#more individual choice to choose seperate things instead of putting them together and going 'this is just what you get' or etc.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Found a very cool pastel cat sweater at the bins but I have literally nothing that matches it well, so I always struggle to make outfits with it lol

[troped-fanfic-challenge]

*This event has ended! Click the links in the Timeline to see individual rounds, prompts, fics, voting, and results!*

Hey, Tropesters! It’s time for another TROPED event, but this time the prompts will be in the form of MOODBOARDS! Made by yours truly, the moodboards function as the inspiration for the fics written for this event! We've got four exciting themes picked out, and the boards are already looking great, so we hope you're excited! This event will be a little different from the others that we have put on, so keep reading for more info!

How It Works:

Firstly, this is our first ever TROPED Multi-Fandom event, so share this around! We would love to get fics from fandoms we've never had for TROPED before! All Fandoms are welcome and there is in no minimum participation required for this event!Because this is a Multi-Fandom event, the voting process and the overall event structure will be a little different!

No Sign-Ups Required! We will release the prompts right here on the TROPED tumblr and you will submit your fics to the AO3 Collection! The Writing Periods will be on a rolling basis, with a moodboard dropping every ten (10) days, but fear not! If you are inspired for a round later in the event, you can still submit a fic to be included in Voting! We will simply drop the next board, but nothing will officially close or end until the end of the full Writing Period, on August 25th! Fics will be accepted into the official collection for the entirety of the event! **You will write four or more (4+) separate fanfics inspired by each round, but you do not have to participate in each and every round.**

Moodboard Prompts! As we said, the prompts for this event will be in the form of MOODBOARDS!!! Because photos are open to such a wide range of interpretations, and inspiration from a moodboard can come in all shapes and sizes, this event is much less strict in terms of 'sticking to the prompt'! We will be releasing the moodboards with a little blurb about what it is we envisioned when putting them together, but if inspiration strikes and takes you in another direction, go for it! Pretty much anything goes, as long as it fits with our standard rules! As a general rule, we'd like you to take each of the nine (9) photos and find a way to include that imagery in your fic in some way. Try to find a way to incorporate the concepts and inspirations you get from each photo into your story! Similar to the tropes used in our traditional TROPED format, the photos in the moodboards should matter to your story. You should try to have the photos not be inconsequential moments within your fic, but rather make the moments in the moodboard plot relevant!

All Pairings Allowed! TROPED is always a neutral space for any and all ships! We encourage [and sometimes require ;)] rare pairs, platonic pairings, and other out of the box dynamics within our fics! TROPED is, by design, a positive fandom space for everyone, and focusing on allowing and celebrating any and all pairings (that are allowed within the rules) is a big part of that! **Please feel free to write any pairing (within our rules) from the Fandom of your choosing. You do not have to write the same Fandom/Pairing for each round!**

**As a note, the photos in the moodboards are not definitive! A lot of stock photos are white, and straight, but we chose photos simply for the ✨vibes✨ of the photo, not the pairings themselves!! You can implement those scenes into your fics with any characters or combos, as long as it complies with our relationship rules!!**

This event will be Optionally Anonymous! Because the voting for this event is much more chill, and the writing period will be open for over a month, we will not require this event to be anonymous! However, if you would like to have your fic be anonymous, we will be sharing a small tutorial on how to make your fics anonymous and how to remove them from being anonymous sometime before the event starts, so keep your eyes peeled!

Voting! The voting for this event will be pretty simple! We will keep a list of all fics submitted for each event, and then at the end there will be a "best overall" poll for each round, along with some bonus polls! The voting will be based on the fics as a whole, and will include all fandoms together! If you do not want your fic included in the voting, you can let us know, or you can simply upload your fic to our non-anon collection instead! We will still share it along with the other fics and it will be included in all masterlists! We will provide a link to SurveyMonkey when voting begins.

For the OG Tropesters: As an added bonus for our long time The 100 fandom writers, we've cooked up an extra special little challenge for you! We will be including a special tenth (10th!!) photo, just for you! The 10th photo will be of a character of our choosing from The 100 (obviously) for you to include in your fic! We will be releasing the character we've chosen for each round when we drop the moodboard, so keep your eyes peeled!

Timeline:

Writing Period Dates: July 15th - August 25th!

Moodboard for R1 : July 15th at 12:00am

Moodboard for R2 : July 25th at 12:00am

Moodboard for R3 : August 4th at 12:00am

Moodboard for R4 : August 14th at 12:00am

End of Visual Writing Period: August 25th at 3:00am PST/6:00am EST [EXTENSION UNTIL SATURDAY, AUGUST 28TH AT 8:00 AM EST!]

Voting: August 28th at 12:00pm - August 30th at 11:59pm

Winners: August 31st!

*All times are in Eastern Standard Time (EST) unless otherwise specified!

Rules:

If you are a veteran to our TROPED Challenges, the rules below are mostly the same as before, but any newbies joining the fun should definitely take a look below!

This competition was created to get creative and put out different fics into the world, and to create a fun, positive fandom experience for everyone! In order to ensure that we achieve that goal of a positive experience, here are a few rules and guidelines that must be followed!The requirements for the fics entered into the competition will be:

Must include Characters from your specific chosen Fandom

Must try to fit the Theme of each round! While this event is a lot looser, each board will have a clear concept or theme for you to use in your fics!

Must try to use ALL of the pictures selected for the round. Each of the 9 photos are meant to be taken and turned into scenes, images, or themes within your story! This isn't hard and fast, but we encourage you to try to utilize the boards in a specific way, beyond just the general ✨vibes✨ of the board!

All fics must be 10,000 words or less! (We have allowed a 500 word buffer to allow for fics that are not quite finished at the 10k mark to get wrapped up!) There is no minimum word count.

All ratings G through M are welcome, but E Rated fics are not allowed. Please be aware that some fics may not be everyone’s thing! Write what you like, but the voting is public so just keep that in mind!

