot to stay indoors; she practically kicked me out of the house,”

“Right,” Steve wasn’t even looking at Dustin as he yapped on. He somehow couldn’t tear his eyes away from Eddie’s. It was strange seeing him in daylight now. The darkness of dusk had made their whole interaction the night prior seem like a dream. Now, face to face with Eddie, Steve was hit by the reality of what had transpired. He felt profoundly awkward.

“ – You should totally get a van, Steve!” Dustin’s voice pulls Steve from his thoughts and he tears his eyes away.

“Y-yeah, probably not. I like my car,” he composed himself, deciding to focus his attention on Dustin rather than Eddie.

“Hey Dustin”  – Robin walks from behind the shelves, carrying a now-empty crate. Her eyes land on Eddie with a hint of surprise – “Hey Eddie,”

“Got anything good yet?” Dustin asks Robin eagerly.

“You’re in luck–” Robin says as she puts the crate away, “We just added The Dark Crystal to our collection,”

“Sweet!” He hears Dustin call when Robin leads him away to one of the shelves in the back.

Steve is left alone with Eddie and doesn’t know how to compose himself. A part of him feels nervous under Eddie’s dark gaze. 

Eddie walks over to the counter and leans against it.

“Cool gig,” Eddie says as he looks around the store. “Do you ever get to keep the cardboard cut-outs?” Eddie points his finger at a life-size cut-out of Indiana Jones that stands proudly at the front of the store. Steve’s eyes involuntary drift back to his fingers again and he really ought to stop that. Sooner or later, Eddie will catch him staring.

“I don’t, but Keith does sometimes,” 

“Sweet,”

A silence falls between them and Eddie kicks his feet. The guy in the back still hasn’t made up his mind and a little distance away Dustin is eagerly explaining something about the ‘Gelflings’ to Robin.

“Hey, uh, are you doing anything next Friday?” Eddie asks suddenly. 

“Nothing yet,” Steve is desperately trying to stop his heart from beating at such an insistent pace and he hopes his voice comes out as nonchalant as he intends it to.

“You wanna…I don’t know…hang out or something?”

‘ Or something’. What does ‘or something’ mean ?

“Yeah, I– …yeah, sure” Steve fumbles a bit, but Eddie doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe he doesn’t care. A smile grows on his face.

“Cool,” Eddie says.

He pushes himself away from the counter and walks up to a shelf to inspect some of the movies. He leans forward, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, and hums a song that sounds vaguely familiar. Steve stares at the interlaced fingers behind his back – adorned with silver rings – and shivers at the memory of their coolness against his neck.

“Cool,” Steve echoes.

***

The whole week, Steve had thought of countless excuses to cancel hanging out with Eddie on Friday, but in the end, none of them carried any weight. He couldn’t get Eddie of his freaking mind and the sappy romance movies that played on the television screen at work didn’t help either.

Eddie had visited Family Video again – once – with Dustin to return a movie. Apparently, they regularly hung out when Steve was busy at work and he felt something akin to jealousy. He had always been Dustin’s role model. Heck, the kid even started wearing his hair like him (thank you, Farrah Fawcett). That was until Eddie somehow inserted himself into the equation. Now, Dustin had grown out his hair and was wearing that ridiculous Hellfire shirt religiously; so often, Steve sometimes wondered if it was ever washed at all. 

Eddie had corrupted him, and maybe he had corrupted Steve a little bit as well.

“You seem nervous,” Robin remarks as she flips through a folder, biting in the back of a ballpen. 

“Well, I’m no–” Before Steve can finish his sentence, Robin continues.

“I haven’t heard you talk about your dates the whole week. Whoever gave you that ridiculous hickey has some serious hold over you –”

Steve feels his shoulders tense. The idea of Eddie having any kind of hold over him was crazy. Steve is cool, Steve is casual. Steve is definitely not nervous about his casual hangout with Eddie tonight.

“ –It’s Friday, aren’t you supposed to be on like three different dates tonight?” she continues.

“Uhm, well–”

“And you’ve been acting weird all week. Things are adding up to a very weird sum. The ‘buying thirty watermelons’ kind of weird sum.”

“You have such a way with words,” Steve rolls his eyes as he finally regains his composure.

“Steve!” Robin throws her pen at his head. He ducks, but the pen hits him anyway.

“Robin!” he mimics her tone.

“It’s someone’s mom, isn’t it? God, Steve–” Robin pulls a face in disgust.

“It’s not someone’s mom! Geez, Rob, what kind of person do you take me for?”

“The kind that acts all mysterious and weird, and suddenly listens to music he hates!”

Maybe going out of his way to buy a Rainbow cassette had been somewhat uncharacteristic. Of course, Robin would pick up on that.

“A guy can expand his tastes…” he trails, hit by the ambiguity of his statement.

Robin sighs, picks up her pen from the floor and gives him an irritated glance. 

Steve hears the bell chime just as he closes the door to the vault in which they store cash overnight. It is only a couple of minutes before closing time and Steve grunts audibly as he raises himself into a standing position. Entering a shop this close to closing time is a certified dick move and Steve is not above sending whoever entered away, customer service be damned. 

“We’re closed!” he yells as he walks back into the shop from the backroom. 

“Eddie’s here for you,” Robin calls without looking back at Steve. 

Sure enough, Eddie is standing at the counter. He is wearing a tank top and his hair is pulled up into a messy bun; his skin gleams with sweat from the heat outside and around his neck hangs a wiry set of headphones. Wind from the air conditioner pulls at his hair. When their eyes meet, a smile creeps on his face.

“Sup, Harrington…I’ve brought the van.” He holds the keys up demonstratively, dangling them from his index finger.

"He brought the van!" Robin exclaims looking back at Steve, her eyebrows raised and a sly smile playing on her lips. Steve can almost see the moment of realization dawn upon her as if a lightbulb had been switched on in her mind.

Steve scratches the back of his head. “I promised Robin a ride back–” 

“No problem, We’ll drop her off. I’ll bring you back to pick up your car later.” 

Steve casts Robin a quick glance and she shrugs in response.

“If Robin’s fine with it…” he trails.

“A van,” Robin whispers as Steve joins her at the counter and elbows him in his arm.

Steve rolls his eyes at her, but still can’t fight the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth.

***

Twigs crack under Steve’s shoes as he follows Eddie through the forest. The canopy of the trees offers ample shadow and Steve finds the heat more bearable here than when they had been walking alongside the road. Still, his shirt clings to his back and sweat is slicking his hair as Steve runs a hand through it. 

When Eddie asked him to hang out, he didn’t expect they would be hiking through the forest behind the trailer park during a freaking heatwave. 

He looks over to Eddie. His bangs cling to his forehead and the veins on his arms are thick as his body fights to keep cool. Despite the oppressive heat, there's a glint of excitement in Eddie's eyes.

“There it is.” Eddie stops and looks somewhere in the distance. Steve squints and follows Eddie’s gaze. Between the trees, he can see the shimmer of water, and he realizes Eddie has taken them to Lover’s lake. 

When they near the water, Eddie ups his pace, stepping around some of the bigger rocks and boulders near the lake’s edge like he has done it a thousand times before. Steve tries to keep up, but his unfamiliarity with the landscape slows him down.

At last, he is standing on the pebbled lakeside. The sun is already lowering itself into the embrace of dusk and Steve thinks they have maybe two hours of light left before sundown. He looks to his right where he sees Eddie standing above a pile of wood. When he gets closer, Steve realizes it is actually an old stranded fisher’s boat.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Eddie remarks.

Steve looks the boat over. It’s medium sized and some of its wood has rotted away. A good portion of it is covered in graffiti, and half of it sits in the water. It has probably been there for years.

“You bring all your conquests here?” Steve asks as he watches Eddie climb onto the boat. The question is mostly meant to be lighthearted, yet he feels a sense of anticipation as he waits for Eddie to reach the deck. 

Eddie squats and looks down on him. “Nah, just you.” 

Somehow, those words make Steve’s heart flutter and his cheeks heat up. He quickly looks away, pretending to search for footing to scale the boat.

When Steve reaches the deck, Eddie is sitting cross-legged facing the lake. 

“This is a nice place,” Steve says, sitting next to Eddie. He lets his feet dangle from the side and follows Eddie’s gaze. Across the lake, some people linger, cooling down before heading back to their hot homes. Some children are playing in the shallows and their joyful screams carry over the water.

“Your work?” Steve asks as he gestures to some of the writing on the boat. The wood is covered in crude phrases, names, and dates – some of them are carved, but most look to be written with a sharpie.

“Some of it is.” Eddie pulls out a pocket knife from his jeans and hands it to Steve. “You can add to it if you want.”

Steve turns the knife in his hand. It is a classic red Swiss knife and it lays heavy in his hand. 

“Here–” Eddie twists around and Steve follows suit. Eddie’s fingers are tracing the wood behind them, running them over the carvings in the wood. “– I think I did this about a year ago.”

Eddie removes his hands and Steve can finally get a good look. It’s nothing crazy, just a simple ‘Eddie was here’ carved in crude scratches – eternalised in some rotting wood in a town no one cares about.

Eddie holds up his hand to Steve and he realizes he is asking for his knife back. Steve hands it over.

Eddie flips out the knife and bends himself over the carving. Steve turns back around, looking over the lake again as the sound of scratching fills his ears.

“All done!” Eddie says after a while.

When Steve turns back, he sees his name freshly carved into the wood, right above Eddie’s original carving.

Steve + Eddie was here

“You wanted to immortalize this?” Steve asks amused.

Eddie flips the knife closed again and shoves it into his pocket. “A year ago, I’d never thought I’d be sitting here with Steve ‘the hair’ Harrington. Guess that’s pretty fucking special.” Eddie casts him a toothy grin. 

Steve had to agree though. If someone had told him a year ago he would be hanging out with Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson on a Friday evening – rather than spend his night on a date or at a party – he would have declared them crazy.

“I suppose so,” Steve replies.

All is quiet for a moment, save the sound of leaves rustling by a welcome breeze. Steve closes his eyes as the wind kisses his sweaty skin.

“I got you something,” Eddie says, breaking the silence and he stands up. Steve’s gaze follows him and his eyes widen when he sees Eddie move his hands over his head to pull his tank top off. 

“But let's take a dip first…it’s hot as balls.” He throws the sweaty tank top at Steve, who slaps it out of the air before it can hit him. The fabric lands heavily on the wooden deck.

“I didn’t bring my trunks,” 

“You don’t need those here.” Eddie gives him a knowing smile as he kicks on his shoes.

Eddie is lean and he has a nice back, Steve thinks. Not particularly broad like some of his former teammates on the swimming team, but not bad for a guy who spends his time playing board games. His torso is littered with fading scars from the Upside Down and Steve has a fair amount of those himself.

“Get on with it, Harrington!” Eddie is already stripped to his underwear when Steve tears his eyes away and finally tugs his own shirt over his head.

A dip in the lake was a fantastic idea and Steve felt himself relax now that he was slowly but surely cooling down to more humane temperatures.

Steve tries to keep his eyes away from Eddie as they make their way back to the boat. The fabric of his boxers is clinging to his skin.

Eddie lays himself down on the deck, using his jeans as a pillow while he fiddles with his headphones. 

“C’mere Steve.” Eddie pats the space next to him and Steve reluctantly seats himself. Eddie is working the buttons of a walkman.

“Remember when I said I got you something?”

“That was like twenty minutes ago,” Steve feels borderline offended at the implication.

Eddie gestures for Steve to lay down as well and Steve complies begrudgingly, resting his head next to Eddie’s on his crumpled jeans while he stares up at the blue sky. He feels exposed in just his boxers and now Eddie wants them to lay side by side.

“Here.” Eddie hands him one half of the headphones while holding the other side to his own ears. Suddenly it dawns on Steve why they’re lying as they are. Eddie wants to let him listen to music. Steve moves half of the headphones to his ear and sure enough music starts playing.

“I put some things together I thought you might like.” Steve can see Eddie turn his head towards him from his periphery and study his face.

“You made me a mixtape?” Steve asks. The idea of Eddie putting together a mixtape for him was…well, really thoughtful.

“Now you say it out loud it sounds kinda lame,” Eddie laughs.

“No, it– it’s really nice.” Steve offers. 

He closes his eyes and listens to the unfamiliar tunes. Eddie did quite a good job at picking music that he might like. It is definitely less intense than Rainbow – the voices are less shrill, the guitar less cutting, and the drums beat at a lower frequency. It’s nice, ridiculously nice, and Steve can’t think of an instance when someone has ever taken the time to put something together for him like this – not even his ex-girlfriends.

They lay there for a while, each holding one end of the headphone. The people on the other side of the lake must have left by now because the only things Steve can hear are birdsong, the sound of rustling leaves, and the music that comes from the walkman. The breeze feels cool against his damp body, and he wonders why he had never done this before – stay at the lake until the sun went down.

Steve can almost feel himself drift asleep when Eddie nudges him.

“Steve.” Eddie shakes him gently by his shoulder.

“Hm, lemme be…” he whines without opening his eyes.

“You’re gonna be mosquito food.” Beside him, he hears Eddie getting up and when Steve finally opens his eyes, Eddie is already wearing his tank top. 

Steve hadn’t realized how long they had laid there. Only a small line of sun was visible in the distance and Eddie’s figure was dark against the pastel sky.

