#might make another games recommendation post sometime

[black-and-yellow]

Lost

(minus grain)

[sugary-daydreams3]

Quiet inbetween [Sukuna x Reader]

Summary: Collections of quiet, cozy, intimate moments you share with Sukuna, who thinks you two won't last a year. Someone who used to live a wild, fast-paced, loud lifestyle couldn't possibly be fit for a long-term relationship. But he doesn't know that you're the one he needed this whole time.

Word Count: 3.7K words

Rating: Mostly fluff with a little spice (sexual content) at the end, but no full explicit content. Mostly T with a little M.

A/N: Happy holidays y'all. This might be my last fic posted in the year so I hope you guys transition into the new year safely. Goodness, do I love writing my A.U. version of Sukuna. So fun and flirty that he makes me blush sometimes and I control what he says. But I guess that's a good thing, right. Sadly my next fic is dealing with a not so fun topic, haha. (It's Gojo-centric, so you might know where I'm going with this) Anyways, stay safe out there and I'll see you again in 2025. Enough yapping from me, enjoy!

Normal, quiet moments tend to bring discomfort within Sukuna. Dating trouble as a teen limited his time to sit and enjoy the small pleasures of life. He was all about the grand, overwhelming, taboo pleasures that one wouldn’t dare chase but rather daydream about. Or worse, make simulation games about and live out their guilty pleasures vicariously through fictional characters. But with taboo pleasures come consequences which landed him in jail for some time.  

Within the year after his release, he met you which slowly inspired him to alter his fast, vicious lifestyle. You introduced him to things he never would have found himself participating in. Things he used to tease his twin brother for being a sheep for society for. A mom-and-pop coffee shop was one of them.  

“How do you drink this shit?” Sukuna sticks out his tongue. Tanned liquid trapped in your mouth almost spills. Air blows from your nose, signifying your amusement at Sukuna’s first experience with coffee.  

Swallowing down the first sip of your coffee, your eyes admire Sukuna’s childlike distaste for your go-to morning beverage. “Because I order mine with cream, sugar, and caramel. You’re pretty much drinking burnt black water.”  

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”   

You give him a “really?” look. “I said you should start out with the caramel Frappuccino but you said, and I quote.” You notch your voice down several pitches lower. “The hell I look like drinking that sissy shit.”  

“You could have recommended me any other drink but this. This was a terrible first impression.”  

“I can order you another one to make up for it.”  

Sukuna pouts. “I’ll pass. I fear I’ll be disappointed again.”  

“Sukuna, you just drink straight black coffee, you can’t write the whole thing off just because you had one variation of it. That’s like saying “I hate potatoes” because you ate unsalted, lukewarm fries.” Sukuna scrunches his face.  

“That’s not the same.”  

“Yes, it is. It’s a perfect comparison.”  

“It’s two completely different scenarios. You really thought you schooled me with that, huh.”  

“Shut up. I’m ordering you a new drink.”  

Waiting for his redemption cup, Sukuna stares at you typing away on your laptop computer. Your hair curtains over part of your face, tempting Sukuna to reach over and fix it. Yet the messy hair curtain highlights your beauty so effortlessly, he couldn’t stop adoring your natural radiance.  

The strong smell of roast occasionally makes its mark. Ranges of chatter mingle with the loud cycle of brewing and baking. Quirky, cheesy posters hang all over, providing a drowning sense of positivity and relatability. Generic chill music slithers through the atmosphere, failing to chill Sukuna’s social anxiety. Thankfully, his new drink just came to save the moment.  

Taking a drink from the flat white laced with sugar and cream, he sits back to allow his brain to register. His eyebrows raise with a small smack of his mouth, giving you some hope that coffee redeemed itself on the oh so great Sukuna’s tastebuds.   

“Well?” You ask impatiently.  

“Not bad. Could use more sugar but it’s drinkable.” Sukuna reviews. A pleased smile killed your worry. “I’m glad you gave it a second chance. I hope we can have more coffee dates like this.”  

Sukuna narrows his eyes. “This is a date?”   

Your eyes roll. “No this is a job interview.”  

“I’m not one for customer service but if I get to look at you all day long and the pay is good then sign me up.” You hate that something as corny as that made you blush.  

“Hush Sukuna, of course this is a date. This is like our twelfth time seeing each other, I like to think all of the time we spent together so far wasn't a waste of time.”  

“Ooh someone’s no-nonsense.” Sukuna smirks, large arms crossed.  

You sigh, “I’m just over the hookups and the flings. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t just one-and-done me.”  

“Eh, all of the one-night conquests and strictly sex ordeals were starting to get stale. You got a nice face with a body to match. You’re on no bullshit and are fun for the most part. You haven't bored me yet so I don’t mind continuing this.”  

“Yet?”  

“I tend to get bored with my women so I wouldn't hold hope of this lasting past a year. Just letting you know so the heartbreak will hurt a little less.”  

You smirk, amused by his lack of filter. “Well, a year will be record breaking compared to my recent relationships these last few years. So bring it.”  

Your polished nails navigate the grassy fields of dusty pink, natural hair oil inked on your fingertips. Your poor thighs are weighed down under his dumbbells for arms. Your other hand caress Sukuna’s right bicep, fixating on the jet black tattoos contrasting with his pale skin. He rubs your left knee as he rests against your stomach.  

Sukuna releases a deep sigh, letting go of the temporary stresses of life. He’ll rather die than admit it but this is what he mostly looks forward to when he goes about his day. It took him a while to get used to you being positioned behind him, often side eyeing the first few times you two were like this.   

Call it trust issues. Slam the non-medical diagnosis of PTSD resulted from a rough upbringing and life as a criminal. Or if we’re really getting psychological, throw out the fancy “internalized misanthropy” word. Re-fucking-gardless, he’s always been highly aware and on guard whenever people are in close proximity to him, ever since he was a kid.  

Now, the more he allows himself to turn his brain off in your lap the easier you hear him lightly snoring within several minutes. You giggle as his resting figure emits loud snores thirty minutes in of scalp scratching and head caressing.   

“Sweet dreams.” You reach down to peck warmth on his forehead.  

Your wishes go unnoticed as child-like ease warps itself across face tattoos and a sharp jawline. A surprisingly dynamic clash.  

Your laughter saturates the kitchen space accompanied by music from the vintage radio. Flour dressed your behemoth all over, making it the sight of the century. Sukuna frowns as he attempts to smooth the pizza dough with the rolling pin. Tears edge your eyes; the catastrophe he was causing was funnier than any standup comedy.  

“Hush. You're breaking my focus.” Sukuna was struggling to knead the dough enough to be a thin foundation. It usually ends up shaping to be a deep dish or just a regular sized pizza. This was his third effort to mold the pizza, with two “epic failures” baking in the oven.  

When your laughter demoted to light chuckles, you rub his arm for support. “You know I can help you shape the dough. It took me fifteen tries before making an objectively decent pizza.” Sukuna shakes his head.  

“That’s because you were the one making it. It’s gonna be perfect this time.” Sukuna smooths out the dough and smirks at his “perfectly” thin pizza. You roll your eyes and walk over to gather the cheese and other toppings.  

The pizza rises within the oven, gluing the toppings within the cheese. Sukuna watches it carefully from the kitchen island, like his life depended on whether this Thursday night dinner was great or not.   

A marathon of T.V. commercial ramblings was bugging background noise as you tidied up. The other two pizzas sat on the cooling rack, being forgotten tasty mistakes. Flour ages his hair many decades, snowing down his chest with every tiny movement. He turns to see an unlikely troublemaker look down at him, a small hill of flour ready to be thrown from your palm. Sukuna narrows his eyes with a challenging look.  

“You’re playing a dangerous game, darling.”  

“Game on.” You threw it, igniting a two-man war.  

The remaining time for the perfect pizza to cook filled with flour fights, spotting majority of the kitchen with white powder. The cooking timer goes off as you two lay across the table exchanging flour and zeal between prolonged smooches.

This epic fantasy was seducing your imagination during the mundane hours of the late evening. You sense Sukuna spying on you and your book from the corner of your eye. However, the clever arrangement of words trailing above your bookmark helps you ignore him.  

“How do you read these things? That shit looks bigger than The Bible.” Sukuna pokes at the spine of your novel, trailing over the gold-engrained lettering.  

“I don’t judge stories based on length. If it’s engaging enough then I wouldn’t mind reading three hundred-plus pages of something.”  

“Where do you find the time to invest in a story that long?” Sukuna wasn’t even teasing at this point; he was genuinely curious.  

“People watch 10 seasons worth of television or animes with more than 100 episodes.”  

“Watching TV and reading are different no matter how much you try to make them feel the same. I can simply turn on the T.V. and watch 100 episodes of something without exerting much energy. You have to sit up, read so many words, and decipher hundreds of pages worth of story. It’s not the same.”  

“True, I’ll give you that. I just find it funny that people draw the line at consuming a story through reading only because you have to put a little more effort in it.” You bounced back.  

Sukuna rubbed his chin. “I remember being into poetry and haikus a lot as a teenager. But I started getting involved in other shit so I lost interest along the way.”   

You snap to him, no longer being a silent witness to a passionate kissing scene. “You like poetry?”  

“I suppose. I always liked how poets managed to craft thoughts so elegantly. Perfectly describing the complicated or unsaid.”  

“You know the local bookstore down the street has a whole section of poetry books. What’s your favorite poets? I could buy you some of their latest work.” Your comforter became a temporary bookmark with your book lying face down.  

“Hmm, I don’t really have a favorite poet. I used to buy a bunch of random poetry or haiku books and kept the ones that stuck with me. There is one writer that I really like though...”  

You wait in anticipation as you witness him in thought. Simple things like racking his brain makes him a cutie. Sukuna snaps his fingers.  

“Ahh, Yosa Takahama is his name. His work is usually written in Japanese but some translators re-publish them in their mother’s tongue. His work is hard to find around here though. I don’t even know how I managed to snag one of his books in the first place.”  

Despite the challenge, you were determined to get it for him. “I’ll figure out a way to get you one. That way we could be reading buddies.”  

“You don’t have to do all of that, doll. You’ll rip your hair out trying to find those books. I’m fine watching you ignore me in favor of a book that can knock your teeth out.” You chuckle.  

During the rest of the night, you noticed the boredom on Sukuna’s face as he mindlessly consumes television. The least you can do is try to hunt down this haiku book for him. Dating him for some time, he confessed to losing touch with so many hobbies he grew up with over the last few years. You wanted to bring that inner child back to life, killed by proving to the world how tough he was.  

Getting him to read something that actually interests him can be another way to embrace the innocent pleasures in life. You can tell he misses that wild delinquency some days, but you hope he doesn’t miss it enough to end this relationship over. If you can find it, hopefully it can be a building block that rebuilds his new path after leaving the old behind. Anything to help you be closer to him.  

6 weeks later 

Sukuna emerges from the bathroom. The odors of the food he cooked from his restaurant today were replaced with standard soap and his natural scent. Like every other night, you sat with your book, seemingly ignoring Sukuna’s lingering stare.  

After dressing himself, he sinks on the mattress and attempts to lay against his pillow. His thick neck isn't met with the soft cushion but instead a hard surface in the middle area. He stares at his pillow, offended for it not providing comfort, so he lifts it up. A white hardcover book reveals.  

“What’s this?” He asked, not turning to you yet. You shift from the words to your boyfriend’s confusion. “I don’t know where that came from. Maybe the book fairy paid you a visit.” You played dumb.  

“You’re so corny.” He holds up the book.  

“A corny girl you’ve been dating for almost a year now.”  

“Quiet. I’m trying to see what this is.” Sukuna didn’t even examine the title, the pages of the book flutter until he lands on a random page. He reads aloud.  

“Vindictive winter / A white, mighty rabbit looks / betrayed by the king / ...wait.” Sukuna looks at you and you copy his shocked expression.  

“This is Yosa Takahama’s stuff. How did you even get this? This must have cost you a fortune.”  

“It was costly and took me weeks to find a readable copy but the look on your face right now makes it worth it. I wanted you to read with me instead of being a T.V. zombie. Even if that means reading mind fuckery haikus.” You chuckle.  

Sukuna grabs your waist from the side and unleashes many wet pecks around your cheek, neck, and upper chest. You giggle as you brush his hair and hug him back.  

“I appreciate it.”  

“No big deal.” You replicate his cool cat version of “You’re welcome.” that he usually throws at you. Sukuna smirks at the playful imitation.  

The rest of the evening is spent with you two lost in your own worlds of literature. Your brains mixed imagination, broadened perspectives, and emotional intelligence from honeyed words inked against the white.

“I’m too big for this tub. You barely have any room to stretch your legs.” Sukuna commented.  

He adjusted his position behind you, the bubbles shifting from his large body. Your feet rested on the tip of the tub to keep from smushing against the porcelain. You turn to him, offering a reassuring smile. He snickers at your ridiculous face mask, particularly the cucumbers concealing your eyes.  

“No, you’re not. You say that every time you get in with me. You’re fine Kuna, really.”  

Sukuna rests his arms around the top edges of the tub, leaning back to make himself comfortable in his slightly cramped soak. The warm water, Epsom salt, and meditation music playing from your phone kneads away the hidden tension that plagues his body from the everyday.  

“Before I met you, I haven't taken a bath in almost fifteen years.” He confesses.  

“That sounds so disgusting out of context.” You cringe. Sukuna chuckles.   

“You know what I mean.”  

“I can’t imagine going that long without a bath. Baths are way better than showers.” You admitted.  

“Showers are for a quick wash. Baths are more for relaxation.”  

“I shower for fifteen minutes minimum, thirty-five minutes max. I spend about three minutes just letting the hot water hit my body and think about whatever. There’s no way I can just shower for ten minutes or less.”  

“Is that why you’re so smoking.” Sukuna flirted. You shake your head, “That was so corny, Kuna. C’mon you can flirt better than that.”  

“You’re right. I just wanted to see your reaction.”   

You two enjoy each other’s company. The heat protects you from winter and the sheet of bubbles float around and pop within. Sukuna arms lay over yours, rubbing over your wrist. Sukuna focuses on your face and develops a sense of mischief.  

“Babydoll.”  

“Yeah?”  

“Turn around for me.”  

You quirk a brow but obeyed by slowly turning his way. In a swift motion, Sukuna moves forward and bites off the cucumber sitting on your right eye. Your right vision sees Sukuna munching on your edible eye mask.  

“Really, Kuna? You couldn’t resist temptation to eat that?” You scolded. You take off the other cucumber, abandoning your hopes to keep your eyelids nice and fresh. Sukuna steals the other cucumber from your hand and flings it in his mouth.  

“You’re impossible to relax with sometimes.”  

