#so tempted to only use these icons but i also spent so long iconning the actual movie... sdfgk

[memoryreign]

Have you ever seen a Tooth Fairy Queen more beautiful....

[cyberexo]

FANTASTIC BYUN | A Byun Baekhyun Series

“You were supposed to die!”

warning: this series contains cursing, mentions & includes violence, detailed injury, and death.

GUIDE POST

word count: 1.2K

FANTASTIC BYUN | ONE

"So you're still in transition?" all three of you gazed at the newest edition to your group, Bonnie, Bennett had found her on campus ground doubled over from a pain she was feeling in her wrists, so he'd offered her a little help and brought her to meet the rest of you who were once just like her.

Why any of you were the way you were is unknown, you weren't born into it, it just sort of happened- there was a pattern where before becoming "superhuman" a traumatic event had taken place before, which makes sense however, non of you could figure out exactly what went down in your personal lives before this. It was as if the transition had wiped your memory clean of its cause.

Bennet had been the first, then you, Ben, and now Bonnie, it wasn't hard to come across one another, you all attended the same university, all lived on campus, it wasn't friendly at first; no one wanted to be taken advantage of; understandably, but the more time you spent around each other you were bound to become more trusting and open.

And that's how it's been for the past two years, explorative, fun, and the thrill was worth waking up for. Swinging around campus & the city at night with no care in the world- it was peaceful. Bennett had also scheduled random practice days in case any of you were to ever be in danger- a simulation to teach you what to do as well as what not to do.

Ben had joked around about going around the city and stopping crime- but this wasn't a spider-man movie, you were nothing in comparison to the arachnid icon but it would be a lie to say that it wasn't tempting. Still the risk wasn’t worth the reward in your eyes.

"I mean- I still can't do what you all can do so I must be," one hand holding onto her wrist to ease the burning pain you've all powered through before- it hurt like hell. "Well you've got us now, and it's best to not talk about it with other people who aren't.. us- you don't want people outing you or for word to go around about you being crazy," "Yeah- I was called a marvel moron for six months all because of a simple slip up so be careful," You added.

It was easy being this way in this generation, no one would actually take you seriously; the name calling was the most any of you got.

People don't buy a word you say until you physically did something what would lead them into believing you. It would probably be amusing to see the looks on their faces for a little while but of course it had its consequences- such as loose lips & social media, from one person to the next to a couple thousand and all of a sudden you're being mobbed by people you don't even know.

You had to approach people with caution.

Especially on a bad day, a bad day being; having wrist spasms, you can't hold anything without shaking or you'd shoot a web without meaning to- when you're experiencing a bad day it is best to stay in your dorm and away from classmates and from each other, sudden jolts in your joints that can cause a drastic change in whatever physical form you were taking, one second you're sat in your chair and the next your cross legged on the ceiling- you wouldn't even know where to start an explanation for that to anybody. Let alone a class of over 200 students who's first response was to probably record it all.

"How long does it take till the pain goes away?" she asked, "Depends, for me it was only a couple of days- oh and don't take any painkillers, it does nothing." Bennett advised, you & Ben nodding in agreement- "For me it took around half a year, it won't hurt 24/7 it'll get better with time. You need to concentrate on your mentality and ability to get the webs going, the more you release the less it'll hurt & soon enough you won't even feel it,” you added, offering her a reassuring smile that she wasn’t on her own, which she reciprocated.

This intervention made you wonder if you were going to keep coming across more people like yourself, you hoped not- thankfully all of you seemed to be good people who didn't abuse their powers to inflict harm on others, however, there is no guarantee that the next will be the same.

And about that you were right.

˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚

Baekhyun who was many miles away from your group sat at his desk moping instead of studying for his upcoming final exam in architecture, he couldn’t think of anything more boring, but if he wanted to lead a seemingly normal and unsuspecting life- he needs to do what needs to be done.

Previous to his transition he was a outgoing, sensitive and down to earth earthling- and that all didn’t come crumbling down right after, he was excited and uncontainable at first, didn’t do anything that would cause harm to himself or anybody around him, it was fun- really fun, and like every other good thing, it had an end.

His excitable persona faded, the feeling of being special and feeling like somebody who was above average significance went with it- nothing in particular triggered the mood swing, at least nothing that he could remember, which of course nagged at him, he wanted to know where it all started to go wrong but he couldn’t figure it out- frustrating and angering him further, telling himself he must’ve just gotten “bored” to suffice the itch to know.

The acts of terror started off simple, easily disguised as a friendly prank or something that he didn’t intent for to go so far in case of any extreme reactions he’d get from friends- whom he’s now lost, or strangers he found interesting enough to meddle with. Unfortunately that all grew old for him quite quickly.

Quickly moving onto business that was non of his, messing with people he shouldn’t be messing with- as well as putting his hands on items he had no business fiddling with or taking. After a couple of fights and wrapping several groups of men to a single lamppost he decided he wanted to chase after the adrenaline by doing something bigger- something worse.

And there was no stopping him.

There was nobody around that was like him, to his knowledge at least, no one with a sliver of resemblance, nothing ever good comes from not being around people who are like you- sure, it’s good to surround yourself with different people every now and again but the feeling of utter loneliness engulfing your existence was unavoidable, especially for a man like Baekhyun.

He had wished there was someone around to share this power he carried, his mind however would dismiss the thought as soon as he’d have it- his being feeling threatened by nobody but the thoughts occurring in his own mind, the weigh of his own internal negativity blurring the scenes of what it would truly be like if he were to come across a person as himself.

No one should ever come close to Baekhyun, or as he likes to call himself; Fantastic Byun.

[dried-deep-sea]

Scrap #2

Yay, more stuff I've written myself out of using, like an idiot who's painted themselves into a corner.

Which was the main reason Clawnoir couldn't be anything other than a comrade in arms and possibly an enemy. The whole thing might be a dead end, but there was no reason to tempt fate by sneaking around. Double the sentiment now that she knew who was under the mask, her belothed fashion icon. If it weren't for the fact that his father was a serious fashion genius there would be no reason for her to see his rotten face. The fact that he has also spent many long evenings tormenting her with horrible puns and snide remarks should not be a surprise.

She sighed, opening her chemistry textbook and reading over everything they went over in class and then the chemical reaction equations they had been assigned. She was halfway through her work when she heard it, the rattling on the roof. Tap, rattle rattle, tap, tap, rattle, tap. Bang! She heard her patio chairs take yet another victims ankles. With a sigh she pushed off from her desk, wheeling her chair to face the skylight above her bed.

It was Clawnoir, she could see his new bleach blonde hair through the glass. He grinned like a fool when he spotted her through the glass and despite her best efforts her heart thumped heavily in her chest. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her work, intent on ignoring him, but he started knocking on the glass and if he didn't stop her parents would be on her for weeks.

Swiftly she pushed against her desk, hopping up the stairs to her bed. She shoved open the skylight almost hitting him in the chin. "What do you want, mouser?"

"Just checking in on my favorite cockroach," He smiled at her again and she swallowed thickly.

"I thought you didn't know me." She replied flatly, stepping up and onto her patio and shoving her socked feet into the slippers she kept there, pointedly ignoring the hand he offered.

"That doesn't mean I don't remember that this is your house. Why else would you have called that woman 'mommy dear'?" He had moved to lean against the railing, back to the street, and was using his elbows to prop himself up.

Marinette rolled her eyes, it was annoying when he was observant because he was always so smug about it. She plopped down on her favorite seat, you could tell because it was the only that had a pillow tied to it. A spikey black flower for the cushion, it matched the motif that carried itself across most of the designs she did for herself and faux thorny vines curling around the legs to keep the cushion in place.

"Well?" She drawled, if he wasn't going to talk then she was going to go back to her chemistry homework.

"Would you believe me if I said I just wanted to see you?" He tilted his head a little and smirked.

[theowritesfiction]

'The Crossroads of Destiny'

Aaah, here we go with the epic finale of Book 2, I have been waiting for this.

Azula ordering the Dai Li around like a queen... you know, I'm not even surprised that people watch the entire show and then are shocked to find out that she's 14. Which just makes her that much more amazing, obviously. What really makes this scene for me, though, is Ty Lee just cheerfully making tea for her girls nearby, enjoying Azula's speech and simping hard. And Mai is just loving it.

Aang lying to his friends about mastering the Avatar State... umm no I'm still salty about the previous episode and this ain't helping. 30 more Jerk Points.

Okay, Iroh using his fire breathing trick to escape Azula's trap was very neat. I love how Iroh facepalms when Zuko states that he's going to face Azula. And Azula just plays it so cool. 'You're so dramatic, Zuko.' lmao, he really is. <3 Agni Kai? lol, no thank u. I love this girl. <3

Iroh pleading with Gaang to help him save Zuko... I mean, on one hand I like that he's not proud enough to ask because he cares about Zuko that much. But on the other hand, I am still salty when he claims that there's good in Zuko, while unwilling to see anything but rot and evil in Azula.

I love the little scene when the Dai Li agent reports to Long Feng in his cell, the agent just can't stop going on about how great Azula is. Okay, guy, we get you, she really is that great.

The crystal catacombs scene with Katara and Zuko was pretty much a starting point for one of my early atla fanfics, so I've done my fair share thinking about this scene already. But it would be silly not to acknowledge how defining it is for a large part of the fanbase. I mean, this is the scene that pretty much kickstarted Zutara. And even if I no longer actively ship them, I have to admit, Katara and Zuko just have strong chemistry. Katara touching Zuko's scar, the looks they exchange when Katara leaves, it's all there if you want to look for it.  

But I have to say... Katara claiming that she was saving the spirit oasis water for 'something important' when offering to heal Zuko's scar now just makes me think back of Lake Laogai and become angry. The writers did Jet dirty, and they also did Katara dirty by implying that she would let Jet die and not consider him important enough to save his life? Screw that. We all know that Katara would have stayed behind and saved Jet. This is a shameful plot hole.

And I do love the twist of Aang dying because Katara is unable to save him because she healed Jet or Zuko prior to Azula's lightning blast. I love it when a character as hopeful and pure is sent spiraling towards full emotional breakdown and descending into darkness, as I believe watching Aang die would do to Katara. It's a tempting scenario for me to explore.

Iroh's conversation with Aang as they make their way to the catacombs... Iroh validating Aang's terrible decision not to unlock the Avatar State, you don't know what you're talking about, old man, so stop flapping your gums. 40 Jerk Points for terrible advice.

I love the scene of Toph and Sokka trying to alert the Earth King. Azula is like... I'm not even going to lower myself to fighting those two. She just ends the fight by threatening Kuei. But I love how she lets the girls have a bit of fun with Toph and Sokka. I still love the Sokka/Ty Lee flirting. Sure Sokka, you're 'involved' with Suki. You've spent less time with Suki than you have with Ty Lee. The triple-cross of Long Feng is perhaps the most iconic Azula moment. I think it's very interesting that Azula invokes the divine right of rule as her political legitimacy, when I don't think that Zuko ever refers to it - even if it IS the only reason why he has any claim on the Fire Nation throne.

Zuko making his choice... I'm trying to see how it could come across as Azula manipulating him into making the 'wrong' choice, but... she really doesn't. This decision is all Zuko. Okay, when Azula promises Zuko that he will have his father's love, she is obviously saying what Zuko wants to hear. But at the same time, Azula has a very warped understanding of what their father's 'love' even is. She thinks she has it, but we know she doesn't, not really. It's all conditional, and Zuko coming back home as a fellow conqueror of Ba Sing Se fulfils these conditions so... it's not that Azula is even lying here. And unlike on my first watch of the show, I'm not even mad at Zuko for his betrayal. It's so understandable to me now that I can't even give him Jerk Points for it.

Okay these are some of the most iconic fight scenes in the show between the four kids. Zuko for once is able to put up a good fight against Aang. Azula fighting Katara means everything to me. <3 I had forgotten how well matched those two are and Katara almost gets the better of Azula. <3 Azula using her blue flame jets to completely destroy Aang. Zuko and Azula teaming up to overpower Katara... just amazing scenes. Zuko and Azula working together are so deadly. <3

The scene of Sokka and Toph liberating Bosco is so sweet and funny. Ty Lee trying to teach the bear how to hand walk <3 Mai not even bothering to put in any effort to defend a stupid bear. Yeah, she's soooo afraid of Azula punishing her, right?

Iroh turning traitor and allowing Katara to escape with Aang was a decision that has always fascinated me, because I think that Iroh is a more complex character with more complex motivations than to just decide 'well I've finally realized who the good guys are and so I'm going to go against my nephew and stand with them'. There are myriad of other explanations. The death of the Avatar would mean the loss of hope and likely collapse of all remaining resistance. Maybe Iroh simply did not wish something like that on Zuko's hands. Or maybe he's playing a long political game.

I think the final exchange between Azula and Zuko is almost wholesome? Azula has absolutely no reason to treat Zuko decently here if she didn't want to. I don't think Ozai ever ordered Azula to capture the Avatar, so she doesn't need Zuko as her fall guy for that, because that wasn't even her task. Wasn't her task to bring back the Fire Nation traitors, Zuko and Iroh? Task achieved. She did not necessarily have to bring them both back in chains. Capture of Ba Sing Se also wasn't Azula's goal. She just saw an opportunistic chance to do it and acted upon it. And now she has a massive success under her belt with which to further endear herself to Ozai. Again, why should she share this success with Zuko, unless she actually wants her brother back?

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. This was a great conclusion to Book 2, and I'm looking forward to Book 3! In the meantime, here are the final Jerk Point standings for Book 2, and we congratulate Iroh with a well deserved victory!

Jerk Points for Book 2:

Iroh - 600 Long Feng - 560 Aang - 320 Azulon - 300 Ursa, General Fong  - 200 Zuko, Toph - 120 Ozai, King Kuei - 100 Sokka - 70 Bumi, Lao Beifong - 50 Pakku - 30

[subbyfoxelf]

[theme park review] halloween horror nights 30 (2021)

this year’s halloween horror nights will be my third! it’s turned into a pretty awesome tradition for me and one of my partners. we went to halloween horror nights 29 in 2019 on our first date. 2020’s was, of course, canceled due to the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic when the powers that be were pretending to actually try to prevent its spread. but when halloween horror nights returned to universal the following year, so did we!

our second year we were joined by her husband and my fiancx. my fiancx wasn’t feeling up for many of the haunted houses, and is a bit of a rollercoaster fiend (whereas i’m a huge rollercoaster wuss), so ve rode hollywood rip ride rockit whilst we were having our spooky times. ve ended up joining us for one of the haunted houses later, and for our apparently obligatory non-horror nights activity that year, men in black: alien attack.

really the biggest thing alien attack is missing is a truly pandering gift shop? like, you do absolutely exit through the gift shop, don’t get me wrong. but i wasn’t the slightest bit tempted to buy anything on offer there, and theme park gift shops are definitely a weakness of mine.

i fucking love the queue. it’s probably my favorite part of the ride? you just walk through mib headquarters, and it fucking rules. the ride itself is based on the shooting gallery j faces in his extended job interview in the movie. this makes perfect sense because that’s probably the most theme parky thing in the movie other than the ltd post-little red button depending on what kind of ride they wanted to go for, and i love dark rides so i’m glad this is what they went with. plus the story of the ride is that you’re an mib trainee and i love dorky shit like that.

shortly after the beginning of the ride an alien prison ship crashes in new york! and you get sent immediately into battle with your weapons switched from training mode to full-power mode! the animatronics in this portion of the ride are just fantastic. i had a blast (pun fully intended, though i think i had the lowest score in our ride vehicle). anyway, moving on to our regularly-scheduled spookiness.

since halloween horror nights was celebrating the big 3-0, they largely used the scarezones to pay tribute to past years’ horror nights. i didn’t have context for any of these, obviously, but i thought the overall concept was pretty rad!

there were only two scarezones that i really spent any time in that year or that left a lasting impression. one was seek and destroy, which was located right outside of the tribute store and was this really cool dystopian robot alien invasion thing where there are just these robotic voices demanding that you submit and like yeah wow i wonder if i liked that or not. the other one i remember pretty clearly was gorewood forest, where tree people capture and sacrifice humans. the costumes and sets here were just totally lit, and the queen of the tree people was just super dommy so yeah obviously i was so totally into that?

the haunting of hill house was a pretty easy skip because none of us have seen the netflix show it was based on and it was going to have long lines all night. also an easy skip was hhn icons: captured because it was based on the like literally 30 years worth of halloween horror night lore and again this was our second halloween horror nights so obviously i probably wasn’t gonna get much out of that. i think we also skipped revenge of the tooth fairy because it just didn’t sound that interesting to me. i think we also missed case files unearthed: legendary truth, which in retrospect i’m actually a bit sad about! but i’ve also gotten way more into detective/mystery type stuff in the year since, so it makes sense that i wasn’t nearly as interested in that one at the time.

