#more than any enemy or boss. most frustrating thing in the game was rolling those red skulls

[zincbot]

played through tunic so fast i didn't even process anything besides filling my noteapp with "left right down up", but yo the production line for the obelisks? that was fucked

[shorkbrian]

Creep

Prelude - bitch hold on what about mean brother Shigs being an absolute creep? Inspired by me playing a boss in AC Odyssey and my controller vibrated so hard I almost dropped it, and I couldn’t beat this dude and it was so freaking frustrating!!!!!! 

Pairing - Shigaraki X Reader

Warnings - - INCEST, NSFW, innocence kink, do not read if those squick you out bro!!! Seriously! abuse of trust, dubcon, noncon, literally nothing about this situation is good, or healthy, or nice. Disgusting behavior is exhibited by Shigs.

Music - (does anyone actually like when I provide music? I like getting music vibes while I read through fics but ik that my music taste is a bit wacky lol anyways). https://open.spotify.com/track/0ODyahnUlK9G5bT4dA5NCI?si=10R9ggoJS1inYidrMeWrHA

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He offers to let you play his Xbox game, you keep annoying him by pouting for his attention and he gives up with trying to ignore you.

Stipulation - you gotta sit on his lap while you play, you’re such a stupid little girl that he forces his hands over yours, showing you how to use the Xbox controller while sneering at how dumb you are.

You’re too focused on the game to pay attention to how one of his hands has dropped from the controller, is creeping up your thigh, thumbing at the hem of your shorts. You don't realize that he’s plastered against your back, breath picking up in your ear as he hunches over your shoulder, thinking of all the dirty things he wants to do to you, how you’re too absent-minded to realize how much of a perverted creep he is. 

“Shit!” You curse, breaking Shigaraki out of his thoughts as you bounce your leg in frustration. He feels the slight vibration of the controller - you’re getting attacked in the game, enemies surrounding you and hacking at your player. Shigaraki is too entranced by how he can watch your jiggling breasts over your shoulder, jostling around as you jerk your arms, trying to not die in the game.

“Nii-san help me, ‘m gonna die!” You shriek, whole body getting into the gaming experience, jerking around in his lap as you struggle to press the right buttons. Shigaraki tries not to groan - he can feel the space between your thighs as you move around, hot and doughy and he wants to touch so bad.

Yeah, he’s always been a bit of a creep, but he’s never actually done anything to you.

The most he does is fantasize, thinking about how you’d feel clamping down on him, how’d you’d taste if he made you ride his face. What you’d look like if he forced his cock into you with barely any prep - you’d squeeze your eyes shut so tight, let out little whimpers and clench your fists because “Hurts, hurts! Go slow Nii-san, don’t want this!”

But he wouldn’t have to listen, you’re just a naive little girl who doesn’t know that Shigaraki would be trying to make you feel good too, that it would feel good soon.

“Stop wiggling, you’re gonna fall off.” He rasps back at you, taking his other hand off the controller to grab your waist, barely saving you from keeling over and onto the floor. You’re left to fend for yourself now, button-mashing, groaning when you finally succumb to your enemies and die a violent, gory death.

“I died! Why didn’t you help, you’re right here?!” the accusatory tone of your voice is ignored as you revert to the last save, huffing in frustration as you’re forced to start over.

“You’re never gonna learn if I’m holding your hands like that.”

Shigaraki’s glad you’ve stilled again - if you’d kept up your wiggling, he’d have to figure out a way to explain what the hard thing poking into the side of your plush little rear.

God, you had the most perfect ass.

Maybe he’s a freak, a disgusting man with fucked up morals, but Shigaraki’s always been a social outcast, seen as weird and wrong and criticized for every little thing he did.

What’s wrong with settling into the role other people were so quick to offer him?

Surely you’ve noticed his odd behavior by now, the behavior that’s picked up in the last few years. How he stares at you a little more than he should, how sometimes he slips into bed with you, murmuring some lame excuse about not being able to sleep.

The way he freezes when you give him an affectionate hug, clenching his fists by his side as your breasts are squished up against his body.

You had to have caught on to his uncharacteristic softness with you. He’s still mean and coarse and rude, but there's an underlying affection underneath the way he mocks your outfits, when he says you look like the gross character out of a manga he’s reading, how he tugs on your hair sometimes when he passes by you, wheezing out a laugh if you turn around and try to slap at him in irritation.

If you didn’t want him to be weird, you could’ve said something by now. You should’ve said something by now.

So really, it’s your own fault that he feels so comfortable being a sicko.

“Don’t tickle, I gotta focus.” You tell him, squirming away when he runs a hand experimentally over your stomach. You’re so cute, and dumb, he wants to bully you until you’re crying, say mean things and hurt your feelings only so he can kiss it better. 

But he doesn’t, because he’s a good brother.

His hand travels further up, rests right underneath your breast, almost cupping it. Still, you don’t say anything, attention on the game.

Do you want this? Are you just stupid? His affection is so obviously not normal for siblings, and yet you act like it’s fine. Maybe you’re a virgin, untainted with the knowledge of how sexual touches feel like.

The hand on your waist begins to slip under your shorts, his cold fingers quickly warmed by your skin. “Nii-san, stop that, it’s weird.”

Ah, there’s the common sense.

“I though you wanted to play the game? Don’t be a bitch.” He doesn’t really care whether you want him willingly now or not, he’s getting excited by the heat of your body, your weight on his lap.

You pause the game when his hand creeps lower into your shorts, when his fingers skim low over your tummy, too close to a private place that brothers shouldn't touch.

“Stop touching me, I don’t like that.”

“It’s not like you wouldn’t enjoy it.” He mumbles, and you stiffen in his lap, but he quickly takes his hand out of your shorts, stops cupping your soft breast.

The game gets unpaused, and you resume playing, although your attention is divided now, nervous about sitting in your brother’s lap.

Has it finally clicked? Are you thinking about what he could do to you, how he could make you feel?

“You suck at this.” Shigaraki observes, the controller shaking almost violently as you’re attacked again, overwhelmed by enemies.

“Well, maybe if you taught me how to play instead of being weird, I wouldn’t be.” You snarked, frustrated with the game, uneasy with your brother holding your hips like that.

Shigaraki rolls his eyes. You’re so dramatic, and although you have a valid point, he’s always been weird. This is nothing new, you’ve just been too thick-skulled to realize it before, which isn’t his fault.

A few more tries, and you still can’t get past the one group of enemies, dying after a few minutes every single time. You’re going to waste the batteries like that, controller jumping in your hands. 

“I can’t-” You whine, coming across the enemies after your latest death, already knowing what’s going to happen.

Shigaraki stays silent, red eyes finally flickering away from your body and up to the screen of the TV. 

You’re at one of the hardest parts of the game, facing a section that took Shigaraki two days to beat (not that he’ll tell you that). He grins as you throw yourself into the fight, immediately getting decked.

The noises you’re letting out are cute, frustrated groans on each hit landed on your player, muttered curses and triumphant scoffs whenever you manage to strike an enemy, which isn’t often.

The controller’s still shaking like crazy, and you’re moving around in his lap again, and Shigaraki is done. He can’t take this anymore, you’re being a tease.

He snatches the Xbox controller out of your hands, ignoring your little “Hey! What’re you doing, I was playing!”

“You call this playing?” The shuddering of the controller surprises him, gives him an idea.

There hadn’t been a plan, he had just been acting on instinct, hands itching to push you off his lap and to the floor, just to see the way you’d look up at him after. 

Like that, you’d be in the perfect position to suck his cock.

But he wants to go in a different direction now.

“Stay still, you’re so annoying.” He’s spreading his legs out, sinking back further in his chair to get a better angle, your legs hooked over his.

There’s no time for you to protest. Like this, you’re spread out nicely, exposed, even though your shorts cover your intimate place.

Without any further preamble, Shigaraki shoves the vibrating controller up against your clothed cunt.

“NIi-san!” You shriek, immediately writhing in his hold. But Shigaraki has an arm locked around your chest, keeping you pinned to his chest. “Don’t, think sins’t-this isn't-! Stop this, stop! Don’t touch me!”

He can bet it feels good, that you’re struggling to tell him to stop. He begins rubbing the controller against you, snickering at the way you jolt and writher on each pass of the hard, curved plastic against your protected clit. He can’t even imagine how good it would feel if your stupid shorts weren’t in the way.

“Stop, stop! Stop it! Stop!” You sound like a broken record.

“Shut up, you can’t even play the game right. Feel that?” the controller gets rubbed harder against you, and you writhe. “That’s how bad you are. So pathetic, can’t even fend off a couple of bad guys.”

Can’t even fend off one, Shigaraki thinks to himself. You could be trying harder to get out of his hold, could be screaming and yelling and scratching and kicking.

Well, you are scratching and kicking, moving around so much that he’s having a hard time keeping you still. And you making a lot of noise, but there’s no one else home.

He’s fully hard, and every movement you make struggling rubs him right up against the meat of your ass, and he sucks in a stuttered breath, biting his lip.

“No, no, no, no, don’t want this Nii-san, stop it-” Your panicked pleas are ignored, Shigaraki shoving your hands away as you try to pull the controller off of your cunt, get the vibrations to stop.

On screen, the player is still getting attacked, each new hit making the controller vibrate even harder.

“Ow, ow! It hurts, make it stop! Nii-san-”

“I’ll gag you if you don’t stop complaining.” Shigaraki seethes, feeling irritation creep up. “It hurts because you’ve never felt this good before, idiot.”

He remembers the first time he’d used something on his dick. It was your toothbrush, unsurprisingly, the one that vibrated with three different speeds and made you so proud of your pearly whites.

It had been so overwhelming, he couldn’t even touch the back of the head to his cock. At times, it felt so good it had hurt, had completely blinded his senses and leave him in a puddle of his own cum and sweat, panting.

So Shigaraki understood what you were trying to say - your inexperienced body needed him to slow down, ease up a little. But your gross, nasty brother wanted to ruin you.

Your character on screen died, resulting in one last heavy vibration that made you sob, thighs struggling to snap shut, hands desperately pushing at Shigaraki.

He felt you convulse in his grip, could practically feel the way your little hole was clenching as you gushed all over yourself, whining and moaning at the pleasure.

Your character was sent back to the last save, the game on a loading screen.

But Shigaraki wasn’t done.

He was still hard against your back, rubbing himself off as best he could, but he was finding his own pleasure in watching you writhe on his lap.

The controller was tossed to the side, nimble fingers sliding over your shorts, Shigaraki laughing at what he found.

“You’re so wet, holy fuck. That’s disgusting, wow.” You were drenched, the fabric of your shorts completely soaked with your juices. You only sobbed out a pitiful noise, maybe trying to deny it, but Shigaraki wasn’t listening. He was too busy rubbing over the wet spot, gleefully feeling you up. It was easy for his fingers to find a comfortable, mind-numbing rhythm, so used to playing games and deftly pushing buttons, using sticks and joysticks, directional pads and the like.

You were rocking against his hand unconcsiously, body unable and unwilling to decided whether to pull away or push closer - you had just cum, but that didn’t negate the vicious, heady sensation that his fingers brought.

Shigaraki quickly grew bored of this though, unable to ignore his dripping erection. He had never been a patient man, quickly removing the hand stimulating your swollen pussy so he could pull his cock out of his sweatpants.

With a quick movement, your shorts were tugged down, your brother completely pushing past your refusal to lift your hips, burning your skin with how forcefully the fabric was ripped down.

“Nii-san, what are you doing-you can’t, you can’t!” You cried, renewing your struggle when you felt skin against skin, his cock hot and velvety as it rested against your cheeks. “I don’t wanna do this, don’t make me do this-”

“I don’t care. I’ve tried to be good, and it’s like you don’t even care.” The man ground out, beginning to rut his hips against your ass. It was dry, and it didn’t feel great, but it was more than enough to satisfy Shigaraki. “I barely touch you, I keep my hands to myself-”

Which was a lie. Late at night, when he was sure you were fast asleep, he’d touch, just a little. Rubbing your nipples, feeling them peak under his touch. Feeling the curve of your waist, skin soft against his dry palms.

“-I wouldn’t stare either, but you wear those stupid shirts-” The deep cut ones, the ones that showed off your cleavage and allowed him weeks of jerk-off material.

“So annoying, just a stupid little imoto that follows me around, you just want attention.”

He knows you don’t do it on purpose. You aren’t trying to make him see you in a sexual light. But maybe that’s what makes it all the more appealing, how naive and innocent you are.

Fuck, he’s getting close just thinking about your purity, how much you don’t know, how much he could teach you.

He doesn’t know a ton, but Shigaraki knows enough about what feels good for him, and you probably wouldn’t want to learn, but he deserved something nice every once in a while, didn’t he?

The drag of his cock between your ass cheeks was making him loose his mind, the slide too rough, but it felt delicious and stimulated him just right, pulling at his foreskin and spreading his precum into a sticky mess on your skin.

“Fuck, stay still, lemme feel good-” His voice was choked up, still holding it’s usual nasal resonance. 

You sobbed in his hold, his fingers still playing over your shorts, exploring, keeping you occupied and frozen with sensation while he got himself off with your body.

And then he was breaking, splurting his seed all over your lower back, watching it come out of his cock in shaky squirts, painting your skin a cloudy white.

Shigaraki groaned, eyes transfixed to the sight before him. It was hard to keep them open, body shaking with little snaps of pleasure in his veins, in his stomach.

On the bed next to his thigh, the controller started shaking again. Panting, Shigaraki raised his eyes to the TV screen as you slumped against him, softly crying.

Your character was getting attacked again.

“Let’s keep playing.”

And the vibrating controller was pressed to your bare cunt, making you scream.

He’d have to wash it after this, but he figured it was worth it in the grand scheme of things

[tainbocuailnge]

fgo criticisms have been flaring up in the wake of dw’s sakura wars mobile game quitting after only half a year but I have a disease that makes me get defensive when people try to rip fgo apart as this uniquely terrible game with uniquely terrible devs so i’m going to complain about people who are complaining for a bit.

i hadn’t heard of the sakura wars game before it shut down but from what i’ve been able to find it suffered from a lot of the same problems as (launch) fgo, terrible gacha rates with no pity, slow ap recovery rates, barebones repetitive gameplay. so i guess seeing how fast sakura wars was shut down people feel like it’s only the fate name holding up fgo and in the early launch days of barely playable fgo that was definitely the case but I don’t think it’s fair to fgo to act like people only continue to play it because it’s fate, and “being like fgo” wasn’t the only problem with sakura wars either. sakura wars is a vn/dating sim series that attempted to revive the series with a mobile game that featured none of the original cast that fans cared about while fate was already a series with new characters and a new setting every instalment and the thing that stood out in this new game was actually that it DID have characters from previous fates available. hell, it’s not fair to sakura wars to claim that its series name is simply weaker than fate’s when there were other factors involved in its failure beyond “being a delightworks game”

fgo DOES improve, launch fgo is unrecognisable compared to current fgo in a good way. events have become more streamlined (events have mid- to lategame enemy hp scaling but feature damage ce’s to let newer players keep up, mission events are set up so that they basically clear themselves just by farming the most recently unlocked node), they experiment with new game modes and gameplay mechanics on the regular, they’re taking more care to make viable permanent servants and buff the older ones, and the past few months there’s also been a noticeable effort to throw out random banners for minor things as an excuse to rerun old limited servants more often. I’ll admit the bar is on the low side (strengthening quests are a ridiculous model, there shouldn’t be this many limiteds to need reruns in the first place, etc) and progress is slower than many people are willing to put up with, and I’m not saying anyone Has to put up with it or they’re a fake fan or whatever, but like, granblue fantasy is seven years old and still doesn’t have the ability to uncap a weapon multiple stages at a time when its entire gameplay loop centers around farming and uncapping weapons and they’ve buffed heles like 7 times but she’s still shit, none of fgo’s problems are exclusive to fgo.

i LIKE playing fgo. i like tapping the cards and watching my little guys go and coming up with different teams to make them go harder or just look good together or even lean into the Themes. and this is going a little bit on a tangent but i have this post window open anyway i was talking with friends earlier that one problem that a lot of mobile games seem to have is that they use “making the game play itself” as substitute for “making the game fun to play”. the only game with autobattle functionality (out of the ones I play, i don’t know everything that’s out there of course) that I feel DOESN’T do this is arknights, where you solve the puzzle that the stage presents in order to earn the right to not have to solve the puzzle every single time you play the stage and coming up with different efficient or perhaps ridiculous ways to solve the puzzle is part of playing the game. the worst case I know is dragalia lost which upon realizing that playing it sucks implemented an item to just let you skip playing stages altogether. “this game is good because you don’t have to play it” is not the selling point some people (and devs) think it is, and fgo refuses to fall into that trap - something I believe is an intentional decision because of their explicit refusal to implement NP skip.

one big advantage that fgo has over the other mobile games i’ve played is that it’s entirely turn based with no real time elements beyond start and end times of events. fgo doesn’t NEED to continue playing itself when you look away because looking away has no bearing whatsoever on your ability to clear the quest, fgo doesn’t give a shit if you look away for six hours and then close the game and only reopen it another ten hours later, you can continue right where you left off. the problem is not that you have to manually play the quest, because as far as the system is concerned you can take as much time as you like to clear that quest, it’s that the greater structure of the game wants you to repeatedly manually clear the same low-stakes quest for disproportionately small rewards. this one’s easy enough to solve by just increasing material droprates across the board. repeat clearing a low level quest is much less frustrating if you actually get drops every other clear.

but that’s a bandaid solution, because related to the issue of having to manually farm low-stakes quests is the lack of high-stakes quests to do when you want to do something a little more engaging than routine farming. outside of event challenge quests with their time limited availability, certain main story chapters that you can’t replay, and recently on JP the permanently available kiara challenge quest in the main interlude, there simply isn’t any difficult content to play. you could argue about fgo’s merit as strategy rpg in the first place i suppose but if you ask me it does have that merit and there is a clear effort from dw’s part to improve the depth of fgo’s strategy elements, the issue is that there is simply not that much content available to unleash those strategies on. of course you’re gonna get bored if all there is to do is either brainlessly repeat the same quest for minimal rewards or play the specific challenge quest that the game hands you right this moment regardless of whether that’s the kind of challenge you feel like facing right now. the solution to this one, although it’s likely going to take some significant effort on dw’s side to implement, is to make main story quests replayable.

you want to flex your brain muscles but there’s no challenge event right now? you stomped on a boss by using overpowered servants the first time but want to challenge yourself with some 3* this time? or the other way around, you beat a boss by the skin of your teeth the first time but want to stomp all over them now that you rolled some bitching 5*? you rolled a servant that’s not that suitable for day to day farming but would really shine in more difficult content and you want to try them out? you have a silly strategy in mind that would only work against certain story enemies? you’re like me and just really crave the shimosa duels? all of this involves content that already exists and is available in the game, dw would just have to figure out a way to let you access it again after clearing the chapter. and of course ideally this extends to event story quests once they’re added to the main interlude

i guess another way to put it is that i think the reason a lot of people say fgo has bad gameplay is not that its gameplay system is actually bad, in fact it has the potential to be very engaging, but rather that it’s a system that is set up to respect your time through the ability to put down the game absolutely whenever you want without being penalised, only for the game around it to go and penalise you for putting it down anyway. if you don’t diligently spend all your ap farming this quest you won’t get single damn material drop, and if you don’t play the event while it‘s happening you’re going to miss out because you can’t be sure when if ever it’ll return. so the number one way to solve the problem of fgo’s “bad gameplay” is not to make the game play itself whenever it tells you to play, but rather to make content more easily available so you don’t have to play if you don’t want to and CAN play if you do want to. thank you for coming to my ted talk i suppose

[wannabemobwife]

Guns, Glamour and Goodfellas- Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Dressed to the Nines

Dad!Mob!Tom Holland x Mom!Mob!Reader Fanfic

-Pairings: mob! Tom Holland x reader

-Warnings: Language

-Words: 3.9K

Background Info- Tom Holland is boss of his mafia and Y/N Holland, his wife, is former mafia boss turned stay at home mom but still joined Tom on his business trips and meetings. They started dating at 19 and were married at the young age of 21, realizing they only needed each other. They have two kids together, both ages 16, Parker and Rosie Holland.