“I’m afraid I’m gonna need my pants,” Eddie says as he points at Steve’s head.

“Oh right.” Steve finally sits up, handing Eddie the makeshift pillow of his jeans.

Once they’re both dressed, Eddie leads them back through the forest. The sky is pink and the trees form black outlines against it. Steve walks after Eddie, who points out when to be mindful of a hidden boulder or a sudden dip in the forest floor. 

They take Eddie’s van back to Family Video so Steve can get his car. The whole car ride, Steve can’t help the feeling of nervousness that sits in his stomach. 

Today kinda felt like a date. 

Normally he would be on the other end of it – driving a girl home after a movie or something. And then, once he stops the car in front of her house, the girl would fidget and Steve would place his arm on the back of her car seat, confident and reassuring. He would tell her he had a good time and if she did as well, he would seal the deal with a kiss.

But this was Eddie, and they had been just two guys hanging out. 

Two guys that had made out a week ago. 

But that didn’t mean anything. It had just been Steve’s one-day gay phase and he got it out of his system now, hadn’t he? Eddie had only offered out of a misunderstanding, or maybe some weird kindness.

Shit, this train of thought was not helping Steve whatsoever. If anything, it had just made the nervous flutter in his stomach worse.

Eddie stops the van and the red neon light of Family Video plays with the curves of his face.

“There we are.” Eddie pushes himself back into his seat with his arms stretched on the steering wheel. Steve makes no movement to get out. They sit in silence for a while.

“About last week–” Steve starts. If he doesn’t acknowledge it now, he feels like he might go crazy. Besides, he doesn’t know when or if they’ll have another moment alone.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. We can forget about it if you want…” Eddie says without looking at him. His shoulders are tense and his grip on the steering wheels seems to harden.

“No…it’s not–” Steve tries, but Eddie cuts him off.

“Don’t worry Steve, I get it. I know what people say about me –”

“But–”

“ –and it doesn’t have to mean anything. People make out all the time–”

Steve unbuckles his seatbelt. He’s kind of sick of Eddie not letting him finish his sentences and is ready to return the favor.

He leans over, turning Eddie’s head towards him and kisses him. Hard.

Eddie’s mouth is parted, mid-sentence, and Steve feels teeth beneath his lips. By all accounts, it’s a shoddy kiss – not his best work – but it seems to do the trick.

Eddie loses his grip on the steering wheel, hands moving to Steve’s shoulders instead as he eagerly returns the sentiment.

“Fuck, Harrington, aren’t you full of surprises,” Eddie breaths against his lips.

Steve leans back into his chair and runs a hand through his hair.

“You talk too much,” he says as he opens the door of the van.

By the time he hears Eddie get out of his van, Steve is already opening the door to his  BMW.

“Wait, Steve,” Eddie calls as he jogs over. When he’s standing in front of Steve, he pulls at Steve’s arm, running his hand down and urging Steve’s palm up. He shoves something square in his hand and closes Steve’s fingers around it.

“Next Friday, same time?” Eddie asks him, searching his eyes.

Steve nods silently. He stares after Eddie as he walks back to his van. He opens the door and turns one last time, giving Steve a two-fingered salute before getting in. 

Steve hears the sound of the motor swinging on and looks at his hand. In the dim neon light, he stares down at a small cassette. Steve can hardly read the black letters in the red light, but he realizes Eddie has written something on its white label.

From Freak, to Hair. 

[AO3]

[satoshi-mochida]

Silent Hill f confirmed for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC; reveal trailer - Gematsu

Silent Hill f will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and Microsoft Store when it launches, publisher Konami and developer NeoBards Entertainment announced. A release date was not announced.

Here is an overview of the game, via Konami:

About

In 1960s Japan, Shimizu Hinako’s secluded town of Ebisugaoka is consumed by a sudden fog, transforming her home into a haunting nightmare. As the town falls silent and the fog thickens, Hinako must navigate the twisted paths of Ebisugaoka, solving complex puzzles and confronting grotesque monsters to survive. Immerse yourself into Hinako’s world imagined by renowned author Ryukishi07, with entrancing music, including pieces by Akira Yamaoka, and beautiful visuals in a gripping tale of doubt, regret, and inescapable choices. Will Hinako embrace the beauty hidden within terror, or succumb to the madness that lies ahead? Discover a new chapter in the Silent Hill series, blending psychological horror with a haunting Japanese setting.

Story

In 1960s Japan, teenager Shimizu Hinako lives in the small, remote town of Ebisugaoka, nestled in a mountain pass. An average teen, she passes the time with nothing particularly special about her life. Until, that is, a deep fog descends on Ebisugaoka, and everything Hinako knows crumbles as she finds her once-familiar home infested with spreading danger, the town empty except for the horrors teeming in the fog. Now, as she navigates the twisting paths of Ebisugaoka, Hinako must solve puzzles and fight for her life in her struggle to survive. Her struggle to reach the inevitable decision that must be made. And her struggle to put an end to that which must be slain. Will she choose to embrace elegance and beauty? Or will her path lead her to madness and horror… A story of impossible decisions, of the beauty in terror, and terror from beauty.

Characters

Shimizu Hinako – The game’s main character. A teenage girl struggling under the pressure of expectations from her friends, family, and society. Cheerful and energetic as a child, she’s grown to become much more restrained, and now hardly smiles.

Staff Comments

Scriptwriter Ryukishi07 – “To this day, I remember the feeling of my first encounter with the suffocating and oppressive atmosphere of Silent Hill. It still deeply haunts me, and it still utterly fascinates me. It’s an honor to find myself involved with a series I have so many memories with. I’ve poured all my efforts into this story, so much so that I don’t think I would mind if it was the last thing I ever wrote. To me, the Silent Hill series is more than just a collection of stories, it’s a medium; an amazing, phenomenal way of exploring and experiencing a person’s heart and mind. It’s my hope that players out there will come to appreciate it in the same way. And to all of our overseas friends, I hope you’ll enjoy a look at what Silent Hill might be like if set somewhere a little different, like Japan.”

Creature and Character Designer kera – “I love the Silent Hill series, and it’s been a big influence on me. In particular, I am constantly remembering Silent Hill 2, and the messages on the walls, the music, and the monster designs. So, when it came to Silent Hill f, and bringing the setting to Japan, we had to come up with something that felt just a little different, and I had to really think about how to get that feeling. The monster designs were the hardest. I had to consider everything that’s come in Silent Hill before, and figure out how to take this game in a different direction, but still be Silent Hill. It might not be the exact same blood-smeared, rusting scenery, but I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy our vision and the world we’ve created.”

Composer Akira Yamaoka – “Although this is set in Japan, we focused on portraying it in a way that is based solely on the conception of Silent Hill. While incorporating plenty of Japan’s unique identity, we sublimated it as fiction and expressed this unique culture as entertainment. By doing so, we believe we were able to blend the charm of Japan in a new way into the unique worldview of Silent Hill. We hope that through this game, you will enjoy the look and feel of what makes this title truly Silent Hill.”

Composer Kensuke Inage – “The first time I played Silent Hill was about 20 years back. I’m extremely honored to have been offered such a great opportunity for a series with a rich history. I was in charge of composing the music for the Otherworld, known in this game as the ‘Dark Shrine.’ I have composed music for an unsettling yet beautiful world that uses imagery from shrines, blending ancient Japanese court music with ambient echoes. I wove in various techniques that will connect the player to the protagonist’s agony, internal conflict, fear, and other emotions. I hope you get to experience it for yourself in the game.”

*Other composers include dai and xaki.

Disclaimer

This game contains depictions of gender discrimination, child abuse, bullying, drug-induced hallucinations, torture, and graphic violence. This game is set in Japan in the 1960s and contains depictions based on the customs and culture of that time. These depictions do not reflect the opinions or values of the developers or any individuals involved. If you feel uncomfortable at any point while playing, please take a break from playing or speak to someone you trust.

Watch the reveal trailer and an archive of today’s Silent Hill Transmission below. View the first screenshots at the gallery. Visit the official website here.

Reveal Trailer

English

Japanese

Silent Hill Transmission: March 13, 2025

English

Japanese

[respectthepetty]

10 Anticipated BLs for 2024

Since I'm excited for ALL the GLs (Pluto, 23.5, Sunshine in the Wind, Chaser Game, Be Mine, y todo!), I'm making my list of the 10 BLs I'm excited for this year with brief reasons why I'm looking forward to them. In my normal fashion, I cheat my way into having more. All except one is Thai because Thailand loves to tease series three years in advance, then never make them, but I strongly believe these are coming:

The Next Prince

Zee continues to never play a poor person, and a trailer is supposed to drop in the first quarter of this year. I never knew there was so many fencers on BL Tumblr, so I'm looking forward to everyone's commentary on how well the characters poke with their sticks or whatever fencers do.

Jack & Joker: U Steal My Heart

It's a heist BL. It has YinWar. It has Prom x Mark. It has Bonz. It's Dee Hup House (we got beef). It's Director Tee and probably Cinematographer Jim. It might have color coding. There is not one thing I can find wrong with this series. It's perfect on paper, and I'm praying that translates well to the screen.

Spare Me Your Mercy

Like that lady in Titanic, I've been waiting 80 years for this series (give me a minute to cry about MaxTul), and it's finally near! I'm getting JJ & Tor in a Dr. Sammon piece, who I feel writes "Be Gay, Do Crime" very well, so I'll be forgiving any of these two gays' wrongs including murder, attempted murder, contemplating murder, and murdering each other in the bedroom (ahhhh!).

Wandee Goodday

Golf from The Eclipse is directing. It's about Muay Thai. It has an older doctor and a younger boxer who start off as bed friends (and I think one is actually a virgin). It has color coding. It has me already seated and waiting with popcorn, and I think it might be the first offering that will be delivered from GMMTV's 2024 lineup.

Sequels: Choco Milk Shake 2, Unintentional Love Story 2, My Doctor

Is Choco Milk Shake 2 gonna finally give me poly? Probably not, but I hope My Doctor brings the same heat the side couple did in Be Mine, Superstar, and the side couple getting the spotlight in Unintentional Love Story 2 will also make my side-couple-supremacy heart very happy this year.

Live in Love

It looks color coded. That's it. That's the reason. Keeping my expectations low because it might not get made since this is Thailand's favorite game.

Red Peafowl

The character reveals were absolute chaos, so I'm hoping that chaos transfers over to the actual series because it can either be a mess or a masterpiece, but it cannot be mediocre with Max, Cooheart, Boun, Mek, and Yacht as supports. Plus, it has color coding and a bird that is quickly becoming a Tumblr god.

Love Upon a Time

Even though it is a historical queer series, which means it could be sad, I think Domundi will keep the sass, so James' character won't be crying in the 1600s club but instead eating fruit seductively to encourage Net's character to put his homosexual skills into practice instead of simply theorizing about them, which is something I need more of. Plus, it has color coding.

Love Puzzle

This is one that might not get made because . . . Thailand. It's connected to Chains of Heart, but I don't care because the cast looks good and Poppy is gonna finally get to kiss a homie. If this doesn't get made, I will cry thug tears. It's 2024. Poppy deserves to kiss a man already.

My Stand-In

I don't understand the plot, but it doesn't matter because Pepzi and Khom are directing, and in case that means nothing, those were KinnPorsche's directors! Then, it has Up and Poom as the leads, plus a stacked supporting cast. I'm here. I'm queer. And I'm ready to be served.

Honorable Mention: Peaceful Property

It's about los espookys and features Tay and New. Will it be a QL? The streets are saying no, but all the characters are color coded, and all's I'm saying is what would be the point of color coding them if I ain't getting a BL main couple and a GL side couple? It's already canon to me.

Bonus: MosBank & JoongDunk

MosBank had like eighty projects announced for 2023, and I got NONE! Big Dragon 2, Big Dragon: The Movie, SunsetxVibes, where you at?! Y Journey: Stay Like a Local and Club Friday do not count. I don't want to watch their horror movie, but gosh darnit, if that comes out before everything else, I just might.

And I am a JoongDunk fan first, and a human second. Give my boys a gym BL already, GMMTV!

[icycoldninja]

Hey there! I was hoping to request a headcannon. If you are busy or do not want to write abt it. Feel free to ignore this. But I was hoping to ask for a platonic headcannon of the sparda boys + V with a male reader being like the main character of Lies of P/ or P if you want to call him. (If you do not know anything abt it. Feel free to ignore this, but I will fill you in)

So, the reader is quiet. I mean, QUIET, not a word leaves his lips. He has a left metal arm (Nero and the reader probably get along with that) and has a talking lantern that calls itself Gemini around the belt on his hip. Everything seems fine at first. But then the boys spot the reader carrying things a lot heavier then someone his age probably could ever (he looks like he is 16), was a lot heavier and for some odd reason, there is a sound of ticking and metal moving whenever the reader was there but they just shrug it off as the reader's metal arm making some weird sounds.

But that all came crashing down when boys and the reader were fighting some demon or enemy and the reader got stabbed. He didn't bleed blood, he bled oil? Now the boys were frightened or confused or a mix of both. And then, suddenly the reader goes on some far away mission, leaving his talking lantern to the crew so they don't feel so lonely. And since Gemini is a chatterbox and has no sense of secrets, it says everying the boys need to know. Gemini explained that the reader is actually a puppet, bit so advanced that it could fit with the humans. And then the more personal stuff is being revealed. Gemini reveals that the reader is actually a repleca of a real boy (the real reader if you will) the boy died a long time ago due to a disease and his father couldn't cope, so he made the puppet version of his son. But the reader didn't want to be just some copy of a dead boy. The dead should rest, the reader wanted to be his own person. He wanted to be a real boy. So he lied he was actually human, to be something he despreatly wished. How would the boys react to this information.