Multiple Entries Allowed. We love when authors are able to pump out multiple fics for a single prompt! If you would like them to be considered seperately for voting, please be sure they are standalone fics! If you end up writing multiple chapters or parts of one fic, let us know! We will only include one for voting but we will be sure to share all the parts!

Collaborations! We've had some people ask about collaborations, and we're all for it! If you and a friend would like to write a fic together, go for it! Just let us know who to credit when we share the fics on our masterlists and we will be sure to tag anyone involved!

You will be disqualified if you include:

Smut! Due to the chance that some fandoms might include a cast of all underage characters, we have decided to exclude smut. All ratings G-M are allowed!

Rape!

Underage! This means no High School AU with sex, no teacher/student if the student is underage, zero adult/under 18 romantic relationships!

Incest! Incest includes adopted siblings, foster siblings, parent/child, step siblings, biological siblings, or any familial relationship, blood related or not!

Negativity towards any character or ship! This includes any sort of abuse perpetrated by a character intending to paint them in a negative light, negative statements about a character intended purely to express your dislike of a character, or things of that nature. You MAY write characters as villains! Writing a character as a villain asks the audience to disagree with the characters motivations and choices, not to dislike the character on principle. The basis of this rule is that your fic should not be written as a way to simply express your dislike of a character.

Plagiarism! While the tropes we use in our challenges are common and communal, the stories and words you create must be your own! Fanfiction is about transformative work, and taking concepts from other writers is natural! Inspiration can come from lots of places, but rewriting someone else’s fic is unacceptable. *Following our own rules, we want to let you know that all photos used in the TROPED: VISUAL Moodboards are from Unsplash.com —a source for freely-usable images.*

This is meant to be a fun and positive experience for everyone. We reserve the right to disqualify anyone if we are reading their fic and we think it violates any of our rules!

Because this challenge is NOT completely anonymous, feel free to share your fics and post about them to your hearts content! If you wish to remain anonymous until after voting, you can, of course, wait and post about your fics then! The non-anon only applies to this event, though, so if you come back to write for us in the future be sure to keep those lips zipped!

Follow along here on Tumblr, the TROPED Twitter, the TROPED Instagram, or our Discord Server for more information on the event! We will release our prompts in these places and then everyone is free to start writing!!! We are super excited to see what you guys create!! 

If you have any questions about this event, fandoms or pairings, or any other concerns please send them to our Ask Box or DM a Mod (@dylanobrienisbatman or @thelittlefanpire)!

[bansept]

Sacrifice

SO, this is angst based on an episode from TVD, which I used to watch. I had in mind almost recreating an episode but then thought “nahhh” So at least I tried to innovate!

This is a one shot, so no updates after that because I love making people suffer, obviously.

Slight OOCness, because it’s a rather dark world.

TRIGGER WARNING : Major character death + mental issues that are camouflaged but not that much

----------------------------------------------------------

One does not decide their fate. You are born from your mother, grow and meet people, if fate is merciful, you meet the one you were created to love. You spend a lifetime with them, you learn how to love, how to care, how to live. You get to understand what it is like to choose for the first time. And, after a life worth of adventures, stories and feelings, you are put to rest.

Once upon a time Ichigo and Orihime believed in this reality. Believed that life could be harsh, but they would climb out of the pit of darkness to reach the sunlight, and enjoy it.

.

.

.

Like all days, it was sunny. In their minds, the vast grass filed in front of them was always illuminated, the light breeze always brought new and known scents to their noses, and they could feel whole again. They could feel the warmth of the Sun, the touch of the other on their hand. The whisper of the wind caressing their ears.

In their inner world, all was alright. All was safe and loving.

The exterior world was corrupted by uncaring people. It was dark and messy and cruel, nothing good could ever come out of it.

Especially people.

Their families had left, stolen away by the frightening death that loomed over each human being. From the father, whose childish behavior always pushed Ichigo out of his skin to the sisters and the brother that loved their sibling in the purest way possible. The sisters looked out for their brother, asking for his protection and his support. The brother watched over his sister, calming her when the world was latching onto her, pulling her out of the black waters of her mind.

But now, all this happiness they could vaguely remember had been taken away. Vanished, disappeared in thin air. Where did they go? Where were they all now? In the sky or in the dirt?

There were no such things as an answer.

“Let’s get going, Orihime.”

The rough voice brought another wide smile on her face. She felt his hand hold hers tenderly, and nodding her head, Orihime followed him docily, letting him lead the way, like he always did.

The world was upside down : debris of buildings here and there, some gigantic from a building or a skyscraper, others small enough to step on. Blocks of stones and piles of wood and iron littered the floor, waiting for more scavengers to dig in them, try to find what was essential to live.

But living was not possible anymore. Not after bombs were dropped on Japan. It was said it was that way all over the world, but no one could say for sure. Was it true the world was destroyed by a radioactive menace? Was it true that the peoples of the Earth were reduced to nothing but wandering all day long to survive for another day?

Orihime could never know. Her world was a golden field with a orange-haired man sitting next to her.

Ichigo talked to her. Explained what he saw, what he felt, what was happening aroudn them. Anything he knew Orihime would love, he described it to her, from a rare seagull to a tiny sprout on the ground, trying its hardest to get some energy. Many times, Ichigo would snark a remark, something along the lines of “it’s fighting to exist, just like us.”. Orihime could do nothing but hold his hand tighter.

For months now, they walked the day to stop at night, cuddling closer no matter the heat of the weather, holding the other close. Closing her eyes didn’t change a thing : she was still in the field with him. She was still watching his traits shift to something relaxed and she was still amazed by him.

Ichigo shifted closer to her, taking the light bag off her back to let her poor spine breathe a little.

“What are you thinking about?”

She smiled. What an obvious question.

“You.”

She heard him chuckle, the sound soft.

“Ah, even in this situation, you keep on saying that.”

Orihime felt his other hand on the top of her head, caressing the not so souple hair, pushing a few strands out of her face, not that it mattered anyway. She didn’t say anything, only placed her chin against his hand.

