#so obviously what connects me with most of you here are games. maybe got and lotr as no-games thing

[yuurei20]

I heard from someone that Azul is actually very strong although he's not very athletic because he's an octo merman he's mostly muscle they said that Floyd has talked about it in bean fest I wanted to know if Azul being insanely strong was just a headcannon or cannon cause its kinda funny to me azul could carry professor vargas that one event on his own when prof vargas is pure muscle

Hello hello! Thank you for this question! 🐙

Yes yes! The first information we receive about Azul being stronger than he looks is from Floyd during Beanfest, who explains,

"Who said anything about Azul bein' weak without his magic? He's real strong. He's slow on land and in water, and he's got lousy athletic reflexes, but that doesn't mean he's weak."

"Azul's bigger than me in the water, and he's got eight huge, heavy limbs. His submission holds are bad news, and he's got crazy grip strength. If he so much as snags you, he can snare you with your arms pinned.

Octopi are, like, all muscle. Seems to me like that wouldn't go poof just 'cause he took a potion to turn himself human.

I'm just spitballin' here, obviously. But all I'm saying is that writing Azul off is a bad idea."

(All of the above dialogue is 100% accurate to the original game! Floyd's "I'm just spitballin' here" line might make it seems like he is just guessing and doesn't actually know, but his original line is closer to, "I don't know all the details," and sounds more like he knows this information is fact, he just can't give a physiology lesson on how it all works.)

But Floyd's information is a little vague: he says Azul has "crazy grip strength" and his "submission holds are bad news," but that is the same line where he talks about Azul in his merform--so is he talking about mer-Azul or human-Azul? Or is he not making a distinction because there isn't one?

Can Azul snare people and pin them down on land, or was Floyd half-relating an anecdote from when they lived underwater?

But then came Book 6 and a line from Azul himself saying that his "arms are quite powerful," unlike Riddle's.

This seems to confirm that Azul is physically stronger than most people, but then comes the thunder spear:

Riddle asks for help lifting it and Azul struggles under its weight, despite how this would have been the ideal opportunity to illustrate how physically capable Azul really is.

But maybe the thunder spears are a tall order for anyone to lift? They're weapons from the age of the gods--maybe they just weren't designed for humans (or creatures in human form) to lift on their own?

Except:

There is Leona, who both lifts and wields the thunder spear entirely on his own, twice (he gets help from Jamil the third time).

But the rules of the thunder spears are unclear: after Team-OctaHearts' spear goes into energy-saving mode Riddle says, "I should be able to handle it now on my own," insinuating that when they are not in attack-mode they are easier to wield.

Azul carries it at first but, due to his infamously poor stamina, he does eventually give it up to Riddle.

When Azul comments on how easy RIddle makes carrying the spear look Riddle explains, "I spend most of my time learning magic. I have ever since I was born," insinuating that he is using a form of magic (perhaps levitation) to carry it and maybe does not have it physically in his arms at all.

(Vil explains that the spears are difficult to control in attack-mode due to the amount of energy they give off.)

And that asks questions about levitation that I have always wondered about!

During Glorious Masquerade Epel is only capable of carrying one crate of apples at a time.

When Malleus levitates an entire apple truck Epel comments, "I'm pretty sure only Malleus could pull off a feat like that…"

Are levitation and physical strength connected? Malleus says that he is physically stronger than humans even without his magic, so he does not serve as a good example.

Is Epel only capable of levitating one crate of apples because that is the limit of what he would be able to accomplish physically? Or do his magical limitations mirror his physical limitations by coincidence?

We know that Leona is extremely powerful (re: Leona's Power). Is Leona both physically stronger than an octopus mermaid and magically stronger than Azul, or is Azul physically stronger than Leona, but his magic wasn't enough for the spear?

And then there is the fact that Azul is, magically, extremely strong:

Jade comments that Azul's unique magic is too strong for even him to control (which is why he designed the golden contracts--to artificially rein himself in). Does that apply to all of Azul's magic, or is it just his UM?

Someone with the muscle of an octopus and a magic too strong to be wielded by its own user seems like they should be able to control a thunder spear on their own--but maybe Leona is just that strong? 🦁

To the original question:

Yes! It is canon that Floyd has said that Azul is insanely strong, and Azul himself has repeated it, but--

edit:

Ahhh thank you very much to the anonymous asker who mentioned Azul's Tapis Rouge vignette! 🥳 In-game example of Azul flexing his physical strength!!📝

And thank you to @basuralindo for the reference to Azul prying Stitch off of the prefect! 🐙 (Azul: "You might've thwarted my efforts entirely if we hadn't been underwater.")

And thank you again to @basuralindo and @mellosdrawings for the Vargas Camp references!! 📝

In a vignette we have Azul volunteering to carry a load of wood for Kalim. He pretends to be struggling under the weight in order to leave a lasting impression of his efforts, but as we cannot tell how much wood there is that he is hauling it can be difficult to tell how heavy it truly is--but then there is Vargas👀

At Trey's request, Jade and Azul are assigned the task of evacuating a bound Grim and Vargas from the mine. Jade takes Grim and runs away, leaving Azul behind alone with the prefect to handle Vargas--did he know that Azul would not struggle with carrying him?💪

Azul does ask for the prefect's help, but only because he is worried about bumping Vargas' head against the rocks--he does not say anything about struggling to carry him!

And this sounds very similar to a comment from Malleus on carrying Idia and Azul through the narrow stairwells of the bell tower during Glorious Masquerade! 🐉🐙

[russsiangirl]

art donaldson x reader headcanons ( both young and dilf art.. ) both banners by me!

starting off strong with young art ( heheh )

i feel like y'all met for a goofy reason

either he asked you for a piece of gum in a class because he ran out

that boy NEEDS his gum he can't live without it ( oral fixation? idk )

OR he saw you on the tennis court when you were meeting up with a friend of yours

you had heard of him of course, he had won the one tournament with his friend

but,, he sadly had his eyes on tashi duncan, not that you could exactly blame him, you've seen her - all lean muscle and tan skin.

that is until tashi starts dating patrick

he's kinda like a kicked puppy , a very jealous one

he's desperate to get his mind off of them, so he finds you

you're perfect for him, you're sweet, pretty, kind. but you're also pliable.

art's seen the way you'd look at him with those pretty eyes when he asked you a question, the way you would slightly stumble over your words

he would wanna laugh sometimes, not in a mean way, more of a 'how cute..' kinda way, yk?

he's a mastermind,, maybe manipulative but that just makes it better

he taps your shoulder one day and is like "hey so would you like,, wanna go out sometime?"

now you thought that he was just gonna ask for help with the assignment, but this- this was unexpected, but good. really good.

you obviously say yes & it goes great! after a couple dates you two start something that resembles a relationship

art is a sweetheart, buying you gifts, treating you to dinner when he can, taking you to his games - model boyfriend!

he loves being romantic and spending quality time with you

also double dates with tashi & patrick ( tension )

you notice the way patrick looks at art and you suspect something. had something happened between them?

you had heard about how tightly-knit the two of them were and something just didn't seem right

so after the date and you two go back to the dorm or wherever y'all are staying you ask him what was up with him and patrick

art shuts down, not saying anything and goes completely silent.

he's not one to talk about things like these or his past

art likes to talk as much as he loves to listen

like if you found a new interest and/or hyperfixation he would listen to you and find so endearing

he loves the way you get so excited and you just beam at him whenever you do something that makes you happy, it makes him just as equally happy

art also loves when you wear his clothes, he finds it funny how they drape over you since he's like six foot.

art does like being praised ( take that as you will ) but when you're reassuring him, especially after his games or practice or anything he just wants to shower you with all the affection he can muster <3

this is my late fathers day present to y'all.. enjoy

ah yes, art as a father, my favorite

he's not married at this point ( sadly no tashi, they got divorced )

he's a lot more tired than he was back in college, obviously

y'all definitely met at some sort of event, you were a reporter for a sports magazine who had sent you to cover whatever it was that you were there for

you just didn't know it would involve art

when you first see him, you didn't really know what to expect - but not this

art with his short-cropped sandy hair and pretty blue eyes and blonde lashes, he looks ethereal, almost like he doesn't belong here

he was distracted most of the interview, too distracted by you with your sweet voice and nice hands and silly questions

so you two rescheduled, over dinner! win-win, you get to spend more time with him and you get your job done

the two of you connect really easily and you agree to do this again, without the interview part

there's something about the two of you thats so entrancing to each other

IMAGINE WITH AN AGE DIFFERENCE

like you're 21 - 22 and he's like 32.. it only makes him crave you more, he can show you things you've never seen

you might be a bit skeptical, but art is telling you that you can trust him, he won't push boundaries, none of that and you do trust him

he does let you meet lily eventually and when you do, you're enamored with her, she's so sweet and you could see art in her

you knew about his past relationship with tashi, but you didn't mind

but older!art is also romantic, sure the paparazzi is interested in the two of you - so most of the dates are at home. he likes it better that way

ough,, this was a LOT - late father's day present yk.. i love you guys - enjoy this! like and follow if you enjoyed these hehe

[fallingdownhell]

May I request Zhongli, Itto, Kaveh and Cyno with an s/o who's got crazy good luck? They could win any challenge or game presented to them, never get hurt (to badly), and are always making loads of cash (somehow).