puppet theatre: captive audience was one of the original concept haunted houses i was super looking forward to, but honestly it was kinda because i was expecting a whole lot more bondage imagery considering the title and the concept being people being turned into puppets? i mean, don’t get me wrong, it was still a pretty great haunted house–all the original concept ones usually are–i’m just whining.

we also checked out welcome to scarey: horror in the heartland, which felt kinda obligatory given that both me and my partner grew up in the midwest. in this one a small town in ohio is just absolutely overrun with all kinds of monsters. there’s a bunch of really cool settings like a house, a school, a local news station, and a butcher’s shop. they did a fantastic job of combining quaint small town settings with a bunch of different kinds of horror.

but pretty easily my favorite of the original concept haunted houses that second year was the wicked growth: realm of the pumpkin. i just really, really like pumpkins and i wish pumpkin monsters were more of a common thing around halloween because that would just kinda make sense right? and anyway as soon as i saw the entrance that was just fucking covered in pumpkins including like a literal arch of pumpkins, i knew i was probably gonna like this one. it did a really great job taking more traditionally “spooky” halloween imagery and making it genuinely scary. just fantastic stuff.

the licensed houses seriously kicked ass that year, though. i mean, okay, texas chain saw massacre is for sure not one of my favorite horror movies and i mostly did it because i was hoping there’d be a ton of bondage imagery since there is in the movies (look i have a bit of a one-track mind, i’m not sorry), but even though it didn’t really have any of that i could still at least appreciate what a good job they did recreating the creepy atmosphere of the movies even if it wasn’t super my cup of tea.

the other two, though… i wasn’t actually super excited for the beetlejuice house? like, i love the movie, it’s definitely one of my favorite tim burton movies, but i just didn’t know how well it would translate into a haunted house? but just… wow, guys, they knocked this one out of the park. like, i wouldn’t say it was scary, exactly, but i was just so damn impressed by how well they brought the movie to life that it kind of didn’t matter? it ended up leaving such an impression on me that i literally ended up suggesting we watch the movie when we got back in for the evening, and we ended up doing just that.

but by far my favorite haunted house from either of the two haunted horror nights i’ve been to so far was universal monsters: the bride of frankenstein lives. i liked it so much i bought a dorky souvenir t-shirt of it to show my loyalty. it was by far the least scary of any of the haunted houses we went to either year, but that just simply didn’t matter.

first of all, this haunted house was actually a direct sequel to the movie bride of frankenstein??? and just… i kind of super want someone to make that movie now???

the story is that after the destruction of the castle the anguished bride realized she actually loved frankenstein’s monster after all. i rather prefer my headcanon that she went off and found countess zaleska from dracula’s daughter and they lived gayly ever after, but in this version we see her recreating dr. frankenstein’s work while wearing his goggles and lab coat and uh yeah, that’ll also work! and she ends up having to capture the brides of dracula as part of her plan to save her monster, and it’s strongly implied that she’s giving them human victims so she can harvest their blood after they feed (at one point someone trapped inside a box yells for help), and just this is metal as fuck, y’all.

and it ends in triumph for the bride and her monster, as she dramatically throws the switch while fighting off dracula’s brides. and it’s just. so. fucking. good.

seriously, make this into a movie right now. and have it be exactly as throwback and amazing as this haunted house was. i was totally blown away. and yeah it was 0% scary, but it was still easily the best haunted house i’ve seen so far. i genuinely hope something tops it in the future, but right now it’s kind of hard to imagine!

[kimnjss]

cyberslut!yoongi | a-z

⤑  series: cyberslut

⤑ genre: smut, jock(fuckboi)!yoongi x nerdy(virgin)!reader, college au.

⤑ rating: explicit. // nd unedited.

⤑ warnings: smut talk... (mentions of) dirty talk, teasing, sexting, use of toys, oral sex (f/m. receiving), 69, cumshots, penetrative sex, exhibitionism, threesomes, voyeurism, doggy, masturbation, public sex, finger sucking...

⤑ A/N: i miss them :( honestly might be my favorite couple y’all, they were iconic!!

A = Aftercare (what's he like after sex):

Really happy. And giggly. He'll even have trouble looking away from you. Lots of kissing and holding you close afterward, not really interested in getting out of bed for a while either. He could lay there and look at you for hours with the biggest smile on his face.

B = Body Part (his favorite body part of his and also yours):

The curve from your waist to your ass. Extremely specific because he has spent quite some time figuring it out. He loved the gentle slope of your waist and the way his hands seemed to fit perfectly there and your ass... that was a whole different story. It's basically impossible to keep him from reaching for it when you're together.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum basically...):

You still don't let him fuck you raw so he's always finishing in a condom. When you suck him off, though, it's free game. He likes to see you messy and the enthusiastic way you slobber on his cock only tempts him to finish somewhere on you. Whether he's painting your face or your chest, he loved to see it.

D = Dirty Secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of his):

While he's slept with a lot of girls in his life time, you're the one that he feels most comfortable with, so you're the one that he does most of the things that he's never done before with. Feelings never really mixed for him ad now that they are with you, he understands the hype of loving the person you're fucking.

E = Experience (how experienced is he? does he know what he's doing?):

Everything feels new with you, even though some things are. Yoongi does have a lot of experience when it comes to sex, but all of that seems to fly out of the window when it's just you two. It's not robotic, going through the motions when he's with you, so every time really does feel like his first time.

F = Favorite Position (this goes without saying...):

Doggy. But with you laying flat down on your stomach with your face in a pillow. You can be as loud as you want with your moans muffled and he's got perfect view of the way your ass ripples as he fucks into you. He loves to reach around when you're close to play with your clit and watching the way your legs shake, desperately trying to keep yourself up.

G = Goofy (is he more serious in the moment, or is he humorous, etc.):

You make him happy, so it's hard for him not to want to laugh and joke around when you're together. In the bedroom is no different. He liked the sound of your laughter more than anything else, so he made sure to always keep it light when you were having sex. It made it more fun that way.

H = Hair (how well-groomed is he, does the carpet match the drapes? how does he like you?):

He shaved regularly. Mainly because of basketball and all the sweating, but he always had very little hair there. He took a lot of showers in the day so he always smelt clean too. When it came to you, he couldn't care less one way or the other. He wouldn't request for you to shave or keep your hair long, but a little extra hair was kinda hot to him.

I = Intimacy (how is he in the moment, romantic aspect...):

Yoongi's romantic is his own type of way. He'll do things that you're sure he only ever does for you or say things that most would wrinkle their nose at, but you're sure he's trying to be sweet. That doesn't change when it comes to the bedroom, the fact that he treats you different than all the other girls he's been with before is his version of romance.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon):

It's apart of his routine. He has an entire folder on his phone dedicated to pictures that you've sent him over the months. And he doesn't hesitate to open up said folder on late nights when you're not around. He's not afraid to make requests either, hitting you up at all hours of the night for a specific angle.

K = Kink (one or more of his kinks):

He likes watching you. He likes when you suck on his fingers, how you're a little obsessed with them and not ashamed of that fact. Yoongi jokes about it all of the time because he thinks it's cute, but truth be told he's pushing his fingers into your mouth just as fast as you're asking for them there.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do):

Hotels. With his basketball schedule, he's constantly moving around for games which means a lot of nights spent in hotels. He's no stranger to sneaking you in after curfew and you're not stranger to suggesting you go explore. The amount of hidden spaces you've found where you can have sex in undetected is insane.

M = Motivation (what turns him on, gets him going):

Nudes and dirty talk. He likes it a lot when you tell him what you want to do to him or what you want him to do to you. Especially when it's random while you're away from each other. You'll send him dirty messages throughout the day which always has him running to his phone whenever he hears it ding.

N = NO (something he wouldn't do, turn offs):

Threesomes. He is not into sharing and will never try and convince himself that he is. Although, he's had his fair share of them in the past, it's a hard no when it comes to you. Whether it's another girl or a guy being added into the mix, he didn't want it. You're the only one he wants to fuck and he wants to be the only one fucking you.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.):

They went hand and hand for him. Couldn't do one without going and doing the other. There was no way you could give him head without him wanting to taste you after and vise versa. He liked it a lot when you sat on his face, which usually just turned into 69-ing.

P = Pace (is he fast and rough? slow and sensual? Etc.):

Slow, but still rough. He really tried to match what he knew you liked and was quickly finding out that you liked it when he took his time. His hips would move in a way that you're feeling every inch of him as he fucks into you, but with enough force to have your ass jiggling with each thrust.

Q = Quickie (his opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often... etc.):

Not really a fan. If you're together, he'd like to just go for the whole thing. Even if you're out with friends or something, he's not against calling it a night early just so he can have you properly. When you're not together and he's got nothing but his phone and his hand, a quickie is fine, though.

R = Risk (is he game to experiment, does he take risks):

He'll try anything at least once, lived by the whole 'don't knock it until you try it' saying. Because of this, he's finding a lot of things that he likes that he never thought that he would. Most of his ideas comes from late night surfing on pornsites and the fact that you're not too uptight when it comes to trying new things makes it that much easier for him to explore.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can he go for, how long does he last...):

A long round with a lot of different positions. He's got pretty good endurance so he's able to flip you around in all different directions while you're fucking. Usually making you cum a few times while he's in it before he's allowing himself to let go. It sometimes amazed you how long he could go without cumming, but when you're seeing how much he cums it makes sense.

T = Toy (does he own toys? does he use them? on a partner or himself?):

No toys when you're together. He's there, so he doesn't really understand why you'd need them. He does like that he knows you have some stashed away underneath your bed and he's not afraid to ask you to send him clips of you getting yourself off with them. Mostly when he's unable to come and fuck you himself.

U = Unfair (how much does he like to tease?):

A lot of verbal teasing. He likes to watch you squirm and thinks it's funny when you're unable to contain yourself. Though, his favorite is when you tease him. Lives for it in a sort of unspoken way that he doesn't even have to ask or you to do it. He loves when you talk dirty to him and push him toward the edge, only to rip him away from it.

V = Volume (how loud is he, what sounds does he make?):

His moans always get whiny toward the end. Since he holds back so much, he can't help the desperate way he sounds when he's finally close. He's not too loud though, sounds delivered right to your ear as he holds you close to him. All the talking he's done before comes to an end while he finishes.

W = Wild Card

It has crossed his mind, more times than once to suggest starting a couples page like the one that you had before. He knows that your page is still up, but that you don't post pictures anymore. It just seems like it would be fun to do it together.

X = X-Ray (let's see what's going on in those pants, pictures or words):

Yoongi's short, so you don't expect him to be as big as he is. But the man is full of surprises. A definite grower, reaching underneath his navel when he's hard. And it's pretty. He knows it too, comes with the cocky way he walks and the smirked expressions that seem to be permanent on his face.

Y = Yearning (how high is his sex drive?):

He's almost always thinking about fucking you. Whether he's thinking in the future or replaying the events from the night before. You two have sex every night that you spend together and the closer you get the more nights you spend together. He lives so much in his head, he can't help but create new fantasies that he's later wanting to try out.

Z = Zzz... (how quickly does he fall asleep afterwards?):

Although sleeping with you gets him feeling lazy in a love drunk type of way, he doesn't end up falling asleep for a while. He just likes to have you close, most likely would pop a movie in for the both of you to watch while cuddling. He'd only fall asleep after the second round somewhere in the middle of act two.

[mittensmorgul]

The Tumblr Beta Version: an objective analysis

I was tempted to just type “it sucks.” And while that is an objective analysis, it’s not exactly helpful. I’ve sent several requests to @staff and @support to restore my account to the old tumblr dashboard format, and received the same automated reply twice now. I’ll copy/paste it here so everyone is on the same page:

(lol, I had to go back and edit this, because apparently the beta version doesn’t display block quotes on the dash. So I’ve also put the block quotes in italics... hopefully it’ll display properly... note after editing: nope, it doesn’t display italics either... how the heck am I supposed to differentiate quoted text? I’ll start each quoted bit with an asterisk, I guess...)

*Thanks for reaching out about the beta dashboard.

*We're currently testing it out, and your account seems to have been selected to take part in the test. Thanks for your patience while we work on it! At this time there is not a way to opt out of testing. You may see your Tumblr experience return to normal as we continue testing.

WE CAN ONLY HOPE.

*In the meantime, check out some of the new features available only in the beta dashboard:

OKAY TUMBLR, IF YOU INSIST, though I would MUCH rather have back all the functionality I personally invested into this website through xkit... you know... making the site ACTUALLY FUNCTIONAL. Let’s see what this beta version has given me instead of functionality:

*Change Palettes: Go to the person icon, then click "Change Palette." You'll find the classic Tumblr blue, dark mode, and a few other color palettes for your dash.

So I tried out all the color palettes. In addition to the ones mentioned here, there’s one that’s trying to look like a green screen terminal that gives me flashbacks to the early 80′s. There’s a reason we stopped using green screen terminals... Another one is “canary yellow.” It’s very yellow. The “classic tumblr” isn’t actually classic tumblr... all the post boxes are dark blue with grey type, not white with black type. And all the other colors are the insanely bright fluorescent of the new Dark Blue standard tumblr scheme. Which means links are practically invisible unless I highlight them. It’s migraine inducing. The one theme with a light colored background is called “Concrete” or “Cement” or something like that and even that only works for about half an hour before the migraine aura really kicks in. I just want my Old Blue via xkit back. You know, what tumblr actually used to look like. I don’t want any of these horrible color palettes. None of them work for me.

*The new "meatballs" menu: This is where you can copy the post link, unfollow the Tumblr who made or reblogged the post, or report a violation to our Community Guidelines.

I could do all of this from the user menus with xkit, too. I don’t regularly report violations or have the urge to block people I have chosen to follow. Why on earth would I want to do any of this? And why would I want these features located directly beside the post link copy feature? 

You know what I do miss? I miss the xkit timestamps feature. I didn’t have to hover dangerously close to the KILL IT WITH FIRE meatballs menu in order to see when a post was made, and in this era of disinformation and misinformation spreading around this site faster than Covid-19, being able to see when a post was ORIGINALLY created is a far more useful feature than an easier way to block people. For reference: I currently have three blogs blocked. Two of them are pornbots. One is a nazi. If I don’t want someone’s content on my dash, I don’t follow them. This “feature” is entirely useless to me.

*A quick note: Pagination is not supported in this beta test, but we're collecting feedback to send to our engineers.

THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST. This beta test might actually be tolerable if I wasn’t trapped into endless scrolling. If I could page through my dash, refreshing it every ten posts or so. You know why? Because once I scroll about 30 posts down my dash, tumblr starts overheating my laptop under the load of ALL THOSE POSTS. Things start malfunctioning-- it takes longer and longer to load new posts the farther I scroll. And the keyboard navigation (both page down and hitting J to advance to the next post, and even just using the down arrow to scroll as I read a long post) freeze and stop functioning. One of my laptop fans has actually begun to malfunction.

You know why this wasn’t a problem on the old version? If the data load got to heavy, I could open a post in a new tab, click view on dash with xkit, and voila! Brand new tab! I could close the malfunctioning tab and everything would be refreshed to normal! But without pagination, THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Also, after reblogging a few posts, the beta version of this site breaks, and doesn’t open a post tab to add commentary or even tags. It just... reblogs the untagged post with no warning whatsoever. You know... that’s really really not cool. I tag EVERYTHING. Well, almost everything. The tags are the only way to keep track of the 40k+ posts on my blog. And warn people that I am posting potential spoilers, or other specific content. It’s REALLY inconvenient to have to either immediately go to my blog to edit the post and add tags, or even comments. The alternative is to scroll up to open individual posts I want to reblog in a new tab, and then reblog directly there. Ironically enough, THOSE pages actually open with xkit installed, and everything (surprise!) functions perfectly there.

It’s perfectly reasonable to understand why this specific issue has limited the number of posts I reblog. Reblogging content should not be this much of a hassle. Creators have been complaining for a while that reblogs have drastically slowed down, and I think making it even more annoying and difficult to reblog posts will not help this problem.

Also, with xkit enabled, there’s a function that auto-loads images as you scroll, so the images are always visible BEFORE they appear on screen. I don’t have to look at the colored boxes and wonder if this is a post I’ve already seen or something I should sit and wait for. Don’t even think about watching tumblr videos. Loading priority is given to the ads that you cannot pause or dismiss, so that video loads and plays in choppy two second bursts instead of being given priority. Since that’s the content I am actually here to consume, it kinda makes me want to do the opposite of patronizing anyone who advertises here with graphically intense ads. And then when you scroll away, with xkit, gifs and videos you’ve scrolled past STOP loading and playing, which I think might be contributing to the intensity of the resource hogging that’s literally melting down my laptop.