Even in this situation, where the world she couldn’t see anymore was destroyed, their families and friends dead, Orihime would still be strong enough to smile. If it was fate to live, and if things happened for a reason, then all the suferring of today would vanish tomorrow, and they would meet again in the golden fields.

.

.

.

When two people travel together in a hostile place, it has its advantages and its inconvenients.

The first being only worrying about one person. No time wasted thinking about a potential individual that got lost. And with Orihime not being able to walk two steps alone, it was easy to stick together. The food, found in a deserted cafeteria or an abandoned house, was also easy to share.

The second... Their number was low, and if they encountered any threat, it was hard to outrun it, or to fight it. Orihime was Ichigo’s number one priority. Always had, always will be. But that only pushed him deeper into the danger.

And it was during the night they would feel the weakest. Ichigo could stand watch, not Orihime. Orihime could sleep, not Ichigo.

When one dreamed of the same place with the same person, the other was haunted by the nightmares of the reality laid bare in front of him. Destroyed houses, rotting corpses, violence in each corner.

One does not decide their fate. They are born with protection in their names, and it is their way of life to live by it. It is not their choice what they see or what they think.

He can’t help but think he should travel alone, leave Orihime to a safer place and come back to her once in a while with what she needs.

But if thinking is not up to him, then feeling is.

He can’t bear it. The thought of letting her be alone. Without him. He aches the moment he thinks of leaving her. So he doesn’t.

He aches the moment he sees her white eyes focus on nothing but her last memory of him, of them, in the field near a barn they used to like.

He aches when he knows how much she must suffer from being stuck in one place.

But because he feels and because those feelings lead him, he keeps them going. In a way, he started to believe fate would be kind after it is cruel. Maybe they will get better soon.

Until he knows they won’t.

Scavengers, unknown men and women, hiding behind old rusted glasses and torn rags encounter them one day. Without any discussion, any word, they attack them, they push them to the ground to rob them. Ichigo wants to fight, but Orihime grabs his hand, his arm, his body to have him close.

The golden fields in her head are starting to burn.

The foreigners attach them far away from each other. Ichigo is near an old electric pole, tied smartly, no chances of him getting out without getting injuried. Orihime on her side, she is told to sit near the fire, because what can a blind girl do? She can’t run, she can’t escape, she can’t help.

The golden fields in her head are burning now.

Ichigo watches her cry, clear tears coming out of foggy eyes, her head tilted to the sky, not daring to speak. And he sense she’s lossing it.

Not because they are seperated by a few meters. Not because he’s not holding her hand. Because she, who couldn’t see the world, couldn’t perceive how evil it had turned, encoutered it by herself. And the only safe place, physically and mentally, was getting ripped away from her.

Ichigo tried to fight his bounds. He tried to have this tiny shape of light and hope in his mind, that the day he would have fate on his side was here. That he could free himself, and her, and go back home.

It lasted for hours. Her crying, his pulling. Both were silent, one to not bring attention, the other too shocked and petrified to move.

Maybe it was luck, maybe it was fate, but they managed to get out. Ichigo shuffled his hands out of the ropes, pretending to sleep as a guard looked down on him. He turned around and the orange-haired man stood up abruptly to wrap an arm around his neck, suffocating him enough to make the lad fall unconcsious on the ground.

.

.

.

But there was nothing he could now.

The fire of reality and fate had burned the golden fields.

There was no Sun. No wind. No gentleness, no caress. The orange wasn’t just a mass of hair next to her anymore. It was all she could feel, from the sky to the clouds. The ground was dark and bloody, the piece only shrinking into chaos.

She couldn’t walk anymore. She couldn’t run, or hide, or talk or anything! All was gone! All she hoped, all she yearned, all she saw was gone!

Even the hand on her arm, the same as always, the same touch and same pressure on her skin, it was different, and it was bad.

Everything hurt. Nothing was bearable anymore.

“Orihime, please... We gotta go now, or they’ll get to us...”

“I don’t want to move.”

He stopped pulling her arm, instead cupping her face. She couldn’t feel his eyes on her own. All was gone.

“What? Hime, come on, now is not the best time...”

“Why... Why are we doing this?”

Ichigo didn’t answer, nor did he asked what she was talking about. He only hissed an insult. Orihime’s void eyes blinked, and she waved her hands to him, messily touching his sides. It was wet.

“I don’t want... I can’t have this anymore! I can’t get going like this! And neither can you, Ichigo... So please... Let’s go home.”

Her hand pushed against the fabric of his vest in a relfex to stop the bleeding he had gotten from the guard. She had heard some fighting by Ichigo’s side, but he had assured her he was fine.

Liar.

“Orihime...”

“Don’t tell me can’t!” Tears kept spilling, getting in her mouth, on the side of her nose, dropping on the floor. “I’m tired, tired of doing all this! I’m tired of suffering everyday, of knowing you suffer too! What kind of life could we have here! Huh? Nothing!”

“... I know.”

“I just want to be home... Just want to feel the sun on my face again...”

A little click was heard, and Orihime closed her eyes, lips curling into a smile. Ichigo breathed out, voice shaking but calm and determined.

“... We’re going back home. To Sora, to Yuzu and Karin. To my father and mother.”

Ichigo pulled them close, sliding a cold and hard gun in Orihime’s hand, their foreheads brought together to feel warmth.

“I can’t wait to meet them... And so that I can talk to Sora about you. He’ll be glad.”

“I’m nervous... I hope he’ll like me.”

The two chuckled, and Orihime leaned closer to gently kiss him on the lips.

“He will.”

One does not decide their fate. You are born from your mother, grow and meet people, if fate is merciful, you meet the one you were created to love. You spend a lifetime with them, you learn how to love, how to care, how to live. You get to understand what it is like to choose for the first time. And, after a life worth of adventures, stories and feelings, you are put to rest.

