#near the wii U. Help!

[hembob]

[shinysamurott9]

How I nuked my 400 Hour Save of Pokemon Heartgold

So, recently I've been playing through the Pokemon Generations doing a Ribbon Master Quest, obtaining every Ribbon a single or set of Pokemon can possibly obtain by sending them up through the series. Just yesterday I was on the tail end of finishing the Gen 4 segment of the challenge.

I have a team of 5 Ribbon Masters currently; Mushi, my Shiny Heracross from Pokemon Colosseum which I hunted specifically for this Ribbon Master Quest, Velos and Seibzehn, a Latios and Metagross I raised to use in Emerald's Battle Frontier, Sparda, my Shiny Arceus I hunted using the void glitch in Pearl and Nero, my Shiny Giratina from Sinjoh Ruins. The only ribbons left for them to get was the Legend Ribbon for beating Red and most pertinent to this story, the World Ability Ribbon.

For those unaware, the World Ability Ribbon is obtained by reaching Rank 5 or higher in the Wifi Room in Gen 4's Battle Tower. Despite what you may think, this is still obtainable thanks to fan made servers which restore old wifi functionalities in Generations 4 & 5. The thing is though the Wifi room is bullshit. The opponents you fight are recorded teams from other players and unfortunately, on top of the highly optimised teams you’ll encounter, you'll also encounter many teams of blatantly hacked stuff like Machamps with OHKO Moves or Sturdy Shedinjas.

This is where I mention the fact that I just so happen to have a modded 3ds, which, among other things, let's me backup save data. So since the game was blatantly cheating anyway, I decided "Fuck it, I'm cheating too". How I did this was to fight one battle in the Wifi Room, and after winning, I'd use the rest option to save and exit the game. Then I'd backup that save file, so if I lost the next battle, I could restore that backup and try again, letting me continue my streak. A slow process but it would mean eventually, I would be able to climb the ranks high enough to get the World Ability Ribbon.

As you can imagine though, I was doing this process of reloading and backing up a lot, and at one point I restored a file incorrectly, taking out the game too early, causing the file to go blank. No problem I'll just restore the file again and if I was competent, that's wherethis would have ended. But, because of how much I was using Checkpoint, my muscle memory got a lite crosswired, so instead of restoring my file, I made a new backup over it, effectively erasing the entire thing.

For reference this included:

400 hrs of Gameplay, A Pokedex roughly 2/3rds complete, A fully developed Safari Zone, Several Pokemon from my various Gen 4 Playthroughs over the years, Every Arceus Plate, (Which are actually pretty difficult to get in HGSS), All 5 of my Ribbon Masters

And perhaps worst of all, my entire collection of Gen 4 shinies. This included:

My near back to back Shiny Luxio and Luxray from Platinum,

A shiny Darkrai and Shaymin I hunted with the Void Glitch

Several Radar and Safari Week Shinies

And a shiny of each Sinjoh Dragon.

Needless to say I was both pissed and devestated. There was some consolation, since I had backups of Gen 3 and Platinum, my Ribbon Masters and Battle Tower mons were safe. Everything else though, initially I was resigned to either losing them forever or trying very likely in vain to recreate as much as I could in PKHex which has it's own issues both logistically and ensuring they were legal, not helped at all by how bad the legality checker in PKHex actually is.

BUT

There was, one, just one saving grace. Fucking POKEMON BATTLE REVOLUTION

The way that Battle Revolution works is that you connect a Gen 4 Save File and it will make an exact copy of your boxes so you can use them in BR's various Colosseums. And of course I just so happened to have copied my boxes from HG a few months ago just after Safari Week meaning every pokemon I had nuked still existed! I had to hack my Wii U to dump the save file but because of that I was able to completely restore almost every single pokemon by copy pasting them back onto Heartgold.

Obviously still lost a lot in other areas but I really can't complain considering what I managed to restore.

As a sidenote, there was a similar incident way back where I accidentally erased my friend's Ruby Master File no shinieswere lost just a lot of progress. I think his reaction speaks for itself.

[dr-spectre]

I didn't get into Splatoon until the second game, and I missed out on playing the first. I, however, knew about the series since its announcement, and I've always wanted to play it, but I couldn't cause I didn't have a Wii U. Jump forward 8 years later, and man, I'm so incredibly thankful for this game. I'm so grateful that Splatoon 1 existed because it birthed a franchise that I hold near and dear to my heart. It sucks that the online for this game, as well as the other Wii U and 3DS titles that shaped my childhood, are being put to rest. (Until pretendo brings them back unofficially, of course).

Splatoon genuinely shaped the person that I am today and helped me get through dark moments in my life. So thank you, Splatoon 1. Although we must Wave Goodbye and have a Fresh Start, we will always have your Maritime Memory in our hearts.

Thank you.

[branmuffins22]

It says failed game dev in your bio what game(s) were you working on? We're there any stories you wanted to tell?

Not all that much of a story to tell, but here's the gist:

I made a few student games with my twin in highschool (even took one to a trade skills competition, we got 7th place in nationals), went to college to pursue game development as a career, learned the hard way that I wasn't cut out for it (acquired hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and a bunch of stress/overwork-related health complications for my troubles), flunked out in my second year, and haven't made a game since (closest I've come has been almost getting a job as a QA tester for Nintendo of America, brainstorming a handful of game ideas, and helping my twin squash bugs in his own projects sometimes).

As for the specifics, I've only worked on 3 games I'm even somewhat proud of: Run&Gun, Paint the Town, and Custom Fighter. All three were made in highschool, using a proprietary game engine made by the same school my twin and I later flunked out of. As a general rule, my twin handled the art and design, and I handled the programming, but there was some overlap where we dipped our toes into eachother's jobs.

Infodump beyond the readmore:

Run&Gun was a combination First-Person Shooter and Racing Game, with some gravity-bending mechanics, as a treat. In it, you raced on a massive, twisting track against a handful of computer players while shooting them with your trusty SMG, and trying not to get shot yourself. The player could stick to walls, treating everything they raced along as the ground, which let us get a little silly with the track's layout. There was also a really cool section near the end that featured a halfpipe (or maybe more like a three-quarters-pipe) that ended in a ramp and a huge jump, which, due to the nature of the wall-sticking mechanic, had you falling forwards moreso than down for about half of it. It was probably the only bit of spectacle that actually hit the mark.

The game had a lot of neat ideas, but ultimately failed in execution for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it served as many firsts: our first 3D game, our first first-person game, our first game with computer players, our first racing game, our first game with dynamic physics, our first game we worked on for longer than a month, etc. I actually ended up reinventing several wheels while working on this game, since I didn't know what to look for as far as guidance at the time: linked lists, aim-assist, behavior trees, and some really crude vector math being chief among them. On one hand, I really didn't need to do all that, because the tech already existed (and is downright ubiquitous in the industry), but on the other hand, I felt smart as hell when I made it work, and super vindicated when I learned that people smarter than me had been doing the same shit for decades.

Paint the Town was a 2D Action Platformer which took heavy aesthetic inspiration from Splatoon (or, what little of Splatoon we'd seen over the shoulder of a Wii-U-owning friend of ours, anyways). There was only one level, which also served as a tutorial, and it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, but with such a limited scope, we managed to squeeze out a solid experience. You played as Fuschia (spelled that way because we thought the real spelling of the word was dumb), an excitable teen who wanted to take back her city from the evil... Blobbers? Bloobies? I don't remember what we called 'em, they were an invading force of aliens that kinda just looked like the slimes from Dragon Quest. Anyways, they were painting everything blue, which made everyone there feel blue, so our hero took it upon herself to paint the town a fresh new hue (fuchsia, obviously).

It was a fairly linear experience, with no special movement mechanics or anything: just a short gauntlet of guys to take down as you hopped across rooftops and construction sites, picking up the occasional extra weapon here and there for variety. The three things I'm most proud of are the relative variety of unique enemies and weapons (patrolling guys, turret guys, helicopter guys, and even a bomb-throwing boss guy, as well as four different weapons with unique shot patterns), the visual effects (the city was a fairly-blank canvas, and you and the enemies would paint over it as you fought), and a handy little tool we lovingly called the ~Vector Trajector Projector~, which acted as a reticle to show the path your shots would go (discounting any spread) while you aimed. It was really just an extremely basic projectile simulation equation, but dammit, I was proud! For a project that only took a couple months to make, it was pretty solid, in my opinion.

Custom Fighter was the last of our highschool games, and the one we took to that national trade skills competition. Well, technically we took all three of them to the competition, but Run&Gun only took us as far as state the year prior, and we pivoted from Paint the Town to Custom Fighter between regionals and state of that final year. Anyways, it was a 3D Dueling Game featuring giant robots that could be decorated and customized in a pre-match menu. The only mechanical effects your customization would have was the robot's physical size (for hit/hurtboxes and so on) and its Weight, which depended on its size and determined its speed, knockback, and to a lesser extent, damage, so the rest was just for fun. Every robot had the same moveset: just a punch, an uppercut, a power-punch, a roundhouse kick, a missile barrage, and a meter-draining super move (a weird timestopping dropkick thing that we couldnt animate in time, and thus really just looked like you stopped time and flew face-first at the other guy in midair).

There were a whole lot of little things I was proud of in this game: dynamic knockback animations, light trails and other such visual effects, my largest attempt at menu/UI design to date (for the customization screen), a really satisfying application of calculus to make the dropkick hit the mark every time, and the fact that I managed to fix every last crash bug the night before the competition's showcase.

But my greatest accomplishment wasn't even technically something I did; rather, it was something I couldn't do.

The time-stopping dropkick had a funny bug that seemingly-randomly caused the player who got hit with it to get flung out of the arena at truly ludicrous speeds, instead of the intended knockback velocity of the attack. The night before the competition, I discovered that it was because the players would sometimes collide physically after the attack's hitbox reached the target's hurtbox (which applied the inteneded knockback), but before time would resume its usual flow. Because the attacking player would be going incredibly fast in-simulation (despite going at a pretty moderate pace as far as any viewers were concerned), they would impart an incredible amount of momentum to the other player, which, once time resumed its normal rate, translated to getting launched offscreen faster than you could blink. I couldn't come up with a way to fix the bug entirely in time for the competition, but I did manage to come up with a band-aid patch that made it a lot less likely.

A month or so earlier, in that same year, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out, and unbeknownst to me at the time, it featured the same exact bug. I only discovered it thanks to the Something About video, which came out a couple years later, but if you've ever seen a speedrunner do a shield surf jump toward an enemy's head, pull out a bow to enter arrow-time, and bounce off to launch way up into the sky, that's exactly the same mechanics at play. The enemy's animation when they get bounced on has their head snap into a different position to start, which, while in arrow-time, translates to an absurd amount of movement over extremely little time. Landing on something while shield-surfing usually only applies a certain amount of bounce to the player, but if the player and the enemy are in just the right positions relative to eachother, they collide physically after the initial hit, and the player gets flung hilariously far away.

So what was once a bug that bested me, the bane of my existence, had become something that hundreds and hundreds of smarter people had tried to fix too, each as unsuccessful as the last. I couldn't fix that bug, but neither could the entire team behind one of the biggest and best games to date.

It was extremely vindicating.

[wfagamerants]

Super Mario Wonder has been out for over a week now and I have beaten it 100% not long after release, so may as well discuss it, shall we?

Spoiler warnings in full effect, since I like to be able to discuss basically everything I’d like, just to clear that up right off the bat.

SMW is the first, for the lack of a better term, normal 2D Mario in over a decade at this point, so naturally, everyone was looking forward to seeing what they’d do next, especially with the step away from the NSMB series, which was really needed by that point.

The NSMB games are also by necessity, the main games to compare Wonder to, given for how long they have been the most recent incarnation of 2D Mario. On that note, this is not meant to be a hit piece on those games. All of them are fine and I am particularly fond of DS and Wii, however they did have problems and it’s hard to think of an area where Wonder isn’t just an unambiguous improvement.

Those improvements already begin in a rather surprising spot: the story.

2D Mario is actually a fair bit more varied in it’s set-ups than it can appear at first, Prior to NSMB it was really just SMB1 and Lost Levels that went with the Bowser kidnaps Peach plot, without much else surrounding it. SMB3 starts as a journey to turn the 7 kings back to normal, with Bowser only kidnapping Peach near the end as a last resort and World, while sticking largely to the base, takes place in a completely new setting. That’s not even going into SMB2 or the Land games, which are all breaks from what we see as the Mario norm in some way. New kingdoms, new characters, new villains and bosses, new a lot of things really.

Wonder in that regard really feels like a return to that. A whole new kingdom once more, with a new companion and NPC species and while Bowser is the big bad, he doesn’t engage in any royalty kidnapping and instead goes after a new power source, which transforms him and he stays that way all the way until defeated. It’s simple, as is typical for Mario, but it is a lot more refreshing than the very samey NSMB plots, which took until U to really add a twist to it and even then failed to do all that much with it, particularly with a level theme as neat as Peach’s Castle taken over by Bowser.

What surprised me even more was how every world had a bit of its own story going on, with the Poplins giving you an idea of what kind of trouble Jr and Bowser’s actions in general, were causing them. A particular stand-out for me was World 3, which doesn’t even have a boss and is instead treated as a series of trials, to obtain a Royal Seed that Bowser hasn’t gotten his hands on.

As with the main story, it never goes especially deep, but it goes a long way to make the Flower Kingdom feel like an actual world, in stark contrast to the Mushroom Kingdom of NSMB games, which was very much just a videogame world for function as a videogame world, doing it’s job and not much more.

The visuals have also seen a refreshing shake-up. Granted, even NSMBU got better about it by U, but even compared to that, I find the visual design of the Flower Kingdom locales to be substantially more appealing, not to mention imaginative. Fungi Mines in particular is full of designs I am a fan of and even a new level theme with its ruins, which isn’t the only time the game diverts and goes for something totally new.

In general, while the game holds true to most of the typical level themes, the aesthetics are so varied that they don’t even really feel that way. This is something you feel as early as World 1, while it functionally serves as the Grassland of the day, it rarely feels that way because the visuals change up enough to not make it feel like a static world theme. It also helps that the order has been changed a bit. You wouldn’t imagine how refreshing it is to not have the Desert be the second world.

The biggest visual highlight of the stages for me were the airship levels, genuinely cool and climactic, in a way that made me pause and just go ‘’woah’’ and I can’t say I feel that way a lot in 2D Mario, but this game brought that out several times.

Of course, the big show stealers are the characters themselves and yeah, everything people say is true. They look great, every animation is filled with personality and detail and there is even some nice stylization, like the sideways mouths for Mario, Luigi and the Toads, which help bring the models in line with the current style of 2D Mario.