I can imagine at least one of those characters getting jealous over something like this.. Characters Included: Itto; Cyno; Zhongli; Kaveh Content: gender neutral reader; established relationship; crack??; some fluff and comedy; nothing too serious here, just some funny headcanons Word count: 942 words Have fun with this<3

Itto

the man, the myth, the legend himself..

he gets SO incredibly jealous. When he challenges you jokingly at first, and you keep winning against him..

His pride is on the line here, okay?

you win a match of TCG against his amazing deck? That's fine, he can always challenge you for another round

but when you keep on winning and winning, he gets more and more desperate with each passing round

okay, screw TCG. How about a beetle fight? He's sure to win this, no doubt about it!

...what do you mean he lost again?

he's heartbroken. Will fall to the ground in disbelief. Have the gods truly forsaken him now?

a little drama queen about it, but it wouldn't be the Itto you know and love if he wouldn't act like this

still, you do feel a bit bad about it. To the point where you decide to only do the bare minimum and let him win against you, so he'll cheer up again

when he does win, his spirit is back up again immediately, bloating about his superior victory for the rest of the day. Like, seriously, he won't shut up about it anymore

unless someone were to mention all his previous losses, then he's back to sulking again

however, the next day, all is forgiven and forgotten again

Cyno

one night, after dinner, he was talking about his new deck in TCG when you decided to ask him if he could teach you how to play

immediate sparkles in his eyes as he gets all excited and pulls out a new set of cards for you. He's been waiting for this day to come!

takes his time to explain the rules to you and helps you build your deck. If you ask him questions, he answeres them paitently

then comes the time for your first duel. Even though you are his partner and it's your first ever match, he doesn't plan to go easy on you. Well, maybe a bit, but he still will take this match very seriously

But when you end up winning against him, he's dumbfounded. How did you manage to do that?

He'd quietly mumble something about beginners luck, then challenges you to a rematch. This time, he plans to go all out

...and he looses again

now thourougly confused, he's looking at his cards like he might find the answer in them, while you are laughing your ass off. Your stomach hurts from all the laughing, but you can't calm down. Cyno's just so cute when he looks so shaken up

it's a mystery to him, how you could win against him, despite him having the better cards, the better deck and obviously having more expierence playing the game

in the end, he does swallow down his pride and congratulates you to your win, though he will work his deck over and challenge you again at a later point in time

Zhongli

as an adventurer, it is unavoidable that people get injured every now and then. It's just a risk that comes with the profession

and yet, Zhongli has never seen an injury on you more severe than a cut and maybe some darker bruises

don't get him wrong, he's glad that you're not getting hurt all the time. It's just that your stories and the results don't match up most of the time

"And get this. Then, a huge rockfall comes falling down in our direction! Can you imagine that?" "Darling, that's very serious. How did you manage to avoid that?" "I don't know. Guess I just got lucky. I only got hit my a small one on the head, but it wasn't even big enoug to give me a concussion, so all's good!"

"I almost fell down a cliff today!", "A group of Ruin hunters attacked us today!", "We got locked in a cave, but luckily, they were connected to other caves, so we got out no problem."

almost every other day, you come home with a similar story and every time, Zhongli questions just how much luck one single human can possess to come out mostly unharmed every single time

still, every time you set out for work, he can't help but worry about you. What if one day, your luck runs out on you? You reassure him that you're careful, but it does little to appease his mind when you come home with yet another tale to tell...

Kaveh

Kaveh isn't one for gambling, never has been and never will be. Though, he knows that you like to induldge from time to time, so when you invite him to come along with you, he agrees

and then he witnesses you winning each and every game you partake in. Doesn't matter how rigged the games might be, you make it look so simple

with a huge grin on your lips, your arms raise into the air as you declare your victory one again, and he's left dumbfounded

when he catches a quiet moment, he can't help but ask you about it

"I don't know. I just always had really good luck when it comes to those type of games.", would be your nonchalant explanaition

now he gets why you don't go out to play more often. You'd get banned from every single location if you were to do this regularely

Going home from a place like this with such a massive win.. he's too stunned to speak, but nonetheless very impressed and proud of you for it

will accompany you more often when you want to go out to gamble again, just to see your excited and joyful expression again

[centrally-unplanned]

Watching Tantacrul's analysis of "Facebook and its discontents", as it were, which is a good video even if I disagree with a bunch of it (I don't assign as much credence to the "social media is causing mental health crises" arguments, even if I am open to them, and am far more skeptical of the case of the "misinformation" proponents). What I do think is valuable is that Tantacrul was himself a large facebook user - not only professionally as a musician and game designer, but personally as one of those people who adopted it in his mid-20's right when it launched. He had the complete prelapsarian experience that Facebook, back when it was a tool and not a platform, was supposed to deliver; getting connected to a bunch of old friends, catching up, and sharing things from your personal life (and even effort posts; people did that on FB back then). While surely people do still have that experience on Facebook, it is a footnote of what it does today - few users are there for that anymore.

What strikes me is that there was something inevitable to the decline of that as a service - it relied sharply on momentum and a specific era. Having everyone join Facebook at the same time created a ton of activity and the easy establishment of community - everyone is here and online all in one place, catching up, so lets share things. But while the idea that one tool would Win The Future and be the ur-platform for everything is ofc the dream of every tech CEO, it isn't the dream of the user. "Everyone" made a Facebook in the late 2000's and at least gave the site a shot, so seeing dozens of friendly faces new and old was possible. But for most users it didn't really stick - I gave up on it in days myself, for others it was months, maybe it was a few years but it "getting old" is baked in. Not because the platform Got Worse, but because look, I can text my friends; I don't care anymore about posting a photo for 100+ people to see. The dirty secret of community everywhere is that if it isn't structural, it is temporary; it doesn't inherently generate endless engagement. Over time, you grow bored.

But you know what does generate endless engagement??

The second pillar of the Early Facebook Experience was the era - the internet was young, and "randos fooling around" was the peak of content. Most people weren't bloggers (the fools), most people weren't autistic enough to troll the dregs of Newgrounds for parody Evangelion dating sims (the absolute fools) - the internet just didn't have that much to do. Which meant the content your friends were posting to their facebook wall was as good as anything, right? Their Hot Take on the end of the Second Intifada ("this is a real opportunity for peace in the region") seemed worthy of several dozen back-and-forth debates in the comments. What this model could not anticipate is that its own success in generating online revenue streams meant that professionals would rise to meet the demand of the attention economy, far better than your friends could. Obviously Facebook-as-platform was a perfectly viable place to Share Content, but you do enough of that and someone's graduation photos seem a bit pedestrian in comparison. And again you can just text your friends - Facebook just isn't a good enough medium for all this.

I do think when people look at "the history of website X", there tends to be a lot of focus on the corporate management as the locus for change - the "pivot to video" for ad revenue or whatever. And certainly that is part of the story - I bet Facebook could have, if it had no ambition, stayed a site for people to see what their friends were up to. But that story is the story of website with declining engagement, with less people signing up new accounts as they are busy already on Tiktok, and active users dialing in less than they did. Maybe still better than the current status quo? Possibly, that isn't a debate I am interested in here. Just saying that change is inevitable in these kinds of places.

[baby-yongbok]

Hide & Seek

Lee Felix x Fem!Reader

Genre: Fluffy Fluff - Friends to Lovers (One Shot)

Word Count: 2,231

A/N: Happy Birthday Dear Felixxx, Happy Birthday To You! + Maybe I'm being hard on myself but I don't feel the most confident behind this one? Let me know what you think, I tried.

✨Masterlist✨

Summary: You and Felix grew up together but haven't had the time to connect since he's become an idol. Thanks to Hyunjin you're able to visit Felix for his birthday and the two of you decide to play around like old times. When one thing leads to another the two of you get to say what you've been wanting to for years.

Warnings: Tickling

“Come out, come out wherever you are.” Felix’s deep voice can be heard vibrating off of the walls of the quiet living room. The two of you decided to play a game of hide and seek to keep yourselves entertained while the other boys went to ‘Run some errands’ which obviously means that they’re trying to surprise Felix with something for his birthday. 

“Are you under…here” You hear shuffling from the other side of the room and you try your very best to stifle a giggle. “Hmm” 

You can’t help the dorky smile that pulls at your lips as you try to stay as still as possible in the back of the closet. Hide and seek is something that you and Felix used to play when you were pre-teens. You’d meet up at the park after school and play for hours, laughing and running after each other until you had to rush home for curfew. The two of you haven’t hung out much since he became an idol, with him moving to Korea and you moving your life from Australia to Seattle the two of you have barely had the time to schedule a meet up, let alone video chat. So, when you got a text from Hyunjin saying that he wanted to arrange for you to surprise Felix for his birthday you were more than excited to make it happen.