And for reference, I have a pretty decent little gaming laptop. A blogging platform shouldn’t be driving it to the brink of frying itself. I didn’t realize just how much xkit worked to streamline this and provide basic functionality to this site.

*And lastly, if you're an XKit user, know that the XKit team is working hard to update things on their end to make it compatible with the beta dashboard.

And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what I’ve lost without xkit. And this is a really REALLY garbage response to user complaints. “Oh, yeah, sorry we made our site suck even worse, but those nice people who do our jobs for free will surely fix our garbage soon!”

Dear wonderful people at @new-xkit-extension, I love you, and I miss you, and while I wish xkit worked with this beta version I’ve been forced into living with, I truly feel for y’all who are trying to deal with this nonsense on behalf of all of us.

And to the folks at Tumblr... maybe try to just... make your site actually more like xkit. You know, actually functional. None of these special new features are useful or functional to me. I respectfully request for a fourth time to be removed from this inane beta test.

Give us OPTIONS. Let us display ALL THE TAGS without having to click a button. Let me have back my Activity+ that actually allowed me to interact with people from my dash! That showed me real-time inline notifications in a way that I could reply to with a single click! Bring me back to my column of open messaging conversation icons so I have easy access to the people I talk with throughout the day instead of closing them all every time I refresh the page. I already feel socially isolated in freaking quarantine, please stop shutting off all my avenues of communication!

Let us have pagination! I mean, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to force heavy users of this site into a beta version that doesn’t allow us to opt out until your engineers had actually figured out how to make it work in a very basic way.

*Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with!

YES. PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THIS BETA TEST NOW. I have let you know exactly what I want from this site. I just want it to ACTUALLY WORK. For someone who spends 12+ hours a day on this site, this beta test version is NONFUNCTIONAL. PLEASE ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT. I AM LITERALLY BEGGING YOU. I WILL ACTUALLY PAY YOU CASH MONEY TO ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT OF THIS AND GO BACK TO HAVING A FUNCTIONAL BLOG AGAIN. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!

PLEASE! 

I AM OFFICIALLY AT THE END OF MY PATIENCE FOR ENDURING THIS NIGHTMARE.

(one final quick note... I’ve only been back on my dash long enough to make the parenthetical edits-- i.e. adding italics that don’t display and then adding the asterisks at the beginning of each section of quoted text, and already my laptop is overheating again. For reference, I originally typed this entire post from within my tumblr inbox page-- which still functions normally with xkit-- and spent over an hour on it. My laptop was fine the entire time. Clearly the issue is this beta version of the website. I will never forgive tumblr if y’all fry my literal only portal to the outside world at this time. PUT ME BACK TO NORMAL NOW. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING AND ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE. Thanks)

(oops apparently i lied... when the asterisks and the previous final note failed to display, I thought that seemed suspicious, and realized that I literally needed to refresh my entire dash in order to see edited changes. Funny how xkit enabled me to do that in real time, which is just another bit of functionality I’ve lost with this beta program. Please guys, this is really, really not working for me at all, just put it back.)

[radramblog]

Dice, ranked

 Players of tabletop games, among other things, tend to get to hoard-like levels when it comes to amassing collections of the tools of the trade- dice. As a result, people tend to get pretty obsessive about their favourites- ones they’ve paid excessive amounts for and therefore are extremely fancy, ones associated with a particularly memorable moment from one game or another, ones they send to jail for rolling too many ones.

I’ve never really understood this (except for dice jail, they know what they did). I got two sets of dice (lost the d6 from one of them, replaced it) and they work fine for just about everything. So I’m probably not the guy to turn to for this sort of topic.

What I haven’t seen is someone discussing on a meta level the ups and downs of each dice, and therefore, ranking them into an opinionated list. And since opinions are fun and I thought this would be as well, I’m going to spend some time writing about and ranking dice.

#7- d4

I feel like the d4 being the worst dice is not a controversial opinion. They’re incredibly awkward to actually roll, requiring a bit of extra effort to clear the first edge on the table, and considering the piddly numbers that come up it never feels worth it. They are also incredibly replaceable, being easily substitutable by a d6, d8, or even a d10/12 in a pinch.

This is of course avoiding the most important point, which is that it’s not hard for dice to end up on the floor, and stepping on one of these fuckers is worse than any lego piece. I know someone who has a metal set of dice, and its d4 is sharp enough to draw blood. Yikes.

 #6- d10

The d10 has always bugged me design-wise. Like, I’m sure there probably wasn’t that much of a better way to design this dice- the odds one side/evens another strikes me as strange, as is it theoretically being substantially more likely to roll from an odd to an odd than an odd to an even, or vice versa, based on the way it’s laid out. Of course, I’m no expert.

Much like the d4, you could probably replace this with a d20, but it’s less cumbersome, so I imagine few bother. It’s also got bigger numbers on it, which is nice, but I swear every time I look at a game’s rules I forget whether the 0 is supposed to be 0 or 10, especially since it differs between systems and in some cases lower is actually better. Should I be happy about rolling a fat nothing? We just don’t know.

 #5- d6

As tempted as I was to put this at #6 for shits and giggles, I really can’t justify doing that based on my reasons for keeping the classic dice this low. And in fact, that’s entirely why this is so low, out of spite. So many fucking board games use d6s, to the point that other dice are seen by the vast majority of people as an oddity.

And the “standard die” is so boring. It’s a cube. The most perfectly generic object in three-dimensional space. They don’t even put numbers on it, where’s the fun in that? Bleh.

 #4- d12

Right in the middle, we have the d12, which may be an odd choice. The reason I’ve put the d12 in the dead centre is that it’s the one I have the least opinions about. It’s the forgotten dice, to me. I can’t remember the last time I’ve played a game where I needed it, even though I’m sure it hasn’t been that long. Whenever I’m gathering all my dice back up, I always count that I’m missing one, and it’s just about always the d12 I’ve forgotten.

It is the most forgettable die. And for that, it gets the forgettable slot.

 #3- Percentile die

Unlike it’s perennial counterpart, the d10, the percentile dice is interesting. It’s got really big numbers on it, giving it a completely different look, and 00 is not nearly as confusing as 0.

But what makes the percentile die the most fun is that rolling d100, which is what you’re typically doing with it, is so fun. Because if you’re rolling that, typically there’s a huge variety of different effects that could happen, and both you and the DM are rubbing your hands with glee at how things are going to land. Because it’s likely something they’ve spent a lot of time working on, and can’t wait to see play out- and in my experience, a happy DM is a happy player. Unless it’s a kill-happy DM, but honestly, if there’s a d100 involved at least my character is getting horrifically mutilated in a fun and unique manner.

Of course, there are some games in which the d100 is a standard stat check. And in those games, the percentile is likely less interesting, which is fair. But I haven’t played many of those games.

 #2- d20

The wizened among you will realise what #1 is now, and hold your horses, we’ll get there, but first is the runner up. The d20 is iconic to role-playing games, to a point where there’s multiple games, softwares, and media (podcasts etc) that use it as part of their branding. It’s standard for D&D, the most popular tabletop RPG out there, and is commonly used by both its imitators and completely separate games for a huge number of rolls and checks and the like. Save for percentile, it’s the only one of these where searching just “d20″ only gave dice-related results on google images.

The d20 gets a lot of points for the joy of rolling a nat 20. It also loses a lot of points for the terror of rolling a nat 1.

D20s are not without flaw. The small faces make them extremely easy to over-roll into and off of things, if you’re a clown like me without a dice tray- though that can be a strength, with the extended roll time being that little bit more suspenseful. As mentioned earlier, they can be extremely polarising, with the gap between a successful and unsuccessful roll being potentially huge.

But I think mostly I’m just kind of biased because they’re a huge pain in the ass to use to track your life in MtG, even though you start at 20, unless you use a spindown d20, but those are often not considered acceptable in other tabletop settings. And I have so, so many spindowns at this point.

 #1: d8

I guess I have to justify my choices, huh.

Look, there’s something about the octahedral die that I find incredibly satisfying. They’re a great shape, they roll easy, and 8 is a really nice number to do maths with. I’m actually shocked that board games ended up with d6 as the default when the maths of a d8 is probably so much easier to balance around. I blame the d6 monopoly on Monopoly.

Ironically I think the d6’s omnipresence makes me like the d8 more, as it feels like a little bonus.

They have the same odd/even divide as a d10, but the shape of each face is equilateral so it doesn’t feel as biased. It’s a fun dice that I get to use often. It’s not as polarising as a d20, nor as awkward as a d4. I just really like these. Humble and unassuming, I cannot possibly justify this beyond that.

I should go collect more.

[orthodoxydaily]

Saints&Reading: Wed., Mar, 17, 2021

Commemorated on March 4_by the new calendar

The Monk Gerasimus (475)

     The Monk Gerasimus was a native of Lycia (Asia Minor). From his early years he was distinguished for his piety. Having then accepted monasticism, the monk withdrew into the depths of the Thebaid wilderness (in Egypt). Thereafter, in about the year 450, the monk arrived in Palestine and settled at the Jordan, where he founded a monastery.      For a certain while Saint Gerasimus was tempted by the heresy of Eutykhios and Dioskoros, which acknowledged in Jesus Christ only the Divine nature, but not His human nature (i.e. the Monophysite heresy). The Monk Euthymios the Great (Comm. 20 January) helped him to return to the true faith.      At the monastery the Monk Gerasimus established a strict monastic rule. He spent five days of the week in solitude, occupying himself with handicrafts and prayer. On these days the wilderness dwellers did not eat cooked food, nor even kindle a fire, but rather ate only dry bread, roots and water. On Saturday and Sunday all gathered at the monastery for Divine Liturgy and to commune the Holy Mysteries of Christ. In the afternoon, taking with them a supply of bread, tubers, water and an armload of date-palm branches for weaving into baskets, the wilderness dwellers returned to their own cells. Each had only old clothes and a mat, upon which he slept. In exiting their cells, the door was never secured, so that anyone coming by could enter, and rest, or take along necessities.

     The Monk Gerasimus himself attained an high level of asceticism. During Great Lent he ate nothing until the very day of the All-Radiant Resurrection of Christ, when he communed the Holy Mysteries. Going out into the wilderness for the whole of Great Lent, the Monk Gerasimos took along with him his beloved disciple Blessed Kyriakos (Comm. 29 September), whom the Monk Euthymios had sent off to him.      At the time of the death of Saint Euthymios the Great, the Monk Gerasimus saw how Angels carried up the soul of the departed off to Heaven. Taking Kyriakos with him, the monk immediately set off to the monastery of Saint Euthymios and consigned his body to earth.      The Monk Gerasimus himself died peacefully, wept over by brethren and disciples. Before his death, a lion had aided the Monk Gerasimus in his tasks, and upon the death of the elder it too died at his grave and was buried nearby. And therefore the lion is depicted on icons of the saint, at his feet.

© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.

Holy Noble born Prince Daniel (Daniil) of Moscow  (1303)

     Holy Nobleborn Prince Daniel (Daniil) of Moscow was born at Vladimir in the year 1261. He was the fourth son of Saint Alexander Nevsky (Comm. 30 August and 23 November) and Righteous Vassa. Two years after birth he lost his father. The date of his mother's repose is not indicated in the chronicles; it is known only, that she was buried in the church in honour of the Nativity of Christ at the Vladimir Uspenie monastery (the Princess monastery), and the people in the surroundings venerated her as "Righteous" ("Pravedna").      In 1272 holy Prince Daniel received as his allotted portion the city of Moscow with its adjacent lands. The holy prince built on the banks of the River Moskva (Moscow) a church (and alongside it a monastery) in honour of his same-name patron saint, the Monk Daniel the Pillar-Dweller (Comm. 11 December). The Moscow principality was during this period small and unobtrusive. While growing up, holy Prince Daniel strengthened and expanded it, not in manners unjust or coercive, but instead benevolent and peace-loving. In Rus' it was a time of unrest. Fratricidal strife amongst the appanage princes was rife. And often, thanks to holy Prince Daniel, and his incessant striving for unity and peace in the Russian Land, bloodshed was averted. In 1293 his brother, the Great-prince Alexander Alexandrovich, together with Tatars summoned from the Horde and headed by Diuden ("the Diudenev Host"), laid waste to Russian cities: Murom, Suzdal', Kolomna, Dmitrov, Mozhaisk, Tver'. Prince Daniel decided to adjoin them to Moscow, to save their people from perishing. There was not the strength for resistance. Together with his people, the prince braced himself for terrible destruction and pillaging. Standing up for his rights, Saint Daniel was compelled to come out against his brother near a place, called Yur'evo Tolchische ("Yur'evo Threshing-Mill"), but here also the yearning for peace won out in him, and bloodshed was averted.

     In 1300, when the Ryazan prince Konstantin Romanovich, having summoned Tatars to his aid, was occupied in secret preparations for a sudden assault on the lands of the Moscow principality, Prince Daniel went with an army to Ryazan, and beating the enemy, he took captive Konstantin and destroyed a multitude of Tatars. This was a first victory over the Tatars, though not a tremendous victory, but it was noteworthy nonetheless – as a first push towards freedom. Having beaten the Ryazan prince and scattered his confederates the Tatars, holy Prince Daniel did not take advantage of his victory to seize foreign lands or take booty, as was the accepted custom during these times, but rather he displayed an example of true non-covetousness, love and fraternity. The holy prince never resorted to arms to seize the lands of others, nor did he ever snatch away the property of other princes either by force or by treachery. And for this the Lord saw fit to expand the boundaries of his princely realm. Ioann Dimitrievich, prince of Pereslavl'-Zalessk, a nephew of Daniel, was gentle and pious and benevolent towards the poor, and he esteemed and loved his uncle; dying childless in 1302, he bequeathed his principality to Saint Daniel. The Pereslavlsk lands together with Dmitrov were, after Rostov, foremost in number of inhabitants, with corresponding fortification befitting a major city. Pereslavl'-Zalessk was well protected on all sides. But the holy prince remained faithful to Moscow and did not transfer the capital of his princedom to the stronger and more significant seat of the Pereslavl' of this period. This annexation moved Moscow up to be numbered as the most significant principality. And here was set in place the principle of the unification of the Russian Land into a single powerful realm.      How wondrous over the expanse of ages was clearly manifest the Providential Will of God concerning the Russian Land and its destiny!      Grateful in remembrance of the constant Blessing of the Hodegetria ("Way-Guide Mother of God) both in his personal life, and also in the life of the Russian realm, Saint Daniel's father – Saint Alexander Nevsky, had expressed it in the words: "God is not in might, but in right!".      In 1303 Saint Daniel fell seriously ill. He assumed the monastic great-schema and commanded that he be buried at the Danilov monastery. Through deep humility he wanted to be buried not within the church, but in the common monastery cemetery. The holy prince died on 4 March.      Within the passage of less than 30 years after the repose of holy Prince Daniel, the Danilov monastery founded by him was transformed into the Moscow Kremlin, the church was transformed into a parish church, and the cemetery became non-monastic. During the time of Great-prince Ivan III (1462-1505), the Monk-prince Daniel gave reminders of himself to his forgetful descendents. As a stranger he appeared to a youth attendant on the great-prince and said: "Be not afraid of me – I was a Christian and the master of this place, my name is Daniel Prince of Moscow, and by the will of God I am here. Tell about me to Great-prince Ioann (Ivan) saying: thou delightest thyself while yet having forgotten me, but God hath not forgotten me". And after this it was that the great-prince established the singing of cathedral panikhidas for his ancestral princes. During the time tsar Ivan the Terrible, at the grave of Saint Daniel was healed the dying son of a barge merchant. The tsar, struck by the miracle, renovated the ancient Danilov monastery and established a yearly church procession, made by the metropolitan to the place of burial of the holy prince, serving there a panikhida.      In 1652 holy Monk-prince Daniel was glorified with the uncovering of his incorrupt relics, which on 30 August were transferred to the church in honour of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh OEcumenical Council.      The holy relics were placed in a reliquary "to the glorifying of the Holy Trinity and for the healing of the infirm". The Moscow metropolitan Platon (+ 1812), in the Vita of the holy prince compiled by him, writes: "This original founder laid the foundation of present-day majestic Moscow, going about this with quiet steps upon a small foot-path. And thus as with any edifice, built not with extreme haste but the rather instead with great artifice and skill, doth receive a particular solidity and doth stand indestructible for a long time; and just as a tall tree growing for many a century, and having started first of all with a small sprout, and thickeneth little by little, with its branches spreading about far around, so also was it needful for this city to grow from the small, but solid root, in order that its first glimmer not beshadow the eyes of the envious, and that initially it not be disturbed or felled early on, but rather grow up to its true height. Thus did this founder prepare the great city given him; though small, but shining uninterrupted by any wafting of the wind, he did bequeathe the great glory of its rise to his son Great-prince Ioann (Ivan) Danilovich, called Kalita".