Everyone and their grandparents has already made comparisons to the NSMB games and that’s because it is ultimately true. If anything this is one of the best things to point to where these games have different mindsets.

NSMB treated the models more like sprites than anything, going for something functional, with very little flavor, while Wonder is determined to fill its animations with as much charm as possible. Even little things like the characters striking poses when collecting a power-up or reacting to mooks about to get out of their shells, goes a long way in bringing those characters alive, instead of treating them like game pieces that carry out their function and that’s it.

In terms of music it has some stand-outs and the rest is at worst, easy on the ears, about what I expect and everything fits the mood of the stage well, no complaints.

More pressingly in terms of audio is that this is the first time we are hearing the new voices for several characters, most notably Mario. Luigi and Daisy and overall I think they all do a wonderful job, I’m already used to all of them.

It’s also just refreshing to have a set of fresh new voice clips this thoroughly across the board. Mario has never been a stranger to reused voice clips even early on, but by the Wii U era it became even more noticeable than usual and in past years, genuinely a bit distracting, so I am happy Wonder does not fall victim to that.

And then we got the gameplay, of course the most important factor of all and where I have plenty more to gush about.

A notable thing about Wonder is that it has some 3D Mario veterans on the team and to be honest, it shows.

There are some more overt inspirations, such as Petal Isles essentially serving as the hub world of the game, a Shadow Mario type wonder effect or being able to find (Captain) Toad on the overworld in exchange for rewards, as has been his role in the 3D games since 3D Land.

Even taking that aside though, while the game is fundamentally still 2D Mario as we all know it, many of its ideas and gimmicks can sometimes feel more like missions in a 3D Mario game, which I very much mean as a compliment. This is further underlined by stuff like the Wiggler Races, timed enemy gauntlets, Badge Challenges or Search Party sections. In general, there is a surprising variety to the kind of things you get tasked with, which is refreshing.

The characters control quite similarly to the NSMB games, even including nuances like Ground Pound canceling and because of it, control like a dream. The only major difference being that you can crouch walk and that the triple jump is gone. The latter was something I expected to miss, but the levels are designed in a way that never made me feel that way.

While almost everyone plays the same, badges do help bring in variety to make up for it. I stuck with Parachute for just being that fun and useful for me, but I did mess around with a couple and am eager to experiment with it and also play more with the expert badges. I can easily see a ton of replayability options completely new to the series, through them.

It does bring me to my first little gripe, which is the Yoshis being stuck to being designated Easy Mode options. I totally get wanting a full set of 4 for multiplayer, but a simple toggle would have been appreciated. Yoshi does play differently and is still fun, but I’d like a way to play him as a more normal character. Same moveset, but without Easy Mode-like benefits.

What I said about levels being more visually diverse also applies to the level elements. Sometimes it’s small things like the fountain springs in the very first level, but even beyond that the game is so full of new enemies and ideas that it feels a lot like SMB3, in terms of bringing in distinct level concepts one after another. It is miles above NSMB which granted, had plenty stand-out stages too across the series, but also a lot that felt samey, especially as the series went on and some gimmicks were repeated.

The power-ups also hold their own well. Elephant even once you get the initial whut factor out of the way is fun and really the star of certain sections, Drill has some really cool applications and the Bubble Flower is easily my favorite of them all. I love a power-up that has both offensive and platforming uses and this one, especially combined with badges, allows for some really fun stuff.

The Wonder effects are of course the star of the show and a contributor to every level feeling so distinct. The amount of different ideas they came up with and how well they all work, is truly astounding and it’s remarkable how few of them repeat. The balloon or rolling ball Wonder Effects would have been recurring gimmicks in other games, but here, you do them once and twice respectively and move on. 

All this combined makes for a remarkably fresh feeling 2D Mario, which was desperately needed and did a lot to elevate the game to something exciting and genuinely addicting.

The bosses are…a bit more of a mixed bag. I like that not every world has one and that does help with the risk of repetition, because aside from the final boss it’s all Bowser Jr. They could be worse, the Wonder effects do help a little, but it’s still full of the same kind of repetitive boss design the Koopalings get flack for, especially the spinning shell bits. They are serviceable, but that’s it and the airship bosses I don’t even count, they are fancy flagpoles.

The final boss though, I actually liked a lot, Bowser’s general state in this game was always going to make it stand out, but more than anything, it isn’t a rehash, it isn’t over in barely any time and it’s not another Bowser over the bridge. It’s new, it lasts long enough to feel satisfying, it feels right in difficulty, it’s just shockingly good.

Speaking of difficulty, that is a thing I heard a lot about when the game got into the hands of people early and to be honest….I don’t really see the supposed difficulty. It does want you to pay attention and that is good, but on the whole I find the game to be pretty breezy. Even the Special World and designated final reward level, were really not that tough. Not that that’s a bad thing though, it is a joyride kind of easy and not the braindead kind.

Haven’t really dabbled into the online or multiplayer, but do plan on that with a friend, so that’s gonna be fun to discover for my second run.

On the whole yeah, I love Wonder, major shocker. It really is a promising next step for 2D Mario, not being afraid to be wacky, full of character, legit fresh and exciting, a true evolution of the formular.

It’s not flawless, but it is an absolute joy and really, any platformer that lets me play as Toadette gets major brownie points out of the gate.

It’s Mario, Mario in his strongest form and I couldn’t be happier.

[emilythedog661]

My ideas for Tomodachi Life 2

So here are some ideas i have if they ever make a sequel to tomodachi life as it's one of my favorite 3DS game and i do also like miitopia but tomodachi life need to be remade for the switch as it's a good nintendo version of the sims franchise (i do also like the sims mainly sims 3 and 4)

Make people chose their own islands and let them place where the buildings go like animal crossing new horizons - i think this was great in animal crossing so why not put it in tomodachi life? the island in tomodachi life confuses me as it's one big island then another island with the fair, park, cafe and photo area on it and it looks like the mini can't reach that island due to it not showing a train station or anything so choosing your own island and then placing where the building go will make it a little more tidy.

Same sex marriage and raising babies - this was kinda fixed in miitopia but in that game, you couldn't get married and have children so in the sequel, have same sex couples, let them get married and let them have babies by making them say they adopted a child but you can edit the baby so it looks like the couple, this would probably fill out of lot of same sex fictional ship and i'm here for it.

change some items - when you reward you mini for a level up, you'll see in the gifts that there's a wii u and a 3DS in there, they need to be changed into a Switch and maybe a retro console as people like the older consoles like a GBA, a nintendo 64 or a SNES, also another idea i have is have more hobbie items as gifts like a drawing pad with a pencil and colouring tools to make your mii a artist , a sewing needle with thread to make your mii a sewer, knitting needles to make your mii a knitter, a crochet hook to make your mii do chochet and etc.

makes cats and dogs perminate to the miis and have breeds to the pets - i don't like that the cats and dogs are part of a pass and then when you give either a shiba inu or a different colour of the same cat, instead when you give your mii a pass, you then help your mii choose a dog breed like a labrador, a yorkshire terrier, a shiba inu, a chihuahua, a shih tzu, a collie, a golden retriever or a cat colour like black, white, orange, gray tabby, double colours, calico, tortoiseshell and etc with different shapes like a chunky cat or a skinny cat, the pet then be chilling in the apartment with the mii and then move to the house when the mii gets married, it will have its own bed, a box of toys, a litter box for the cat, a leash and collar hanging near the door for the mii to take the dog out and when your mii is at location like the beach or park, you'll see them walking their dog on their own or with a friend or a partner.

get rid of the marriage mini game - i hate it, it stresses me out everytime it happens and i just don't like it so instead, when the mii is telling you that they want to get married to another mii, give them a wedding ring from the treasures part and you can watch as the mii proposes to the other mii while you get to either control the fireworks or prepare the food.

decorate the house like what you can do in animal crossing - the apartments look so bare without furniture so why have a furniture shop added to the apartment design shop and use it to design the mii's apartment or house.

Add the editing feature from miitopia - this was a great feature in miitopia so i would love to see it in in this sequel.

That's all i got but if you have more ideas, put it in the comments and i will edit this if i have more ideas 😁

[owlixx]

Operation Terminus

So…I’ve canceled my plan to play/replay the first nine Assassin’s Creed games following my current playthrough of Valhalla. Instead, I’ll be cleaning up my “backlog”. Given the nature of what I do and how I play games, that’s less about which games I “own” and more about which games I’ve already sunk some time into.

Games I’m close to finishing:

* Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Xbox

Yeah this is the one I’m currently doing so definitely going to finish here before moving on, but I maybe do some small sonic game runs before digging into this operation proper.

* Phoenix Wright 1 3DS

I’m sooooo close, I’m like halfway through the final case, the DS exclusive one.

* Midnight Suns Xbox

Okay admittedly I’m only like…just past the start of Act 2 but this one is a priority before all the information completely leaves my brain. Plus the DLC is all out now and I own it!

* Wind Waker Wii U

I’m literally over halfway done with the triforce hunt so this is super close but I lost about an hour of progress last time I played over a year ago and haven’t touched it since. Shouldn’t be more than a couple days of playing left.

* Sonic Unleashed Xbox

Stuck on empire city, I just need to get some more medals to progress. Using a guide should help.

Games I’m near or around half done:

* Skyward Sword Wii U

In Lanayru Desert for the first time, not yet to the dungeon. So 1/4 - 1/3 done with the game? The motion controls kill me but standing up might help

* Metroid Prime 1 Wii U

Similar to wind waker, lost a good chunk of progress last time I played to space pirates. I don’t think you can turn down the difficulty after starting a playthrough but I should if I can.

* Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze Wii U

Stuck on boss of world…3? I do really enjoy this game when it works well

* Wario Land 3 Switch

I think I’m around half? Game is just big and other stuff came up

* Hot Shots Tennis Get A Grip PS Vita

Actually no idea how long this game is but it’s awesome

* Ratchet and Clank 2 PS3

I think I’m around half? Just got new ps3 controllers

* Bulletstorm PS3

I think I just started act 4 of 7, enjoying it so far

* War For Cybertron (dad?)

Okay admittedly I’m like less than half done with the first of two campaigns but I think I’ll be trying this coop soon online with my dad

* Fire Emblem Awakening 3DS

I think I’m on chapter 8 of 25

* Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes Switch

I can’t remember how far I got actually but I feel like I poured a good amount of time in already

* Xenoblade Chronicles Wii

Maybe 1/3 done with game?

* Professor Layton 1 DS

Maybe 2/3 done? I tried to omit games I’ve already beaten from this list unless I’m super close to beating them again and it’s been a while

* Mario Kart 7 3DS

I just kind of plink away at unlocking all the courses now and then but this shouldn’t take long with any effort applied

* Monster Tale DS

Again no clue how long this one is but I feel like I’m a good chunk into it, maybe 1/4

* Deadpool PS3

I think I’m on chapter 4 of 8

Games I Can Skip The Intro On:

* Mega Man Battle Network DS

I’m past the first main boss but not yet to the second. Playing a fan Tran of the Ds remake

* Mega Man Battle Network 2 GBA

I think same as above

* Death Stranding PC

Honestly this is a huge game and I’m only maybe 6 hours in

* Disco Elysium PC

Maybe 15 hours in?

* Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3

Barely past tutorial

* Bayonetta Wii U

Literally just past tutorial

* Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga Remake 3DS

Out of tutorial and past first main boss

* Final Fantasy Tactics Advance GBA

Decent clip into this one, maybe 15 hours, but it’s a huge game

* Puzzle and Dragon Z 3DS

Still in the tutorial in the main game, on world 3 or 4 of the Mario version

* Pilotwings Resort 3DS

I mean, it’s such a short game that the couple hours I’ve played is like half of it

* Dragon Age Origins Xbox

Maybe ten hours in? Big game though

* Final Fantasy VI GBA

Only 2-3 hours in and a huge game

* Twilight Princess Wii U

Just past the tutorial if that

* Crisis Core PS Vita

Think I’m still in the first real mission after the tutorial

* Locoroco PS Vita

Towards the end of world 2

* Patapon 2 PS Vita

Okay not actually far in but I’m considering the five or so hours I spent in Patapon 1 to be a kind of sunken cost tutorial

* Dead Space Extraction Wii U

I think…3 missions in? Out of 10?

* Sonic Colors Wii U

On world…3? Out of 7? Played before and replaying taking turns with partner

* Uncharted Golden Abyss PS Vita

Okay just past tutorial admittedly

* Wipeout 2048 PS Vita

Like Mario kart, i plonk away at this here and there

* Luigi’s Mansion 2 3DS

First of five mansions down

* Retro Game Challenge DS

I wanna say I’m on the third or fourth game of 8

* Grand Theft Auto 4 PS3

Maybe 2-3 hours in

* ICO PS3

1-2 hours in

* Demon Souls PS3

Okay barely even got past making a character, just got to the hun world at all

* Pokémon Sun 3DS

Okay this one I’m actually more like half done with I think, maybe closer to 1/3 but it’s been a while.

* Elebits Wii

Maybe 3 or 4 of the 25 levels done

[aiiria17]

A "Brief" "Review" of Sonic Lost World

I just finished the game and want to express my dissatisfaction (that's reviewspeak for hatred) for it. Wow that's the worst Sonic game I've ever played. I sincerely put it under Boom and Chronicles. It made me appreciate that at least Forces was semi-competant.

There's going to be two sections- one for story and one for gameplay. Basically if you want to skip a section go ahead. Amazingly both are just about equally bad okay review time

Part One - Gameplay is bad Sonic and also just bad?

Okay so I owned this game on the Wii U years ago and it got sold eventually so I rebought it on PC. I'm just saying this in case there is any weird PC version jank but also briefly I feel like this was a lazy port from the UI. All of the UI looked gross. Tangent out of the way here's actual content:

My main problem boils down to Sonic's controls being awful. Lost World is much more experimental with his control scheme in that it strips Sonic of his individual identity and makes him a generic platforming character. Most notably Lost World added a run button instead of the momentum mechanics that made Sonic unique. Honestly, the run button doesn't ruin the game or anything. I see it like tripping in Smash Bros. Brawl: really not that problematic but emblematic of a larger problem (for Brawl it's the general slower speed and for Lost World it's the lackluster movement for Sonic) Generally the saving grace for me is that, even in bad games like Sonic 06 and Heroes, at least Sonic will feel good to just generally maneuver with. Like running around is nice he controls good enough to give me my "Sonic kick" for the day. Lost World proves its lack of value by making him feel like sludge.