“Ah, I see.” You hear his voice getting closer to your hiding spot and you hold your breath and squeeze your knees to your chest to make yourself fit better into the corner. Felix slowly creaks the closet door open and pokes his head inside. 

“I know you’re in here.” He hums out as he searches the opposite side of the closet. “Hm, maybe she’s over….here!” 

He quickly turns in your direction, moving the coats that you were hiding behind and revealing your hiding spot. You squeal in excitement as you scramble to your knees and start crawling towards the exit. 

“I got you!” Felix laughs as he bends down to stop you from escaping. “I knew you’d pick the closet.”

He teases you as he starts to tickle you lightly. One of the rules of hide and seek that you guys made up when you were younger was that if you’re found in under a minute you get tickled as a punishment. This was your least favorite part of the game since Felix always managed to find you the fastest. 

“S-stop! That’s not f-fair, ugh.” Your laughs filled the air as you fought against him. “Felix, s-stop it!” 

Felix’s laughs mixed with yours in the quiet room, he rolled you over onto your back so that he could see your smiling face as he administered your punishment.

 “You know the rules” Felix tickled you for a few more seconds before stopping and sitting next to you on the floor. You laid out on the hardwood like a starfish as you tried to catch your breath. 

“I’m gonna get you back for that.” You managed to mumble between breaths and Felix chuckled. 

 “You gotta find me first!” He scrambles to his feet and starts jogging towards one of the other rooms. “Count to thirty, no cheating” 

“Yeah yeah yeah” You close your eyes, still laying on the hardwood as you start to count aloud. You hear a door open and a door knob being turned right after. You smile to yourself and shake your head, he’s clearly trying to trick you. “Ready or not, here I come!” 

You pull yourself up from the floor and take one final deep breath before you start to tiptoe across the hardwood. You notice that two doors that were closed before are now open and you look between them carefully choosing which room to explore first. You remember Felix telling you earlier how the bathroom is such a terrible place to hide so you decide to choose the other door that leads to his room instead. You slowly push the door open trying to avoid any creaking, you tiptoe inside of his dimly lit room, the only source of light being the evening sun shining through the blinds. 

“Oh Felix, where could you be?” You step across the room lightly, checking every space that you can think of. You check behind his thick blackout curtains, in his closet and even behind the door to make sure he isn't trying to sneak up on you but you don’t see him anywhere. Just as you're about to give up you glance towards his bed and notice a stray strand of blonde hair peeking out. You laugh to yourself as you make your way over to the bed and sit on top of it.

“Hm, where could he have gone? I checked everywhere.” You let out a faux sigh of defeat before standing from the mattress. “Oh! Maybe just maybe he’s under… here!” 

You bend down to look under the bed but to your surprise you find nothing but darkness. Your eyebrows furrow and you stand quickly looking around the room for him. Before you can turn around you feel a pair of strong arms lace around your waist and you jump at the sudden contact. A surprised scream leaves your lips and Felix laughs at the reaction.

“One minute and two seconds” He teases as he sways you back and forth with excitement. “I don’t get a punishment!

You whine, pushing him off of you and plopping down on the mattress in front of you. “No fair! You moved.”

“It’s not my fault that you’re a slowpoke.” He sticks his tongue out at you and you groan out in frustration. 

“I’m still gonna punish you for cheating.” You start to push yourself up off of the mattress but you’re quickly stopped by the weight of Felix on your back.

“That’s not how the game works!” You groan at the feeling of him on you as you fight to get him off. “You can’t make up new rules now!”

You struggle to get him off of you for a bit before you finally are able to shift from under him. He wraps his arms around your waist pulling you into him and holding you close.

“Get off of me you cheater!” Your chuckles and grunts fill the air as the two of you playfully struggle with each other. He tickles you here and there and you do the same earning some whiny laughs from him. You roll over on top of him straddling his waist and start to tickle his most sensitive spots. 

“Hey!” He laughs as you tickle him, barely fighting against you. 

“You’re not even trying to defend yourself.” You tease as you continue to tickle him. 

“I was t-trying to be nice!” He bites back in between giggles. You scoff at him, stopping the punishment for just a second to allow him to catch his breath.

“Yeah sure, just admit that I won. You barely even fought back.” Felix rolls his eyes at you playfully before smirking up at you. 

“Fine.” He grabs your waist and lifts his hips just enough to lift you off of the mattress. He flips the two of you over, his face inches away from yours as he hovers over you. “How’s this for fighting back?”

His question comes out in a breathy whisper as he tries to steady his breathing from your tickle attack. You look up into his eyes quietly as your own breathing starts to become a bit unsteady. Just as you’re about to say something to him you feel his hands on your sides and his fingers start to move against you. You gasp at the sensation before you break out in forced laughter once again. Felix smiles down at you as he tickles you for the hundredth time making your body wiggle beneath him.

“Keep still!” He laughs as he places his knees on either side of your body and straddles your hips to keep you in place. “You wanted me to fight back!”

His fingers move quickly against the fabric of your shirt, tickling your sides and trailing up under your arms. You push against his chest trying to get him to stop but it’s no use. “Felix!”

He  trails back down your sides and when he moves back up you can feel the pads of his fingers against your bare skin. You gasp at the sensation as he trails his fingers under the fabric of your shirt. His movements start to slow as he looks down at the exposed skin of your belly, your shirt riding up more and more as he moves his fingers against you. His digits come to a full stop and rest lightly on your sides as he watches the rise and fall of your stomach carefully. His eyes trail up your belly and chest until they meet your wide ones, your breath catches in your throat as he looks at you, his eyes are asking you a question and you think you know exactly what it is.

“I’ve missed you.” Felix whispers down at you, a meer grin on his lips.

“Felix..” You move your hands to rest on his forearms and his eyes look down to take in the light touch. “You can.”

He quickly looks back up at you, his eyes slightly wide as he tries to figure out what you mean, you couldn’t possibly be saying what he thinks you’re saying, right?

“I can?” He asks in a whisper and now it’s your turn to grin at him. “What are you giving me permission to do?”

“What you wanted to do the day you left.” His eyes are fully wide now and his lips part slightly like he’s just seen a ghost, a slight blush creeps up on his cheeks and you take in the way that his freckles look against the red of his skin.

“You remember that?” He asks, his voice is barely a whisper. 

“Of course, because I wanted you to do it so badly.” You whisper back, he stares down at you as the gears turn in his head, he’s clearly trying to take this all in. “What do you really mean when you say that you’ve missed me?”

“I think you know the answer to that.” His fingers start to slowly move against your skin. A light and innocent touch that makes a shiver run up your spine.

“I want you to say it.” His gaze softens a bit as he takes in a deep breath and starts to lean into you slowly. His eyes trailing from yours down to your lips. 

“Are you sure?” You nod your head as your hands start to slowly move up his forearms.

“Yes.” You breathe out and Felix carefully closes the gap between you two, his chest hovering over yours as your lips connect in a soft kiss. The golden evening sun shining against his honey skin, illuminating the moment. One of his hands lightly grips the exposed skin of your hip while the other softly rests on your cheek. You kiss him back just as gently, your hands trailing up his arms and resting on his shoulders. He pulls away from you for a second and your eyes flutter open to meet his gentle gaze. 

“I love you.” His voice is sweet yet deep and he watches your face for any sign of resistance to his confession. “I’ve loved you for so long.”

His lips brush against yours gently, aching to kiss you again. 

“I love you too.” You whisper and he smiles down at you instantly. 

“You do?” You can tell that he’s trying his best to bite back his excitement. You shake your head, returning his smile. 

“Thank god.” He leans back into you, closing the gap and kissing you a bit harder than before. Your lips glide against each other passionately as you savor the feeling and the taste of him. Your arms wrap around his neck pulling him closer to you, his chest now resting lightly against yours. You feel his fingers gently tangle into your hair and you sigh at the feeling. Felix whines lightly as he tries to get closer to you, he’d melt into your body if he could, anything to get the most out of this moment. He presses his forehead against yours and his other hand moves from your cheek to the side of your neck. You pull away from him slightly to break the kiss and Felix groans lightly in protest.

“We need to breathe.” You chuckle as you try to catch your breath, your heart is beating a mile a minute and you know that his is too. 

“You’re all the air I need.” You giggle lightly as he smiles down at you. 

“Softie.” You tease as he rubs his nose against yours.

“Only for you.” He kisses the tip of your nose and you scrunch your face at him. 

“Oh?” The two of you hear a voice from the other side of the room and turn towards the door to find a surprised Chan staring back at you.

“What?” You hear another voice ask before Hyunjin and Minho stick their heads into the room 

“Oh?” The two say in unison. 

“I called it” Hyunjin smiles as he pulls back and pushes Chan’s shoulder.

 “You owe me ten bucks.” 