Once upon a time Ichigo and Orihime believed in this reality. Believed that life could be harsh, but they would climb out of the pit of darkness to reach the sunlight, and enjoy it.

They were not always surrounded by light. They were not always surrounded by warmth.

They knew they wouldn’t be in the sky or in the ground.

They knew where their place was.

They knew where the sunlight was, the same place they would feel warmth, always.

There were two loud bangs. One soft thud, as their bodies fell together.

Then laughter, the golden fields perfect again, with the new Sun, the new wind, the new caresses, and the joy of meeting new faces.

Now, and forever, they were put to rest, and fate would never be cruel again.

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I’m not certain that people will like it, since I wrote that in an hour and with a loud loud mind.

I hope you guys do not hate me too much haha

[pchlarz]

Minecraft could have such a cool lore and game mechanics

So I played minecraft since I was like 13 or something, when the thing was still in early beta. I still play it, but after half an hour tops I just lose interest and quit. The game isn’t challenging, the world seems empty and npc and animals like wind up toys than anything else. I know minecraft is a canvas you have to paint on, but I was always more into the idea of Minecraft as a world you have to tame and grow into. There are mods that do that, like rlcraft (which im not gonna play cause the lycanite mobs don’t fit into the games art style and ice and fire mobs are straight up unfair). And you know, since I have a script, dissertation, stop motion animation to do this semester for my Filmmaking Uni, I’ve been thinking about minecraft a lot. Procrastination, am I right my dudes?

I have no idea how to make mods, I can barely use Java to install Optifine for crying out loud, but I can write a couple hundred words post on this hellsite that no ones gonna read, cause it’s literally my first post, and no one can stop me! Also maybe somebody’s gonna get inspired and make it. No need to credit me, just let me play it XD

The World and Lore, I guess

So, let’s get one thing straight... Is the Minecraft world post apo? Like let’s be real for a second. The player is the only human specimen in the entire world. There are villigers that are vaguely humanoid, but they are definately “The other” some ofshoot of the human race than actual human beings. Zombies and skeletons seem to share the player’s anatomy but they’re undead, therefore dead, therefore had to be alive at some point. So yeah, let’s work with that! 

Let’s say that in a distant future, like distant enough for new subspecies of homo sapiens had time to evolve with enough pressure. The human world died after they opened the portal to the End. This allowed magic to seap into the world, boosting the technology but also corrupting people it cam across with. Like why is the Ender Dragon dropping more exp than your PC is able to handle? Cause she’s the source of all magic! Why do monsters drop it? Cause it’s what reanimated/mutated them. So according to this, fucking with the eldritch magic balls is what created the zombie virus, destroying the human race. Also the End is the moon. Like not our moon. Opening the portal didn’t just link the worlds together, it straight up teleported the End into the earth orbit, destroying the native moon and replacing it. And that’s why the monster’s only come up night, cause that’s when the End holds the most influence over the overworld. 

But what about the villigers? Just descendents of humans who have survived the apocalypse. Some adopted peaceful agrocultural approach to survive, sharing and caring and being lovely anarchocommunist communities. The other ones living according to the “Survival of the Fittest” evolving into the illigers. But that’s only the two races that are already in the game. Since it’s supposed to be a mod adding shit, lets get some new races! The dwarves have been talked about by the developers so let’s add them. Shorter and stockier than humans, with glowing eyes and not so much beards as just thick fur on their bodies. The underground is cold after all. Also descended from humans, this time those that had enough brains to burrow themselves underground.They just chill in caves, building something like big ant colonies. You could trade with them just like villigers, although instead of emeralds they’d want silver (We need like shitload of new ores, my good people). Oh, and they wouldn’t be pacifist like villigers, if you piss them off, they will mine you to pieces. You could also find them in random caves mining their own business (XD) and by business i mean resources you could mine yourself. And so if you’re a bellend, you could straight up murder them and grab their stuff and have your ores left unmolested. Or you could pay them off to share the loot, giving you a temporary partner with basically x ray vision, leading you to more ores, than you’d find yourself. But at the end of the day, you’d be obligated to split what you found 50/50, meaning that you could get more stuff than on your own, or less, depending on your in real life luck. Boom, reasons for morals. 

I’d like to see a basic faction system, based on which aspect of the game the player finds most appealing. If you’re the kind of a peaceful player who just wants to build and farm, the villigers are your people. They’d gladly take you in if you build, farm and trade for them. If you’re into conquest and looting Pilligers could use your skill to cut some Villigers throats. And if you want mining and exploration, The dwarves wll take you in. Ofcourse you can just be your own person and solo the entire thing, and no one will nag you. 

Character Customination and Skills

I want roleplay, man. Skins are cool but what if on one save I’m the peaceful farmer, developing my village and chilling with my bros, but on other I’m the fucking antichrist, burning them to the ground and taking what I want? Do I just swap my skins depending on what world i’m gonna play today? I quess I could, but that’d be hardly graceful. So let’s just put proper character creation into the game, with ethnicity, hair models and all that other bling. Ideally you’d also be able to paint on your characters if you want scars or tatoos or just dont want to look human. Clothing on the other hand would be a seperate system linked to the survival system. But more about the clothing system later. 

Also since Minecraft is getting slack for becoming more of an RPG when it got its full release, lets embrace that. I’d split them to Gathering, Combat and Crafting skills.Gathering would include your tool proficiency, allowing you to skip enchanting altogether while still getting some upgrade for your tools. Also chances for more resource drops or just getting new utilities from the tools. Any movement releated skills should also be there for simplicity sake. Combat is self explanatory, if we add different weapons types, than there has to be some incentive for specialization. Some skills for combat overall wouldn’t go unwelcome. Dodging, parry without a shield, throwing various weapons and stuff like that. Crafting would be for the new weapon customization, enchanting (including proper spell casting wands) and alchemy. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with that. 