And after that info dump from Gemini, some time passed (feel free to add how long, weeks or mounths) the reader finally returned, his movement nore fluid and the sound of ticking and metal no longer being heard, but a faint sound of a heartbeat. And the reader finally spoke "I'm home." What would the boys feel after the reader finally returned.

Bonus points if you write the reader playing the piano in the middle of the freaking night while everyone else is sleeping.

Btw, I love your work. Your writing is so good. Keep up the good work and have a nice day 👍

Thank you so much! I saw the trailer of that game once, only to discover fans have dubbed him the "hot Pinocchio" lol. Don't know much about him so thanks for the info. Enjoy!

Sparda boys + V x P from Lies of P-like Reader headcannons

¤ Dante ¤

-Dante doesn't mind the fact that you don't talk much. If anything, it reminds him of Vergil.

-Thinks your superhuman strength is pretty impressive, given your apparent age and humanity, though it's nothing he can't do himself.

-As you two get to know each other, (except Gemini does most of the talking) Dante begins to see you as the son he never had.

-When he saw you get stabbed and bleed oil instead of blood, the rusty gears in his mind clicked, and Dante realized exactly what you were.

-Confused, Dante could only watch as you ran off to do God-knows-what, leaving behind your lantern to keep him company. Said lantern then proceeded to expose all your secrets and reveal that you are an advanced puppet recreation of a boy who died many years ago of a disease, made by a grief stricken father who just couldn't move on.

-It also told them how you hated being only a puppet, and how you desperately wanted to be your own person. Dante had to admit this was extremely depressing information that made him pity you a little. It also hurt his heart to think the kid he considered his own wasn't even alive.

-A few months passed, edging dangerously close to a year, before you came back, and when you did, Dante was shocked to find that you moved more fluidly and the clanking of metal was gone, as if you'd somehow replaced your machine parts with human ones.

-"I'm home," You'd said, barely managing to get the words out before Dante tackled you to the floor with a massive bear hug, actually crying a little as he mumbled about how much he'd missed you and how stupid you were for going off alone.

-In a way, it was a good thing that you'd decided to run off to apparently become a human, or Dante wouldn't have made the decision to ask if you'd want him to adopt you.

-Now that you're a human, you can play the piano easier since your fingers will move more fluidly. Thus, you wake Dante up at 3 AM every night with loud, somewhat discordant piano music that...well, let's be honest, is fricking annoying.

■ Vergil ■

-Vergil saw you as a quieter, milder-mannered, honestly better little brother.

-While your strength was impressive, there wasn't much you could do with it that he couldn't do too.

-One thing Vergil doesn't like is your stupid chatterbox lantern, Gemini. It's annoying and it gets on his nerves.

-The day he witnessed you get started and bleed oil instead of human blood, Vergil knew you weren't a human or a demon, you couldn't be anything that came from this world.

-Then you took off, presumably to complete some mission, though for what benefits, he had no clue. You'd left behind that annoying lantern for some reason, unfortunately. Probably to spite him.

-Naturally, Vergil questioned the lantern and it readily divulged your secrets, explaining how you were an advanced puppet created to heal a grieving father who couldn't move on.

-Gemini also decided to inform Vergil of how you detested being a puppet, and how you wanted more than anything to be your own person.

-This was distressing information; now Vergil was even more concerned than before about where you'd run off to and why.

-He'd searched for you for months, but no matter how hard he looked, he just couldn't find you. It was as if you'd vanished into thin air.

-Then, out of the blue, you returned, more humanlike than ever, and for the first time in history, you spoke. "I'm home," You told him.

-Since Vergil is not a touchy feely person, he deemed hugs unnecessary, so he settled for a very firm handshake and a pat on the shoulder.

-On the inside, though, Vergil was screaming with glee, overjoyed to have his precious little brother, whom he loved a little more than Dante back.

-However, should you decide to play the piano at 2 in the goddamn morning, Vergil will march downstairs, face mask and all, and whack you on the head with his slipper.

□ Nero □

-Nero thought of you as his best friend, cause you two were alike in so many ways, the most important part being that you both have metal arms.

-Your super strength is impressive. This means you can lift all the heavy boxes and furniture so Nero doesn't have to.

-Gemini is kinda annoying, but let's not forget Nero grew up around Dante and knows Nico, so talkative morons aren't really new around here.

-The moment he witnessed you get stabbed and bleed oil was the moment Nero's whole world shattered. You clearly weren't human, so...what were you?

-Nero had so many questions he wanted to ask, but he didn't get the chance to, since you decided to run off on some crazy mission, leaving your chatterbox lantern behind.

-Beyond angry, Nero interrogates the lantern and demands to know what the hell you actually were, and what else you might be hiding. Gemini quickly folds and confesses everything, explaining how you're a puppet recreation of a dead boy who hates the fact that he's a puppet and badly wishes to be a real human.

-Nero was shocked by all this; it's a lot of information to digest, and after a moment, sinks into a chair and decides to let you do your thing. There's nothing he can do to help you anyway.

-Several weeks pass before you return, and when you do, you seem to be more human, more fluid in your movements, and more capable of speech.

-"I'm home," You said, shocking Nero with your words. Without even thinking, he gets up and runs into you, giving you the biggest bear hug you've ever felt. He really missed you, bestie.

-From that point on, things were easier, and happier, the sole exception being when you decide to play the piano at 3 AM and wake the hell out of everyone, making Nero consider dismantling the piano so he can finally get some sleep.

● V ●

-V endearingly saw you as a child, and sought to be your guardian, even if you were nearing adulthood.

-He thought your superhuman strength was beyond incredible as it allowed you to perform remarkable feats and carry him around when he was feeling too weak.

-He also noted that you looked a lot like him, especially your hair and eyes.

-Your lantern friend Gemini, though irritating, was quite similar to Griffon, making it easier for him to get along with it.

-When he saw you got stabbed, he grew very frightened. He thought he'd lost you, until he saw you bleeding oil instead of blood.

-After retreating, you decided to take off before he could ask for details, presumably never to be seen again.

-V was beside himself with worry, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, had the lantern you'd left behind, Gemini, not spoken up.

-It told him of your dark history; how you were a puppet made by a grieving father to replace his dead son, and how you hated being a puppet; how all you wanted was to be human.

-V felt so sad upon hearing of this. He never knew the sweet boy he cared for had such a tragic backstory. However, what could he do? He was essentially useless in a situation like this.

-It was a few months before you returned, but when you did, you were a changed person. You were more fluid in your movements and you spoke to V, for the first time ever. "I'm home."

-V was ecstatic to see you again and wasted no time in stumbling forwards to give you a hug and welcome you home.

-From that moment on, V acts more and more like a parent to you, despite his crumbling existence. He loves you like a son and always will, even if you wake him up with your piano at 3 in the morning.

[halfusek]

What do you think about that new Bendy game coming out on the 14th?

hard to tell from how little there is

the trailer didnt really captivate me, but i guess its fair how much of a nothing there is considering the game will be free, so i'd expect something like batds - i did enjoy batds for what it was (maybe except for the final "reveal" about the collage which was uh. a giant nothing burger)

seems like this is leaning to the scp / found footage / analog horror territory, which ive gotta say im very sceptical about, at least personally to me they are often executed in an unsatisfying way but who knows maybe the devs who kept delivering a disappointment after a disappointment will surprise me

i do like the design of that thing that you can see clearer in the screenshots, im intriguied by the possibility of meeting a less messed up butcher gang character, and im especially excited about The House

seems like im not the only person reminded of the little barn allison painted on the wall we can see at the beginning of batim's chapter 5, i would love a tie in back to that (cuz it never really was tied back to and thats quite interesting why she'd paint something specific like that)

but i am begging them, i am getting on my knees - stop STOP copy pasting the bendy face png on everything, i promise the house doesnt need to have a giant bendy face, it looks sooooo out of place

speaking of overdoing things, mentions of 414 are starting to get a bit tasteless, especially that the number isn't really meaningful in-universe - yes i know that's henry's assigned subject number - but 414 really started as a joke from one of the developers which was picked up by theorists. that meaning was given by fans and it doesn't seem to have any satisfying origin in-universe. yes henry has the 414 subject number *now*. what does it refer to? there's a few theories (like we used to theorise about it waaay before batdr) but there's nothing that's really clearly stated. if it's just gonna be a number that appears cuz ooooo oooh look its a number you guys like isn't this fun like jiggling car keys in front of a baby that's gonna get old Pretty Fast. but maybe they are planning to give it a meaning, i'd be looking forward to it

i will give them that the game being officially developed by Gent Corporation is kind of funny

it seems like they're trying to alleviate responsibility for Whatever Horrors That Happened Really off of JDS shoulders (and joey's by extension) and put the blame on gent for being The freak evil corporation and im not sure how to feel about that (weeeeeell i do not like this direction the way it is looking now. i would have liked it more if it was executed differently)

my thoughts are that this is going to be a game that will not really answer any questions or will answer questions we didn't/wouldn't have but it will be more or less entertaining while we wait for the main course (the cage)

[electricea]

@corruptedbunny-multimuse

if memory serves, atlus were pretty tight lipped about akechi and revealed almost nothing about him leading up to the reveal of the game - i mentioned earlier that every character got their own trailer - except for akechi. i can't speak for past persona fans (especially ones i didn't agree with) but if i had to guess it was probably an example of

1) people once again assuming persona 5 would follow in the footsteps of older games and therefore assuming that akechi would be a genuine and benevolent detective genuinely interested in seeking justice and solving the case, like his predecessor, naoto.

2) atlus barely showed anything of akechi so he wasn't really on anyone's radar - the person you see the least of is often the one you least suspect.

3) he immediately had a lot of stans who were ride or die for him, lmao.

[hbyrde36]

Life is a Game (and True Love is a Trophy)

Chapter 9

Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 ao3 link

*Eddie*

Eddie pressed his fingers to his mouth as he walked down the front steps, still feeling the ghost of Steve's soft lips against his own. He felt like he was walking through a dream, instead of the nightmare that his life had become in the past 24 hours. Though that feeling began to drift away rapidly as he got into his fan and drove away from the trailer, and Steve and Eleven. 

Once he was alone, with nothing to distract him and no sound other than the hum of the engine, Eddie couldn't help but start spiraling, just a little. 

Could Steve have really meant what he said, when it was far more likely that he had just latched onto Eddie because he was the first person who’d helped him after two years in what was essentially captivity?

Did Steve actually like him, or was this some kind of Stockholm Syndrome thing?

No, that was for kidnappers.

Florence Nightingale syndrome?

It was a slightly better match, but it wasn’t as if he’d nursed Steve back to health or anything. 

Okay, so maybe there wasn’t a fancy name for it, but the two of them had been pulled together under wild circumstances. Was it so surprising that they might cling to each other as anchors for their respective ships in this storm?

A little, considering they were both boys and he had been 100% sure that Steve Harrington was straight, right up until the moment he’d kissed him!

Eddie knew, at least for his part, that it was more than a thing born of shared trauma. He’d been crushing on Steve for years, and had fantasized about kissing him countless times. The reality of it had been better than he could have ever imagined, too good to be true in fact, or maybe that was him projecting his own fears.  

It was a scary thing to be handed everything you ever wanted, and even more frightening to accept it when you’ve spent so long being absolutely sure that it would never be an option.

As he pulled into the high school parking lot he decided to just put the whole thing out of his mind for now, as best he could anyway. There were much more important things to worry about than his love life.

The bell rang, and he watched from his parking space as students began pouring out of the school. He spotted Mike and Will first, the two of them having grown so tall this year that they stood out from the crowd. He peered behind them, knowing Lucas and Dustin wouldn’t be far off. The four boys were rarely without each other, except when Lucas had basketball practice of course. Which he must have today, Eddie realized, when he found Dustin bringing up the rear on his own. 

He stepped out of the van and made a beeline for the boys, wanting to catch them before they got on their bikes and took off. 

“Hey shitheads!” Eddie shouted, hands formed around his mouth to boost the sound.

All three boys whipped their heads in his direction. Dustin’s expression morphed from a wide happy grin into a worried frown in an instant. Mike and Will just looked confused. Eddie jogged the last few feet to them, in a hurry to get everyone on board and get back home as soon as possible.

“Is everything okay?” Dustin asked, at the same time Mike said, “Where were you today? 

“Everything is fine” Eddie began, holding significant eye contact with Dustin, then looking at the others. “But there is something back at the trailer that I need you all to come see.”

Dustin gasped.

“What is it?” Mike asked, sounding annoyed.

Will was quiet, watching it all go down with a slightly amused smile on his face. He was definitely in the running to be Eddie’s favorite today.

“All will be revealed in due time, young Wheeler. Go throw your bikes in the back of the van. I’m gonna see if I can snatch up Sinclair before his practice starts.”

Mike opened his mouth, either to ask another question or to argue, but Dustin elbowed him in the ribs and told him to hurry up. Will had already unlocked his own bike from the rack and was walking it towards the parking lot. 