[neatalchemist]

THIS IS ALL MY OPINIONS! obviously made before the whole game came out, this is just my opinions on songs that the characters would either listen to or songs/artists/albums that remind me of them :3

all songs and artists taken out of my liked playlist on spotify 😭 im also making a leander and mhin playlists on there..

(i got carried away erm LOL) you can tell i was heavily into...a couple of trenches in my early teenage years. yes im talking about the emo quartet whatevrr

leander is mania coded argue with the WALL!! to me he is the fall out boy. hes got that charm guys TRUST ME. its definitely not because fall out boy have been my top artist for 5 years in a row now and because i love leander and im connecting them its not that guys trust me. ALSO a little death by tnbh ???? Young and a menace and a little death r his song trust me. Also pitbull..Toes by glass animals. just a fever you cant sweat out by patd

mhin is the smiths coded. big mouth strikes again and please please please let me get what i want especially. i saw someone compare them to julian devorak and that did something to my brain because julian may or may not be on my kinlist. Whatever. SO the smiths, radiohead... just the most depressing self hateful indie ever. Yeah, Yeah. the front bottoms. Shit, alex g as well head in hands. Maybe and hear me out- some mitski JUST A LITTLE FUCK IT the only non sad song might be flight of the crows by jhariah. They make great music btw. (theres no emoji for the emotion i need to convey) Kill me kill me now body by mother mother END ME wheres the animation memes and just Three days grace.

ais is hm. i dont want to say the neighbourhood and chase atlantic but the neighbourhood and chase atlantic. ARCTIC MONKEYS. fuck it, system of a down and deftones too. Seriously unserious. glass animals SPECIFICALLY Zaba. I feel it. Oh and naturally GUY.exe DUH ALSO Tyler the Creator... And Pitbull for this guy too

freek-a-leek for both ais and vere goodnight

vere.... Who is she by I Monster. this is going to be so ooc, Odetari and its so basic La Seine. I absolutely see MARINA here... Choke by IDKHBTFM!!!!? I may be reaching here. Honestly i feel like hed listen to lady gaga :× He said he liked lutists but the closest to that genre ive got is yaelokre and sea shanties (nancy the tavern wench) and they just dont fit him, sorry pooks

KURASSSS i love him ive got a few off the top of my head, hozier, he definitely likes calmer music, judas by lady gaga being the exception. riptide by vance joy and honestly? Mac Demarco and tame impala. He gives me that vibe (and reminds me of nadia from the arcana bcz theyre both serious but can switch up to goofing around just like that) Absolutely cosmo sheldrake, its just that folklore far away nostalgic feeling of magical days trust. Cas too OHHH just ghost bc. Yes.

[oswhys]

So, when I played Lucanis’s questline for the first time, I genuinely thought that Illario was going to turn out to also be possessed. I like to try to come up with theories if there's some kind of mystery involved. Obviously, Illario is suspicious from the get-go but if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt you can, after all, grief really does make people act strangely, but not usually immediately after the death. But when he shows up after the defeat of Zara and kills her just as she says “Amatus” upon seeing him there's no doubt he was in cahoots with her. But then something interesting happens, he uses blood magic, some enchanted pin. He still keeps up the act of innocence though. We get further confirmation during the questioning of Zara’s corpse that the two were extremely close, at least from her perspective. But then we get a strange little tidbit from the memories of Lucanis later in his quest line when you're with spite. Lucanis has a memory or maybe it's some warped memory of Zara talking about the cultivation of an Envy demon. 

Zara’s project was to cultivate and bind different types of demons more easily through new techniques. Zara was talented enough to be able to put a demon inside of a non-mage subject, something that shouldn't be possible in the first place, or at least unheard of. She also wanted to cultivate certain types of demons, ones that are more rare and possibly harder to bind. We see the results of most of her test subjects, either walking corpses or bound demons. Let's say she agrees to take Lucanis to be a test subject, thinking the whole thing would just kill him and the terms of her deal with Illario would be met. Let's say shes surprised Lucanis is even able to merge with spite, let alone survive well afterward. Now let's say this gets her thinking, can she replicate this? Can she put demons and spirits into non-mages? Was this a freak accident?

I know I’m speculating a lot here but hang with me. Now I don't know if her scheme is to take advantage of Illarios jealousy and use it to create an envy demon, something rare and hard to bind, but it would naturally be attracted to that much envy in a person. Or maybe it's presented as an opportunity later down the line, that Illario could become an abomination and gain as much power as one, being able to tap into magic even if not in full control would still give him an edge. I don't know, I just think there was a bit more to the story that we don't know about, aside from what we’ve seen in some of the concept art. Which shows something akin to Illario being manipulated by either Zara or some kind of desire demon or??? Just someone in a pool of blood, with horns? But pieces of these ideas got left behind in the game. Fragments of something larger and it drives me up the wall. 

There's an obvious romantic connection between Illario and Zara that is never elaborated upon in conversation, It is a deeply interesting tidbit of information and nothing is done with it. Then there's Zara’s line in Lucanis’ memories of her saying that the conditions of cultivating an envy demon must be perfect (the line that sent me through this spiral). And then there is Lucanis’ log book. His 5th one if you don't save Treviso shares a reading list of books and he writes some notes with his thoughts about each. He says that Spite “trusts nothing to do with envy demons” which to be fair to spite, is reasonable they're… creepy, and envy as an emotion is a huge liar sometimes. 

There's just something there. Obviously, the story got cut up and changed with time but there was a time when I started to think that the reason Illario is so suspicious is that he's a red herring, or he's a patsy, or not in control of himself or being manipulated or SOMETHING. But no he's just… kinda stupid. He locked up his grandmother and kept her alive? IS HE STUPID?

Anyway, I just like the idea of some grander conspiracy or grander narrative and that maybe Illario wasn't all to blame for everything or that he was, and he was actually even more villainous. Being controlled by his own jealousy to the point of madness blah blah blah you see why I’m thinking about this so much now yeah?

[peachhcs]

how it all began -> podcast episode

hughes!sister x will smith au (samy + will)

a small podcast snippet where samy and will talk about how they got together

1.9k words

here are the small draft blurbs i wrote way back when i started this series that i told y’all i would share. i have a lot of them, so i’ll post them periodically :) this is from where i imagined will and samy talking about each other on podcast episodes they've invited to

au masterlist

"alright, so give me all the juicy details. how did this next step in your relationship come to be?" samy laughed mostly to herself as she fidgeted with the ends of her shirt.

"i mean..i feel like will and i are like..the exact of every best friends to lover trope right now..like i feel like we fit all the stereotypes," the brunette began making the interviewer laugh.

"i don't know..i mean something in our brains just flipped. we only ever saw each other as like..siblings. like we had a brother and sister relationship with one another, but the more i think about it, the more i think it might've just been us suppressing those feelings and playing it off as a family dynamic instead," the girl giggled.

"were your close friends and family ever like..why the hell aren't they together?"

"looking back on it, there was one night when i was like..sixteen maybe? will had just moved to michigan for his development program and he hung out at our house with some of his friends and like..we all had a great time. we just talked and caught up and i got to know his teammates, but after, when they left, my mom..she had this look on her face. i didn't know what look it was at the time and so i was like why are you looking at me like that? she didn't say anything, but she just smiled and shook her head and now, i'm pretty sure it was her seeing the connection will and i had that we didn't even know we had yet," samy explained.

"i feel like there's such a beautiful thing about that though. it's like you guys weren't even trying to be in a relationship, but everyone around you two knew how special of a connection you two have and they were just like..oh yeah they're definitely gonna be together one day," the interviewer nodded.

"i know. i know. it is beautiful because we weren't even really looking for a relationship and..one thing led to another. i always see those posts that say relationships come from the most unexpected person in the most unexpected time," samy smiled.

"i mean you can tell us whatever you want, you don't have to say anything, but if you want, can you talk about like how it happened and what changed?"

"it was this past summer..will was finishing up his dev program and he was like in a different place every weekend so we hardly got to see one another, but he still texted me and called me whenever he could to talk about his game like we always did, so that wasn't unusual..but like i don't know..there was this thought in the back of my head like..i don't even know how to explain it, but it was like i got this feeling in my chest every time will texted or called me and i started realizing that he didn't do this with everyone. really only like me and his sisters. anyways, the draft rolled around and obviously i was gonna be there. my family sat with his family and we were all dressed to the nines. will was locked in, nervous about his pick, all of that. it wasn't until after where we just found ourselves just with each other in the arena and like..we looked at each other and i think that's just when we knew something was changing between us."

"you both felt that change right in that moment?"

"i mean yeah. he looked at me like..a little too long and i was like..oh shit, this is..this is a way different feeling than i'm used to. it wasn't until his draft party in boston when everything sort of..like came out. i can't give too many details, but we ended up talking that night and like..the rest just went from there," the girl laughed a little.

"and i mean, you two have the same collegiate number absolutely coincidentally."

"yeah, i think that was our final tipping point when we found out we got the same number. it was like the universe telling us, okay yeah, you guys definitely belong together," the brunette grinned.

"so is it hard being long distance and like finding out all of this stuff right as you leave for college?"