All texts©1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.

Isaiah 2:3-11

3 Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4 He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore. 5 O house of Jacob, come and let us walk In the light of the Lord. 6 For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob, Because they are filled with eastern ways; They are soothsayers like the Philistines, And they are pleased with the children of foreigners.7 Their land is also full of silver and gold, And there is no end to their treasures; Their land is also full of horses, And there is no end to their chariots.8 Their land is also full of idols; They worship the work of their own hands, That which their own fingers have made.9 People bow down, And each man humbles himself; Therefore do not forgive them.10 Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust, From the terror of the Lord And the glory of His majesty. 11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, The haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

Proverbs 2:1-22 

1 My son, if you receive my words, And treasure my commands within you,2 So that you incline your ear to wisdom, And apply your heart to understanding; 3 Yes, if you cry out for discernment, And lift up your voice for understanding, 4 If you seek her as silver, And search for her as for hidden treasures; 5 Then you will understand the fear of the Lord, And find the knowledge of God. 6 For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding; 7 He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk uprightly; 8 He guards the paths of justice, And preserves the way of His saints. 9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice, Equity and every good path. 10 When wisdom enters your heart, And knowledge is pleasant to your soul, 11 Discretion will preserve you; 12 To deliver you from the way of evil, From the man who speaks perverse things, 13 From those who leave the paths of uprightness To walk in the ways of darkness; 14 Who rejoice in doing evil, And delight in the perversity of the wicked; 15 Whose ways are crooked, And who are devious in their paths;16 To deliver you from the immoral woman, From the seductress who flatters with her words, 17 Who forsakes the companion of her youth, And forgets the covenant of her God.18 For her house leads down to death, And her paths to the dead; 19 None who go to her return, Nor do they regain the paths of life— 20 So you may walk in the way of goodness, And keep to the paths of righteousness. 21 For the upright will dwell in the land, And the blameless will remain in it; 22 But the wicked will be cut off from the earth, And the unfaithful will be uprooted from it.

[folkloreguk]

Strip Uno (optional bias smut)

A/N: It’s been 84 years since I last posted...thank you to the sweet messages I’ve been getting, you guys motivate me so much! I hope you like this one! (fyi: It’s another friends to lovers scenario, idk why I keep writing those lol)

Pairing: reader x optional bias (male)

“I'd appreciate if the house was still standing when we get back home, okay honey?” your mom said, closing the car trunk.

“Mom! H/N's coming over and we're gonna watch some movies or whatever we feel like, no big deal,” you replied, rolling your eyes. “I'm not nine years old, I can take care of myself.”

“I know that,” your mom said with a smile, getting into the seat next to your dad. “Have fun, I love you.”

“Love you too,” you replied. She shut the door and they drove off. The second they had left the driveway, you fished for your phone in your pocket. Eagerly, you texted your best friend.

Come over later

My parents aren't home

we can build a blanket fort

or mess up the kitchen

Make pancakes??

 As always, it only took him a few minutes to reply.

 first of all I'm never cooking pancakes with you again

I'll be over in a bit

You grinned at his message, getting excited. Even though you saw him almost every single day, there was no better feeling than knowing you were going to have so much fun with him. Like you always did. And since you both became grown ups, you had started to notice your slight attraction towards him. It wasn't like you were in love with him. (That's what you told yourself, at least.) It was just that every time you two spent time together, you noticed it more and more. It was mostly harmless flirting, but it was most certainly mutual. Which only kept you from holding back even more.

Half an hour later, your doorbell rang.

“Did you shrink overnight or did your sweater grow?” was the first thing he said after spotting you in the door frame. He was grinning cheekily and you rolled your eyes.

“It's called oversized and I bought it that way on purpose,” you explained. “I swear to god, you're so uncultured.”

He simply chuckled at your comment and started going off about some school project he was supposed to do. Apparently hanging out with you was more important to him. For a change, you headed into your living room instead of your room.

You had to admit, perhaps you had checked him out as he was walking in front of you. His hair was done nicely, but he was in a comfortable hoodie and his black sweatpants hung on his hips lowly. After he had approached the armrest of the sofa, he flung himself across it, landing in the soft pillows and giving you a playful glare.

“So blanket forts,” he began, “I've been told I'm great at building those.”

“Oh yeah? By whom exactly?” you asked, falling onto the sofa from the opposite side, so your head was next to his, but your legs pointed in different directions.

“My many ladies,” he claimed. You snorted at him.

“You mean your plushies that still sit on your bed?”

“Hey! Too far! You still have plushies too!” he instantly fought back.

“Okay, fair enough, I'm just kidding,” you laughed. “Let's do it then. Show off your skills to me.”

“First, we need every blanket we can get,” he ordered right away. When you looked at him, he was already up, collecting the pillows and blankets in your living room.

The next fifteen minutes you spent looking through drawers. You were surprised at just how many blankets you managed to gather.

“Are you finding any?” he shouted from the living room downstairs. Too busy to reply, you tried hard not to trip down the stairs.

“Does this seem like enough to you?” you questioned. In your arms you were balancing not only around six massive blankets, but also a game of UNO that you had randomly found. You realized you hadn't played it in way too long, and therefore taken it with you.

“Perfect,” he agreed, laughing at your clumsy walk.

Meanwhile, H/N had carried chairs and pillows and even your clothes airer into the room. He had already begun with the positioning, creating a loose concept of where the fort would soon be. When you dropped the blankets and the game, his expression changed.

“Full offence, but playing uno with two people sucks,” he stated. In response you gave him a look of disagreement. Then you decided you would have to convince him later. For now, there was another objective.

As you started the building, you realized a few things.

1. It is seemingly easier to build a stable fort as a grown up person

2. It is more difficult to build a big enough fort for two grown up people

3. It is just as much fun as it used to be

Twenty minutes, lots of laughter and even more concentration later, you were standing in what had to be the most extravagant blanket fort you had ever laid eyes on.

“This, if I may say so myself, is iconic,” he said, putting his arm around your shoulder like you had just completed building your own mansion. You could only agree.

Next, you spent around ten minutes trying to persuade him into a game of UNO. But to no success. Eventually, you ended up next to him in the fort. A bowl of popcorn sat in your lap and your favourite film was playing. To be fair, it had only come to this because he told you he would think about playing with you if you watched a movie first. And when he requested your favourite, you said yes without thinking.

“Stop crying, nothing bad is happening,” he laughed at you. A popcorn landed on you as he threw it. You picked it up and ate it, giving him a glare.

“I can't help it, this is the best scene,” you admitted through teary eyes. Right away, another popcorn flew your way. You were terribly tempted to get him back. For the sake of your fluffy carpet you changed your mind.

“That's so cute,” he said, staring at you while you were completely immersed in the scene. Still you caught yourself wanting to give him a smile, maybe say something flirty back. Instead, you grinned a little, but kept your eyes on the screen of your laptop.

After the movie was over, you brought the bowl and the laptop outside of the tent. Of course you returned with the UNO. It had gotten later at night, but you were determined as ever. Plus, it was Saturday. He was probably going to stay overnight anyway. Or at least that's what happened 9 out of 10 weekends.

“It's still a no from me,” he said the second you put down the game in front of him.

“Please!” you begged. “I haven't done this in so long, I wanna play it so bad!”

He sighed from where he was lying on the ground. One of his hands was supporting his head while the other was reaching for the box of the game. He was smiling brazenly now, and you wondered what was going through his mind.

“Okay, I'll play with you,” he said. You clapped in excitement, but he raised one finger. “If…we put a little twist to it.”

“Fine! What is it?” you asked, wanting to start playing as quickly as possible. He gave you another cheeky look, and you were slightly worried.

“We'll play strip uno,” he said. Like it was the most normal request in the world.

“What the hell are you talking about?” you replied, confused but not as surprised as you thought you would be.

“You know, like strip poker. We'll play and the loser takes off one article of clothing until-” he began.

“I know how strip poker works!” you interrupted him.

“Great? Why did you ask then?” he replied, fake innocence on his face. You let out air through your nose and shook your head. Your mind was spinning. Flirting between you two was one thing, this was a whole other. Then you thought. You wanted to play this game. Now. And you thought of all the times he had seen you in a bathing suit. This wasn’t so different, was it?

“On one condition,” you said.

“You're proposing a condition on my condition?” he asked jokingly.

“We'll stop at the underwear,” you told him.

“We'll see,” he replied, completely calm. Again, you shook your head. But his answer was good enough for you. You knew he was just fooling with you now.

So it be. As you played the first round, your heart was beating way too fast for you liking. He's just your best friend, dammit, calm down, you told yourself. It didn't work for a second.

On his part, he suddenly acted as if UNO had always been his favourite game. Even though he was the first one to lose.

“Next round!” he exclaimed, throwing his socks away. At some point his enthusiasm caught you and you had to admit, you were less nervous and felt like this was more fun with every card you laid down. And so it went, round after round.

You lost and took off your socks. He lost and took off his hoodie, under which he was wearing another shirt. You lost, and took off your pants. He lost and took off his pants. At least you were even for now.

“Final round!” you said. He was wearing his shirt and you had your sweater, that covered your bra underneath. This round was worse than the previous ones. You could feel a kind of tension in the air, there was less joking around and more stares into each others eyes. You weren't sure what was going to happen after the game was over, but you had a few ideas.

Maybe it was the idea of him possibly losing, but you suddenly used every spark of imagination on what his bare skin would look like. What it would feel like under your fingertips. No matter what would happen after the game, this thought would haunt you until you had found out what it would be like to touch him.

He only had three cards left, while you had six. But frankly, you didn't really care for winning any more. Not when he was there, right in front of you. So damn handsome and charming. When had you begun feeling this way towards him?

You barely noticed as he put down his last card.

“uno uno!” he cheered, giving you a daring look. You wanted nothing more than to simply bend over and kiss him. Instead, you did as the rules said and took off your sweater. The way he looked at you only made it worse. How he licked over his lip just for a moment and how his eyes travelled down your body just shortly, before locking them with your gaze.

“Again,” he commanded.

“It's over, my clothes are gone, I'm not taking off any more,” you reminded him of your rule.

“Come on! Let’s just play another round,” he insisted. You were sitting close to him, but not close enough to feel his body heat. When you looked at him you noticed his eyes on your lips. Then you realized he was still waiting for an answer.

“Whatever, let’s play again then. But I’m keeping my word. No more clothes are coming off,” you gave in, just because you had no idea what to do otherwise. You didn’t want to get away from him now, and what else could you have requested that would have involved being half-naked right next to him?

The last round you played in complete silence. It didn’t feel silent in your head though. Every smile he gave you, made you feel dizzy, like you were drunk. You kept catching him as he stared at you, waiting for you to put down a card. And for the record, you were in the process of losing and he knew.

Then he put his last card onto the pile.

“Uno uno! I won again!” he triumphed. You grinned at his excitement and opened your mouth to ask what to do next. But you noticed his gaze on you, like he was waiting for his order at McDonald’s. It was ridiculous, this boy never gave up. For a few seconds you returned his look. Then you decided to just chance it, and speak.

“What?” you finally asked. “If you want my bra off so bad, you’re gonna have to do it yourself, because I won’t.”

Just for a moment, he was taken aback. Slight confusion and reluctance played on his face. But you gave him a look that said more than a thousand words could have, and suddenly he bent forward and was kissing you.

It wasn’t a romantic, sweet kiss. It was hungry, like you had just found an oasis in a desert after a week of searching. It was like fire when his tongue touched yours for the first time. Your heart was drumming against your ribcage with so much eagerness, you thought it might break it.

At the same time his hands had moved to the back of your bra, fidgeting around for a while until it opened. Without really thinking, you pushed the cards aside and moved over to straddle his waist. His lips moved messily against yours while your fingers tangled in his hair. You couldn’t help but moan softly when his hands made contact with your boobs, his thumb circling around your nipples ever so slowly.

You felt like it was only fair to finally get rid of his shirt too, but when you reached for it, his hand closed around your wrist.

“I didn’t lose, remember?” he asked, clearly joking. He earned a playful hit for that comment. Then he swiftly pulled the fabric over his head. You barely had time to stare at how hot he looked before he kissed you again.

A strained sound left his throat when you ground your hips into his. It kind of sounded like he had just lost to you at Mario Kart (which he often did), just as little higher pitched. It might have been a weird comparison, but after all, he was your best childhood friend.

When you did it again, he moaned even louder, let his head hang back and closed his eyes tightly. Almost like he was trying to control himself, but seemed to be failing.

You took it as a perfect chance to bend forward and kiss his exposed neck. His skin under your lips felt just as you had imagined. Soft and smooth, letting your mouth follow every curve. At the same time you never stopped rolling your hips against his. Now that both of you were left in your underpants, the lack of clothing only turned you on even more.

As your crotch pressed against his already hard bulge, it made something twist the pit of your stomach. Something eager and impatient. Your breaths mixed up as you went from kissing to catching air. All those years of being friends you had never looked this closely into his eyes. They sparkled, even in the dim lighting inside the blanket fort.

“Have you ever thought about doing this before?” you suddenly asked. You didn’t know what had driven you, but you needed to know.

“Having sex?” he asked, followed by a restless sigh of when your hips moved against his.

“Having sex with me,” you said. “Be honest.”

“You want me to be honest?” he asked. He was quiet for a few times, his breathing just as uneven as yours. “I've lost count of how many times I've pictured this.”

Not sure what to say, you leaned forward and kissed him again. You shivered beneath his touch, when his hands wandered down your chest and to your waist, drawing small circles. His hold matched your movement when you rolled your hips over his. They followed the curve of your hips and to the small of your back.

Only when they softly touched the inside of your thighs, you realized you were holding your breath. A tense sigh left your lips when his hand slipped past your pants and between your folds. In no time he was curling his fingers against your sweet spot, seeing how you reacted to his touch. You said his name in a weak tone, your eyelids fluttering in pleasure.

“I like when you say my name like that” he stated, grinning cockily but his eyes looked as if he was in pure awe.

“Right...there,” you whimpered. He fastened his pace, rubbing small circles against your clit until you barely managed to keep your eyes open.

“I can’t wait any longer,” you spoke, softly tugging on the waistband of his boxers to let him know what you were referring to.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Never been more sure,” you replied, and whimpered right after, when he detached his hand from your aching center.

For a moment you sat next to him, so you could both shed off your underwear. When his eyes locked with yours, almost like he was luring you in, you climbed back into his lap.

Another time you gave him a questioning look, and he gave you a small nod. He hissed when you touched his member, pumping him a few times before aligning the tip with your entrance.

You both cursed in unison as you sank down on him, and just for a second you couldn’t help but laugh at each other. There was a moment when he twirled a strand of your hair between his fingers, and you almost failed to believe what was going on.

Then you slowly started to move, and you stopped thinking completely. He began rubbing your clit again, this time messier but it felt even better now. Somehow he seemed to know just how to touch you, even after this short amount of time.  

Meaningless words and moans filled the air beneath the blankets. He had his eyes shut for a few seconds, and you examined his face as it twisted in pleasure and his mouth hung open just a little. His hair was disheveled now, and a small hickey adorned his neck. You blushed at the thought of someone other than you might seeing it.

You could tell he was getting closer, and so were you. Seeing as you both had been so worked up, you knew it wouldn’t take long.

“You feel so good,” you moaned, wrapping your arms around his neck. He only groaned in response, and you buried your head where his shoulder met his neck. Your breath fanned against his skin as you closed your eyes and concentrated on the feeling of his fingers on your clit and of him inside of you.

“I’m so close,” you spoke against his neck. “H/N, oh my god.”

“Me too,” he spoke. His voice was husky and the fingers of his hand was buried in your skin, pushing you against him and making you move faster. Just a few more seconds of his moans, and his fingers working their magic on you, and you saw stars in front of your eyelids.

His name fell from your lips like a mantra as you came. Your hand closed around his wrist, too sensitive to take any more. You forced yourself to keep moving steadily, wanting to see him reach his high too.

It didn’t take long. For a while his jaw clenched and he breathed quickly through his nose, then his lips parted and his fingers dug into your sides as his orgasm washed over him. Slowly you rolled your hips another few times before you halted completely and climbed off him.