Sludge is heavy and slow feeling and gross and yep that fits. Jumping feels yucky and wallrunning is especially egregious. Wall running effectively ruined the game for me because, if you are holding the run button, you will always stick to a wall, for those unaware. Like always. Even when you don't want to. I don't even think you have to be holding in. Point is if you are trying to do like a running jump or something and Sonic goes near a wall he will decide "this is my new purpose" and stick to the wall. And he can only come down in two ways: 1. let his wall run timer run out (it's a few seconds) or 2. jump. Jumping is sometimes an option but it sets you back and in a lot of situations can kill you. So, especially in later parts of the game where platforming is tighter, you just have to wait for seconds sometimes while Sonic stands on the wall like an idiot. It's so infuriating because there is a way to counteract it: don't run. I think the fact that not running makes some of the game better says a lot. Gotta go slow I guess.

Also Sonic's attack options are... something. The homing attack is here as always with a new kick that is introduced to you like WAY later than it should have been (not even mentioned or needed until world 5/7, but more on that later). The new feature for the homing attack is the multi lock-on which oh boy howdy does it """function""". Pretty much you will never actually get a lock-on to a full set of enemies unless the game decides it spontaneously is feeling it that day. Generally more air time might help? Not sure because I definitely didn't succeed with the multi lock-on. For bosses, who only are one being, you can just lock on multiple times to do even more damage. Which basically adds up to you standing next to the boss for a hot minute. For the endgame refights this actually can just straight up instakill the bosses because they are absolutely pathetic.

Those bosses by the way, briefly disregarding the Deadly Six in the story because that's later I'll just say they are as interesting in gameplay as they are in the plot. You fight each of them 3 times. On the even number levels in their respective worlds and split up into two boss rush likes in world 7. I'm not going to go over all of the bosses mostly because they are SUPER forgettable. Like sincerely I don't think I even know how most of them worked. They all die in like two hits despite there being a whole world of buildup of "oh this one's gonna beat up Sonic into them just getting folded by three homing attacks. I think every time I beat a boss I though they were about to phase transition and just though "oh wait that's it." Super bland and underwhelming. Even the final boss! Eggman is the "surprise twist villain" and also an incredibly lame fight. How lame? there are five red rings scattered across his track. Playing the fight normally, I managed to not even be able to get the fifth ring while playing the stage. It's that quick of a final boss.

It's next to the two bushes in the screenshot (I apparently got like the worst frame my bad) but like Sonic could just stroll back there and grab it.

Only one boss needs to be mentioned and that's the Zavok zone 4 fight (the one where you're on the dragon thing). For one reason: the game literally does not provide the player the information needed to win the fight. Here's how the first two phases work: he charges, you kick him to break his block, you homing attack, he "runs" away to the next set of the dragon. Other fun fact, Sonic's walk is faster than Zavok's run. While trying to walk during the phase transition I had to slow down to not bump into him. Amazing. Then the last phase is a little different. You use the homing attacks to move him to the edge after which what do you do? Of course you have to use a multi lock-on homing attack with all 6 lock-ons! So why is this bad? Well main reason is just that it's entirely unintuitive. No other boss has required the big homing attack (that's what I'm calling the all 6 lock-on one now) so there is no reason to know it's in the game. I had no clue you could even lock on six, I was getting to three and assuming that was the max but nope. It's just infuriating because the game will multiple times have Sonic's confusing movement completely unexplained and this fight is just the worst example. I mentioned the kick only being mentioned in world 5 and the tutorial says you "press the duck button in midair" and that's also when I learned there was a duck button. Cool I guess.

Conclusion on gameplay: I've seen the consensus be, to some, that it's "bad Sonic but good gameplay" and I completely disagree. It's awful Sonic and still a bad game too. It's not ever going to provide the satisfaction that Sonic does but even looking beyond that it's a bland and boring platformer I'll probably not think about ever again after like next week (beyond it haunting my Steam library). But maybe the story is fine right? Yeah I'm not going to do this gimmick we all know it's awful.

Part Two - Story is bad Sonic and also just bad?

I'm going to further break this down by character because that's my real problem. The actual concept is fine enough - Eggman brought some big bads to like control the world while serving him but Sonic messes it up for him and the big bads try to destory the world. I'm going to just rip the bandaid off and start with said "big bads" because they are bad alright that's for certain. And evil too.

They were also the worst part of Metal Virus but that's unrelated so I'll leave it at that.

Part 2.1 - The Deadly Six

First of all the designs. Even with the excellent IDW art they just look so boring. They feel like they were designed to be one off villains. I'm not an artist though so I'll leave the design analysis in more capable hands.

I can read though so lend me your ear and let me tell you why The Deadly Six are also just bad villains. I'm going to break all of their characters down for you right now (left to right)

1- Zazz: CRAZY

2- Zeena: woman

3- Zomom: Fat

4- Zavok - evil leader

5- Master Zik - wise

6- Zor: Sad

Wow that's literally it? I'm going to leave Zazz and Zomom alone because I hate them and wish to ignore them. I also want to explain that I think it's interesting that Zeena, the only female Zeti to appear, has her whole personality being vain and being interested in nails and fashion and calling Sonic a fashion disaster for some reason (leave him alone). Not to pull a feminism (full disclosure: not a woman) but that's an interesting characterization for the only female character in the entire game (besides Amy who only appears through ipad). Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's bad to depict a woman as liking fashion a lot and being into stereotypically feminine things because there are women who do like fashion a lot and that's cool! The problem is it's not a great look when that the only woman you depict.

Cool feminism over. Briefly on Master Zik - he's easily the most important besides Zavok, despite having less screentime than Zomom (they love that one fat joke). He actually does serve a role, albeit an uncreative one, as an advisor and mentor to Zavok. Even more brief on Zor - he was my least favorite at first but then I realized his entire existence was being in this fuckass game and yeah I'd wanna kill myself to so I can't hate him too much.

Now for the actual villain Zavok: he's bland. Like I really wish I could say more but there is nothing to say he's really bland. He wants to conquer the world I guess. Real original. I mean seriously this is the end of the segment because the writers couldn't even do anything interesting with the main villain. I can't even type a few lines about feminism again. Game's bad.

Part 2.2 - Eggman et al

Apologies for the weird picture there's surprisingly little official material on the front page of google images with Eggman, Orbot and Cubot.

So first Orbot and Cubot: Most "your mileage may vary" characters in the series to my knowledge. You already know if you like them or not and they are consistent that's for sure. I personally love them and the two of them were the highlights of the game. They made me not feel the urge to build a time machine and like hack into Sega and delete the script for the game. So that's cool.

Anyways Eggman's the actual villain so let's talk about him instead. Lost World has the most okay depiction of Eggman in the series I think. He doesn't really bring any interesting tech besides the conch (which is super irrelevant after Sonic kicks it for some reason. I guess the writers just forgot it). It's very textbook Eggman but with the caveat that he works with Sonic for like 10 minutes. Really the major plot point for Eggman is "he has to team up with Sonic" but it's super ineffective. Main issue being that he teams up with Sonic enough that it shouldn't be an idea that makes him want to scream like it seemingly does in game. I mean Adventure 2 and 06 both happened not too long ago in the canon timeline so what gives? The other reason it's ineffective is that he doesn't even do anything. No joke he sits there, makes Tails mad, and then Sonic runs off on his own until Eggman "shockingly" betrays him. There's a whole deal about him having to fix something but Tails does it anyways and... yeah I'm just going to move onto Tails because he's actually a relevant character to the story. Quick pit stop though:

Part 2.3 - Sonic the Hedgehog

2010s Sonic smh (shaking my hog). The only standout thing is that he's disturbingly apathetic. Like he sees a robotized version of Tails and really doesn't have much of a reaction. It's weird but the 2010s weren't really famous for great Sonic characterization now were they.

Part 2.4 - Tails

Everything I do circles back to this fox

Perfect image for Lost World Tails because he is MAD in this game.

So Lost World is arguably the worst characterization of Tails ever. Debatable if it's than Forces but the two of them are close together.

In Lost World, Tails is introduced by flexing his abilities on Sonic. Okay. Not even remotely what Tails does but sure. Like Tails is a humble bragger; the fox will throw out his achievements when it's relevant but wow his first scene (or one of I'm not bothering to go back and check) is just pure ego flaunting. Cool I'm sure these writers will handle him perfectly for the rest of the game.

Tails' next big thing is getting really mad about working with Eggman. Like really mad. He's incredibly aggressive towards Eggman. So, first off, he was right. But, in my opinion, it makes no sense for Tails to just openly say "we don't need Eggman I can do all this myself." Because he's simply more respectful than that. Tails isn't mean, but he would be cautious. I see why Tails would raise suspicion and it is odd that the one Sonic game to make Sonic and Eggman working together a point of conflict is also the only one where Sonic blindly trusts Eggman over Tails.

At least Tails has an actual kind of arc like substance over the course of the story. His whole deal is wanting to show Sonic that he's capable and make Sonic believe in him and he succeeds in the most nonchalant, completely emotionless ending ever featured in a Sonic game, where Tails just kind of unbreaks the world and then the credits roll. Cool. I don't think I need to say much else. Lost World Tails is not a good Tails.

Prower heads, we lost on this one.

CONCLUSION:

bad game 4/10 at best would refund but it was only $8 and maybe I'll feel the strange desire to prove my opinion about the game right again someday so I'll hold onto it. Thank you for reading all this, if you want to disagree or something go ahead I'll probably respond.

[tyrorexdmzapp]

Another NSMB2-based Mario Story/Paper Mario scene set!

Once again, I've made more graphic assets and screenshots based on one of New Super Mario Bros 2's worlds. This time, it's the Beach half of World 3!

As an aside, due to how long rendering in Cycles takes, only the first image is done that way, while the rest are Eevee renders.

Enough of that, though- let's swim right in! ...Or maybe not, given what you're about to see.

A small beach island area, the gang must navigate the islands and sands to reach the Gold Star at the end!

Two Yoshis on a honeymoon were apparently interrupted by the boss' arrival, a tale which Captain Ahant recounts to Mario, Sushie and Captain Azure! But it's nothing that hammering, swimming and tossing can't handle!

The first island area. With careful throws, Azure must toss Mario onto the lowest cliffs to navigate. All the while, Piranha Plants are moving around to and fro. There's a bridge to the next area...but what's that over there?

Ah- a far-off island with a bunch of Item Blocks and baddies. Even better- a Green Star on the far-off west side! Perhaps this water-bordered land can be reached with Sushie!

Next up, the actual beach. A whole bunch of Trouters, Urchins and Spike Basses call these sands and waters home. Mario and his pals will have to endure quite a frantic, thorny barrage to make it!

With Sushie's help, Mario and Azure must ride her across Spike Bass-inhabited waters. Hope Sushie can handle the weight, or she'll be sushi! Also, M Bushes litter the beach!

The last stretch before the boss. Among many Hurt Plants is a switch activating a plank bridge back to the start! Then, the gang should use the Save Block to save their progress in history, gather the items, and continue on their way to the Gold Star-

-Aw, naw. Not CHEEPSKIPPER again! What does a fat fish want with a Gold Star, anyways? Whatever- Mario, Sushie and even Azure are ready to throw down!

---

I should probably explain why NSMB2 keeps getting picked, despite it's infamy among the fandom and redundancy. My original plan was to try and have a mix of locales from DS, Wii and 2. However, upon review of the three games and deciding which game would depict which archetype, I noticed 2 generally has the more colorful and unique designs of the trio, while DS...yeah. I actually thought DS would get more slots, but the areas seem kind of bland even for the NSMB series.

That's not to say no NSMBWii locations will be depicted. It's just NSMB2 keeps getting lucky with its incarnations of various world types early on.

Also, while NSMBU is the best of the NSMB series, due to U being implied to be a specific wild area of the Mushroom Kingdom rather than just general locations, its levels weren't and couldn't be considered, in the interest of fairness. I may do them one day, though- just not in the near future.

[digitalfrontiers]

To go a bit more into Lonepower’s previous question, i figured i’d make a long (sorry ahead of time!) post with some examples (a good bit of these are test shots).

Just for a little backstory, i spent a few months in early 2021 trying to put together the most complete screenshotting tool set i've ever had for a game, because if any game deserved that, it's Botw. Using a combination of injectors (cam mods, Reshade, cheat engine), the highest graphical settings i could enable, and with a ton of game mods on top of that, i set off to start testing everything and then after weeks of that, finally started actually taking screenshots. I made it to the Lost Woods, and then real life got in the way and i had to put it aside. During this time, a hardrive died with a lot of the testing/tools/shots on it and then when i tried to start getting back into it with what i did have, a lot of things didn't work anymore since i updated Cemu (Wii U emulator) and Bcml (Botw modding program). *cries in Hylian*

More info/pics below.

With all that stuff going at once, the game was literally held together by duct tape as all of it makes the game super unstable. It was a miracle it even worked at all. That miracle though, was due to talent and effort by all the people that made and helped me with the tools (shout out to Etra, Postposterous and Sabbertooth! They are truly geniuses). But, with all of it together, i had near complete control over time, physics, weather, atmosphere, poses, facial expressions, and could even spawn most items in the game (every key on my keyboard has some kind Botw option binded to it). I could get through invisible barriers (getting off the Great Plateau early, walking around the entire Lost Woods), skip whole story/gameplay sections, disable the AI, remove all the Hud, push the LOD as far as the engine will allow, etc. I could do another whole long post just about all this stuff.  

I'm screenshotting the game around 10-11k. It looks phenomenal, but as you can imagine, the framerate is constantly crying for help (5-10fps). I'm using my own Reshade which i tweak per shot and/or the very first clarity preset in graphic pack options. I'm using a cheat table to push the LOD way past what the graphic pack option does. All other Cemu/graphics pack setting are the highest they'll go. I haven't adjusted any fog values manually (but the weather/atmospheres i use, do). I'll include some pics of the settings/mods i use below. 

For a little more info, here's a bit of what's going on in each screenshot above (all of them had the time of day changed for optimal lighting).

Freezing Link's animation, custom facial animation.

Custom weather (i believe fading in to a blood moon), custom clouds, custom atmosphere (heavy fog). Custom pose (Link holding the torch downward).

Link floating in the air, custom weather (Lost Woods).

Spawned Epona and the low to the ground Silent Princess flowers you see at the very end of the final cutscene.

Custom pose, facial animation.

Custom pose (while avoiding triggering the memory cutscene), weather and clouds. 

Custom pose frozen mid animation (Link falling off his shield) to create a sitting like pose.