"yeah, a bit. it was kind of like a punch in the face. we get something good, but it doesn't last for long because will's now states away in boston and i'm still in michigan, but we're making it work. we call everyday and we text everyday. it's also easy because we know how one another works, so we like skipped all the awkward parts of getting to know one another and figuring out each other's quirks because we already know it."

"i think that definitely makes things easier like you said. you don't have to spend time in the awkward stage because you guys already had that growing up."

"yeah, exactly, but yeah, it's been fun opening this side of one another and delving into it more. he's always been there for me and i mean it's like we danced around one another until the time was finally right for our lives to mix together in that way."

—

"so i don't know if you've seen the clips of sam talking about your relationship or not?" will smiled a bit, nodding to say he has seen it.

"i have and i mean everything she said was pretty spot on and i probably couldn't have said it better myself," the blonde chuckled.

"i don't wanna exhaust the subject too much, but i'd love to sort of hear your take on about the change and sort of realization about your relationship with her."

"yeah, just this past summer was when things just changed for us. she was at the draft in nashville with all of us and just like..it was really special having all of my close friends and family there watching me take on another big milestone in my life. samy's always been there for me, so having her there was really great. i think she said after i got picked we ended up in the arena with just us and we were talking briefly and like..yeah it just changed for us in that moment. i realized how lucky i was to have her there and that she took time out of her busy schedule to be there and support me and i was just thinking how no one else would do that for me but her," will said, his smile still painting his features.

"did you like ever have any past feelings for her in that way that you pushed away thinking it'd never be like that?"

"i think maybe when we were like..12 or something. it was like..peak puberty years so i had this thought in the back of my mind like..what if samy and i ended up as something more, but she never seemed into that ever. we were like siblings, so i kind of just let the idea go knowing we wouldn't ever be like that until it started just resurfacing this past year with her."

"i think i asked sam this, but were your close friends or family ever like..why the hell aren't they together?"

"well definitely my teammates knew way before i did. the first time they met her and hung around us and we went back to our places they looked at me and they were like: are you sure you've never thought about her in that way before? so they even knew before i had an idea. my mom at times was definitely suspicious and surprised that we never got together because i think she was secretly rooting we would at some point," the hockey player laughed.

"moms and friends always know. always trust what they say," the interviewer also laughed.

"i know, i should've listened to them more. even at sixteen where samy and i still saw each other as siblings they were skeptical. especially ryan. he was giving us eyes and anytime we hung out with her he was giving me these looks like you're for real right now? you have zero feelings for her? and i mean i thought our interactions were normal and i guess i brushed off a lot of them that looked flirty or came off that way and samy did too so that's probably why it took us so long to catch on."

"even though you guys are long distance right now, how are you two working through that while taking on this new territory of your relationship?"

"well, it's definitely easier because we know one another so well. it helps that we didn't have an awkward stage because we kind of already went through that when we were kids. plus, samy just makes it easy. we're very alike so we know why we are the way we are. she's always been there for me and i've always been there for her. we're constantly supporting one another and we call everyday just like talking about our days or games if we have them. if we can't call, we send like 10 voice messages explains our days. it's just easy because we know each other so well, so nothing has to be misread or miscommunicated because we already know. it definitely sucks we're not together like we were for two years, but it just makes seeing one another that more special when it comes around."

"that's really special. your relationship has always been really special to the fans who've been following you two for while now, so i know they love seeing you guys finally together. i'm sure they knew way before you guys did too," will and the interviewer shared a laugh.

"i'm sure they did. samy and i aren't the best at picking up clues like that," will chuckled.

view all comments

user1 OH MY GOD I CANT??? THEYRE BOTH SO ADORABLE AWWW

user2 IGE BEEN WAITING FIR THIS ONE!!!! i knew i knew i knew they'd finally end up together

user3 the best friends to lovers pipeline is so incredibly real

user4 WILL'S FRIENDS KNOWING BEFORE HE DID!!! god they must've been so painfully obvious back then to everyone but themselves

user5 golden retriever and golden retriever fr

user6 stop i love these two sm they truly did grow up together and seeing them try out a relationship is so cute i hope they work out!!!

user7 MY roman empire

user8 oh they're in love love

user9 them calling everyday is so cute oh my god

user10 THEM HAVING THE SAME NUMBERS UNPLANNED IS LITERALLY FATE AND DESTINY

user11 samy hughes and will smith make so much sense in my head

user12 THE WAY HE CALLS HER SAMY IS SO CUTE

user13 we need them in an interview together next!!!

user14 samy saying how will looked at her for a little too long and she just knew is so fucking real on god like i get you girl so bad if will looked at me the way he looks at her i'd fold immediately

user15 i love that they're so willing to share this with us bc we basically grew up with them too

user16 i'm actually obsessed with them

user17 THEYVE BEEN SOFT LAUNCHING EACH OTHER THUS ENTIRE TIME??!

user18 im definitely betting it was some sort of like drunk confession at will's draft party because samy said she couldn't get into the details meaning she couldn't tell the interviewer they were underage drinking GOD i love them sm

[arcadekitten]

Hello, arcadekitten! I've recently been grabbed and dunked headfirst into your games and am currently hyperfixating on them(First hyperfixation that hasn't been my ocs in years lol!) and am currently on the grind of trying to figure out Reginald's weird plot! I've only got about a page of notes so far in my doc, more questions than answers but I thought it would be neat to share, so here are some things I've noticed! **Spoilers for My Wishmaker and Cemetary Mary for anyone reading lol** Reginald strangely isn't affected by bad injuries too much? Seen in My Wishmaker as he has his whole arm chopped off and can walk seemingly ok without a tourniquet or anything to stop the bleeding? Ik having your arm chopped off doesn't affect walking around but my goodness he's awfully chill in this situation. In Cemetary Mary in Twylas good ending when he is shot in the leg and eventually stands back up on both of his legs to walk over to Mary(But I guess this could be explained by him having adrenaline from the whole ordeal, or if you're my friend ''it's because he's crazy and has uber demon warlock time god powers'') Also at the end of the prologue, he is shot twice and(seemingly maybe) gets back up again after the purple text(Eye fellow most likely) I don't have an explanation for this, as I could very well be overanalyzing it and it could be cartoon/game logic or the characters having different anatomy but I think maybe it has something to do with our purple eye fellow, whether it just some strange effect/gift they have/gave or if Reginald is born with some crazy pain tolerance lol, or if he maybe he asked for it(After rereading this I am definitely over analyzing but we'll leave my crazy rant up LMAO) Reginald says the eye has an affinity for objects like the clock, which makes me believe that our purple-eye fellow was definitely in Cemetery Mary the same way he is in My Wishmaker. The scenes that come to mind immediately are Reginald's vanity(I think that's what it's called) and (less likely maybe) the coffin at the church funeral. Obviously whatever it is makes Mary feel not too great so I wonder why it's only her and (seemingly) not Reginald(Although again maybe it's that crazy pain tolerance lmao). Mary is definitely connected in some way to the eye but I don't know how yet other than maybe her just being around Reginald, he says he doesn't want her to ask about that silly stuff as she could end up in a similar position to him and it wouldn't work out for either of them. So I wonder what that means. Eye fellow says they thought Reginald was better at this(Killing people maybe? Reference to Cemetary Mary?)(The eye looked forward too when he responds with ‘’Oh yknow..’’ which like..fourth wall break?) Idk just smth I thought was neat There is so much more stuff I can talk about and I will probably go back and scream because I've put more points together or I forgot to mention smth but this is all I'll put since I've already written a lot and I don't want this to be too long aa so ill end my midnight ramble here But anyway I really enjoy your games and I can't wait to see more from you in the future!! (Tho one last question does the eye have pronouns I feel as if I'm misgendering the purple eyeball lmao)

So many observations and notes, I am so fllattered! I miss I could say more but I don't want to spoil anything! You'll just have to wait and see for more answers! ♡

As for the eyeball character, they go by any pronouns but will most consistently be referred to as "they" and "it" !