Custom Tools, Weapons and Armor

Doesn’t it bug you that on multiplayer server everyone just walks around in enchanted diamond eq, throwing all sense of individuality out of the window. Do you like the idea of roleplaying as a cave men the entire game, but the stone sword doesn’t really give you that opportunity? Well let’s do something about it. Instead of vertical tool and weapon progression let’s do it horizontally. Lets take a bit more realistic approach to crafting. Stone tools have to knapped and assembled, bronze has to be casted, iron hammered into shape and wood carved. All types of materials have their drawbacks. Knapping tools would just need you to pick a stone in your offhand and the crafting material of your choice in your main and right click. And from there you get the list of shapes you can knap your stone into. And after choosing the tool/weapon type of your liking you knap it again to customize the shape more. Do you want your hatchet to look like a primitive piece of sharp rock or a skillfully crafted tomahawk? Casts for soft metals and wooden objects would be made in the same way, just with a carwing knife instead of stone and wax or wood for the crafting material. Than just put your cast into clay to get a mold. Fire the mold, craft a crucible and pour the molten metal into the mold. Change the anvil from an enchanting tool into a proper workbench for your hard metals. Then craft some handles, guards or accesories and put them all together in your crafting window. Different materials would have different pros and cons. Stone tools have low durability but don’t have any wear mechanic. Wood rots, Soft metals can bend and have to be straightened and hard metals rust and have to be cleaned. Also no tool progression. What you can mine depends on your mining level. Right now you can easily get diamond on yout first day if you mine deep enough. Locking it over a skill tree would pace the games more high tier materials more naturally. Also diamonds are classed as knapped material. No diamond swords for you, but a diamond macuhuitl is totally cool. Just craft a wooden sword of your choice and add some diamond blades in the crafting. 

Armor would be split into classes, Light, Medium and Plate. You can’t make armor out of stone (so no diamond armor either, but you could encrust your other armor with it) but you can make wooden plate. Just for the heck of it. Different armor classes would affect your stamina meter differently. 

Guns!!!

I’m not a gun nut, but hey we have gunpowder in the game. Let’s add guns. But just the flintlock ones, atleast the ones made by the player. They could be made out of anything even stone, just for the heck of it. They would be crafted like any other weapon. But shooting them would be expensive with all the gunpowder you’d have to loot from creepers (I like the idea of dead creepers burning away, giving you only a short window to loot them) or craft from sulfur, a new rare resource. Still they’d pack quite a punch and make hella noise, bringing all the monsters to you. Also long reload time, they’re flintlock after all. 

Also lets adhere to an old fantasy trope and make them unenchantable. Their op as they are. 

Animals and Looting 

Just add more animals. Add more predators, so the day isn’t just a cake walk. Add predators hunting. Pray running from a player simply approaching. Give me a run for my food. Animals reproducing on their own. If you want to tame livestock or pets than you better hope for a rare domesticated kind of animals or trap and break them enough for them to let them eat from your hand. 

And what about hunting. If you manage to kill an animal, it doesn’t just disappear and live porkshops in the cloud of smoke. Every killed entity just turns into a corpse that you have to manually loot, while holding a sharp weapon (for simplicity sake). All of them drop their hide (acting kinda like armor with its own durability, on which depends how much letter you’ll get from it, thus encouraging clean one hit kills), a lot more meat (so you don’t have to slaughter an entire herd just to have something to eat) and bones. Also food would spoil now, to discourage hoarding it. But there would be workarounds like salting it or drying it for jerky. 

Various animal hides could act as trophies (if you’re a cunt) or for crafting special clothing items or beds (since proper wool would be much harder to come by now). 

Monsters and the Night

Same deal as in the main game. Mostly undead with some mutated mobs like creepers and phantoms. The only hostile mob I’d add would be Vampires, who would follow the player and try to score a hit while you’re unaware. Of course they’d be rather rare. Enderman on the other hand... Let’s raise them to the mini boss standard. When they were announced I was hyped, that they’ll be a proper horror mob that you could be genuinely terryfied of. But no, they just vibin’ most of the time. So let’s change them. Since in the new lore the undead are humans corrupted by magic, enderman should be the remnents of the humans who have gone and got trapped in the End, turned into the Dragons army. And now their job is to stalk you and kill you. You still have to look at them for them to turn hostile, but now they don’t care if you only looked at them from the distance. If they can see you and you can see them, they attack. Give them proper range. Let them teleport behind you to score a hit. Put blocks in your way if you try to run. They could pick you up and teleport with you next to ledges (they shouldn’t just be able to throw you over the edge, let’s give players a fighting chance). They should also steal more valuable blocks than just dirt. Let them target specifically blocks placed by the player, allowing them to pick holes in your defenses for other mobs to get to your house. 

The night itself would change. For the first couple nights there should be no monsters. The rise of the undead according to the new lore is the Dragon learning about the new human in the world trying to slow them down from discovering the End portal. But for the first few nights it would be unaware of your existance, letting you to get comfortable. But when the first full moon hits, The dragon saw you and she will let you know she sees. And from then on, every night the undead horde will rise to haunt you, only resting during the eclipse (since the dragon can’t see). On the other hand the full moon would be equivalent to the blood moon from terraria.  With mobs more aggressive, able to break your doors and forcing you to defend yourself. Also you wouldn’t be able to sleep during the full moon. If you manage to fall asleep, you wake up dead with mobs spawned all over your house. Also the mobs don’t burn in the sunlight. When the night ends, they just disapear like Enderman. 

The mobs right now spawn only on active chunks, but let’s add a lore reason for it. They’re targeting you. This is why going to a village means bringing the horde to them. And if you don’t fight or they kill to many, the viligers will add two and twoo together, banishing you from their dwelling. The illigers will just turn hostile. The dwarves won’t mind since the undead are plentiful underground anyway. 

Also give me my Overworld Dragons. Like proper fire breathing ones. Kinda like the ones from Ice and Fire but actually managable and not the size of goddamn school. 