For a couple seconds you blankly stared at each other. Then he started smiling like an idiot and fell backwards into the pillows, his arms flopping to his sides lifelessly. You thought of the only rational thing to do, and lay down with him, supporting yourself on your arm and facing him. The way his chest moved slowly as he breathed made you feel peaceful.

“Are we still just friends after this?” he suddenly asked. You thought for a while.

“I think we haven’t been just friends for a long time now,” you admitted. He chuckled in agreement.

“Good, because I want us to be more” he said. A warm happiness spread in your chest at his smile.

“I need to tell you something,” he suddenly said in a different tone. You were awaiting something sentimental, but surely not what he said next.

“The last time we played and you lost,” he started, “I didn’t say uno when I had only one card left. You wouldn’t have lost if you had noticed.”

The way he grinned at you made you want to slap and kiss him at the same time. But you only gave him a playfully warning glare.

“I’m hungry,” he said, quickly changing the topic before you could complain. “You wanna order pizza?”

[votsalot]

Downton Abbey Oppositions Tag Game by @naevery​

I was tagged by @oleander4​ - thank you so much!

1. Favourite plotline from your least favourite season?

Season four is my least favorite because it’s a season of vacancies where they find themselves trying to replace three key players plot-wise with.....mixed...results. But one thing I think season 4 touched on that could’ve been really interesting was Jack and Rose; Jack was a total sweetheart, and a singer, and cute, and I think they deserved some more fleshing out and time on-screen instead of being something everyone forgot about. Downton Abbey generally needed more characters of color from season 1 onward, so Jack’s presence was very welcome. I wish he’d been given more love and respect from the writer’s room, though. There could’ve been a very nuanced portrayal of an interracial relationship from the 1920s, and they could’ve used it as an opportunity to give more roles of substance to actors of color. What we got wasn’t that.

2. Least favourite plotline from your favourite season?

My favorite season is season 2 --> I think my least favorite plot line was the Daisy / William “love” story. The whole thing is just super uncomfortable to sit through, and I feel bad for William because he’s a kid that’s drank the patriotism juice that everyone was loving in 1916, and you know he talks big about doing his bit but did he ever think he was really going to die?? And I feel bad for Daisy because she is only into him because Mrs. Patmore said he would die on front if she didn’t say she’d be his girl....and then be his fiancee...and then marry him....and yeah, she got a widow’s pension out of it, but I think the WIDOW variable kind of detracts from the $$$ part of that equation. Anyway. It’s sad from all angles and it fills me with a deep sense of second-hand dread.

3. What’s a quality that you actually like about (one of) your least favourite main/regular character(s)?

I like that Bates can pick locks and forge hand writing. We love some mischief. As wiser minds have said before me, rock solid evidence this man fucking killed his wife.

4. What’s your least favourite quality of your favourite character?

Least favorite quality of Thomas’s is when he’s intentionally cruel without any reason to be. For example, making light of Cora’s miscarriage and bullying Baxter in season 4/5. Sucks bad. 

5. What’s your favourite thing that your least favourite main/regular character has done?

My favorite thing Bates did was get Jimmy, Alfred, and O’Brien to cancel the “Fire Thomas” cavalcade. My feelings about why that parade was even a plot point in the first place are very complicated, but this was an efficient use of Saint Bates, even if looking back at it too closely tempts God to smite me by turning me into a pillar of salt. 

6.  What’s your least favourite thing that your favourite character has done?

My least favorite thing Thomas has ever done was write to the police that Baxter knew more about the murder of Mr. Green. I hate that whole story line. The show would be better on the whole if it didn’t happen, and season 4/5 could spend the extra time establishing that Edith is bisexual and making a bunch of gay writer friends instead. Anna never goes to prison. Rob James Collier delivered on the unhinged, “Because I FEEL like it,” though, so that’s something we could keep.

7. What’s a positive aspect about (one of) your least favourite ship(s)?

A positive aspect of Tom / Sarah Bunting is that Sarah Bunting was in proximity to Daisy and taught her to read. Run away, Miss Bunting. Onto a better show, where you lead marches and organize rallies and covertly teach kids about imperialism being evil instead of being the socialist strawman JF beats up at the dinner table.

8. What’s an aspect about your favourite ship that you don’t like?

An aspect of Thomas / Richard that I don’t like? They don’t spend enough time together. I think there should be a group proposal to fix this in Downton Abbey 2. Richard and Thomas should get two and a half hours of screen time, and then all the straight romances can get 5 minutes

Extra -

Matthew / Mary, I don’t like how the passion kind of goes *pffft* in season 3. They’re still cute, but instead of the longing and anguish over being apart, they’re arguing about what to do with Lavinia’s money....realistic? Yes. Sexy? Not to me, but if you think it is I unironically admire your ability to transmute the mundane. Bring back the psychic-connection-red-string-of-fate shivers, please.

9. What’s your favourite and least favourite styling/outfit of your favourite and/or least favourite character? (feel free to add pics if you want!)

Most of Thomas’s looks are iconic, he’s got his fingers on some kind of fashion pulse, which makes sense because that’s his job. He can’t have his bosses walking around looking bad. That being said...this is one of my favorites:

And I’m not really sure why. This is also good:

 Also his season 3 ensemble. Spiffy. And more or less every time he’s out of uniform, except for the whole striped ensemble in the season 3 Christmas Special. 

Striped suit ensemble is my least favorite styling. Take away the jacket, the hat - but that’s very 2020 of me to say.

More like this! 

And the wig in season 4...they spend so much money on wigs that look like a Marcel waves and you can’t tell they’re hairpieces, so why did the one they pick for RJC while his hair grew back look like that? Some sources said production spent 5,000 euros on it - I can’t think about it, it’s too painful.

tagging @sybbie-crawley​, @helpmemarty​, @waistcoat35​, @silentgirlspeaksout​ - you don’t have to do it, but if you’re looking for something to do!  Pass it along, this was fun.

[annakie]

An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Five

Will we make it off the Citadel in this update??

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Flux is my favorite bar in all of the first game, I know there’s not many to choose from, but I like the music best, everybody’s clothed, everyone’s having a good time, there’s slots upstairs for entertainment, there’s dancing, and plenty of space to chill out in.  Also the color scheme is great.  It looks particularly great now with the graphics mod improvements.  

Doran gets a nice glamour shot here.

I’m a tattle tale who always turns this guy in.  I agree with Kaidan...

Also I really love Rita’s quest with her sister.  She loves her sister, Jenna  wants to be helpful, even Doran’s like “Hey I’d love to give her her job back.”  Everyone here is pretty wholesome.  And Jenna gets one of the best surprise appearances in ME3 if you do things right.  ME1Recalibrated fixes the bugs with her quest, too!

Speaking of bugged quests, Hello Conrad!  ME1Recalibrated fixes Conrad’s bug, and even if it doesn’t, ME2Re does.  The only bad thing about that is it makes his apology for accusing you of something you maybe didn’t do make no sense.

Everyone else was sure Conrad would turn out to be evil, too, right? Instead making him into just a big lying dummy with an advanced degree was a great move.  I was kinda hoping he’d show up in the Citadel DLC.   

Harkin is JUST the FUCKING WORST.  I’m always tempted to let Garrus cap him in ME2 because what a waste of air he is and doesn’t learn his lesson.  

This is also maybe the most overt place where FemShep experiences sexism.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s some pretty shitty sexism sprinkled throughout the games (as discussed a bit last post) but ugh this guy, if I could shoot him this game, I might.  At least on renegade playthroughs.

Speaking of Garrus...

Finally, an alien who wants to hang out with us.

As primarily a Kaidan-romancing gal, who tends to keep up with the Kaidan Alenko tag, especially back in the heyday of tumblr, for a while, loving Garrus was... difficult.

In October, when I was finishing up my latest ME3 playthrough and also cleaning up my blog, and also rewatching Doctor Who and thinking a lot about Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, I posted a long thing in a post about Kaidan and Garrus and badly behaving fanbases, which I don’t feel like typing again.  Here’s the whole thing, but I’m going to pull a part of it into here.

I love Garrus, so much.  And I was thinking with this whole parallel DW rewatch / Mass Effect replay think I’m doing right now how both Rose Tyler and Garrus Vakaraian are characters that were ruined for me for awhile due to their respective… overly enthusiastic fanbases who a small percentage of were dicks to people who loved other characters.  The Kaidan tag (and from what I understand Thane got some of this too, but not nearly as bad) was a pretty hostile place for awhile (and yeah I used to regularly check the Garrus tag too and there was a small amount of tag-invasion there but uh, like 5% of what the Kaidan tag got) which made loving the character of Garrus a lot harder for awhile.  But when actually watching seasons 1 & 2 / the end of 4 of Doctor Who, or actually playing the ME games, those characters are awesome.  

Fanbases can be amazing or terrible, and time and time again I think you start to realize that no matter how great a fandom is, there are going to be a few people who can only enjoy themselves by feeding on drama, or on lifting up what they love by stomping on other people/characters/plotlines.  

It’s not fair to characterize everyone who loves a popular thing as someone who does this.  It’s also hard to avoid completely because there will always be jerks, or young/new people who don’t realize what bad form they’re showing.  I did learn by trying to fight it for a year or two, that responding might help that one person not do it again, but it’s not going to stop overall.  

Anyway, don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like.  

It’s sad that even thirteen years past the release of ME1 and eight years past ME3 some people still need to have this fight online.   It’s basically impossible to enjoy like, any non-curated Mass Effect space online because of pissing contests or people spouting the same boring opinions.  Which they’re entitled to.  I’m just real tired of “Kaidan is boring!” “Ashley is a racist!” etc with no further depth of thought being given.

The ability to mute / block people and get away from the worst of it is one of the reasons I’m still on tumblr.  Especially always mute/block “confessions” blogs.  Yeesh.

---------

I’m glad Garrus is here, and I’m glad he’s on the team.  What’s funny though, is that people tend to forget that Garrus like, wasn’t really all THAT popular of a character before ME2.  I know I was only in the fandom for a year before ME2 but I dug in pretty deep in that time.

It wasn’t until he gets his face blown off and starts talking about Old Times that a lot of people started to REALLY like him.  He’s still great in ME1, but not like, elevated to god-tier that so many people did post ME2 release.  But in ME1 he IS neat because he’s really malleable.  Probably the companion who can have the biggest personality shift depending on your choices.

Also, I remember a time when the people who wanted to romance Garrus were like... outliers?  I remember thinking “GARRUS?  As a romance?  That’s... weird.  Who would do that!?”

OH HOW I WAS WRONG.  But that was before reach and flexibility.

Hey I even have a Shep that romanced Garrus in ME2 and ME3.  And I loved it!

Were I to replay a different Shep, she’d be my first choice.

So yeah, I love Garrus, I keep Kaidan in the squad all the time in ME1 and the other spot I try to rotate everyone else somewhat evenly, but you’ll see plenty of him.  Then ME2 he’s by my side most of the way.  And an awful lot in ME3, too.  But I’m happy for him to get crushed on by Dr. Michele and glad to see him and Tali find happiness in ME3.  SO that’s the path we’ll be going down if we get that far here.

I love the Destiny Ascension flyby moment on the Citadel, and it’s so easy to miss.  Also really hard to get good screenshots of.  Thanks Flycam.  Don’t pay attention to the untextured wall in the first pic, just look at the pretty lights!

Let’s go get another squadmate!  This time, a not-as-initially-friendly alien!

What an amazing entrance for Urdnot Wrex.

“Do you want me to arrest you?”

“I want you to try!”

Hell.  Yeah.

Here’s where the somewhat in somewhat evenly comes in.  I probably do favor Wrex and Ashely in the squad in ME1 a little because... well you know what’s coming for Ash and Wrex you get the least amount of time with by far of the other companions.  Also, he’s just... great?  A tank, with some biotics and a shotgun... okay well so am I as a vanguard, but Kaidan has just enough tech powers for us to muddle through where we need to when Wrex is in the squad and he’s so much fun to have around.  His “Fuck you, I don’t care” attitude is great, and his growth story throughout the trilogy is one of the best arcs a character gets, imho.  I just really love Urdnot Wrex.

This is a real nice flight control office you’ve got here, C-Sec.  It would be a shame if someone planted a bug in it later, since literally anyone can just walk on up here uncontested.

This entire area really is so pretty though.

I always pump points into Paragon as much as possible from as early on as possible, and saving these poor guys’ lives is one of the big reasons.  They don’t need to die.

Ash usually still stays in the party up to this point, though sometimes it’s Garrus.  Fist is still a dick in ME2 but he doesn’t need to die here, sorry Wrex.

...raise your hand if you still occasionally forget to pick up Emily Wong’s evidence and have to reload.  I remembered!  ...once I was almost out of Chora’s Den and had to turn around this time.

Kaidan?  Kaidan my love?  My darling... perhaps YOU shouldn’t be the one standing in the middle of the corridor with no barrier or protection?  (I suppose I could scooch over but then I’d look less badass for these screenshots.  Naaah.)

It’d be a shame if someone properly lit the corridor so we could see what’s going on.

But hey... TALI!  Tali Tali Tali!  The first quarian we see, and only one for... awhile?  Is there another quarian in this entire game? I’m trying to remember and seriously can’t think of one.

Anyway, I love Tali, but another character you really need to ignore their most rabid fanbase portions of.  Yikes, Talimancers were really something back in the day.  The biggest problem I have with Tali being in the squad is that normally she’s REALLY useful against Geth and... not so much against just about anything else.  She gets sidelined on my team more than I wish she would.  Especially since she doesn’t show up until very late in ME2 and late-midway through ME3.

Finally, the proof we need.  And the game continues to introduce new concepts to us with the Conduit and we hear the word Reapers for the first time.  We also get a loredump on the quarians and the geth.  

Tali’s voice doesn’t have quite as heavy of an accent in ME1 as it does in 2 and 3.  I guess we can assume she’s lost part of it while on her pilgrimage?  Picking up the local dialects a bit?  The next two times we see her she’s just spent a lot of time with her own people.

Tali’s suit and omnitool look SO GOOD with the updated textures.

I swap Ash out and Tali in at this point, and usually finish up a few more quests along the way.

Ah, Septimus.  You lovesick fool.

Honestly, the very best thing with Septimus is to bring Garrus here if you’re gonna romance him, have Garrus laugh at him for coming undone for love and then... well, ME2 and especially ME3 happen.  But still.  Septimus... always needs a kick in the pants but will get around to doing the right thing.

Hey here’s a cool thing ME1Recalibated does -- Morlan carries a Squad Iconic Armors stock, so you can always find tier-appropriate default look armor for you and all the squad.  Very cool of you, Morlan.  You are currently my favorite store on the Citadel.  Now stop sending me spam, I didn’t sign up for your mailing list.

Look, I have questions about what exactly Xeltan told the consort and how... all that... works... but... I don’t think I actually want to ask them.  Just.. let’s all shut up about all of it, it’s over now.

BTW, according to one of the novels, Councilor Anderson finds Ambassador Cayln super annoying.  I need to re-read that book.

OK fine... I’ll go talk to the Council.

Coming at ya with Actual Proof and a quarian tagging along to back up the claims, the Council is ready to listen.  And while not surprising that it’s finally time to become a Spectre, the actual ceremony is really well done.  With the swelling theme music blaring, and all three councilors stressing what a big deal this is and what will be expected of you, you really feel the weight of this moment.  People take notice.  Although apparently later, Kaidan or Ash get an entire televised event around becoming a Spectre, I guess there’s no time for that right now.

It definitely feels like the game so far has been building towards this moment, not only with POUNDING it into your brain about who Spectres are and why they’re so important and letting you know you’re being evaluated... but it feels like there’s been a shift in the game after this moment.  It’s A Big Deal.

I didn’t finish all the sidequests on the Citadel yet, they can wait, I’ve been here long enough.  Let’s go check out the new cool stuff we can buy.

ME1Recalibrated adds in this Spectre Armor.  Eeehhhhh... no thanks.  We’ll stick with Onyx.

I did cheat myself in a bunch of credits and picked up Spectre weapons though. This ain’t no tryhard playthrough.  

Well OK, we can finish ONE more quest.  Thanks, startlingly loud and triumphant music queue that’s never used again!

Man, this would be SUCH a good pic of the Normandy if... the airlock didn’t go straight through the ship.

We’ve got a ship of our own!  And most of our squadmates to put on it!

Sucks for Anderson to be sidelined, though.  We already love you, Anderson!

It’s cool to get a bit more of the Saren & Anderson backstory here for real.  Still, I enjoyed the book more.  Maybe I’ll do a re-read of all the ME books here soon.

Udina... just keep being you, I guess.  

WE HAVE A SHIP!!!