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

ok! so i know that you're not to try to motivate yourself with punishment, however: i cannot argue with the results. also, @failonade asked, and who am i to deny the people in my phone the right to make fun of me?

most of this is under a cut because i cannot imagine it will be interesting to most people, but two or three of you will think it's hilarious.

why am i using a silly wip game to organise my stuff? well. because i am, generally, not much of a writer. when i'm working on things—like, for work, etc—they always end up with a standardised name, and i take notes as needed in either a notebook or a text file entitled 'work', as the vibes suit. this is not especially descriptive, but ctl-f for keywords gets me where i need to be, and it's fine!

unfortunately. this meant that when, for the first time in nearly a decade, i considered writing something, i thought to myself, 'it's fine! just stick it in a file called fic!'

it's worth taking a moment here to tell you that one of the things i enjoy about notepad++ is that it autosaves your tabs. they're not saved saved, but when you open the program again, they're in the same state. unless something went catastrophically wrong at some point. but usually they're in the same state! i mention this only because i have a bad habit, especially with work-related things, of simply closing notepad++ and telling myself that it will preserve things for me, something that works well 99% of the time and completely loses all the information that i'd made note of the remaining 1% of the time.

and so, for a minute, i did fic notes more or less the same way i take notes for work-related things: just an unsaved text file with no real headers or organisation, and nothing to mark the transitions between projects, because i can obviously tell that by keyword.

you may, at this point, have spotted the error that i did not: if one is writing several fics about the same show, there are not, in fact, easy keywords in the text that will tell you which bits were intended with which fic.

so i again, cleverly, thought, well, the solution to this is to use more text files, obviously. simply make one for every project.

an interesting thing about living in the future is the way that everything's so connected. people move seamlessly between locations and devices and you never even notice it happening, because everything is so connected. is my friend on the train while we're talking? on her sofa? at work? quite possibly all three, and on my end, this is entirely unnoticeable.

however, i am, it turns out, also a people! but do you know what is not connected? that's right. text files, especially if you are the sort of person who simply does not believe in saving text files, and believes in your heart that if the contents disappear, it's a sign that you should just let it go.

at this point, some people might stop and think, 'are all these text files really necessary? maybe there's a better way!'

that's quitter talk, tho. what i thought was 'yeah, i mean, i'll just add bits in my notes app or in my private discord server and then paste them into the text files later!'

which is a thing you can do. but at some point you find out that discord only likes to scroll back so far, and also that your notes app has a character limit, after which it tells you to get the fuck into the docs.

which you do, because what other choice is there?

a skilled observer, someone who's good at math and counting, may at this point notice that there are now four locations involved in this process. a skilled observer, or simply someone who is smarter than i am, which is a very low bar, might think, wow, that's kind of a lot of locations you've got there, buddy! sure would be a shame if things got all nonsensically jumbled together!

i, on the other hand. i found out about ellipsus, and i thought, oh, i'm just going to try this, i'll just throw a couple things in there and see how it goes. and so i did.

here is what i did not do: stop writing in the text files. or in the notes app. or in discord. i also did not transfer everything from the text files to ellipsus, or anywhere else. i also did not transfer everything from gdocs to…anywhere.

unfortunately, at some point in the past week, i've realised that at this point, i have a truly horrifying number of versions of some files. they're not labelled or even saved, in many instances. i keep finding things that i thought i'd fully deleted, or things that i have three versions of, and they're all within a couple hundred words of each other, but the most recent scenes have nothing at all in common.

which is to say that currently, my notepad++ tab bar looks like this.

if there's a .txt in the name, it means that it was, at some point, saved. when? well. that's not my business. i am now down to twenty-two open files. some of them have literally tens of thousands of words; some of them have work-style notes about medical appointments and bills and random phone numbers; some of them have notes about fics my friends are writing; some of them have as many as two or three sentences with absolutely no further context.

one of them contains, in total, the words 'not actually dead'. that's it, that's the file. 'not actually dead'. the period is outside the quotes because it is not in the fucking file. what did i mean by that. why did i feel that it needed its own file. what the fuck does this mean. we may never know! there's certainly not gonna be any insight from this corner!

another uninteresting fact about me is that i am, in many regards, sort of a minimalist. there are three open tabs on my phone. i have never accessed ao3 except in an incognito window. my search history is empty. i feel like having a dozen tabs open is a lot of tabs. (not you, text files, you're perfect.)

however, right now, i have seven tabs open (normal! fine!), and then…i have. this.

i am sitting here, three in the morning, waiting for a storm to (please please please) roll through, picking at a fic that i'm writing and also sieving through all these goddamned files (yes, the ones in notes and gdocs, too) and consolidating.

questions you may have, at this point, because they're certainly questions that i have:

is this productive? i don't know.

will this fix me? almost certainly not.

is this a good use of my time? i honestly could not tell you; never before have i been in this position, and i don't quite know what to do with it.

will this make it slightly less likely that i have to spend between three minutes and three hours skimming files and looking for the one thing that i want to work on? possibly. hopefully. perhaps. god i hope so.

[icarusdiesatdawn]

Hatchetfield + Magnus Archives

I'm sure this has been explored plenty, but I've not actually seen much of it around so I want to give my own two cents to this conversation. I've been thinking about the Lords in Black and the Fears since NPMD came out, but I've never properly shared my thoughts, so here goes

Basically;

Pokey is the Corruption 🪱

Blinky the Eye 👁️

Nibbly the Flesh 🥩

These are pretty much on the nose I reckon. Tinky and Wiggly are a little more interesting to me personally, so I'm going to elaborate a bit. This ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated - apperantly Ido have many thoughts and feelings on this crossover - so I'm putting a break here.

[Also a fair warning for TMA spoilers]

Wiggly clearly got to be the Slaughter🩸 (at first I thought he might be affiliated with the Hunt, maybe they bleed into each other a little bit)

What I find most interesting though is when you put Black Friday in the context of TMA. Because it is basically just Wiggly's most devoted avatar Wilbur Cross, trying to execute a ritual for Wiggog Y’Wrath, aka the Slaughter, so he can come through to our dimension and bring about the apocalypse in his vision.

Similarly TGWDLM would be Pokotho's apocalypse (apokolypse) if the Web pushes through in a ritual. The fact that the Hatchetfield musicals all seem to be parallel universes works so well with the way the Fears work with parallel universes in TMA lore. Obviously this doesn't add up completely since Pokey's meteor backstory doesn't align with the concept of rituals in TMA, - and of course the whole point was that the rituals would all fail anyway because you need all the Fears together for it to work. But in Hatchetverse the Lords can!

Now I like to imagine what the rituals for the other Lords might look like. This is really scratching an itch in my brain

Also the Black Book is a Leitner, we all know it

Now I still haven't talked about Tinky. This is actually my favourite thing to think about because he's not as obvious to me as the others when it comes to the Fears.

I am very sure that Tinky is the Spiral🌀

The way he seems to enjoy to just fuck with Ted people's lives and trapping them in his toy box - which feels a little reminiscent of trapping people in, say, certain hallways. Fucking about with time and space to make their victims lose sanity seems about right for the Spiral.

Another part of the Spiral is deceit, the It Is Lies, and while this might seem like a stretch - I do think this is just as if not more so important to Tinky's whole deal. It's kind of the main thing he uses to play with Ted. He makes him believe he has anctually chance with Jenny again, makes him believe he's in control and knows what he's doing, when in reality it's just Tinky having a bit of fun toying with his feelings. All of this rings closely to the Web as well, but there two aren't quite off from eachother anyway, since lies and deceits are just a way of manipulation at the end of the day.

We only have Time Bastard to assess Tinky's personality, but it would be super interesting if this story would be explored in a whole play or musical, just to see the length of Tinky's manipulation tactics. Especially knowing they can take form as humans if they want to, he could - like the Distortion does - pretend to be Ted's friend to play his mind games. ...I might actually want to write this now

Okay, but the Spiral is not all T'Noy Karaxis is about. Again, just based on Ted's story, it actually becomes quite clear that Tinky is also the Lonely ☁️

Seriously, Ted's story is lonely coded through and through. Starting with the reason why Tinky picked Ted in the first place. He's at Emma and Paul's wedding, unenvited, unwanted, and probably the most lonely he's ever felt because what could make you more aware of your own loneliness than a room full of happy people who don't want you to be there. He's reminiscing about the time he had with the only person he's had a genuine strong connection to, then Tinky chimes in like "He's perfect, I can work with that"

And it's really just so sad. Ted has to go through losing Jenny again, and then ending up being comppletely and utterly removed from society. He doesn't even get to keep his sense of identity. His life. He just becomes "Homeless Guy", watching the people he once knew pass him by in the streets, seeing his little brother, his younger self - as strangers he lost all connection to. And he can't do anything about it. He is truly alone. Absolutely bonkers insane, I am eating drywall

do you get me???

Also just the Spiral / Lonely combo aesthetically clashes so hard but is actually not far removed. It really shows that the Fears bleed into eachother. From the Web to the Spiral, the Spiral and the Stranger, the Stranger and the Lonely, it kinda drives me insane I love it

Anyway, knowing that Tinky's a fan favourite for many of you, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, so please let me know what you think!!!

EDIT: as some have pointed out, Pokey much better fits the corruption than the web, you are RIGHT I am an idiot

[turtlesocksv2]

Let's talk Fate

ok for #kpanniversary2024 the first prompt is Fate and boy howdy is that a good one to start a rewatch with. Because from the very beginning, as soon as Kinn and Porsche crossed paths there was only one way it was going to play out. In fact, even before that, Porsche's fate was sealed as soon as he was born and here's why:

Porsche was always going to end up in the Theerapanyakul family one way or another. Nampheung was basically kidnapdopted when she was child by Grandpa T, was raised by him, grew up with Korn and Gun who both end up in love with her (or at least psychosexually obsessed with her). And when she was old enough she got out of there. She married a man and had (what we assume to be) an ordinary life for at least 8 years. But here's the thing: Nampheung never actually got out.