Survival Mechanics

Let’s add thirst. You can’t just drink any water ofcourse, so while food means you have to scavenge or hunt, thirst encourages you to either find drinkable streams or distill the water. Eventually just drink juices or booze. Yeah, let’s add booze. Just for fun, with all the stuff i’d want to add the game wouldn’t be kid friendly anyway. 

You have to sleep now. Unslept nights cut your stamina meter by 25% while also bringing the phantoms to you. You can sleep without a bed, but you’re risking temperature debuffs and less stamina regen. 

Temperature. With adding seasons and all the clothing option it seems reasonable (also i loved it in don’t starve). To not make the HUD to cluttered I’d just display the temperature on your heart meter, having them freeze over for cold and dry out for hot. Dried and frozen hearts wouldn’t be included in your hp pool, meaning that temperature makes you weaker. You could fight the temperature with proper clothing, fire or ice. Although the hot temperatures would be more forgiving, just making you lose water faster and being managable with shadow from blocks. 

Clothes would have their own slots, be made in their crafting table and heavily customizable like banners and letter armor, giving proper use for all the dyes we have. They could also be drawn on like player skins. You could also wear some of them on armor, allowing for further character customization. They’d have their own durability, but be easily repairable. Aside from temperature protection they would be mostly cosmetic and if you don’t like the idea of having to wear a coat in the winter, just enchant your shorts with some frost protection. 

Hunger would be overhauled slightly, letting you to get fat from food. But just like in real life FAT IS YOUR FRIEND (just you now, moderate amounts). It let’s you absorb all foods value even with a full bar. Still to much of it will slow you down and make your stamina bar go down faster. Oh and it’s no longer your stamina bar, that’s a seperate thing now, indicated by a small lighting bolt icon above your exp level. Still a full food and water bar is nessecary for healing. 

Enchanting

Bookshelves no longer make the enchantments stronger. Atleast not the decorative ones. Instead you have to enchant books on your own hoping for the “Arcane Knowladge” enchantment, which can’t be put on anything but, if you put a book with it in the bookshelf it will raise the enchantment cap. So does leveling your enchanting skill, as well as allowing you to see what enchant you’re putting on your stuff, as you grow more fluent in the language of magic. Enchanting would also be more powerfull in the night, as that’s when the End - The birthplace of magic is the strongest. This also means that enchanting during the full moon would create the most powerful enchantments, if you can manage to enchant while the undead hordes attack. And they will try to get to you as an active enchanting table is drawing them closer. 

Different materials have different enchantibility. Pracious metals are overall more conductive, while obsydian might make fire enchantments stronger. This would come into play mostly when crafting staffs!

While Guns are unenchantable, Staffs are just weak pole weapons without magic. But enchanting them let’s you pick a spell for them, like lightinig bolt, healing, stuff like that. One staff can hold only one enchantment and casting spells uses exp points meaning that you’d need quite a big pool to be able to just be a mage. While staffs are two-handed you can also make wands to cast with your offhand. Ofcourse they’d be less powerful to balance things out. 

As the Anvil is now a crafting station, the Arcane Anvil would take it’s place made from obsidian and golden bars. While we’re at it lets also think about Arcane Chests to store your exp. 

Player Death

Why can the player just live after death? Well depends on difficulty. If you want to lose your stuff but keep the skills, it’s because the last humans put a spell on you allowing you to be uneffected by the corruption and also be linked into the world, cursing you to wake up from dying in the last place you slept, making you think if your death was just a dream. If you want a more hardcore experience then it’s because they cast a spell of reincarnation on you, so you don’t come back as the exact same person, having to work upon the achievements of your predessecors (I have no idea how to write that, I’m polish okay?). And if you just want straight up hardcore, they sent you to the future, with only one chance to make things right. Applies to the multiplayer, there’s just more of you that have been cursed.

If you find your dead body you can loot it. But on the reincarnation difficulty all the food, potions, weapons and armor you had will have long rot away. A lot time passed afterall. 

The Stronghold and the End

So if you actually read so far, I love you and congratulations. I’m writing this while I’m high, so it probably doesn’t make much sense. Still, thanks! 

So... Strongholds suck. Let’s get rid of them. Instead let’s put the End Portal in a new rare biome. The Ruins! They would be a large decimated city from before the apocalypse, now overtaken by vegetation with undead present even in the daylight. The magic is right in the heart of the city after all. The undead are much more powerfull here, some even having modern weaponry like assult rifles. They can be looted, but they’re all falling apart and you can’t craft them. But you could repair them and use them. They’d be end game unenchantable gear. Enderman also stalk the city, so you’d have to be prepered for them. You still find the city with the eyes of ender, but this time crafted with a compas and obsidian to create the Ender Compass, cause fuck throwing balls into the air. The End Portal is in the heart of the city in the special dungeon called the Crumbling Facility. It’d be a long parkour challange with you having to reach the top while also fighting for your life. “But Pchlarz”, I hear you saying, “You could just build across or up, this is Minecraft”. Well no, cause the building would be made from gravity affected blocks, meaning that if you do, the whole thing falls apart. As for building up, try to do that while being shot from every direction. What if the tower falls? Well, the End Portal awakes spawning more monsters and moving to the height limit. So now you would have to build straight up, while the Enderman teleport to your position and try to throw you off. But if you get there, the Portal is your to enter. 

And so you do. Before you stands a temple build in the center of the New Moon. The towers are still there and the Dragon still heals from them. The temple is built from blocks the Enderman took from you (not just them ofc) You destroy the crystal and fight the dragon. It picks you up, throws you around, breathes Black fire (purple is ugly, sorry guys). You chip at its health and finally you bring it to half. And thats when the dragon falls into the temple with broken wings. Now it’s a ground battle. Now you have cover, but the temple is destructable. It’s blocks affected by gravity. Finally you kill the dragon. It imbues you with its magic and drops it’s heart. Still beating, Scarlett and glowing. The Enderman stand around you, their eyes no longer white (yeah i dont like purple), but now inteligent with pupils. They seem thankful. You’ve won. The end stone around you starts crumbling, falling into the void. And there’s no way back home. You start to accept your fate. You’ve sacraficed yourself to end the Undead horde’s reign. And thats when an Enderman takes you by the hand. You walk to the edge of the crumbling world and gaze into the blue globe staring at you from the abyss. It’s the Earth. But you wouldn’t survive the impact. Not from space. That’s when you see the Enderman holding something, with his hand stretched out to you. He’s holding a pair of wings. The Elytra. You put them on, say goodbyes to the newly freed Enderman and dive into the world beneath you, watching as the tall figures behind you die with their dying world. 