Okay, whew... we made it off the Citadel.  Now I gotta actually play some more to have more updates to post.  Might be a few days.  Have to actually go back to work tomorrow. :p

Let’s probably do like one sidequest then go get us an Asari!!

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

Love Me Like You Used To (part 2)

AN: Thanks for all the love on this little mini story, y’all! I do ask that if you like my work, please reblog! It’s great to get so many likes, the but the greatest compliment as a writer (imo) is sharing my work! :) 

2.7k of uncertainty

____

Y/N shifted on her bed uncomfortably as she read the text from Nick.

It was good to see you today.

She didn’t know what to say--mostly because it was good to see him today. It felt good to be with someone who knew her before things felt so out of balance. Y/N read the words another three times before she let her thumbs hover over the screen.

How did she say that to Nick in a way that didn’t seem like she was coming onto him or holding onto something that wasn’t there? Sure, Y/N and Nick had agreed to be friends when they broke up, but it went just as well as it does for most couples. A few texts here and there--liking each other’s instagram posts--until finally, nothing. Their years together faded into a memory, only thought about in rare moments alone.

She typed back: It was good to see you too. Thanks for listening.

She let the phone flop to her bed and wondered about where things had all went wrong. When did her life become one that she didn’t recognize? When did she start to feel so unlike herself?

Her phone buzzed quickly--her immediate thought was that there was clearly nothing left between she and Nick if he was texting back so quickly. If there was, he would have waited a few minutes, you know, make her work for it. But it wasn’t Nick.

It was Harry.

Hope Nick is doing well.

Y/N’s breath hitched in her throat, her heartbeat was suddenly in her ears as she looked up at the clock. Had he seen something online? Had he seen them in person? Was he still living in the West Village?

Again, her thumbs hovered over the screen--but this time, for a different reason. What did she say to the boy who still held her heart in his hands? The boy who likely didn’t love her like she still loved him--despite the six months and the one drunk text between them?

He was angry, the words in his text made that clear.

She typed a few words and backspaced. Typed again, backspaced. Once more, until she stared at the blank message and wondered what it would be like to type her real feelings.

“Hey,” a voice sounded from the doorway--Y/N’s roomate, Nina, poked her head through the door frame. “How was your date with a Jonas Brother?”

Y/N rolled her eyes, flopping back on her bed a little too dramatically. “It wasn’t a date, okay? It was just coffee and talking and catching up. You know, normal things you do with your ex-boyfriend.”

“Girl, I’ve had a shit ton of ex-boyfriends and I have never done that with any of them.”

Y/N shot her roommate a look, one that read you’re not helping, as Nina came to sit on the bed.

“It’s not that easy, Nina.”

“What’s not easy? Dating cute guys with lots of money?”

Y/N gave her another unimpressed glance--she hated when people took it there. Sure, she knew that she was linked to people with a different form of popularity than most were used to--she knew her job gave her that type of access to those types of people--but Y/N didn’t see them that way.

“Harry texted me,” she said quietly, her eyes on the ceiling as she waited for Nina to have a dramatic reaction.

“I’m sorry--what? Two ex-boyfriends in one day?”

“In the span of three hours,” Y/N corrected.

“That’s got to be a record, even for you.”

Y/N laughed at this, watching as Nina stood from her bed and headed back to the door. “I’m meeting Katie for dinner, want to join?”

“I can’t,” Y/N spoke, turning on her side to face Nina in the doorway once more. “I’ve got a skype call with my manager and a few contracts to read over.”

With that, Nina disappeared from sight, her words still ringing in Y/N’s ears. That’s got to be a record, even for you.

Y/N knew that there was something cosmic about it--something strange about the fact that the one time she was vulnerable enough to reach out to Nick and put herself out there, Harry showed up.

Y/N had been to Chelsea four times since she broke up with Harry. She’d avoided it for so long. She avoided the 6th avenue street fair when the weather warmed up and she avoided the Chelsea Pier like the plague.

She wondered, as she stared back at her phone once more, what kind of sick joke the universe was playing on her.

**

Harry had decided to put his phone underneath the couch cushion when he watched TV that night. He decided it’d be better off there, in a place where he wouldn’t be tempted to check it every 13 seconds to see if Y/N had texted back.

He’d made it through two commercial breaks before he felt like the phone was burning a hole at the end of his couch.

He scrambled for it, his heartbeat climbing when he saw her name on the screen. Somehow, he hadn’t expected to actually get a reply.

He’s doing well. Working on a few new projects lately.

He let out a burst of air through his nose, his anger climbing up this throat and leaving a heat in his chest that he didn’t like the feeling of. He hated being mad at Y/N. He hated feeling like there was space between them that only grew with the passing seconds they spent apart.

But he couldn’t deny that things had changed. He couldn’t deny that distance was hard and work never made it easy. He didn’t like all of her friends and she certainly didn’t love all of his. There were fights and phone calls that ended in an impulsive press of the ‘end call’ button and ignored voicemails.

There were also days when Y/N would be the only person in the world to make him smile.

Harry had to fight the urge to call her--his thumb seemed to float above the small icon under her contact. One quick press and he had the chance of hearing her voice. But he didn’t know if that’s what he wanted.

Not if she was back with Nick.

But how was he supposed to ask that? How was he supposed to get more information about their meeting if he couldn’t actually ask? And what did her text mean? Y/N wasn’t stupid enough to think Harry was seriously inquiring about Nick--she’d absolutely picked up in the sarcasm that laced his message.

Which mean that Y/N was being just as testy in her reply, which made Harry more annoyed.

**

Nick had no clue what the feeling was in his chest when he laid in bed to try to sleep. He didn’t know what he thought or felt or wanted and that was something entirely new to him. He’d always been a take charge kind of person--he’d always been one to set his sights on a goal and meet (if not exceed) it.

It’s not that he hadn’t thought about Y/N at all since they broke up. The first year he thought about her a lot. It was hard to go from talking to her everyday to barely speaking--and it was especially hard when he found out that she’d started dating Harry so quickly.

It’d been barely 6 months and she was suddenly paired up, going out, and doing fun and exciting things with all of her new friends. Nick avoided instagram altogether after he saw her first post about him--even though the breakup was amicable.

Nick cared about Y/N--and that would never change. He wanted her to be happy, but something about Y/N’s new boyfriend had rubbed him the wrong way when he got a text from a mutual friend asking if he’d heard the news. She’d bounced to a new boy in a new band and it felt--in a way--like she was fame chasing.

Not that Y/N needed to do that--she was successful on her own. But now she had a new group of friends to go on tour with--new names were beside hers in the headlines and to Nick, it felt like he’d suddenly woken up in an alternate universe.

Y/N L/N on to the next one (direction).

A new direction for Y/N L/N, literally!

Nick eventually decided that getting a girlfriend of his own was the best way to deal with the strange feelings he had about it. And when he met Olivia, everything settled down. The world moved on from his public relationship and public split, and Y/N and Harry seemed to be quieting down as well.

So life moved on. His band broke up, his new relationship ended, he became an uncle (twice), and he realized that he actually enjoyed fishing and writing songs for other people and spending time with his friends away from the stage.

Now, as he sat at the counter in his brother’s SoHo apartment the next morning, Nick couldn’t help but be annoyed by the look on his brother’s face. Joe--who had a penchant for pissing Nick off--was just excited that Nick had reunited with Y/N.

“You can’t be mad at me for being happy about it--she was one of my best friends for four years.”

Nick rolled his eyes and then sipped at his black coffee. “I’m not mad at you--it’s just weird, okay? I have no idea who she is now.”

“She’s Y/N,” Joe said simply. “She can’t be that different.”

“You’re missing the point,” Nick shook his head, almost ready to drop it entirely until Joe rounded the corner and took a seat next to him.

“Then enlighten me, asshole.”

Nick laughed a bit, rubbing at his eyes to try to gain clarity. “She used to be my best friend, too. She used to be the person I called every night before bed--and then suddenly she fell off the face of the earth, pretty much.”

Joe shrugged his shoulders, an admission that Nick had a point.

“And now she--she shows up in my life four years later and needs emotional support? Because her relationship ended and she asks how I’ve been like it’s nothing?”

“This is one of those things that would only happen to you,” Joe laughed, clapping his hand on Nick’s back as he stood.

Nick let out a sigh. “Yeah--no one’s written a book on how to be friends with your ex-girlfriend who you haven’t spoken to in four years.”

Joe tilted his head thoughtfully. “You’ve always wanted to write a book.”

While Nick appreciated the joke, it didn’t help him decide anything. It didn’t give him any more insight into what this meant for he and the girl he didn’t know anymore. And it certainly didn’t give him any insight into the feeling in his stomach when his phone lit up on the counter.

Why didn’t you tell me you had coffee with Y/N? I had to find out on twitter?

**

Harry wasn’t trying to obsessive. He wasn’t trying to check Y/N’s instagram for updates and he wasn’t trying to be weird when he texted Niall to ask if he’d spoken to her lately. He knew they’d talk periodically--he knew because Niall had let the metaphorical cat out of the bag when he publicly wished her a happy birthday on twitter.

Niall, however, insisted that he had no idea what was going on with her and Nick, and he did his best to ensure Harry that her ex-boyfriend had nothing on him.

“He’s ridiculous, Harry. He wore a chain to a red carpet not that long ago--lookin’ like Liam but stupider, t’be honest with ya.”

Harry let out a sigh, appreciative that his friend was following all the usual protocol: shit talk the competition and boost Harry’s ego accordingly.

“I don’t know if I should text her back.”

“She texted you? You wait until now to tell me that Y/N texted you?”

“Well I texted her first, and then she responded.”

“What did you say?” Niall’s words were rushed as if he needed the information like his life depended on it.

Harry paused for a second, a small laugh escaping his lips in contemplation--he was snarky and he knew it. He also knew that if he told Niall what he’d said, he’d likely get a lecture.

“I asked how Nick was.”

Silence on the other end of the line. After a second, a sigh. “You’re incredibly petty sometimes, Harold.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he brushed his friend off. “What am I supposed to do when she’s the one who broke up with me, huh? She’s the one who left and she’s the one who’s now in this neighborhood for some reason and hanging out with him.”

“M’not saying it’s right,” Niall said. “I just think you’d be better off telling her how you feel.”

“How I feel?” The words escaped Harry’s mouth without much thought. The problem was that he didn’t really know how he felt. He didn’t really know how to handle this when his strongest feeling was a desire to punch Nick Jonas in the face. But those headlines wouldn’t be good.

“Yeah--y’know. Say that you miss her, say that you wish you never broke up.”

“I can’t just say that to her Niall,” Harry’s deep tone insinuated that what he was saying was obvious, but Niall didn’t see it that way.

**

“I’m sorry if it was weird,” Y/N laughed, holding her drink to her lips as she smiled across the table at him. She couldn’t really read him--which had always been an issue in their relationship--but she sipped at her drink and set it on the table before raising her eyebrows at him.

“It wasn’t weird in a bad way,” Nick said slowly, a smile pulling at his lips as he let his eyes take her in again. She hadn’t changed much. Her hair was darker than it was when they’d broken up. She’d died it a lighter shade that spring--he was finding blonde hairs all over his apartment long after she’d packed up her things.

“I’m okay with it being weird,” she said. “I mean, we you date someone for four years and then not speak for another four years--I don’t think things just go back to normal after that.”

Nick nodded and moved his head side to side, letting Y/N know that she was right. “You’ll be happy to know that Joe and Kevin are thrilled, though.”

“Joe already texted me,” she laughed, finishing the last of her beer as she tossed her head back in laughter.

Of course he had. The two of them had been inseparable. Another strain on their relationship. 

Y/N knew that had always bothered Nick--that she’d been so close with his brothers that she had her own relationship with them. It wasn’t that he was jealous, but Y/N had a knack for taking sides with Joe or Kevin and pissing Nick off. Something that now, Nick could laugh about.

“Of course he did,” he smiled.

At first, when Y/N offered to grab a drink with Nick that night in a bar near Joe’s apartment, he wanted to decline. Their coffee date had only been a day earlier and his head was still reeling from the small talk they’d performed.

Y/N wasn’t nervous this time--she wasn’t wrapped up in her own downfall and her feet felt a little more firmly planted on the ground, even when Nick admitted that he missed her.

And when they hugged goodbye that night, Y/N didn’t mind that Nick’s arms were wrapped around her shoulders, his chin resting on her head before he kissed the top of her hair. “I’m glad we did this,” he said.

“Me too,” she replied, though she didn’t really know what they meant by it.

She was comfortable with the not knowing, though, which was an unexpected (but welcome) change from the last few days. She walked home by herself, counting the blocks in her head as her feet hit the pavement one after another after another.

She rode the elevator up to her apartment and turned down the hall, reaching for her keys in her purse--when she noticed him sitting there. He was slumped on the floor beside her doormat, his head in his hands as if he’d been half-asleep. He shifted and raised his head when she said his name.

“Harry?”

His eyes were on her--he was completely still and seemed to be frozen in thought until he stood from the floor and swallowed. “Hi--sorry--I just, I figured I’d say it all in person instead of over text.”

table of contents

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

athenas or the new ign videos... hmmm

im gonna go for the ign videos (moze gameplay and sanctuary-iii, no guns yet, i have a reason for that) because athenas hasn’t gotten its sweet instagram video yet. once that’s released i’ll do a full post on it. by the time i got around to finishing this post, they had released the video. oh boy... gonna do the gun post then the athenas post, i think. alright, off we go.

tl;dr: we read the entire end user agreement DAHL thrusts upon us for using the ECHO device, talk about some stuff like how (spoilers) it seems like Lilith will be getting her powers back at the end of the game, and a voice line Lily says that sounds like “Tyreen took my powers. it’s like Tannis said: [inaudible] Siren” (altho im not 100% sure on the [inaudible] part because 1) it sounds weird and 2) there’s a drum beat and also the devs are talking over her, the Siren part seems fairly accurate because of the way her mouth moves). so you know. im gonna be agonizing over that until i can hear what she says. ive already spent an hour just repeating it over and over. i nearly fell asleep lol

we’re gonna start with the moze gameplay (the first 14 minutes of bl3) because chronologically it’s first in both timeline and release date

i love the license plates on the right there

also it looks like they added in claptrap’s old welcome sign from windshear waste! time to stand in front of it for 30 minutes to see if any messages pop up like bl2

fast travel station as well, definitely going to see if/where i can teleport and going there immediately. i imagine this is more for DLC stuff and grinding tho.

also! i do believe we saw Covenant Pass previously. good to know this is actually where it is!

Marcus saying “And Welcome to Pandora!” in the beginning confirms that, yes, they’re going to be on a bus!! i wonder if there will be a fight scene before that though. it’s interesting Clappy mentions that “those jerks who tried to murder you are the children of the vault!” so i mean... there’s gotta be... right?

im also convinced this intro is going to be a mirror of Borderlands 1. i stg if it starts out with the first few notes of Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked and then swaps songs I’m going to lose my mind

also also, the order is totally going to mimic the bl1 one. Fl4k = Mordecai, Amara = Lilith, Moze = Roland, Zane = Brick. We even have Lilith taking Angel’s spot as the mysterious voice in our heads, and probably Marcus driving, AND being dropped off at a bus stop.

bet the reason they changed it from ‘Moze as the Bot Jock’ to ‘Moze as the Gunner�� is because it fits under ‘Roland as the Soldier’ better. Also, ‘Zane Flynt as Himselfs’ would be a play off ‘Brick as Himself’. Amara as the Siren is obvious, and ‘Mordecai as the Hunter’ vs ‘Fl4k as the Beastmaster’ is pretty similar as well, given Fl4k has all those Hunter skills.

the 4 basic emotes im guessing. im so glad we have the option to boop our friends in the face with emotes.

also moze’s little bunny skin is adorable

the ECHOnet used to be called “Riftspace”, “the Spline”, and... “MercTel: A Cyber-Dahl Joint” lmfao

specifically calls out Pandora. also, “artificial megastructures”??? THAT’S SO COOL

AND FUCKING

SENTIENT MEGASTRUCTURES???? 

gearbox. please. i have never ever wanted anything more in my life. please. it’s probably my birthday. PLEASE GEARBOX

also interesting that the user agreement specifically notes ‘Respawns’. I assume this is a joke because New-U stations have been confirmed not canon

“Core law”. Core law? Core... daddy? ... ????

core as in like a core government somewhere that’s not the border worlds? that’s interesting...