“Thanks for the snack.” Sukuna mumbles through chewing.  

You sigh then lay against his chest and close your eyes. If he was going to interrupt your beauty routine the least he can do is be your pillow.

Sukuna big toe hugs your own after caressing your right foot. Both of your feet poke out from the thick blanket, suffering from the gentle lashes of the nippy air condition. You rest your head on his squishy but firm chest, goosebumps forming from his rough hands brushing your skin.   

“We should light the fireplace.” You suggested.  

Sukuna let out a lazy sigh, “What you really mean is that I should light it.”  

“Yeah, you should.”  

“I could but I fear I’ll turn into a popsicle.”  

You giggle. “Hey, at least you’ll taste good.”  

Sukuna smirks, “I already taste good. You should know out of anyone.”  

You playfully shrug. “Eh, you’re alright. No fine dining though.”  

“Oh really?”  

“Yep.”  

“How about you taste this then.”  

Sukuna leans down and traps your lips in the moment. His lips were smaller than yours yet they managed to govern the heat stirring between each lingering kiss. The frigid air in the room is forgotten in your minds as you and Sukuna make out under the grey blanket. After a couple minutes of sensual touching and lip pulls, Sukuna goes for your neck.  

“Well?” Sukuna lands soft bites inches under your chin.  

“I was just kidding earlier but that was...”  

“Better than fine dining?”  

“I don’t know what’s better than fine dining but, yeah, better than that.”  

Sukuna chuckles, “Glad to remind you.”  

Sukuna “accidentally” lands a hard bite just above your collarbone, caging a pleasured groan within closed lips. Sukuna kisses the forming red patch, “Sorry baby, got a little greedy there.”  

“I hope I give you a brain freeze.” You joked, trying to take your mind off the aching spot.  

Sukuna hooks his finger around the side of your silk underwear, his other hand slowly appreciates your ass. “I’m sure it’ll be worth it.”

Your body slowly rocks on top of him, the yellow and orange from the fireplace illuminate your dips and curves. The aftershocks of your second orgasm calm down, giving you the signal to stop riding him. One hand caresses the trimmed hairs sprinkled across Sukuna’s chest. The other traces the small gold chain decorating his pecs. Sukuna squeezes the body fat from your hips then pats your left butt cheek.  

You hop off and lay down on the blanket you set down for your second round. Sukuna pulls off the condom and gets up to throw it away. The contained fire warms your naked body from a distance, defending you from the army of white cold. You hum while the fire entertains you until Sukuna comes back. He’s wearing the boxers he had on earlier with the embroidered knife patterns. Where he got those kinds of boxers you may never know.  

Sukuna drops the pillow he stole from the couch then sits down on the blanket. He pulls you towards him and you two lie down together. You perform his signature trait, pushing his hair back, enabling his wild look. Sukuna traces your spine, quietly admiring both how strong and weak one’s bone structure could be.  

“I never thought I would enjoy silly things like sitting in front of a fireplace during winter.”  

“It’s silly?”  

“Not really. I guess I just associated this with Christmas activities. Christmas always seemed too cheesy to me so I associated things like this as silly holiday stuff.”  

“Yeah, I get it. Sex in front of the fireplace, just silly wholesome Christmas activities.” You joked. You instantly felt Sukuna’s laughter rumble throughout his chest. After calming down he gives your arm a light pinch.  

“You know what I mean.”  

“I’m just happy you allowed me to bring some mellow in your life. I remember when I met you, you were always in some crazy illegal trouble. It seemed like I could barely keep up with you and your fast-paced lifestyle.”  

“Yeah, it was fun for a while, I’ll admit. Even getting caught had some sort of thrill. Now that I’m pushing thirty, I just feel over it.”  

You chuckle, “Not a spring chicken as you used to be.”  

“Yeah. I suppose every hot shot has their limit.”  

“Well, I’m proud that you’re beginning to settle down. I know your brother is too.” You rub his cheek.  

“I was surprised when he offered to help me set up my fight clubhouse. He’s usually against violence and shit.”  

“Maybe he thought that it would be a nice distraction from your life with crime. Even if it meant supporting you doing something he also doesn’t like. Like a lesser of two evils kind of thing.”  

“I never knew someone so predictable yet unpredictable at the same time more than him.” Sukuna said. You giggle then sprawl your hands across Sukuna’s abdomen, trailing over the ridges in a playful matter. Sukuna tender gaze studies your features as he softly pulls little cushions of your skin.  

“Thank you for sticking with me.”  

You look up to see the wild orange shadowing his strong features. His usual too cool-for-school attitude was replaced with a loving nature only reserved for you. A nature molded by small, seemingly insignificant moments sparked by a mutual agreement of casual dating. You plant a few kisses against his jawline then lay back on his chest.  

Before your eyes close for the night, you slur a few words that gets a smile out of Sukuna. “Guess you’re stuck with me now.”  

[jungkoode]

OFF-LABELS | O8

→ PAIRING : Med Student!Hoseok x F!Reader (Brother’s Best Friend AU)

→ RATING: Mature, 18+, suggestive tones.

→ DATE POSTED: March 3rd, 2025.

→ SUMMARY: You’ve spent four years convincing yourself that your brother’s best friend is just being nice when he remembers your coffee order, quizzes you on neuroanatomy, or lets his touch linger a second too long. Because there’s no way that the golden boy of Seoul National’s medical program might actually be flirting with you. Especially when he keeps saying things that could be perfectly innocent… if only he didn’t say them in that voice.

→ TAGS: second person perspective, female reader, medical school au, brother’s best friend trope, age gap (4 years), pining, touch starved, overthinking reader, confident hoseok, gentle dom hoseok, medical terminology as flirting (lmao), study sessions, domestic moments, innocent (but not really), plausible deniability king hoseok, anxiety, internal monologue, guilty crushes, subtle teasing, emotional edging, gentle manipulation, praise kink undertones, intellectual attraction, competency kink, hand fixation, voice kink, medical intern hoseok, first year med student reader, home setting, casual intimacy, unresolved sexual tension (for now), secret attraction, nervous rambling, self-doubt, intrusive thoughts, anatomy lessons with ulterior motives, competent hoseok, flustered reader, close proximity, accidental touches that aren’t accidents, virgin!reader.

→ CONTENT in this chapter: Failed attempts at normal Friday nights, tequila-fueled bad decisions, drunk texting that definitely crosses lines, deliberately provoking reactions, pink sets making reappearances, and countdown timers that feel like threats (or promises). | drunk texting, emotional provocation, jealousy, possessive behavior, failed rebounds, tequila courage, late night messages, countdown tension, deliberate misbehavior, text conversations, bar settings, alcohol consumption, purposeful disobedience, revenge flirting, provoked responses.

→ MASTERLIST | TAGLIST REQ | WORDCOUNT: 3,6k

→ MINI SERIES: PREVIOUS | NEXT

→ A/N: Sometimes it takes tequila and spite to say what you really mean. This chapter is dedicated to everyone who's ever sent that one text they absolutely shouldn't have (but definitely meant). Also to anyone who's ever tried to move on and realized they're ruined for normal flirting. Special thanks to my friends who had to watch me spiral while writing this - your emotional support and drink recommendations were crucial to this mess.

PLAYLIST

The screen blurs as you stare at his contact—a blank gray circle where his photo used to be. The one of him and Caleb at graduation, both grinning, arms slung around each other's shoulders.

Gone.

Your thumb hovers over the message thread. The last thing he sent stares back at you, clinical and cold:

Hoseok: 𝙳𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚃𝚑𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚍𝚊𝚢.

Three words.

That's all it took to unravel everything—all the heated glances, the lingering touches, the way he'd made you feel seen and wanted and his.

(Stupid. You were so stupid.)

The phone hits the wall with a satisfying crack. You don't check if the screen's broken. Don't care. Let it shatter like everything else.

Because that's what this is, isn't it? He'd played you perfectly—drawing you in with gentle words and meaningless touches, making you question your own sanity until you were desperate for confirmation. Until you were willing to do anything just to prove you weren't imagining it all.

And now?

Now he's gone.

Like it meant nothing. Like you meant nothing. Just another conquest, another game won, another—

A soft knock interrupts your spiral.

"Y/N?" Caleb's voice filters through the door, concerned but not pushing. "You okay?"

You swallow hard, swiping at your eyes. "Fine."

The door creaks open anyway.

Your brother takes one look at you—curled up in your desk chair, eyes red-rimmed, phone face-down on the floor—and something in his expression shifts.

He doesn't ask. Doesn't pry. Just disappears briefly and returns with two mugs of chamomile tea, the kind mom always makes when either of you is upset.

"Scoot." He nudges you over, settling on the floor beside your chair. "Found that terrible rom-com you like. The one with the talking cats."

A wet laugh escapes before you can stop it. "It's not terrible."

"It's horrific." But he's already pulling up Netflix on his phone, patting the space next to him until you slide down to join him.

The tea is too hot and slightly too sweet—he always adds an extra spoonful of honey—but it warms something frozen in your chest. You lean against his shoulder as the movie starts, breathing in the familiar scent of mom’s laundry detergent and that stupid cologne your aunt always gifts him for Christmas.

He doesn't mention how your shoulders shake slightly. Doesn't comment on the damp spot growing on his sleeve. Just wraps an arm around you and lets you hide your face when the tears come faster.

It's going to be okay.

(It has to be okay.)

Your phone buzzes weakly from its place on the floor. You don't check it.

Some things are better left broken.

You stare at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to convince yourself this is a good idea.

Kiara had been insistent—persistent—about dragging you out tonight. "You need this," she'd declared, rifling through your closet with terrifying efficiency. "Fresh air. Good music. Hot strangers who aren't emotionally constipated medical residents."

(You hadn't told her about Hoseok. Hadn't told anyone. But somehow she knew—the way best friends always do.)

The dress she picked is shorter than you'd usually wear, black fabric clinging to curves you normally hide under oversized sweaters. Your legs look longer in the heels she forced on you, and the smokey eye makeup makes you look... different. Older.

Less like the nervous med student who stammers through anatomy presentations.

Less like his Chip.

Your throat tightens. You reach for your phone automatically—to check if he's unblocked you, to see if he's noticed your absence, to—

"Don't you dare." Kiara appears in the doorway, looking unfairly gorgeous in a red dress. She snatches your phone, dropping it into her clutch. "No drunk texting allowed."

"I wasn't going to—"

"Sure." She starts fixing your lipstick. "And I'm not planning to get absolutely destroyed on tequila shots."

You manage a weak laugh. "You're buying."

"Obviously." She steps back, examining her work with critical eyes. "There. Now you look properly devastating." Her grin turns wicked. "Let's go make some bad decisions."

And that’s how you somehow end up in one of those trendy pubs near campus.

Which is, by the way, absolutely packed when you arrive—music thrumming through the floorboards and lighting making everyone look airbrushed.

The bass line manages to drown out the voice in your head that sounds suspiciously like him.

Kiara orders shots immediately. The tequila burns going down, but it's better than the ache that's been living in your sternum for days.

"To terrible men," she declares, raising another glass.

"To terrible decisions," you counter, and the lime tastes like freedom when you bite down.

And three shots later, the edges of everything finally start to blur pleasantly.

The music feels like it's flowing through your veins, making your hips sway without conscious thought. Kiara drags you to the dance floor, her laugh bright and infectious as she spins you around.

"See?" She has to shout over the bass. "This is what Friday nights are supposed to feel like!"

And maybe she's right. Maybe this is better than sitting in your room, staring at your phone, waiting for a message that's never going to come. Maybe this—the plethora of bodies moving around you, the asphyxiating burn of tequila, the way your dress slides against your skin when you dance—is exactly what you need.

You close your eyes, letting the music take over. Let yourself forget about gentle voices and surgical hands and the way he'd looked at you like you were something precious right before he—

No.

Not tonight.

Tonight is for dancing and drinking and pretending your heart isn't still beating in morse code: Ho-seok, Ho-seok, Ho-seok.

(But god, even the bass line sounds like his laugh.)

The tequila makes your phone screen swim as you glare at his contactless profile. The gray circle mocks you—empty and cold like his stupid perfect soul.

"Look at you," you slur at the blank icon. "Not even a picture anymore. Too good for pictures now? Too busy being tall and successful and making people question their sanity?"

Kiara—who apparently managed to grab a mojito at some point—now snorts into her glass. "Honey..."

"And your hands." You jab accusingly at the screen. "Why are they so big? Who gave you permission? Stupid... stupid surgeon hands with their stupid... precision."

"Okay, that's enough." Kiara tries to grab your phone, but you clutch it to your chest.

"No wait, I'm not done insulting his perfect face. Which isn't even here anymore because he's too important for profile pictures apparently." You hiccup. "Probably busy being gentle and professional somewhere else. With his stupid rolled-up sleeves and his stupid honey voice and his stupid—"

"Perfect bone structure?" Kiara supplies helpfully.

"Yes!" You slump against the bar. "It's offensive. His whole... everything is offensive. Criminal, even. We should report him to the medical board for being unreasonably attractive while also being a complete—"

"Asshole?"

"I was gonna say bastard but yes." You squint at the screen again. "Look at him. Not looking at us. With his not-picture. Rude."

Kiara pats your head sympathetically. "Come on, disaster. Let's find you someone who actually shows up in photos."

As if summoned by her words, two guys materialize beside your table. The taller one—dark hair, nice smile, definitely not wearing a white coat or speaking in medical terminology—leans against the bar.

"Can we buy you ladies a drink?"

You open your mouth to decline, but Kiara kicks you under the table.

"We'd love that," she says smoothly. "I'm Kiara, this is Y/N."

"James," the tall one offers. "This is Mike."

Mike waves, sliding onto the stool next to you. He's cute, in a slightly tired way—the kind that comes from hospital rotations and too little sleep.

"Med student?" he asks, noticing your distracted glance at your phone.

"How'd you guess?" you ask.

"The thousand-yard stare," he laughs. "I'm doing my internship at SNU. Just started the emergency rotation last week."

You manage a small smile. Med student, intern—at least he's not a certain first-year resident with surgical hands and a talent for making you question your sanity.

"So," Mike asks, "what brings you here tonight?"

"Emotional devastation," you announce before Kiara can stop you. "Also tequila."

He laughs—a normal laugh, not a honey-dripped chuckle designed to make your knees weak. "Sounds like there's a story there."

"Oh, there's a story." You straighten up, warming to your topic. "See, there's this guy—"

Kiara slaps her hand over your mouth. "Who we are not talking about tonight!" She smiles brilliantly at James and Mike. "How about those drinks?"

You lick her palm until she releases you with a yelp.

"Fine," you concede, accepting the fresh margarita Mike slides your way. "No talking about He Who Must Not Be Named."