Custom time of day (night, during the day. weird, i know), custom fog/atmosphere. Frozen Link fight pose and enemy.  

Custom time of day frozen mid change, removed atmosphere, custom facial animation. 

Frozen pose, removed Lost Woods atmosphere, removed most clouds, custom time of day (sunset). 

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. Which is awesome, and horrible, since it makes you want to try every single combo of poses, weapons, outfits, weather, time of day and atmosphere. I have like 40 versions of every screenshot i take in this game. *cries in Hylian again*  

As another example of how just the atmosphere setting alone can change the look of a scene, look at these 2 shots at the same time of day. First one is using the shrine atmosphere outside. The second is how the game looks normally. Even though i didn't change anything else, it affected the clouds, color grading, and added little specks of dust and particles. I don’t think you really get to see this combination of colors quite in this way. Super neat.

Couple more with mixing custom weather/atmospheres.

Fun things you can do while freezing the world physics.

Mods (most don’t help with the visuals, though).

My settings.

Just a few examples of some of the poses and things i can spawn:

Anyway, hope a few of you found this interesting!

[horned-icecream]

first years game night- MARIOKART

every friday, the first years gather in ramshackle dorm for a game night! however- something is different tonight, hence the wide-screen TV and many beanbags piled in front of it, courtesy of ortho. everybody is surprised when they find out that the little robot boy held up a game cartridge that wasn't a board game, wasn't a fighting game- but mariokart, the known racing game that absolutely wrecks relationships!

(let's pretend that you can seat 5 players playing mariokart at a time)

initial reactions

"ta-da! mariokart, a racing game! it'll be fun if you all played together!"

ace is the first one to react at this. he played mariokart with his brother all the time, it was a big part of his childhood and brings him a lot of nostalgia.

deuce has also played this a lot when he was a kid, but on the WII-U (or whatever magical equivalent of a handheld gaming device) rather than the magical WII set up in front of them. the game also brings him a lot of childhood nostalgia, similar to ace.

epel, jack and sebek have never seen this game in their life! epel was too busy playing outside- he did live in the countryside, after all. however, epel loves driving and magical wheels- this is a driving game, so he is more than willing to give it a go.

sebek remarks that technology was near nonexistent over where he lived, and has never seen a magical WII until this very moment.

jack just didn't prefer to turn to technology, as he is more of an outdoor person.

yuu is smirking, they can't wait to see this scene before them unfold. they played mariokart all of the time back in their world with their friends when hanging out and it always ended up super chaotic- after reminiscing a bit, it was them who came up with the idea of tonight's game. running over to ignihyde dorm for some guidance on where to find the game, they find ortho- and no later than 5 minutes, a TV, magical WII and mariokart is now set up in ramshackle dorm!

picking characters

ace chooses mario. he thinks mario's accent is funny, that's all.

deuce picks luigi. luigi is a kind, good-natured man- much like he wants himself to be.

jack picks donkey kong. there was something about donkey kong that stood out to him straight away that made him pick him, and that was his look of determination on his face!

epel chooses bowser. he wants to be strong, so he picked quite a strong-looking character in the game. he also loves the spikes on bowser's back.

sebek picks yoshi. he was originally going to go for bowser, but epel picked him- and sebek ended up realising that a heavy character wouldn't do the best for driving the kart. so, yoshi he went (very unironically!)

the racing starts!

"oh, whoever threw that shell at me is SO GONNA GET IT!"

out of all the ones to play absolutely merciless, it's epel. after picking up the cubes, he nearly always gets a shell of some type- green ones, red ones- all sent flying at his opponents! but the most notable time he shelled someone is when deuce was in first place. it was a plain green shell but epel managed to let it bounce off the walls and hit deuce's kart square in the back! he'll thank rook for teaching him amazing aiming skills later.

deuce is a very good drifter. he uses the track's curves to his advantage and garners the extra boosts of speed to drive himself up to first place. the mushrooms he gets also helps boost his speed, however it becomes futile when he gets shelled and overtaken!

ace, like epel, is more of an offensive driver when it comes to the race. he focuses on getting items, stealing items with the ghost, throwing the bombs and shells in front and back. he's not very careful though- he exploded himself with the bomb after he threw it where he ended up driving towards.

jack is a strategic player. although he's not very fast, he makes sure to leave banana peels behind him in order to hinder people driving through on the next laps and using the map's shortcuts. this actually helps him to climb up the ladder a bit, right on the tail of epel who is in first place.

sebek, oh, poor sebek. he is coming in an evident last place, getting caught by each and every obstacle people left behind. he keeps falling off the edge, with lakitu having to drag him back up again. he is yelling his head off while epel cackles maniacally in the background. but he somehow manages to obtain a blue shell and throws it, blowing up two people at once since jack and epel were very neck-and-neck. this allowed him to catch up!

after the game, they all lay on the beanbags zonked, epel triumphing in first place. but after some snacks joined the picture, they get ready to play yet another intense game of mariokart!

[yan-senna]

Christmas Special of The Keeper of the Diamond (Severus Snape x reader & Lucius Malfoy x reader)

By yan-senna

Other links to the story: Wattpad / AO3

The Keeper of the Diamond series

Summaries of The Keeper of the Diamond

Want to be tagged when I post a chapter?

Chapter 1 / Next chapter / All chapters

Dec 11 - Christmas Cookies

Word count: 913

It’s afternoon. Y/N, Vera and Laura are preparing for the wizard and witch teenagers to arrive at their house. They are going to bake Christmas cookies together. It’s going to be fun!

The girls made sure to wrap up all the presents that they bought yesterday in Hogsmeade.

Green gift wrapping with silver ribbons for the Slytherins and red gift wrapping with golden ribbons for the Gryffindors. Luna’s present has been wrapped in blue gift wrapping with a white ribbon.

As they have found all the required items for the baking process, a knock can be heard at the front door.

Y/N opens it as she smiles. “Hi, guys! Come in” she says as she steps aside for the Hogwarts students to enter.

Smiling, the nine teenagers do so.

“Merlin, you have certainly decorated the house” Draco exclaims, looking surprised at all the decorations.

Vera laughs. “Yeah, we have! I think it’s pretty cosy” she states as she smiles.

“I can’t wait to bake Christmas cookies!” Hermione says in a happy tone.

“And I can’t wait to eat them!” Ron states, looking rather hungry.

The others laugh at that while Hermione rolls her eyes.

The twelve of them then start baking. After a while, they have made quite a lot. The cookies are in different forms - Santa Claus, reindeers, snowmen, Christmas trees and presents. Now they just need to wait for them to be baked in the oven.

“Why don’t you guys stay here in the kitchen while Y/N, Vera and I grab a few board games for us to play? We can play on the Wii U later” Laura suggests.

They all nod at that. The three girls then leave the kitchen. As they do so, the others can’t help but discuss the escapees again.

“Honestly, I really think we should tell them. Like I said at the meeting, they could be in danger!” Harry exclaims, trying to keep his voice down.

“I know, Harry, but what will Dumbledore say? Perhaps we shouldn’t tell them” Ginny says, looking worried.

“Tell us what?” a voice then asks.

They all jump as they turn around. It’s Y/N.

“Oh, um…” Ginny says, looking nervous.

The twins look at each other. “Oh, it’s simple” Fred starts. The Trio, Ginny, Luna, Neville and Draco widen their eyes.

“Fred and I are going to beat you all in the games” George ends, both of the twins smirking.

The others sigh in relief as they didn’t tell her.

Y/N laughs. “I’m sure you will” she says, patting their shoulders.

Laura and Vera then appear with a few different board games and card games. They then start to play while listening to Christmas songs.

They decide to start off with Cranium, splitting up into three groups. Y/N, Hermione, Neville and Ron in one group. Laura, Luna, Fred and George in another group. Vera, Ginny, Draco and Harry in a third group.

They play for around forty minutes before the winner is announced. Laura’s team won. It’s celebrated as the cookies are done just as they finish the game.

The others stay for dinner, playing games all day with the girls.

“Wow, there are still a lot of cookies left” Neville says as they are about to head back to the Wizarding World.

It’s quite late, the Hogwarts students do have to return before curfew.

“Well, we could offer some for the professors” Luna suggests.

“Hey, good idea! You can bring some with you to give them” Vera says as she gives everybody an equal amount of cookies to take with them.

They then bid the others goodbye as they leave the girls’ home to apparate near Hogwarts.

“Well, we have a few left as well” Laura states as she gestures to the cookies they kept.

Y/N gets an idea. “Maybe we could give some to Lucius and Narcissa? Perhaps they would like them” she suggests. Vera and Laura nod.

Meanwhile at Malfoy Manor, Snape is still there. He has tried his best to get Lucius to leave the bed, but the stubborn man has refused each time.

Sighing, he keeps trying. His patience is wearing thin, though.

“Come on, Lucius. You can’t stay in bed forever. You need some fresh air” Snape says, sounding like he’s Lucius’ mother.

Lucius merely huffs, crossing his arms.

Snape groans. What in Merlin’s name should he do?

Having enough, he grabs his enchanted notebook.

“Y/N, I have something important to tell you. Two Azkaban prisoners escaped three days ago. Dumbledore told us not to tell you girls, but I don’t care. Also, Lucius is not himself lately. The baby peacock has been taken… I believe the escapees did this. Perhaps you could come to the Manor and cheer him up? I miss you, princess” he writes, hoping she’s not asleep. It has gotten rather late.

Back at the girls’ house, all three of them are asleep as it’s night time. Y/N is having a nightmare.

She then jolts up in bed, awake. However, she can’t be awake as she sees her nightmare lurking in the dark in front of her.

In the dark is Bellatrix Lestrange, smirking at the girl.

Y/N blinks a few times. The woman is then gone. That’s weird, was that real? Or a hallucination, perhaps? She is quite tired after all.

Shrugging it off, she lays her head back on the pillow and closes her eyes.

It was probably nothing.

Taglist:

@zennyloves

@severuslovebot

@nickangel13

@someoneonearth2007

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

The 3ds Funeral

The Kids and some of the adults all stood outside near a lake located conveniently by the Mansion. They all wore black suits and dresses. Pit took a step forward.

Pit: Friends, thank you for coming today. Today, we mourn the discontinuation of what may have been the last of an incredible era. The 3ds lasted about a decade, carrying some through their childhood up to their adulthood. It allowed people to play 3D games, in the 3D. And….(fights back some tears) …And it brought many memorable games along with it. One of those being Kid Icarus Uprising. Pittoo, would you like to say a few words?

Dark Pit: Uh, no. I….

Pit: (Sad puppy eyes)

Dark Pit: ….(sighs and steps forward) …I’m gonna miss the 3DS because I was born on it. Dunno if we’re ever gonna get a sequel, maybe Hades struck a deal with some guy, I don’t know. But, it had loads of games I’m sure people won’t forget. Like….that one game I forgot the name of. 

Dark Pit steps back. Leaf pats his back.

Leaf: That was beautiful, DP. 

Dark Pit: Eh.

Little Mac walks forward, now wearing a suit: The 3DS also brought us Smash 4 for Wii U and 3DS. A Smash tournament, where while it had flaws, it did many amazing things. It brought a dude from the Bronx back into the spot light.

Ridley, wearing a bloody tuxedo: It made people remember how much they wanted me in.

Isabelle: I managed to locate the mayor’s location thanks to being an Assist Trophy in Smash 4.

Ice Climbers: Since we were absent for Smash 4, we were able to focus on other things in our lives, like the petition to add Cloud.

Bayonetta: It helped me meet Palutena.

Captain Falcon, wearing a black helmet: It brought Rosalina, who I’m pretty sure is a Space Goddess.

Rosalina: Your guess is as good as mine.

MegaMan: Me and Ryu were able to come into Smash Bros.

Bowser Jr: I finally joined after helping Sakurai establish a deal for both Cloud and Pac-Man.

Wii Fit Trainer: It helped me feel the burn in Smash Run.

Corrin: I was able to use Smash 4 as an escape from my family and joined a new one that wouldn’t judge me.

Chrom: …I got beat up in Smash 4.

Captain Falcon: Sorry.

Lucina: ….I miss Smash Run.

Mii Fighters: We got to be more than just blank avatars.

Robin: But most importantly, it brought the most groundbreaking feature to ever grace the universe.

Robin: Miiverse.

Palutena: I had 1 million followers on Miiverse…

Pit: Everyone. Let us not weep now that the coolest handheld system we had is no longer being produced thus making the remaining 3DS’s more valuable but also more high maintenance to keep safe. But smile that it happened and we can look back and say…those 3DS games were epic.

Corrin: Let us reflect on those memories while accompanied by fitting music.

Everyone bows their heads. 

(“Lost in Thoughts” begins playing)

[taelme]

Friends-to-lovers!Mark

genre: friends-to-lovers!au, (fluff, angst, mutual pining lol might seem like slow burn) 

pairing/s : Mark / Reader, the dreamies all appear in this!! 

word count: 12k+ 

tw:  mild language, bullying :( but nothing too major im too weak to write that shit HAHHA 

a/n: this was a rly cute concept I always wanted to write,,, like a older brother figure best friend mark and it takes place in a church camp!! but you can just ignore that and pretend its a normal camp if you're not like religious I guess u know idk I hope u guys like this!! it was rly fun to write smth with all the dreamies :( gif creds to original poster

Stepping into the hall of the camp, you took in a deep breath of the air through your thin mask, the only thing you could smell being the stale material of the mask mixed with the warmth of the air you breathed out. Your eyes wandering around the room before landing on the familiar head of light brown hair. Lugging your duffel bag and sleeping bag over to where the boy was, you greeted, “Hi,” tone sounding too tired for his liking.

Looking up from his phone, he shot you a displeased look, his nostrils flaring slightly with the deep breath he took in as a prelude to the sigh you knew he was about to give you. “Took you long enough. What’s with the mask?”

“Mom told me she wouldn’t let me leave the house without it, says I’ll spread my germs to you guys,” you drawled with evident disbelief.

Donghyuck’s heart shaped lips curve into a smirk, “Strange, that’s never stopped you before, though.”

You shrugged, running a hand through your hair absentmindedly, eyes simultaneously searching the room for where Mark was and it didn’t take Donghyuck very long to catch onto what you were doing. 

“Dunno, I mean, it’s Mark’s first time as a camp coordinator. I wouldn’t want him having to deal with a whole flu breakout here..” you trailed off  

Donghyuck cooed sarcastically at your statement, “how disgustingly thoughtful of you. So, basically, what you’re trying to say is that you’re doing this to make life easier for your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” you protested, earning an eye roll from Donghyuck- and a rather long one at that.