You crush into the earth. With half a heart you drag yourself to safety. The Ender compass now points the way to your bed. You walk. Victorious. 

Endgame

So you’ve beat the game. What’s now? Well the Enderman are no longer hostile. And the dragon heart? You can put it into your alchemy station and turn it into the potion of resurection. While the zombie villigers could be cured with a golden apple and the potion of weakness, the human zombies need this one. The skeletons are to far gone, but zombies and vampires can be turned back. The Dragons Heart can never be used, but if you lose it, well it sucks to be you hero. 

With cured humans you can create a village and start rebuilding. You can have relationships with them, turn them into companions and even have children with them (i like stardew valley okay). And with their numbers growing it’s up to you if you will live in peace with new races populating the world or reestablish the human reign on earth. 

Okay this took me like three hours and the weed is wearing off. I think way to much about minecraft, maaan. Still hope you like it. And make this mod for me. I’d be grateful. 

[stileteckel]

Tech Shopping for College in 2019? Laptop with Accessories Reccomendation's by Stile Teckel

Hello fellow geeks, nerds, and anyone else that stumbled upon this corner of the world. It has been a while since I have done one of these pieces on the blog, or really anything at all for that matter.

I have some new projects in the works though which is going to see the site and blog becoming more active again. Therefore when I realized a project I just finished working on would be useful to someone else in the world, maybe, I thought it would be a great way to kick off the site a little bit. This is more for the tech side of us geeks as opposed to the gaming side of things 🙂

Ok, go ahead and pull up a chair, grab your Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and Character sheet. Sit back, as I am going to give a little backstory before I dive into the recommendations. Why backstory? First, everyone has a different preference and second everyone has different needs. Understanding what mine are/were in this situation will help you determine if you need to think a bit differently for any of these items or even if the reccomendations are of any use to you at all!

My daughter is starting college in 2019. She is a very scholastic focused individual and very goal driven. As such she is one of the top students of her school, tutors, will graduate high school already having college credits, has been class president, on academic teams, and much more.

I don’t mention this as a parent bragging (although there would be something wrong me if I wasn’t proud and happy that my sperm rolled a critical when I made her), but to understand that in my situation, school focus is VERY strong and I take that into account in my investment decisions. You should definitely consider your child’s enthusiasm and personal needs (not to mention your financial situation) before making any type of purchases!

My daughter comes from divorced parents and she has been living with mom. In the past, I had set her up with a decent Laptop, but I definitely made some mistakes with it.

One of the mistakes I made is that it was too big. Sure it was a power-house with a huge screen. That also made it a lot to carry around and more delicate then something being hauled around by a student should be. The biggest issue was not even me though, but a manufacturer design flaw that I continually had to spend money fixing. The MFG refused to fix it out of warranty, even though it was a known issue with a certain run of their laptops.

Add all this together, and as I have been spending time examining her college needs for next year as well as helping to fill those and acting as a coordinator with the family on her dad’s side, I was noticing a lack of a computer or laptop in her life.

I started making some discrete inquires, sending a few ninja notes around to the family, made some steealth and research roles, took 20 on some discussions with her, and learned that the laptop was possibly lost in a family move a little over a year ago and shes been getting by using other peoples computers, tech at the school, and simplier things such as her phone.

My daughter is the type of person that is not very materialistic, doesn’t ask for a lot, and will get by with what she has. So this all is really no surprise to me. Regardless for someone as academically involved as she is and as she is going to be, it definitely felt like I had missed a fumble I tossed out at some point! Spot check failed!

Not only will this be one of the most critical tools she will have in college, but she has also been getting by without it when it has been one of the most critical things in her current life by begging, borrowing, and stealing! Way to roll on your survival skills!

This may not be the case for your child. While some sort of computer will most like be needed by just about anyone, what that is and to what level, is going to vary a lot based on what sort of classes they will be taking. Also keep in mind their choosen degree and classes could change! Unfortunately you still have to meet the current needs even if that was to happen.

So one of my NPC’s is telling me to shut the F up with the backstory already and get going with the main game, before I no longer have any players. Fair enough!

I started out by taking 20 on a research skill to learn as much as I coudl about what the most popular device (or one of them) is currently for college students and why. I also went into this research with the following thoughts in mind.

I wanted something that would be portable and somewhat rugged

A lot of power but not necassirly a high end gaming rig

Despite portability, useable as a desktop at a home workstation

It was not long before I was looking at the Lenova Yoga Line of products, quickly followed by the 730 series. The 920 while nice has to small of a screen in my opinon while the 730 is perfect in that its slim and lieght weight, without the screen being so large as to begin to turn the unit into a giant.

What is nice about this laptop is that it comes in a lot of builds. This allows you to get one that meets your college needs and financial situation. You can configure for RAM, Graphics, Monitor, Hard Drive size, and a few other options. So regardless of your needs for a portable can be a good choice for just about anyone!

So regardless of your needs for a portable can be a good choice for just about anyone!

Personally, I ended up purchasing my daughters direct from the Lenovo website instead of Amazon. There were three reasons for this, whereas typically I would have bought from Amazon.

The first being they are running a holiday sale so the pricing direct was decent. Secondly, I wanted a configuration of the options I could not find on Amazon and so I wanted to custom build it, opposed to choosing one of the MANY options you will find if you follow that above link, and look at comparable items, on Amazon. Finally I had a discount code that was fairly sizeable!