"Voldemort?" James jokes.

You snort into your drink. "Worse. He's a doctor."

Mike winces sympathetically. "Ah. One of those."

"Exactly!" You point at him triumphantly. "One of those. With their... their competence and their steady hands and their stupid ability to make everything sound like a medical procedure—"

Kiara kicks you again. "Drinks," she reminds you firmly. "We're drinking and dancing and not thinking about certain medical professionals who shall remain nameless."

"Right." You take a long sip of margarita. "No thinking about names. Or nicknames. Or the way certain people say certain nicknames like they're tasting them—"

"Dance floor!" Kiara announces loudly, grabbing your arm. "We're going to the dance floor now!"

As she drags you away, you hear Mike ask James: "Should we be concerned?"

"Probably," James replies, but he's following anyway.

You let Kiara pull you into the crowd, the bass drowning out your thoughts. It's fine. You're fine.

And if you check your phone one more time—just to glare at the blank profile picture and maybe compose a strongly worded text about the audacity of certain medical residents—well.

That's between you and the tequila.

Definitely not between your bones and Mike as hemoves closer, hand settling tentatively on your waist.

You know he’s being polite about it—know he’s asking permission with his eyes, keeping a respectful distance.

It's nice.

Normal.

Boring.

(No. Not boring. Safe. This is what normal flirting feels like. Not... whatever psychological warfare Hoseok had been waging.)

"You're a good dancer," Mike says, and his voice is perfectly pleasant. No syrupy-thick manipulation. No clinical observations about your hip mobility.

"Thanks." You manage a smile that only feels slightly forced. "You too."

He grins—an uncomplicated expression that doesn't hide any surgical precision behind it. "Want to get some air? Maybe..." He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "Take a smoke break?"

You don't smoke. Have never smoked. Would normally launch into a lecture about pulmonary health risks and carcinogenic compounds because you're that kind of med student.

But.

But tonight you're wearing a dress that makes you feel dangerous, and your lips still taste like tequila, and somewhere across the city he's probably being perfect and untouchable and—

"Yes." The word tumbles out before you can stop it. "Air sounds good."

Kiara catches your eye across the dance floor, raising an eyebrow in silent question. You wave her off, letting Mike guide you through the crowd toward the exit.

The night air hits your bare shoulders like a slap, sobering and sharp. Mike leans against the brick wall, offering you the pack with another easy smile.

You take a cigarette because you're drunk and stupid and maybe trying to prove something to yourself. Or to him.

(Everything feels like it's about him lately.)

"Here." Mike cups his hands around the flame, shielding it from the breeze as you lean in.

The first inhale burns—acrid and harsh and nothing like the way his mouth had burned against yours. You manage not to cough, but it's a near thing.

"Not a regular smoker?" Mike asks, amused.

You shake your head, watching the ember glow in the darkness. "First time, actually."

His eyebrows lift. "Shit, really? Should've told me. We could've started you with something lighter."

The concern in his voice makes something in your chest twist. Because it's nice. He's being nice. And you're standing here thinking about someone else's mouth and someone else's hands and—

"Sorry," you blurt out. "I'm kind of a mess right now."

Mike's laugh is gentle. "Yeah, I got that impression." He takes a drag, smoke curling between you. "Want to talk about it?"

"God no." You attempt another inhale, managing not to choke this time. "I want to forget about it."

His eyes flick to your mouth, then back to yours. "I could help with that."

The invitation is clear. Simple. Uncomplicated.

You could do it. Could let this nice, normal boy kiss you against the brick wall. Could replace the memory of bergamot with something softer. Safer.

Could prove that you're not still thinking about gentle poison and cloying praise and the way his fingers had—

"I can't." The words taste like ash. "I'm sorry, I just—"

"Hey." Mike straightens, hands lifting in surrender. "No pressure. We can just talk. Or not talk." He grins. "Or you can keep pretending to enjoy that cigarette while plotting revenge against whatever doctor broke your heart."

A laugh bubbles up—slightly hysterical but real. "That obvious?"

"Little bit." He takes the cigarette from your trembling fingers, stubbing it out. "Come on. Let's get you some water before your friend murders me for letting you smoke."

You let him lead you back inside, grateful for the simple kindness of it. For the way he doesn't push or pry or try to take advantage of your obvious vulnerability.

It's nice.

Normal.

Right.

(So why does it feel so wrong?)

Your phone buzzes in your clutch.

You ignore it.

Some habits are harder to break than others.

The rest of the night blurs into a mess of well-meaning moments that all feel slightly wrong. Mike gets you water, makes sure you're steady on your feet, laughs at your increasingly unfiltered commentary about medical school.

He's perfect.

And that's the problem.

Because your drunk brain keeps cataloging all the ways he's not perfect enough. His hands are normal-sized. His smile doesn't hide anything. When he touches your elbow to steady you, it's just... a touch. No clinical observations about proprioception or balance compensation.

"You doing okay?" he asks for the third time, and his concern is so genuine it makes your teeth hurt.

"I'm fine," you lie, but what you mean is: you're not him.

You're not fine. You're drunk and touch-starved and maybe a little broken, because apparently regular flirting feels empty now. Like eating sugar-free candy when you know exactly how the real thing tastes.

"Want to dance again?" Mike offers, and you almost say yes because that's what you're supposed to want.

Normal girl, normal boy, normal Friday night.

But.

But your skin feels too tight and your head is spinning and all you can think about is how he would handle this—how he'd steady you with those surgeon's hands and murmur something about vestibular dysfunction while his thumb pressed against your pulse.

"I need air," you announce, pushing away from the bar.

Your heel catches on nothing, sending you stumbling.

Mike reaches for you, but you're already righting yourself, muscle memory kicking in as you adjust your center of gravity.

"Excellent compensatory response," you mutter in his voice, then laugh because you're definitely losing it.

"What?"

"Nothing." You wave off Mike's concerned look. "Just... medical student things."

"I get it," he says with a knowing smile. "The terminology gets stuck in your head after a while. My attending at SNU is always going on about proprioception and vestibular function."

Your stomach drops at the mention of SNU. "Which department?"

"Emergency, but we rotate through different services. This week I've been with the surgical team." He shrugs. "It's intense, but the residents are mostly cool."

You nod, wondering if he's ever supervised Mike, if they've worked side by side while you were sitting at home staring at your phone.

He smiles like he understands, but he doesn't. Can't. Because he's never had someone turn basic anatomy into psychological warfare. Never had someone make him question his own sanity with plausible deniability and careful touches and—

"Text me?" Mike's voice cuts through your spiral.

Your eyes flicker down to his hand. He's holding out his phone, expression hopeful.

You stare at it. At his normal, nice, completely uncomplicated contact page with its normal, nice, completely visible profile picture.

"I can't," you say finally, and you mean: I'm ruined for normal now.

His smile is understanding. Kind. "The doctor?"

"The doctor," you confirm, and you hate how your voice catches on the word.

Kiara immediately appears at your elbow—your guardian angel in four-inch heels. "Let’s get some air." She waves to Mike. "Thanks for keeping an eye on her."

"Anytime." He means it too, which makes it worse somehow.

You both make it outside. The night air feels like clarity. Kiara tucks you against her shoulder as you let out a soft sigh.

"He’s nice," she says finally.

"Yeah." You close your eyes, remembering gentle smiles and normal hands and complete lack of medical terminology. "Too nice."

"Oh honey." She strokes your hair. "You're so fucked."

You laugh until you cry, because she has no idea how right she is. How thoroughly, completely, deliberately fucked you've been by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.

Your phone buzzes.

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚝’𝚜 𝚞𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚢. 𝙳𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛.

Your heart stops.

“Y/N.” Kiara mutters, glancing down at your screen.

“Give me a second.” You reply, voice slightly slurred.

Because you know that clinical concern. Know that detached tone that sounds like medical advice but feels like ownership.

Your fingers slip on the keyboard as you type:

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜??? 𝚒𝚏 𝚒𝚝𝚜 𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚘𝚎𝚔 𝚝𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚞𝚛 𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚕 # 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊 𝙲𝙾𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙳

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚖𝚛 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚘𝚗 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚜 𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚢?? 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚂𝙼𝙰𝚁𝚃

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙶𝚘 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚕𝚎𝚎𝚙, 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚙.

The nickname makes you see red. You practically stab the screen with your thumbs:

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙳𝙾𝙽𝚃. 𝙲𝙷𝙸𝙿. 𝙼𝙴. 𝚞 𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚙 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚎𝚜 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚞 𝙱𝙻𝙾𝙲𝙺𝙳 𝙼𝙴

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝚠𝚑𝚢 𝚛 𝚞 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚑𝚐 𝚖𝚢 𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚝????? 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚎𝚛 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑????? 𝚗 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 “𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚍𝚊𝚢” 𝚑𝚞𝚑?????

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝙾 𝚞𝚛 𝚊 𝙲𝙾𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙳. 𝚌𝚘𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝙲𝙾𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙳

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚈𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚛𝚞𝚗𝚔.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙽𝙾 𝚂𝙷𝙸𝚃 𝚂𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙻𝙲𝙾𝙲𝙺.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚜𝚑𝚎𝚛𝙻𝙾𝙲𝙺.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎. 𝙼𝚛 𝙱𝚒𝚐 𝙱𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚂𝚞𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚘𝚗 𝙼𝚊𝚗

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚍𝚒𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚝𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚒𝚗𝚝��𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎𝚐𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚖𝚎𝚍 𝚜𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚘𝚕?????? 𝚊𝚜𝚔𝚒𝚗 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚊 𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚍

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. Your heart hammers against your ribs as you wait.

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞?

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗𝚝 𝚄 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚠𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚘𝚢

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚈/𝙽.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚘𝚘𝚘𝚘𝚘𝚘𝚘𝚘𝚑 𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎. 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚢. 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚞 𝚐𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚊 𝚍𝚘??? 𝙱𝙻𝙾𝙲𝙺 𝙼𝙴 𝙰𝙶𝙰𝙸𝙽???

The dots return, lingering longer this time.

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙸’𝚖 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙽𝙾. 𝚞𝚛 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚍. 𝚞𝚛 𝚖𝚎𝚊𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚒 𝙷𝙰𝚃𝙴 𝚄

𝐘𝐨𝐮: …𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗𝚝 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚖𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚋𝚝𝚠. 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚜 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚕 𝚜𝚒𝚣𝚎𝚍. 𝙱𝙾𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙶.

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚆𝚑𝚘’𝚜 𝙼𝚒𝚔𝚎?

You grin viciously at the sharp edge in those two words.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚍𝚗𝚝 𝚄 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚔𝚗𝚠𝚘

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙻𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗. 𝙽𝚘𝚠.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚘𝚛 𝚠𝚑𝚝????? 𝚐𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚊 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚣 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚝 𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚟 𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜????? 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚌𝚛𝚢 𝚒𝚗 𝚞𝚛 𝚘𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚎?????

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚙.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙽𝙾𝙿𝙴. 𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚙 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚐𝚎𝚜 𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛????? 𝚒𝚖 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚢/𝚗 𝚗𝚘𝚠. 𝚛𝚎𝚐𝚞𝚕𝚛 𝚢/𝚗 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚐𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚐𝚞𝚕𝚛 𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚛𝚎𝚐𝚞𝚕𝚛 𝚋𝚘𝚢𝚜 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚝 𝙱𝙻𝙾𝙲𝙺 𝙷𝙴𝚁

You jab at the send button, chest rising too fast, too unsteady, because fuck him.

Fuck him for watching you from a distance. Fuck him for pretending he wasn’t. Fuck him for texting you when he’s the one who left—for acting like he still has a say in what you do, who you see, how much you drink.

Fuck him for making you like this.

Your fingers curl tighter around your phone, the alcohol thick in your bloodstream, pulse scalding under your skin.

You squeeze your eyes shut, but all you can see is him. That fucking look on his face, like you’d somehow made him the victim.

Like he was the one suffering.

You shove your phone back into your bag, stomach twisting, vision tilting—

And then you pull it right back out.

Because you can’t escape inevitability, even as much as you wish you could.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚒 𝚝𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚞 𝚒𝚖 𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚛𝚗

The dots appear instantly, then vanish. Your heart pounds as you push further:

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚒 𝚝𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚞 𝚒 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚊𝚋𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚔

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚙.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚒 𝚝𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚞 𝚒 𝚙𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚎𝚍

A long pause. Then:

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙿𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝.

Your lips curve, knowing you’ve got him. Even through the alcohol haze, you can feel the shift in his tone—the way the period instead of a question mark betrays his tension. Curiosity. Intrigue.

Attraction.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚞 𝚝𝚊𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚖𝚎. 𝚊𝚋𝚝 𝚖𝚢 𝚐𝚊𝚐 𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚕𝚎𝚡

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. You press on:

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚞𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚖𝚢 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚛𝚜. 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚊𝚜 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚊𝚜 𝚞𝚛 𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚝𝚑𝚘. 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚎𝚗𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑.

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚈/𝙽.

Full name. You’re getting to him.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚞 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚒 𝚐𝚘𝚝??? 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚍𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚒 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚞 𝚗𝚘𝚠???

The response is immediate:

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚒𝚝.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝???? 𝚐𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚊 𝚙𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚜𝚑 𝚖𝚎??? 𝚝𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚖𝚎 𝚊 𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚘𝚗????

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙻𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚎𝚡𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗??? 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚢 𝚎𝚍𝚞𝚌𝚊𝚢𝚒𝚘𝚗????

Another pause. Then:

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚃𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚎 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚛𝚎.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚢??? 𝚐𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚌𝚔 𝚖𝚢 𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝚌𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗???

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙵𝚞𝚌𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞.

Your thighs clench at the curse. Because this—this is what you wanted. What you want. Him cursing. Him losing it, like you’ve lost it—medical terminology abandoned.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚜𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚊𝚞𝚐𝚎 𝚍𝚛 𝚓𝚞𝚗𝚐. 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚞𝚗𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚏𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚊𝚕

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙶𝚎𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚝𝚊𝚡𝚒. 𝙽𝚘𝚠.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚒𝚖 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚗 𝚏𝚞𝚗 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎. 𝚖𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚕𝚎𝚝 𝚖𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚋𝚞𝚢 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚛 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚔

The response is lightning fast:

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙸𝚏 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚜 𝚐𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝙸’𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚊𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚙𝚊𝚕.

The threat has your knees wobbling.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚓𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚞𝚜???

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙷𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚊𝚕.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚒𝚝

Three dots appear. Linger. Disappear. Your phone buzzes with a location pin instead.

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝟸𝟶 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚜. 𝙳𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞.

You stare at the address, feeling slightly bold. Slightly reckless. Because that’s his apartment. Where he’d almost—where you’d nearly—

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙸 𝚊𝚖.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚍𝚘𝚜𝚗𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚒𝚝

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚙.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚢𝚎𝚜?

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝟷𝟿 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚒 𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎

His reply makes you, indeed, not want to behave at all.