“I call bullshit!” You heard another voice pipe in and soon enough you could place a face to the voice when you saw Renjun take a seat next to Donghyuck, half-turning to Donghyuck to mutter, “I heard the word boyfriend and assumed she was denying her love for Mark again.”

You gasped, doing your best to look offended as you watched open-mouthed as Donghyuck shook hands with Renjun in approval, “Absolutely correct.”

You heard a shout of your name, turning your head to find the direction of the noise when you saw a navy blue sweater clad Mark, landyard round his neck, jogging towards you with a lazy smile on his face, his brown hair ruffled messily making him exude a certain boyish charm.

“Hey, I’ve been looking everywhere for-” his smile curved downwards into a frown upon noticing the mask you were wearing on your face. “You still sick?”

You nodded, “It’s weird, I feel like I’m fully recovered but felt like I should put this on just in case.”

Donghyuck and Renjun took that as a cue to proceed with their own individual conversation and leave you two to converse after Mark’s lack of an acknowledgment towards their presence.

Mark nodded slowly, his lips pressed into a thin line like how they did whenever he was thinking. He wouldn’t say, but he knew the mask would be gone before the day ended since you never liked the feeling of it covering your face; also because he was familiar with how much you loved your reactions to be unrestricted.

“Oh, right, I remembered what I was gonna ask you. D’you mind helping with bag checks later? There are really few girl helpers here now since most of them told me they’d be showing up later,” he shot you a pleading pout.

You whined in reluctance but nodded nonetheless. “Mark, you know how much I hate that,” you put on your best glare in the hopes it would dissuade him.

Jutting out his lower lip and batting his eyelashes profusely at you in response, you were prompted to continue, “It’s always so hard to be patient with them when they’re always rolling their eyes at me and giving me attitude for confiscating their phones.”

“That’s why I’d rather you do it, ‘cause if they had a problem with you, I know you’d just give them attitude too, also because I’d make sure no one gives you any trouble if I can help it.”

You scoffed at his snickering, trying your best to ignore the way his nose scrunch tempted you to reach your hands out and pinch his cheeks. The both of you walked over to the tables they had set up for bag checks, Mark following close beside you.

“You say it like you wouldn’t do that if it was another girl helper,” you accused him with a teasing lilt in your tone, seeing Mark shrug casually yet not making any move to deny your accusation.

“Well, just that if it was you half the work would already be done for me,” he winked, making you gasp, whacking him on the arm.

“Can’t believe my best friend is making things easier for himself at the expense of my emotional state.”

Mark rolled his eyes at your dramatic sigh, a soft smile never faltering as he spoke, “oh, shut up, you know I love you.”

You couldn’t help but hear that as nothing but platonic, hoping Mark couldn't hear the hitch in your breath, shrugging as nonchalantly as you could, “of course.”

You were friends with Mark ever since he transferred schools and moved into your neighbourhood, occupying the house just directly opposite yours. All it took was a single dinner invite to his family and the two of you shared an immediate bond over a friendly dance battle on the wii console. ( Till today you'd like to remember it as a victory for you since Mark's flailing limbs didn't help him very much in moving along to Lady Gaga ).

From then on, you never felt like him being 2 years older than you prevented you from getting closer - hell, you barely even believed it - with his constant presence near you, be it in school and out of school, cheering you on at your drama performances and vice versa at his band performances and basketball games. You weren’t sure when it started being an unspoken thing that if you were somewhere, there he would be as well.

But that was never awkward till you entered your teen years, Mark's changed physique gaining him more attention from girls, whereas your beauty grew more and more each day ( well at least it did to Mark ) and there was an unspoken knowledge that the both of you knew that your feelings for each other could start to wobble over the line separating platonic and romantic, but neither of you ever brought it up. You always just brushed off Mark's habits of buying you your favourite melon milk before school or saving you a seat at his table with his group of friends as all part of his duty as your 'older brother' best friend figure.

While you were busy fumbling around to setup a table for bag checks, Mark was fumbling as well in the pantry for his vitamin drink and preparing a thermos flask full of ginger tea for you to soothe your throat. Once he’d finished, he sounded the siren on the megaphone- after many minutes of ‘oh shit’s from pressing the wrong buttons on accident -signalling for everyone to gather as he strolled to the assembly hall, the corner of his lips quirking up ever so slightly at the sight of everyone already gathered and seated there upon his arrival.

“Sup- I mean uh…alright guys, thanks for being so fast in gathering," he began, silence ensuing in the hall other than the clean tapping of his shoes against the shiny wood floor, and hushed chatter from Donghyuck and Renjun, as he made his way towards where you sat in the circle, making as if wanting to seat himself next to you.

Not without an offended scoff, Renjun shifted his bum to the right to make space in between himself and you for Mark to sit down, the older boy holding the thermos flask in front of you with an expectant look.

"Ginger tea," he answered before you could even ask him what the flask contained, "make sure to finish it by lunchtime for your throat," he gave you a rather forced-looking close-lipped smile, unbeknownst to him that he was being watched by the entire service team, the only thing on his mind being to give you that and see to it that you fully recover.

"Thanks, Mark," you mumbled, grasping the flask tightly and lowering your head to avoid the stares you were receiving from the team, especially Donghyuck and Renjun who made their smugness a little too obvious.

He's just taking care of you as a little sister, you reminded yourself, desperately hoping your words would lessen the severity of the heat you felt on your cheeks.

Mark proceeded to run through the details of the camp programme, mentioning details of the day like wet games and whatnot. You would’ve remembered if you were actually paying any attention. The tip of his pink tongue would occasionally peek out to wet his lips as he spoke, his hand coming up to nudge his glasses up his nose bridge whenever he looked at his papers scattered on the floor.

You were starting to think it was a little ridiculous your heart rate could speed up watching him just sitting there, not doing anything particularly mind-blowing. Just sitting there being, well...Mark.

"Is that alright?" you snapped out of your trance when he glanced at you for approval of whatever he had been talking about for the past five minutes. You nodded mindlessly, shooting him a smile of reassurance.

"Yep, it's fine," you answered along with a few other murmurs from around the circle.

Mark sighed in relief, nodding as he stood up swiftly, clipping his pen to the string of the lanyard he’d slung across his chest.

"Campers are to be here in about fifteen minutes, everybody be on standby and mix around with your group till the time for the opening address I guess, I mean- yeah, just do that.” and just like that everyone slowly stood up in groups, dispersing around the hall. Mark held out a hand for you to take to help you off the ground just as you heard Donghyuck snort at something Renjun did, turning to you as his next target.

"Hey, Y/N. Try to get up without using your hands," your competitive nature got the better of you and you heaved yourself off the floor with just your legs, grinning proudly at Haechan, Mark’s hand withdrawing to his side quickly in the hopes no one saw what had just happened.

Mark winced as he felt Renjun slap him between the shoulder blades, his chuckle sounding all too obnoxious, "better luck next time, bro," as Mark flushed red, dismissing the blonde haired boy's teasing.

Mark huffed, not feeling bitter or anything, couldn’t help the endeared smile that appeared on his face at the way you cheered triumphantly at Donghyuck, who mussed up your hair as you simply grinned back at him, then at Mark. Mark’s breath almost hitched as you stared at him as if saying ‘did you see what I just did?’, and his smile stayed unwavering, shooting you a thumbs up because god, did he love you.

===

“Don’t you ever get tired of the pining?” Renjun prodded at Mark as the both of them made their way to the water coolers, the blonde haired boy twirling his bottle in the air with each throw.

“What?” Mark felt as if he hadn’t processed whatever Renjun had just said to him.

Renjun shot him a tired look, “Don’t act dumb, Mark. You know what I’m talking about.” Renjun was who Mark had first confided in when he realised that he had feelings for you, obviously earning a long lecture from the younger boy, who was very much insistent that Mark should do something about the way he felt before it was too late.

“Of course I do,” Mark muttered with a defeated tone, the muted whirring of the water cooler matching his sentiments.

“Then? Why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

“Ever heard of fear, dude? She’s like...my best friend, I can’t just like drop a bomb like that on her, it’s too risky.”

Renjun rolled his eyes, “And hopelessly pining for her every day is a better option?”

Mark’s mouth opened in protest, holding his now filled water bottle up in protest, “It’s not hopele-“

“I heard Jaemin’s gonna ask her out.” Renjun lied, making Mark fall silent as his eyes widened, speaking for themselves. Though it arguably wasn’t the best method, Renjun knew that someone like Mark would need a push like this if he wanted Mark to take action.

Mark’s jealousy was slowly creeping in, making its authority evident in his tone as he countered with a scoff, “I’d like to see how that turns out.”

“Well, you’re not exactly ‘Johnny Bravo’ yourself, dude. You gotta up your game! C’mon, you’ve got so many chances to do that in the next 3 days, might as well use them to your advantage,” Renjun karate chopped the metal railing for emphasis as they walked up the stairs. Though he was convincing, Mark wasn’t sure if Renjun would be the angel or devil on his shoulders in this situation, but whatever it was that he was trying to do certainly was doing its job in getting Mark riled up.

Walking back into the assembly hall, Mark spotted you chatting with your group members excitedly, the mask you were wearing in the morning now no longer covering your face- which Mark would never outrightly admit he was happy about.

“Remember what I said, dude. Don’t miss your chance,” Renjun’s words lingered in Mark’s mind, meandering around every other thought that occupied his head and slowly tainting each one with possible thoughts of how he was going to tell you about how he felt. Campers were almost fully gathered in the assembly hall now, with bag checks finished and opening address not due for another ten minutes but as Mark saw you spot him across the room and start to make your way to him, he felt his heart start to race- no, sprint -in his chest, threatening to burst.

“Babe! The tea you made me was amazing, I feel even better now,” you grinned at him, his heart at a loss, not knowing it was possible to flutter so hard until he heard the pet name bubble so casually from your lips, accompanied by your heart stopping ( well, for Mark definitely ) smile. Your hands flew up to cup his face, squishing his cheeks together with a giggle, the sound itself making Mark panic, his fist clenching but his finger accidentally knocking the button on the megaphone that sounded the siren, making you shout in surprise, squishing his cheeks even harder before letting go quicker than you imagined you could.

Donghyuck and Renjun, who were watching the scene from afar were busy laughing at the fact that you had managed to fluster Mark into sounding the siren, attracting the attention from the entire hall.

“Sorry, false alarm,” he spoke into the mic, not sounding apologetic at all, more preoccupied with how to make his ears not give away how he felt. What he didn't notice was that his cheeks were already wildly pink, both from embarrassment and the blood rushing back into them after that pressure from your hands.

“Are you cold? your ears are really red,” you laughed, playing with his ears absentmindedly as your wrist rested just against his collarbone, making him shove you away quickly in a desperate attempt to put at least some distance between the both of you.

“Excuse me, facilitator, aren’t you supposed to be getting to know your group now instead of bothering the person in charge?” he told you as authoritatively as he could in his panicked state, raising an eyebrow at you to which you scoffed.

“Power has changed you, Mark Lee,” you shook your head in mock disappointment, “won’t even let your best friend talk to you now that you’re all up there,” you used your hand to gesture high above you before you coughed, wiping away fake tears from your cheeks before sticking your tongue out at him when you realised it wasn’t making him budge.

“Get,” he shooed you away before taking his place at the front of the assembly hall, fiddling with his phone before he sat there idling away, trying to stop his gaze from wandering over to where you were with your group, the sound of your loud laughter attracting his attention whether he liked it or not, but soon Mark settled for subtly scanning the room so he could let his gaze linger on your group a little while longer before he resumed scanning the room like it was part of his role.

===

You shrieked upon the feeling of cold water rushing over your head, down your face, wetting your neck and travelling down the rest of your body. Turning around rapidly, you heard the camera shutter go off with an all-too familiar voice ringing out a "Smile!" your eyes landed on the culprit which was none other than said cameraman, Mark Lee, carrying a camera in one hand and a - now empty - bucket in the other.

Letting the camera dangle from the toy story camera strap you gifted him hanging around his neck, his giggly giddy laugh echoing within the almost-empty underground carpark. Usually this would've been enough to cloud your judgement with sheer endearment for the boy, but you opted to whack him on the arm and kick his butt as punishment for getting you wet with foamy water.

"You're lucky you have that camera or I would've drowned you by now," you huffed, seeing him pucker his lips at you, shaking his butt from side to side in some sort of attempt to mock you, which you found unbearably cute instead.

“I know," he told you in a matter-of-fact tone, throwing the empty bucket aside before bringing his hand up to comb through his hair and wipe the sweat from his face with the hem of his t-shirt, which of course caused you to look away quicker than lightning. The hair that he had now pushed back messily on his head was recently dyed back to black from its previous stunt of blonde he thought would be fun to try. You had to say, as much as he was annoying you right now, how he looked in his hawaii print shorts and his white shirt was distracting you.

"Feels good to be an organizer, no getting wet and gross like you," he stuck his tongue out, making you roll your eyes in response, snatching the bucket back from where he threw it on the floor so you could hand it back to the logistics member running the particular station game you were at.

"Don't you have other people to take pictures of?" you sneered, his seagull eyebrows rising in disbelief that you sounded as if you didn't want him there so he turned around, making as if he were about to leave.

"Well sure if you don't want me here," you grabbed his shirt before he could walk any further, pulling it so he stumbled back next to you, slippers stomping noisily.

"No, wait. I’m kidding stay here don't leave me," you pleaded, flashing him your signature pout with your best attempt at sympathetic eyes, making his nose scrunch up in a smile as his hands unconsciously clenched.

"God, don't give me that face," one of the participants in your group waggled her eyebrows at you behind Mark's shoulder, making you flush and shoo her away with a flick of your hand.

"Good, isn't it? if I keep practising, you bet I can get my mom to checkout my shopping cart for Christmas in no time," you grinned, earning a good-natured shake of the head from Mark.

"It's shower time after this right?" you asked, the sludging and squeaking of your wet slippers irking you as you walked behind your group with Mark, who glanced at his watch before nodding at you.

Mark couldn’t help the giggle that escaped from his lips as he saw the way your arms would unconsciously raise as you tried to take your steps with minimal noise. “Yeah, you guys can hit the showers after this, especially you.”

You heard his stomach grumble, your gaze shooting up from the floor so you could frown at him.

“Please tell me you ate during lunch...” Mark was sheepish, laughing nervously as he shrugged, his hands fumbling around as he debated on whether to avoid the question or listen to the scolding he assumed you were about to give him.

"Well, I got a lot of reviews on the catering??" you sighed at his reply, making sure he knew how displeased you were at that fact.