Nampheung was allowed her little housewife cottagecore daydream by Grandpa T. I call it that kind of dismissively, we don't know anything about her life, actually, maybe she had a highpower job, etc etc. but the point is that as soon as Grandpa T decides to call her back home, back to the Theerapanyakul Mafia, she is powerless to stop it. In the flashbacks we see of the moment Porsche's dad died, The things that really sticks out to me are these 3:

1: Gun and Korn both came to visit and in at least one version, they are there at the behest of Grandpa T who wants to see Nampheung.

2: Pat says that they will never go back to that house and that the family is rotten. (which implies that Pat also has a connection to the family, I am a 'Pat was Nampheung's bodyguard and they ran away together' truther and this leads into the last point and perhaps the most significant

3) Porsche was hiding in the cabinets when Korn and Gun are there. Now, I don't know about how your family operates but i'm pretty confident that isn't exactly normal behavior when your family has guests. Like, little kids are usually pretty excited to have company, especially people who grow up to be as extroverted and gregarious as Porsche is. Korn and Gun are obviously unaware in the moment that Porsche is hiding. Pat probably knows because I'm convinced that this is a safety drill they'd run many times. Nampheung and Pat knew that someday, Grandpa T's generosity would run out, or he'd die, and the Theerapanyakuls would come calling again. They were trying so hard to keep Porsche out of that life, but it was never going to happen. If they'd lived, Korn and Gun would show up to darken their doorstep at some point. And since they died...well, how did that turn out, hmmm?

Porsche (and Chay but lmao Korn and Gun don't give a single fuck about Chay so we'll just ignore the baby for now ) ends up in the guardianship of an unreliable gambler under the thumb of loansharks. Porsche ends up in illegal street fights to make money. He is being pushed in the Theerapanyakul's direction. Make no mistake, at some point the loan on his house was going to end up in Theerapanyakul hands, or Chan was going to come up to Porsche after a fight, and that would be that. There is no world in which Korn lost track of his beloved Nampheung's sons, not when he's so obsessed with her he has her locked up in his attic. Gun, at least, has the excuse of thinking Porsche and Chay are dead along with their parents. Korn was just playing the long game.

Is it fair to call it fate when it's being orchestrated by someone? Well, I guess that depends how far back you think the hereditary curse goes.

It was never about Kinn and Porsche at all. Nampheung knew it was always going to end here. She tried to stop it. It didn't work. She was never going to get out. Her sons were never going to get out. And now they're more enmeshed than if she'd never tried at all. Sounds like fate to me.

[davidisnotmyname]

okay I do think that the adrenaline coursing through my veins while reading the comic for the first time has somewhat faded, and the rose colored glasses I was wearing have turned into normal colored glasses cuz my vision still sucks regardless. Anyways I wanted to actually share my opinions on the story of the comic and how it was handled. As you should be expecting by now, major spoilers for the seventh comic ahead:

First off, I want to make it clear that any criticisms I have are not meant to be a dig at the artists and writers. They could have easily left the project as dead, but they decided to give us all closure after seven years. The comic team is chock full of incredibly talented creatives, and I have only the utmost respect for the time and energy they put into this project. I am incredibly grateful for that. Additionally, I am not an expert on storytelling, nor do I claim to be. I’m just a neurodivergent kid who feels insanely strongly about this game and fandom, and I felt compelled to share my personal feelings. Anyways, yeah here’s what I think:

I am… a bit upset with how they managed the characters in this comic. Not in terms of mischaracterization, they did a fine job with that as per usual. However, it really feels like the mercs got totally sidelined in the comic about the game that they’re literally the main characters of. Most of them had barely any lines (if I am recalling things correctly, Medic did not speak once(obviously pyro doesn’t actually speak, but there wasn’t any mmph-mmphing to be seen anywhere either), Demoman and Sniper had like one line each, and even the mercs who did have more significant line counts felt largely overshadowed by other characters). In my personal opinion, the only merc who had significant contribution to the plot through his lines was Engineer and maybe Spy (soldier and heavy talk quite a bit, but it feels like soldier is only really talking for exposition and to connect to the time skip, and heavy is there to save his ass from the Korean mafia).

They were treated more as background characters than anything. A vast majority of the scenes involve the mercs just standing in the general vicinity of characters like Pauling and Admin as the actual plot happens. It’s disappointing since this was kind of a last hurrah for official lore and characterization regarding the mercs. This was already an issue in the previous comics (with characters like pyro being largely ignored and just hanging out in the background), but it’s increased tenfold here.

also, I cannot express my sadness enough about how we got basically no detailed interactions between the mercs other than spy and scout (duh) and heavy and soldier (double duh). Tf2 is such a unique circumstance in regards to its characters. They are exaggerated and cartoonish in their personalities, but they’re still fueled by their own motivations, fears, and emotions. They’re really fun to watch interact with their world and each other, and that opportunity kind of got chucked out of the window.

A prime example of this would be Medic and Heavy. And no, before you start saying “oh you’re just upset that they weren’t made canon,” I’m not talking about shipping necessarily (although it would have been really nice to have a canon queer couple, especially after so many years, plus their romantic dynamic is really enjoyable at least for me, but hey, it would be kinda out of left field if they were suddenly explicitly). Let’s take a look back at the previous comic, shall we?

in that comic, the very climax is centered around their relationship. Medic dies and goes to hell and Heavy beats the shit out of the Classic Heavy, quite literally stating he didn’t care if he died as long as Classic Heavy suffered. Keep in mind, they haven’t seen each other in months, and they’ve only reunited for like five seconds maybe before Medic is killed. Their bond is explicitly depicted and is used as a tool to move the plot forward. What do we get for the final comic?

uh… well, they certainly stand next to each other multiple times.

ALSO, even simple interactions between the mercs contributed so much to the story, even if it was just the humor of it or just small glimpses into their characters. The whole conversation between Medic and Demo about his eye, Sniper and Spy mildly beefing but ultimately sharing cigarettes while they’re both severely wounded, Heavy and Scout’s conversation on the motorbike. These brought so much life into the story, but in the seventh comic, they took like two dynamics (soldier with heavy and spy with scout) and just ran with it. I wish we could have seen the mercs actually do shit, to basically sum up my incoherent attempt of making a point or two.

[autffiy]

My supernatural DR Stories part 1

Hello lovelies,

As promised I would tell you some of my favorite little stories from my Supernatural DR. Grab a coffee, tea or water because hell, this uis going to be a multi part series i think. I got so much to tell.

Mind you.. this is not series accurate so please don't come for me thank tou very much.

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First of all, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my DR self. So you guys can get to know my DR self a little better! {this will be written in my DR POV, little snippets from my DR journal. how fun.} I started writing this journal in September when I hadn't even met the Winchester brothers yet. So you will follow me on my journey when I meet the Winchesters. I started writing in this journal to keep up with my cases... and all the weird stuff happening around me.

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"So my name is Ashly Rowan, I'm a 22 year old girl who is currently moving from motel to motel because ha... i don't have a fucking steady job.. or a home. I drive a sage green 1975 ford F-100 which i sleep in most days... not the most comy tbh. It is now, september 1st when i'm starting to write this journal. I'm now in a motel in Little Rocks- Arkansas. Trying to figure out one of those stupid cases again... on my own. It's a vampire case, nothing too bad. Wish dad was here, he would be.. well probably in shock that i didn't do anything like college or something like that. But also would be proud that i was hunting the thing he got killed by....."

¹⁰⁻³⁰⁻²⁰⁰⁵

"I'm currently writing in my car.. I'm on my way to Bobby's house. Bobby Singer.. that old man. Sweet, but feisty and well.. old. But nothing i can't handle. I need his help with a case. Some nasty skin walker a few towns ahead. I need his advice.. and possible help because hell that thing escaped me many.. many times. My ribs are bruised.. and i have a few cuts on my face. Nothing to worry about. I found out that dad had some connection with the supernatural world before he died... but what?? That's what i need to find out.. Maybe i can ask Bobby? Anyhow.. I'm going to sleep now.. in my car in a parking lot at a gas station. Woohoo... goodnight."

The following day on october 31st, Halloween moring i drove the last bit to Bobby's house. Franticly knocking on his door. That's when i met Sam and Dean, their dad went on a hunting trip and hadn't come back. And Sam's girlfriend Jessica got burned up in flames a couple day's prior. Just how their mom died.. Well that's what they told me. I knew a little bit about John Winchester, because various hunters had told me about him. From what i heard he was a prick... but i didn't say that to their faces obviously.

Fast forward a few days later where the boys helped me take down the shapeshifter. We tracked its location down, it was staying in a sewer, of course. We made a game plan. All would enter different entrances of the sewer. So we could lock it in. This was I think one of the most terrible cases ever, so yada yada ya we walked our paths, all circling the skinwalker now. Then it decided to fucking run my way??? So now o was standing there.. in a sewer, covered in fucking slimy, bloody skin walker skin. Since Dean decided to blow that fuckers head off out of reflex. Fantastic... Definitely what I planned. We ended up cleaning off at the motel and meeting back at a diner to grab some food...