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸’𝚕𝚕 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚎𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚛. 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚕𝚢. 𝚁𝚎𝚙𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍𝚕𝚢. 𝚄𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚕 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚗.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚎????

Three dots appear one last time:

𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: 𝟷𝟾 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚜, 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚙. 𝚃𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚝𝚘𝚌𝚔.

You send him a middle finger emoji and watch the dots appear, disappear, appear again.

Let him stew.

You’ve got 17 minutes to decide just how badly you want to misbehave.

(Very badly, as it turns out.)

→ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: @cannotalwaysbenight @livingformintyoongi @itstoastsworld @somehowukook @just-reading-dany @sanarin @billy-jeans23 @stuti2904 @chloepiccoliniii @kimnamjoonmiddletoe @annyeongbitch7 @mar-lo-pap @hobis-sprite0218

© 𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐤𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓.

no reposts, translations, or adaptations

[theresattrpgforthat]

Any low improv TTRPG's? as in low on the GM part, i would like to try some and see how it compares as I'm part of the improv scary crew

THEME: Low Improv Games.

Happy holidays folks! I'm going to try and get the last recommendation posts of the year out quickly, so you might get some more rec posts in the next two weeks!

As for this one friend, I tried to mix things up across game and genre, so I hope you find something you like!

Tunnels in White, by MeatCastle GameWare.

Old money siphoning new money from every corner of your city. An aging mansion, quiet and worn. An old corporation shifting its gaze from development to development, always hungry, always growing.

A warehouse bearing the name Singleton Solutions, small and unassuming in one of a hundred industrial parks like any other, takes in truckload after truckload but never sends anything out. It’s the same for the people. Sometimes, they arrive in towncars, other times in shuttle vans. None come out. Ever.

What you know is something strange is going on inside that warehouse and you are determined to discover what it is. What you cannot know is where and how far the mystery may take you.

Tunnels in White is an adventure for Liminal Horror, a modern-day horror OSR game about normal people being subjected to terrible things. A good number of adventures and mysteries written for these games come with locations, maps, factions, enemies and consequences for you to use as needed whenever your players enter a new location or attempt something dangerous.

I’m really interested in the use of these adventures for various OSR games, as the adventures seem to be what have most of the meat, rather than the rules. If you really want these games to sing, you’ll want your players to create characters that fit the kind of adventure that you’re presenting to the table - in this case, perhaps your characters all have loved ones who have gone missing recently. Once your players have character buy-in, they won’t need much prompting to delve deeper into the mystery, and the fact that Tunnels in White doesn’t have one single “correct” solution to the main problem means that your players’ actions will mean all the more.

I think I see this module as a stepping stone towards improv in that it gives you options to choose from, rather than a singular railroad to follow. What you’ll get out of this is a location that feels logically consistent and real to the players, while the story that happens will feel organic, and heavily dependant on what the group decides to do.

You can find more modules for Liminal Horror in the Tales from the Void Liminal Horror Jam.

The Doom of Macbeth, by leozingiannoni.

Famine. Execution. Oppression. Supernatural longevity that no one seems to quite understand or question. As King Macbeth’s reign approaches its 100th year, your knights receive a revelation in a dream.

It does not have to be like that. 

As an answer to prayers and cries, the god Lugh reveals to you the alternative realities that could be, if Macbeth is not allowed to move on with his coup. You wake up to 100 years in the past, before you were born. What will you do to stop this horrible future?

The Doom of Macbeth is a deep-dive into one of the most iconic plays of all time, where you fight  your way to avoid a future that seems inevitable. Using the Doomsday Clock mechanic found in Arc:Doom by momatoes, you simulate the feeling of the play creeping upon your characters, and must fight against it— or towards it. 

Using a narrative that is familiar to the GM and the players might be another way to enter a game without having to worry too much about improv. Even though this setting is only the size of a brochure, you and your crew can lean on your knowledge of the Scottish play to make things happen the way you want them to. In this version of the game, Macbeth succeeds in becoming a mad king, but you know that this can change, if you tweak the story.

One more thing: I think you might need Arc, by Momatoes, in order to play this game.

Kiss Me If You Can, by sdunnewold.

River is a notorious international art thief and cat burglar. Jules is a well-respected special agent in charge of art crimes. Jules is determined to find and bring River to justice. But maybe along the way… they'll kiss?

Kiss Me If You Can is a simple print and play two player cat and mouse romance game that you can play in under an hour. It features two unique decks of prompt cards, one for each character. Each turn you play a prompt card, answer its questions, maybe talk about a famous artist or painting, and get a little closer to justice and/or love.

Another two-player experience, Kiss Me If You Can feels very similar to games that are Descended from the Queen, in that the bulk of the game revolves around drawing cards and answering the prompts provided. You’ll come up with locations, personal motives, and reasons for your characters to end up getting closer to each-other, but the cards provide a lot of direction, so I don’t think I’d necessarily classify it as improv. If you want a cute romantic story about a will-they-won’t-they scenario, you might like Kiss Me If You Can.

Exalted Order of the Mystic Moose, by Jacob Marks.

The Mauvewoods. You can’t hope to see the crown of a mauvewood tree from the ground. It took a day just to climb to the top of the oldest trees. Look past the undergrowth and ghosts can be spotted on the old lumber paths. Every ghost you see used to live in a mauvewood tree. Knock on a healthy tree, and you just might hear a hollow wooden knock in answer.

This zine details a forest, a town, and a dungeon, all intended for use with the tabletop roleplaying game: Cairn. Explore a forest full of lumberjacks, maple syrup, and strange ghosts. Delve into an old mansion sinking into a marsh. Confront the Exalted Order Of The Mystic Moose.

Cairn has a few editions now: the link I’ve added to this entry is for the 2nd edition Warden’s Guide, and you can check out Yochai Gal’s creator page for both the Player’s Guide and the First Edition. This adventure has oodles of locations, three main factions, and a 20 room dungeon for your players to explore. Cairn feels like a very traditional fantasy game at its roots, but the Exalted Order of the Mystic Moose feels like like a unique take, with some flavour that feels very Boreal Forest to me.

Like many OSR adventures, this isn’t a linear adventure - instead is a series of connected locations and a broad description of things that are happening when the player group shows up. The setting has a natural conflict that is happening separately from the players’ choices or decisions, which will make the setting feel more real and important to your play.

If you want to explore more adventures for Cairn, you can check out the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam!

Totally Killer, by bloodygorgeous.

When you were kids, all the girls—and, certainly, some of the boys—wanted a Chrissy, the only fashion doll to give Barbie a run for her money. Chrissy was designed to be the woman every girl dreamed of becoming: stylish, smart, independent, and, most importantly, a total smokeshow. For a while, shelves exploded with Out of This World Astronaut Chrissies. Protect and Serve Policewoman Chrissies. ’80s prom queen Totally Killer Chrissies. Chrissy could do anything, all while her boyfriend Ben waited at home. Chrissy could have it all. Decades later, as Chrissy fever descends again on Deep Lake, a murderer stalks the night. The police have their theories, but only the Latchkeys suspect the truth: that this killer has long legs, an unstoppable smile, and a passion for fashion. Chrissy has come to life, and she’s come to slay.

Public Access is horror-mystery found-footage style game that relies on pre-written mysteries to give the table an organic approach to role-play. While typically PbtA games are considered very high in improv, I think the mystery format of these kinds of games takes a lot of weight off of the GM’s shoulders. Typically these mysteries provide a very strong starting point, introducing the table to the mystery and some key characters to look to for hints and clues. The GM is also provided with a series of clues to drop into the game where relevant - perhaps a headless doll is found where one of the victims went missing, or a mysterious silhouette lurking in the distance.

These kinds of games also typically come with some kind of track to help monitor both the progress of the latch-keys as well ask heighten the stakes to encourage the story to keep moving. In other games, I know that this track is called the mystery clock. I’m not entirely sure what Public Access uses, but the core rulebook looks to have quite a bit hidden within its pages, so I’m confident that it contains everything you need to run your first game.

You can find more mysteries for Public Access in the Degoya County Public Access Jam.

Auctōrātus, by M. Allen Hall.

You know why you are here. You are not a criminal. You are not a slave. You are an auctōrātus, a volunteer, and you will be paid well for your performance. Make sure your mech is ready. Select your components. Charge your batteries. Be prepared for the fight of your life.

Auctōrātus is a 1- or 2-gladiator game of mechs vs. monsters. The 3 files include the one-page (2-sided) rules sheet, the character sheet, and the map of the arena.

Battle monsters over six rounds to win the tournament. From the lowly Scale Wolf to the monstrous Crescent Wyvern, you will need to carefully choose your mech's components if you want to survive. 

Featuring a diceless, zero-luck mechanism,  Auctōrātus is an experiment in tabletop combat. Since this is a one or two-player game that focuses primarily on strategy, you might find a lot of satisfaction in simply immersing yourself in strategy. You can play the game solo and manage everything yourself, or play as two players who take turns playing the monsters in each person’s respective arenas.

A Good Plan Never Fails, by Deric Bindel.

A GOOD PLAN NEVER FALLS is a one-shot, gm-less roleplaying game for 2-5 players focused on infiltrating a TOWER and making off with THE GOODS held within. The group builds up with a tumbling block game, with each move taking everyone closer to collapse or success!

Over the course of play, everyone will create a member of the Crew from a set of Archetypes and receive a special Secret Agenda, dictating how they get their BONUS. You'll be bulding up the TOWER, dictating each obstacle and how you overcome them. When the TOWER inevitably COLLAPSES, it's time to shift from the HEIST to the GETAWAY!

A really strong feature of pulp-action genre games is that they’re typically heavily inspired by movies, like heists or cons. This means that the game has a pretty familiar structure, such as the infiltration or the getaway. You can rely on the hallmarks of these genres when playing these kinds of games to fill in the blanks, and it’s easy to figure out what happens next because the game builds each phase onto the last. In the case of this game, that means that the first part of the game, building the tower, leads into the second part, when the tower collapses.

Kill Him Faster, by Korvidae Games.

On May 8th, 2068, scientist Elisabet Rosenzweig answered the most pressing question in science fiction – “what’s the first thing you would do if you could travel through time?” - by killing Hitler. It took her precisely 5 years, 137 days, eight hours, and 12 seconds.

Fifteen years later killing Hitler is the hottest sport on the planet. The record stands at two weeks.

Competitive games are another great structure for play groups that want to build on something without needing a lot of heavy improv. In Kill Him Faster, the game is divided into three phases: pregame, game, and post-game, each composed of press conferences, the competitive portion, and interviews. There’s various additional phases for a longer game, including Trade Day (where athletes swap teams) and off-season vignettes, which allow you to slow down and focus on individual characters.

If you want a taste of the game before you buy, you can get the rules preview here.

Other Notes

A Complicated Profession by Always Checkers Publishing has a lot of guiding questions and a very structured order of play, and follows reformed bounty hunters running a cruise ship.

Tournament Arc, by Biscuit Fund Games, focuses on sports competitions, which may provide a structure that is easy to follow, as well as a more collaborative experience.

If you like what I do and you'd like to send me a token of your appreciation, I have a Ko-Fi page!

[wcbblife]

Public relationship with Juju HCs

a/n: I have another one brewing that's a secret relationship with her. Reader is an athlete too btw.

First of all, Juju would be pretty shameless if you two are out to the public. I think she wouldn't shy away from making it known that you two are together. Whether it's showing up to a game around Cali together or her showing up to a school activity with you by her side.

You two would be considered THE power couple since you’re both athletes for USC.

Juju is always on the big screen when she’s at your games and vice versa. When you two are watching another sport, you two always get called out in the crowd. In that case, Juju smiles with a hand around your hips or shoulder to let everybody know just how she felt about you without even having to say a word.

Birthday and anniversary posts are a must for her. She’s also always posting funny videos of you with her laughing in the background and the occasional fit check with an off-screen kiss at the end that makes everyone go crazy.

Some reporters usually try to poke and prod for some scandalous information, but Juju never deters from the fact that she’s down bad for you. She never hides that.

“So, rumor has it you've been spending a lot of time with someone special lately outside of basketball. Care to expand on that?” Juju raises an eyebrow, clearly annoyed at the fact that he was asking such a question at a basketball conference, “You mean my girlfriend?” She tries acting tough but the mere idea of you makes her break into a soft smile, “Yeah, we’ve been hanging out a lot since the season started. We might not get to be together as much once the games start to roll in.” “And you’re sure it’s all well? I mean, we’ve barely seen anything about you two these past few days.” It’s impossible to miss the huff of breath that she lets out. Almost frustrated. “Yeah man. I mean I think we’ve been better than ever. She’s been focused on her rehab, and I've been playing basketball.” She shrugs, “She’s got me breaking all of the coach's rules.” Juju tries to liven up the room with a joke and they all laugh as her coach smacks her hand in a playful manner.

Same with being shameless about you, she doesn’t hesitate to protect you when those crazy overbearing fans criticize you or the media gets out of hand.

"I'd like too also say that what the media paints my girlfriend to be is completely wrong. It would be nice for people to stop talking without knowing anything about her and us personally. " Seeing the media paint you as someone overbearing or keeping her from her full potential pissed of Juju a lot. She turned to the camera capturing the interview. "I would recommend not getting too comfortable on speaking about our relationship. It's none of your business at the end of the day. "

Her media team are literal menaces lowkey. They never miss an opportunity to tease you two. Whether it's making a cheeky caption with Juju's picture or commenting on a post about you.

Never fails to give you the credit you deserve. It can sometimes feel like all the attention is on her, but Juju uses her spotlight to let everyone know just how important you are to her and how she's down bad for you.

TikTok videos together>>>

You have countless videos of her just laying on you when you two are together in bed. Especially those where it’s without her knowing and she’s acting all weird or her just sleeping. Whenever she realizes, a shit eating grin settles on her face. She literally begs you to post them every time people doubt the status of your guy's relationship because it makes her feel super cocky.

She would wear your jersey. I don't make the rules.

[yuri-is-online]

I’d like to hear a little about Idia’s Yutu. I bet he was pretty startled to see his hair suddenly catch fire + any other physical changes associated with the curse. (Do you think the yellow eyes and shark teeth are even caused by the curse?)

Idia is a popular boy and I have a lot of thoughts about him in general; I feel like I gave him a lot to deal with in this particular au... Jade is probably having a worse time mentally but Idia has a bunch of work I know he wasn't asking for.

As for the talk about the curse, I kicked it around in my head a bit and I am going to say yes the teeth are caused by it but the eyes are just something Idia got from his parents. I know I talk about thinking there is something wrong with Trey, but I don't think that's because of a curse and his eyes are definitely yellow. Idia's do seem to glow a bit so if you want your Yutu to have different colored eyes I think it would make sense if they had a bit of a glow to them, but that's just me.

notes: they/them used for Yuu, for context on the fyuuture kid au can be found here and here. For this post, I would recommend reading this explanation of what happened to the boys as Idia has a pretty big role in the bad timeline, and his actions will be somewhat referenced here.