"Mark,” your hands found their way to your hips, “you can't just keep forgetting things like this, I swear, no one else is gonna remind you to eat if I don't," you told him, recalling how Mark had been like this ever since high school when he started taking up more responsibilities in student council and being basketball captain and whatnot. You remembered the many lunch periods you would have to spend with him in the council room with him rushing a proposal or his homework.

"Well, at least I still have you right?" he offered with a hopeful smile, but your expression remained unwavering so he continued, "c'mon, it's my first time leading a camp; I want to do a good job."

You looked at him in understanding, resigning to the fact that Mark wouldn't back down so easily since he wanted to work hard. "Alright, fine. But I’m still gonna hound you about necessities whether you like it or not, mister," he seemed to have no objections to that, simply choosing to nod at you as if it was something he wanted.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he picked up his megaphone and held it away from you, pushing the button- successfully, for once -to signal the siren for the facilitators to dismiss their groups for shower time.

After you were showered and in a fresh pair of clothing, you brought your things down to the canteen for dinner. It wasn't surprising that you already saw Mark waiting in the canteen, though he was looking rather rigid while talking to Jaemin, which you were curious about since you knew them to be quite comfortable with each other. Walking past them, you caught Jaemin’s eye, making him halt his conversation with Mark to wave at you with a smile, yet Mark seemed to be glaring at Jaemin the entire time.

Gathering your group of kids to get their food, you made your way to the drink dispenser, doing your best to carry multiple cups at once so you wouldn't have to make a second trip back.

"Here, lemme help you with that," Mark showed up in front of you, obstructing your path as he proceeded to take half the cups from you, earning more than a few unnoticed stares from the campers who absolutely adored the idea of you and Mark actually dating.

"Thanks," you murmured, the tip of your tongue peeking out from your lips in concentration so you wouldn't spill your drinks.

"How's the food?" he asked you.

"Haven't eaten it yet, but smells great," his eyes crinkled in a bright smile at your reply.

"Really? That's great," he sighed in relief.

After placing the drinks on your group's table he sat at one of the empty seats and spoke with you for a while as your campers slowly came back one by one. You missed the suspicious stares your campers were giving you at Mark's presence at the table. He had a hand resting on the back of your chair casually, an almost identical scene from when you had to make sure Mark ate while he buried himself in student council work.

The two of you shared food from one plate since Mark had helped take enough for the both of you, not getting a separate one for himself because he was lazy. You know, totally not because he just wanted an excuse for you to feed him while he pretended to be busy skimming through the agenda for the rest of the day.

"Do you have to leave soon for prep?" you asked him, seeing an look of realisation wash over his face, nodding at you when he glanced at the time.

Letting out a breathy sigh, he stood up, megaphone in one hand while picking up your now empty plastic plate and cutlery to help you dispose of it.

"See you later, dude," you waved sadly, and you couldn’t help but laugh as he let out his signature nose scrunch and giggle before his lips jut out in a pout, waving goodbye as he left.

Considering the fact that for the rest of the day you were busy with your group and Mark was busy making sure everything was in order, the both of you didn’t manage to find the time to stop and talk to each other when you even simply crossed paths in the hallways, settling for a playful poke in his side or a nod of the head from him as a greeting.

Thankfully, just as your back had started to hurt and your eyes started to feel heavy, it was time for the night debrief. You walked into the room, glad to see Mark had saved a space for you and was waving you over to come sit with him, beckoning you over while patting the empty space next to him.

"Hey," he greeted you with a smile, his nose scrunching when you knocked over the hood of his jacket to ruffle his hair.

"Glad that one day is almost done with," your words were slightly muffled as you yawned, seeing him shoot you a look of agreement and nod with a sigh.

"I know, right? Hope none of the committee make noise tonight, I’m really hoping I can sleep as soon as possible," he admitted, pressing his lips into a firm line as he glanced at the things he was supposed to discuss during the debrief.

You wanted to get something to munch on to keep you awake during the debrief, looking around the room as if scanning to see if any members of the service team were in possession of food, and it was as if Mark could read your mind when he took out a pack of cookies from his jacket pocket, passing it to you ever so subtly.

“Thanks, dude,” you heard Donghyuck’s voice interrupt when he reached over to take the packet from your hands, bursting it open and munching on one, much to the dismay of Mark, though he didn’t say anything, simply smiling and returning to his papers when you flicked Donghyuck on the forehead and reclaimed your cookies.

Debrief went by fairly quickly, with Mark running through the points he needed to take note of as quickly as he could. You were already feeling a little restless after finishing your cookies so you leant your head against Renjun’s shoulder since he was sitting closest to you in the circle, earning a soft chuckle from him, “Careful now, your boyfriend might get jealous,” he teased.

Harshly whispering back, “what boyfriend,” you huffed, rolling your eyes.

When debrief had ended, you were feeling really tired so after washing up and changing into your sleeping clothes you were happy to have found Mark already waiting for you outside the girls’ dorm to walk with you to the communal sleeping area.

“You’re not sleeping yet?” you asked, already yawning. Mark shook his head with a yawn himself, “still gotta finalise some stuff for tomorrow’s program.”

You frowned, waiting obediently as he had already helped the both of you take a mattress each and lay it at the side facing each other since there wasn’t much space left in the room.

Squatting next to your mattress and laying out your sleeping bag, you voiced out as softly but firmly as you could, “why couldn't they have told you earlier? It's not fair that you have to stay up doing work for them while they’re all happily asleep," you felt a tinge of annoyance at the unfairness of it all but Mark simply ruffled your hair good-naturedly, assuring you it was okay, all the while his face was heating up from his heart fluttering at your concern for him.

Once you were tucked into your sleeping bag you glanced up at Mark who was still sitting with one knee tucked under his chin, his face illuminated by the light from his phone. As if feeling your stare on him, he glanced from his phone to you, placing his phone down to give his attention to you.

“Go to sleep, you’ve got a long day tomorrow,” his voice was barely a murmur, fatigue laced in his tone.

“You should be sleeping too, you know. It’s not as if we go through different camps..”

Mark let out a soft huff of laughter, whispering back trying to reassure you, “I know, I will. Don’t worry about me and get some sleep, alright?”

Rolling over in your sleeping bag, you stared Mark down as hard as you could, “no. I refuse. For as long as you’re awake, I’m not gonna sleep,’ you huffed.

Mark knew that your claim was far- fetched, seeing as he could tell you were tired, with how your head would lull to the side ever so often and your breathing would even out before you would jolt awake suddenly, remembering your promise to stay awake.

But true enough, he wasn’t even 2 pages into his documents when he heard the light thud of your head hitting the mattress, your breaths slowing down and becoming deeper. Seeing as you didn’t bring a pillow to the camp, Mark figured he could do without his jacket since he probably wasn’t getting much sleep tonight anyway, folding his jacket carefully into a nice rectangle, one hand lifting your head gently to slide the jacket underneath so your head could rest gently on it.

“Goodnight,” he murmured, tugging your sleeping bag up to cover you more before he resumed browsing his documents.

===

The next morning, during the briefing in the morning, one of the members leading the service team had decided to add morning exercises to get everybody’s energy up, part of this including stretches.

You were a little hesitant to do the stretches since you realized your shirt would ride up a little when you had to do certain stretches, but you tried your best. Mark was a little late, walking in and not being able to help the laugh from slipping out of his mouth when he saw you struggling to do the stretches, but he couldn’t stay entertained when he saw one of the older guys from the service team checking you out while you were doing the stretches.

His best solution he could think of in the moment was to shed himself of his jacket and wordlessly walk over to tie it around your waist, successfully covering you adequately and making you a lot more comfortable, as evident in how you could freely stretch without fear of exposing too much you weren’t comfortable with.

Your cheeks flushed, not expecting Mark to swoop in with such a gesture that you obviously weren’t prepared for so early in the morning.

“Sleep well?” he asked, his voice still hoarse from sleep, joining the stretches smoothly and you had to keep your gaze focused forward so you wouldn’t lose concentration.

“Yeah, you?” he nodded.

“What’s for breakfast, organizer?” you grinned.

“Cereal, dummy. You were the one that bought it, remember?” your mouth formed an ‘o’ shape in realisation.

“Oh, right,” you laughed.

The rest of the day went by fairly fast, the highlight of it being that Donghyuck wouldn’t shut up about how flustered Mark was when he was caught off guard during your session you were giving, when he was too busy admiring you and not paying much attention to what you were saying. “He was totally drooling! Renjun can vouch for it,”


“Renjun is not a reliable source, if anything, Mark was just tired, and zoning out. That’s all.”

You could practically hear Donghyuck rolling his eyes at you. “Listen to me, I’m just saying. I’ve known Mark longer than you have, and if anything, the last time I saw him act like this was... basically never, because Mark’s never cared about someone other than his family as much before.”

“Yeah, you said it, family. That’s what he sees me as, hyuck.”

“Yeah, his wife!” you choked on your fruit punch, pushing your dinner further from you on the table since you were done with it. “I mean, everyone can see it, might as well make it clear to the both of you before I have to resort to bringing you both together myself.”

“I love you too, hyuck,” he made a face of dismay, mocking you as he repeated what you had said.

“Also, does Mark have beef with Jaemin? He’s been acting really weird around him,” you voiced out, having noticed it yesterday during lunch.

Donghyuck laughed a little too loud, shaking his head vigorously, “Mark’s just weird,” he continued, voice dropping to a mutter, “I don’t know why you like him, he’s an idiot. But you know, I’m not here to judge, you do you.”

“Get out,” laughing, you shoved him off his chair, and his high pitched giggle rang out like bubbles.

Mark couldn't help the way his eyes searched the room for you whenever he stepped in, landing on you and Donghyuck when he heard the younger boy's laughter ringing in the distance.

"I bet if Y/N usually wore stripes you'd be really good at where's waldo," Renjun snickered at Mark's resemblance to a lovestruck-puppy as he looked at you and Donghyuck every five seconds while he ate.

Mark's head shot up at the sound of Renjun's comment, glaring at the boy seated in front of him.

"Whatever," he murmured, cheeks hollowing because of the way he pursed his lips, chewing aggressively on the food in his mouth as he saw Jaemin approaching you and Donghyuck to join the conversation.

"He's totally not her type anyway," he justified to no one in particular, earning a rather intense eye roll from Renjun.

“Does saying that make you feel like you have a better chance than Jaemin? It's not as if u can just… telekinesisJaemin away from her, you might as well man up and do something about it yourself if you wanna guarantee that he won’t get in the middle of whatever you two have going on,” Renjun sighed, shrugging as if he hadn't just had an encouraging best friend moment, leaving Mark wondering how Renjun could still manage looking so innocent sipping his orange juice.

Mark didn’t even notice when you had left the canteen with one of the participants from Jeno and Chenle’s group that wasn’t feeling well, leading him up to the toilet as quickly as you could because he needed to throw up.

The boy had mentioned that he had a history of bad health, and he wasn’t feeling well enough to stand on his own, so you figured it would be best if you could follow him to the toilet to make sure he wouldn’t faint. After many minutes of retching and coughing, the boy was starting to feel a little better and you let him wash his mouth before moving to lead him out of the toilet, only to come face to face with some of Mark’s fellow committee members- who you didn’t remember the names of, but you weren’t very fond of them anyway.

“What are you doing with this kid? Did you know that we’ve had to spend the last 15 minutes looking for you while you were doing God knows what in the male toilet?” one girl with a sleek ponytail had snapped, her voice sharp and cutting.

You furrowed your eyebrows, confusion taking over you, “hey, you should go join the rest now, tell Jeno and Chenle I’ll join them later.”

Turning your gaze to the committee members after you had seen the boy disappear around the corner, you continued, “I’m sorry, I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea. He wasn’t feeling well and I saw that Jeno and Chenle were busy so I took him to the toilet myself, that’s all that happened...”

“You couldn’t have asked another male facilitator, could you? Or were you just so eager to bring him to the male toilets yourself. You know, it’s hard to believe what you’re telling us, Y/N. I mean, we don’t necessarily have the bestimpression of you,” another one of the group had spoken up, and a strange feeling bubbled within your chest. You barely even knew any of these people, yet they seemed to have so much to say to you.

“This is a church camp...” you murmured, flinching slightly at how quick they were to bite back at you with an answer.

“Yeah, a church camp where this situation would have required a male facilitator to follow the participant, not you. Wonder what Mark would think if he saw you in the male toilets with a participant, whom, you know, is younger than you,” the ponytail girl had hummed, making you scoff.

“Mark knows I wouldn’t do that,” you spoke up, trying to make your voice as firm as possible.

“Yeah, but does everyone else know?” you were at a loss, your fists clenching and unclenching as you tried to find the right words to say to them, however they seemed to have beaten you to it.

“What’s your aim, huh? Are you mad because they made us in charge and not you? Did you think that you would’ve been chosen as well just because you’re close to Mark?” one of the guys had added, folding his arms and taking a step closer to you, his height practically towering over you. “You know, he’s not even doing that great of a job, for that matter-”

“Don’t you dare talk about Mark like that,” you frowned, though their laughter only served to make you feel even smaller in their presence. “Oh? Are we not allowed to? I mean, it’s the truth after all. The dumbass doesn’t even know we’ve just been making him do all our work for us,” she shrugged nonchalantly, making your frown grow even deeper.

“Is that how you make him go to your beck and call too? hmm?”

“My relationship with Mark isn’t like that...” you started, though you couldn’t seem to know what to say after that, which of course, gave them the perfect opportunity to mock you once again.

“Really, now?” the ponytail girl had leaned closer to you, the sarcasm in her tone making your eyes roll. “Then what is it like? like you and that kid you fooled around with?”

You held yourself back, not wanting to tear up from their words but not being able to help your frustration.

“I did not fool around with him. He was sick and I brought him to the washroom,” your voice trembled with the sheer amount of anger you were feeling.

“Sure, whatever, Y/N. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.” They left before you could say anything else, leaving you dumbfounded as you made your way back to the hall for the next session.

===

It was no surprise that Donghyuck found your behavior suspicious when you returned to the hall, and though you acted as per normal through the session, when Mark had dismissed everyone for an hour of free time before dinner, he’d taken the opportunity to sit you down and squeeze whatever gossip material he could get out of you.

“What happened during lunch? You left with Jisung, right?”

You nodded, picking up the crumbs of bread that had fallen on your pants and tossing them elsewhere, “yeah, he needed to puke and Jeno and Chenle were busy serving food.”

A silence fell between the both of you as Donghyuck continued to look at you expectantly, “Yeah, and?” he prompted with a ‘duh’ tone.