Yup, favorite kid. 

Eddie set off in the direction of the gym. He opened the door only to see Chrissy who had just come from the girls' locker room. It was perfect timing. 

She smiled at him and ran over, her sneakers squeaking on the court as she did. 

“Eddie! You weren’t in school today. You okay?”

He smiled in return. Chrissy was a literal ray of sunshine and he couldn’t help but react to that, no matter how weird his day had been.

“Yeah, I just had some family stuff to take care of.”

He scrambled for a way to ask her to come with him. If things did pan out the way they feared, she was in very real and immediate danger, and he just couldn’t imagine letting anything happen to her. 

He didn’t really want to give anything away until he could prove it, and there were too many prying eyes and ears for him to just blurt out - I found Steve Harrington in the woods! But he had to try something.

“I know you’re about to start cheer practice,” Eddie began, “But…uh, do you remember all that stuff we talked about in the library?”

Her smile faltered a bit but she nodded encouragingly.

“There’s been some developments and I'd really like to fill you in on what I found out, if you wanted to come back to my place? The boys are coming too, my cousin and his buddies.” He added quickly, worried that she might somehow take his invitation the wrong way.

Chrissy glanced nervously around the gym, and he was pretty sure she was about to agree to go, when two things happened at once. The outer doors swung open loudly, revealing Dustin, Mike, and Will, who must have gotten tired of waiting and came to look for him, he guessed, while the door to the boys locker room was also thrown wide as the entire basketball team came trotting out. They were buzzing with pent up energy and Jason Carver was at the head of the pack. 

He spotted Eddie immediately and rushed over. With no hesitation the jock planted himself between him and Chrissy.

Jason crowded Eddie as he shouted in his face, “Get away from her, freak! She doesn’t want to talk to you. What are you even doing here?”

“Jason, stop!” Chrissy shouted.

He waved her back dismissively. “No, no, it’s alright babe, I got this.”

Eddie grit his teeth, fuming, and not only because of the way Jason was talking to him, he could deal with that, but the way he was so openly dismissive of his girlfriend. Someone he was supposed to love. Chrissy deserved better.

“What is it, Munson? You like to watch the girls while they practice, huh? You got a thing for looking up their skirts?” Jason accused loudly, then lowered his voice to a sinister whisper.  “Or is it the boys locker room you’re more interested in getting a peep at?”

It was a dangerous accusation, and it unnerved Eddie a little that Jason might have suspicions about him. If he’d said what he did a little louder, there might be a lot more guys looking to jump into this fight. He tried his best to ignore it like he would any other barb, but it was an effort to keep from overreacting and rising to the bait

“Oh fuck off, you neanderthal. We were just talking.”

“What did you call me?”

Eddie looked at Chrissy over Jason's shoulder and rolled his eyes. She stifled a giggle, stopping abruptly and going wide-eyed when Jason turned his head to glance back at her.

“Don’t worry about it, Carver.” Eddie answered. “Now, if you would just kindly back the fuck up so I can finish my conversation with the lovely Ms. Cunningham here, I’ll be out of your hair in a jiffy.”

“I don’t think so. What makes you think she wants to talk to somebody like YOU anyway?”

In Eddie’s defense, it had been a long and mostly no good very bad day. He stepped into Jason, closing the very small gap that remained between them until they were almost nose to nose. 

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” He said, jabbing the other boy in the chest with his finger.

Jason shoved Eddie away from him hard. He stumbled, but Will, Mike, and Dustin were all there to steady him.

“Stop it, Jason! He's my friend!” Crissy shouted again, still hovering but trying to stay out of the way. This time her boyfriend either didn’t hear, or completely ignored her. 

Eddie shoved Jason right back, pleased when he had to take a step back to maintain his balance. Unfortunately, Eddie hadn’t really been in that many fights. Guys usually took one look at him and backed off, assuming he carried knives and shit just because he wore leather and a battle vest. He was briefly a drug dealer, so maybe that had something to do with it too. So, he was a little unprepared for Jason cocking back a fist and punching him square in the face. 

Chrissy looked like she was about to jump on Jason’s back to stop him but suddenly Lucas was there. He caught Jason’s arm, stopping it before he could land another hit.

“I knew you weren’t really one of us Sinclair! I should never have told the coach I had a good feeling about you! I’ll have you thrown off the team for this!” Jason shouted.

He shrugged himself roughly out of Luca’s grip and walked back over to where the rest of the team was doing warm ups and pretending not to watch the drama unfolding in front of them. 

Chrissy looked torn. She watched Jason walk away, bouncing her eyes between him and Eddie as she gnawed on her bottom lip. 

“I’m sorry,” she finally said to Eddie. “I don’t know why he gets like that.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault.”

She nodded a little to herself, sending a sad smile his way and turning to follow after her boyfriend. 

Eddie sighed. He’d have to let her go for now and hope that tomorrow wouldn’t be too late. He felt like an idiot, he should have known better than to approach her when that meathead was bound to be close by. 

“You good?” Lucas asked. Producing a small towel from his pocket and handing it to him to dab away the blood from his nose. 

“Yeah, sorry if I made trouble for you.” Eddie said, gesturing off towards the rest of Lucas’ teammates.”

“Don't worry about it, they all know how Jason can be. I’m sure the whole thing will be forgotten by tomorrow. What are you guys doing here anyway?”

“We need you to come with us.” Dustin butt in.

Lucas looked at all of them in turn. “Party business?”

“Don’t ask us,” Mike said, hooking a thumb in Eddie's direction. “He won't tell us shit.”

“I’ll tell you everything when we get to the trailer, I promise. We can’t talk about this here. You in, Sinclair?” Eddie asked.

“Fuck it, why not. Didn't feel like dealing with Jason’s attitude today anyway.”

“Good choice.” Eddie said, grinning. “Come on boys, let's get out of here.”

-

On the way back to his van, Eddie noticed Nancy and Jonathan about to get into her car. He’d thought for sure that he had taken too long and missed them, but somehow he’d gotten lucky.  Maybe the eldest Wheeler got caught up doing newspaper stuff after school. Whatever the reason, he was grateful. He told the boys to get in and trotted over to the couple.

Eddie found he had mixed feelings towards Nancy. She’d been so great about the investigation thing and told them everything they wanted to know, and she was nice about Eddie’s own reaction to it all, but there was a small part of him that bubbled up with jealousy when he thought about her and Steve being reunited. 

He knew she was with Jonathan now, and had been for a long time, much longer than she’d dated Steve, but the thought still set his teeth on edge. He shook it off, he had no reason to think they would still be interested in each other, and even if they were, it’s not like he had a claim on Steve now just because they’d made out a little bit. Nancy cared about Steve, and she deserved to know that he was alive and safe. Well, as safe as any of them were now.

“Shit, man, what happened to you?” Jonathan said as Eddie got close. He must still have some blood smeared on his face. 

Eddie shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. “A disagreement between me and one of our resident jocks. No big deal. Listen, uh, are you guys busy right now?” 

The two of them shared a look. “Not really, why?” Nancy said.

“I can’t tell you here.” He was getting really tired of saying that already. “I’m sorry to be cryptic about it, but I think you’ll understand when you see. I’m taking all the kids back to my house right now, could you follow us there? There's something I need to show all of you.”

The couple looked at eachother again, confusion clear on their faces, but for whatever reason they agreed. Probably because he already had their brothers roped into something. Oh well, he'd take it. This had all gone much easier than he thought it would, apart from the black eye he could feel forming. 

-

The short ride back to the trailer park was uncharacteristically quiet. Dustin remained silent, though Eddie could practically hear the thoughts churning in his head. The other boys knew at this point that Eddie wasn’t going to give in, so there was no point in questioning him on the way. 

He pulled in front of the trailer and got out, ordering the boys to stop when they tried to walk right inside, insisting they needed to wait for Nancy and Jonathan.

He and Steve hadn’t exactly planned this part but Eddie made sure to stomp his feet on the steps so that anyone inside would hear them coming. He turned to his small assembled crowd, feeling like he should give them some kind of warning. 

“So, this might be a bit of a shock. Just…everybody try to be cool, ok?”

Eddie spun back around quickly to avoid the several sets of very concerned eyes that were aimed in his direction. He opened the door and stepped inside, doing a quick sweep of the room, finding Steve and Eleven sitting at the kitchen table with Wayne. He stepped further in, letting everyone trail in after him. 

Wayne, who’d had a sandwich halfway to his mouth, let it drop from his hands to hit the plate with a little thud. He rubbed at his face muttering, “God damnit Eddie.”

Eleven didn’t seem surprised at the influx of new arrivals, Steve must have filled her in when she woke up. 

“Wait, is that?” Lucas started to ask but was cut off by Nancy’s gasp of, “Steve?!”

Steve stood, giving her a little wave. “Hey, Nance.”

She hesitated, just staring at him for a handful of seconds before stepping forward and throwing her arms around him. “You’re alive.” She murmured softly into his chest, eventually pulling away to look at his face.

“Oh my god, you’re alive!” She said again, much louder this time and with tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?” She asked, reaching up to cradle his face in her hands. 

Eddie had that feeling again. He knew it wasn’t right but he felt like she was touching something that belonged to him. He held the jealousy in, Nancy and Steve had been something to each other once upon a time, and they were entitled to this without his interference. 

Steve lightly took her hands and lowered them from his cheeks. Then he finally looked up and met Eddie’s eyes, smiling as he said, “I’m okay, Eddie’s been taking good care of me.”  

Oh and didn’t that make his stomach flutter. Eddie could feel himself blushing a little under Steve’s gaze, glad that no one was really paying attention to him. Everyone was too focused on the missing person in the room, now found, and the young girl at the table who was a stranger to all of them.

Steve broke their stare after a moment and looked around at the rest of the assembly crammed into the small space of the trailer. 

“Hey guys.” He said, nodding to the younger boys.

Dustin, he greeted by name, causing the other three to look his way accusingly. He shrugged at his friends, mouthing the word sorry while looking far too smug to mean it, before walking over to take a seat next to Eleven. 

“Hey man.” Jonathan said, finally emerging from a stunned silence as Nancy came back to stand near him. “I’m, uh, glad you’re alright.”

“Thanks.”

“So that’s it? You found Steve?!” Mike blurted out, finally losing patience. Honestly Eddie was surprised he’d lasted this long. “I mean, not that that’s not cool and all but what’s with the secrecy, and why is he here instead of with his parents or Hopper?”

Eddie finally sidled up to Steve, close but not touching like he really wanted to. He wasn’t sure how he was meant to act now in general, let alone in front of this many people, so he was happy enough just to be near the other boy. 

Steve wasn’t. 

He took that one step closer that caused their sides to brush and rested his hand on Eddie's lower back where no one else could see. “Are you still sure about this?” He murmured the question softly into Eddie’s ear. 

Eddie nodded, even as his heart started to race from the gentle touch and the feel of Steve’s breath on his skin.

“There’s a lot we need to tell you all, starting with introducing you to someone. This is Eleven. She and I have been held against our will at Hawkins lab for the past two years.”

Mike, Lucas, and Will’s jaws all dropped simultaneously. Dustin grinned from his place next to the girl. She looked a little shy suddenly with all the attention and Eddie noticed Wayne gave her a little pat on the back in support. 

As he watched the interaction, and how the girl smiled up at his uncle, it hit Eddie suddenly how lucky he was to have made it out of that place when he did. Luckier still that Claudia had found him and took him home. He could have died, or been made to spend the rest of his childhood in that place the same way Eleven had. He honestly wasn’t sure which one was worse. 

-

Steve and Eddie took turns telling their parts of the story and then together explained the parallels between the game and the real world. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, it didn’t take much to convince the boys that they were telling the truth. They quickly accepted the fact that much of what they had played through was real and they even took Eddie’s backstory in stride, though they had a lot of questions that he didn’t have the answers to. 

Jonathan and Nancy were a bit harder of a sell. He was quietly skeptical, while she kept trying to poke holes in everything and seemed completely unwilling to accept that anyone could have the type of power they were claiming. Finally, with a flick of her hand El sent a magazine that had been sitting on the kitchen counter flying in Nancy’s direction. She caught it on instinct, her mouth opening in a soft ‘oh’ of surprise as her brain caught up to what it had just witnessed. 

The rest of the room went dead silent at the display, save for Dustin who was giggling like an idiot at having finally seen what he’d been waiting for since the morning. He offered her a high five, which she returned with gusto, smiling wider than Eddie had ever seen her in their short acquaintance. 

Things went a lot quicker after that.

Wayne didn’t say much throughout the explanation, which wasn’t surprising to Eddie, his uncle had always been a quiet person, but he watched the man's face fall as they reached the end and had to tell of Eddie’s character's death at the hands of Vecna via the demobats.

“You boys said things don’t always go the same as your game, right? Do you think…does that mean…is that likely to happen, Eds?” Wayne's voice shook as he finally spoke. His worry for his nephew clear as day. 

“We’re honestly not sure.” Eddie admitted reluctantly.

“That’s why we wanted to tell everyone who might be involved as soon as possible,” Steve added.

“There’s more too. Fred, and Patrick were victims in the story, and Chrissy. I tried to get her to come with us but her boyfriend interrupted.” Eddie said, mostly to Steve since the others had been there. 

“Yeah! You should have seen it, Steve.” Dustin jumped in. “Eddie got a good shove in but then Jason punched him in the face.”