Idia has the benefit and the literal curse of being in charge of S.T.Y.X., meaning that when blot investigations are conducted he tends to be in the know. His Yuu and Yutu should have been safe from anything the Marshall's decided to do but they weren't. Unlike pretty much everyone else in this AU, Idia learns what happened to his family. He knows that Yuu was cursed, he knows they were sent back to their world. But that's about it, he tries to find some sort of way to make contact with your world so he can bring you home but then things go to shit and his progress is severely delayed. By the time he has to help bury Leona it's stopped completely. Ortho tries his best to help, but Idia doesn't really want him to. As much as he wants to see you again, he doesn't want you to have to suffer through any overblots again, nor does he want to raise a child in a dying world.

Sometimes when he is alone, energy drinks scattered around his desk he'll look over to the little digital photo frame he loaded up with pictures of you, from back at NRC all the way up to your wedding and wonders if he should just let you go. There's a chance you being forced to forget about him means you would have moved on, maybe met someone else and had other kids. Was his kid anything like him? He hopes they ended up looking mostly like you, and knowing there is no way for the Shroud curse to reach them does make it slightly easier to sleep at night. He tells himself when he comes back to work tomorrow, he'll put the frame in a drawer along with his wedding ring but he never does. In his mind, he is still your husband, just waiting for fall to come so you can try to be together again. Fall might be another life, but Idia surprisingly doesn't mind. He can wait for you.

Idia! Yutu was a massive crybaby when he was a baby. Very clingy to Yuu and very afraid of his own shadow let alone his teachers and peers. He grows out of the crying as he gets older but not the social anxiety. Yutu wants friends, he just sucks at making them and is extremely stressed out by being around people. I could see Yuu maybe getting an animal of some sort to help with the stress and anxiety their son was feeling. And just by typing that I have become attached to the concept: Ida! Yutu gets a dog Yuu feels inclined to name Cerberus. Yutu adores her and takes very good care of her without any fights about his chores.

Yuu remembers Idia as being more of a cat person, but they tell Yutu they think he really would have approved of Cerb. They remember him as being a socially awkward, but extremely passionate about his work and hobbies. His love of retro games causes a lot of Yuu's cursed pains, they know he liked those sorts of games but they can't for the life of them remember the titles. Yutu tries to reassure his parent it's just nice knowing a little bit about his dad and that he doesn't need the specifics. Hearing about his dad's interests motivates him to learn about emulators as he gets older, and he builds Yuu a nice family computer after scrounging for parts.

Yutu prefers single player or local co-op games, but makes an exception if Yuu has a long term MMO or something like a genshin account because he does like playing with Yuu. It helps soothe his social anxiety to talk to people while he knows his parent and Cerberus are near by, but when they aren't online he's essentially a solo gamer.

Unfortunately for Yutu's potential inner gremlin, Yuu also remembers Idia's shut in tendencies and is determined to get him outside from a very young age. Cerb does her best to help with that too, it's Yutu's job to walk her and he swears she keeps trying to introduce him to people. He's had so many awkward conversations with the people in his neighborhood because of her. His other chore used to be helping out in the little vegetable garden Yuu started to help cut down grocery costs, but that quickly ceased being a chore and became a full blown passion.

Idia! Yutu loves flowers. He fills his windowsills with plants that are safe to be around dogs and has Cerberus help him dig a flower bed around your home so he can plant more of them. Sure the veg garden is nice too, but he loves the significance of and variety that can be found in flowers. If you live in a place that can keep bees then he will absolutely bug you about wanting to get some.

Twisted Wonderland looks horrible to Yutu. It's dark and cold, he's been snapped into a room full of people in a place he doesn't recognize, and his parent has gone non responsive as he tries desperately to shake them awake. He tries snapping at the fancy looking man that comes to help and accidentally bites his tongue, and that's when he notices it.

Mostly because Cerberus tackles him and tries to put him out.

"Owowowowowowowwww-" Yutu tries to push Cerberus back but she keeps whining and trying to lick at his face. She yelps as Yutu catches his breath as he sees what she's trying to paw at. His hair is on fire, or to be more accurate his hair is fire. He can hold it, he can tug at it, it's warm and is not burning his clothes but his hair is on fucking fire-

"STAY." The voice is so commanding that both Cerb and Yutu freeze, the strange man from before with his dual colored hair looks oddly nostalgic at his little command, eyes obviously softening at the dog as he shakes his head. "Good girl, no need to worry. Your little master is ok, he isn't going to combust." Cerberus whines, but she relaxes and Yutu stands shakily. "Though full warning you might feel like you are once I am done explaining things to you."

Idia and Ortho are called to NRC for an emergency and debriefed on their way over. Yuu holds on to life just long enough to speak with Idia a little, the first time Yutu meets his dad the two of them are saying goodbye to a now comatose Yuu. The silence is awkward, but the hold Idia has on Yutu isn't. I like to think that Idia and Yuu had talked about what they would have wanted to name Yutu, and that memory had carried across the world so there was no awkward introduction phase between the two of them. The sort of fall into each others lives immediately, the want for the other to exist overriding anything else.

Cerberus helps too. Idia might be more of a cat person but cute doggies are good too. ESPECIALLY one with such an awesome name, she's the most spoiled girl in the entire apocalypse. She's an old dog at this point, so Idia takes her back to S.T.Y.X. where she becomes a sort of unofficial mascot for the research teams. Idia makes her a uniform and everything. He regularly sends pictures to Yutu while he's busy at school.

Because of Yutu's love of gardening trumping his interest in technology, he ends up in Heartslabyul instead of Ignihyde. He is very embarrassed about this at first (he really hates the uniform) but Idia reassures him that he doesn't care about that. His kid could probably kill someone in front of him and he would not care, especially not at this point. So long as he is able to talk to his child about manga and games he doesn't care what extra circulars they're into. I can't see him being super excited about having to go to sports games, but then again maybe he would just think about it like a sports anime to help psych himself up to go (his kid would obviously be his favorite character).

Bad timeline Idia is a lot calmer than his younger self. He still loses his temper and goes on smug rants, but in general he speaks exactly like he does in book six to the S.T.Y.X. employees. His true personality only really comes out when he's alone with Ortho and Yutu, but he tries to keep his more pessimistic side in check. He wants Yutu to have some hope for the future, but the more he runs the numbers the bleaker things look.

Ortho is beyond excited to have his nephew back. He always liked hanging out with Yuu because of the lack of data he had about them. Every conversation he had with them was unique, and he was really looking forward to having the same experience with Yutu. He was just as if not more distraught than Idia when you both disappeared, so having Yutu back brings a bit more spark to his soul. Yutu was so stressed out from all of the changes he was experiencing that meeting Orhto felt weirdly normal. What's weirder: having an artificial humanoid for an uncle, technically being part alien, having fire for hair, or having a spell that literally opens the gates of hell. Yutu is not taking option one that's for sure.

Ortho and Idia are the ones who propose going back in time, but when it's their Yutu who is making the journey the suggestion is extremely difficult to make. Idia doesn't like the idea of asking his son to do this, it feels selfish. But then, Idia also feels like bringing him into existence before he could break the family curse was selfish, no matter what Yutu was always going to be doomed. But that just means he should be the one taking responsibility for this... Ortho volunteers himself for the mission but Yutu points out that that would probably be even more dangerous than sending him. It's a tearful goodbye, everyone knows that if the missions succeeds this timeline will cease to exist and they will never get to see each other again. They have a little party at NRC and Idia takes Yutu aside to visit Yuu's grave, firstly so they can say goodbye and secondly because he has a confession to make

"I was mega cringe when I was at NRC." His dad can't even look him in the eyes, and Yutu swears he sees him shaking. He has to blink a few times to make sure he is seeing things right, this doesn't look like overworked dad, or stressed dad, or angry at something mundane dad. If he didn't know any better, he'd say he was-

"Well isn't everybody?" The tips of Idia's hair turn pink at the question and Yutu's quickly mirrors him from feeling like he's done something wrong. All he's done is repeat his dad's own advice back to him though. "You're always so cool and confident-" Idia wheezes and Yutu almost has to catch him. "I mean I'm sure you can't be bad as me-"

"Oh you are going to regret saying that." His dad can't really bring himself to elaborate further but the thousand yard stare does all the talking for him.

Idia! Yutu was given three very simple instructions by Uncle Ortho about going back in time:

1) don't try to lie to me about who you are, I will run scans and figure it out. Grandma and Grandpa finding out would probably be bad and just complicate things. Easy enough, having Uncle Ortho on his side makes the transition between future and past a lot easier. Current Ortho might be a lot more innocent? Naive? He isn't sure if those are the words he would use, but he is certainly less used to having a soul and being his own person than his Uncle is. Not that this makes him any less accepting of Yutu... if anything he is even more excited about him than he was in the future.

2) try to keep who you are a secret from Yuu, but get close to them. We need them to stay alive, even if we don't know why yet... Less easy than hanging out with Uncle Ortho, but still easy enough. I tend to write all Yutus as not fully realizing how much they missed or loved Yuu until they got to see the younger version of their parent... but out of all of them Idia! Yutu is certainly up there for just how hard it hits him. Mostly because of Rule 3:

3) I am so fucking sorry for what you're going to have to deal with please be patient with me!!! I promise I love you and your parent so much I'm just not going to know-

So that obviously came from Idia and not Ortho, but Yutu really disregarded that warning until he accidentally ran into his dad while trying to find Ortho and saw him take out a tablet? That he used to talk with and got very panicky about when he asked a very simple question about it. Uncle Ortho helpfully tells him later that Idia uses it to help him speak in public because of his anxiety, and is very pleased to learn Yutu has never seen him use it in the future. But that doesn't really change how things are now...

On the one hand, Yutu gets it. He has bad social anxiety himself, but because he had a very supportive parent who worked with him to challenge himself in healthy ways he never got to the point that Idia is. He also was a lot older when he had his first experience with a traumatic loss and had Idia (who is a bit too experienced) and Ortho (who is just so understanding) there to help him through it. He knew that was not the case for his dad, they talked about it a lot in the future because Idia felt like he had a right to know, but I don't think he fully comprehended how bad Idia's mental health was.

Because no matter how much he might get it, this guy is still his dad and Yutu really wants to interact with him. He wants to impress him and maybe finally beat his high score on Star Rogue, Yutu just knows there are a bunch of stories he never got to hear because his dad was too embarrassed to tell him and this is maybe his one chance to find all of them out. But his dad is such a shut in he barely even interacts with Yuu! Yutu was always way too embarrassed to ask him about how they got together and now he swears he'll never know because him being in Ramshackle seems to have scared his dad off.

That's only half true, Idia doesn't really see Yutu as a romantic rival... like Cater he assumes you are related in some way because of the similar appearances and tastes in manga. Even when the two of you deny it he shrugs it off, hey maybe Yutu is just you from a different reality? He thinks he read a manga like that once... either way not his monkey not his circus. But like. It could be, Ortho really does like to remind him that Yuu is much less judgemental than everyone else on campus so if he wanted to make some progress on his journey of self improvement talking to them might not be such a bad idea. wink wink nudge nudge! But going over there still means he has to interact with someone other than Yuu and Mr. Grim and that's stressful.

He doesn't think about it at all when Yutu keeps finding excuses to not be there when Ortho drags him to visit because of how relieved he is to not have to socialize with him, at first anyway. He notices when Ortho excuses himself too, they certainly seem to be buddy buddy which isn't something he's going to complain about but as Idia does get closer to Yuu and *ugh* admits to himself he's got some feelings he starts to feel like he should at least know something about the kid other than his name. He does not completely figure it out, but he notices all of the relevant data points before he's slapped in the face with who Yutu is.

Like Lilia! Yutu's reveal, I think Idia finds out about who Yutu is in the middle of a fight. Yuu gets injured by a really strange blot phatom Idia has never seen before and Yutu absolutely looses it. His hair flares up and for snaps his hood to cinders as he's roaring out spells and trying desperately to make sure that thing doesn't touch his parents. Something you both hear loud and clear.

At first this makes Idia beyond excited. He probably joins the little fit his son is throwing except in raw joy because he's fantasized so much about this! He even has a little sims save where Yuu and him are married and they've got a kid and a cat and wow just look at Yutu he looks even cooler in real life than he does in a life sim! Yuu look at him, you guys have a-

A kid. You have a kid. With him. One that's got his teeth and hair and your nose and is sobbing in his arms about how much he missed you both and doesn't want to watch you die again. The sheer worry eclipses his second hand embarrassment at his own smugness as he awkwardly holds on to the sobbing Yutu and looks towards you for help. He's never been good at this whole emotional comfort thing, pls assist. So you pick yourself up and join the group hug and all three of you just sort of sit there for a bit while Yutu tells his story. About growing up in your world, how he came to NRC and his friends in Heartslabyul (Idia is blaming that on you, as a joke ofc he doesn't care what house his kid is in), and the plan to go back in time because of how hopeless the future is. It's not a story Idia takes lightly, especially when Ortho confirms it and sends him all of the data he and Yutu have collected so far. Idia is a bit gloomy and prone to complaining, but if you are in a bad place there are few people more reliable. He is a lot like death in a way, he'll always be there in the end.

Idia is a bit awkward around Yuu for a bit after the reveal, I like to think of you as being newly together at this point so Idia hasn't really revealed just how... detailed some of his fantasies about you are just yet. There are a lot of them, he has uh. Maybe written some of them down, pleasedon'tmakehimreadthemoutloud and most of them are perfectly normal and respectable (lies). It stops when you tell him Yutu had to come from somewhere and he dies, buries himself under his covers, and rises again a changed man. Yeah that's right, his kid did come from somewhere NORMIES. He had se-

He's not super big into PDA but he is comfortable being clingy around Yutu and Ortho, though he tries not to be overly cheesy around Yutu. He hates seeing his parents be all lovey dovey with one another and he likes to keep his compliments quiet and for your ears only anyway. I do like the idea of Yuu being a tiny bit more outgoing and embarrassing him a bit around "the kids" (Grim and Yutu) so his hair is in a damn near permanent shade of pink any time he's around Ramshackle. It's one thing to have your younger brother think the world of you, but to have a kid think so highly of you that he travels back in time to save you from an apocalypse? Idia feels super unworthy, it fuels his determination to work out the "problem" Yutu has given him even if his natural pessimism makes him want to give up.

"... Just leave it to your dad." It's an echo of the only other promise he 100% intends to live up to. He really does mean it, Idia is not loosing this match. Just you wait and see...