“What do you mean, ‘and’? that’s it.”

“Cut the bullshit, dude. Jeno and Chenle told me Jisung came back without you, said the committee were giving you shit.”

You sighed, finishing the last bite of your bread and gesturing to Donghyuck to hand you your water-bottle, taking your time to sip your water- and pluck up your courage -before you decided to continue, “they were just talking shit, as usual. No big deal.”

“What did they say to you?” he prodded again, making you shoot him a look.

“You’re not gonna stop till I tell you everything, aren’t you?” he nodded with a sickening smile, batting his eyes at you expectantly.

“I don’t know...you know, like....they started saying I brought Jisung into the cubicle with me on purpose or something-”

Donghyuck’s eyes widened, before his eyebrows furrowed in confusion “Huh? To do what?”

“I don’t know!” your tone was exasperated, glad that Donghyuck felt the situation was just as absurd as you thought it was. “Whatever it is it clearly wasn’t what I was really helping Jisung out with!” you huffed.

“They said it as if I was fooling around with him or something...then they were saying shit like, like I don’t know they make Mark do all their work for them? And they asked me if I manipulated him that way to get him to do things for me as well and when I said that wasn’t the kind of relationship I had with Mark they were like ‘oh so you do the same things with Mark that you did with Jisung’? and I don’t know hyuck it was just really horrible and I felt like shit and I wanted to cry because I was so embarrassed but it was like I couldn’t even talk!” you gasped, practically panting after telling Donghyuck what had happened at one go.

Donghyuck paused, letting a silence fall between you for a while before letting out a scoff, and a rather exaggerated one at that, “aren’t you pissed? I’m super pissed and it didn’t even happen to me!”

You pouted at the floor before frowning at Donghyuck exasperatedly, “you know that there’s nothing I can do about it now. And as a matter of fact there’s nothing I want to do about it now. It’s over, Jisung is okay, and that’s all that matters.”

“You know that’s not it, Y/N.” In all your time of knowing Donghyuck, you would have to say that this was the most serious you’ve ever seen him act ( well, aside from when he’s playing video games with Jeno or Renjun ).

“Well, what do you suppose I do about it, genius?” you shot back, downing a big gulp of water to soothe your still slightly hoarse throat.

“I think you should tell Mark,” he told you as if it was the best idea in the entire world, earning a violent shake of the head from yourself.

“No way in hell- I mean, heck, that Mark is gonna know about this. Hyuck, I’m serious,” you put a hand on his knee that was on the bench to steady yourself.

“Mark already has so much on his plate, I can’t afford to have him worrying about even more things, especially not if it concerns me.” You could see that Donghyuck was thinking hard about this, the pout on his lips seeming to deepen as he glanced elsewhere with his eyebrows slightly furrowed, his eyes squinting the more deep in thought he got.

“I know! What if it wasn’t about you! I can just tell him the committee were giving somebody shit-“

“Donghyuck, are you hearing yourself right now? You’d have to mention me eventually if you went with that plan. Scrap that plan, go with my plan. Which is to just not tell Mark at all,” you grinned at him, holding two thumbs up in an attempt to be more convincing, earning yourself a very slow and accentuated eye roll from Donghyuck.

“Hyuck, I mean it. I know you’re gonna wanna do something to get back at them but believe me when I say I reallydon’t want this to be made into a big deal.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever. You have such little faith in me.”

You heard the sound of the megaphone’s siren signalling that it was dinnertime, so you said goodbye to Donghyuck and joined your own group to eat dinner.

Donghyuck, on the other hand, was busy gathering him and Mark’s group of friends to, if put in Donghyuck’s words- “spill the tea.”

Jaemin, Chenle, Renjun and Jeno were currently surrounding Donghyuck at one of the stone tables in the church that Donghyuck figured would make his announcement more professional, “okay, boys, first order of business. Let me tell you what happened to Y/N just now after she helped Jisung puke and whatever,” Jeno and Chenle shared what seemed to be a knowing look whereas Renjun and Jaemin just looked confused.

“Something happened?” Renjun spoke up, earning an equally confused sound from Jaemin, to which Donghyuck nodded gravely, proceeding to tell them exactly what you had told him prior to dinner time.

“I knew it!” Chenle shouted, standing up in his excitement before being shushed and shoved back into his seat by Jaemin and Renjun.

“I knew something was up when I was having touch time with Jisung just now, he said that the committee were saying things that ‘weren’t so nice’ to her but he couldn’t exactly remember what it was,” Jeno explained on Chenle’s behalf since the latter was too busy enjoying the fact that he was right about his suspicions against the committee.

“And she just stood there and took all of that?” Jaemnin asked, concern laced in his tone, glancing at a pissed-looking Renjun mid-speech.

“Well, she did say she was so humiliated and I doubt she could’ve gotten anything else in with all of those psychos ganging up on her,” Donghyuck shrugged, “which is why I say we should do something about it! Avenge our dear sister whom Mark just so happens to be in love with!” Donghyuck pumped his fist in the air, earning a sound of agreement from Jeno and Chenle, but he felt opposition the moment he glanced at Renjun and Jaemin’s concerned expression.

“I don’t know, hyuck. I mean she did say she didn’t want it to be a big deal...” Jaemin started.

Chenle jumping in quickly to add, “Unless we just tell Mark?”

“But that’s exactly what she didn’t want us to do!” Jaemin shushed Chenle again, who simply shrugged in defeat, “well that’s the limit of my ideas, man,” Chenle shrugged.

“I think we should tell Mark,” Renjun piped up, to which Jaemin asked, “wait are you on our team or against us?”

“Nobody’s against anybody here!” Donghyuck sighed, desperately wanting to facepalm, thinking again to himself why he thought telling them would be a good idea.

“The only people we should be against are those stupid committee members.”

“Wait who are they again?” Jeno asked, earning a loud groan from Jaemin.

Eventually, their discussion drifted elsewhere after someone had mentioned the brownies being served for dessert, leaving Renjun to be the only one silently thinking of how to approach Mark to break the news to him before it was time for debrief since the group of them couldn’t decide on things for shit.

===

“Dude I need to talk to you,” Renjun closed the door to the empty committee room that Mark was currently in, since after the groups were done sharing they would have to be dismissed to go to sleep and it would already be time for debrief.

“Uh-huh,” Mark barely glanced away from his notes he’d taken in the day, earning a tired look from Renjun.

“Dude I’m serious, I need to talk to you it’s about Y/N.”

“Huh?” Mark finally tore his gaze from his papers, before shaking his head and returning his glare to them again, saying, “Renjun, I’m really sorry but can this wait? I really need to make sure  got everything down here, the priest is gonna be there at the debrief later and if I screw this up it’s gonna look really bad on me as the person in charge.”

Raising his hands in an action of surrender, “Ok, fine man, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

===

When you got to the room where the debrief was going to be held, you avoided the smug looks on the committee members’ faces as they whispered amongst themselves and pointed at you not-so-subtly as you made your way next to where Mark was seated.

“Hey,” you chirped, seeing his head tilt up to look at you, a smile on his face when he realized it was you.

“Hey,” he greeted.

You chose not to distract him since he seemed to be rather focused on his notes, making you feel a little upset at how he was over here stressing out about the agenda for the debrief while the other committee members were lounging on the table idling away.

Thankfully, Mark had started the debrief a little early today, with the reasoning that he understood everyone would like to go to sleep as soon as possible after the long day you had today. Running through the list of things to cover quickly, what was next was when Mark would routinely ask if any participants were not feeling well and he would proceed to check back with the groups on those participants whose sicknesses were already reported to him.

“Group 7?” Mark asked, and you knew this was Jisung’s group, so you were expecting Mark to ask about Jisung but Chenle and Jeno’s statement caught you off guard.

“Jisung was actually feeling really bad around lunchtime? Chenle and I were busy serving food so he was accompanied by Y/N instead, since it was pretty urgent and he’d puked up a lot according to him,” Chenle made a disgusted face at Jeno’s words.

“He’s still feeling a little queasy but we gave him some medicine before we sent him to bed. HIs mom says he has a really sensitive stomach but he claims after he puked he felt a little better. But thankfully since Y/N was there it really helped him- and us -loads.” Chenle nodded, flashing you an appreciative smile as Jeno awaited Mark’s reaction.

Mark’s expression darkened, turning to the committee members who were behind him to ask, “why was I not notified that we had a participant that threw up and was under medication?” the ponytail haired girl suddenly seemed as though she had a lot less to say compared to when she was outside the washroom with you earlier.

“Well, you know....uh, well, we assumed since Y/N was the one who was so eagerly helping Jisung, she would’ve told you about the situation,” she shrugged, her gaze pointed at you.

Mark turned to you momentarily before narrowing his eyes at the committee once again, “so you were aware that this was happening and none of you decided to double check if I was notified about this?”

One of the taller guy members sitting next to the ponytail haired girl had spoken up, “well since Y/N-”

“Whether or not she was involved is not the main concern here. Her responsibilities do not include doing the work that is meant to be done by the group of you.”

You looked at Donghyuck with a panicked expression, seeing his lips pressed together in an attempt not to laugh amidst the tense atmosphere that had fallen throughout the room.

“What the heck is going on?” you mouthed to Renjun since Donghyuck didn’t seem to be able to be of any help right now, seeing Renjun shrug, pointing at Mark before using both his index fingers to make angry eyebrows on his face.

Mark lowered his voice so he could direct his words more specifically to the committee members, “I don’t know what you take your responsibilities in this camp to be, but clearly you’re not taking them seriously enough, not with you thinking I’m actually stupid enough to not realize you’ve been asking me to do extra work since you’re all seemingly incapable of doing it, and to add on to that you think that even non committee should be taking care of and receiving blame for your faults?” Mark’s voice raised slightly before he remembered the presence of the priest in the room, which served to remind him to keep his calm a little.

Mark turned back around to face the rest of the team, “Any other issues you would like to raise? if not there’s no further things we need to discuss on the agenda, you guys are dismissed. Committee please stay behind.” Mark’s aura was a lot more intimidating than you’d seen him in a while, and you understood why since you knew this was his first time being in charge of a camp and he wanted to do a good job and prove himself, but it seemed like things weren’t going as planned.

You decided it was better to leave him to do his own thing now before he could get more triggered, leaving the room after giving him a gentle squeeze of his arm.

Renjun had met Mark downstairs in the canteen after most of the service team members had gone to sleep. He felt a little pity for the older boy, seeing how his eyes had dark circles under them, his hair was messy now probably after many times of frustratedly running his hands through it, and he looked absolutely ready to pass out.

“So...debrief, huh,” Renjun let out a low whistle.

“I know, it was a mess. I can’t believe I could let that happen-“

“Did they tell you what happened?”

Mark’s eyes narrowed at Renjun, taking a seat at the bench in the open air, enjoying the cool wind of the night time that served to comfort him just a little in the midst of him feeling like absolute shit. “You mean you’re telling me there’s more that happened?” Mark’s voice was tired, sounding as if nothing would surprise him any more than he already was.

“The committee, they basically attacked - well, verbally attacked -Y/N when they saw her coming out of the male toilets with Jisung.”

Mark frowned, already getting riled up at the thought of what kind of things they could have said to you.

“They were talking to her as if she’d brought Jisung to the toilet to do....things with him, and they sort of told her that you weren’t doing that great of a job as someone in charge and asked her if she manipulated you into being at her ‘beck and call’ too…and- I don’t know there was a lot of things. They sort of put her on the spot,” Mark fell silent, the only thing he could liken his emotions to was a washing machine with his anger just busily rolling around in his mind and heart.

“Okay before you get mad, or more mad actually, the rest of the gang and I were saying that we wanted to respect her decision of not wanting to make this a big deal-”

“Wait so the rest of the guys know what happened already? I’m the last one to know?”

Renjun sucked in a sharp breath, “well....yeah,”

Mark ran his fingers through his hair for what must’ve been the hundredth time that night, “What the hell...why didn’t she tell me?”

“I mean-” Mark stood up suddenly, shocking Renjun. Mark fiddled with his phone, quickly thumbing out a message to ask you where you were.

12:18am -huh, why? i was just about to go to the sleeping area-

Mark 12:18 am -wait for me at the door-

Mark pocketed his phone quickly, “sorry, man, I gotta go.”

“Okay, fine, just totally abandon your friend who just gave you important information. It’s fine with me,” Renjun threw his hands up in exaggerated offence.

Mark was anticipating some sort of dramatic confrontation to happen when he reached the door but when he actually saw you in front of him, he’d felt as though he’d lost all the words he wanted to say.

You were relatively quiet since you weren’t sure how Mark was feeling, but you let him do the usual and bring mattresses for the both of you to lay it on the stage.

Since you were already tired beyond belief from the events that happened during the day, you didn’t refuse this time to lay in your sleeping bag and get ready to sleep, hearing Mark mumble something next to you, making you turn your head to face him, a small hum escaping your lips.

“What happened this afternoon?” he asked you, his voice clear enough that you wouldn’t have mistaken him to be saying something else. Though at this time of the night, you were desperate to give him answers to his questions so you could go to sleep, simply choosing to tell him what you thought he was asking you.

“Jisung wasn’t feeling well, he said he felt like throwing up so I brought him to the toilet.”

You heard a silence from him, assuming he was finished with his questions, “I’m gonna sleep no-”

“I asked about you, not about Jisung.”

You were too tired to realize the annoyance in his tone, turning to face him, eyebrows furrowing, “me? Nothing happened to be I mean yeah sure seeing him puke kind of made me want to puke but-”

“God, why the f-“ he stopped himself, looking at you before letting out a shaky breath, “when will you just put yourself first for once,” he turned around in his sleeping bag so his back was facing you.

“Mark,” you whispered, hoping he would turn around.

“Mark,” you murmured again, “Mark. Turn around, what are you trying to say?” you reached out a hand to shake him gently on the shoulder, feeling him grip your hand tightly, peeling it off his shoulder.

“Go to sleep, Y/N.”

===

The next morning you weren’t surprised to have woken up and found that Mark wasn’t next to you, and you hated the looks of confusion Donghyuck was giving you as to why you weren’t talking to Mark that morning. Making your way downstairs with Jaemin to have breakfast, you chose not to bother Mark more since he obviously seemed annoyed with you for some reason.

“Are you feeling better?....you know, after yesterday?” Jaemin asked, concern laced in his tone.

