#screen brightened

[moeblob]

When you have to clarify for social media reasons and it just becomes a disclaimer and no one takes the comments seriously.

[mikesbasementbeets]

byler in every episode -> 3.06. e pluribus unum

[emmetofthestars]

wish you were here

[catastrophic-maniac]

warm up w/ my roblox avatar, i call him cat maniac ^.^

[sercj]

Alright, I'm finally typing it out. Gather around, all, for the tale of the time my friends and I kidnapped a blueberry and drug them into the Vault of Glass.

Once upon a time, I used to have friends I would play Destiny 2 with regularly. None of them that feature in this story still do, to my knowledge, but at the time we were pretty cracked on the PvE side of things. At the time, we were raiding semi-regularly (when schedules lined up), and as Vault of Glass had just been added to D2 recently, it was our raid of choice that one, fateful evening.

We, like any sane PC player, were using Discord for comms, and so I had hopped into the channel to wait, and headed to the Cosmodrome for my favorite time-killing passtime - blueberry watching. For those of you unfamiliar, blueberries is an affectionate term for new destiny players, named after the color of the low rarity gear they end up decked out in, blue. The Cosmodrome, being the first public area a New Light ends up in, is often a place where you can see adorable new players getting the hang of things.

At this time, the voice channel began to fill up, and one of my compatriots joined my fireteam. We initiated some hug emotes with a blueberry and were just all-in-all chilling when we got word that one member of our team would be unable to join us. Then someone (I forget who) suggested 'hey, what if we took this blueberry along with us?'. It was a patently absurd option - we had no communication with them. Their mishmash of blue armor and crappy weapons would clearly be outclassed by the raid, leaving them unable to damage enemies and likely to die instantly if any of the vex even looked in their direction. But we started to plan a bit - really, we could do every encounter with just 5 people. We'd have to protect the blueberry, but that could be done, theoretically.

I think, in the end, we came to the conclusion that we'd try it, but they weren't likely to stick through it. After all, we weren't (and never did) using the in-game VC, or text chat. The two of us hanging out with them in the Cosmodrome sent a fireteam invite. And the blueberry accepted. So we joined the rest of the team in orbit, and launched Vault of Glass.

I could go into our specific strategies for each encounter, but for the most part it was pretty same-y. We'd use emotes and shooting to get the blueberry into a defensible position, then 5-man the encounter. And somehow, this worked. I have taught many, many people many raids in my time (including many people from this friend group!), and I have never seen someone pick up so quickly on what we needed them to do. With no actual words passing! An absolute, biggest-brained legend of a guardian.

We did get this guy all the way to Aetheon. And with some tricks (and good RNG), we were able to even defeat Aetheon. With some random blueberry nobody knew, or talked to! Unfortunately, they didn't get Mythoclast (can you imagine, though!), but they did celebrate with us with their default dance emote, and we all went our seperate ways. Nobody friended them, we just re-released them into the Cosmodrome like they hadn't just helped us save all of time or whatever the point of Vault of Glass is.

Now, perhaps this was a returning player, or someone on a new alt, who already kinda or entirely knew what was going on. But there's no real way of knowing, and it's just as (if not more) likely that this was a brand new player. Can you imagine what kind of a 'first experience' that new player had with the game? How puzzlingly odd to begin with, developing into concern as the activity we brought them to was clearly beyond them, to the 'fuck it we ball' attitude to stick with it all the way through. A true champion.

And imagine the lore perspective too. Fresh guardian, still got gravesoil in their armor, hasn't been to the tower yet, and they get scooped up into the Vault of Glass? Battle Aetheon? AND WIN!? The reaction from Shaw, or hell, the Vanguard as a whole would be amazing. Our guardians getting reprimanded for taking some fresh new light and dragging them through such a crazy difficult experience they weren't prepared for. Fun stuff to think about.

I wonder how that player is doing now. If they still play, how this particular experience flavored their perception of the game and its community. I know the community at large can be extremely toxic (and worse), but I still strive to embody the community impression we made on that day. Patience and Understanding, being goofy and silly about it, inclusive and kind. Dunno, maybe that's just me being sappy about a fun memory with friends gone by.

[boarwinds]

do u by any chance have a timelapse/speedpaint of the snowbaird piece you posted on jan 1st?? if so pls share it im OBSESSED with that piece and how beautifully you rendered the lilac dress

[mad-scientist-clown]

the muse was like,, a weird episode of ds9. the lwaxana plot was actually really good (ODO WOULD INVITE QUARK TO HIS WEDDING????) but the energy thought vampire that was weird with jake was fucked up. isnt he like?? 17 or smth??? it was just. i didnt like it. it was no good.

[lunarfeat21]

Jeez! What a dump!

Told you so.

Whatever, let's find this-

That’s peculiar...

Hmmmmm? What do you found here?

Ah, the book, I see... so, shall we begin?

[Start?]

[hecatesbroom]

We all know that most fics tend to get more kudos than comments, right? Way more. But I've been scrolling through my ao3 stats lately and noticed something that took me by surprise: my fics tend to get more bookmarks than comments too.

Which— okay. I'm not complaining. I really really appreciate the fact that people love my fics enough to bookmark them: they want to return to this piece of writing! I feel honoured whenever I see that number go up by 1, because who would've thought??

But there are so so so many people who apparently love my stuff enough to bookmark it without leaving a single "hey! I loved this!"

The lack of interaction genuinely makes me feel a little sad? I love that people bookmark my fics, seriously. I get that people don't have a lot to say. I'm a pretty verbose person myself and even I had to develop a sort of formula for commenting. But even a simple "this was great!" or "I really loved [insert line]" can mean a lot to a writer.

Maybe you feel like your opinion isn't worth much, or who would like to hear your words anyway? but I can assure you that for every name I've seen on my fics (either in the kudos or in bookmarks) I've been so incredibly curious about the person behind it. I want to know about you! What did you like? What made you click that bookmark button? Who knows — I might think of that thing you said when I'm writing my next thing, and write an extra little bit with you in the back of my mind. It's happened before!

And it means a writer doesn't end up looking at stats like this:

You write something, you spend hours of free time on it, you work up the courage to publish it online, and then people read it and clearly love it — and most of them never reach out to tell you.

[nicolaisanya]

some more art, lance and keith with a lil of my own personalized headcanon vers of them teehee

i did this on my broken ipad so the pics arent very good :(

[ohimsummer]

tbh if I have to highlight your bio to find your age because the words are the same color as the bg, it’s still about to be a block

[daisywords]

hi. look at them.

[rainowbenstyls]

little illustrations inspired by this gorgeous piece of work by @tippitytap :D

DO NOT REPOST!

[snivel1]

Lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship

[011011100110100101101100]

i had to set up a new laptop for someone at work and it was one that dims when you arent looking at it

and can i just say, turning to look at a laptop and it instantly brightening up is SO

[lindira]

Okay but more people need to play dwarves cuz my duergar is all kinds of gorgeous.