“The Legion”, okay, acknowledging TPS, that’s dope

“Project Blackrakk” ... im interested

“Thresher Company” lmao

im curious if Axton was apart of any of the mentioned ones. i don’t think it’s been stated, but i could be wrong

“Chieftain Oort”. also ‘Recently Legless Gary’, lmfao poor dude.

oh yeah im sure this is fine. also holy shit did they google the synonyms for ‘change’ and just start listing them? lmfao

“implicit subscription to the Digby Vermouth ‘Dig’s Gigs’ secret concert subscription service” 

sorry, what?

if this doesn’t come up again in the future- if we don’t get a spam letter or 3 in our mailbox about this concert subscription thing i'm gonna be so disappointed

Dahl hates you if you’re not a fan of hyper-jazz, “you snob” lmfao

my brain hurts, they’re good at writing these 

damn phones exist? i thought everything was ECHO. aight, that’s good to know. i guess there just aren’t any phone networks around the border worlds

also “shared dreamspaces” sound really cool

hm. that’s no good lmfao. also i love that the buttons are ‘Agree’ and ‘OK’. there is no escape, once you agree, you can’t even leave because you’re agreeing that you’re trapped with these rules even if you cancel.

that’s fucked up, DAHL. can’t believe you treat your user base the same way you treat your employees. i guess i shouldn’t be surprised.

anyway, shoutout to literally the only TOA I’ve ever fully read in my life.

also, clicking through this TOA too fast WILL end claptrap’s voice line early. so be careful if you want to hear what he has to say!!

oh shit lmao I gotta go edit that Fl4k post

ok im back ~time magic of being able to save things in drafts and post them at a later date~

sliding preserves momentum, so you can actually slide (nearly) the entire way down! i love this.

small, but claptrap bends his antennae when trying to be stealthy. i thought that was a pretty cool detail

“and some guns include an alternate shooting mode~! try it out!”

player: `immediately shoots claptrap in the face`

i died lol

a very nice look at this sign.

good to know that the twins really are tempting people to join with promises of food. i mean it makes sense, i imagine most of the cultists are desperate for stability and a reasonable life on pandora.

also, Shiv calls himself “holy influencer of the children of the vault” lol. i love that. gearbox really is going for the internet’s throat, isn’t it?

i do like that hovering over an NPC will give you their name only and not name/healthbar.

a better look at one of the signs referencing the Mother!!! i was waiting for this, the only real look we got at one was in that one scene with Moze and IB

“Behold the Mother strength surrender to the truth” 

yeah that’s not ominous...

i assume the mother and father are intended to be tyreen and troy? but idk how i feel about that implication...

i like the new little gear/spring effect for the magnet lol

new lilith! i know a lot of people don’t like it, but i do. she looks better than the bl2 vers. altho i think it’s weird they swapped both bl1 and bl2′s ‘AI’ effect to those dots and then didn’t bring it to BL3. the dots effect felt cleaner. curious why they’re not applying it to bl3 when they went thru all that effort in 1 and 2.

... back up please.

i like that there is a changing icon for long pressing now

“time to check out our slay of the day!” sounds like Tyreen but tbh i legit thought this was moze’s reaction to opening the chest at first lol 

you can hear someone start screaming in agony while she’s walking up the stairs, so i know it’s not moze, but im so used to the VHs talking when they see a new piece of loot my brain just assumed.

also THE MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND IS A REMIX OF BANDIT SLAUGHTER!!! IM SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS I WAS FREAKING OUT THE FIRST TIME I HEARD IT

also, claptrap when dropping health yells “this could save your life! then, you’ll owe me a life debt!” bullshit im pretty sure you already decided we owed you a life debt the moment we stepped off that bus

“i see it... the great vault” - a line from a cultist you kill

i know i mentioned in this post that the Great Vault may be already opened, but it could also just be a Vault they’re planning on opening and using the propaganda to convince the cultists to help them find it. 

“if you help us get this vault open, you’ll be handsomely rewarded! you’ll get superpowers! you’ll get regular meals! you’ll get money and guns and dates!” you know, the usual stuff. 

either way, elevating the Vault to a higher state (god/heaven/whatever) makes sense if you’re running a cult.

btw there is a hidden chest in the scaffolding to the left of the door, if you’re interested in grabbing some better guns before shiv. personally, i’ll be using the toy guns.

also the TVs are actually playing propaganda now!!

this one is asking questions that i cant understand due to the sound effects of the chest and claptrap talking, but it says something about “... the dust? ... join the Children of the Vault!”

“hey shiiiiiv all your dumb friends are dead!!”

shiv be like

“all my friends are dead”

some cool level-up art! I notice these are the same pictures as used on the japanese site. i wonder if they change depending on which VH you’ve picked (If you’re playing Amara/Fl4k, do you get pics of Amara and Fl4k? the player is playing moze, afterall).

also also “it’s a KIA on the knife wielding maniac. suuuper dead.” 

it’s cool that the VHs have specific lines for the deaths of bosses. i hope that continues and it’s not just a ‘15 min of intro gameplay’ thing. you know, where everything is super detailed in the beginning and then slowly gets less and less as the game progresses? anyway, moze’s little chuckle is fuckin adorable lol

ah. the door closes now so you can’t even explore Shiv’s room before Lilith shows up. gearbox plS you know me too well, i was looking for a g l i m p s e

claptrap’s voice line for getting released is SUPER off time, he hits the ground before going “you did it! i’m sa-ahhhhhhhh!” it’s weird, wondering if that’s just a glitch.

also also we get a nice listen to the revive ally sound. i could’ve sworn it wasn’t in the first look at this mission we got, because i heard it for the first time during the coop Zane/Amara gameplay on Promethea. i might be wrong, tho.

im very curious what these symbols are claptrap is beaming up

i mean you know what im gonna say

they look eridian

and they do

so wtf clappy why u beaming up eridian letters to Lilith

i assume maybe Tannis gave clappy some weird upgrade or something so he could communicate with the crimson raiders without the CoV listening in? it could be that Tannis or someone is decoding this message since Tannis does know how to translate Eridian (as shown in her bl1 ECHOs)

... or at the very least she gave Lilith a translator

the darkening makes it so that you can see the crackening. also this COULD just be a beam that lilith can see from wherever she is, but i want to believe there’s more eridian stuff. bc eridian stuff is fun.

this is so fu cking crisp im dying i love it

lilith’s tattoos spreading down her fingers

same symbol as her chest tattoo. maybe the symbol denotes new powers? like how lily has one on her chest for phasewalking, and a new one on her hand for teleportation

i love how her wings look like actual fire. i fucking love this

lilith is looking so fucking good in the new engine

im glad they got rid of her super red eyes, tbh it looked a bit weird

i think they are really pushing her fire affinity, im sure we’ll see Maya has an elemental affinity as well (im calling corrosive) and im sure Tyreen will too (slag). Amara looks to be Shock because that’s her ‘default’, but who knows until (if) bl4 comes out. but corrosive wings on maya would look SOOO fucking cool. please. please please please.

god she looks so good compared to bl2. i love how the tattoos softly glow in the dark, too. i gotta play this mission late in the day...

“you’re... the voice in my head, right?” i love this so much, i really hope my shitpost comes true.

lilith gives you a grenade mod for completing her mission! im really glad they are PUSHING through the tutorial/intro so you can get right into the game. bl2′s ‘intro’ of all these tutorials was brutal. especially waiting to unlock your action skill.

in 3 you get your action skill automatically at level 2!!! which is insane, i love it! they’re jumping right into it, it’s great. and they seem to be pushing for you to get all the stuff you need right away. 

it’s curious to note that in bl3 we get our class mods at the end of the Promethea demo (after Gigamind), since in bl2 you get your first (usually?) after the hunting the firehawk mission and both seem to take place immediately after we get to the ‘base of operations’ of the game (Sanctuary vs Sanctuary-III).

yep that quest is 100% in line with the quest marker. 

i imagine From the Ground Up may be discovering where the Vault Map/Key actually is? maybe bringing people to the Recruitment Center (notably Tannis)

for this scene. i hope this takes place after the HBC, because i seriously... can’t imagine the twins showing up, taking the Vault Map, bringing it to the HBC, and then NOT taking Lilith’s powers/trying to kill Lily and accidentally taking her powers. it just doesn’t make sense, Vault Hunters be damned, we are level 2 they could melt us easy peasy. 

If anything, it feels like we COULD find the Vault Map in the Recruitment Center, Tannis tries to activate it/fix it, we find out it’s mega broke, and then the Sun Smashers show up and take it. but i seriously can’t imagine Lilith nor the new VHs allowing that to happen while they’re still there. maybe if Tannis sends us to do something while Lilith is gathering other CR members? then it could make sense if they attack while Tannis is alone with the Key...

OR

we end up finding something in Shiv’s room that shows/helps us realize the Sun Smashers bringing the Vault Map to the Calypsos. tho this would mean the quest From the Ground Up is SUPER short and I imagine it’s not. Maybe we raid a camp of theirs like the one in front of Sanc-III with the bridge/ramp? We need to be about level 6 before we go and we start From the Ground Up at 2 so there’s obviously something DEEP we’re missing here. maybe this is a mission where we go gather the other Crimson Raiders? HMMMMMMMM...

.... oh.

nevermind lmfao

she opens her ECHO immediately after this LOL i feel kinda dumb now

raiding their camp it is! the Droughts sounds like a fun location. Very much like the dust. you guys think there’s a Shade situation going on there? i’m excited to see it. Still think we’re going to use Shiv’s room to get that lead, though. i just really wanna watch tv lmfao. i hope this means the bandits run from the camp to the HBC, or we find info that the bandit warchief sent a party to the HBC with the Vault Map. either way, i just don’t want the twins showing up until after the HBC or i will have so many questions. “why didn’t you kill lilith?” being the first. “the god queen wants her head!” ur goddamn right she does, so why doesn’t she (try to) kill lilith???

85% already?! hot damn

also

that’s one badass description there, Moze

also also

while having gun slots locked is pretty normal, im surprised they’re locking class mods and relics, too! i wonder when we’ll be able to equip relics. maybe when we first go to eden-6 or smth. or maybe after we meet up with Rhys. shit maybe he’s just handing us an artifact (im gonna interchange these a lot, sorry!) in that Promethea video lmfao

“ready to chuck some boom and frag some maniacs” lol moze i love you

if you’re playing Zane... `equips grenade mod for checkmark` `immediately equips second action skill and never actually uses grenade mod`

“it’s the firehawk! the god queen wants her head!” 

like i alluded to before, i would not be surprised if Tyreen doesn’t know she can absorb Siren powers... when she goes to succ lilith in front of Sanctuary-III, it’s totally possible she actually was trying to kill her. That could explain why she looks so intrigued at her hand like “oh shit okay lets see what this can do”

might be why she was okay with sending her cultists after her instead of showing up herself.

“alright, we got a foothold. maybe things are turning our way. come on killer, you’re with me” we are going to explore the SHIT out of shiv’s room.

alright alright alright

let’s move on to the Sanctuary-III stuff

yessss

i love the quest objective thing, it looks like we will be able to swap through our quests with the push of a button! also im curious why exactly we’re going to promethea right away. i wonder if the twins say something about moving there after getting the vault map/lilith’s powers, or if we hear from rhys. im expecting something about the vault map, since our vh will admit they don’t know rhys at all when talking to lorelei. but for some reason we need to be within the city limits? since lily says ellie got us within the city limits. 

hmmmmmm. okay, okay, maybe the map was trying to lead us to promethea for vault reasons during that short amount of time that we had it and it was working. maybe promethea is what we see when tannis is activating the key during that one cutscene? ohhh shit how dope would it be if we got that fucking easter egg message? omg “Children of the Vault. Come to Promethea. We are not on Pandora anymore. Tannis is not what she seems. Do not open the Vaults.” and everyone is like ‘uh did that thing just mention Tannis by name??’ and now it’s REALLY important to get the map back just so we can figure out wtf it’s trying to tell us. 

i will question how ‘Tannis is not what she seems’ would affect character relationships, especially if it’s said so early in the game. so perhaps we only hear the first part of the message. maybe it’s corrupted because it was recently broken. iunno. just playing around with ideas. the canon of this game is like flarp putty until sept. 13th

anyway moving on because this is literally the first f r a m e of the video

i like that you can see pandora’s eridian scar. if the destroyer is speaking through eridium to people, it’s gonna bust outta the side of this planet like you wouldn’t fucking believe lmao. eridium is a window to the soul and if you stare long enough into its glossy, shining sides, the destroyer stares back

that or it’s just like a beacon, slowly spreading its influence across the universe. but i like the idea that the destroyer can waltz out of a big enough hunk of eridium. so it will bust out of pandora’s eridium scar. F in chat for pandora but also lmfao the amount of tentacles and rage would be unparalleled.

reality is that the twins are probably farming this scar for eridium to turn into slag for multiple purposes. like brainwashing their cultists, giving them powers, and ensuring their guns have their manufacturer’s quirk (im getting to this in my next post bc im just gonna compile all the ign gun videos into one big post)

the floor art is different from the actual sanc-iii demo. i mention this first in my behind closed doors panel analysis, but im gonna mention it again because this is ~official~. the floor list on the first walkthru of sanc-iii we got had the names of all the crimson raiders and lines leading to their shops. so we had the infirmary/tannis, marcus, moxxi, etc listed on the floor. i imagine this new sanc-iii will change as we get more people on board or if we do a sort of re-decoration of the ship.

also also, it’s cool to see that we have 4 rooms on the minimap, likely one for each of the VHs (and your coop buddies). ive seen speculation that the other, non-played VHs will hang out in their rooms when you’re not playing them, and tbh i really hope this is the case.

we also know this version of sanctuary-iii is after pandora, so there are no promethea citizens aboard yet. which makes me double certain the first sanc-iii video we got takes place either after endgame (explaining why Lily has her tattoos back) or right after Athenas (explaining why Maya is there). which... i mean... spoilers, guys. 

that’s one good lookin fast travel station, holy shit

im in tears over here because “Caution: no steppy”. this is so fucking funny to me

no steppy on me

okay moving on because i will cry laugh over this for forever im allowed

moze’s room is so much different than amara’s

also i notice she’s on the left of the two on the top, which makes me hope the other 4 are reserved for the other VHs (or your coop buddy).

compared to the official sanc-iii demo video

and amara’s room

moze’s is so barren oh my god

someone get this girl like... a colorful throw pillow or something

baaank. also doubles as the secret stash. kinda upsetting, because that is infinitely less loot i can store when i make a lot of characters. also if i upgrade the bank once, is it upgraded across all my other characters too? or are the guns i put in storage slot 11 locked up until i buy the upgrade?

either way, i am saddened because no more mule characters. and way less space the more characters you make and more gear you find, because all gear you put in here is there across all characters. i hope this means our backpacks will be a lot bigger this time around!

supamax mfg shows up again

ppm/04-02 matches up with the number behind the fast travel station. i wonder if this will come into play. if the number changes later in-game im going to freak the fuck out bc that means wherever we are isn’t actually sanctuary-iii

ppm/04-02. remember that 👀

also, the wall behind the golden chest changed from red to steel/greenish. can’t tell the actual color. same as the floor

you know. that color.