*Realistically to have two teenagers, Tom and Y/N are both in their mid/late thirties but they look like they are in their mid twenties/late twenties alright. What can I say, they have really good genes. I can guarantee that Tom will still definitely look as gorgeous as he does know in his 30’s.

Author note: I enjoy writing drama, so it’s hard to have constant fluff, mostly angst (I hope, at least what I consider angst). The more times where a character almost dies but doesn’t the better to me. This is my first fanfic, I wrote this story based on being married with kids because that is the part of my life I’m most looking forward to. Heads up but there is tons of dialogue, I find that the most fun to write.

Also I enjoy PDA and a personal goal of mine is to be married for 20 years and still want to jump my husband’s bones so there are a bunch of little hints like that through the fanfic. Sorry if your name is any of the characters, feel free to change them in your mind. I know it’s stupid of me to say that but whatever.

Chapter 1: Dressed to the Nines

Words: 3.9K

You and Tom were a power couple. The Hollands, the ones with the most power and the most dangerous. A king and queen to their empire. Lately you had been tackling married life together and had been raising two kids. A boy named Parker and a girl named Rosie both the same age. But nothing could prepare you for what every parent dreads, their teenage years. All the hormones, mood swings and relationship drama that comes with it.

When both the twins turned 16 it was big turning point in your family. Rights of passage as Tom would say. You and Tom threw a massive gala to celebrate their 16 years of being alive. Tom as the leader of his own mob, money was no object and you coming from the family you did and being a former mafia boss, you both had truly opulent wealth. It was the night of their kids’ sixteenth birthday and everyone was invited from family, friends, business associates and even enemies. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer they would say. Tom and tried to keep as much as possible from your kids, trying to give them a normal childhood. Failing over and over again at that. Some nights Tom would come home bloody from beating up someone who crossed him. Or there would always been strange, bulky, built men surrounding your mansion for protection. It was hard to explain everything to the kids, but it was something they just had to do for family.

The party was about to begin, 7:00 on the dot, and the house was decorated to fit a very elegant yet youthful look. Caterers dressed in white carrying bountiful trays of appetizers. Tom and you adored the luxury of their life, even though they knew if they didn’t have all the materials they did they would be even happier. Their family is what mattered most to them. You were dressed to the nines, in a lace gold gown, with sparkly stilettos on. Her Y/H/C hair gracefully laying one her back, without a strand out of the place. And her Y/E/C eyes were beaming, if looks could kill they would. Tom couldn’t help but admire you.

“You know, it’s rude to gawk,” you said and Tom chuckled.

“I’m sorry but you’re just too beautiful not to,” he responded and placing his hands on your hips.

Rolling your eyes and smirking you said “tonight’s the night.”

“I know, should we do it now?” he questioned as his half smile turned into a frown.

“No, let him have this one more night. Without any obligation,” you had been dreading this night for years.

“Alright, darling,” he said as he kissed softly, he just couldn’t contain himself he

found his other half. The person that makes him want to be a better man. His soulmate.

Like any family there are skeletons in their closets but, the Hollands were a whole another story. Tonight was the night, one they had been dreading for 16 years, to be exact. You and Tom’s son, Parker would be tasked with the most difficult decision of his life. One that will rewrite his story. Tom wishes he would just turn it down and do what he didn’t have the balls to do when he was his age.

The day Tom’s dad brought him into the office, he knew his life would never be the same. Dom, his father and former boss of the Holland empire, made it very clear that if he turned him down, he could forget about being in this family. Tom just knows he won’t give the same ultimatum. Parker being the oldest and only son of Tom and Y/N Holland is the future of their family empire. Parker was quite popular, a playboy actually and very dashing. Wearing a black suit with a black tie and a white shirt he look just like his dad with his brown hair slicked back. Being one of the guests of honor tonight he had to look the part. Slowly made his way to the bar before his mother could find him. Desperately needing some liquid courage, he quickly poured himself a shot of vodka and downed it even faster. However nothing gets past, you, Y/N Holland.

“Parker Jackson Holland!” you fumed, catching her 16 year old son drinking.

“Hey, what’s with the middle naming me, it’s my birthday,” he responded a little startled.

“You should not be drinking, ever. You got two years, mister,” you explained.

“Alright, mum,” Parker sounded annoyed.

“Where’s your sister by the way, party is supposed to start in 10 mins,” you said as she noticed all the guest starting to arrive. A line of people already waiting at the door but everyone knew the Hollands preferred people to arrive fashionably late.

“I don’t know. Having a fit probably. Last I heard was screaming coming from her closet.”

“I’ll go check on her. Your father and I need you sober later. Understood?” You exclaimed.

“Yes, mum.” Parker was a good boy on paper but, enjoyed breaking the rules.

Right as you turned away, Parker then started to pour another shot.

“Don’t even think about it,” you said still walking forward. Parker chuckled and set the shot down.

You went to go check on her daughter. You knocked on the door when she heard something shatter. Rosie may seem timid but she definitely inherited Tom’s anger issues.

“Honey? Is everything alright?” You questioned, startled by the outburst.

“Yeah, mum. I’m sorry,” Rosie muttered seeming frustrated.

“It’s ok, oh honey!” You exclaimed, noticing the tears on her daughter face

“I know, this is stupid,” Rosie whispered trying to hide her tear stained face.

“No, no it isn’t. What’s wrong?” you said, genuinely concerned for her daughter’s well-being.

“I don’t know everything, this dress, my hair, my makeup,” she exclaimed frantically.

“Baby, you look beautiful.”

“Pretty enough that someone would want to dance with me?” Rosie whispered. You were caught off guard that your daughter could ever have thoughts like that.

“Yes of course, you are always gorgeous.” You hated seeing your baby girl beat herself up based on her looks.

“Thanks mom, I have a question?” You just nodded in response.

How did you get dad to fall in love with you?” Rosie asked inquisitively.

“Um, I guess was just myself. I didn’t put on a facade and I was very honest and transparent with him,” you answered a little taken back from the question.

“You were yourself? I find that hard to believe. From stories I’ve heard you seemed to be bold, brave and beguiling” said Rosie with a hint of sarcasm.

“Am I not those things now?” You asked, cheekily.

“No you are, just in a different way.”

“Honey, whoever you are trying impress, will love for who you are, ok?” You couldn’t stand seeing her daughter like this.

“Alright. Can you help me with my makeup?” Rosie asked because her previous makeup had been ruined by her miniature breakdown

“Yes, of course.”

Back at the party Tom was making his way around saying hello to almost everyone. He desperately needed to find his son. Tom’s and Parker’s relationship was interesting to say the least. As babies and toddlers Tom was there. He loved his kids so much but as they grew older they only noticed the times he wasn’t there. Only the missed recitals and football games, never all times that had dinner as a family and he tucked them in to bed at night. Parker is closer to his mother and his twin sister. Never really having that man to man talk with his dad yet. The time when fathers stop seeing their sons as boys and look at them as men. Tom approached Parker sitting there with his a drink in his hand, he hoped was a watered down Pepsi.

“Hey Parker, did your mom talk to you already?” Tom asked, not trying to raise too many questions.

“No, she might have mentioned something,” Parker responded.

“Ok, well after cake meet me in my office.” Parker nodded in response and noticed how he tensed a little at the conversation.

Their chat quickly ended when Harrison and his 16 year old son Henry came to wish happy birthday. Harrison is Tom’s right hand man, his consigliere and his best friend. He was more than that, Harrison was family. Harrison’s son, Henry was best friends with Parker and Rosie, ever since birth.

“Hey mate,” Tom said to his best friend Harrison.

“Hey, just came to wish this guy “happy birthday”” he said patting Parker’s shoulder.

“Happy birthday, dude” Henry said to Parker and he returned with subtle “thank you’s.” Parker slightly nodded to his dad to see if he could leave the conversation and Tom let him know it was ok.

“Come on, let’s go,” Parker exclaimed making his way to den where his other friends were.

Harrison was the first to speak up, “Have you told him yet?”

“No, Y/N and I are going to do it tonight” Tom uttered with a low toned voice.

“Geez, do you need me there?” Harrison asked, afraid Tom might say yes. Harrison was there when Tom went through the same process with his dad. Tom’s anger issues didn’t help the outcome.

“I think I’m alright, just family. Not that I don’t consider you family but I don’t even know if Rosie should be there.” Tom justified.

“It’s alright mate, I get it.”

They were both enjoying their night, making their rounds, Tom and Harrison went to get drinks, not beer this time but a scotch on the rocks as this was a classy night. Everything was dandy up until one of Tom’s men, William, came up to him informing Tom of a problem.

“Sir we have a problem,” William whispered to Tom, Tom nodded for them to follow them to his office.

“William, what now? Can’t you see I’m enjoying the party?” Tom exclaimed, closing the doors to his office.

“Sir, Daniel, was found dead at his post outside, shot by a tranquilizer gun, with a note taped to his chest, it’s for you.” William announced and handed the paper to the most important and dangerous man of the mob, his boss.

“What the fuck?” A long silence stayed in the air while Tom processed the news. Awkwardness had filled the entire room as they all awaited Tom’s response.

“For fucks sake, you need at least 3 guards posted outside. NOW!” He screamed as his anger continued to rise as read the note.

“Yes, Sir.” William said promptly.

“God forbid anything else happen tonight, but my wife and kids are the first ones to be escorted to safe house. Understood?” Tom explained as he only was only thinking about his family in that moment.

“Yes, Sir.” William said and quickly ran out before he could get the brunt of Tom’s upcoming outburst. Right on cue, Tom threw a glass ashtray at the wall, it shattering into shards.

“Calm down mate, what did the note even say.” Harrison asked with a worrisome look on his face. Tom showed Harrison the joy and his smile faded immediately. Tom for the first time, in a while, felt fear because he knew he had everything to lose.

Not wanting to deal with the life long headache that is his life. He looked for solace in, you, his wife as he spotted her over by the fireplace and made his way over to you.

“Have told you look stunning tonight?” He said instantly falling in love with you over again.

“Several times actually,” you said.

“Well I can’t help what you do to me, gorgeous.” He said placing a kiss to your temple.

“Hey, have you had the talk with him yet?” You said pointing a finger at your son getting very intimate with some girl.

The girl was Charlotte Owens. Parker and her had been together for almost a year, but you and Tom hadn’t met her formally yet. Your son was very tight-lipped the it came to his private life. She was tall, fair and had platinum blonde hair along with piercing blue eyes. Rosie didn’t seem to like her very much, constantly annoyed by her popularity status and reputation, used to be known for being with a new guy every couple weeks and don’t put it past Rosie to not give her the benefit of the doubt.

“No, remember we’re going to do it tonight. Is something wrong?” He said with concern, worried why you would forget something so important.

“No, not that talk, silly, “The talk”,” you responded. His lips formed an “o” shaped as he realized he would have to teach his son about how to be safe during sex.

“Oh, no. I’ve been avoiding it for as long as possible.”

“Why baby, you’re so good at it. You could give him a few a pointers.” You said, winking at him.

“Wow, love, you surprise me everyday. Speaking of beautiful girls, where’s Rosie. I’ve haven’t seen her all night,” Tom quickly trying to change the subject as they were at a party.

“I saw her a few minutes ago,” you said as a puzzled look grew on her face.

“Come on, let’s go find her and maybe you and I can sneak off for awhile.” He said cheekily.

“Tommy,” you whispered but eventually agreed. Slowly making your way out of the main ballroom to the secret garden next to his office.

Walking very slyly, you both made your way to secret spot near Tom’s office. Where ivy had grown throughout the brick and purple and yellow tulips lined the fence along with giant trees. There was a little wishing fountain that Tom had installed when you moved in, this was their secret spot. One where they could forget about all the violence and responsibility that tainted their lives.

Their intimate moment was ruined when Rosie walked by with some random guy named Connor, not the person she’d hope to bring there. All throughout the night Rosie seemed to be jealous of the attention her crush was getting at the party as he didn’t pay attention to her. Thus, she went find a distraction of her own.

“Oh hey, shh, look two people getting it on over there,” he whispered to her as she dragged him outside.

“Please don’t be my brother.” She murmured but felt like she wanted to throw up when she saw who it was.

“Mom, dad?” Rosie screamed.

“Oh shit, we’ve been busted,” Tom muttered against your neck.

“Hey honey,” You said while Rosie was completely mortified. Rosie’s potential hookup stood there mouth wide open.

“That’s your mum, god, she’s a babe.” Connor said.

“Connor, not helping.” Rosie exclaimed sternly as she pinched his side.

Tom spoke up, “Why don’t you guys go back and enjoy the rest of the party.”

Rosie just nodded and left as fast as humanly possible. She never wants to be that embarrassed again.

“Oh my god, we were gonna get it later.” You said.

“I know, we really screwed up this time. But have you had “the talk” with her yet,” Tom asked.

“Nope, we should both really get on that. What would I’ve happened if they hadn’t caught us?” You asked jokingly.

“I don’t want to think about that Y/N! She’s our daughter.” Tom exclaimed.

“Neither do I.”

“Enough of this, where were we?” Tom interjected immediately changing the subject.

“Well you lips were on my neck and you hand was on my waist, but I think the moment has passed and we should get back to the party,” you said rather seductively.

“Fine, I know you’re right. But fuck, I just want to make out with my wife,” Tom muttered frustratingly.

“Well you can later... in bed.” Winking as you chuckled.

“Man, that kid was right, you are a babe.”he said as he slapped your ass as you walked in front of him chuckling.

“Is it time for cake?” Harrison asks as he came up to Tom and you.

“I think it is.” Tom said and you nodded. Walking towards Rosie, who was desperately trying to erase her self from existence because of the embarrassment she’d experienced a minute ago.

“Hi, honey. Can you please go find your brother? We are going to cut the cake.” You said trying not to accidentally bring up the elephant in the room.

“Alright, fine,” Rosie muttered still a little peeved finding you and Tom like that. Rosie searched high and low for Parker.

Needing some assistance she asked Henry. “Hey, have you seen my brother?”

“Last I saw he was taking Charlotte to the green house” Henry responded.

“Alright, come on, let’s go find them” Rosie said rolling her eyes. Her hand slipped into Henry’s as she led the way. Making their way through the vast yet gorgeous yard. Rosie and Henry found Parker and Charlottes lips entangled together and bodies in a compromising position in the green house

“For fucks sake, how many people am I going to find sucking face at this party.” Rosie yelled, startling Charlotte and Parker.

“What the fuck do you want, Rosie? Can’t you see I’m busy.” Parker quipped annoyingly.

“Mom and dad want to cut the cake” Rosie responded.

“Ugh fine. Give us 10 mins” knowing he will be finished in that time.

“No, you can fuck your bimbo of a girlfriend later.” Rosie said, receiving a grimace from Charlotte.

“Don’t you fucking talk about her like that! Fuck off!” Parker yelled as Henry and Rosie left. Both of the kids had inherited Tom’s angry side.

“Well, you can explain to mom and dad you were late because you were balls deep in in your whore,” Rosie said walking away.

The moments leading up to the end of Parker’s innocence were fleeting. In more ways than one. He wasn’t a virgin even before that evening but, Parker could imagine the task he was supposed to accomplish. The 3 tier chocolate raspberry ganache cake had been cut and distributed to the guests. Happy birthday had been sung to Rosie and Parker. Parker tried to go off with Charlotte again, but Harrison stopped him and brought him to the Tom’s office.

“They’re in there,” Harrison whispered.

“Who?” Parker asked Harrison who was like his uncle.

“Just go,” Parker opened the door to see his mother and his dad sat behind the desk. The door shut behind him.

“Mom? Dad? What’s going on here?” Parker hesitated.

“Son, sit down,” Tom said, knowing this wasn’t going to be easy.

“We have to talk to you.” You interjected.

“Parker, as part of this family, there are certain responsibilities you have to take. It is a tradition in our family that at the age of 16, the sons are brought to light about the dealings of our family and what is expected of you,” Tom said as Parker grew wary. Not really understanding what his parents were trying to convey.

Throughout his entire life, he had his suspicions about his family. Wondering why men followed them everywhere, even on trips to the store for eggs. Why his parents went to work but have never seen their office, only heard it referred to as “the warehouse.” Why everything was always so damm secretive. Scared if he accidentally let some enormous family secret slip with his big mouth there would be repercussions. Never not scared of the harm that could come to his family.

“Your father, is the leader of a very powerful mob. I am part of it too, not just as wife but as his partner. There will be day when he will longer be in position of boss and you will take over,” you asserted playing off of Tom’s words.

“Our family is not only the owners of one of the world’s richest exporting company, we also do business with casinos and own multiple hotel chains. Sometimes our work brings us above the law, but the connections we have are what keep us alive.” Tom explained trying to preserve his son’s innocence.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Parker stuttered.

“Because it is time. Time for you to step up and take your place in this family. You’ve had 16 years of juvenile fun and now this is what has to be done.” Tom concluded.

“What if I don’t want this life. You don’t think I don’t know what happens behind closed doors here. All the times dad has come home with a black eye or blood on his knuckles. Why fuck isn’t Rosie here? She is the same age as me, WE ARE TWINS! Why am I the only one who has to do this. I don’t want to kill for sport like you and mom!” Parker screamed. He couldn’t handle this anymore. There was too much information he had to process.

“Do not raise your voice at your mother! Tom screamed.

“Dad, I had dreams and hopes. I wanted to go to college and travel. Find a nice girl and marry her. Experience the kind of love you and mom have. What you are asking me to do, flushes all that away. You are asking me to give up on my life.

So that’s it, I don’t have a choice,” Parker begged.

“Baby, you have a choice. Nothing is set in stone,” you said rubbing his arm.

“Y/N, you damm well know what will happen if he turns this down,” Tom yelled.

“Maybe this life works for you two, but I don’t want this kind of life. My answer is no. Find someone else.”

“Parker, you know I can’t do that. Take a couple days and think about it” Tom answered trying to stay calm.

“NO DAD! My answer is final, I’m not going to be your apprentice to carry on this heinous family legacy!” Parker exploded. It was too much.

“If you aren’t willing to do what is asked of you, then you can forget about being in this family!” Tom screamed. He did exactly what he said he wouldn’t, he gave his son an ultimatum. Parker couldn’t handle it anymore and left. Needing to forget about the fact he no longer had a say. He was stuck.

It was just Tom and you sitting in the study. They couldn’t understand where the conversation had gone. All their hopes for tonight went out the window along with potted plant Tom threw when Parker stormed out.

“Tom, you can’t force him. You can’t do what your father did to you to him.” You tried to say in a loving tone but it came out as stern.

“IM NOT, Y/N!!!” Tom screamed. He had fucked up. The words spoken tonight have rewritten his relationship with his son.

“Alright.” You whispered trying to calm your fuming husband down.

“I’m sorry I raised my voice, baby.” Tom’s tone immediately changed once he heard the softness of your voice. You just nodded in response

“Tommy?” You asked hoping Tom was now ok.

“Yes, love” Tom said.

“He’ll come around. I can promise you that.”

“I know, darling. That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Then what?” a look of confusion grew on your face.

He handed you a paper, the same one that was found on Daniel’s body, saying “Eclipsing of the Hollands. Let the show begin. Better watch your back.”