More Ninja notes sent around to the family, we made a combined effort and compared our dots in resources to see what we could pull together, did some begging with the GM, and what to proceed with.

I talked to my daughter, had her help with the configuration options, and then based on her needs begin putting together the accessory order. This was a grueling 6 hours of research and shopping!

She picked the bag, so that was personal prefence on her part. It does come in a lot of color options.

My first concern with the Yoga is the hard drive capacity. I ended up going with a 512 GIG SSD on her unit, but I know from recent experience that Windows 10 and some software will eat that up fairly quickly.

She’s going to want some games, photos, music, and more on her unit. Given the cost to upgrade to a 1TB HD, I thought a portable external drive, as a place to put that stuff, would make perfect sense. The plan is to also set up the portable on one of my cloud services as an off-site backup solution.

I also like that her data and personal files are actually separate from the Lenovo. She can leave that at home when she won’t need it.

The Yoga does have a built in mouse pad on the keyboard half, but given this is also going to serve as a at home desktop replacement a seperate mouse was important.

One theme I want on everything though is that is also portable so she can sort of Ala Carte choose based on where she’s going and what she will be doing, what options she needs to take with her. This setup is allowing her to carry only what she needs, when she needs, as opposed to everything being built in and stuck with that continual weight and bulk all the time!

This particular mouse is nicely sized for at home or on the road, is Bluetooth eliminating cables and mess, and rechargeable so batteries won’t be needed. It can be used on any surface including glass so she can use it wherever she goes with no worries about a mouse pad. With 3 device connections, she can set it up on some of her other items, like a phone.

A keyboard is almost most likely going to be entirely for at home use. Regardless you never know when you may set up for a long period in an off-site location and wish you had a full-size keyboard. So again, portability was taken into account and while being full size, this thing is light and thin.

Bluetooth, again helping reduce cord mess. Recharegale to avoide batteries. Not only like the mouse, does it retain 3 device connections but it handles Windows, Ios, and Android all three. Again making this a great compaion component for things like her phone, playstation, or a Roku.

While she will have a portable hard drive for her personal files and data I feel it is important to have a very small media, you can carry on a keychain if you want, and hand off to anyone with it being liekly they can use it. In short folks, you always need disc(s)!

This 128gig Micro SD with Adapter was perfect for that purpose and also took care of another concern I had.. I wanted her to have an Micro SD to SD card adapter! This gives her a portable storage device she can keep empty other then some favorites she might want to share with people continually or share between a lot of diferent type of devices (not everything can read a hard drive!). Most importantly in my opinon is it gives her something other then her data drive to hand to people and pass things back and forth, that does NOT contain sensative information on it.

The one thing the Yoga does not have on it from what I could determine, I really thing it should, is a SD card reader… I mean, you see how small they are?

Regardless I had wanted to get her a USB hub as a docking station for at home. I like this one as not only does it give her the docking stationn, it handlesthe SD reader concern, gives her a second headphone jack to share with a friend (airplane or train tavel comes to mind), a VGA port, and some other things.

I REALLY love that it has an RJ45 port. Some places still may only offer hardwire and not wifi and regardless of that, I ALWAYS prefer hardwire over wifi if I have the option!

I mentioned the VGA port. Why? VGA and HDMI monitor connection options are two instead of one! Meaning wherever she takes it she can plug into a TV or computer monitor either one with a low chance of not having the right connection type.

Also great if you have this and can be the hero of the party in a library or classroom when someone needs to charge, can’t connect to something, etc! Bribing the GM will almost always get you something discreetly!

Movies and such are defintiely a thing for her (thats my girl!). Also its not uncommon these days to have a class where you can (or even sometimes required!) turn in assignments on CD or DVD you burn yourself.

A portable drive takes care of this concern. Probably something rarely used in the classroom so mostly used for the home workstation or travel. A Bluray Reader and DVD/CD writer would have been sufficient for her I believe, but I actually have a quite a bit of blank Blu-ray media I will unlikely ever use, including Dual Layer. The DL Bluray drive’s cost difference with that writing ability vs. without is significantly less than the cost of the blank media I have. So I went the extra little bit on the basis if at some point the media is useful to her, this paid for itself immediately.

Note give that this item has moving parts and is the most fragile of everything that she is getting (most likely to break or stop working), I opted for the 4 year extended warranty. It was also very inexpensive.

I understand you are getting low on power (or are out of power) sometimes. It happens to the best of us, even when your carefull to try to always charge when given the chance.

I do not understand how it is possible to ALWAYS be in that situation. I mean, you had to charge at some point, to be abel to get to the point where you are “running out” or “ran out” of power right? So how come it’s never quiet about having a charging issue?

Furthermore WTF is it with cords? I thougth I had to replace a lot of cords in the past when it was because I was buying cheap cords, was to rough on them, or one of the dogs got pissed off at me about something. I had NO idea how many cords and wall adapters I would need to keep stocked because I would be asked to “borrow one for a little bit” (that I never see again). Not to mention, I had to start stocking types I DON”T EVEN USE in some cases, for someone else’s backup! wow!

With that said, I think the following selections speak for themsevles.

That about wraps it up! You have a lot of flexability in choosing the core system, the accessories, and what accessories you take around with you and when. As well as fairly decent at home work station setup in addition to portability.

One thing I did consider but did not get at this time is a small portable HD projector. The ability to shoot the second monitor of varying size on a wall (or ceiling if laying down), would be handy. Could even get a small portable white screen to go with it. Possible future item if it seems like after time, that would be hugely beneficial.

I told my daughter I am jealous! This is a fantstic setup for a lot of situations. I have archived her order, as if I ever am spending a lot of time travelling on the road again, I would want something similiar for my business.

From Sir Stile Teckel of Caverns, Dungeons, and Beyond - http://www.thecaverns.net/Wordpress/tech-shopping-for-college-in-2019-laptop-with-accessories-reccomendations-by-stile-teckel/