You shrugged, “If I were being honest....I feel even worse. I thought it would be okay, you know, after it got brought up during the debrief but..” you shrugged, trailing off as you collected your breakfast from the servers, waiting for Jaemin to collect his drink. “But I don’t know, Mark said something to me last night and he sounded pretty annoyed at me and it just made me feel...like shit I guess,” you shrugged again.

Leading you to the table where Donghyuck and Chenle were sat at, you’d joined them for breakfast, Jaemin successfully cheering you up after you’d seen Mark come into the canteen and leave with Renjun shortly after, not even remembering to take his breakfast with him, yet something in you knew you couldn’t exactly tell him to eat his breakfast now.

“Dude what’s wrong with you? I thought you would’ve worked things out with her by now?” Renjun waved his hands frantically in front of a zoned-out Mark’s face.

“Huh?”

“Why, are you, so awkward, with her?” Renjun said slowly, pausing between the sentence to break down each word for Mark with a sarcastic tone.

Mark made a disgruntled sound in response. “I just need to calm down first, okay? Everytime I see her I just think of what happened and why she didn’t wanna tell me. If I confronted her about it now what would I even say?” Mark frowned, “oh yeah I’m in love with you lol haha ttyl? It’s not that simple, Renjun.”

Renjun’s mouth dropped open, poorly stifling his laugh at whatever you could call what Mark just did.

“Mark... you know I love you but...but if she still loves you after that kind of confession, that’s how you know it’s real love.”

Mark whined, “shut up, Renjun.”

“Where is she anyway?” Mark did his best to sound nonchalant but it was hard to act nonchalant when you seemed to be completely fine at your table playing games with the guys and being so close to Jaemin, and no, Mark didn’t care if the game required you to cross hands with the person next to you because to Mark any contact with Jaemin was just automatically deemed unnecessary.

Mark saw you jump away from Jaemin and look and his direction, not even realizing why until Renjun took the megaphone out of his hand.

“What are you doing!” Renjun clicked a button on the megaphone to stop the siren, talking into it, “sorry guys false alarm.”

Shoving the megaphone back into Mark’s chest, a muffled grunt sounding from Mark, Renjun shook his head in disappoinment, “times like this I really need to remind myself why I’m your friend.”

===

Later on in that day, the committee had separated everyone into different groups to carry out the clean-up for the respective areas, and your assigned area was the carpark, which meant you were busy lugging around heavy buckets of water around the carpark in an attempt to clean it without slipping on the water and falling.

Your pants were rolled up to your knees and you were struggling to carry up a bucket to the second floor of the basement with Chenle because the more he laughed the more the water tended to spill over to your side of the bucket. Once you had set the bucket down, you thought you could finally take a break but you heard Jeno calling you over to where he was.

“Y/N, can you please go to the canteen to help shift the stuff upstairs?”

You hesitated, since your feet and slippers were already so wet, shifting the things upstairs in your condition now was just going to be a pain in the ass that you didn’t really want to deal with right now.

“Please, please please, I’m really busy right now, I’ll buy you a drink when we’re done or something,” he clasped his hands in front of him in a begging action.

Your eyes widened in interest, “I get to decide what drink it is?”

“Yeah sure of course!” You grinned in response, running ( or trying your best to with your wet slippers ) up the stairs to the canteen, looking around to see who you were supposed to help until you saw Mark, the instinctive urge to pick flight instead of fight taking over you.

You decided there was no going back now since you did want that free drink after all, so you made your way over to where Mark was, seeing his eyes widen at the sight of you there instead of Jeno.

“What are you doing here? I called Jeno.”

“Oh, uh...he was busy with stuff so he told me to come up to help instead,” you told Mark, not missing the way he kept shifting his weight from foot to foot, bringing a hand up to grasp the back of his neck.

“Do you want me to leave? I can like call someone else to come here instead-”

“Yeah,” he breathed, your eyes widening in response. “Wait!, I mean, no! I mean, like- Jeno, no wait, you-” he stopped himself, taking a deep breath in and out, facing you with a serious expression.

“Don’t leave. Just help me shift this stuff upstairs.” He handed you two boxes stacked on top of each other. Not wanting to get in his way, you decided to turn to walk the other way up the stairs but you seemed to have turned too sharply, the smooth surface of the floor and the water on your slipper causing you to trip, landing roughly on the floor, boxes scattered elsewhere as the only thing you could focus on was the sharp pain that shot through your ankle.

Mark had immediately put down whatever he was holding, shocked sounds escaping him at an uncontrollable rate as he made his way to your side, asking you if you were okay, his eyes scanning your limbs rapidly to see if you had injured yourself.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, whatever’s in those boxes must be broken because of me-“

“Even now you’re still thinking of the boxes?” he gave you a displeased look.

“Huh?” you frowned.

“I mean, whatever was in the boxes was probably really important....”

He shot you a look, “so are you, you know....you’re like....” he looked away, “important...and stuff.”

You couldn’t help the laugh that threatened to bubble from your throat, “oh my God, please shut up and get me off the floor before you continue.”

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Mark asked, making you snort in reply.

“Yeah, my heart.”

“Huh?”

“My leg, Mark. My ankle really hurts,” you pointed at your ankle, letting him hobble you over to the nearest bench you could find, awkwardly trying to point your gaze elsewhere when he knelt down in front of you and took off your slipper, “oh my-Mark don’t, that’s gross! Please, my feet are wet!”

“Shut up, can you just-“ he shot you a look, “let me do this, I know what I’m doing. This happened to the basketball guys all the time.”

You nodded slowly, still trying to avoid looking at him in fear that you’d get even more shy than you were now.

“That was like a metaphor, you know, in case you didn’t get it.”

“Mark, I didn’t take literature,” you added pointedly, earning an eye roll from him, choosing to press particularly hard on your ankle at that point.

“Sorry if I...you know, annoyed you last night or something,” you muttered, finally making eye contact with him when he looked up at you with an unreadable expression.

“No, I sort of was being a dick to you last night... I was just kind of...stressed I guess,” he shrugged, continuing to massage at your feet.

“Look, Mark. You obviously know about everything that happened yesterday afternoon right?” he looked up to nod at you, “and you can say that you weren’t the least bit worried?”

He let out a scoff, “What? Of course I was worried! I was so pissed off-”

“Mark that’s precisely why I didn’t want to tell you in the first place! I knew that you had a lot going on and a lot that you needed to take care of, and worrying about me was the last thing I wanted to add to your list of things to do,” you told him, seeing his ears start to tint red.

“Yeah but how do you think it feels for the girl I like to leave me out of things like this?” he asked you, a challenging tone laced in his voice.

“Wait, you like me?” you asked.

Mark’s eyes widened, “shit, wait...that was not how I planned to tell you.”

He let go of your leg, standing up and taking a seat next to you, turning his body to face you. “Okay, rewind. Pretend I didn’t say that,” you nodded at him, trying your best to stifle your laugh but you could feel yourself grinning widely at him.

“I like....wait, do you have a thing with Jaemin?” He narrowed his eyes at you, using his index finger and middle finger to cross each other.

You burst out laughing at that, especially because Mark’s sincere pout made it even funnier, “no, of course not. Who even told you that?”

Mark let out an annoyed groan, “not important, anyway. As I was saying, I didn’t wanna tell you because I didn’t want to impose anything on you, not with the whole possible Jaemin situation anyway. Also because...you know.....secret boy stuff.”

“Secret boy stuff?” you quirked an eyebrow at him.

“I was scared, okay?” he glanced up nervously at you before looking down at his interlocked fingers and continuing, “I thought...it’d be weird for us to keep being friends if you didn’t feel the same way, and I didn’t want things to just end like that, you know?”

You nodded slowly, “I get it, you and your secret boy stuff,” you smiled, reaching out a hand to pat him on the head.

“I guess I only realized how much I actually...oh my god this is so embarrassing to say but...I only realized how much I liked you when I heard what those committee members said to you. And I just, kind of, felt really horrible because of how I was just over here acting like I was having the hardest time when you were too.”

“You weren’t acting, Mark.”

He contemplated mentioning to you how he sometimes pretended to be busy with work so you would give him attention but decided against it, lest you stopped doing that.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better…I like you too, you know,” you told him, enjoying the way his eyes widened, his gaze immediately flitting elsewhere from being too shy to keep your gaze.

This time it was Mark’s turn to laugh, shaking his head as a soft smile found its way onto his features, “we’re kind of stupid, aren’t we?”

You looked at him, not being able to resist smiling at the sight of him, “very,” you nodded your head.

===

The last day of the camp brought the usual, photo taking, bag packing, you and Jeno bringing the leftover snacks from the camp home for yourselves. Everything seemed as if it was just like any other camp, but Mark was insistent on finding every opportunity to remind you he was dating you now.

“Here, let me carry your bag,” he offered as you were walking down the stairs to the front entrance of your church, saying goodbye to the campers that walked past the both of you to leave.

“Mark, just put it on the floor we’re not even leaving yet.”

Donghyuck snickered at your comment, holding out his bag in front of Mark, “I’ll gladly let you carry mine.”

“You guys need a lift? My mom’s sending me home,” Chenle jogged over to you guys, earning murmurs of ‘no’s and ‘its okay’s except for the ‘yes please’ that Renjun squeaked out, practically wobbling under the weight of his duffel bag.

“My mom can send you back, unless you’re coming over to my place?” Mark told you, or more like asked you.

You hummed, “I don’t know, I kind of feel like going home and taking a good shower, maybe I’ll come over after that?”

Mark grinned, nodding in approval.

“You guys haven’t gotten enough of each other yet? I’ve seen enough of Jaemin to last me 5 years,” Renjun shot you and Mark a disgusted look.

You were caught off guard when Mark slung his hand over your shoulder, pulling you closer rather abruptly, squishing your face against him “never,” he said confidently.

Gagging sounds resounded around the group, Donghyuck letting out a pained groan, “I kind of miss when they weren’t aware of each other’s feelings now,” he cringed, earning a high five from Renjun.

“I think it’s kind of cute,” Chenle piped up, earning a handshake from Mark, “thanks for the support, man.”

Jaemin burst out laughing, “Chenle’s opinion doesn’t count he thinks everything is cute.”

You saw Mark’s mom’s car drive into the church, nudging Mark gently, “hey, your mom is here.”

After saying goodbye to the guys you got into the car, not missing the knowing look Mark’s mom was giving Mark but choosing not to say anything about it.

“Y/N’s coming over later, mom, so you can cook more for dinner.”

“uh-huh, alright,” she smiled. She’d already heard from Donghyuck about what happened that very morning when she met him in the church so she wasn’t surprised in the least, especially when she heard from Donghyuck about how Mark was so shy he had to stop to giggle first before asking if he could hold your hand.

You were home sooner than you’d wanted to be, stepping out of the car and bidding Mark and his mom goodbye with a ( too breathless-sounding ) “see you later” and once you were gone, Mark let out a big sigh, fanning his face as he made eye contact with his mom in the rear-view mirror.

“Finally, huh.”

“Well, you know...I like her.... and stuff.”

[joonheaven]

no one irl willing to indulge my playlist ted talks so i hope u are

february playlist

i’ve been listening to kali more often and i rly enjoy her style overall. the beat drop in the beginning is so satisfying and i love how easy it is for me to memorize her lyrics.

i’m pretty sure this was on tiktok ??? not too sure but i like the lightheartedness in the song. near the end when the verses and chorus overlap it scratches the itch in my brain. and who doesn’t provide forks ???

prefer it over the original only bc i heard this version first so listening to the original is weird. slight mj voice.

if kali uchis offered to fly me out to eat her out who am i to deny her very generous offer ykwim ???? very enchanting, love it. groovy.

tapped into my childhood mj phase w this one. i remember hearing this for the first time while playing mj the experience on my wii and it still goes hard to this mf DAY. there’s this one part where he says “sucking” in which i rly wish he would’ve said “fucking”

in comparison to the rest of their discography this song is pretty muted but i rly love it. and bitch i would seriously reconsider my life decisions if any of mx said they never wanted to see me again. shownu’s n jooheon’s voice rly do shine in songs like these.

hook and chorus are my faves. also kinda quiet but not so much as sorry i’m not sorry. kihyun just b singing bruh i love him for that

i think my favorite of all my favorites ong i love this song and the mv made me love it so much more. i was doing research and was mf FLABBERGASTED to say the least to find out that christian yu and dpr ian are the same person like they were two completely separate ppl in my head. anyway love the melody

when does bruno ever miss like fr this shit is so good i’m gonna binge all his shit soon bc what other hidden gems he got. all his songs are karaoke worthy bc i b singing my ass off in the car about some gold digging bitch named natalie or about how my in-laws don’t approve of me. i’m so serious i love his music

a diary of a wimpy kid edit on tiktok reminded me of this song lmaoooo singing in spanish is very satisfying to me lol helps me w not forget my native tongue

[ethan-hayward-fmp-year1]

hyper light drifter: team

Hyper Light Drifter is primarily based on the vision of its key developer, Alx Preston. Preston had been born with congenital heart disease, and throughout his life has been hospitalized with digestive and immune-system issues relating to this condition. While in college, Preston had used the mediums of painting and film to illustrate his experiences with frail health and near-death conditions.

Preston envisioned Hyper Light Drifter as a video game as a means "to tell a story he can identify with, expressing something personal to a larger audience, so he feels more connected and have an outlet for the many emotions that crop up around life-altering issues". Further, he had yearned to develop a game that combined the best elements of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Diablo for many years, which would feature world exploration and combat that required some strategy by the player, depending on foes they faced. After several years of being an animator, he felt he could do so in 2013.The theme and story for the game, featuring a protagonist suffering from a terminal disease, is meant as a simile for his own health 

Preston originally set out to make the game for Windows, OS X, and Linux computers and started a Kickstarter campaign in September 2013 to secure US$27,000 in funding to complete the title. Prior to starting the campaign, Preston had secured the help of programmer Beau Blyth who created titles like Samurai Gunn, and musician Disasterpeace, who worked on the music for Fez. He opted to develop the game under the studio name Heart Machine as an allegory for the various medical devices he often needs to track his own health, and to use for future projects following Hyper Light Drifter.

The project funding was exceeded in a day, and quickly grew over US$100,000 within a few days of its launch. To encourage additional funding, Preston created new stretch goals, including additional gameplay modes, more bosses and characters, and expanding the release to include the PlayStation 4 and Vita, the Ouya, and the Wii U consoles. These goals were all met by the completion of the campaign, with more than US$640,000 raised. Preston stated that he had had these additional platforms in mind when first launching the Kickstarter, but did not want to over-promise what he felt he could deliver. The additional funds have helped Preston hire additional developers to aid in porting the game to these additional consoles.

source-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Light_Drifter