It was threat. A play to eventually be made on his life or the life of his family and you all had no idea who was behind it.

Guns, Glamour, and Goodfellas Series Masterlist

[dalekofchaos]

Harbinger and The Illusive Man

Something I think would’ve fixed Mass Effect 3 while also keeping the plot and the dynamic of The Reapers and Cerberus as the main threat is making Harbinger the big bad and The Illusive Man as his puppet or as The Illusive Man could’ve put it his “partner”

My other ME3 metas

ME3 mistakes

ME3 ending fix

I cannot state how much I hate that Harbinger is almost nonexistent in this game. 

The thing that annoyed me most about ME3 is the fact that Harbinger is not the main threat. The Illusive Man is. Harbinger has been built up as the big bad since ME2. "YOU HAVE FAILED. WE WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY." He says as he discards the Collectors. Then his speech to Shepard as the base blows up. "Human, you've changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction. You will surrender your potential against the growing void. We return, and you will rise. We are the harbinger of your perfection. We will bring your species into harmony with our own. Your species will be raised to a new existence. We are the beginning, you will be the end. Prepare for our domination. Prepare for our coming." Then in Arrival, he came pretty damn close to unleashing quick subjugation and harvest upon an unprepared galaxy. Upon Shepard foiling his plans. "Shepard. You have become an annoyance. You fight against inevitability. Dust struggling against cosmic winds. This seems a victory to you. A star system sacrificed. But even now, your greatest civilizations are doomed to fall. Your leaders will beg to serve us. Know this as you die in vain: Your time will come. Your species will fall. Prepare yourselves for the Arrival." The perfect final villain right? Unfortunately, Cerberus was more focused on than The Reapers. My problem with Cerberus and no Harbinger is Too many Cerberus, too few Reaper forces in plot. We fight Cerberus more often than the reapers. Hardly any boss fight and the one with Reaper Destroyer on Rannoch was more an interactive movie than fight. During the Horizon mission in Mass Effect 2, Harbinger was solidified as the Big Bad. It was menacing and ominous, with just the right amount of annoying. It taunted us throughout the game, telling us how insignificant we were, and how our actions were pointless. It was willing to posses drones through the Collector General to fight us personally, and when we killed the host, it tossed them aside. Harbinger even gave the typical “You haven’t seen the last of me!” villain rant. It made any fire fight frustrating, and that made me want to kill it even more; I hated Harbinger. Many games fail to do that. Harbinger was an enemy which I looked forward to defeating. I had the desire to annihilate. In Mass Effect 3, I got a codex entry and a cameo. Harbinger just swoops in at the last second and blows my friends and I to hell(and lets the Normandy save them), then flies off. Personally, I would have loved to hear Harbinger’s menacing monologue, it drove me on. I would have felt a deeper motivation to take the fight back to Earth if it told me how much destruction the Reapers were causing, how many lives were lost. I felt cheated when I got to the final mission, only to suddenly realize it was largely absent from the game. Harbinger has been replaced. Replaced by the Illusive Man and Kai Leng. The former is an old acquaintance, albeit one now controlled by the Reapers. The latter is a space ninja from a terrible book.

I will admit. The Illusive Man is a worthy foe and someone worthy enough to be Harbinger’s Saren. Kai Leng however is a terrible counterpart for Shepard. 

Kai Leng. Sucks. Period. Here is a long in depth version on why he sucks. Even in the novels Leng is a terrible character. He’s a edgelord racist.  He couldn’t even kill Anderson, he almost got taken out by an aging Drell with stage 7 Drell cancer. Oh but he has snarky one liners and he sent that stupid fucking email after Thesia. KAI LENG SUCKS! He is not even interesting. I genuinely fucking sighed when he was introduced. When he killed Thane, all I could think of was “really?”. When he sent that little email I just rolled my eyes. When I saw him at the temple all I could think of was “not you again”. When he “beat” me on Thessia(I would have unloaded my N7 Typhoon and sent his whiny ass into oblivion, but game mechanics said I couldn’t) I just felt angry that such a stupid character ever made it past the writing board. Oh and BULLSHIT. Thane and Kirrahe would have killed Kai Leng. Even near his death bed, Thane could still kill Kai Leng. Kirrahe is a hardened veteran, he is AN STG MAJOR! Kirrahe would have killed Kai Leng in a blink of a fucking eye.  Here is my take on Kai Leng. He should have been killed on Priority:Citadel. If you do not save Kirrahe or don’t talk to Thane. Shepard should kill Kai Leng. If you saved Kirrahe but don’t talk to Thane. Kirrahe comes out of cloak and bombards Leng with Scorpion rounds and Leng blows up. If you talked to Thane, Thane would blow Kai Leng’s head off. The only reason why Leng is presented as a threat is cutscene logic and bad one liners. 

But back to The Illusive Man and Harbinger

To make Harbinger work as the big bad, we need to have Harbinger constantly “ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL” 

Near the end of the first mission, before Shepard contacts the Normandy, we would see Harbinger’s hologram appear like it did in Arrival. Harbinger taunting Shepard. that the harvest begins. 

Instead of suggesting Control, The Illusive Man is basically saying The Reapers can uplift Humanity and ascend them and dominate the other races. With Harbinger’s help, Humanity will be the ultimate force in the galaxy

Everytime we fight Reaper forces, Harbinger is there to “ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL”

Kai Leng dies on The failed coup on the Citadel. The Illusive Man does not care as he is close to finding The Catalyst 

On Rannoch, instead of a Destroyer Reaper talking to Shepard, Harbinger’s hologram will appear. Harbinger will continue to taunt Shepard, but Shepard shows that everyone is coming together to end the Reapers once and for all. Harbinger would not say that the Reapers are needed to keep synthetics from killing organics. He would say The Reapers are there to ascend and are your salvation through destruction. Harbinger’s end quotes from ME2 is basically the premise of The Reapers end goals. That's all it needed to be.

On Thesia, The Illusive Man will explain to Shepard that Harbinger chose him. After The First Contact War, TIM found a Reaper artifact. In that artifact, he was contacted by Harbinger. He lost his human vision, but awakened to the truth and because of Harbinger’s guidance, he founded Cerberus. Strength for Cerberus is strength for humanity. TIM believes he and Harbinger together they could uplift and empower humanity over the lesser races. The Illusive Man is to Harbinger, as what Saren was for Soverign. He will then tell Shepard, he plans on using the Crucible to finish what the Collectors started. Completing the Human Reaper. Then TIM sends a group of Phantoms, Nemesis and Cerberus Dragons to face Shepard in place of Leng. Thesia falls. 

Sanctuary is used to create Husks and harvest humans to help create the Human Reaper

At Cerberus Headquarters, TIM says Harbinger knew more about the Citadel than Soverign. There is more than one Conduit and he found it. Vendetta will reveal that the Citadel was moved by Harbinger and taken it to Earth to complete the harvest

The confrontation between Shepard, Anderson and TIM happens but we know how TIM is on the Citadel and if you read my ending fix, you will know that Anderson would’ve went to the beam with Shepard and they are transported to the same place

Shepard will ask “Why didn’t Harbinger kill me?” “Because, we need you to understand and we need you to believe”

Same confrontation ends with either Shepard shooting TIM dead or TIM killing himself after Shepard uses paragon or renegade to reveal that Harbinger used him all his life

After Anderson passes. Harbinger “Assumes Control” over TIM’s dead body. Harbinger will explain the purpose of the Harvests. The explanation is the original ending of Dark energy. The Reapers as a whole were ‘nations’ of people who had fused together in the most horrific way possible to help find a way to stop the spread of the Dark Energy. The real reason for the Human Reaper was supposed to be the Reapers saving throw because they had run out of time. Humanity in Mass Effect is supposedly unique because of its genetic diversity and represented the universe’s best chance at stopping Dark Energy’s spread. We have a choice either Sacrifice humanity, allowing them to be horrifically processed in hopes that the end result will justify the means or use The Crucible to destroy The Reapers and find a way to stop the dark energy from spreading and it shows it is hopeful with a united galaxy. However, if we choose destroy, Harbinger will attempt to stop Shepard. A Reaperfied TIM appears and Shepard fights him, while The Normandy fights Harbinger. If we choose sacrifice humanity, Shepard will be the final catalyst to completing the Human Reaper.  But obviously no one will choose that choice as the entire point of the trilogy is to destroy The Reapers. So we get a hopeful ending. The united galaxy will work together to stop the spread of dark energy, as Hackett said “If we can put aside our grievances long enough to stop The Reapers, imagine what we can do together” 

There, I came up with a way to have the best of both worlds. Harbinger and The Illusive Man as the big bads. 

I also made The Reapers motivation to actually work. They are there to control the chaos. The harvests end with a creation of The Reaper and The Reapers are the pinnacle of evolution Harbinger’s speech at the end of ME2 was enough for a motivation. The Reapers are our salvation from the coming void. They want to ascend humanity to perfection. That makes complete sense and makes more sense than destroying everyone to save everyone????? WHo fucking wrote this Starchild garbage???

The point is, The Reapers and The Illusive Man could’ve worked as the big bads collectively together. 

[arashikitten]

The Light that Burns Twice as Bright Burns Half as Long

   When Macaque had first spotted the kid, he had immediately been drawn to him. The aura that seemed to flicker from him was warm, bright and comforting like a ray of sunlight in the afternoon. It was strong and silly, like a child’s laughter, but there was power hidden there, raw and ancient and monstrous, like that of a malicious trickster deity toying with humanity for the hell of it.

   The realization snapped into him only when he finally noticed the ornate, red and gold staff strapped to the kid’s back, the familiarity slamming into him with the force of a crashing mountain, crushing him beneath it’s oppressive wieght.

That was Wukong’s staff. The Monkey King’s most well known weapon and source of power.

   And it was being wielded by a child. Anger had bubbled in Macaque then, simmering and burning away at the corners of his vision like lava.

   He’d contemplated, then, whether or not he should just kill the boy then and there and be done with the day. It would be so simple, just a quick snap of the neck. Humans were so fragile, it was honestly a miracle they had lasted so long in the face of much more powerful, demonic creatures.

   Macaque had dismissed the idea almost as quickly as it came. No, the boy would likely be more useful to him alive. Macaque lifted one of his paws, and quickly summoned the small purple seal. He grinned before clenching his fist, extinguishing it in a small trail of smoke.

   Yes, that was a much better idea than killing him outright. Sure, it would require patience, and a lot of acting on his part, but if all went according to plan…

   Macaque backed into the dark shadows of the alleyway, reveling in the darkness they brought as they consumed him. A sharp smirk grew on his face.

   Watching Wukong’s face as he destroyed him with his own powers would be so much more satisfying than just killing some kid.

———————  ———————  ———————  ———————

   His first real meeting with the kid had been… interesting. Everything had gone according to plan, of course: catch the kid’s attention with a shadow clone avatar, have the avatar beat him, show up and defeat the avatar while looking as cool as possible. The kid had been impressed, and Macaque could feel the admiration pouring off of him in waves as he had scrambled to the top of the building Macaque was on.

   It was a nice feeling.

   One that had been completely shattered when the kid had realized he wasn’t Wukong, and had ever so kindly pointed that out.

   But Macaque, with his impressive self-restraint, was able to just barely bite down the growl crawling up his throat, turning his grimace into an awkward smile. He needed the kid’s trust, and he couldn’t have that if he snapped at him.

   Maybe this was a bad idea, a part of him thought. He wasn’t exactly known for his patience, or his people skills, and the kid would probably be comparing him to Wukong the entire time if Macaque did decide to “train” him.

   Yeah, no thank you.

   But as Macaque started to leave, the kid jumped up yet again, rushing in front of him with clear awe and excitement.

   “Can you teach me that awesome thing?!” Oh hell, he looked so excited and hopeful, like he really wanted Macaque to teach him. Macaque backed away slightly, so the kid wasn’t up in his face.

   “Uhh… don’t you already have a master? I thought Monkey king was training you?” Please take the bait please take the bait…

   Thankfully, the kid did, backing away slightly and, to Macaque’s surprise, looking a bit… disappointed. Like he wasn’t getting what he wanted from training with the great Sun Wukong.

   Suddenly, that small voice of doubt vanished in Macaque, replaced by interest. Maybe… maybe he should continue with this plan. He smiled to himself, anticipation brewing in his gut like a storm.

   “But you can never have too many teachers, right? I’m sure Monkey King would agree? It’s not like he’d want to hold you back!” Yes, Macaque could see the temptation growing in the kid. He could also see the beginnings of doubt, dissatisfaction toward the Monkey King being stoked by Macaque’s carefully chosen words.

   “Ummm… Yeah! Yes, he’d totally be cool with it!” That was a blatant lie, but Macaque let it slide. He needed the kid’s trust if he wanted this plan to work.

   He slung his arm around the kid’s shoulder, leading him to the edge of the building. He called the seal to his fingertips as he did so, quietly pushing it into the kid’s aura to slowly feed off it, before letting his paw slide from  Xiaotian’s back.

   Now, all he had to do was wait.

——————— ——————— ——————— ———————

   Macaque was losing his mind.

   Three days. That was all it should’ve taken for the seal to fill up completely. That was the most it ever had taken, and that was only because Macaque had been unable to complete it at the time. So, the seal on Xiaotian’s back should’ve been full to bursting.

   And yet, when Macaque had finally decided to check it, he’d found that it was barely 5% full. At first, he’d thought it was because the kid hadn’t been using his full power. But then he’d thought back to the day before when, in a fit of frustration, the kid had blasted a hole clean through the side of a small mountain. Aside from scaring the absolute shit out of Macaque, because holy fuck this kid is strong, that one blast alone should’ve filled up at least 20% of the seal. Clearly, that was not the case.

   Which left two options: either a) Macaque hadn’t correctly applied the seal (an idea that was very quickly disproven with a second check), or b) the kid’s aura was so strong, it was messing with his seal. It was honestly the only option that made even a bit of sense. After all, the kid’s presence had been enough to draw Macaque’s attention even when he was in a large crowd of people.

   Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that Macaque could do to fix that. Maybe if the seal had been incomplete, he could remove it and replace the old seal with a new, complete one. It would’ve been a pain, sure, but he could stand to wait an extra day or so. But this… this wasn’t something that he could fix. If he removed the seal now, then all his hard work from the past three days would go to waste, and he could not let that happen.

   Macaque sighed as he sat next to Xiaotian. The kid was out cold, curled up on the small futon that Macaque had set up in one of the rooms of his dojo. The kid had been exhausted, worked to the bone by his boss, Sun Wukong, and Macaque himself, and had come into the dojo two hours earlier with dark purple bags under his eyes and a bad case of bedhead. They’d trained for about an hour before Macaque had told the kid to get some sleep, unable to watch the kid try to clumsily strike him only to trip over his own feet.

   It was odd, really. Macaque typically wasn’t the type to enjoy being with others. He was a loner, had been for hundreds of years now. And he’d enjoyed it! No burdensome connections, no one to carry but himself, no one to tie him down to any one place. Besides, he found humans to be too annoying and needy, and demons were often so pretentious it made Macaque’s eyes want to roll out of his head. In short, he didn’t like being with other people.

   And yet, the kid had somehow managed to begin worming his way through all of Macaque’s barriers with an ease that, if he was being honest, scared him a fair bit. He’d spent years, years, building up those walls, making sure that every crack, every little weakness, was sealed up and airtight.

   Only for a kid, who Macaque had absolutely planned on killing, and whom he had only met three days ago, to bypass all of that as fast as though the walls had never even existed.

   That was why Macaque was starting to panic. If he got attached, if he actually started to care about Xiaotian- no, he couldn’t start calling the kid by his name, he’d get even more attached- if he actually started to care about the kid, then not only would he be unable to execute his plan, he’d be making himself vulnerable. He’d give himself a weakness, one that other demons would exploit.

   He could not, under any circumstances, let that happen. He needed to distance himself from the kid as much as possible, while still “training” him and filling the seal. It would take a couple of months, a lot of patience, and really, really good acting on his part, but he could do it.

   Besides, the kid was the apprentice of his worst enemy. How hard could it be?

—————— —————— —————— —————— ——————

   He couldn’t believe this. It was absurd. Ridiculous. An absolute waste of his time. And beyond that…

   “C’mon Macaque! I need to show you this one game! You’re gonna love it!!”

   ...It was embarrassing. It was so, so embarrassing.

   Qi Xiaotian had come into his dojo about an hour earlier, somehow buzzing with even more energy than usual and excitement making his eyes glitter like a diamond in the sunlight. When Macaque had asked the kid what had him so excited that he was literally vibrating, he’d expected it to be something along the lines of ‘Wukong finally taught me a new move’, or something else related to the Monkey king.

   What he had not expected was for the kid to start ranting about some video game that had just come out today. The kid had been talking so fast that Macaque couldn’t understand about 90% of what the kid said, and the 10% he could make out made no goddamned sense. Who the hell was Minecraft Steve? And on top of that, what the fuck is a “Sans”?

   When the kid had finally finished, Macaque had sat there for a moment, just trying to process what had just happened. He’d probably looked like an absolute idiot, just sitting there staring.

   When he’d finally found his voice, he’d said that it sounded interesting, and that he knew Xiaotian would have fun playing it. That was when things started to go downhill.

   As they had been walking to the training area, the kid had asked him what video games he played. He’d sounded genuinely interested too, like he really cared about what Macaque did in his free time (like he actually cared about Macaque). Without thinking, Macaque had responded that he didn’t play video games, preferring to use his time to train or carve stuff.

   At that point his fate was sealed.

   The kid gasped, giving Macaque a scandalized look. It was almost comical, and he’d  had to bite back a snort.

   “You’ve NEVER PLAYED A VIDEO GAME?!!” The kid gave him an incredulous look, mouth gaping. Macaque rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, his tail twitching nervously.

   “Ummmm… no? It’s not that big a deal-“ Macaque was cut off by the kid grabbing his arm and dragging him out of the dojo. Shit, this was not going as planned.

   Macaque dug his feet into the floor, halting Qi Xiaotian even as he struggled to tug Macaque along with him. The kid was strong, he’d give him that. He’d actually struggled a bit to stay in place.

   “Whoa whoa whoa, easy there kid. What’s with the hurry?”

   “You’ve never played a video game! How is it that you’ve never played a video game?!” Macaque shrugged nonchalantly.

   “I have other, more important things to do. Besides, they can’t be that good-“

   They’d argued over that for a while, until Xiaotian had gotten the idea to take the dark monkey to an arcade a few blocks away. That was when it happened.

   Macaque had opened his mouth, the word no already on his tongue, when the kid had given him this look. It reminded Macaque of a kicked puppy, except somehow even sadder and more pleading, and suddenly he’d found himself agreeing to go. Which was how he ended up standing in a shitty, loud, brightly colored arcade with an excitable young human buzzing around him like a hummingbird.

   Macaque couldn’t even get frustrated about it. Oh, he’d been pissed on the walk here, for sure. But then the kid had smiled at him, and he looked so goddamned happy that Macaque was going with that he couldn’t find it in himself to snap at him. He’d even started to feel excited about going, before he remembered that arcades are loud and smelly and full of people, and by that point it had already been too late.

   “OH MY GOD, THEY HAVE MONKEY MECH 3??!?! MACAQUE WE HAVE TO PLAY IT!!!” Still, he couldn’t help the small smile that crossed his face as his protege dragged him toward one of the brightly colored games.

—————— —————— —————— —————— ——————

   Shit. Shit. Shit. How had he let this happen? How could he have been so damn stupid?