Wayne shook his head, grumbling softly, “Gonna have to call that school tomorrow. Ain’t right letting my boy get hit like that.”

“I’m fine.” Eddie insisted, catching his uncle’s eye.

“Jason Carver?” Steve asked, jaw tightening every so slightly.

Lucas nodded, answering him. 

Steve touched his fingers lightly to Eddie’s chin, examining his face carefully. “Did he hurt you?” He said softly. 

It was almost too much, the way Steve was looking at him, and a lump formed in Eddie’s throat. “I’m fine.” He forced out, hoping his voice sounded more normal than he felt. He swallowed hard and tried again. “I'll probably have a hell of a black eye later, but that’s all.” 

“So, what do we do now, what’s the plan?” Will asked.

Steve and Eddie shared a look. “We hadn’t really worked out much past telling everyone what we had figured out.”

“What about Max and Billy?” Lucas asked.

Steve frowned. “Who is she again?”

“Max is a girl the boys tried to make friends with, she and her shitty brother, Billy Hargrove, moved here the fall after you got taken.” Eddie explained.

“What do you mean, tried to make friends?” Steve asked.

“We were all hanging out at the arcade once, a few days after we met Max.  Billy showed up early to pick her up. He saw her and Lucas holding hands and he freaked out.” Dustin said. “I’m pretty sure if we weren’t in public he would have killed lucas.”

“Yeah, he said some pretty messed up stuff.” Will added.

Lucas sighed sadly. “She wouldn’t talk to us again after that.” 

Will patted him on the arm. “She doesn’t talk to anyone, Lucas. It’s not your fault.” 

“He’s right.” Mike agreed. “She always acts pissed off, but sometimes when she thinks no one is looking her eyes go all sad. I don’t think she has any friends.”

Eddie didn’t like the sound of that. “So, she’s alone, and possibly depressed.” He pointed out, looking at Steve.

“And If Henry picks his victims like you said, then…” Steve trailed off.

“She’s screwed.” Eddie finished the thought. “Do any of you dipshits know where this girl lives?”

The younger boys all shook their heads, they didn't know.

“Cherry Street.” Wayne answered out of nowhere. 

Everyone including Eddie stared at him for a moment in surprise. 

How and why the hell did Wayne, of all people, know where this girl lived?

“That boy you were talking about, the racist one? I know his old man, Neil. He’s a supervisor at the plant and a real piece of work, apple doesn’t fall far, y’know? You go get that girl, but be careful.”

Eddie gaped at his uncle. “You’re seriously on board for this?”

Wayne laughed. “As if I could stop you. You boys go, I'll handle things when Jim gets here.” He paused to check his watch. “Which should be any time now. Probably better if you stay out for a while and let me explain to him what’s going on. He’s gonna blow his stack.”

“Jonathan and I can stay and help you explain it to him, Mr. Munson. If that’s okay with you?” Nancy offered.

“It’s fine with me, and please call me Wayne.”

Steve wanted El to stay behind too. She wasn’t happy about being left out while her brother put himself in danger, but she agreed once Eddie promised to keep an eye on him for her. It was decided that the four younger boys would go along with Steve and Eddie to the Mayfield/Hargrove house, because at least she knew them a little from school, and it would be less creepy than two older boys showing up alone unannounced. 

They were getting ready to leave when there was a knock on the trailer door. Eddie, thinking it was Hopper coming early, opened it without hesitation. 

It wasn’t the police chief, it was Chrissy Cuningham. 

She started profusely apologizing the second he opened the door, but stopped abruptly in the middle of her speech and let out a loud gasp when she spotted Steve hovering behind him.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you found him!” Chrissy cried out.

Eddie took her by the hand and pulled her inside, he didn’t want to risk his neighbor overhearing anything. “Actually, he sorta found me.” Eddie told her. 

She smiled brightly at Steve and hugged him before turning back to Eddie. “Is this what you wanted to tell me?”

“This, and a lot more actually.”

Chrissy looked around, finally taking notice of just how many people were inside the small home. 

“Why don’t we take her with us?” Steve suggested. “I think I can explain it to her on the way.”

Eddie shrugged and looked at Chrissy. “You up for a little field trip?” 

-

Dustin called shotgun. Eddie would have preferred to make the trip with Steve sitting by his side, but he and Chrissy had crawled into the far rear of the van so they could talk, giving the back seat to the other boys. 

The whole way there Eddie couldn’t stop staring through the rear-view mirror at the two of them huddled together. It wasn’t a jealousy thing this time, it was the fact that Steve kept catching his eye in the reflection, and smiling in a way that would’ve made his knees give out if he wasn’t already sitting down.  

When he almost missed a turn for the second time, Dustin elbowed him hard in the side. “Eyes on the road, Romeo.” He kept his voice low enough that Eddie didn’t worry about the other boys hearing it over the music, but he still blushed and swatted at the kid’s arm. “Shut up!”

It turned out that Chrissy knew exactly where the house was, since Billy had been on the basketball team with Jason before he graduated. They parked a few doors down, trying to scope out the situation a little before going in. 

It looked like the kids' parents must be out, as the driveway was empty, but a blue camaro that Eddie knew belonged to Billy was parked out in the street. That was going to be a problem. He had known better than to hope that the girl would be home alone but he still didn’t have any idea how they were going to do this.

“What if I went up to the door and distracted him?” Chrissy offered.

“Yeah! And then we can sneak around the back and find her window or something!” Lucas said.

Eddie chewed on his thumbnail, thinking. “If me or Steve get caught sneaking in a young girl's window we’ll get arrested.” 

Honestly if they got caught doing this, getting arrested for that would be the least of their worries. 

“You two can stay here then and keep watch. We got this.” Dustin said.

Eddie didn’t like it but he didn’t have any better ideas, so he reluctantly agreed. At least it was dark out now, so the kids had a decent chance of not being seen. 

Chrissy slipped out the back door of the van, and they all watched as she walked up to the front door and rang the bell. It didn’t take long for the door to open, revealing Billy, silhouetted in the doorway by the lights inside the house. They weren’t close enough to hear what was said but just based on the guy's body language she must have been doing something right. He leaned against the doorframe with his hip, smirking at her as he listened to whatever it was she was saying. 

They didn’t know how long she’d be able to keep it up so the boys quickly spilled out, going through a neighboring backyard to come up behind Max’s house. 

With everyone else now gone, Steve climbed over the back seats and settled in next to Eddie, taking his hand right away and squeezing it. It would have been romantic, holding hands with Steve in the quiet dark, had they not been so worried about the others and what could go wrong. 

About five or ten minutes had gone by since the boys had left the van, and Billy was still happily chatting with Chrissy by the front door. Eddie should have known that things couldn’t be this easy, that something was about to go wrong. 

Out of nowhere, all of the lights in the house began to flicker wildly. Eddie’s heart sank. It had to mean what he thought it meant, there was no way it was a coincidence. They’d almost been too late, still might be if they didn’t get in there right now and try to help the poor girl.

Without a word he and Steve both leaped from the car, perfectly in sync about what needed to be done, and ran for the house. Chrissy was already looking in their direction, a panicked look on her face. Billy was distracted looking around at the blinking lights. Neither of them stopped or slowed their steps as they approached the door to the home, pushing right past a bewildered Billy and into the house beyond. He recovered quickly, following closely at their heels and shouting at them to get the fuck out of his house. 

Eddie could hear distantly that Chrissy was trying to stop him or distract him, but he couldn’t concentrate on what was being said. They needed to find the girl. 

Thankfully the house was small and the second door they tried turned out to be her bedroom. It was a crazy scene. The young redhead was standing in the middle of her room stock still, her eyes rolled into the back of her head. He could see the boys standing on the other side of the window, they were banging on the glass and shouting. It looked like she'd been walking towards the window to talk to them when the attack started.

Finally Billy fought his way into the room. Eddie was sure that under normal circumstances fists would be flying by this point, but with the lights flashing and his sister having some sort of episode, it was chaos, and the guy didn’t seem to know how to respond to it all. 

“Music right?” Steve said.

“Yeah, let’s just hope it works. Everybody look for a walkman!”

Chrissy, Steve, and Eddie started to tear the room apart as Billy continued to shout.

“What are you doing to her?! You better get the fuck out before I call the cops”

Chrissy quickly found it lying on the girl's bed half obscured beneath a throw blanket. She shoved it in Eddie's direction. He popped it open, and after all of this he was still somehow surprised to find that the tape she’d last listened to was in fact Hounds of Love by Kate Bush. He shook his head, rewinding the tape to the start of the last song that had been played before shoving the headphones over the girl’s ears. 

He heard more than saw Steve bodily shoving Billy out of the room. Eddie was worried about him getting hurt, but he had to trust that he could handle it. Eddie had his hands full trying to save this girl. Once she was okay he could worry about everything else. 

The song began, the volume loud enough that it could be heard in the room which had grown quiet in Billy's absence. When Eddie had envisioned this moment, the young girl’s first battle with Vecna, it had been to the soundtrack of Running up that Hill. Though he was a metal guy first and foremost, he enjoyed all kinds of music, and was able to appreciate Kate Bush for her theatricality. He didn’t know why that was the song his mind conjured up, had never thought to question it. That wasn’t the song that was currently blasting out of the girl’s headphones now, however Jig of Life felt more than appropriate under the circumstances. 

🎵I'll be sitting in your mirror Now is the place where the crossroads meet Will you look into the future Never, never say goodbye To my part of your life🎵

“Come on, Red. You can do this.” Eddie murmured, shaking the girl by the shoulders. He wasn’t sure if she could hear him, and even if she could, he didn't know what he could possibly say to help her fight this thing. 

🎵No, no, no, no Oh-oh-oh-oh let me live She said come on and let me live, girl She said come on and let me live, girl Come on, let me live This moment in time, she said It doesn’t belong to you”🎵

The lights stopped flickering so suddenly that it was jarring, and in the same moment Max’s eyes shot open. She gasped as if rising out of a deep pool of water, swaying on her feet, and would have fallen if Chrissy hadn’t been there to catch her. Max grabbed on to Chrissy's arms, gripping tight as her breath came in short gasps. She looked frantically around the room searching for a danger that was no longer there.

“You’re okay, you’re okay. It’s over. I got you.” Chrissy rocked the girl gently, murmuring comforting words into her hair over and over again as she fought to control her breathing.

Now that Max was free, Eddie finally tuned in to the noise happening in the rest of the house, and he could hear that the raised voices in the other room had reached a fever pitch. It wasn’t only Steve and Billy that could be heard now, but the younger boys as well. 

He locked eyes with Chrissy over Max’s head. “Stay with her, I'll be right back.”

She nodded rapidly. “Go! Help them!”

Eddie rushed out to the hallway and found everyone in the living room. Steve was in the middle of it, the only thing standing between an enraged psychopath and the four younger boys. From what he heard, it sounded like Steve had been trying to explain to Billy some of what was going on, but he was refusing to listen. Then the boys had come bursting in, and Hargrove took one look at Lucas and lost it. 

Billy had his back to Eddie, so the asshole didn't see it coming when he creeped up behind him, snatched a commemorative plate right off the wall, and smashed it over his head. Unfortunately, it didn’t knock the guy out like he had planned, but it did send him to the floor. Eddie jumped on him, holding his upper body down, while Steve quickly got the idea and took hold of his legs. Eddie yelled at the boys to find some rope or anything they could use to tie him up with. They returned quickly with a handful of zip ties and a roll of duct tape. They made it work, finishing the job off with an extra piece of tape over Billy’s mouth for good measure. 

Chrissy and Max chose that moment to come out of the young girl’s bedroom, both staring open mouthed at the scene before them.  Max’s eyes were wide but sparkled with amusement as she watched her step-brother struggle against his bonds.

“What are you going to do with him?” Chrissy asked.

“I have no idea, but at least we shut him up for now.” Steve said between heaving breaths. He sat down on the floor hard, using the hem of his shirt to dab the blood from his split lip. Eddie tried not to stare at the strip of exposed skin that the move had caused, but it was a losing battle. He knew it was fucked up to ogle the poor guy while he was bleeding, but he felt less bad about it when he realized that Steve was watching him right back, eyes full of intense desire. Apparently seeing Eddie smash a plate over some douchebag's head had really done something for him. 

Dustin cleared his throat loudly, purposefully, interrupting the moment before either of them could do or say something they might regret in front of all these people. Eddie didn’t know whether to thank him for it or throttle him. 

Lucas was the first to approach Max, the other boys following close behind him.

“Are you okay?” Lucas asked. The tender expression on the kid’s face told Eddie that his little crush on the redhead hadn’t dimmed at all since that awful night at the arcade. 

Max gave him a small smile. “I have no idea what's going on or how you and your weird friends got me out of there, but yeah, I’m okay.” She said.

Chrissy stayed by Max’s side even as the boys swooped in to try and cheer her up, the poor girl was still clinging to her hand like a lifeline.

“Maybe we should take him back to the trailer with us, Hopper should be there by now. Maybe he can hold him for something down at the police station?” Steve suggested, mostly aiming the idea at Eddie since the others were occupied. 

“That’s not a bad idea.” Eddie agreed. He offered a hand to help Steve. He took it, letting the touch linger a little longer than necessary once he was on his feet.

Eddie raised his voice to be heard over the small roar of all the younger boys talking at once. “Hey Red, you got a problem with us kidnapping your shitty stepbrother?”