[gffa]

Over the last week, I decided to go ahead with bookmarking all the fics I've recommended over the years on AO3 since I abide by tumblr poll results always (and man pour one out for all the fic that never made it to AO3 or has since been deleted, sooooo many gems lost to time!) and it was a bit more than the ~3,000 I was expecting:

Hopefully, this will be easier than browsing the hundreds of recs posts I've made, since you can filter for any of the author's tags now! These are mostly focused on Star Wars and DC fandom, but I did my time in the anime mines and occasional tours through some TV fandoms or movies. You can dig into everything unfiltered and start your own filtering, or the bigger fandoms you'll find:

MAJOR FANDOMS: Each of these should have 100+ at minimum and, in the case of Star Wars, literally almost half of them are in that fandom. Look, Star Wars fandom might be a trash fire in a lot of ways, but it is ON FIRE with some good fic. (Older bookmarks not guaranteed to match my current sentiments, especially re: the Jedi, but they did catch my fancy at that point in time!)

STAR WARS: - All Star Wars -OR- All Star Wars minus the Obi-Wan/Anakin ship - OR- Nothing BUT Obi-Wan/Anakin

BATMAN/DC: - DC can sometimes be tricky, but you can do a Batman* search and get most of them (though, sometimes Nightwing* or Young Justice* or Superman* will catch some of the others). Honestly, though, you might want to just do a search for what character or dynamic you like and have fun from there, because otherwise you're getting a face full of my Dick Grayson Is The Center Of The Universe And I'm Making That Everyone Else's Problem agenda. ;)

MARVEL/MCU: - Marvel* will probably get most of the various properties, though you may want to filter for Defenders* or Guardians of the Galaxy* if you're interested -OR- Marvel* without the Thor/Loki - These focus a lot on the Thor* fandom if you want to witness the results of like 8 years of constant voracious reading in that fandom (Minus the ship), because, seriously, I read a LOT of Odinson family fic. - Bonus, just do a search for Maximoff* to find some really good X-Men: First Class-verse because, listen, I have been ALL ABOUT the Maximoff twins since long before the movies or MCU brought them over and I will DIE ON THE HILL of "Marvel, make Magneto their bio-dad again or I'm never reading another comic of yours ever".

TOLKIEN/LORD OF THE RINGS/SILMARILLION/HOBBIT: - Tolkien* -OR- Hobbit* -OR- Lord of the Rings* searches will turn up most of my Elf-hunting, I primarily focus on the Sindar Elves, but look I can't resist my problematic Feanorian faves or that I will die on the hill that Fingolfin is the best ever. (You have NO IDEA how sad I am that so much fic on Stories of Arda or FFNET is not easily bookmarked on AO3, sob. I externally bookmarked a few of the bigger ones, but sooo many shorter faves are missing from my recs tag.)

CLAMP: - X/Tokyo Babylon legitimately bums me out because it's not a huge fandom and yet so much of what was written was pre-AO3 and lost when CLAMPesque went down or was never brought over from Livejournal, yet this fandom (well, the Seishirou/Subaru pairing) still burns brightly in my heart.

MINOR FANDOMS: Ones that probably only have under 100 bookmarks (often around the 20-30 bookmarks range), but will at least give you a place to start! ANIME/MANGA: Bleach | Cardcaptor Sakura | Dragonball | Finder no Hyouteki/Viewfinder | Katekyou Hitman Reborn! | Kuroko no Basuke | One Piece | Sailor Moon | Madoka Magica | Naruto | Princess Tutu | Trigun | Weiss Kreuz | Yuri!!! on Ice

BOOKS: Chrestomanci | Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

DRAMAS: Nirvana in Fire | The Untamed -OR- Modao Zu Shi

TV SHOWS/MOVIES: Community | Game of Thrones -OR- ASOIAF | Good Omens | Hannibal | Highlander | The Old Guard | Our Flag Means Death | Stranger Things

VIDEO GAMES: Dragon Age: Inquisition | Final Fantasy 8 | Genshin Impact | Okami

BANDS: Arashi

All right, whew, that was actually a fun project, despite how much work it was to hunt down a lot of older faves to see if they were on AO3, hopefully you'll find this useful!

[nabi-unveiled]

Nabi Notices (Mar 18, 2025)

It's been something like eight weeks since I decided to stop being a ghost and risk writing up my thoughts on Tumblr. I tagged my first post as "things I might regret", and I still might regret it one day. But today is not that day.

Interacting with everyone has been so much fun. It's enriched my viewing experience, and it's given me an outlet that I didn't know I needed. I'm not new to Asian media or BL by any means. I've watched Asian media for over 20 years and BL since 2017 (plus other queer media prior), but my options for discussing it have been very limited (my brother mostly).

It's just not safe in my family or my community. But man - it really is fun talking about the things you enjoy. There have been some interesting side effects of this venture, but I'll save those thoughts for a future week.

In general, the BL Tumblr community has been so welcoming and affirming. We may disagree on our takes and interpretations. A show one person loves, another may hate. But isn't that the beauty of it? We can actually say those things. We can have conversations about dopamine sprinkles, read too much into symbols and colors, and rant about poorly written dialogue. I continually feel affirmed here.

When I started this blog two months ago, I initially did a "Weekly Wrap-Up" outlining shows I watched and a few thoughts. I really enjoy reading those posts from other people. However, I quickly learned that I don't enjoy writing those posts myself.

I watch a lot of shows during the week - some properly, most as background noise. I'm sporadic at best. My brother calls us human ping-pong balls. In our defense, we only get to talk 1-2 hours a month. There's a lot of ground we need to cover in those calls.

I drop and pick up shows based on my current mood, the nature of my current work assignment, time availability, and if I crash from lack of sleep. Sometimes I binge. Sometimes I space episodes out weeks apart. Anyone who followed me during When It Rains knows I have bouts of hyperfixation. The thought of being "locked into" a show is not for me. After all, the reason I delayed this long in watching the ThamePo finale is personal. It has nothing to do with the show. The typical format of a weekly wrap-up felt like I was setting up an expectation I couldn't keep.

So this made me ponder - what type of "weekly post" would work for me? After much thought, I've decided I'll post my favorite moments of the past week from a variety of categories. The categories may change from time to time. My main goal here is to give myself flexibility and have fun with it. The intro will probably be MUCH shorter in future weeks.

The Things I Noticed This Week:

Fabulous Fit

I love talking style. I love looking at fashion. My phone background changes about every three days and is always a look I liked from an actor or K-pop idol. I still dress in comfy basics more often than not. But this week, the look that caught my eye was this one right here:

My man Eve (Make Up With Mud) is the epitome of dressing how you feel and varying style up. I can't recommend the show, but I'll be watching it to the end solely for this character and his asymmetrical earrings. I fully intend on making a compilation of his looks by the end of my watch. Maybe by then I'll have learned how to properly make GIFs.

Fascinating Find

I go on a lot of deep dives. When a question pops into my brain, I tend to seek out the answer. I've learned a lot of interesting information over the years. Some things I never figure out. This week's fascinating find came from Secret Relationships.

I knew that this move here is referred to as being the black knight/black rose (or dark knight/dark rose). But I wasn't really sure "why" it was called black knight. My search didn't produce exactly what I was looking for other than the black knight/black rose gets a wish from the person they drink for. It's really a different type of drinking game, and you can be asked to do some very embarrassing things if someone drinks for you. It's not really a pure/selfless act in most cases. I mostly knew all that - though we don't see the "wish" aspect itself often in shows. I still found it interesting because...that means Sung-hyun owes Da-on a wish (or does he? Sung-hyun didn't ask him to drink it after all).

Fantastic Frame

I loved this shot in Secret Relationships this week. There's a light on the chessboard in the back highlighting Jae-min's playing games. There's Jae-min wearing pink with his pink plates and making a dinner that looks great just like he looks great to society. But the trash is peeking out from under the counter, because others are beginning to see him for what he is. We know something he doesn't. We are now up high observing him as we wonder what the next move will be.

Fun Fluorish

This category is my "miscellaneous" category. It could be about anything really. Just something that caught my attention. This week it's the name of the bar in P10Ls.

I know that this bar has a perfectly respectable name in Thai. Something along the lines of "village of food"? (my Thai is super weak; feel free to correct). But all I keep seeing is these college boys drinking in a bar that says "Bang On" which in English....yeah. It makes me chuckle every time I see it. I have the mind of a middle schooler at times. It's probably part of the reason I get along so well with my oldest son.

Favorite Fragment

This is the category for a bit of dialogue I particularly enjoyed. This could be dialogue that is serious, humorous, nerdy, etc. It just caught my attention for whatever reason.

I watch Flirt Milk for one reason - Scrappy Doo and his brat tamer (formerly called Swamp Thing). There is SO MUCH wrong with this show and it's definitely a background watch for me, but Scrappy Doo continues to bring me at least one smile (or fun fit) a week so I typically tune in at some point.

My Queue for the Coming Week:

These are the things that I KNOW I will be watching (unless disaster of some kind strikes).

Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo (Finale)

Secret Relationships (Ep 7-8)

Perfect 10 Liners (Ep 22)

Make Up With Mud (Ep 4)

Love for Love's Sake (Ep 1) (It seemed like this show was on everyone's list during the tag game.)

When Life Gives You Tangerines (Ep 1)

I'll also probably watch the ThamePo finale. I've delayed it long enough. Anything else is up to whim and fancy.

[calware]

would you ever share a list of your fave fics to reread ? Id love to hear your recommendations and faves

sure thing :) i'm only going to list works that have been going on for a while (or at least have gotten past the very beginning of the story) and that i've read all the way through. i'm also not going to list any of the super iconic fics i like because this list is already pretty long. these are all based on stuff that i personally find more interesting to read about, mostly focused on the human characters and not a lot of romance

i don't really know if these first two count but they're too good to not include:

Jade Route by spicyyeti

a post-epilogues comic centering around jade, this is my favorite homestuck fanwork. i especially love the artwork and the way it frames the story. it is reaaallllly hard to read it on a phone so make sure to read it on a computer or tablet

House of Dirk by imarriedacherub no rating - graphic depictions of violence - 13,570 words - 20 chapters (unfinished) A sitcom about completely normal and well-adjusted newlyweds Dirk and Caliborn attempting to make a good impression on their son, Dave, and his boyfriend, Karkat.

another comic, this one hosted on both ao3 and mspfa (though the ao3 version has more pages). i like how ridiculous it is. will probably never be finished, sadly

moving on to the actual fics:

Reallocated by breezefulskies mature - chose not to use archive warnings - 324,756 words - 65 chapters (unfinished) Hal finds himself stranded aboard a certain meteor, impact-bound for Houston, Texas circa 1995. And everything spirals out from there. Because sometimes, when a system seems to be just short of defunct, all that is required is to take a step back and reevaluate the materials at hand and redistribute your available resources. And so, with birth comes a countdown on a cycle that begins as it ends: In the red.

hal is mysteriously sent to earth via unknown means and finds himself raising a baby as best as he can, which, given that he's glasses, is not easy. this is my favorite homestuck fic, not just because it's about hal, but also because i love the focus on family dynamics and the plot as it unfolds. begging everyone to read this, i can't say what happens exactly without spoiling things, it's just really really good. at the moment, it updates once a month

Ersatz Abyss by katreal mature - no archive warnings apply - 120,092 words - 39 chapters (unfinished) You look into the mirror to find your own face looking back at you. You laugh. And then you cry. Last, you try and figure out how you got to this moment. The Auto-Responder had long since resigned himself to an artificial existence, his only dwindling hope for escape hinging on a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. Then one day he wakes up, Dirk nowhere to be found. What's the point in getting what you want, if you can't show off a little?

another great hal fic. i managed to get my roommate (who has not read homestuck) to read this and they really enjoyed it, so i'm sure you all won't have any problems liking this one either. there are a lot of fics out there of hal getting a body, but this one is very different in that it's not the happy ending that you might first think it is. this fic perfects the feeling of everything snowballing into a bigger and bigger problem until it all falls apart

Falling for the First Time by nobrandhero teen - no warnings apply - 63,818 words - 11/17 chapters The game is over, Alpha Earth resets to 2009, and Dirk's bro doesn't live up to expectations. The movie director who appears so chill and stoic in interviews is actually a talkative, needy dweeb like his teenage counterpart. It's not a bad thing, as far as Dirk's concerned.

for whatever reason, i'm a sucker for fics where the characters somehow end up on earth again post-game, and out of all the fics that follow that concept this one is my favorite. sadly, this one barely touches on jane and jake, but it's pretty interesting to read about what dirk and roxy are getting up to with their guardians (and the earth) restored to their previous conditions

The Haunted Harley House by hemoanarchists teen - chose not to use archive warnings - 78,462 words - 23 chapters (finished) There is an old house you built a long long time ago, alongside someone very close to you. Now as you don a new name, slipping back into society to care for a descendant, to whom tragedy has left you as her only family left, you take her to the house, the house that bears your family name. You really shouldn't have been surprised when he came to join you. It is his house too, after all.

carlah, a young girl who lives on earth c, has just been taken in by her uncle "jacob harley" after her mother's death. as time goes on, she slowly learns more about the true nature of her new guardians and the house they all live in. normally i'm not that interested in OCs but i love how intriguing carlah is as an outsider of the story. it's really easy to get invested in her as she uncovers a mystery we all know from the beginning and another that we have to learn along with her. shoutout to dysfunctional family dynamics

actually, while i'm at it, i'm going to recommend a bunch of other stuff he's written:

Atlantis Bound teen - chose not to use archive warnings - 33,263 words - 8 chapters (unfinished) Dirk tracks down an old friend

prequel to the haunted harley house but can also be read after (or separately). i really like the dynamic between dirk and vriska here, and i also love the way vriska's repeated reincarnation is utilized. vriska's journey through the newest iteration of her life while dirk watches over her is soooo captivating, especially when snippets of her previous lives are sprinkled in throughout. do you guys love cycles? personally i love cycles

Cherubian mature - chose not to use archive warnings - 54,011 words - 29 chapters (unfinished) The 5000 year time skip never happened, at the dawn of time the gods desperately try to guide the planet into a better future. But with tensions rising it feels like one bad day could bring everything crumbling down.

all of dante's earth-c god fics as a whole changed my brain chemistry and this acts as the beginning (and catalyst) of that overarching story. a lot happens in a very short amount of time

Transitional teen - no warnings apply - 1,860 words - oneshot a simple question what changed when you went godtier?

super simple but also an interesting exploration of the headcanon that players' bodies change when they go godtier. the twist is that each "change" is unique to each character and relates to their Self in some way

Monster under the bed teen - chose not to use archive warnings - 2,573 words - oneshot Skeletons in the Closet mature - chose not to use archive warnings - 2,910 words - oneshot Small Talk teen - no warnings apply - 8,944 words - 6 chapters (unfinished)

putting all three of these together because i believe(?) they're all part of the same narrative

[jellazticious]

Do you have any recommendations for art references and or video's that might help me improve as an artist? Your art style is really inspiring to me and I'd love to get better at drawing because I haven't been on that grind recently of doing so!!!