   Macaque paced the darkened halls of the dojo, tearing at his hair in frustration. Xiaotian- no, the kid, he was the kid dammit- was fast asleep in one of the small office rooms, curled up on the spare futon that had effectively become his bed. Training had run far longer than either of them had been expecting, and it had started pouring rain as well. The kid had shyly asked Macaque if he could stay the night and, wanting to check on the seal’s progress, Macaque had obliged.

   It was more than two thirds of the way full. Which, given that a month and a half had passed since he last checked it, made sense.

   What didn’t make sense was the distinct dread that overcame him upon that discovery, turning his insides to ice and causing worry to twist in his stomach. Dread quickly turned to confusion, which became anger, which gave way to one hell of a realization.

   He’d fucking grown attached. The one person in the world that he needed to emotionally distant from, and of course Macaque had gotten attached. It was just… he’d never had anyone be genuinely happy or excited to hang out with him, or talk to him, or anything like that. Most people who saw him tended to shy away or, if they knew who he was, bolt in terror. And in the past few hundred years, he’d grown accustomed to that.

   And then there was Xiaotian, who actively sought him out, who really enjoyed being with Macaque, who actually talked to Macaque like he was really interested in what he had to say, and who smiled at him whenever he entered the dojo, and who treated him like an actual goddamned person. Macaque had never gotten to feel that before, like someone really gave a damn about him.

   And slowly, Macaque had begun to feel the same about Xiaotian. He found himself genuinely interested in whatever the kid would rattle on about, found himself feeling actual concern whenever the kid showed up to train with bruises or injuries. He’d grown fond of the kid, with their training time becoming his favorite part of the day.

   Which would be great, if it wasn’t for two little things: a), the kid is also being mentored by his worst enemy, and b), MACAQUE WAS STILL PLANNING ON BETRAYING THE KID! Except now, the mere thought of that made Macaque feel sick with guilt as he imagined the confused, hurt look Xiaotian would give him if he did, and Macaque knew he wouldn’t be able to go through with it.

   But he didn’t have a choice! If he didn’t do this, if he didn’t go through with the plan, then he’d lose everything! All that progress, all that hard work, wasted! He’d be alone for the rest of his life…

   And if you do go through with it, you’ll end up pushing away the only person who cares about you.

   Macaque froze, ramrod straight. His arms fell to his sides as the sounds of the night permeated the air. He stood in the darkness, surrounded by the shadows of his regret.

   “Oh,” he said quietly, as tears dropped from his cheeks onto the cold, wooden floor.

—————— —————— —————— ——————

   He removed the seal that night, while the kid was asleep. It had been easy, easier than he expected, and the resulting golden glow from the kid’s aura made it worth it. He’d basked in the glow until he’d finally fallen asleep, and when he woke up the next morning, the kid was gone. He’d panicked at first, believing that Xiaotian had somehow found out about the seal and the plan and that he hated Macaque now and was gonna get Sun Wukong and-

   And then he’d seen the kid’s note, saying that he needed to go to work and he’d be back at around 6:00, and Macaque breathed a sigh of relief.

   Before cringing slightly at his earlier panic. It hadn’t even been a whole day since he’d decided not to betrayXiaotian, and he was already panicking about the kid turning his back on him? What was he, the kid's father?

   Some deep part of him said yes, before he quickly shoved it back down. No, he was not the kid’s parent. Mentor? Maybe. Friend? Honestly, yeah. Parent? Hell fucking no. He already had enough to worry about without mother-henning the reckless young adult.

   Slowly, Macaque went about his day. Went out into the city to get (read: steal) food, fought a demon or two for the hell of it, watched people from atop a building, before he headed back to the Dojo to get ready for the day’s training session with Xiaotian.

   Macaque checked the clock as he finished up. 5:55. Excitement rose within him. The kid said he would be here at six; he should be arriving soon.

   Macaque tried to hide his excitement as he waited, leaning against the front door. He’d gotten rid of the seal, Wukong didn’t know about him, and Xiaotian still wanted to train with him. All in all, this had been a good 24 hours, Macaque thought.

   The minutes ticked by. 6:00 became 6:30, which became 7:00. Excitement become concern, which became anxiety. Xiaotian was never, ever this late. Hell, the kid would usually be so excited to train that he’d show up ten minutes early, before Macaque would be fully prepared.

   Macaque checked his new phone (Courtesy of an impromptu shopping spree with Xiaotian). Nothing from the kid saying he would be late. Actually, aside from a message from this morning that mirrored the paper note he’d found on his desk, there was nothing at all.

   That was what spurred Macaque to start running through the city, leaping across rooftops with ease. In just a few minutes, he was almost to the kid’s apartment, wind in his fur as he turned the corner-

   Rubble. Yellow police tape everywhere. Massive scorch marks that streaked the walls and ground. One of the walls of the apartment had been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole.

   There was the scent of blood and burning flesh.

   Macaque couldn’t breathe.

   He couldn’t B R E A T H E.

   He stumbled away from the scene from the flashing light of police cars and the scent, that horrible scent-

   It was Xiaotian’s scent. Gods, that was Xiaotian’s scent, mixed in with the blood and burned flesh, and something had- someone had hurt him- someone had hurt his kid-

   He was running now, rushing to the hospital because his kid was injured and he needed to be there to make sure he was alive and ok, because he couldn’t lose the one person on the goddamned planet who cared, or he would go insane. Guilt crashed over him in waves, he should’ve been there-

   He doesn’t remember the trip to the hospital. He doesn’t remember transforming into a finch and flying around the building, doesn’t remember the search at all.

   He does, however, remember finally finding the kid’s room. He does, however, remember the short, old doctor saying that he had several 3rd degree burns, multiple broken bones, and that he may never be able to see out of his left eye ever again.

   He remembers, so vividly, finally catching sight of the kid’s battered and burned form, bandages obscuring the entire left side of his face, an oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose.

   He will forever remember just how pale the kid looked.

   Like he was dead.

   Macaque flew to the roof of the hospital, clumsily transforming back as he skidded to a stop. He fell to his knees, staring numbly down at the concrete rooftop. He was dimly aware of the tears that silently streaked down his face, but he could not feel them.

   He couldn’t feel much of anything.

   Why? Why couldn’t he have just one person who cared? Why did the universe have to take the only person who gave a damn?

   Anger, slow and hot, began to burn at the tears. Why the hell did Xiaotian have to be the one to get hurt? Was it karma for Macaque? Was it the universe’s way of getting revenge for all of his misdeeds?

   But if that was the case, then why had Xiaotian been the one who got hurt? Why had Xiaotian been the one to almost die, to have his bones shattered, his flesh burned, his blood spilled? Why hadn’t Macaque been the one to suffer, instead of a kid who did nothing but give a monster hope to be better?

   “WHY??!!”, Macaque screamed to the heavens, “WHY DIDN’T YOU TAKE-ta-take me….. wh-why didn’t you take me instead...why….” his voice broke into a whisper, as his tears burned like liquid fire in his eyes.

   The heavens, cold and uncaring and so unlike Xiaotian’s warmth and light and kindness, gave him no answer.

[radramblog]

a few thoughts on FTL

Halo 5 commentary has to be delayed yet again. It happens. That does, however, leave me somewhat lacking a topic for this afternoon.

Hmm.

Let’s talk about FTL for a bit. Why the fuck not.

It’s been a while since I picked this game up for a run. As I recall, I listed it as one of my favourite games of all time at the start of the year, and while I might have been looking with rose-coloured glasses, it’s not like the game has gotten any worse with age. If anything, it might have gotten better.

Modern roguelikes are, more often than not, very action-based. As the player keeps playing new and different runs, they unlock new items, but also gain the knowledge and reflexes to keep getting further without them. You figure out the timing on Enter the Gungeon’s dive-roll, or particular enemy or boss behaviours in Isaac. This combination of factors makes you really feel like you’re honing a skill rather than just playing a game, and make it all the more satisfying when you succeed.

It also makes a lot of those games really stressful. Like, really stressful, to the point where you get extremely frustrated at yourself for even the tiniest of mistakes. Most action-y video games have some element of this, particularly ones known for their difficulty as roguelikes often are, and its easy to blame yourself for failure all of the time regardless of how true that actually is.

This is kind of one of the biggest strengths of FTL, and one of its most unique features among modern roguelikes. As tense as most of this genre is, FTL is a game that is uniquely relaxing to play. The music is calm and mysterious most of the time, with even a lot of battle themes having a more curious tone than a violent one, not to mention the gorgeous atmosphere conveyed through the dialogue and aesthetics. While the management-style gameplay can get frantic at times (especially with the infamous Flagship), the ability to completely pause time and manage your crew and ship while doing so means you always have enough time to think things through and plan your next move, be that your route through the stars or how best to move your crew around to repel boarders, fires, or both.

I think the other really interesting part of FTL as compared to many a roguelike is how little the game hides behind unlocks, and how fresh it feels as a result. There’s so many moving parts within runs- different subsystems and weapons, the various species of crew you can have, and how the sectors you chose influence the encounters you have, that make no two runs truly the same. The “blue text options” are honestly kind of genius- a way of either letting the player get lucky when the problems they face suit the crew or ship they have, or to reward them for the versatility they’ve chosen to pursue. There’s just so many of these little things that spruce up the world and can lead to some fun secrets or in some cases the rare cruiser-unlocking sidequest.

The extra ships are the only new things you unlock by playing the game, which is kind of refreshing, honestly. It means that what you see at the baseline is kind of what you get, with you as the sole exception. And the unlocked cruisers are very much more alternate playstyles than upgrades, even within the variants- While Fed Cruisers A and B encourage a slower, more fortified but inevitable style of fighting battles, the C layout is brutally, suicidally aggressive and relies on its Clone Bay to keep the crew technically standing. Each of these ships also further reinforces the game’s mechanics- the Stealth Cruiser demonstrates how important upgrading Engines can be, as well as the sheer power of Cloaking, while Rock Cruisers tend towards picking your battles so you don’t run out of the limited Missiles your weapons require.

It’s really such a simple game- entirely controllable with a mouse, with various keyboard shortcuts- that I’d encourage anyone unfamiliar to give it a shot. It’s got the depth to suit its astronomical pursuits, and scratches that tinkering itch you get with managing and upgrading and finding new stuff to strap on to your ship. It’s not too RNG-heavy for a roguelike, since you can always pump more money into the ship itself if the shops aren’t biting, but it does make every choice you make feel like it matters.

Fuck me it’s hard though isn’t it? Can barely beat the bloody flagship on easy, let alone normal, and hard just makes me die over and over.

[bill-beauxquais]

Blogging my Bravely Default II Playthrough - Chapter 2

Here we are for a new chapter!

As usual, spoilers for up to chapter 3′s title card below the cut (so all of chapter 2, none of chapter 3), you have been warned.

Overall opinion: The game is still fun to play and while I sometimes laments being so slow, I like that I can play a lot without feeling like I’m goind too fast. On a story standpoint, I’m a bit bummed that this chapter didn’t really make any real progress in its main thematics, but on a gameplay level, it was fun.

Gameplay: I talked about there being more strategy in battle already, but I realise I didn’t mention why. Compared to previous games, it seems like enemies use brave and default a lot more, and they actually go into negative. It happened in previous game, but if my memory serve, it was only certain enemies who had this quirk baked into them. Also, nearly all of them have counters and immunity, preventing you from just braving 4 times and calling it a day (albeit it still works reasonably often).

However, I did notice a flaw as well in the balancing. Some sidequests (most notably, the mushrooms sidequest) only opened to me after I finished the chapter’s story, but they took place in a dungeon where every enemy was WAY underpowered. I’m still getting underdog bonuses in the story, so I’m not overleveled. I don’t know what exactly unlocked the sidequest, but I checked everytime I set food in Wisward. On the other hand, the sidequest boss actually took me some planning, while I basically Yolo’d all the asterisks of the chapter. Weird. In the end, the whole dungeon was simply a long corridor (every enemy fleeing from me), with one tough boss at the end. Jarring.

Speaking of dungeon, this chapter really made them a lot longer than anything the serie had until now. On one hand, they can get a little boring and frustrating after a while, but on the other, I do like that they allow you to really train your new asterisks by putting more time between each of them, so overall I’d say it’s a positive.

Speaking of which, I finally looked into what you get from the boat, and I need to mention the inclusion of JP orbs, to give you JP experience on the go. It makes it easier to level up jobs without having to grind with ill matched teams, which is a good idea, since ill matched teams are sometimes really unforgiving because of the immunities and counters mentioned earlier. You still end up having to train jobs the old fashioned way, but any shortcut is good.

Speaking of grinding, I was surprised that I didn’t need to grind even once, for now. I wouldn’t qualify the asterisk battles of underwhelming, they took me half an hour on average and demanded strategy and quick thinking or risk taking, but I went into most of them with in-training teams full of ill matched underleveled and redundant jobs and still won. For me, that’s just the right difficulty to be interesting without getting frustrating.

My favorite asterisk of this chapter probably was the Shieldbearer for more Gloria Tankness (I also noticed it pairs well with White mage for a tanky healer)  , but Ranger is good as well (but I’m biaised from the previous games. Always liked hunter). I appreciate that they changed red mage to be less of a watered down mix of Black and White, but I’m not sure I’m using it very efficiently. It just doesn’t seems to deal a lot of damage, and I prefered the old one’s design. This one looks a lot more boring. As for Artist, I’m not really using it very well for now either. I feel like there’s already tons of debuffing skills in other classes.

I didn’t really get the point of Wayward Wood, since you know where the correct exit is, there’s not much point in making a looping/”lost wood” kinda dungeon, because it’s not like you will get lost (unless you’re doing it willingly the first time just to see what happens). Maybe it’ll open other paths later, who knows.

Writing: Still good, albeit I think i prefered Savalon. I suppose I expected to see more of Elvis’s backstory and family, why did he come study magic, how did Lady Emma pass away... But nothing of the sort. I don’t think like it really helped see Elvis any more in depth, sure he is a good friend, but that’s something we already could infer. I would’ve liked to see his character broken down more.

I’m always happy to see dead kids stories (don’t get me wrong, I love kids, but I also roll my eyes quite a lot when writers chicken out on having anything bad happen to a kid in their stories) but I don’t know if this was strong enough to be the focus of the entire chapter. I don’t think it had any connection to Musa’s downfall or the crystals. But I could see Wiswald coming back later in the story to tie back into these themes, and maybe that was just the Wiswald introduction chapter.

With the dead kids, crazy people, greenery, hunter & red mage asterisks, and those darn Mushrooms and flower enemies, it’s also hard to shake the feeling of this being Florem.02, and Florem will always be extra special to me.

Writing - Theories: Definitely called it for Edna’s veiled ass, although introducing that silver haired lady just before almost threw me for a loop. I’m assuming she’s the traveler handing out asterisks like candies, and Adelle probably knows (or at least she knows her sister is related to asterisks in some way)

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I had a theory back when playing Default for the first time, that asterisk made people crazy or at least, more extreme, and that’s why they all made the perfect little mascot for theirs each time. And also why Ringabel *and* Artemia in the anthology lost their memories when they lost their asterisk: it plays into their brain and personalities. So, nice to see theory confirmed by the sequel.

As expected of its unredeemable bosses, Folie kicked the bucket, which begs the question: I fully expect them to have another gauntlet like the previous games. So is a timeloop/universe hopping all but confirmed at this point, or will this be something else? Will the characters’ deaths be retconed or explained away? I feel like some of these characters could be redeemed in a timeloop, and stopped an saved before they do much damage. The asterisk are pretty much the ones to blame in nearly every case for the sudden change of heart of their holders.

I’ve got that flimsy theory that Shirley is Emma’s kid, based on a similar hairstyle, the fact the gambler asterisk pairs well with black mage, and that Shirley mentioned her mother leaving her father. Who knows. I liked Shirley.

Adelle is definitely crushing hard on Elvis, but I think he’s pretty much ace. Interesting to see how this develops.

Graphics: Gonna hand it to them, i was impressed that they actually made a unique model for Mona, all to use it for one cutscene. Long gone are the days in which they just reused Yew and Magnolia’s models for Altair and Vega, two majors characters. This is the kind of attention to detail we like to see here. No cutting corners. They even made a model for the paintings, too.

The fog effect was pretty rad as well, and definitely got me running a few laps like a giddy kid. You like to see it.

Elvis’ head looked pretty big compared to his friends, noticeably so. But I suppose Bravely Default 1 and second weren’t that much better, and even worse. The main 4 were DEFINITELY chibised compared to other characters (which made Alternis look like a baby in the Eternian team)

Performance: I noticed a bit less lag, but I also made the battle speed slower, this is probably related. Else, it’s the same things.

Music: Elvis’ theme is pretty good. I remember listening to the first drafts that were datamined from the first demo back in the day, and it was already my favorite.

However, I wasn’t a fan of Wiswald’s overworld theme, and the city’s was forgettable.

[bustedassgames]

Chaos Legion

Man.

Fucking Chaos Legion.

It's an hack and slash made by Capcom, it's not Devil may cry, but it's kinda close.

The plot is... I don't know how to describe it, it feels good enough, but it isn't delivered very well; it's about two edgy anime dudes, Sieg Wahrheit , which, by the way, is named after a fucking painting, and Victor DeLaCroix. Sieg ( the dude you control ) killed Siela, a girl who was very important to Victor, we don't know how or when, but now Victor has gone mad and wants to bring about the end of the world and bla bla bla bla

And, you know, this isn't THAT BAD, i mean, there's a little bit of mistery going on since we don't know why Sieg killed Siela or what's Victor’s plan etc, but it feels soooo clichè and it kinda makes it hard to take it too seriously, since fucking EVERYONE can't stop from making cringe anime poses in every single cutscene.

But enough of that shit, now for the gameplay. In this game you kill stuff, a lot of demon stuff and man does it feel great to kill stuff in this game. It controls like a standard third person hack and slash, you've got your standard 4 hits combo, a dodge roll, you can sidestep etc, but the interesting part comes with the legion system, your legion is basically your stand, you can choose up to 2 legions per level, there's about 7 of them and they all feel cool to use. You can use your legion by eiether performing an assist (your legion comes out for a single attack) or by just summoning them, which makes Sieg weaker and slower but the price to pay is well worth it. Sieg in general controls pretty well, the dodge roll is kinda trash and jumping away is always the better solution for dodging attacks. Also it feels sooooo cool to just walk around with your legion following you, makes for great screenshots too!

The levels are super linear, you go in a room, enemies spawn, you kill them, go to the next room, repeat. BUT, surprisingly, it doesn't get boring! Killing shit just feels good and there's enough room for you to experiment and play around with your legion to see what works and what doesn't, and it's something that you'll have to do cause this game doesn't fuck around, even on the standard difficulty some levels will kick your ass for a while, but the game isn't very long so it doesn't get too frustrating. Bosses are also pretty good for the most part, even if a bit gimmicky.

*im too cool to look into the camera* This leads me to talking about something else; the lenght of Chaos Legion. It's pretty short, about 5 hours to finish up the campaign, but you can also get back on the already completed levels to get more exp and high scores etc etc. The thing is, those 5 hours will feel much, much longer than what they really are. I would normally be able to finish a game that lasts 5 hours in one sitting, but Chaos Legion fucking EXHAUSTED me, after every couple levels i just had to close the damn thing cause i was phisically getting tired, but in a good way! Im not sure how to describe it, you should try this for yourself. One of the things that can make the whole experience feel frustrating is the lack of a decent tutorial for most of your moves, or any kind of explanation on how to level up your damn legion really. For example, at one point i kept on bumping into items that i just couldn’t reach with my normal jump, i went into the menus and found out that i was supposed to be able to jump higher thanks to one of my legions but it didn’t really tell me how, turns out you have to level up the ‘’enchant’’ attribute to get passive bonuses for Sieg, which kind of fucking sucks. Speaking of level up, there are two ways to get stronger, exp ( which is used for your legions only ) and items, items straight up increase your attributes permamently, and there’s no end to them, so in theory you could just repeat a level over and over again to farm stat-boosting items to get stupidly op, but there wasn’t really a need to do that. You can see that as a kind of last resort, if the game is getting too intense, you’re taking too much damage or not dealing enough, just retreat and farm a bit, it can only get easier. To wrap this up, there are two last things i want to mention At one point in the game you get to play as another character, Arcia, who duel wields guns, and honestly, despite her having a single level, she’s just so much more fun to play as than Sieg! The whole time i was playing her level i kept on thinking ‘’man i wish there was a whole game where you play as her’’ which i found pretty interesting, given how usually games throw at you ‘’alternative’’ levels (such as the ones with vehicles in crash bandicoot) and they can be total trash or just boring, when here it’s just better than the base game!