“No.” Max answered quickly, then hesitated before continuing, “but uh, I don't think I want to be alone right now. Can you take me too?”

Chrissy released the girl’s hand in favor of wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she said, “I think you’d better come with us anyway so we can try to explain what’s happening to you.”

Eddie caught her eye and nodded in agreement. “We’re definitely not all going to fit in my van this time. Maybe we could take two trips?”

“One of you could drive Billy’s car. I know where his keys are.” Max supplied helpfully. Eddie was really starting to like this kid. 

Together, he and Steve managed to pick Billy up to carry him to the car, the others going out ahead to keep watch and open doors. Halfway down the front yard, their captive started thrashing violently, causing them to drop him to the ground. Luckily for Billy, the lawn was pretty lush and probably cushioned his fall well enough, though Eddie sincerely hoped he hurt something in the fall. 

They were working on getting him back up, Mike and Lucas now helping now too, when Eddie heard a rustle in the bushes separating Max’s house from her neighbor’s.

Great.

The last thing they needed right now was for some nosy housewife to spot them in the middle of - whatever this was - and call the police.

Eddie shushed the group and had them lay Billy back down on the ground. He crept over to where he’d heard the noise. It was very dark in the side yard, since Max’s house didn’t have any outside lights other than the single bulb on the porch. He squinted as he got close, trying to see if there was really someone there or if it was just a raccoon, only to get blinded as the creeper turned on a flashlight that was aimed directly in his face. 

“Jesus H. Christ,'' Eddie shouted, stepping backwards as he threw his hands up to shield his eyes, and proceeded to trip over a branch and fall flat on his ass. 

Steve was at his side quickly, making sure he was okay, and helping him up.

The mystery person with the offending flashlight had also come out of hiding. Eddie blinked a few times, trying to force his eyes to adjust. It took a second, but once they did he realized they were standing face to face with Robin Buckley.

“What are you doing?!” She asked accusingly.

“It’s not what it looks like!” Eddie insisted.

She crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing the two of them curiously. “So...you don’t have Billy Hargrove trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and you and your merry band of freshman, along with whoever else, aren't getting ready to take him and his step sister god knows where?”

Eddie sighed. “Okay, it’s exactly what it looks like, but I swear we have a really good reason.”

“We’re not trying to hurt anyone.” Steve added.

Robin tilted her flashlight up again, shining it directly in Steve's face this time. 

“Wait a second…Harrington?! I thought you were missing!” She all but shrieked.

Eddie slapped his hand over her mouth as he said, “Technically, he is still missing. It’s a long story.”

Robin glared hard and he lowered his hand for self preservation.

He turned to Steve, they hadn’t really talked about bringing Robin into things. She had mostly served as Steve’s side-kick in the game, and she wasn’t a victim of Vecna’s. She also wasn’t friends with anyone in the party, Eddie knew her from band but that was all. Now he wondered if there was some reason why, out of all the people in Hawkins, he had chosen her to be NPC-Steve’s best friend.

Steve seemed to read his mind. “You want to tell her?”

Eddie shrugged. “At this point we might as well.”

“I really love the way you’re talking about me like I'm not here, guys. Doing wonders for my belief that what you're doing has no nefarious purpose.” Robin said, clearly rolling her eyes despite the fact that they could barely see her.  

“Look, we can explain everything, but you’ll have to come with us.” 

She stared at the two of them, then looked towards the gaggle of kids behind them keeping watch over Billy. Finally, her eyes settled on Chrissy, going just a little wide as she recognized the cheerleader. 

Oh, that was interesting.

“Okay, fine.” She said. “ But if anything happens to me I will haunt your asses!.”

Chapter 10

Thank you @penny00dreadful for beta reading once again!

Taglist: @yeahhhh-suga @steddie-there @goinsteddie @brbsoulnomming @the-s-is-silent @paintsplatteredandimperfect @estrellami-1 @herebedragons404 @epiclazershark @mentallyundone @hardboiledleggs @manda-panda-monium @ellietheasexylibrarian @sofadofax @5ammi90 @bestwifehaver @eddie-munsons-lunchbox @soaringornithopter @buckleybarnes @adaed5 @goodolefashionedloverboi

As always, i'm happy to add or remove anyone from the taglist. Just let me know!

[katieskarlette]

I watched the trailers and read the Blizzcon '23 stuff on WoWhead.

Meh. Not the spark I was looking for to rekindle my passion for the game.

(Morose lack of enthusiasm for 11.0, and Shadowlands postmortem below.)

Instead of getting hyped for upcoming content, it just makes me feel bad about how little I care anymore.

I used to be on the edge of my seat, palms sweating, happily freaking out about new cinematics and new expansion releases. I would plan ahead and take time off to watch the Blizzcon livestream, and stock up on food I could eat while glued to the screen. Today I got home from work and turned on my computer...and only then remembered that Blizzcon was today. After seeing the trailers and stuff I'm like, "Okay. I guess that's fine. Whatever." [Garrosh voice] Times change. [/Garrosh voice]

I didn't expect the news about upcoming expansions to knock my socks off, though. If Dragonflight, an expansion that was practically custom-made to focus on my favorite lore, didn't rekindle my love for WoW, nothing was going to.

That said, I'm still underwhelmed. I can't say that Alleria, Thrall, and Magni are characters I'd be super excited to hang out with. (It was a nice touch to have Thrall going gray, though.)

Xal'atath (sp?) is pretty cool but forgive me for being wary considering the track record for female villains in this franchise.

Anduin...very mixed feelings there. I'm glad he's back, and it was nice to hear Josh Keaton's voice again. I don't recognize him physically anymore, except those baby blue eyes, which is probably why the cinematic spent so much time zoomed in uncomfortably close on his face. I get that that's the point, that he's grown up and gotten grizzled, but he looks and feels like a completely different person.

I think part of the problem is that we didn't get to see him changing. He went from dropping his sword to resurrect an army and being stubbornly optimistic in BFA, to weary but still full of the Light in the cutscenes with Sylvanas in Torghast, to completely blank (save one glimmer) while under Zovaal's domination, to this broken, unstable, self-loathing shell of a man in the 11.0 cinematic. Even if we're generous and count the tiny conversation with Sylvanas at the end of her novel, we have to just imagine what happened to him in between then and now. It's okay to ask the audience to fill in some implied developments, but this is jarring. (I suppose it's possible we'll see more characterization in-game between now and then. I'm not optimistic, though.)

I imagine Anduin will go through an arc where the Light comes back to him, or he finds some kind of peace again and reclaims his throne, but I don't have the patience to wait around for it to happen, or the confidence that it would be done well.

I also can't separate the character's angst with the real-world consequences of Shadowlands sucking as hard as it did. Yeah, Anduin, you've been through absolute hell--so have we. You haven't recovered--and neither have I.

When they had him do the "Arthas pointing Frostmourne just left of the camera lens" pose, instead of going "Ooh, I recognize that! That was cool!" it just reminded me of all the times they did fanservice callbacks to the Lich King in Shadowlands, only to shit all over that part of lore. That's the last thing I want to be reminded of.

It was a bold move to reveal the names and story hooks of the next two expansions, but rather than whet my appetite it just removed the hope that "maybe the next expansion will be better." Nope, it'll be more of the cosmic bullshit that I don't care about: Light, Void, Titans, etc. It's okay in small doses, but it's not the kind of story that pulled me in and made me fall in love with the world.

I hate to say it, but this might be the nail in the coffin for me. I definitely miss the glory days of WoW when it was a huge part of my life and I got so much enjoyment out of it, but I'm beginning to realize that those days aren't coming back. When I think of all the hours and dollars I invested in the franchise it makes me want to cry--not that I regret any of it. I just wish the spark hadn't gone out for me.

I had been so immersed for so many years that maybe it was just time for it to run its course. The social climate has also changed a lot for me, from a thriving guild during MoP, to sporadic bursts of people logging on in Legion and early BFA, to a ghost town in mid-to-late BFA and SL. Strangers can be rude and elitist, making pugging more stressful than fun. I've also been concentrating a lot on my own original writing in the last year.

Those are factors, to be sure, but I do have to lay a lot of the blame on Shadowlands. I had gotten past so-so expansions before. Cataclysm wasn't the best, but all the Firelands stuff was fun, and some of my favorite dragons got screen time. MOP was freaking fantastic. WoD was a dud expansion for me, but there was enough to keep me busy and playing right up to the end. Legion was awesome. BFA wasn't great, and the loss of Teldrassil left a very sour taste, but it had good leveling content, some fun characters, and generally enough stuff going on to tide me over. It was going in a pattern of great expansion, not-so-good expansion, great expansion, not-so-good expansion, and that was okay.

Then Shadowlands came, and it was grimdark, overly serious, cosmic-scale stuff, headed by the most aggressively boring villain the series had ever had. There were a ton of new characters, and, except for Denathrius, Renathal, and Theotar (and Merileth and his slimes, in small doses), none of them interested me. The game systems somehow became even more fiddly, complicated and confusing time sinks than they were in BFA. The afterlife setup barely made sense, conflicted with past lore, complicated future lore, and was ultimately depressing as hell--you probably won't spend eternity with your loved ones, and even if you do, you'll probably end up as a blip of red energy that gets consumed and then cease to exist at all. That's just how I want to imagine all my favorite Warcraft characters ending up! (We probably didn't see Tirion Fordring because some blue guy in a toga needed his anima to grow better grapes. FFS.)

But the worst aspect of Shadowlands, IMO, was the way the pre-existing characters were done dirty--every single one of them.

I don't know you manage to take one of the greatest paladins of all time, then turn him into fiery overlord of the undead, and have him be boring, but there's Bolvar. Get that man a throat lozenge and some personality. Taelia got cameos in which they mentioned their relationship, but nothing ever came of it. He was a father figure to Anduin in the king's youth, but you wouldn't know it by what they did/said in SL. Going by BFA and SL, freaking Saurfang was more of a father figure to Anduin than Bolvar, who literally raised him for several years of his childhood.

Nathanos got an epic sendoff courtesy of Tyrande in the prepatch, then got teased a few times without ever appearing or mattering again.

Sylvanas was a mess. I don't need to get into details; we all know the trainwreck of a story. The concept of making her soul complete again so she had to come to terms with what she had done was a promising one, but it was handled so clumsily and briefly that it was ultimately frustrating.

The less said about the Jailer, the better. I wanted so badly to like Zovaal, but he was the most flat, boring, paint-by-numbers Saturday morning cartoon villain in the franchise's history. Not interesting, not sympathetic, not fleshed out, not funny, not charismatic, not sexy, not scary--none of the things past Blizzard villains had going for them.

Uther's story was one of the better ones, but because of how closely tied it was to Arthas' story, and the unforgivably bad way that was handled, it ultimately fizzled.

Thrall was...fine? The bits with his mom were neat, but I couldn't stop thinking about what a crappy afterlife it would be to constantly fight, spy, scheme, and play politics, all while the supposed love of her life is nowhere to be seen. Poor Durotan.

Baine famously, frustratingly, amusingly in an if-you-don't-laugh-you'll-cry kind of way, did jack squat in the entire expansion. I know his arc got cut for time, but regardless of the reason he was yet another character whose involvement in SL was disappointing.

Jaina was wasted. Her history with Arthas (and, to a lesser extent, Anduin) could have made for some memorable, heart-wrenching story, but instead she was just a generic sorceress. That was especially disappointing given the respectful, deep treatment her character got in BFA. I know not every character can have the spotlight in every story arc, but the complete lack of personality she had in SL was especially jarring in contrast.

Anduin's arc should have been interesting, but we never got into his head enough to really feel what he was feeling. We had that glimpse of his horror after stabbing the Archon, and he left his father's compass as a clue, but those were fleeting moments open to interpretation and not enough to offset the blank slate we got the rest of the time. Even that would have been forgivable, given the limits of storytelling in a game, but the thing that sticks in my craw the most is that constant, blatant Arthas parallels led to...nothing. Anduin would have been just as devastated to be mind-controlled into doing evil stuff even if Arthas had never existed. Arthas meant nothing to Anduin. The only time he met the man was as an infant. They weren't related. Nobody in-universe was comparing them. Garrosh compared himself to Arthas in the War Crimes novel, and Anduin fleetingly thought about Arthas when he befriended Calia in Before the Storm, but that's it. Even as hokey as it would have been to make Anduin secretly Jaina and Arthas' son, at least that would have explained two expansions' worth of in-your-face parallels between the two characters. But no. It all came across as fanservice--or fan teasing--and had no payoff.

Speaking of Arthas, arguably the most famous and recognizable character in the franchise (competing with Illidan and Scantily-Clad Female Night Elf #17 for the top spot)...

After being teased about his possible involvement or whereabouts all expansion long, after they milked every possible drop of nostalgia out of his story in an attempt to make SL palatable, after all the flashing red arrows calling our attention to parallels between him and Anduin, despite his importance to three prominent characters (Uther, Sylvanas, and Jaina), Arthas never did anything (boss mechanics don't count), never had a line of dialogue, never appeared in a form we recognized, got insulted and belittled by Sylvanas one last time, and disappeared in a flicker of blue plasma that was less impressive than a drunk frat boy lighting his farts with a match.