Honestly your best bet is learning the RULES of art instead of the process, at least that's how I did it

I find it easier to NOT do the things that make it wrong than to learn ALL the things that make it good

There's like a million different ways to make art appealing but a lot of them typically avoid the same mistakes. It also makes the learning process customizable for you

To anyone else other than Gongus, I wanna say first that this post is heavily catered to cartoonier art styles but the links are for general art. I will also be laying down a lot of the things I learned from college (multimedia arts course)

Alright, first of all try to dabble up on some character design rules, here's a video that teaches it and a channel that has a series with critiquing people's portfolios

(she's not really insulting the portfolios btw, the thumbnails are just click baity)

Then also learn about the 12 animation principles because it can still be applied to non animation art like comics and stuff

Get yourself some line of action crammed in there. Regardless of art style, a lot of people struggle with stiffness, line of action is the counter attack to it

Optionally, if you're gonna learn line of action then you're gonna be doing gesture drawings to practice it. I suggest going to @adorkastock for reference images

Next up, color also have rules so here's the basics

I only linked that so you can smoothly transition here wjsndndm

But YEAH color fuckery is an underrated art cheat, you can get away with art that looks good without shading if you know how to toy with the colors right

Trouble making thumbnails?

Photography as an art form has got your back. Composition techniques can be applied to the drawing sort of art

Here are my personal tips now skskksks

1. Use your inspirations as reference. I got a sense of solidity when I saw the reference sheets for Wander Over Yonder and copying stylistic aspects from DST, TF2 comics, Clone High, and Pizza Tower.

SPEAKING OF TF2, I also wanna throw in this video about it's character design and other visual aspects (you'd only wanna watch the first half, the rest talks about the characters writingwise)

2. Another thing I do with references to make it easier is draw it at least two times. First time to trace it (directly or eyeballing it. You can also do with skeleton sketch or not but preferably give it a skeleton), then the second or third or fourth is to make it slowly morph into your style.

This will give you a sense of solidity, teaching your hand the traits that should be kept or exaggerated

3. If it looks like ass or you don't like it then that's okay. You DON'T have to post EVERYTHING you make. Sometimes you will feel like you draw a character you've always drawn wonky and that's because you just need to do warm up doodles.

I have SO MUCH sketches that I haven't posted and will never post because they're warm ups. Y'all think Pepperman is hard to draw? Y'all think I draw him good? I have good news for you, I fumble his face more often than not AND THATS OKAY

4. ANOTHER niche technique is to learn the keyboard shortcuts and other functions of your art program. Do not underestimate how much time that can spare you. It's gonna be tricky to find or get used to but it's gonna be so worth it

I learned you can alt+G on Krita one day and it makes a folder for your layers, total game changer. I can move layers at once instead of the old one by one with precision

5. Final note is to do the opposite of everything Vivsiepop does, it does not matter if you like her shows or not because time and time again critiques of her art and writing style breaks SO MANY RULES without UNDERSTANDING why they exist in the first place.

Art is like architecture, you need to know how to make a basic house before going straight for the fucking manor from Hello Neighbor 💥 or else you're never gonna figure out why the living room collapses everytime you flush the toilet

Anyway eeee, that's about everything I can teach, hope these help and if there's anything else to ask or add on, please do so!

[awingedllama]

Hi Anna, I know you mentioned a while ago that you had made your own lighting mod so I was wondering if you have a tutorial for how to go about that?

there used to be a great in-depth tutorial for this by lunar-nelfean (which is how i learned to do it, so all credit for the discovery to them), but since they've deactivated their blog i'll make a quick one. for posterity. and google results

Sims 4 Edit World Lighting Tutorial

Navigate to Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 4. If you want to change the lighting for an expansion pack world, go to the Delta folder and choose an EP folder. If you want to change the Base Game lighting, go to Data\Shared\Worlds\Areas. BGEngagement 0-3 is Newcrest, all worlds with a GD prefix are Willow Creek and SO prefix is Oasis Springs.

Copy the .world files you want to edit, as you can't save files in your game folder. I recommend saving a backup of the original EA ones too, just in case you don't like your edits and want a clean slate, or want to go back to EA lighting without having to repair your game.

2. Open "World Color Timeline" and click Edit Items.

3. From there, you're off to the races. Change any values you like. The names are mostly are self-explanatory as to what they change. Sometimes you notice a huge difference on changing values, and other times you might not. Some effects (like bloom) are only visible when you have Post Processing Effects on in your settings. You just have to experiment!

It's a bit difficult to visualize what each one of those colors is going to look like in game, so back when I was still planning to make a lighting mod, I spent way too much time making a sheet to help visualize what each color looks like at each time of day for certain values. The top colors are EA's original for San Myshuno, and the bottom is basically a recolor I made by just changing the hue/saturation (I used the eyedropper in Photoshop to get the RGB and changed the values in S4S to match). Hopefully this can help you get a rough idea of what decimal number corresponds to what time of day.

4. Each 'World Timeline Color' represents a season, hence the 4 entries in the box. When you're done editing, if you want the same values for each season, delete the bottom 3 World Timeline Color entries, then copy your edited one 3 times. Change the PointofInterestID. Make sure you have 00000000, 00010000, 00020000 and 00030000. When you're ready, save!

5. To quickly copy your custom lighting to the other neighborhood files for the world, batch export the World Timeline Color file.

Open another neighborhood, click on World Timeline Color and click Import.

6. Save, repeat for the rest of the neighborhood files, and you're done! Drag your edited files into your Sims 4 game folder, replace the existing ones, and go in game to see your changes :D

i hope this was easy to follow. if you have any questions I'll do my best to answer them, just shoot me a message!

[allthingslinguistic]

Language Guinea Pig Diaries #2: Highlights & Troubleshooting

I'm trying to improve my skills at four languages in preparation for summer travel: Italian, Dutch, Finnish, and Estonian.

Italian and Dutch I've studied a bit a while ago and I'm now trying to "activate" so I can hopefully have a conversation or two in them, while Finnish and Estonian I'm trying to pick up some rudimentary bits in. Here's the previous post in this series describing these goals and strategies in more detail.

Highlights

I've progressed from my menu of only gelato-making videos in Italian to other recipes in general, and in particular to lots of cooking videos from this popular Italian home cooking channel which was in the recommended videos after another one I watched. Maybe I'll branch out again at some point to other speakers, but for now it's nice to be able to stumble into more videos without having to think up new keywords to search. Also, I might need to make some of these recipes now...

The Dutch podcast listening is going well (though see weird issue below) and I especially like that the podcast I chose because it's the only podcast I knew in Dutch contains a mix of adult-to-adult and adult-and-child speech, which is a fun way to mix it up.

In Estonian, so far I have learned one (1) highly useful word, "tere", which this video tells me is an all-purpose neutral greeting (neutral with respect to both formality and time of day). Ooh, I've just realized while writing this post that it's probably cognate to Finnish "terve", a greeting I learned from Duolingo! (Yes, I just looked this up, seems like they both mean something to do with health.) So I've already learned one neat thing!

I'm also recognizing a few Estonian cognates from the Finnish Duolingo lessons, especially the verb "on" (which means "is"). I'm not recognizing many other words though, and I'm wondering how much of that is differing vocab and how much of that is not having learned many common words in Finnish yet (I've been especially chafing at how few verbs we've learned yet, it would be really useful to have a word like "I want" even if it's unanalyzed because the grammar is more complicated than they want to introduce early).

Youtube's algorithm has, after about a week, adjusted to the fact that I now want to watch videos entirely in Italian, and started recommending further Italian videos on my home feed (it was already doing so at the end of previous Italian videos). Tiktok's algorithm, so far, has not done this yet, and is still recommending me stuff in English, despite me aggressively liking basically all of the Estonian videos I watch and nothing else.

Troubleshooting

I've noticed that it's been easier to remember to do the podcast listening in Dutch and the youtube videos in Italian because I already have habits related to opening those apps, whereas I don't have habits around using tiktok so I kept forgetting to open it and look at some Estonian videos. But a couple days ago I moved the tiktok app on my phone to a more visible location, and now it's getting easier to remember.

Something else very weird that I noticed about listening is that when I play the tracks on my phone fairly loudly, it's relatively easy to focus on trying to listen to them, sometimes while playing a simple visual game on my phone for something to fiddle with (I've already noticed that unfamiliar languages need to be played louder than familiar ones). But when I beam the podcast over to my speaker at a distance, suddenly I very quickly start tuning out the unfamiliar language and opening up apps that involve reading and completely ignoring it. I have no problems listening to podcasts on speakers in English; in fact, it's my preferred method when I'm at home, but for some reason this causes my brain to reclassify Dutch as background noise to be ignored, even if it's the same loudness as it would be when it's played right near me. Super weird, has anyone else ever noticed anything like this?

Previously in Language Guinea Pig Diaries:

Summer 2024 travel plans and Language Guinea Pig Diaries

[modmamono]

Getting people into Puyo Puyo. A lesson in etiquette.

[Edit: The video adaptation with updated script:

]

(Some tips on how to get people into Puyo Puyo and where to get them to start.)

Introduction.

First and foremost. My Tumblr post here is (perhaps counter-productively) for people who may want to get their friends and newbies into Puyo Puyo and not for said friends and newbies themselves. (Though you’ll no doubt get something out of this too.)

I just wanna instill some etiquette into people. Because way too often in Discord servers I see a group of people shout at a newbie to play their favorite Puyo Puyo game instead of trying to actually considering what the best Puyo game to get started with is for that newbie.

My goal is to try and help you get people into this series you like.

This is by no means a guaranteed method and should not be seen as such.

What’s Puyo Puyo’s appeal?

Generally speaking these are the one people cite when I ask them:

The characters.

The Artstyle.

Stories/Lore.

A puzzle game with personality. Similar to those of fighting games.

It's funny and charming.

Simple-to-learn, hard-to-master gameplay.

Keep these in mind.

Do you know the person?

This is very important.

- If it’s a friend that shows interest in the colorful cast and the wacky words they shout  as the jellies disappear on screen in a pleasing rhythm, then don’t be shy encouraging them to try a Puyo Puyo game out.

Not all friends have everything in common. But if you’re friends and know enough about each other, that alone should do a lot of heavy lifting.

- If it’s a stranger or someone online you barely know then its best to play it safe.

You can ask a few questions what they look for in a game and maybe consult the bottom of this blogpost what game to recommend to them.

- A tip for both: If they show no interest, then just accept it might not be their thing. It’s disheartening, not getting someone into the thing you love, but that’s just life sometimes. Doesn’t mean you have failed, it just means you’ve been pitching to the wrong people.

Dos & Don’ts.

- This is a series where you come for the story/gameplay and stay for the gameplay/story.

You can sell the game on both as well. But if the person is inclined toward one over the other then sell them on story, gameplay, or even the aestatics or the characters and chances are they’ll grow attached to all the other things. No need to rush things.

-  Reign in your passion a little.

I’m not saying to not be passionate. But it’s possible you can turn people off to Puyo Puyo because you never shut up about it and keep trying to sell it to them.

This goes for anything really. Sometimes people just get sick of hearing a thing, and instead of checking it out, they’ll disassociate and distance themselves from it.

- Don’t oversell how tough the gameplay is.

Unless the newbie like to be challenged don’t tell them Puyo is hard. That can be discouraging.

You won’t believe how many people I see trying to get someone into Puyo Puyo and do this. You want them to get them into this series, right?

Most Puyo Puyo games have difficulty settings in the options menu anyway. Tell them there’s no shame to adjust it to their liking and switch it to another setting when ready.

- Be supportive and encouraging.

If they struggle with the game. Be kind and offer them some advice. Teach them some basic stuff to get through if needed.

Beating WakuWaku is already a huge accomplishment, don’t make that victory invalidated by saying it doesn’t count because they didn’t do HaraHara if you know what I mean.

There’s no shame in lowering the difficulty. They’ll get better eventually.

- Don’t force them advanced tactics right away or funnel them into competitive.

Let. Them. Have. Fun. First.

Don’t breathe down a newbie’s neck for not using GTR or whatever else stacking method. Let them learn and experience the game however they want to. And if they wanna ask for help, then provide that. Try not to preemptively answer EVERYTHING if they didn’t even ask in the first place.

When they’re ready for GTR, competitive, and the like, then they are ready. But they gotta make that call on their own.

- When you play multi-player with your newbie friend(s) try not to do this:

You wanna invite them into the series, right? Why turn them off like that? You don’t wanna chance and encourage them to try again.  Losing to a player is way more demoralizing then losing to the game’s AI will ever be, they’re just two different things.

But if you do play with your less experienced friends the games have handicaps. If you’re good at the game put your board on Spicy, and let your friend choose whatever they want.

- Soooo, uh, about the lore...

Generally speaking, don’t entice a newbie in with that unless they’re a lore nut (and even then I have my reservations).

I know most Puyo fans love that Puyo Puyo has lore and that’s a big appeal to the series, but hear me out:

I think that’s a terrible way to entice a newbie. It’s fun lore for sure, and ideally, they get into it eventually. But have you ever thought about how much lore there actually is per game?

Puyo 1, Tsu, and Sun don’t have much of anything.

Puyo~n has Doppel and her intrigue and amazing vibe. But when you peel off the layer there is nothing but fanon.

Box and Minna have nothing much of note.

Fever 1 is a new world but otherwise is just another Puyo 1, Tsu, and Sun.

Fever 2 and 15th Anni are actually the exception to the rule. And I will go into why later.

And the rest while they do provide lore. It’s all contained within a single game for the most part.

Most of the interesting stuff are from Novels, Drama CDs, old dungeon crawling games. Which is cool and all. But, for now, you’re only just pitching the game(s) to the newbie. That’s quite a bit away.

I just don’t think it’s wise to hype up the lore when they’re barely ever gonna see any of it. I’ve been around too. A lot of the lore goes over a lot of people’s heads.

That and I think it’s just more rewarding to let newbies piece things together themselves. It releases a really nice feeling in the brain that SEGA’s run actually has a solid continuity.

I hope I’ve made my case? This is probably my most controversial stance here. But I think it’s for the best. Puyo Puyo is a series with lore, but it’s not a lore focused series. (I feel the same about Kirby.)