And now, for the audio. The audio is really fucked up. The voice acting is... decent, about what you would expect from a sunday morning anime, the sound effects are way too fucking loud, i really suggest turning them down first thing after you boot up the game, but the music is FANTASTIC, honestly, the boss themes are absolute banger and they immediatly ended up in my playlist, if you’re not sure about playing this try to look up the boss theme, you’ll want to play this after hearing that!

Oh, an by the way, this is painting after which the protagonist is named, it’s called  Allegory or The Triumph of Justice, 1598, by Hans von Aachen

[transfemininomenon]

short answer: its a bad game

long answer: okay sit down i have so much to say about this game and full disclosure inevitably a lot of this is going to come to My Personal Opinion and ALSO full disclosure that i have not ever actually Finished dark souls 2 because ive on two separate occasions gotten half-way through and then given up because i just was NOT having fun FUCK shrine of amana piece of shit awful god damn fucking area what the FUCK were you thinking with that area with its heat seeking magic missiles and water and random holes in the world and millions of enemies an 

its basically divided up into a few different sections - presentation & theming, quantity vs quality, how difficulty is handled in the game, and the gameplay itself, and how they all kind of go hand in hand with each other 

on the subject of presentation & theming, THE big thing when it came to dark souls 1 is that the world is oppressive, dark, and Difficult. the difficulty of the game is put right into the theming of the game in that its a hard game while the WORLD is a shitty and difficult place in the story. but on the back of that is another theme which is that of yes the world is oppressive and bleak and feels hopeless - but you keep going Anyway and no matter how insurmountable something might feel you can and WILL defeat it

this is further built into the game through the covenant system as well as summonable npcs for boss fights. the game not only says that its okay to ask for help if need be, it actively encourages & rewards people for helping others with the covenant system. its not just a game that is Hard - its a game that’s scary and difficult and dark but also actively encourages you to seek help and to also BE the person helping others survive in a seemingly hopeless world. and that triumph of finally getting past something you were stuck on for so long feels SO good and becomes worth all the trouble

dark souls 2, meanwhile, buys right into the “dark souls is HARD casuals get OUT” mentality. literally the intro cutscene to the game is like “man youre gonna DIE youre gonna DIE so MUCH and youre gonna lose all your SOULS and youre gonna be so MAD”. in contrast with the original dark souls’ opening cutscene which establishes the base lore/story of the game while introducing different characters & future boss fights, the opening cutscene of dark souls 2 does nothing beyond “haha ur gonna be so MAD” 

and it just really kills the vibe Immediately for me. it no longer feels like a really interesting story about overcoming adversity through determination and struggle. it just feels like well i gotta prove im Good and Kill The Boss 

then there’s the issue of quantity vs quality. when it comes to both zones & boss fights, dark souls 2 by far went for quantity when it came to them and the actual quality of both suffered a Lot as a result. like, there’s a LOT of zones and boss fights in dark souls 2. a LOT. and yet i genuinely currently can, off the top of my head, remember around 5 by name, and none for any Good reason. a lot of the zones just end up blending together because there’s SO little actually memorable things about them 

and the exact same is true with the bosses. many are reskins of bosses from 1, very few actually have much in the way of interesting mechanics or good design, and a lot of them are just so Easy. without even really trying when i was doing my attempts at the game id end up defeating some bosses in something like 10 hits without ever taking much damage. much like the zones there’s very few bosses i can even actively remember because they’re just SO unmemorable and boring. the bosses that i DO remember are only because they end up just getting reused as normal enemies, sometimes as quickly as the VERY next zone

which this ties into another one of my big issues which is how the game handles difficulty. when it comes to others games in the series the difficulty comes in ways that, while they may be frustrating sometimes, almost always at least seem Fair. if i die its PROBABLY because i fucked up, whether it be mistiming an attack, anticipating the wrong enemy move, or rushing into a situation im not prepared for. most of the time i die and i go yeah, okay, i see where i messed up, and that lets me bounce back in and do it better

the difficulty in 2, on the other hand, more often than not comes very cheaply. a big issue i have long complained about in terms of area design is there’s SO many random holes in the world for you to suddenly fall into, including a number of bosses where this is the case. then rather than having enemies actually have interesting or different moves to them the game tends to either send swarms of enemies at you or have them appear out of hiding and ambush you. very little when i die in that game do i ever feel like it was because i actually did something wrong and it always just feels cheap & unsatisfying 

this is then weirdly paired up with bosses being so lackluster where most of them are just SO easy and require such little thought that even defeating those doesnt even give a big sense of accomplishment. there’s just so little Satisfaction to be gained from the game and SO much frustration 

THE big thing with all of this is that all of those above three things i could forgive if the game itself was at least Fun but it just........... isnt to me. the game itself constantly feels SO clunky and slow, even compared to earlier titles - like demon’s souls of all games feels Better to play than dark souls 2 does. i never feel like i have the level of control with my character that i do with the other games and combat feels awkward and just in general not very fun 

enemies tend to have really weird timing with their attacks, rolling feels weird, and it could just be the weapons ive tried in the game but none really ever feel Good. i tend to in soulsborne games go for Big Sword (except in bloodborne where i tend to move more toward dex builds on account if it being the one games where i actually Get parrying) and not even the act of swinging a Giant Sword around could ever make me happy in that game

exploration isnt fun because the areas arent interesting and the bosses suck................ it isnt fun to fight things because the game doesnt feel good and the difficulty always feels cheap.............. the theming isnt interesting and there’s nothing about it that draws me in or inspires me like various themes in the other games.................... its just overall nothing i really am interested in or want in a souls game and when the OTHER ones give me that in their own different ways there just really isnt any reason for me to want to play that game 

this all isnt to say there arent aspects of dark souls 2 that i DO like - majula is a VERY good hub area and only beaten by the nexus on my list, and Lucatiel is my favorite character & storyline out of anything else in the whole series. she’s such an interesting and tragic character and her storyline better showcases the undead curse and the reality of how Terrifying and sad it is than any other storylines in the other games and its VERY good 

those arent enough to make up for the issues i have with the game though so im going to long say that dark souls 2? sucks 

[misssophiachase]

Klaroline AU Week - Day 3: Crossovers/Fusions

He’s the new hotshot recruit at the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School and unbeknown to him, she’s his new instructor (you know how this goes).  Lines from the movie in italics (because I’m no aeroplane expert).  

Take My Breath Away

Sunday 20:45: Raised By Wolves Cocktail Bar, San Diego, CA

“I start my new job tomorrow, Kat,” she insisted. “I should be home in bed preparing.”

“You do that every night, roomie,” she shot back by way of response. “And drinking wine and watching the Notebook for the millionth time doesn’t count as an activity.”

Caroline was an Astrophysicist and had been working in DC for the past ten years. She’d recently moved cross country to take a contract position at the  Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego and had reunited with her best friend Katherine who was a Professor at the University of California in La Jolla.  

It made sense for them to move in together, but Caroline was realising that Katherine was one of the nosiest roommates ever. 

“This is a completely new role for me,” she argued. “I need to be on my game, these officers are some of the best in the Navy, Kat. They don’t call it Top Gun for nothing.”

“I’m jealous that you get to work with gorgeous men in uniform and I have to lecture children.”

“I never understood that. What is it with everyone’s obsession with men in uniform?”

“Well, maybe you just haven’t seen one in the flesh yet?” His crisp but attractive English accent wasn’t enough to stop the rolling of her eyes. 

“And I suppose you’re going to remedy that situation,” she drawled, turning in her chair and meeting his dark blue eyes for the first time. 

She wanted to deny it but she couldn’t. This guy was hot, with or without the white, naval uniform.  Sexy stubble, sinful, crimson lips and dirty, blonde hair that curled teasingly over his ears was only the beginning, he had a pair of rogue dimples that she swore had superpowers they were that disarming. 

“Alright, love?” Caroline felt Katherine nudge her subtly in the ribs. She needed to retain what composure she still had. 

“I think you got the wrong location, the fancy dress party is on campus,” Caroline teased.  

“Cute,” he shot back, licking his lips teasingly. She should have been repelled but this guy had the opposite effect and Caroline knew it had nothing to do with the uniform. 

“I need to apologise for my friend,” a fellow officer, also in head-to-toe white offered. “He can’t help himself, he was dropped on his head as a baby.” 

“Oh, I know what this is,” Kat realised. “This is your little, two-man act to try and pick up poor, unsuspecting patrons.”

“Gee, tough crowd,” he murmured in his friend’s ear, although they could still hear him. Officer Number One’s gaze hadn’t wavered, it was still firmly trained on Caroline. 

“I’m Lieutenant Klaus Mikaelson, this is Enzo St John,” he offered by way of introduction, his eyes slipping lower and perusing the low-cut, black top Katherine insisted she wear. Caroline could feel an unmistakable blush forming in that region and hoped he wouldn’t notice. He was an arrogant ass for sure but her body obviously didn’t care about that. 

“Lieutenant?” She asked, wondering if this cocky guy was one of her students because if so this was going to be really awkward come morning. 

“We’re Naval Aviators,” he said it slow like she couldn’t understand the concept. “At Top Gun.”

“Impressive,” Katherine cooed, her voice laced with sarcasm, not that Officer Number Two noticed. 

“I go by Lucifer though,” he shared, they both looked at Enzo curiously. 

“Did your mother not like you?” Kat asked, mouth agape. Unlike her friend she hadn’t been around the Naval culture Caroline had.  

“It’s his call sign, like a nickname,” Klaus explained, again slowly. Caroline had to stop herself from telling him where he could shove his mansplaining.   

“My surname is Saint, get it?” The girls just looked at each other thinking that was just weird logic. 

“And what is your, call sign is it?” Caroline bluffed. 

“The Original,” he smirked, knowingly, tipping his hat in her direction. 

“The Original what?” She asked, unable to help herself.  

“Well, how about we get to know each other and I’ll tell you all about it, love.” 

“Wow,” she muttered, Caroline was surprised there was any oxygen left in the bar his ego was that inflated. “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to pass. In fact, we were just leaving, right Kat?”

She picked up her purse and grabbed Katherine’s hand. She might have wanted to be there but Caroline had no interest in staying any longer.

Monday 05:45: “The Strand” Pacific Beach, San Diego, CA

“Tully! Tully, come back here, girl!” He heard a melodic voice before he saw her. 

Running along Pacific Beach was his rare downtime these days. Flight school was intense, not that Klaus minded. He was a fighter pilot first and foremost and he was living his dream.

He liked to think he was confident, most people considered him arrogant but Klaus could practically fly in his sleep it was that deeply ingrained in his life, so too the Navy. 

The first time he’d faltered since arriving was the previous night. Klaus considered himself good with women but his performance at the bar was woeful. If he wasn’t aware, Enzo had been reminding him ever since. He’d never had a woman literally leave a place because she didn’t want to talk to him.  

Klaus knew he’d acted stupid, peddling those tired lines but he had a habit of doing that when he liked someone. And he liked this girl, that much was clear given he’d been thinking about her ever since. Not that he’d probably ever see her again.

The golden retriever bounded over to him, rubbing against his bare legs and almost tripping him in the process. Klaus stopped to lean down and give her a pat. “Hey, girl.” 

He looked up into the familiar, blue eyes of the woman from last night. Dressed casually in form-fitting jeans and a white t-shirt, those blonde waves hanging loose over her shoulders, Klaus didn’t think she could look any better than the previous night but he was wrong. 

“Lose something?” He asked, noting just how adorable she looked flustered, her creamy cheeks tinged pink from the exercise.  

“You again?” she asked, obviously only just realising who he was. “I didn’t recognise you without your costume.”

“There’s that sarcastic wit I’ve missed,” he chuckled. “I take it this is a friend of yours.” Caroline eyed the dog in frustration as she rubbed up against him lovingly.

“Traitor,” she muttered. “Tully is my friend’s dog and as I’ve discovered this morning has a mind of her own and enjoys flirting with strange men.”

“I’m not a stranger,” he drawled. “You know my name but I never caught yours, love.”

“That’s not my name,” she shot back. Klaus felt his muscles going cold so started stretching on the spot, his shorts riding up even higher. He could see her checking him out like she had last night. He still had it. 

“Well, if you told me then I wouldn’t have to call you that,” he grinned. 

“I better get going, don’t want to be late,” she replied, hooking the leash to Tully’s collar. 

“Late for what? Or is that just another excuse to get away from me?”

“I start a new job today, I need to be on time.”

“Well good luck, love,” he offered. She didn’t bother to argue about his endearment and just shook her head. Everything in Klaus wanted to ask her out again but knew it would probably be pointless. 

Monday 09:45: Miramar Naval Air Station, San Diego, CA

“Civilian specialists are here because they are our very best source on enemy aircraft. One of our very best is Caroline Forbes. She has a PHD in astrophysics and is a civilian contractor so you do not salute her. But you better listen to her because the Pentagon listens to her.”

“Good morning,” she greeted them. Klaus was seated in the front row with Enzo not quite believing what he was seeing.

Turns out her new job just happened to be him. He was torn over whether it was a good development or a bad one. Hooking up with your boss was obviously frowned upon but at least this way he knew where to find her. 

The way she looked in that fitted, black, skirt suit with her wavy hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her creamy neck was messing with his composure and looking around the room he could see his fellow students thought the same thing.

A ripple of jealousy came over him and Klaus didn’t like it one bit. 

Somehow he’d managed to lose track of what she was saying, something about F5 and MIG 28 Aircraft but he’d been too busy to really take much notice. 

“However, the MIG 28 does have a problem with its inverted flight tanks. It won’t do a negative G pushover,” she explained. 

Enzo nudged Klaus. Only a few weeks ago they’d seen a MIG 28 do exactly that during a training exercise which had attracted enemy aircraft and nearly killed them for their trouble. They continued to discuss it between them.

“The latest intelligence tells us the most it will do is one negative..” she paused mid sentence.”Excuse me, Lieutenant, is there something wrong?”

“Yes ma’am, the data on the MIG is inaccurate,” Klaus replied, noting her adorable but puzzled look. 

“How’s that, Lieutenant?”

“Well, I just happened to see a MIG 28 do a...”

“We,” Enzo interrupted. 

“Uh, sorry, Lucifer. ‘We’ happened to see a MIG 28 do a 4g negative dive.” 

She cocked her left eyebrow, almost like she was trying to work out whether he was telling the truth or just messing with her. 

“Where did you see this?”

“Uh, that's classified.”

 “It's what?”

 “It's classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.” 

He sent her his very best smirk and given her less than impressed expression, Klaus knew he was going to have to do a lot more work to win her over. 

But he was more than willing to try. 

10:45

“Ma’am? Excuse me!” He called out. She continued walking towards her car, choosing to ignore him not interested in a discussion right now, it was already extremely awkward enough. “Caroline!”

She finally turned, realising he was going to continue to make a scene until she acknowledged him. Of course she’d expected him but what transpired after she hadn’t. Caroline was trying to work out if it was all arrogant bluster or something entirely different. 

“Yes, Lieutenant?” She answered officially, trying to ignore just how good his khaki uniform brought out his Californian tan. He came closer, and even though he wore Aviators she could tell his eyes were trained on her with that same intensity she remembered from the previous night. 

“You tricked me.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You knew I was at Top Gun, you knew I was your student but yet you didn’t feel the need to tell me, why is that exactly?”

“I felt that it was inappropriate to disclose my identity at that time.”

“But yet it’s okay to just show up in class like that? What if I’d said something in front of everyone.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” she murmured. “You want to be here just as much as I do because we love what we do and this, whatever this is, doesn’t factor into that.”

“This? You rejected me last time I checked,” he replied. “Twice.”

“Is that why you did that before in class? Was it some form of petty payback?”

“It wasn’t petty,” she gave him a look which clearly said she didn’t believe him. “Okay maybe a little bit petty but it did actually happen, Enzo has this great polaroid you’d love.”

“But apparently it’s classified though right?”

“How about we go out for a drink and I’ll tell you the redacted version?”

“I am not going out with you, I don’t know how many times I have to say it.”

“Why not?”

“I’m your teacher, you’re my student. This can’t happen because it is all kinds of wrong, Lieutenant .”

“I don’t like to take no for an answer and, just so you know, I don’t give up easily, love.”

“Is that so?” He sent her his best smile and finally removed his sunglasses, those blue eyes roaming over her body before eventually landing on her face. Caroline was trying to pretend he had no effect on her whatsoever but she could feel her resolve fading fast. 

“I’ll see you in class tomorrow, ma’am.” He walked away, the spicy scent of his aftershave hovering in his wake. 

Caroline had no idea what she’d gotten herself into but at the same time it excited her too. It had nothing to do with men in uniform, just one man in particular. 

[omg-foreverfilledwithweird-posts]

That Girl is Poison...

PAIRING: Eddie Brock/ Venom X Reader

Summary: You’re assigned to work with the infamous but sexy and charming journalist, Eddie Brock, there to be his assistant, get him into meetings and interviews, and help him with anything he might need. Fast forward a year and you’re good friends, closer than you thought you’d get when you first met the character, and now you’ve fallen in love with him. You’re invited to a night at his favorite bar, to play a game with heated game of pool, where the winner gets anything they want, and things get steamy quickly.

A/N: So I’m watching Venom and staying up WAY too late while writing this but it’s worth it I never sleep anyway and I am now in love with Eddie Brock another fictional character yay so please enjoy this took me so long and I went kind of overboard eek let me know if you want more which I will probably give cause he’s my whole life now (also Happy New Year!!) also ALSO i crave feedback (in need of validation)

Warnings: swearing, sexual tension and themes, cheesy, mentions of alcohol, an overwhelming load of fluff (seriously it should be illegal), heavy makeout

You walk through the double doors of Eddie Brock’s private office, re-tucking in your white blouse into your tight pencil skirt, hugging your curves, a glimpse of your y/s/c skin peeking through where the top button previously popped. You curse yourself for accidentally snapping the button on your way to work in the cab and pray Eddie doesn’t see the glimpse of scandalous skin that just barely reveals your lacy, black bralette. All that you, of course, only noticed to be showing once you got to the building. Cue the small panic attack in the staff bathroom.

Eddie happens to your boss, of sorts, which means no dating according to company policy. Even when you do most of the things around here, as he always likes to tell you, you’re his rock. You do what he asks, set up his meetings and interviews, get him coffee and lunch, answer phone calls, and write articles of your own. All those late nights, caffeine-fueled cramming sessions at the office and mounds of paperwork you’ve completed together, you’ve grown close. He won’t ever admit it, but he trusts you more than anyone else in his life, sometimes more than himself. Especially as of lately.

That’s why when you walk around his desk to discuss with him his schedule, his eyes immediately dart to your slightly revealed chest, the sight of you in your flattering work clothes making his mouth go dry. His chest seizes with guilt, you’re his friend, quite possibly his only one, and he doesn’t want to ruin that. Yet a wave of lust washes still over him and it’s not just Eddie that feels it.