So yeah. Toss Shadowlands in the trash heap (except Sire Denathrius). It was so bad it tainted the entire franchise for me, so that I couldn't even enjoy the long-awaited dragonpalooza that followed.

Phew, that was a long rant, and the first time I've written about WoW in ages. I guess it just goes to show that I have deep roots in the franchise that come along with strong feelings--which makes it all the harder to accept that I may not even buy the next expansion. I suppose I'll weaken when the time comes, but I'm certainly not shelling out for the collector's edition or other bells and whistles.

But then the Li'l Wrathion in-game pet stares at me from another browser tab, and I think about the new Wrathion plushie, and I'm like...DAMN IT, why couldn't you have done this years ago? :(

Anyway, sorry to be a downer, but I'm kind of in mourning, in a weird way, as I come to terms with the way I feel--or more importantly, don't feel--about Warcraft now.

[magical-regical]

Scanning the galaxy for Xavier lore

I know Xavier has some deep lore in his myth story but in most of the main story he's like:

Either I'm just rly bad at reading subtext or the main story does nothing to elaborate about his past or what he's looking for and I'm on chapter 7. Maybe that's intentional and then it ramps up on chapter 8 since that's when you unlock another one of his anecdotes.

With Rafayel, the game basically tells you he's tied to Lemuria from even before launch through his dialogue and the shot of him underwater in the Jan 18th release trailer. On his daily interactions he also doesn't really hide it, straight up saying "that shit won't fly in Lemuria" when you touch his butt lol.

And ig with Zayne w/ the thing abt his evol being revealed early on and the fact that he's your childhood friend and a doctor and all of chapter 5, it's pretty easy to put two and two together.

But Xavier? His in game interactions just hint at how he's been alive for so long he's mastered everything except cooking and that's why he has no worldly desires and I'm here like 'yea, we been known. It's in his character release trailer'. The same trailer is also (so far) the biggest source of lore I've been getting without reading the myths story and after really paying attention to it, gives quite a bit of juicy info.

Aside from the '214th spring on earth' line, the radio in his trailer says their planet welcomed the 4389.2 billionth sunrise and currently, the earth is 4543 billion years old and the earliest signs of life only emerged 3.7 billion years ago. The radio lady then proceeds to mention how 'the tracker team has returned from earth' and about 'returning to an era before immortality'.

Does that imply Xavier's immortal? Or just immortal compared to regular humans? While I'm on this topic, lore says Xavier's been on this earth for 214 years which implies the myth stories don't happen on earth because 214 years from the time of the stories (which I assume is 2048 since Zayne is 27 years old and I saw a random tumblr post saying he was born in 2021, I might be wrong about that) is the year 1834 which is far from a time of swords and seers but is still crazy to think about because that means this man lived through two world wars and the great depression if history holds.

So my theory is, w/ Zayne and Rafayel, the myth stories are like, memories of a past life but for Xavier, after whatever happened in the myth story, he goes back to his planet and it's not until way waaay into the future that for some reason he decides to come to earth and when he meets MC the first time and he gets absolute whiplash because holy fuck that's them. They're back. After god knows how many lifetimes it's they're once again within his reach. Which is actually pretty fucking tragic? Holy shit I did not think I'd be uncovering all this when I thought about Xavier doing that stupid meme.

[cospinol]

supremely late as usual but yayyy it's finally time for the winter season's isekai (and rpg fantasy and miscellaneous reincarnation plot) log~ i initially expected the average score of the shows in this log to turn out significantly higher than average but instead it's only very slightly higher than usual because the one essential truth in seasonal anime is that everything will always let you down except for kingdom.

kicking things off is the one that i think is the most Actively and Consistently good , saijaku tamer, which is (certainly not incidentally) the one whose isekai aspect is by far the least relevant to/present the actual show, not just among this season's crop but across the entire genre as i know it : the 'reincarnated person' is not just a completely separate character from the protagonist, it's a disembodied voice in her head that no one else can hear (including the audience!) and whose knowledge/commentary she remarks on less than once an episode. it's the kind of thing that immediately makes you assume it's only there for marketing purposes but it's also not in the title or in any synopsis or trailer, so...? anyways this show made me cry during that trailer and then kept that momentum the whole time; it's absolutely laser-focused one thing, which is extracting as much feelsbait as possible out of various scenarios of ivy cautiously allowing herself to be foster-parented by different types of people (and animals) along her journey, which is also fortunately also the thing it's really good at (when the plot occasionally requires it to show you something else, like the worst action sequence you've ever seen in your life, it's deeply apologetic about it). what if kino's journey was moe! this is the platonic ideal of a 7/10

just below it in the 'you should've earned yourself a 7 as well' shame box we have ishura and chiyu mahou, neither of which is actively bad in its own right but ultimately can't cash the checks they started out writing. ishura does a lot of things right for most of the season, and while i know a lot of people bounced off its structure of 'half a cour of isolated character introduction segments, half a cour of these people showing up in the same place to kill each other', i love a stupid death game in almost any form it's offered to me. unfortunately, though, it ended up getting on my nerves by only distantly promising the eventual murder tournament and centring its actual plot around its military politics, only to reveal that absolutely everything that happened this season was just in service of taking a few pieces off the board before we go to the real plot, which will be... the tournament itself...... this is way too meaty an arc to just be a prologue but its ending is so dismissive of it that it makes me wish neither i nor anyone involved had bothered and we were just watching the tournament instead. it's such a shame... still, the actual pvp section of the show is excellent, and my favourite part of this entire anime season was when it aired its Bandit Vs Spider episode as an apéritif for the Bandit Vs Spider episode of kingdom later in the same week lol

it's hard to place the full blame on chiyu mahou for failing to live up to expectations when i know full well that when one of these shows promises that its characters will go off to War With Demons later in the season, it's never going to be the kind of detailed military campaign i want to see. the problem is that this series is very character-focused (..comparatively, for the genre) and all of its major character arcs and theming revolve around individual sense of responsibility towards one's role on the battlefield, so it's incredibly hard not to get your hopes up that that theme will be explored... and then find them dashed as we get further and further into the season having done nothing but increasingly basic training arcs and slice of life antics and more training and multiple episodes of flashback and even more training until momentum is completely at a standstill, and then we spend barely two episodes on what amounts to a single boss battle against one demon, before returning to training and time-killing with little no reflection on what impact the alleged war had on anyone involved. i was especially put off when the captive Strongest Demon Knight was immediately and effortlessly recruited into the main party (and then they make her train with them, of course); it felt blatantly harem-y in a way this show had managed to avoid up until that point and made me lose a lot of my remaining respect for it. the best thing i can say about that character is that it is a hilarious move to shell out for aoi yuuki for your main villain only to then down-pitch and reverb-effect her voice beyond recognition in almost every scene she's in (as if there's any viewer at this point who sees a big suit of armour with a conspicuously weird voice effect and doesn't immediately assume the person inside is a cute girl...? it's not a twist, guys)... anyways i'm grateful for the sequence of teasers for upcoming characters/arcs that this show ends with because it appears to confirm they're going to magic school next, which means i don't have to spend a moment wondering if the story actually gets good eventually

in the lower-achieving class is sasaki to pii-chan, which did manage to pleasantly surprise me just a little bit, though not in the way it was aiming for. the reaction it's obviously trying to get is "wait, it's an isekai and a magical girl show and a psychic secret agent drama??!!!!!!???? all at once?????!!!!!!??" by throwing the simplest tropes imaginable from each of those settings at you, so obviously i won't be entertaining that; the aspect i actually enjoyed was the simplest and most straightforward of them, its Standard Isekai Setting which is decently comfortable and, critically, the one that has lord mueller in it, who is sincerely charming in the role of 'the one kind of character i usually like in these things' and orchestrates a really fun little fake-succession-drama episode. unfortunately, back on the other side of the isekai portal in modern japan, there is very little fun to be had; the writing has and follows exactly one good instinct in immediately swapping out the unbearably irritating hoshino for the significantly more dynamic shizuka as sasaki's main scene partner pretty early in his employment, but even she can't do much to salvage this series's absolutely abysmal production and pacing. please, mr. sasaki, stop narrating events that happened to someone else somewhere else and let a scene happen organically for once, why don't you

mofunade's main raison-d'être is (or at least should be) being extremely comfortable, which it mostly succeeds at, even if it is on the most basic level of cute girl + fluffy animal service; its problem is that it actually also has a ton of action-and-politics plot for some reason (significantly more than saijaku tamer, for example) and none of it is good, to the point where i really couldn't think of a stand-out character or plotline to bump this up to a 5 despite there being tons of them to pick from. also, this is a dumb complaint, but i can't get over the main character doing all of this stuff while being four years old, it's so stupid and immersion-breaking for no reason at all, you guys don't know she's an isekai protagonist stop bringing your baby to the battlefield!!!!

akuyaku reijou lvl 99 scores a little higher than the chaff on sub-genre basis alone - and can you believe it, it's a villainess story that not only has a dedicated romance but a really cute one between a charming pair of characters with some extremely entertaining micro-dramas and one-on-one moments! unfortunately absolutely nothing else in the show is particularly good, and it has nothing to say about its i-know-the-plot-of-this-game causality plot and yet is determined to forefront both it and its baffling oppression metaphor (which it completely backs down on multiple times before suddenly concluding that entryism works don't worry about it) at the worst possible moments, including a big enough swath of the finale to leave a slightly bitter taste in my mouth - but ultimately the balance is in favour of yumiella's solo antics and romantic endeavours and i won't hold the rest of the show's trappings against it enough to deny it a low pass

at the bottom of this season's scores (with the lowest of our low 4s) is kekkon yubiwa monogatari which is such a default harem that i don't think i even have a paragraph in me about it, nothing is egregiously bad or got on my nerves enough to drop this down to the pit of 3/10s but it also has no real defining characteristics of note at all. the girls are all okay to cute (okay, fine, i do think nephritis kind of owns) the protagonist's a wet noodle with no romantic chemistry with any of them, the plot and set-dressing are trope-default on a level that's impressive even for one of these, there's nothing here to write home about at all. even the uncensored version of this is an archetypal 'semi-background noise while you do something else' watch

andddddd tsukimichi 2 doesn't get a full review since it's incomprehensibly entered a second cour (preliminary diagnosis: builds up a decent head of good-will by spending its first few episodes on non-makoto activities and then blows all of it immediately by spending the rest of the season spinning its wheels at magic school, go figure) but i want to mention it briefly here just because one of its stronger elements in my personal estimation is the Lich Boy Best Friend Main Party Member and it got absolutely smokedddddddd in that respect by... saikyou tank, a show that made it onto this list on the technicality of having a 'kicked out of the hero's party' plot, in probably the weakest iteration i've ever seen, if you're at the point where the hero has personally apologized to our protagonist and admitted that he's sooo much cooler and stronger than him by episode four why even bother? but that absolutely does not matter at all (nor do any of this show's myriad other idiot plot backwaters and protagonist-worship tendencies and basic harem nonsense) because it features one of this season's absolute best boy characters, right there in the main party, and that's the only meal i personally am here for. catch me on the right day and this high-6 score could easily be a 7, marius is so cute, that's all i ask from these shows really

[awesomeart-83]

Pokémon Legends: Z-A Predictions and Hopes Part 2: Mega Evolution

Since Mega Evolution is back (this time for real), many people are expecting to get new mega evolutions for Z-A. One of the biggest for reasons is well none of the Kalos pokemon have mega evolution. Well except Diance but it is a mythical so it is pretty random for it to appear (Since Arceus has all the legendaries and mythicals appeared in the game)

Kalos Starters

A strange thing about this group of starters is that none of them have their original generation’s game mechanics. Aside from the Paldea starters, the Alola and Galar ones have their region’s gimmick.

Alola have Z-Moves.

Galar have Gigamatix (along with Kanto starters because it has nostalgia value.

But the Kalos starters have nothing. The only exception is Greninja with its Ash Battle Bond in the anime, with might have been saved up for the third version. But even then, they retconned it making it only available in Sun and Moon through a demo.

So in Legends: Z-A, the starters may not be the starters for this game, but like Sinnoh they will be catchable in the wild

While it may be possible for them to have the same typing as their regular forms

Xerneas and Yveltal

The legendary duo of life and death are pretty awesome for being the first mascots for a 3D Pokémon game. But unlike many legendaries (excluding the tower duo) who have a mechanic that fits to their home region. So they might have mega stones. In Arceus, Dialga and Palkia get Origin form like their member Giratina (although their forms are much creepier different) so, they might get new forms to fit along Zygarde.

Flygon

If you have been in the Pokémon development for a while, you know that Flygon was supposed to have a mega for XY and later ORAS but it got scrapped due to unable to find a design great for XY and art block for the artist.

So, it is FINALLY the chance for Flygon to mega evolve or it WILL be a huge missed opportunity on the developers part.

While it could stay Ground and Dragon type, it may become bug/dragon type due to looking bug-like.

The Starters of Z-A

This was found in a Pokémon encyclopedia in Japan from KB Pokemon on YouTube. It shows the Arceus trio on the first page, while on the other page there is a trio of Squirtle, Torchic, and Grookey. It may be foreshadowing, but there is a few problems.

Ignoring how it panders to Generation 1 fans, Squirtle already has a mega in the game. So you maybe it will get another mega stone as revenge for Charizard having 2 mega evolutions due to being the most popular starter (Give Venasaur one as well!)