So this was basically my first few weeks in my DR. It was nightmare fuel in some ways, skinwalkers are definitely terrifying and I hate them. But even though, it was pretty fun if I say so. The brothers are so funny and sweet.

I will make other parts of this soon, i loveee telling you guys about my stories. Feel free to ask any questions, i'm happy to answer them.

xoxo alli.

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Tip jar

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

Calling for your expertise on Rohan lore!

By 3018 and early 3019, it must have been quite obvious to Éomer and Théodred (and of course Éowyn) that Gríma was a bad influence on the king and on the Mark in general.

Why did they not... Do something about it? Was he that powerful? Or were they so bound to their allegiance to the king that they could not do much?

I'm feeling a little embarrassed because I can't find a satisfying answer to this and it's turning out to be a problem in my fic. Any ideas, quotes or headcanon to help me get unstuck?

My copy of UT has not arrived yet... Is part of the answer in there?

I hear you on how this is a weird sticking point in the larger Rohan story! And it’s another place where LOTR suffers a little from the absence of Théodred – if he had been in it, we’d have surely gotten some answers to this question because it would have been the focus of his life at that moment. But instead, it’s a big blank space.

That being said…here are a few canonical things (if we count UT as canonical, which I do for the Rohan chapters) that might help as you think about how you want to fill in that blank space:

1. Théodred and Éomer didn’t live in Edoras – Théodred was based at Helm’s Deep and Éomer in Aldburg – and they were both constantly dealing with emergencies in their lands (border raids in the west for Théodred and orc attacks in the east for Éomer). Being so often at a distance and also distracted by the grind of their jobs would have kept them from being able to see everything happening with Gríma up close on a daily basis. So they would know the vibes were off, but they wouldn’t necessarily have a clear sense of exactly why and how.

2. When Gríma failed to turn Théodred and Éomer against each other or the king, he switched to turning Théoden against them instead. So if Éomer and Teddy were falling out of favor with Théoden, that would reduce their access to him and to court and to info in general, and that would then further impact their ability to fully understand what was happening or to take steps against it.

3. Théoden was still the king, and he wanted Gríma around (or, you know, thought that he did). And if that’s the case, what can you really do? You could kill Gríma or run him out of town because you suspect he’s up to no good, but then you’ve committed treason by directly defying the king on a matter of utmost importance. Éomer says in TT that disobeying orders could cost him his life, so that kind of defiance would have been the absolute last resort.

4. The overriding goal of the First Battle of the Fords of Isen was to kill Théodred at all costs. That strongly implies that Gríma/Saruman saw Théodred as a threat that was so significant that they absolutely HAD to eliminate him. And that, to me, further implies that knew Teddy either already had or soon would figure out their game and get a plan in place to oppose them.

So maybe thinking about it in that context will help to spur some ideas for how you personally want to square this circle? Though obviously canon compliance isn’t always the most important consideration, and if any of this messes up other story elements you have in place then it shouldn’t constrain you! I only offer it as food for thought and hope it’s helpful in some way! 🙂

I’ve got my own HC for this whole question, developed as part of an older story I did about Théodred and how he was spending the last few days before his death, but I’ll put that below the cut in case it’s either not of interest or you’d rather not have it influence your own thoughts.

In my story, Théodred and Éomer are obviously aware that Théoden is Not Well, and they also know and are frustrated by the fact that Gríma is giving Théoden lots of shitty counsel about how to deal with the rising threat of Isengard. But they don’t know that those things are connected. To them, the illness afflicting Théoden is an unexplained mystery – one that they’d had every healer in the realm try to remedy, with no success – and Gríma is just a purveyor of ridiculously bad advice rather than someone executing a nefarious strategic plot. So they are each dividing their time between home and Edoras, trying to keep an eye on things, to blunt the worst of Gríma’s bad counsel, and to figure out a way forward. But they’re struggling, and everyone is super stressed out about it all.

When Théodred arrives at Meduseld in late February 3019 to hear that Théoden’s condition has taken a significant turn for the worse, he decides to seek the help of his buddy Boromir with the thought that maybe Gondor’s healers will have an idea of how to cure Théoden. He goes to see his father so that he can observe his latest condition directly, but Gríma has convinced Théoden that Théodred is trying to usurp him and Théoden sends him away. That experience, together with info gained from Éowyn and Háma (both of whom ARE around Théoden and Gríma regularly), allows Teddy to finally put all the various pieces together. [This is multiple chapters compressed into a paragraph, but you know…]

But if Théoden isn’t in his right mind and will let Isengard overpower Rohan as a result, the only way for Teddy to fix things is to do exactly what Gríma had accused him of: seek to take power for himself, at least until Théoden can be healed. Teddy is VERY hesitant to do that. It’s breaking the law, it’s disrespectful of his father, and he’s got no real ambitions to power anyway. But he can’t think of another way, so he decides he’ll do it if he can get the support of all the other significant lords of the land (Éomer, Erkenbrand, Elfhelm, that whole cast of senior leaders).

He writes his letter to Boromir (which, of course, Boromir will never receive because he’s about to die at Parth Galen) and has drawn up a list of everyone whose support he’s going to seek for his attempt to take temporary control of the throne when word arrives that a full-on invasion is about to happen at the Fords and he is needed there for reinforcement. He leaves his fiancee to send the letter to Boromir and to start working on lining up support while he goes to deal with the emergency at the Fords, but he’s tragically killed, which obviously derails the plan. At which point, we hook back into the main narrative where Éomer is kind of flailing on his own…

[mesmir-ized]

also apparently forgot to post p2ponies 😞… sorry !! orz

(cutie mark rambles below~)

i always think crazy hard about cutie marks they are like my #1 stressor when it comes to ponies……. so here’s why i chose certain cutie mark designs !!

also i tried really hard to make sure they all shared some colours , especially making sure to include each others’ colours !! i wanted to have the original masked circle all have a star somewhere (BC.astrology or something…) LOL , maya sort of stands out both in colours and cutie mark , but that was on purpose !!

tatsuya: his was 100% the easiest to come up with . it’s gotta be his lighter !!! not only is it like His Thing but also very much representative of the bonds with his friends , as well as everything that got them into the events of IS … both in the game and here , the lighter is a symbol of both destruction/power and connection/creation !! which really fits tatsuya :] you can also think of it being like he “lights the way” !! the little teal star is in lieu of the little prince quote , and it’s kinda clear who this star is meant to represent ;U

jun: THIS ONE TOOK FOREVER TO DRAW . my issue was i had an idea , but couldn’t figure out how to make it work !! i wanted to include both flowers and a shooting star and fought 1 million battles trying to figure it out….

i wanted to include a shooting star for many reasons !! stars obviously for jun’s love of stars , but also because the shooting star is a symbol of something to follow (like Jun making himself a leader/savior as joker) as well as being representative of wishes and dreams (which is joker’s whole thing !!) !!! i wanted to add 4 forget-me-nots for both the obvious meaning of memory and his love of flowers , but also to mimic other stars and represent both masked circles he was involved in ! i love jun if you can’t tell

lisa: though this one looks simple it actually was pretty thought-out !! i wanted to figure out a way to both have her love of kung fu and role as an idol represented , which led me to these sort of boom-flash symbols ! these symbols are meant to be representative of her personality (feisty and explosive, but also fascinating and even lovely !) as well as what i said earlier , both of her paths~ they can be read as punch SFX , as well as the flash of cameras/lights on stage !! they’re pretty simple , but i feel like they pack a lot of punch (LOL)~!!

maya: the standout girlie of the whole bunch !! i immediately had the sort of idea for an intersection of heart/moon , and came up with this ! the heart is for ahh.. reasons most people know , but also she’s just associated with hearts in general (think mr bunbun) !! they obviously are related to her compassion and big heart , and if we want to have a sort of more darker and serious inspection of it.. how she’s the heart of her friend group and the loss of that heart (literal and figurative , in many instances) makes everything fall apart .. i also wanted to include the moon for her association with the moon (and Artemis !) , which also serve to show her duality and antithesis to the heat and light of the tatsuyas ! i like to think the EP cast’s colours would be more based around her cutie mark colours , like how IS were all based around each others’ !!

eikichi: i struggled with this one the most & i think it’s obvious.. U~U; .. i wanted to , again , make a symbol that’s not too complex , but is able to encapsulate so many different elements of a character ?! i ended up coming up with this skull (for his association with death/self proclaimed title as the “death boss”) and rocker/vkei/darker alternative aesthetics in general~ the starry eyes are BC welll…! star ! and also because it’s like he’s “starry-eyed” and looking towards the future :] the little glowy shine thing is meant tp be a spotlight , like he’s in the spotlight ! maybe one day I’ll come up with soemthing better , sorry eikichi , i love you ! 😞💦

Okies that’s all !! hope you like my cutie mark rambles , i love explaining my thoughts !!! ^7^