Venom hums pleasantly in Eddie’s head, We like her, hm? She’s yummy. Yes, we do. But she’s a friend, and it will stay that way, thanks to you. Come on, I’ll behave, promise. Your promises are shit. Ouch, harsh one, Eddie.

You peer down at his frustrated expression and how he’s whispering to himself, wondering if this job has finally gotten to him and he’s gone mad, hearing voices in his head. You wave your hand in front of his face with a small, assuring smile and he looks up at you, blinking hard. His gaze flipping from confusion to complete adoration for you and your kind, picturesque, stunning features. Tendrils of hair fall down, framing your angelic face.

“Eddie,” you say sweetly with a honey-laced tongue, his eyes wanting to flutter closed at the lullaby sensation of your voice, cooing him to sleep. “Earth to Eddie, are you alright?” you say with an amused lilt in your tone, smiling at him.

“Y-yeah, yeah I’m fine,” he gulps, licking his dry lips, returning your easygoing smile, halfheartedly at best, and he clears his throat. “What’s on the schedule for today?”

You lean over his desk, pointing to the schedule you created for him, and he finds it hard to keep his eyes to himself, your wonderful, floral perfume and shampoo masking the air. He wishes to fall into you and never get back up again.

“You’ve got a meeting at 11 and we prepare for an interview scheduled for Monday at noon during lunch, into the rest of the day if need be. And besides that... nothing else and you’re free to enjoy your Friday night.”

Your chest brushes his arm when you stand up straight and he inhales sharply, sitting himself up along with you. You place your hand on his forearm, afraid you alarmed him somehow, and there’s lightning in your fingertips when you meet his skin. He looks at you and you pull your hand back, “Sorry, sir, I-I didn’t mean to frighten you,” you chuckle slightly.

“Oh, oh no,” he situates himself, both from you brushing up against him and the way your sweet voice calls him sir, how you’d say that term in other circumstances. He blushes at the inappropriateness of ll this. He stumbles out of his leather, desk chair when he moves to hide his excited area with his jacket.

“You didn’t, I-I’m just... tired and jumpy. Not your fault, you’re amazing... wait, no, I mean, you are, but I what I’m trying to-” he stops himself with a wiry, crooked smile. “You-you’re fine.” Your bright eyes crinkle with amusement at the sight.

Venom laughs menacingly, Nice going, Casanova. What was that before about just friends? Your heart rate has never been this high with someone just a friend... Shut it, parasite. P-parasite!? Say you’re sorry!

Eddie ignores the grumpy voice in his head and instead looks at his just a friend, you, knowing deep down the voice in his head is right.

You smooth down the wrinkles in your shirt, tucking hair behind your ear with a tender curl of your lips, “What? Got something on my face?”

He shakes his head frantically, slowing down when he sees your eyebrow raise then you smile and laugh at him. He smirks, leaning against the desk, his mind drifts to daydreaming about pressing you against this office wall, taking you right here and now.

“No, sweetheart, you look...” he gives you a once over before he can think better of it. No choice of words can fit you. And the ones that do aren’t appropriate for work so he opts not to speak at all, tongue-tied in your presence.

You run a hand through your hair, giving it much needed volume, to distract yourself from the pet name he’s decided on giving you. You like it more than you’d like to admit, “Don’t hurt yourself from thinking too hard, Brock, can’t have your death on my hands, what would the people think?” you mock gasp.

He snorts, “You couldn’t hurt a fly, no one will believe you did it. I have plenty of enemies that easily could have done it and framed you.”

“I-I can be... tough if I have to be.”

“I’m not saying you aren’t,” he laughs. “I’m just saying you’re not capable of murder, princess.”

“How thoughtful,” your lips curl. “But who will testify on my behalf if you’re not here to tell them that?” you continue to play along, tucking the clipboard of papers under your arm.

“No man in your life who could do it for you?” he flips through a random book to seem busy in front of you, peering at you from the corner of his eye. “I’m sure you have many... eligible suitors.”

You shake your head, hair falling down and hiding your flushed face, “None at the moment, no. That’s still sweet of you to think so, Eddie.”

He lifts his head up and his eyes light up when he beams at you, “Of course, any guy would be...” he locks eyes with you and your breath catches. “...would be lucky to have you, y/n.”

Your heart warms at his words, but you both think better of it and he clears his throat, looking away. He suddenly has an idea, and he knows it’s dangerous, being with you outside of work. He can hardly contain himself around you as it is, it’s a bad idea. Being alone with you... he’s done it before, all those late nights, he doesn’t know if he could do it again.

Then he does it anyway. “I have an idea.” Venom snorts, You have no self-control. You stay out of this.  

“Well, that’s never good.”

“Hey,” he says with mock offense. “-some are... not so bad.”

You dissolve into laughter, filling the room with the melodic sound, hand resting over your beating heart, “One would think so.”

He rolls his eyes, unable to suppress a small, fond quirk of his full lips, “My idea... smart ass,” you guffaw at that. “-is that you could come for a drink with me...”

Your head snaps in his direction, masking your shock at his invitation as best you can. You didn’t expect this, but you’re certainly not mad either.

“Really?” you beam, cheeks flushed with color. “At O’Malley’s?

He nods and chuckles coolly, the sound resonating deeply from his chest, “So... w-would you maybe want to,” he scratches the back of his neck nervously, clamming up with an anxious chuckle. “To do that...? If you want and as friends, of course, completely professional.”

You push your hair back shyly behind your ear. “Of course. Completely...” you look him over, dark shirt, leather jacket, and black jeans, your favorite look on him, and meet his eyes once again. “Professional.”

He half smiles, “Is that a yes, then?” Your chest flutters.

You nod quickly and smile softly, “Yes, sir... That’s a yes.”

He can hardly contain his excitement when he breaks into a rare, genuine smile that takes up most of his handsome face, “Alright. I’ll see you then.” He stumbles back into his desk and catches himself on the corner. You giggle and he finishes, “After... well, work.”