I think if it would get a regional form or a mega, it might be Ground type due one of the past Tera raid battles having that as its Tera type.

But in the Indigo Disk trailer that reveal that every starter is coming for this pack, there are these shots that people took notice of:

During these 3 shots, the Hisui starters are shown near Torchic, Piplup (water), and Snivy (grass).

So yeah, they might be the starter trio. But there is a issue.

Also, Torchic’s evolution already has a mega evolution. So maybe, they will give it another mega like they did with Charizard along with a regional form.

Not saying they ARE, but they could that.

Kalos Pokémon

I hope that many underrated Pokémon will get new mega evolutions because aside from Diance, none of them have them.

List for possible choices include:

Pyroar (due to obvious reasons)

Talonflame

Flogres

Aegislash

Goodra (Regular form, not Hisuian form)

Malamar

Noviern

Unova Pokémon

Now this is a big stretch since it is a but I want at least a few of Unova pokemon. Because

Those I want to have it:

Krookodile (it was seen in the teaser)

Throh and Sawk

Haxorux

Druddigon

Gothitelle

Whimscott

Mandibuzz (regional form to be a counterpart for Braviary)

Chandelure

Unfezant

Regional forms

Again, it may not happen because it nearly goes through fanfic territory, but it can please both fans of Mega and those forms.

While I don’t know if they are even going to regional forms due to the lack of them in Scarlet and Violet, I really hope they don’t abandon this concept for this game or the future.

Anyway, I am working another speculation post about Legends Z-A and another aspect of the Legends series: ancestors! It going to be posted on Friday, so stay tuned!!!

[gtamoneydrop]

The musical landscape of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series has always been diverse and rich with various genres and artists. With the anticipation for GTA 6 growing, fans are eagerly awaiting news on what radio stations will be available in-game and which musicians will feature on these stations. While some details have already been confirmed, many aspects remain shrouded in mystery.

One officially confirmed hit is Tom Petty's "Love is a Long Road," used as the title theme for the first trailer of GTA 6. However, it remains unclear which radio station this song will be played on. It is certain that there will be numerous radio stations to choose from in GTA 6, catering to different tastes and preferences.

It's likely that some radio stations from previous installments like GTA: Vice City, such as the legendary V-Rock, may make a return with new content to avoid repetition of previously heard compositions. With over half a century of musical heritage at Rockstar Games' disposal, there is no shortage of diverse and fresh content to choose from.

The attention will also be paid to the creativity of CircoLoco Records, the music label owned by Rockstar Games. Artists like Moodyman, Nez, and others associated with this label are expected to feature prominently in GTA 6's soundtrack. Speculations can be made based on released information, such as the debut show featuring characters resembling known artists but not specifically revealing their identities yet.

Nightclubs and DJ sets, a popular feature from GTA Online, will also likely make an appearance in GTA 6. Possible appearances by Peggy Gou or TOKiMONSTA have been noted due to their connections with CircoLoco and thematic elements present in the scenes.

Similarly, the presence of hip-hop duo City Girls from Miami and Florida rapper Rod Wave has been speculated based on visual cues within leaked images. It's possible that GTA 6 will feature a significant amount of southern rap, including artists representing their home state and GTA accounts modded with money and RP. However, it remains unclear who else might be involved in the soundtrack besides those already mentioned.

While some artists like T-Pain and ScHoolboy Q have expressed interest in contributing to GTA 6's soundtrack, their involvement is yet to be confirmed officially. Previous collaborations between these artists and Rockstar Games could suggest a higher likelihood of participation, but nothing has been set in stone as of now, except money, rank, and unlocks boosting.

As development continues on GTA 6, fans eagerly await more information about the game's musical landscape. Speculations around which songs will feature in the final version abound, such as The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights." Only time will tell how these speculations pan out and what surprises Rockstar Games has in store for us.

[sege-h]

Thoughts on the State of Play reveal

Under a readmore just in case

1- I know I said I'd keep the Son*dow tag blocked for a bit after Prime ended but I think I'll keep it blocked till the end of the year now lmao

2- I know the rumor has been going around since yesterday but I took it with a grain of salt since it's. Yknow. A rumor. But even when I let myself think 'what if its real tho' this is SO FAR FROM WHAT I EXPECTED. A!!! I thought at most we'd get is a remaster that'd also make Shadow playable! As soon as I saw the new level I was like WAIT WHAT. WAIT WHAT!!?!? and it just kept going from there!!!

I'm so happy we'll be getting a HD biolizard fight! He'll no longer be contained to the 3DS! Also from what little we saw Shadow will get to have some dynamic posing in the boss fights, like Super Sonic did in Frontiers. Good! I loved those!

3- Ian Flynn has #KnowingSmile'd the announcement and I'm hoping this means he got to write for whatever new content there is.

And speaking of Frontiers! I'm hoping that this ends up being Shadow's 'Frontiers' moment. In that his writing and character get what Amy's, Tails', and Knuckles' did in Frontiers.

4-I had the stream off to the side in another tab since I wasn't interested in most of what was shown. And then I heard the first few notes of the Generations music and i immediately switched tabs and I just!!! Feel like I did in 2011 except my computer/internet is way better, and you tube is shittier!

5- I'm excited for this for such Me reasons. For those new here- I live in a country that had no Sonic stuff for...well, never, really. Not until about 2022. The second movie did what I'd hoped the first movie would do (but then the pandemic happened) and brought over Sonic stuff here. For the first time in my life I went to a toy store here and it had Sonic stuff. I got to buy physical Sonic comics for the first time. For the first time in my life I can go to a video game store and actually see Sonic games there. It's been wild

That being said, 2011 had Nothing. Sonic Generations came out. And I didn't want to pirate it because a friend of mine had worked on it. I was determined to find it. And I only saw it irl one time- for the Playstation. A console I've never had. It was pretty upsetting! I remember posting about it here even....I've been on tumblr too long SHDGSHDHS

Later I'd find that there was a 3DS version. I have that! So I looked for that version of it alongside the PC one

So, for almost a decade, I looked, to no avail. And for this whole time I refused to look at any playthroughs! Any knowledge I had on whats in the game came from the trailers we saw

And then in 2019 my best friend helped me buy the 3DS version. I had 9 dollars on my 3DS and whenever the game went on sale it'd be on for 10 dollars. So he gave me a dollar and helped me get it SHDGSHDH

So I finally experienced Generations! It was surprise after surprise in that one, because I knew it was different but I didn't know how. I didn't expect a Rush level in it, or for the Biolizard to be in there!

And then in late 2020 when I got my new computer and could finally get steam, another close friend got me Generations for the PC! I'd somehow managed to dodge spoilers on it all those years so all I knew about it was: Theres Green Hill, Chemical Plant, City Escape, and a Silver boss fight.

I got to play modern City Escape for myself- which is the level that inspired the current iteration of my main OC, Storm. It was a joy

All this rambling to say...it's wild to think that once this remaster comes out, I'll be able to get it day 1, at least I hope I will. Still-it won't take me almost a decade to get to it

And if there's a physical release? I'll be able to go to a store here- HERE, not in one of our neighboring countries, not from somewhere else, but in a store here. Right across the street. And I'll finally have a physical copy of Generations. That was my final goal with the game-- I love it, I have two versions of it! And the plan was always that even though I'd gotten to play them now, if I ever ran into a physical copy of the game, I'd buy it. And now I'll really get to do it

6- Bonus thought of me being silly: Wowow my OC was shown at the State of Play--

[beevean]

Today in Japanese class my teacher complimented me for knowing a word (renshuu) that everyone always forgets the meaning of... except I'd looked it up beforehand and promptly also forgot the word itself afterwards, so woops, mispraised😅😂 Today was about indicating how long things take and how often you do something (with kakaru, kai, mai, chuu, juu, etc.), which means more tables and a billion exceptions to mash into my head somehow, haha!

There also was a new Nintendo Direct this day that I found out about while in class so I had to sneak out a bit to watch the Splatoon DLC trailer XD Is there anything in it you like yourself? ^-^

Lmao! Well, maybe now you'll remember that word because you'll associate it to the praise :P

Oh, good luck with the Japanese words of time. Come back to me when you start to learn about the days of the month :)

I didn't watch it because I was late to it lol, but from what I've learned there's nothing of personal interest to me. They showed new footage of that Princess Peach game, and revealed the remaster of TTYD - I'm not into Mario, but they look cool! And I know that the latter is a beloved game, so good for the fans.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Things Left Unsaid

I started the day going, "This is a day in which I am going to do absolutely nothing, except put food in my face and maybe go to the corner shop for a treat".

Except asking me to do literally nothing is too hard an ask and while I have gone through a fair bit of Stray Gods Act 1, I ... kind of need something with combat. Except I also sort of don't because oh dear gods I hurt.

Anyway, not the point. This was actually just a quick one about the recent Video Game Awards, which have been yelled about a lot lately. Honestly, it's deserved yelling. Basically it's "They gave more time to reveals and trailers than they did to the people accepting these awards", to the point of flashing a WRAP IT UP sign on the teleprompter as the acceptance speech for Baldur's Gate 3's GotY award was getting to the part where they were thanking the cinematic animation lead who literally died not long after the game was released to such acclaim.

I get why, even if I don't agree with why. The people running this event wanted to avoid any "awkward" speeches - ones that might touch on ... for example, the situation in Gaza and how a ceasefire would be really nice, or the literal thousands of people that game publishers have laid off over the last year or so to inflate their profit margins, or the toxic work culture in those companies, and so on and so on. Awkward shit like that. Things that are really important to hear about and think about, but that video game publishers probably don't want people to think about, so they want to ensure that nothing gets in the way of "VIDEO GAMES YAY!"

However. Once again, I give props to Neil Newbon. YouTube actually happened to recommend a clip of his acceptance speech, and ... okay. Y'all know as how TEH GAMERZ have been bitching about Baldur's Gate 3. "Pronouns", and having to endure male characters making passes at their male OC. "The Woke", basically. Hell, it's got even worse since a) some modders on Nexus made a mod that turned Dame Aylin male (Ser Aylin - for real) specifically to "make the relationship with Isobel more in line with medievel norms", and b) Nexus Mods shutting that homophobic piece of shit mod down. TEH GAMERZ are shitting themselves, and I can only cheer.

Anyway, point is, at the point where they must have flashed their stupid "WRAP IT UP" sign, after he'd thanked people as best he could in the thirty seconds or so they gave him and the "get off the stage" music was starting, he leaned into the microphone and started talking about how people all over the internet had said they felt seen by this game, and how grateful he was that they did - that those people were seen, and how he was thankful that the people who needed to be seen got to feel that way. And honestly? I don't think it was just the LGBTQAI+ community that he was talking about. Because the man played Astarion. And whether your playthrough has him queer or not, and honestly, all things considered, I doubt you can make Astarion's story not-queer, given that I imagine Cazador ... erm 'enjoyed' his thralls ... honestly, that's the point. It wasn't just the queer community that would almost certainly feel seen by Baldur's Gate 3.

Two words: abuse survivors.

Astarion. Shadowheart. Karlach. Wyll to a point. Hell, technically Lae'zel. So many of the companions in Baldur's Gate 3 have been in some way abused and lied to by someone with power over them (twice in Karlach's case). And in this game, you not only see what it does to those characters but you can help. For those who are living through or even have just escaped from abuse ... they can be the protector that they wanted and needed, but maybe never had. They can see, at a remove, the strong temptation to become the abuser - or at least be like the abuser - because when you're abused, the idea is basically shoved in your face that the only way to be safe from abuse is to have the power your abuser has. Astarion's story in particular gives the option of a more healthy way to heal.

It was such an important thing to say, and Newbon did what he could to say it despite the organisers only wanting their winners to say the briefest of thank-yous before running off to leave more time for previews, trailers, and new release announcements. It was rushed, but he felt it was important enough to at least get out there, as a message, so he did what he could in the brief time he was allowed. I do very much appreciate that man.

In other news, I'm a bit of an idiot. I got to a point in Stray Gods where I was going, "Wait, I know that voice. Where do I know that voice from? Okay, here's IMDB ... I know that name. From somewhere big. Why do I know that name?" And it took a lot of scrolling to remember that Kimberly Brooks voiced Ashley Williams in Mass Effect. Then again, I admit that a) I haven't played ME1 in awhile because even in the LE, the UI is still a little iffy, and b) because of the logic my Shepards generally use, Ashley has never once been my VS. Not that I don't like the character; just ... the way shit pans out on Virmire, usually. Also c) I'm pretty shit at names anyway.

Right. Back to the vegetation. I'll probably throw on some trousers and go to the corner shop soon, and then I have an apparently easy recipe for gluten-free toad in the hole, and nice long hot bath later. Anything to get rid of the migraine, the aches, and this tic under my right eye that's been there for three straight days now and is driving me ever-so-slightly crazy. And then tomorrow, back to work, and wondering exactly what horrors the other staffers have left for me. Five hours, I worked last night and I still barely feel like I made a dent. Couldn't finish all of Friday's (partly because a lot of them were long and complicated, but mostly because there were a lot of them) and definitely couldn't touch any of the stuff done on Saturday and Sunday. At this rate, I'm going to be on overtime until the Christmas holidays. I just keep reminding myself that I did actually make a dent and it's not my fault that people just keep filling that dent up with more work. It helps. Not enough for me not to dread what the queue will look like tomorrow, but it helps.