Entice newbies with surface level things first. Like the funny characters or the surface level stories. They’ll get to the deeper stuff eventually when they’re hooked. Trust me.

Unless you know they’re the type of person that likes lore for lore’s sake. But in that case do please let them know most games aren’t upfront about it and they have to put in the effort to dig. And digging for the obscure can be fun.

- Don’t push your favorite Puyo Puyo games onto a newbie without a good reason.

Sometimes your favorite game isn’t the best to start with. And while I believe you could give a newbie any game and if it clicks BOOM they’re a Puyo fan now. I do believe some games are better introductions to get someone into the games.

I’ll get into what I believe are the best options later on in this post.

- Don’t overload them on things to keep in mind.

Give them no more then 2 things to keep in mind. Things like “PPT1 will have a nasty difficulty spike, so be careful” and “I wonder what your thoughts are on a certain moment”.

If you give someone too many things to keep in mind they might get distracted from the game to remember everything you’ve told them.

And I believe that covers it all.

Which games should you recommend to newbies?

I’ll give you a bunch of options. But I’ll let you know which ones I think are the best for a newbie along with my reasoning.

Best:

Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 & 2

No contest. These are just the best ones to start off with. Either one of these will do.

You may disagree for whatever reason, but the fact it’s a crossover with Tetris is its biggest point in its favor. If they don’t like Puyo Puyo they will have Tetris as a safety net. By default that’s the best.

That and it’s been proven that it has been a surprisingly good entry. Over half of the current fanbase started of with PPT1. Like that guy who makes those Puyo Puyo in a Nutshell videos. You know, that guy.

Also you can buy PPT2 on all current consoles, most other games are only accessible through emulation if you want them in English. That’s important because some people are just against emulation or just plain don’t know how to emulate things.

And if they like either of these games maybe they’re willing to try emulation to play more Puyo Puyo.

Also who knows, if they use the Tetris as a safety net maybe they’ll bounce back and later enjoy Puyo Puyo after all.

Good options:

Puyo Puyo Tsu/Puyo Puyo 2 (Most versions)

Puyo Puyo Tsu introduced the standard ruleset most other rules are based off. And that’s the ONLY rule it has. Which I think works to its benefit for a newbie.

While the game lacks much in the way character interactions (maybe recommend them the Super Famicom translation patch which does have those) it does have a goal reaching the top of the tower and beating Satan.

I think the tower is an excellent motivator to get good at the game. If they can beat Satan at the top I’d say they’re ready for any Puyo Puyo game to come.

My preferred version is the Super Famicom version called “Super Puyo Puyo Tsu” but I don’t think you can’t really go wrong with any version besides the Neo Geo Pocket Color one.

For the emulator averse they can buy the game on SEGA 3D Classics Collection on 3DS or the SEGA AGES version on Nintendo Switch.

Super Puyo Puyo Tsu is also available on Nintendo Switch Online’s SNES app. So if you have the basic package, you already have that game at your disposal.

All versions except the NGPC one are in Japanese, but I don’t think that’s much of a hindrance with this game specifically. Any version without the cutscenes is sorta alingual. Sure there’s Japanese text in the game, but of all the games, I think you can enjoy this one the most without having to understand it.

Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary (DS) (Precise Museum patch)

(Note, a Wii patch with a revised script is on its way.)

I think this game is a good introduction to the current day cast and has a ton of modes. So if basic rules don’t do it a newbie may find a mode that slowly eases them into more basic rules.

If you wanna 100% the game you gotta win 200 story mode matches. That’s a lot of Puyo, and that’s plenty of time to learn.

Do refrain from telling newbies that though. 200 is big number. Playing 200 without realizing it is more palatable then telling them you have to do 200 to beat the game. One’s fun, the other sounds like a chore.

Direct their focus on the cast, there’s a lot to chew on this game.

I would recommend, but...:

Puyo Puyo Fever 2 & Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary

These are the actual lore games. These games practically give you lore as a reward at every turn. These two games are the exceptions to my rule that you shouldn’t sell the games with lore to a newbie. And soaking all that lore in is a great motivator to play these games.

But we have no patches yet beside some out-of-date ones from Puyo Nexus. Which is the main problem (for Fever 2 especially).

Also, while these two games are a bit holy grail, their praises are rightfully sung. I’m a bit apprehensive calling them great entry points.

Fever 2 relies on the Fever rule. Which not everyone’s a fan of. I’ve been around and not everyone enjoys that rule (and anecdotally it overstimulates me). The Fever Rule has a ton of rules to it. But a lot of people were introduced to Fever 1 and became life-long fans so I don’t know, take my claim with a grain of salt. I’ve been told it’s an easier game then Fever 1 at least. Fever 1 does not play nice.

And 15th’s story mode relies on a roulette. Which doesn’t have to be a negative, but it is a game with a with a ton of gimmick rules. And while 20th is that too it gives you more freedom in that regard, which I think might be more beneficial to a newbie.

But any of the games above here are good places to start. One dishonorable mention to recommend to a newbie:

Puyo Puyo Champions

I’ve historically been nice to this game. But I don’t recommend it to a newbie.

It’s just Puyo 2 and Fever Rules at an admittingly cheap price. Not much to it.

You could argue that I gave Puyo Puyo Tsu slack in that regard. But my counter argument would always be: “What is the goal of Champions?”

This game is so competitive focused it hurts. No charming animations, the characters count instead of escalating their spells. Only good single-player content is hidden behind too many boring tutorials, which is watered down from the Nazo Puyo games.

Puyo Puyo Tsu you scale a tower and get an ending. Reaching the top and beating Satan is the goal.

Champions has nothing to offer besides online rankings. And as I’ve said before, don’t funnel a newbie into being competitive. They’ll do it when they’re ready. Let them enjoy the jelly game on their own pace first. Let them enjoy the characters.

And that’s all I wanted to say.

[no-light-left-on]

So the Death of the Outsider lacks a chaos system and it makes perfect sense

(I recommend reading my other post on how chaos works in the DH universe first but it is not mandatory.)

The point of the chaos system is, at its core, a reflection of how a world already at its tipping point reacts to the player's actions: Dunwall ridden by the plague and oppressed by the Lord Regent’s rule, Karnaca bloodfly-bitten and slowly torn to shreds by the Duke with people scared after the recent coup.

Billie, however, simply exists as a person once the world has been tipped towards the better, Emily having reclaimed her throne and Karnaca slowly but surely steering towards better times. Her quest is not motivated by politics or by a falling empire. It is entirely personal to her, Daud, and the Outsider.

Billie is an ex-assassin. She puts the world on a tipping point, but she does not decide whether the world rights itself or comes crashing over the edge. She takes jobs from the black market, sometimes killing people for money, because that is all it is to her - a job. And while she may kill innocent people while at it, there is no more terror it can bring atop the cruel rule of the Duke and people dying in the mines. In the end, she will disappear into the shadows. It is just another mugging, another unfortunate murder of a father coming home in the evening. Nothing more, nothing less. No responsibility to take over it after.

She is dedicated to her quest, and that quest is not even hers - it is Daud's, and she is just going along with it out of maybe guilt, maybe old times' sake. She is not even that interested in killing the Outsider herself, has very little stakes in it, and decides to go through with it because it's what Daud wanted. There is no world that can react to her because she is the world that is reacting, in a sense, to Daud's wishes and the Outsider's subtle interventions.

Compared to, say, DH2 which takes place months before the events of DotO, Billie has very little to lose, no place to reclaim, no world to save. The results of her actions, no matter what they might be, won't change how the world is at the end of the game. Emily can choose whether a brilliant doctor lives so she can save lives, she decides whether the Howlers or the Overseers take over Batista, dictates who rules and with how much power, with what level of cruelty. Billie is killing a god, no matter what it takes, and there is little need for consideration of how this result is achieved.

The game does not even have targets, save for one, the Outsider himself. All the missions are about gathering intel and preparing for the job. The structure of the whole game is very different to serve the purpose of the plot and honestly it's a clever choice so that the focus remains on the one thing only - killing the Outsider.

One thing I did not mention in relation to chaos in my other post is that the chaos also influences the Outsider and his speeches at the shrines. Which, fair enough, it is just one more change in dialogue among many. But in the case of DotO, he is directly involved. He is not an observer anymore. He has real reason to be emotionally invested in what is happening and what Billie is doing. He needs to bait her into murder, or change her mind to spare him and free him from his eternal imprisonment. There can't be a change from interest to cynicism as Billie kills more people to get to him, because in the end, he is the target. He wants out of the Void by any means necessary, which means he has to be fully invested at all times. He has no reason to suddenly go soft and make subtle comments. He comes across as so much more malicious in this game, maiming Billie and being so incredibly cruel when he tells her that Daud has passed while she was away. All this because he can't risk her changing her mind, thinking to herself, “Hey, maybe he sucks but he’s not That Bad” and then turning on her heel to leave. He is trying to influence Billie instead, which he didn’t do with his Marked (unless you count his mentions of multiple possible outcomes as influencing, or him telling Daud about Delilah).

So no, the world won't change for you, the player. It won't change because you chose not to kill anyone, not even the contract targets, because if you don't do the dirty work, someone else will. And the Outsider cannot change either, because Billie is not changing the fate of an empire. She is changing the fate of Him, personally, and he cannot afford to let her choose the only bad choice - indifference. So there is no point in a chaos at all.

No matter what Billie does in the end, the outcome will be the same - the Void will change. sShe will change the universe as they know it, but no matter how she goes about it, the change will come. She is not faced with a question of what she wants the world to be. She was guided there by others, expected to do one thing - kill a god. The world has set her up, and now she has to react.

And so she comes to the Void and is met with the only choice that will matter: Is she going to show mercy, or remain the same?

[starlitprism]

GMing and Cooperation

So you're probably thinking "oh like a tabletop game. Cooperating. Telling a story together" and you're right! Sorta. We're getting more specific than that. I am going to start by posing a question. When does character creation end? Does it ever? Does it have to? Should it?

I don't know about most people but I am one of the people in my friend's group who is almost always the GM of her group. I like GMing. I love telling a story. I also sometimes want to let loose and not have to craft something from the ether for several others... but not completely.

See, I have a GM's love of creation and that means I have a really hard time, well, not creating. So I talk with my GM (another forever GM) and go over thing after thing after thing proposing ideas, giving my thoughts, sharing my character's current state of mind, and possible ways to take the character in the future. We're in near constant dialogue at least insofar as in between each session I bring up the character at least once or twice.

And some of you might ask why? Don't I want mystery? Don't I want to be surprised? YES. I live for it actually. Curiosity is one of my primary motivators as a player. Few things will invest me more than a mystery to delve into (the other way being excessive emotional and consensual stabbings of myself during the game in the form of shit happening to or around my character). And this need not get rid of ALL mystery! The other reason being I literally told my GM to "make me bleed" and then point out the various ways she could emotionally stab my character and myself. It's very helpful

Not all GMs want to talk this much I imagine. To have a player so involved but I want to advocate for it anyway. It's a cooperation between the player and the GM to craft a story. Maybe you don't know the ending but sometimes it's ok to know a few story beats. It removes some of the pressure from the game master or whatever your term is and instead, you give something to them. A tool. An outline. Jolly cooperation at its best.

Hell, most recently my character started planning for a party for example (see here: https://www.tumblr.com/starlitprism/757035153048715264/me-to-my-gm-ok-my-character-is-prepping-for?source=share )

Now I could have left this stuff up to the GM but I didn't. I came back with a party playlist, party games (mechanics included), and a guest list. I largely just built it all for her. Because my character was making it. Why shouldn't it have my touch all over the damn thing? PLUS it let said GM focus on my oncoming possible demise (and the demise of the multiverse. Not my fault). I admit this blog post is less an argument for this as much as examples of it working but I wanted to write it anyway as a sort of recommendation to try it. To talk to whoever is running your game and ask them "do you want to work together?" It will make it easier on them and will let you have more say assuming it is agreed upon.

A tabletop game is not somewhere where one person runs the show and the rest are there to passively watch. No. It's collaborative storytelling. So why not collaborate? And who knows, maybe you'll bottle some lightning together

And no I don't expect this to be entirely new. I just want to share something that has brought me SO much joy for so long.

[pleucas]

hello! may i ask what device are you using to draw? You mentioned using Procreate, so i think it's an iPad, but i was wondering what model it is and if you'd recommend it for painting

hey there!

thanks for sending in an ask. i’m pretty sure i have the iPad Pro 2020, 12.9in. i use a gen 2 apple pencil with it :)

and abt digital painting etc…

i’d def recommend it for digital painting! since it’s an old model you’d prob be able to get a discount for it, or find a used one in good condition 👍👍 the screen size is sometimes excessive for me, i think the 11in model or anything smaller would work fine. only concern there would be functionality and memory, bc digital painting is very storage taxing

i’ve been using this guy for four years and she’s holding up very well. i’ve noticed that the battery is less effective (draining quicker, charging slower, etc) but it hasn’t severely inebriated my painting practice

i used to have a paper feel screen protector for it, but for the past year i’ve taken it off. i think there was just an adjustment period from traditional to digital and i hated the slippery screen, but i noticed it wore down my pen nib really quickly lol. now i use a nib with a metal tip (kinda looks like a mechanical pencil tip) and the smoothness doesn’t bother me as much. just took some time getting used to

smth abt digital painting on procreate/ipad that i both hate and love is the color display. apple color display is super good, almost too good… laptop/phone screens don’t match up and i find myself editing things for posts or printing lol. important to note, apple specifically functions in their own RGB scale, so exporting files from procreate preserves that color profile. it’s not compatible with printing, sharing, or anything LOL so be careful to convert things to sRGB (learned this the very hard way…)

i do hate procreate sometimes because their DPI is just. SOOOO low. if you transform or rotate anything then it pixelates 😭 i enabled all the hacks and nothing helped. nowadays i set up my canvas to be 3k+ pixels on at least one axis and 600dpi, it’s marginally better but i def do adjust my process to avoid any transformations 😞 maybe its just particularly bad for my style bc i like my details n Things all over the place but yeaaa prolly the biggest pitfall for ipad/procreate

another note (not rlly digital art related), i pretty much just use my ipad for digital painting, gaming sometimes (i had a crazy genshin/hsr phase), note taking on pdfs whtv. it prolly averages to ~2.5 hours per day, which isn’t a lot. so idk if you plan to use an ipad more intensively (ik some pals who deck out their ipad and basically use it as a laptop), then aforementioned problems might be a much larger issue

this got suuuuper long i apologize but all in all, ipad is def good for digital painting! it’s accessible, customizable, transportable (even with my massive 13in screen LOOOOL), and worth :) but at the end of the day, it’s a tool and its utility is what you make of it. hope i could help!