“Yeah, work,” you take your bottom lip between your teeth, stifling more laughter. “Can’t forget about that.”

~~~

Eddie paces anxiously in front of the bar, taking a swig from a beer bottle the barkeep slid to him. He continues to check the time on the large clock hanging on the wall above the drinks, watching as the hand ticks, each click increasing his state of worry that you won’t show up. That he’s made a mistake. Of course you won’t, you deserve better than him, he thinks-

“Is this over a girl, big guy?” the bartender, Marty, asks, wiping down glasses.

He sighs and cracks a wistful smile, “How’d ya know?”

“Cause there’s a lovely one in the doorway looking right at you,” he nods to where you’re standing by the door. 

“Keep it together, Eddie, it’s just y/n,” he whispers to himself, leaning back against the bar with a sigh as you walk over to him.

He’s frozen, seeing you outside of work clothes. You wear a plunging, red bodysuit, tucked into a pair of flattering black jeans that hit your curved waist flawlessly. His eyes are glued to that revealed piece of y/s/c skin, smooth and he finds himself wondering how you’d feel in his calloused hands, touching ever inch of you and his lips would follow. He shakes the thought away, crimson red. Your hair mussed from rushing down the bar’s stairway, trying to make it at least a little on time. You run a hand through it in an attempt to tame the beast. And he’s awestruck, you look stunning.

“I’m sorry I’m late, traffic was terrible,” you laugh, tucking a curl behind your ear. “Just a glass of red, please, Marty. Put it on my tab, too.”

“Sure thing, dollface.”

Eddie reaches for the wine glass when the bartender slides it down at the same time you do, your fingers brushing during the harmless exchange. The simplest of touches and your face goes hot. He grows flustered as well, cheeks a rosy shade of an adorable pink. You let go and he extends it kindly to you, your fingers wrapping around the base of the glass.

You chuckle, “Thanks.”

Marty takes his cue to walk back into the kitchen, just before sending a warning look to Eddie, “Everyone back here knows y/n, she’s family. If you lay a hand on her, we gotta shovel in the back. I doubt anyone would miss you.”

Eddie snorts to hide the sudden fear for his life buried in his eyes, cracking a smile in your direction, “Glad to know where his loyalties lie.”

You can’t help but laugh, “They’re harmless, Marty’s just an old family friend,” you tell him, unconsciously leaning towards Eddie, giving a delectable view of your crimson shirt and cleavage. Venom growls internally and Eddie finds himself doing the same.

“You look...” he breathes an airy laugh, running a hand through his hair. “You look beautiful, y/n.” You’re caught off guard from the compliment but take it all the same, warming you up from the inside out.

You grin, growing heated under his stare, “Thank you,” you breathe out, color rising to your cheeks. “You look great as always yourself.”

He takes a sip from his beer bottle, lips curling around the rim when he side eyes you, drinking you in, “Flattery will get you everywhere with me, darling.”

You giggle, intoxicated, not by the drink dangling between your fingers but from the heat in his dark eyes, “I’ll keep that in mind.” A door in the back of the bar catches your eye, the game room with a pool table, completely unoccupied.

Eddie has the same idea when he sees where your gaze lies and takes another sip of liquid courage before standing up from his seat, taking the bottle with him, “Play some pool with me?”

“It’s been awhile since I’ve played,” you look at him and take a sip of your wine, hiding a smile behind the glass. “I might not be very good.”

He clicks his tongue with a smirk, “You’ll be fine, we’ll make it interesting,” he hold out his hand, inviting you to take it. You look from his extended hand to his eyes and back again, cautiously resting yours in his before he pulls you from your seat, falling into his hard chest.

“Sorry,” you blow hair out of your eyes, a rosy smile gracing your face. You look at him in the eye for just a moment, breath catching.

He shakes his head, hands steadying you, placed firmly your waist, “Don’t be. You don’t ever need to apologize around me,” his mouth twitches at the side when his hand falls to the small of your back, guiding you through the tables and people. 

A group of men in an isolated booth looks your way, wolf whistling and calling you over, whispering foul things to each other. Eddie picks up on the way you’re burning up, embarrassed, angry, and uncomfortable, hoping for a hole to appear in the ground below you and swallow you up before you do something you’ll regret. He instinctively wraps his arm around your waist, softly at first, tucking you into his side while you both walk, an air of safety warming your chest. Your hand on your wine glass gripping tighter.

You shut the door behind you and watch on as Eddie prepares the game, dusting the cues and setting up the balls into a triangle in the middle of the green felt. You wait and continue to look on, setting down your drink, fascinated in the way he moves. His carved from stone muscles clench and flex when he gathers everything you two need. He catches you looking from the corner of his eye and flashes the ghost of a smirk. You realize you’ve begun to like him more than you’ve let on. 

He stands behind the pool table and leans against the redwood, cocking his head towards the game in question, “Ready?”

“Before we play, we should practice for the interview on Monday,” you idly walk around the pool table to him, “How do you want to do this? Practice it and I pretend to be who you’re interviewing...?”

He sighs, putting the game on hold because of that doll like look in your eyes, turning to face you, “You’re going to let me ask whatever I want instead of playing pool with me?” he tilts his head. “And you answer truthfully?”

“We can play in a moment. This is more important. Pretend I’m Richard Ford, the tech mongol you’re going to be on television with,” you chuckle, failing to remain serious, tucking fallen hair behind your ear. “See,” you grab a tendril of hair, twirl it, put it under your nose, and pucker your lips, faking a mustache. “The name’s Richard, nice to meet you.”

Dimple. “I can hardly tell the difference,” he humors you.

“I’m a master of disguise,” you let the piece or hair fall with a sweet smile. You extend your hand for him to shake, deepening your voice, “Hi, I’m Richard, it’s a pleasure to meet you Eddie. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“This is the worst version of role-play I’ve ever done with a woman,” he teases when he takes your hand in his. You roll your eyes and he takes the game a step further, placing a cheeky kiss to your knuckles, nose brushing the soft skin. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

Your face lights up, heat sent straight to the knot in the pit of your stomach, “Y-you’re going to kiss... Richard’s hand, Eddie?”

“You have to make a good impression with these sort of things, it’s only polite.” He cracks a smile, “Or maybe it was an excuse for me to kiss you, you’ll never know.”

“I guess I won’t,” you flush. “Right... okay, let’s get started then.”

“No fun, all work, huh?”

“We can have fun.” You grumble with a small frown, “I-I’m fun.”

His lips curve into a smile, “Never have I ever then... while we play pool.”

You sigh, if you brought work into this you were hoping it would diminish that damn knot in the pit of your stomach, coiling and spreading like wildfire from your chest to your fingertips. This wasn’t the greatest of ideas but when have they have ever been between you two? 

“And if I win?”

“Your choice,” he folds his arms over his broad chest.

You lock eyes, “Same with you?” This would only end badly. He nods.

“Fine,” you grab your pool cue and take aim, “Never have I ever cheated on a test.” Keep it innocent. 

His brow pinches in confusion, taking a long sip of his beer, and setting it back down on the edge of the pool table, “You’ve never cheated on a test? Ever? I doubt that.”

“I was a good kid,” you chuckle, hitting the ball into the corner pocket. Hm, maybe you were good at pool.

“Every kid cheated on at least one test.”

“Not me.”

“You’re just a liar.” You stick out your red colored tongue, stained with wine and just as sweet, but missing your next shot. 

He rolls his eyes, “Alright, never have I ever ogled at someone in this room when they were shirtless at the company retreat in Lodge Falls.” He misses and frowns. Innocent questions only, that idea seems to have been thrown out the window.

You scoff, “And you didn’t look at me?” you say while taking a quick sip, lips curled around the rim of your glass. Both of you walking around the table, remaining across from each other, neither daring to cross the distance. You make the shot, a solid color too.

“Had to distract myself with other things,” he smirks. Liar.

“Other things named Jacqueline and Angela...” you clarify for him, his eyes poring into yours, masked guilt in both of your gazes, hidden by a year of a friendship of will-they-won’t-they. You force a small smile, lessening the tension as much as you can, hitting another corner pocket, but the air has changed and something’s clicked.

His brow arches, “Were you jealous?” he asks quietly, almost afraid he’ll scare you off if he raises his voice above a mere whisper. You reach to where he stands, right beside him.

You laugh quietly, “No,” you answer quickly, too quickly, voice cracking towards the end of that damned word. Your eyes on him making him miss his shot. 

His mouth twitches in the right corner, deciding to drop the clearly tender subject, he nods to the table, “Alright. Your turn.”

You walk closer to him, pool cue in hand, and an interesting idea arises, something to distract him from making a good play when he shoots next. You take a step between him and the table, making a show of bending over in front of him. He inhales sharply, too shocked to move when Venom chuckles darkly. She’s a minx, this one. I say we teach her a lesson. Eddie visibly stiffens, jaw clenched tightly, as he tries to covertly situate himself behind you while you take perfect aim, and, as expected, make an equally perfect shot. 

You stand up straight again and throw him a coy look over your shoulder, “Never have I ever gotten aroused by someone in this room tonight.” If he wasn’t going to make this easy, you weren’t either. 

He locks eyes with you and takes a sip of his beer. You smile. He wets his lips and sighs, slightly amused, “You, sweetheart, do not fight fair.”

You smile, feigning innocence, “I don’t remember us making any rules.”

He clicks his tongue, cutting his eyes in your direction before getting level with the table, and shooting a ball into the corner pocket. One after the other until there are only a few left, meaning your distracting tactic clearly didn’t rattle him enough. The odds don’t seem to be in your favor. 

You exhale slowly, aiming your cue, just as Eddie circles the table to stand behind you. 

His eyes glaze over you, “Your hands are in the wrong place, darling.”

You chuckle, delightfully buzzed, “Really?” you muse. “And where should they be?”

You stand up straight once again, his chest pressed against your back, close enough for you to hear the telltale beating of his rapid heart.

His breath is hot by your ear, your chest tightens, “Would you like me to show you?”

“Do I have much of a choice?” you breathe a laugh, voice failing you.

Eddie’s calloused fingers dance up your bare arm, eliciting goosebumps and a sharp intake of breath from you, your lungs filling with his woodsy, cedar scent. His other hand falls to your waist, thumb caressing the fabric of your shirt, making it painfully aware to the both of you of the clothes separating your skin from meeting. His sensual touch is warm and inviting, conveying a silent love letter you can’t yet read. He slides his hands down to grasp your own, placing them in the right spot on the cue stick.

You arch your back at the sensation of his his lips smugly brushing your neck, “Eddie... What are you doing?” 

“Fighting dirty.” He guides you to pull the cue back, “Now aim.”

You scoff, “I’m almost impressed.”

He chuckles deeply, “High praise coming from you.” His hands encompass yours entirely when he readies you to take the shot, “And... shoot.” You hit the ball directly into the side pocket, much easier and swifter when he’s here aiding you. 

You turn around, his hands on either side of you, resting against the edge of the pool table, and pinning you against it. You blush, “Thank you.”

He looks over you, eyes riddled with both lust and adoration, the more flustered you get the bigger his smirk, “You’re very welcome.”

You tuck your thumb tenderly under his chin and lift his head up, guiding him to meet your eyes, “But was this your way of attempting to distract me, Eddie?” 

How do you do that, he thinks. Flip from cute to sexy so quickly? But he smirks, well pleased with himself, “Maybe... Is it working?”

You shake your head, smile, and lie, “No, I’m afraid not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

You raise your eyebrows in mock offense, “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No, sweetheart, I’m not... Because you’re a terrible one.” You scoff at that. “Might I suggest that you never get into gambling.” He walks away from you.

“I can lie,” you turn back around, ignoring his protests about your hand placement while he circles around the table, praying for no more urges to touch you again, your skin still tingling from it. 

“For example...” you look up at him from your cue, “I told you I liked your ex girlfriend.” Clink. Right into the side pocket again.

He can’t help but smile at that, “You didn’t like Anne?”

You shake your head, making your next shot, “Not really, she was always jealous... of you and me. She would sometimes come up to me when you weren’t around and tell me to stay away from you.”

He frowns deeply, “I didn’t know that.”

“I know,” you look at him. “I didn’t want you to stop seeing her on account of me. I’m sure she was great besides that and I-I wanted you to be happy, so I stayed away. So when she had to move to Prague with Dan, for her new job, I just kept it to myself. I thought there was no use in telling you. Because you’ve moved on.”

“Sure, there was,” he walks back around to you, wanting to hash this out, but you didn’t expect this reaction. There’s concern etched in those worry lines between his brow and on his forehead. “You could have, sure I’ve moved on and it was a long time ago, but I-I would have liked to have known.”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” you breathe out. “But now it seems I have. I’m sorry, I j-”

He tilts his head curiously, “What did I tell you about apologizing, sweetheart?” he says to you.  

You can’t breathe. His hands lightly grasp both sides of your face, thumb caressing your flushed cheek. You sad smile is faint, going weak from his gentle touch. “To not...” Your nose nudges his, lips brushing, and you gulp hard. You smile against him, “But when have I ever listened, hm?”

“God...” his eyes clench shut, like he’s fighting an inner turmoil you won’t ever see for yourself. “We can’t... We’d lose our jobs.”

“I know,” you nod, your hand resting over his. 

Eddie’s breathing has gone shallow, hands falling to his sides, the anticipation becoming too much for the both of you. His eyes burn into yours, “You don’t make this easy, you know that?”

You lick a stripe from his bottom lip to his top, tasting the bittersweet flavor of liquor and a musk you can only classify as Eddie. You couldn’t take it anymore. You hum pleasantly at his lust blown pupils, “I though you enjoyed a challenge.”

“Y/N...” his voice is hoarse. “Stop. We can’t.” 

Are you out of your mind, Eddie?! I can’t! I want to but I can’t, she’ll lose her job and I’ll lose mine, it’s not right. I won’t hurt her like that. Jobs come and go, my friend, but there’s only one y/n... Take her right here.

You lock eyes with the man and utter just two words, voice barely above a whisper, “Make me.”

His hands grasp both sides of your face once again and he pulls you to him, all restraint a distant, forgotten memory when his lips crash desperately into yours. You inhale sharply, both from surprise and delightful release as your trembling lips part for him. Wanting something for so long and finally gaining the satisfaction of grasping it, him, you, it’s almost too much to bear. Your arms tangle around his neck, ensuring there is no space between your bodies when he guides you flush against his chest. He takes your red bottom lip between his teeth and tugs, moans falling from you like sin, legs gone weak at the simple action. His lips are soft and plump, bringing a tingling sensation to your own  There’s nothing rushed in his kiss, nothing harsh or fast. He’s taking his time with you, gentle hands now running languidly up and down your curves, worshiping you and your body for all your worth. 

His powerful arm wraps around your back and picks you up like you weigh absolutely nothing, laying you down on the pool table. His eyes wander all over you, your body on display for him, the brown in his eyes completely diminished by the black of his pupils, dark and hooded. 

You hold his face in your hand and he places a soft, fluttering kiss to the palm of your hand, leaning into your touch, “We’re so fired,” you giggle.

He runs his thumb over your swollen, rose flushed lips and smiles softly, “You’re worth it.”

Then his lips press to yours so ferociously and completely that a soft, mewling whimper escapes you, tugging on the ends of his hair, and earning a groan from him. Your smile, pleased, into the kiss and tilt your head up when his lips migrate to just below your mouth, your chin, your throat, your neck. He peppers wet, open mouth kisses anywhere he can reach, leaving fire in his wake. His big hands roam your body, roughly squeezing and gripping your thighs and your ass.  

Venom grows excited, growling impatiently, My turn. No, Venom, you’ll scare her off. Now isn’t the time. Oh, Eddie... you insult me. Let’s let the girl decide that for herself. Venom, please n-

He breaks away and you frown, wondering why he pushes away from you like you’re skin was on fire.

A black, molten liquid transforms his body, encompassing him completely until he stands above the table. You look on, terrified and curious, your eyes wide as saucers. What was happening to Eddie? The monster from the news. You must be dreaming. Because this can’t be happening, this isn’t real...

Your hands are shaking as you muster up the words to question this... thing, hoping this is all in your head, “W-who... who are y-you?” 

He flashes his large, razor sharp teeth, lips curling maliciously, ivory eyes slitted with dangerous intent. 

“We... are Venom.”

[mayquita]

The Art of (Fake)Dating (1/4)

Surprise @shardminds​ ! I’m your CS Secret Santa! I felt pretty bad for not being able to have your gift ready on time. I wanted to offer you something, so I decided to divide your gift into four parts, and here’s the first one, finally! It has been a pleasure to get to know you throughout these past weeks, I’d like you to know that you already have a friend in me. ;)

Apologies in advance because there will probably be around a million mistakes. I hope you like it despite that :)

Thanks to @cssecretsanta2k19​ for organizing the event and making sure everything worked correctly.

Summary: When Emma agrees to be Killian’s fake girlfriend she expects it to be a one-time thing. However, and despite getting an enemy in the form of an overprotective brother, she ends up becoming an expert in the art of fake dating even though she can’t stand her fake boyfriend, at least at the beginning.

Ao3 / FFNet

//

The Art of (Fake) Dating

I need a reminder, Jones. Why am I doing this? - Emma

Because you’re a good person who offered help to someone in need? - Killian

Nah, I mean the other reason, the one that really matters to me. - Emma

Are you implying that you aren’t a good person then? - Killian

Jones, keep pushing and you get nothing. - Emma

Just was kidding, Swan. I know the terms of our agreement. - Killian 

So enlighten me, I need a reminder about the reason why I’ve accepted this stupid plan. - Emma

Killian? - Emma

It’s not funny, Jones - Emma

Well, since you don’t seem especially interested, I better look for a more enjoyable Thanksgiving plan. It won’t be a difficult task, by the way. - Emma

Where’s the rush, Swan? I was just a bit busy, but I’m all yours now ;) - Killian

I’m waiting. - Emma

(insert heavy sigh sound) Okay… you get to choose the best shift. Happy now? - Killian

Ask me when we get back - Emma

Emma rested her arms on the counter and barely resisted the urge to bang her head against the smooth surface while cursing under her breath. What the hell was I thinking? Why on earth did I accept this stupid plan?

Letting out a soft groan, she put the phone in her pants pocket and straightened her back, ignoring Ruby’s inquisitive gaze.

She could barely stand the guy, for God’s sake, but that hadn’t stopped her from accepting not only to spend Thanksgiving with him and his family (and also spend the night there — seriously, what’s wrong with me? ) but do it as his fake girlfriend.

Who are you kidding, Emma? You and I know the real reason why you accepted the deal. Her inner voice seemed to be very active today, although she made an effort to ignore it trying to focus on her current task.

You know you’ll have to share the bed with him, don’t you? And obviously, it won’t be the first time…

“Oh shut up!” Great. She had gone crazy and started talking to herself. 

She felt her cheeks start to burn as she glanced around to make sure no one was witnessing how she managed to embarrass herself. Luckily, Will and Ruby were serving some customers and Robin, their boss, was in the back room. Killian Jones, the object of her tribulations, would arrive later. Although she tried, she found herself unable to prevent a flood of no longer repressed memories from starting to resurface.

Her inner voice was right. Thanksgiving night wouldn’t be the first time she shared a bed with Killian. It had all been the product of a series of unfortunate decisions taken shortly after she had moved to Storybrooke, a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, three and a half years ago in a somewhat desperate attempt at a fresh start away from everything and everyone.

In retrospect, she should have gotten drunk, at least she would have an excuse for her behavior. She couldn’t blame alcohol, but she might have found herself in a state of transitory alienation that would have clouded her mind to the point where it seemed reasonable not only to fuck a guy she had just met in a place as mundane as the town diner but did so knowing that he lived in the same apartment building as her, although on a different floor. 

To make matters worse, that guy, Killian Jones, had also turned out to be one of her coworkers at The Rabbit Hole, the bar she would start working on the following day. Seriously? What were the odds!?

She had decided that she was going to hate Killian for the rest of her life, even though he had offered her one of the best sex sessions she remembered. But what she had hoped was a simple one night stand, without complications, in the end, had become not only her neighbor but the asshole, cocky and too sexy for his own good co-worker.

In case all this wasn’t reason enough for her dislike towards him, there was a fact that was the one that had bothered Emma the most, although she would never admit it out loud. By the time she had learned that she would have to see him on a daily basis at their workplace, she had pushed him away, holding back any possible approach on his part. Although she was the only one to blame, she couldn’t help feeling rejected in some way, since, after a couple of timid attempts and some flirtation, he seemed to have lost any interest in repeating their dalliance. Dammit!

//

“Why me and why you need to pretend you have a girlfriend?”

Emma had asked the same questions since she had agreed to be part of the farce, obtaining vague explanations or directly silence in response. However, since they were already on their way to the Jones’ house, she found herself in need to ask once more. She wanted to know the cards she played with in this stupid game.

Killian’s gaze drifted to her for a split second, but then he turned his attention back to the road, keeping his lips sealed. Emma let out an exaggerated sigh as she leaned back in her seat and turned her head in the direction of the window, feeling a sense of growing frustration settling in the pit of her stomach.

The day hadn’t started well, as she had intended to follow Killian’s car while driving her beloved yellow beetle. Killian had looked at her as if she had grown two heads before responding in a somewhat condescending tone, which had done nothing to placate her annoyance towards him.

“We live in the same building and now we are a couple, obviously we don’t need to travel in two separate cars, Swan. And don’t think for a second that I’m going to spend the next two hours stuck in that horrendous metal trap.”

At least the music resonating inside the vehicle was good enough to keep her entertained since her fake boyfriend seemed to have entered into a kind of mutism, or worse, he had decided to ignore her presence completely. This entire situation only strengthened her resentment towards him, although that did not prevent her from wanting to fuck him. Emma wasn’t sure yet how she was going to deal with those mixed feelings when they were locked in the privacy of a bedroom, presumably sleeping in the same bed and…

“Two things, love.” The unexpected sound of Killian’s voice brought her back to reality, causing those inappropriate thoughts to return to the most hidden corner of her mind, where they would remain and where they should never escape again, an arduous task when his voice alone had the ability to make her blood run hot in her veins. Gods! She hated this guy for taking control over her body without him even being aware of it. “Well, actually three.” The bastard gave her a sidelong glance, the hint of a smirk adorning his lips. But if she thought he was finally going to give her an explanation, she was wrong, since he looked back to the road as he returned to his silence.

The man was so infuriating and always seemed to have an ace up his sleeve to cause a reaction in her. On this occasion, she tried hard not to take the bait but her current situation, locked in his vehicle on the way to a somewhat uncertain destination, did not help much for her purpose.

“Come on, Jones. Tell me now or I’ll break the deal,” she snapped finally, hating him a little more in the process.

“Calm down, Swan. We still have an hour and a half left to reach our destination. You should relax and enjoy the ride, the good music and, of course, the good company.” She didn’t even need to look at him to know he was smirking again. “Maybe if you ask nicely…”

The glare she gave him seemed to be enough for him to stop teasing her. “Okay, okay. As I was saying and to answer your questions, three things. The first one. I chose you because my family had heard from you before. You know, the coworker who hates me for some inexplicable reason, but over time she ends up falling for my undeniable charms in the most classic enemies to lovers style.”

“I can’t believe you told that story to your family,” she huffed while shaking her head, somewhat surprised by the fact that Killian seemed to have the entire farce under control.

“Well, it’s partially true, isn’t it?”

“Me falling for you? Keep dreaming, Jones.”

“Always.” He winked at her causing her stomach to flop. Bastard . “But I meant you hating me.”

She rolled her eyes, holding back a biting retort. Instead, she chose to continue with her inquiries. “I know I’m probably going to regret it, but what’s the second thing?”

“Ah, that…” Emma didn’t miss the fact that he looked back at the road while his cheeks acquired a light pink hue. Although she tried to ignore it, her stomach fluttered in anticipation, making a small somersault when he looked at her again before continuing to speak. “I know how you kiss, Swan. So I thought it would be convenient if I chose a lass with whom I had already kissed previously since it would give credibility to our performance.”

So he remembered that they had kissed before… Emma wondered if he also remembered that they had done much more than kissing. She had even come to think that he had completely forgotten their night together, one of the reasons that had made her feel somewhat rejected.

“Even so, I’m entirely willing to practice to perfect our technique in case it’s necessary to carry out certain public displays of affection, you know what I mean.” The way he bit his lower lip and wagged his eyebrows at her had no effect on her. None at all.

Was he flirting with her or was it just a figment of her imagination? To be honest, he had never stopped doing it, but in the same way he did with any female who crossed his path. This time, however, his flirting seemed to have a clear intention, but it couldn’t be, right?

Emma shifted uncomfortably in her seat, feeling a blush crawling up from her neck to her cheeks. Still, she felt the need to tease him back. “I also know how you kiss, Jones, there is no need to practice. In fact, there is no need for kisses at all. We will be there for less than twenty-four hours.” Before he had time to reply, she continued speaking in an attempt to divert attention. “And what about the reason for this farce?”

He took a few seconds to respond, which allowed Emma to notice a slight change in his attitude. His jaw clenched and the muscles in his arms tensed as he gripped the steering wheel tightly. “About that… Let’s say that my brother thinks I’m a total failure in several parcels of my life.” His gaze shifted almost imperceptibly to the prosthesis of his left arm. “I guess I wanted to cross out one of them from the list.”

Killian had used a nonchalant tone as he shrugged as if he downplayed his statement. His fake smile and the hint of bitterness in his voice said otherwise, though. Emma and Killian might not even be considered friends, but at least she had come to know part of his past and had even witnessed some of his lowest moments. Even so, she didn’t expect that to be something that could affect him in his relationship with his brother.

An unusual wave of sympathy for him washed over her. She was aware that Killian, like her, dragged several demons from his past. The fact that his first instinct had been to look at his prosthesis was proof of that. She was also able to recognize, despite her dislike towards him, some of his qualities. She had always admired that, despite the absence of a hand, he seemed able to get everything he set out to do. Or at least that was the impression he gave, with all that aura of self-confidence. Now Emma was no longer so sure. Suddenly, this stupid plan acquired a new and interesting dimension. She needed more answers.

“Let me see if I’ve understood. For your brother to think that you are not a failure you decided to take a fake girlfriend home so that he thinks that at least you haven’t failed in love?”

“Something like that,” he admitted reluctantly. Before she could reply, though, he continued. “There is one aspect to keep in mind, by the way. I don’t think he will dare, but I still need to warn you. My brother Liam can be a bit overprotective in addition to a pain in the ass. But since you’re a tough girl, I assume that you will be able to handle him in case he decides to have it in for you.”

Emma’s eyes widened in surprise. “Great, now it turns out that I have to play the awful girlfriend role that isn’t good enough for the little brother? Just perfect. Anything else I should know before venturing into the lion’s den?”

“My sister-in-law is the nicest person and my nephews are adorable?”

A soft snort escaped between her lips before she laid her head on the back of her seat and let her gaze wander through the window, while trying to prepare for what might happen. It might be interesting, after all, she tried to cheer herself up. Emma felt apprehensive but at the same time with some level of excitement to know not only the dynamics of that family but also to discover more layers of the mystery that Killian Jones meant to her.

//

Thanks for reading.

Since I’ve already started my winter break it won’t happen as with my other wips. I plan to post the rest of the parts in the next few days.

[kittenfemme27]

Genshin Impact

Breath of the Wild was a game I wanted to love. I love the Zelda games, always have, and I eat up open world games like candy. Yet, BoTW has sat on my digital shelf collecting digital dust for ages. Why is that? Well, to put it simply, I don't want to play as Link. BoTW has a beautiful world, rich combat and game play puzzles, tons to see and do and experience, it's a sandbox for the ages. But it's hampered so heavily for me by the fact that I have to play this very boring and to be honest kind of forgettable boy named Link during the game play. That may sound petty, but if I'm in an open world game I want to fully immerse myself into that and video games are where we all go to escape anyway. If I wanted to be misgendered, I'd simply forget to shave and go outside.

I don't mind playing other Zelda games because in those, Link is a self contained character in the world and they're relatively short and self contained games. But BoTW is a sandbox. And for a large majority of it, you're not going to be doing the story or being addressed as link. The size of the world and the sheer amount of hours you're going to put into it mean that for almost all intents and purposes, Link isn't Link, he's a faceless avatar that you're supposed to put yourself into. The game offers so much freedom in so many avenues and yet, in your choice of how to explore the world as someone you'd actually like to be, you're not allowed. You have to be a skinny blonde twink.

So, in late 2019, in comes a trailer for Genshin Impact. It's making its rounds on the Internet as a "PC Free to Play Gacha Breath of the Wild Clone" which, while a mouthful, was something I initially wrote off. Didn't see a point in checking it out, as I really don't like Gacha games very much. But in late September 2020, MiHoYo the developers released the public 1.0 build of the game to everyone. Multi-platform, too. iOS/Android, PC, PS4, and even a switch release down the line. And maybe its the pandemic, or maybe the Internet was simply too lured in by the cute anime girls, but it took the many by storm. It took me personally over 12+ hours to download the 11 gigs of the game because the servers were so swamped with people.

Now I do want to be clear: Genshin Impact borrows many things from BoTW, but it isn't a clone. It's not a sandbox in the same way BoTW is and aside from some general game play things such as gliders, stamina/wall climbing system, and general aesthetic, the games are massively different. Still, though, playing it has highlighted to me why I never felt quite right playing BoTW, and its that lack of freedom. That lack of ability to play the game on my own terms and explore the beautiful handcrafted world the way I want to. 

Despite appearances, Genshin Impact is a lot more like a single player MMO than it is anything else. Requiring tons of farming and grinding to create high level powerful characters in a world that gets increasingly more powerful and hostile as you do. The core game play loop of Genshin Impact is pretty phenomenal, essentially giving you a massive world to explore with literally thousands upon thousands of chests and rewards to find. Either by clearing out enemies, doing random in world puzzles, or even just sitting around. Being inside of and exploring the world of Teyvat is as rewarding as it is beautiful. The art and animation design of the game are stellar and do a lot to make you forget how much time has passed since you booted up the game in the first place. There's tons of different lore books to find, NPC's to talk to, quests to complete, the world is chock-full of lore and world building even down to simple weapon and material descriptions. Teyvat is a wonderful place to be and the developers MiHoYo deserve a pat on the back for how good the world of Genshin Impact is. The other side of game play is a simple system of Character Progression where you farm materials to make your characters/weapons/abilities better so that you can farm even more materials from harder enemies, much like an MMO, and you also acquire gear called Artifacts with randomly rolled stats much like an ARPG. In that regard, Genshin Impact is highly addictive. There are a myriad of weapons, talents, artifacts, and characters all to level up and build up over the course of your play, and every character can be made viable very very easily. The game also lets you keep a party of 4 characters that you can swap between at any point, as well as each character being attuned to a specific Elemental Type that reacts to other Elements. This causes the end-game to be centered around doing some of the hardest dungeons the game has to offer by theory crafting incredibly powerful teams that work off of each other and cause Elemental Reactions in enemies. It’s some of the most fun i’ve had in a game in ages.

All of that is fantastic but unfortunately its all also held back by one simple, huge problem: Original Resin. The game uses a currency called Original Resin that you use to challenge the harder content in the game. Dungeons, World Bosses, Elite Weekly Bosses, you name it and if its end-game content, it likely costs Resin. And not in insignificant amounts either. Dungeons are 20, Bosses are 40, and Weekly Bosses are 60. So, how do you obtain this material? Time. You start with, and are capped, at 120(Later 160 in patch 1.1). 1 resin takes 8 minutes to get back. If you spend it all, it takes 16 hours to get back. Given the rates you spend it, you can go from 120 to 0 in roughly 10-15 minutes. With no way to increase the resin cap, and the incredibly slow acquisition rate, that frequently means you only have about that much playtime a day of the game in the endgame. And that's, needless to say, incredibly frustrating. Thankfully its not an entire stamina system that means you can't play the game at all when you're out of resin, but it does mean that character progression itself is gated as all upgrade/progression materials are locked behind these dungeons and bosses that you must use Original Resin to face. Effecitvely, this means single characters will become weeks and weeks of work, with weapons and artifacts being only slightly less time consuming. I can only hope MiHoYo is looking to change this system in a way that isn't just increasing the cap as the feedback they've received has been very negative regarding it, but only time will tell.

Unfortunately, this isn't the games only problem with its players either. The game is a Gacha, there is no getting around that, but despite the fact that pretty much any character can become massively overpowered and viable in the endgame, people are going to want the rarest characters that exist. This is by design and unfortunately is more or less a glorified gambling system. And while the game is quite nice with its premium currency and how often it gives it, what isn't nice is that the rarest “5-star”characters cost a minimum of 200$ to get through money. With no guarantee you're getting the one you want.

Worse still, outside of a guaranteed 5-star drop at 90 rolls on the gacha wheel, the chance for a 5-star weapon or character is 0.6%. Not even a whole rounded up 1%. This is frankly ridiculous, as is the cost of real money to premium currency. For reference, most other popular Gacha’s doing well offer their rarest characters at anywhere between a 1-6% rate. In general, gacha's aren't known to be kind in their rates. That’s the point, they want you to gamble with real money. Genshin Impact, however, is so unkind and unfair that even other regular players of gacha gamers are very, very vocally upset. If it wasn't for the game play loop and the world, I'm not sure this would fly. And its certainly not flying in the west with the crowd that doesn't play Gacha's nearly as much. Neither is the resin system, as gamers in the west typically want to play for hours and hours at a time.

I’d be remiss if i didn’t bring up the story in Genshin Impact, as it’s genuinely fantastic. As previously stated, the world has a metric tonne of hidden lore in books, weapon/item/artifact descriptions, character stories you unlock as you use a playable character, etc. But the main story you can currently play from start to finish in the 1.0 release is the prologue.

This prologue stars very simply: Your character, the “Traveler” is an alien from another world. Not much is known about them so far, other than that the Traveler and their sibling were people with the ability to hop between worlds at will. In the opening moments of the game this power, along with your sibling, are stolen from you by an unnamed assailant. Thus trapping you in Teyvat and leaving you to begin a journey to find the Seven Gods of Teyvat, simply known as “The Seven” and seek their power and wisdom to find your sibling and potentially leave. This journey is how you meet Venti, one of the Seven in disguise as a simple human bard, and his best friend Dvalin. The events that follow have you help this strange bard, as well as the people of Mondstat, defeat the dragon Dvalin. Previously, he protected the lands of Mondstat for hundreds of years. However, as you meet both Dvalin and Venti, he has had his mind corrupted and been lied to by an order of evil mages known as the Abyss Order, and its caused him to go on the offensive against Mondstat and her people.

It's a fair bit emotional, humorous at times thanks to Venti, and overall very engaging. Mondstat is a city built on freedom, to the point that its own god Barbatos(Venti) refuses to rule over it and allows himself to be the weakest of the seven gods, as that would take away some of the cities freedom. Within this prologue, there is a huge focus on Mondstat being a city of Freedom, the prologue quite literally ends with Venti telling Dvalin after you have saved him from the corruption that even though he is "meant" to be the protector of Mondstat, he hopes Dvalin chooses whatever life he wants, even if that's not Mondstats protector, and that Venti simply wants him to be happy. Venti's own personal story quest goes further in depth about the foundation of Mondstat and its origins as a rebel city founded after the citizens overthrew the oppressive rule of an awful tyrant God and killed him. In a very pretty hand drawn "cathedral window" style cutscene, you get to see the end of this war and why Barbatos chose the form he currently inhabits and took up being a bard, which was to honor a dead friend from this very same war. This explains why Mondstat and Barbatos value its freedom so highly. I cried at this moment both times I played it.

For a free game, the storytelling here is off the charts. As i said before, Venti and many other characters have personal stories that both introduce you to a trial version of the playable character, thus letting you see how they work and play, and also giving you either more info on the world or an introduction to the character in question, or both. They're fantastic little stories and are up there with the main story in quality. One of my favorite parts of the game and something that will only be expanded with time. Each one takes you on a journey of discovery or even simple fun with a character and it all feels very personal and touching, as all of the main stories and character quests are very well voice acted.

The prologue being so focused on freedom makes it all the more awkward, then, that MiHoYo is a game developer based out of China, and as such has to follow China's censorship rules. Taiwan and Hong Kong both are censored in-game chat and if you're reported for saying them, you'll be banned for daring to speak the words. These aren't the only censorship decisions in the game, but they're by far the ones that struck me the most. I understand that the company is based out of China and thus has to follow the censorship rules, as they are the actual law of the land and they could be fined or even shut down if they refused. But the disconnect of knowing there are actual human rights atrocities being committed in China with the Uygher Genocide and Re-Education camps, the human rights violations in Hong Kong, the breakdown of democracy and the treatment of Taiwan, while this game that comes out of China boasts on and on about Freedom and the Human right to self actualize and choose their future is... troubling. It's one that I don't really know how to reconcile, if it can be reconciled at all. I'd like to believe that the developers really believe in their own story and secretly oppose those sorts of atrocities. But at the same time, banning players who mention Hong Kong or Taiwan isn't in the law. That’s a decision MiHoYo is making. Right now, China doesn’t have the freedom that Venti and Mondstat and Genshin Impact try to instill in you so hard as important and a human right. And knowing that and knowing the censorship is in the game make it very difficult to get a read on what the game actually wants you to feel.

Overall,i think Genshin Impact is a fantastic game. Its updates plan to bring in not only more story, as there are meant to be 7 Acts and currently the game features the Prologue and half of Act 1, but in those acts it plans to explain the playable areas and bring in new Events, Characters, Weapons, etc. And that makes me excited for the future of Genshin Impact! It’s a beautiful game of genuinely Triple AAA quality completely for free. But. Its also a Gacha game and by far one of the least rewarding Gachas you could play right now. Maybe that will change with time. I certainly hope it does. But it feels hard to recommend something that, once you beat it, disrespects your time so much and so badly. I hope Genshin Impact has a bright future, I really do, and I’m definitely going to continue playing it. But right now, I can’t say for certain that I feel confident in the developers to make it the game it clearly wants to be if it wasn’t shackled down by its Gacha.

[defiantscribe]

The Full Moon

It always seems to hit me right around the time a full moon happens.... the introspective turn.

Honestly, I want to write about the things eating away at me, but I guess I don't know what exactly is eating away at me.

I'm a bit disappointed that I have no one but empty space to bounce this off. And it doesn't really bounce as it just floats away like a Star Wars monologue.

I feel disconnected, I feel alone, I feel frustrated, I feel that if I'm not the one to make the first move, no one else will take the leap.  That's mostly about my family and their lack of want to upkeep the house. I can't be the only one who wants a clean home, but it certainly feels like that.  Fuck this keyboard, I'm gonna sit at my desk.

I'm completely tired of my job.  I'm now playing the lottery more often in hopes that any sizable win will allow me to walk away because I'm tired of working.  I don't want to be someone's errand boy anymore.  I have no skillset that would allow me to quit what I'm doing and work from home or be my own boss, so the only true solution is a large windfall coming my way.

I'm just so tired of feeling like I put forth an effort and it's just par for the course. That nothing changes, nothing improves, it all just stays the same.  And sometimes that's nice, but when it's all that ever happens, it's bland; boring.

I know I'm not alone, but fuck if it doesn't feel that way on nights like these.  I mean, christ, I'm having what can only be seen as a one sided conversation with a notepad and we call all see how THAT'S going....

I try to make videos for the entertainment of my friends or maybe others who might stumble across them, but seriously, it feels fruitless.  I get a chuckle here, a tiny bit of feedback there, but for the most part.... 10 views is about my top cap.  Guess that YouTube career just ain't gonna shake out.

Unlike some of my friends, I don't have that natural charisma.  I would struggle selling a bucket of water to someone on fire.

And that's my life. In it's rotted little nutshell.  I choose to not change, yet I want change. When I reach for change, the effort seems to be more than I'm willing to put forth, so I complain.  I whine and hope that my whimpering will somehow instigate some sort of change, when I know full well that it won't do dick.  And yet, I still do it.

Forty and I'm still no closer to "being an adult" than I was 20 years ago.  I go through the paces, but make no plans, have no master plan, I have nothing and I use simple escapes to find tinges of happiness. And maybe that's all I can do, but even those tinges are wearing thin and I'll be right back where I always am: by myself, introspective, feeling sorry for myself. And it's getting tired. I'm tired of it, but I don't think I'll ever change it.

And any time a change might come my way, I somehow find a way to goof it up.  I'm just so tired of being my own worst enemy.  I'm tired of my job.  I'm tired of feeling like my life has thusly amounted to being a source of financial stability and minor home repair. I feel like I should be more, but I feel it's getting too late in the game to turn that corner and I'm just gonna continue rolling down the hill to the open chasm that will eventually be my final destination.

Stupid medications, you're suppose to not make me feel like this.  Yet here I am, bothering strangers for attention and writing to myself in a feeble attempt to make myself feel better.

Quite honestly, this used to be therapeutic, now it just feels fucking sad.  Even writing has started to do me dirty.  My last bastion; et tu?

Whatever, no one's gonna read this trite anyways or even sympathize or honestly give a fuck.  So I'm going to go back to reviewing my Jackbox videos, highlighting what I consider funny content and then posting it for those 10 views.  At least I can have that level of impact in this crusty world.

[mattgambler]

Phoenix Point and why I want it to live

No TLDR this time. I said in the past that I could write pages over pages about this. I guess its time to see how many pages we are actually talking about here. Phoenix Point is currently rather mediocre. From the soundtrack to the many bugs and rather rough implementations, the missing features that were envisioned in the kickstarter campaign, the 5 scheduled DLCS, the epic store exclusivity, the inferior graphical polish in comparison to Firaxis’ XCOM reboot, the inferior complexity in comparison to Longwar, probably even the inferior Idontknow in comparison to the very first XCOM games from way back when, I didnt play those. If you are looking for something to hate in this game, you dont have to look too hard, there is something here for everyone. The reason Ive been a determined defender of Phoenix Point is not simply because I have a different taste in games than the mainstream however, but because I feel there is a way deeper underlying problem at work here. I’ll come back to that later. Btw starting now, when I say XCOM, I mean Firaxis’ XCOM. Personally I want more games like XCOM. More games like Battlebrothers, Mordheim: City of the Damned, Invisible Inc, hell, even Bloodbowl, even though I dont dig the sports angle. Games with permadeath, nameable characters, dynamic overworld systems and missions and situations that are created ideally by circumstance, not by simply playing mission 1, then mission 2, until you reach what the devs decided to be the last one they would make for the game. I thoroughly enjoy that concept of progression and many turnbased strategy titles just dont do it for me because they are too linear, even when they are otherwise nicely crafted experiences. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is a nice example of this, the game looks nice, sounds nice and is very well made, but it lacks the one thing I enjoy most in all the games I mentioned earlier. Along comes Phoenix Point and the moment I look at this game I know that it is all about scratching that specific itch. Not only that, it also brings with it a variety of creative features to even improve the established turnbased squad tactics formula. I didnt lie when I said I think that it is in many ways better than XCOM. Just that... WHAT?!?! ...the overall game doesnt compare well if we look at the sum of their parts at the moment. YOU CANT BE SERIOUS!!!!! About Phoenix Point being better in many ways? Sure, let me make a list. 1) Aiming In XCOM you aim, you have an x% chance to hit, you either hit or you dont. While widely accepted because of the quality of the overall games, its a pretty simple system that becomes especially frustrating when your guns model on screen is touching the enemies forehead and you still manage to miss. Or when a flashbanged and suppressed sectoid crits you in full cover after rolling a natural 20. In Phoenix Point bullets get simulated and trace a path from the barrel of your gun to a target that they then either hit or miss. Smaller enemies in Phoenix Point are hard to hit not because the game designers arbitrarily decided so, but because smaller enemies are simply smaller. In comparison, in XCOM you roll dice. 2) Modular enemies Similar to Battlebrothers, Phoenix Point has you encounter the same brigand thug (crabmen) over and over again. The enemy itself doesnt matter as much, its more about the number of different variations you can encounter. Brigant thugs can come equipped with simple helmets and/or armor as well as different weapons that have different abilities. They also have different faces on top of that. They are by far not the only enemy in the game, but even if they were, by the time you encounter the exact same thug a second time you wont be able to tell anymore because you have seen so many others inbetween. The same goes for most enemies in Battlebrothers (with a few exceptions), it becomes way more about your opponents equipment than about his actual type or class. Phoenix Point goes for the very same approach, but falls short because of  a variety of reasons. To name just one, the first time you encounter New Jericho as a faction, you fight four New Jericho soldiers and all four of them have the same armor, the same weapon and even the same face. To hammer it home the mission also always takes place on a variation of the exact same map. It is an absolute travesty. The ambition is there and in random encounters on the map you can see where it is supposed to go, with every enemy type in the game being designed in a way that allows for as many variations as the devs can think of, from paralysis tentacles and bloodsucking arms to mist generators and everything inbetween. The possibilities are endless and from the standard crab to the giant bosses every enemy is designed with this modularity in mind. In XCOM in comparison, you have a variety of different enemies, but for the entirety of the first month (what is that, 3-7 missions?) you only fight the sectoid. Or maybe the drone too, I havent played vanilla in forever. Longwar tries to spice that up by using preexisting models and assigning new abilities to them, making some models bigger and giving others new abilities, but at the end of the day the sectoid looks the way the sectoid looks. I love what it looks like btw. But modular enemies are decidedly cooler. 3) Scale In XCOM you control 4, later up to 6 soldiers at the same time. In Longwar it goes up to 8, or 12 in that one mission. In Phoenix Point you start out the same way, but to my knowledge you can bring as many soldiers to any mission as you can get there via aircraft. Meaning that as soon as you get a second manticore you can theoretically have up to 12 soldiers in a mission, or 18 with a third. Naturally you would probably want to split your forces instead and be in 3 places at the same time (and you can), but this sort of thing being possible, both the 18 soldiers in one mission as well as the 3 different squads doing missions in 3 different places of the planet, is something XCOM simply does not offer.  4) Other features Be it vehicles, giant enemies, diplomacy or the amount of control you get on the overworld map, Phoenix Point does (or attempts to do) a huge number of things that in XCOM are simply nonexistant. In XCOM you dont get to decide were to fly, missions are simply spawned in popup fashion, the skyranger is on autopilot, “diplomacy” is managed by talking to top secret bald guy representing the council and by sometimes fulfilling a councilrequest. The only opposing faction apart from the aliens is EXALT which can be regarded as more of a separate mission type with human enemies and not really as a faction that contributes in any diplomatic way. Dont get me wrong, I dont think XCOM needs diplomacy in order to be good. XCOM is already good, fantastic in fact. But if we compare based on features alone and not the quality of their implementation, then Phoenix Point is doing A LOT of things that XCOM never even touched. This is in no way me trying to trash XCOM. I love XCOM, especially Longwar. However for the sake of an at least somewhat fair comparison the only games we should compare Phoenix Point to at this Point are XCOM Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, both at launch. Bringing Longwar into the mix is something I do for the sake of providing a third angle, not because I am blind to the fact of how ludacris it would be to compare a newly launched game with an extensive overhaul mod that was in the making for years after the vanilla game and even its expansion were already released. As I was saying, along comes Phoenix Point doing all those very ambitious things. And it gets DESTROYED. To quote Beaglerush, the probably best known XCOM streamer out there: “But honestly, for anyone with experience in the XCOM genre, anyone who likes XCOM games, and anyone particularly who likes XCOM games at a harder difficulty or likes to obviously, like, play well, I do not think it is possible to enjoy this game unless you are getting a big paycheck and you are a good actor.” To be clear, I didnt watch the entire footage that made him come to that conclusion and I dont want to comment too much on what “playing well” means, but i have played Longwar on the highest difficulty in ironmanmode for 2000 hours (without beating it, but also always with Training Roulette active) and I have beaten XCOM 2 on highest difficulty in ironman mode. I do consider Longwar as one of my favourite games of all time and I do consider myself as someone who has experience with the genre, likes games and likes to play them “well”, or at least on highest difficulty. I dont agree with Beagle (duh), but I can of course see where he might be coming from. In its current state Phoenix Point is not finished. Playable, but even for an early access game its still pretty rough, with many mechanics not or only sometimes working (leanout, aim and aimsnapping, end turn, details, you get the point), features missing, performance issues, lackluster soldier customization, lackluster diplomacy options, a rather simple skilltree, questionable balance, etc. Don’t look at me like that, if I wanted to I could jump that hatetrain any time! But if I was to do that, where would that leave us? The XCOM genre, as Beagle calls it, is a niche genre at the best of times. Not only regarding the playerbase but also regarding game developers willing to invest time and money into creating something new. Xenonauts 2 is a year or more behind its originally panned release date with not much news to speak of, Terra Invicta is a distant memory of a game that will maybe one day still be released and Im still waiting for the XCOM 3 announcement and who knows if it will even come. Especially after we, the players, completely demolish Phoenix Point to the point where I would just cancel the 5 planned DLCS right now if I was in charge of the devteam. The main reason I defended Phoenix Point was not because of what the game currently is but because of what the game could be after 5 more DLCs. Ive played every backerbuild of the game and statements like “the game is still what it was 2 years ago” are simply and factually false. Especially between backerbuild 4 and 5 there was a huge jump in quality and between 5 and the release version that same jump has ocurred again - with an entire game that is now playable and completable. Yes, it could have more voiced lines instead of text, yes, it doesnt have the sexy “alerted sectoid” animation sequence when you run into a new enemy pod (pods dont exist in PP but you get me) and sure, the epic exclusive sucks I guess and I dont care much for the soundtrack. But after Backerbuild 5, who knows where the game will be after the next DLC? And the next? If you compare XCOM Enemy Unknown with XCOM Enemy Within, the difference was breathtaking. And here we have a game that has so much work already done, so many assets created, so much code already in place, and we, the players, punch them in the face and shout “NOT GOOD ENOUGH!”. You wanna go back to the drawing board, have somebody else start fresh on something that could be better in a year or two if we are lucky? Ive been looking for a game like XCOM for literally years. Battle Brothers was the closest I found. Tens, if not hundreds of others inbetween failed hard, from “Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus” to “Legends: Viking” to “Wildermyth” and basically everything inbetween. And here we have a game that seems to have the right idea, the right amount of ambition and a good amount of the work already done and we are bitchslapping them left and right just so we can go back to getting hyped about the next mediocre linear story experience. Sure, them releasing already is a shame. But if I was the one to decide, I would give them the same amount of money again and triple it and tell them to finish the job instead of spitting in their face when they come to us and lowkey tell us that they ran out of money. And I would send them flowers and tell them that Im sorry. Anybody can polish a game with extra cash, but getting the core idea right is something that even Firaxis almost failed to do with XCOM 2, as far as Im concerned. I said earlier, that there was a deeper underlying problem here and that I would come back to it and here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Modernday gamers are an ungrateful, hateful bunch of whiny spoiled brats, who think they are entitled to only the best of the best while in fact they “deserve” nothing. The entire concept of a kickstarter campaign is that you provide funds and trust so a bunch of people can try to realize their vision. If you dont like the outcome, then that doesnt mean they betrayed you, it means you have poor judgement. Notice how I say judgement and not taste. You dont have poor judgement because you dont like the outcome, but because you gave them money in the first place. I should maybe add at this point that my anger is mostly directed towards the public reaction and the phoenix point subreddit and not towards my own viewership. (hello) Phoenix Point is not the first game that has had me feel like the entire gaming landscape is slowly spiraling out of control. 5 years ago I thought quality means sales. At this point Im worried that a high marketing budget means sales. And I dread the possibility that 5 years from now I might be convinced that a high marketing budget means quality. Some of the best games this year were literally destroyed by players. Artifact wasn’t only boykotted, but actively brutalized, with people at some point purposefully streaming porn and torture under the Artifact tag on Twitch. Pathologic 2 had the devteam almost go bankrupt after poor sales and unfavourable reviews by people that barely grasped the basics of the game. All the while people feed money to the ginormous immortal that is Magic The Gathering and praise Hideo Kojima for his “unique vision” for Death Stranding. I didnt play Death Stranding and Magic can be pretty fun, but does nobody see the smothering double standards in play here? Im not saying that Phoenix Point has no problems right now in terms of quality. Some of the issues player encounter are in fact inexcusable, at least longterm. But XCOM 2 also had a bumpy launch with long loading times and tons of bugs and then they were fixed and today there are people that think XCOM 2 is better than Longwar. Incomprehensible to me how anyone could think that, but time and some postlaunch fixes did clearly change peoples minds. I think the main reason Phoenix Point got so much hate on launch in comparison to XCOM 2 (which also released 3 DLCs ,or was it more) is because its drastically different and more ambitious in many ways, not because it is half as bad as people make it out to be. XCOM is just like Phoenix Point, just dumbed down I guess. Kappa. (I hate it when people use the term “dumbed down”. This is a joke. Ffs why do I have to explain this)