“golden keys are popular. you can get some in-game and also get them online”

in-game you say??? im interested! i wonder if there will be some sort of arena (like moxxi’s) where if you complete it you get a key as a reward. i saw people speculating about some sort of randomized boss rush, that could definitely be a way to get gold keys, as well.

oooo engine room! im excited to explore here.

original size is 16. so, we have 40 backpack slots! still... you know... only 1 above the max of bl2, but hey. at least that’s an upgrade. as small as it may be

on the bright side: bank upgrades increase capacity by 5. with a base of 10, and 8 upgrades, we have 50 slots to fill. which is a big leap from the original 24. it is still a shame we have to share these across characters, tho

offline cultist stream? makes me think the CoV really was trying to steal/take over sanc-iii from the crimson raiders and we went to go take it (back?) in Taking Flight. either the CoV found/ordered Sanc-III, or the crimson raiders were building it/fixing it up, their stronghold got taken over, and the CoV were prepping it for takeover.

the shooting range. and if you notice that little CoV symbol in the bottom left there? yeah pretty much backs up my previous theory

all those red bits are tied to ellie’s crew challenge. so we’ll be collecting things for her!

an altar for scooter 😢

“we’re gonna get those cultism sumbitches, believe you me”

where you get yeeted out of Sanc-III. im definitely going to try jumping in it to see if it kills me. doesn’t look like the drop pods are available yet

that’s not clappy, pretty sure he’s hanging out on the bridge right now

schematics for veronica

the thing i was most excited about in this video!

loooots of customizations! which excites me because i know eridium used to get useless late game when you’ve grinded all the raid bosses. it looks like eridum is going to be in ultra high demand. but u can bet ur ass im gonna be unlocking all those fucking customizations asap.

veteran rewards is also super super interesting

hgggggg i wanna know what the shields do!!! 

i like the vault symbol at the top of the item card as well, shows you its a special type of weapon/item. im honestly surprised we’re able to buy ‘veteran rewards’ so early in the game? i mean obvi we won’t have enough eridium (look at the costs!) but it’s wild it’s even accessible. im personally a fan of the first bonus ‘anointed: gain life steal on action skill end’

looks like these guns have been chosen

to give them those special bonuses

i do see that just anointed is not class specific, but the ones that say anointed gunner or maybe anointed siren will be (confirmed by the devs in video).

you pay with eridium, so maybe the vending machine has some way to confer the power of eridium to the guns. or some shit. iunno. it’s possible this won’t be available until the end of the game, hence veteran rewards, and is only being shown to us right now since this is a showcasing video.

pandoran civilian. no promethea civilians today folks! i am CONVINCED that the old sanc-iii demo takes place after the end of the game. at least after athenas.

it’s weird seeing moxxi hanging outside her bar.

is also cool to know that the 4 slot machines are actually available. seems like npcs can play them, but we can use all 4 if we want to. which is really nice

the one on the far left is called the ‘loot boxxer’ and it gives mostly guns lol. i see they are taking jabs. good for them

better pic of the leftmost machines

Zer0 seems to have a bounty board? not sure if this is like a physical bounty board or if they will contact you when they want something dead, but it is cool to note. this isn’t shown in video, just the devs speaking about it.

similarly hammerlock has ‘big game hunts’ where you find “rare, challenging creatures” and kill them for him

apparently we’ll be killing something known as a manvark

this book

i fucking recognize this book

HAMMERLOCK NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

in all seriousness tho

hammerlock probably isn’t in his room because we haven’t rescued him from eden-6 yet.

a cool thing about the crew challenges: as you progress through the game and do these challenges, sanc-iii will ‘grow and change to reflect the things you’ve accomplished’. altho another dev says “sometimes these are optional things, like challenges” 

so now im like oh shit we’re gonna change sanc-iii as we play the game. i wonder if that means we’ll be changing the hull, too. because you know. the blue paint job. we gotta go STEALTH. sneaky beaky into the calypsos fleety

tannis doesn’t have the saurian on her table. also, interesting note, she DOES have the eridian log in the corner. meaning she must have had that before eden-6. interesting... maybe we’ll find more on Pandora.

she is still covered in blood tho. idk i don’t have an explanation for that. don’t think i want to think of one, to be quite honest.

oh no. (those are skulls next to all the gurneys)

“tannis plays a much bigger role in bl3 than she has in past games”. bigger than borderlands 1? that is... impressive. she’ll be running the health vending machines (which is weird bc i could’ve sworn in the promethea demo, zed was still running them... hm.)

another angle of sanc-iii

clappy? you good there?

the devs said they’re using him to plug a hole. i assume the calypsos shot at the ship as we’re leaving or smth.

lily with no tattoos, who also looks significantly more pissed than her other sanc-iii demo counterpart

you know. because she got her tattoos.

also

fucking

lilith says something right here. all i can make out is “Tyreen took my powers. it’s like tannis said. ..... [inaudible] Siren.” maybe some weird word i haven’t heard before? i swear she’s saying ‘like tannis said: a ‘m...’ Siren” but i am not 100% sure. if someone could help me out, that’d be rad.

so its sounding like lilith rushed in with explicit warning from tannis about tyreen stealing her powers, and tannis knew tyreen was some sort of Siren and warned lily, but lily didn’t listen. it could also be that lily is saying something like “im not a siren” but i can’t really hear it if she is. it sounds like she saying a word that starts with m to me. if someone could help me with this i’d owe you my life

whew. i am. fucking TIRED.

im gonna sleep for like 3 hours and then wake up and make food before the fl4k streams start.

[journal-of-skyrim]

Last Seed, 18th, 4E, 201

Arriving was.. difficult. It began simple enough, a long voyage, but ended with disaster as that fool of a captain killed everyone. The ship is lost, and I am the only survivor; the divines truly smile on me.

My first day in Skyrim was... certainly eventful. I had begun by passing out within the walls of an inn, my body shut down from the cold as I was forced to swim away from the sinking skip in frigid water. I do not know how long I was out for, but as I woke up by where I had passed out, it couldn’t have been for long.

From there, I had learned of the plot to consume Dawnstar from a priest of Mara, and with his help, we went to the source of the problem, a ruined temple overlooking the town. It was there that the priest had revealed to me his origins as a worshiper of the Daedra that had operated from that temple. He had claimed he had spent decades seeking forgiveness from Mara, and though I certainly felt Her gifts on him, I do not have a choice in the matter.

I must report him to the Thalmor when I return home. I have nothing but scorn for those elves, but I have a duty to the Divines, and as such, I must endure this fate.

After we made our way through the temple, fighting off other worshipers, as well as Orcs, both of which having been under the effect of “The Miasma”, a Daedric ritual of some kind that put the inhabitants to sleep.

The ritual was decades ago, if the priest is to be believed, and I do, as the potions and food within were rancid and rotted. Despite this, however, the people moved as if they had slept mere hours, let alone years. There was no sign of degradation or aging on them, or their items; I had attributed this to the work of the Daedra, and I plan on checking back in a few days and asking the Priest if the bodies had decomposed in my absence. if they do not, then I shall write for a squad to come and burn the temple to the ground to rid us of the Daedric effects permanently.

In order to work around a mystical barrier that had been erected in the temple, the priest had suggested using a Daedric artifact known as “The Dreamstride”. I had objected, of course, but we both knew there was no other way, as a full-fledged Daedric Icon was at the source of the temple, and it had to be destroyed.

Saying my, prayers, I had drank the potion, and had a vision. I was walking among the worshipers decades ago, experiencing the raging battle that had occurred. My body moved of it’s own will, though I felt the damage done to it as I ran. Nonetheless, I had succeeded in finding my way to the source of the barrier, and destroyed it. From there, we made out way to the icon.

We slew it's guards quickly, and the priest called upon Mara to destroy the Icon. It was there that I had heard the voice of the Daedra in my mind. I heard it try and tempt me into killing the priest, and going on as it’s servant, but I resisted, and the Icon was destroyed.

That is, at least, my hope. I cannot be fully certain of the priest, nor his true intentions, and thus I plan to check up on him  every so often to ensure his word was true.

With the task completed, I made my way back to town, gathering several carcasses of wolves I had killed on my way to the temple, and stowed them behind the Inn, making use of the shelter to quickly turn the carcasses into meat and pelts before a blizzard drove me inside the Inn once more. I sold the meat to the Innkeeper, and used the coin to but a hearty meal of soup before purchasing a room here where I write. I plan on heading inland tomorrow; I know not what I will find, but my investigations into these “Dragons” may yet unveil more Daedric Plots, which I will, of course, make priority.

I shall use this section of my Journal as my confessional for misdeeds done during my journey. I will turn this separately to the Grandmaster of my Order upon my return so that he may dispense proper justice upon me for the sins I commit on my task.

My primary sin today was theft, and the theft of the dead. During the shipwreck, I had lost everything of my person that I did not have on me. This, as can be expected, is a tremendous setback. Without the coin the guild had provided me, I would not able to purchase food or drink, or survive the very environment, let alone continue my investigations.

My situation left me little choice; I had ransacked the sinking ship, taking lock-picks and coin from chests and bodies as I made my way out, and this attitude persisted during m,y trip in the temple as well. I shall ensure that with the clearing of the temple, so too will end my theft of both the living of the dead.

Also while in the temple, I had collected a bear-skin coat which I now wear as protection from the snow. I will strive to hold onto it until I return, where I will donate it to the guild as proof of my wrongdoings.

And finally, there is the matter of the Daedra. I had resisted it well, and I feel just as well, though I cannot be certain if the taint remains. I shall visit a shrine soon to ensure there is none, and as well I shall take yet another test once I return, just to ensure my purity. And if any taint remains, then I shall even turn myself over to the Thalmor of my own will.

Divines preserve us.

[jade4813]

A Lie, Told Often Enough, Chapter 16

Author Notes: Inspired by @fallinginloveinaflash‘s AU prompt. All credit for the idea goes entirely to her.

Title: A Lie, Told Often Enough

Rating: NC-17

Synopsis: Iris just landed her dream job at a PR firm and her first assignment is reforming the bad boy image of celebrity artist Barry Allen. He’s overly cocky and well-known for being a playboy, but Iris has never met a challenge she couldn’t handle.

Chapters: 16/?

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

In the fuzzy, warm glow of that state between sleep and awake, Iris sighed and reached out for Barry, wanting to draw close to his warmth. Her brow furrowed with dismay when the back of her hand brushed found nothing but cold cotton where his body should be. The incongruous absence was enough to pull her out of her hazy dream, and she frowned slightly as she blinked into the morning light. She glanced at Barry’s side of the bed and sighed at the smooth, untouched blankets. Now that she was awake, she remembered that he was away on tour. He hadn’t slept next to her for over a month. It would be at least another month before he did so again.

Knowing there was no chance she would get back to sleep now, Iris arose and threw on a tattered old robe she’d found in Barry’s closet. It did little to ward off the morning chill, but she imagined it smelled like him, so wearing it made her feel better. She still wasn’t used to these long days spent without him, and she wondered if she would ever grow used to them again. Ignoring the tiny voice that reminded her she would have to do so once this charade was over, Iris headed into the kitchen for some coffee before grabbing her laptop and preparing to start the day.

As she had every day for the past month, Iris immediately searched for updates on Barry’s tour. Not long ago, she would have done so to see how her PR strategy was working. Now she did so because she missed him. She would never tell him that this online perusal felt like her only tether to his present life. Although they exchanged texts during the day when he had the free time to do so and he called her before taking the stage every night, she was careful to keep her tone upbeat, her questions general, letting him drive the conversation. She tried not to let him know how much she missed him, telling herself that she didn’t want to make him feel bad for being gone so long. But, of course, she was also scared that she would say too much and betray her feelings for him.

BARRY ALLEN DISHES ON MUSIC, LOVE, AND HIS BAD BOY IMAGE AFTER SOLD-OUT CONCERT IN CHICAGO

The headline was the first to pop up when Iris searched for Barry’s name, so she clicked on the link and started to scan the text. It wasn’t long before she saw her name.

“The star, notoriously reluctant to talk about his personal life, opened up about his recent engagement to fashion icon and burgeoning philanthropist, Iris West. When asked about the criticisms regarding the speed of his engagement, he admitted, “I suppose some people might think it was fast, but if you ever met Iris, you would understand. She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met. I didn’t expect to fall in love with her, you know, when we first met, and now I realize I never thought I could love someone as much as I love her. I know it probably sounds cheesy, but she makes me want to be the best person I can be. She grounds me. Like a lightning rod. And from the day we met, I’ve carried her with me. She’s in every song I write and – okay, I’m embarrassing myself now, aren’t I? You can tell me if I am. I just miss her, you know?”

When asked what it’s like to be on the road for so long, he explained, “It’s exhausting, of course, but there’s no better way to get out and meet my fans. I always meet such incredible people on the road. This time, though, every stop on the tour is one step closer to getting home to [Iris].”

Iris smiled, lingering on the word “home.” She wanted to believe his words were true and not just pretense, all part of the charade. She wanted him there with her. With a sigh, she tore her attention from the article to look at her schedule for the day. She was supposed to attend an event for charity that evening, which would not only allow her to network for Mason but would help her bring attention to a worthy cause. But when she checked on the details, she saw in e-mail in her inbox informing her that, due to an extensive kitchen fire at the venue the evening before, the event was being postponed.

As soon as she read the words, she flipped back to her calendar again, her breath catching in her throat. When she saw her schedule was free until the following evening, she grinned and almost bounced up and down in her chair as she searched for airline flights. For a moment, she considered texting Barry to let him know she was coming but decided in the end that it would be more fun to surprise him.

Her flight booked, Iris raced to the bathroom to shower and pack for her upcoming trip. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Barry’s face – or to fall asleep in his arms once more.

The roar of the crowd washed over him, and Barry bounced his weight onto his toes, throwing open his arms as he threw a grin towards his sea of fans. There was so much about touring that he hated. But these moments on stage – when the cheers and roaring excitement seeped into his skin, making his heart pound and his blood race – made the bad food; antiseptic, impersonal hotel rooms; and the endless, grueling hours on the road almost made it all worth it. If only he didn’t miss Iris so much that his longing was a physical ache.

“How is everyone tonight?” he yelled into the microphone as he strummed the first note to kick off that evening’s set. The crowd roared again, and he bowed his head and began to play. The song ended, and he started to joke with the audience until his bass player caught his attention and nodded offstage with a smile. Confused, Barry followed his gaze, his heart skipping a beat when he saw Iris.

She was dressed in torn jeans and a t-shirt from one of his old shows, pilfered from his bottom drawer. When he caught her eye, she threw him a cheeky smile and a wave. Barry stopped his story mid-word, tempted to race to her side. Instead, he turned to the audience and said conspiratorially, “You’ll have to excuse me, but it looks like my fiancée has decided to surprise me.” The crowd cheered, and he threw them a smile and then looked back at her and tossed his head, silently inviting her to join him onstage. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head.

“I think she’s shy,” he murmured into the microphone, eliciting laughter from the crowd. “Maybe she needs a little encouragement?” The crowd roared, but Iris didn’t move. “If I play a song for her, do you think I can convince her to come out here to give me a kiss?” He glanced at Iris again and she laughed and stuck her tongue out at him. “But what should I play?” he asked, his eyes locked on hers.

Iris lifted her eyebrows and threw him a teasing grin, and he lifted one arm, encouraging the crowd to shout suggestions. But they only suggested his songs, and he was afraid that would somehow reveal too much, that she would realize how much of her was in his songs if he sang them to her. The audience quieted when he grabbed the stool nearby and perched on the edge. Throwing his band a slight shake of his head to let them know not to play along, he began to strum his guitar and turned so that he could watch Iris as he sang softly into the microphone.

“When the rain is blowing in your face, and the whole world is on your case, I could offer you a warm embrace. To make you feel my love.” He threw Iris sheepish look, hoping she liked the song, and saw that she was biting her lip, shifting her weight back and forth. He continued, “When the evening shadows and the stars appear, and there is no one there to dry your tears, I could hold you for a million years. To make you feel my love.”

Iris didn’t tear her eyes from his as she stepped forward. A slight murmur arose from the crowd when she appeared onstage, but it was muted quickly as though they were afraid of ruining the moment.

“I know you haven’t made your mind up yet, but I would never do you wrong. I’ve known it from the moment that we met. No doubt in my mind where we belong.”

Iris stopped a few feet away, and Barry stood. His band started to play softly as he lifted the guitar over his head and placed it aside. Then he stepped closer to her, his mind only on her as he continued to sing.

“I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue. I’d go crawling down the avenue. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do. To make you feel my love.” He lifted a hand and brushed her hair back, stroking the soft skin of her cheek as he continued, “The storms are raging on a rollin’ sea and on the highway of regret. The winds of change are blowin’ wild and free. You ain’t seen nothin’ like me yet.” He drew her into his arms, pulling her tight against him, and she curled her arms around his neck and melted into him as he finished his song, his voice barely above a whisper.

He could have been singing to her alone, and it was only the presence of the microphone that spoiled the image and made his voice carry across the crowd. “I could make you happy, make your dreams come true. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do. Go to the ends of the earth for you. To make you feel my love.”

As the song ended, he bent, bracing her with his arms as he lowered her into a deep dip. His mouth crushed against hers, and the roar of the crowd pressed against them like a physical weight. The roar grew louder the longer they kissed, but Barry barely noticed. His heart lighter just having her in his arms, he finally put her back on her feet. Pressing his forehead against hers, he shrugged out of his trademark coat and slung it over her shoulders, whispering, “Baby, I missed you so much.”

Later, after returning home, to her loneliness and her responsibilities, Iris would close her eyes and relive the feeling of Barry’s arms around her. His lips against her skin. His song as it washed over her. She would remember how he sang the words like he meant them, and how he looked when he came to her after the show, his hair damp with sweat.

She was waiting for him in his dressing room backstage. In a moment of impulse, she’d stripped out of her clothes, dressing herself in nothing but one of the towels he so hated as she waited for him. It was barely enough to cover her chest, tantalizing glimpses of skin peeking through the folds. As the door slammed behind him and he reached behind his back to lock it, his gaze swept over her. Then, in two long slides, he was across the room, lifting her into his arms. He stepped forward and pressed her against the wall, sliding a thigh between her legs to hold her in place as she tore his shirt over his head.

“You’re right,” he growled, yanking the towel open until it fell on the floor at their feet. “I love these towels.” And then his mouth was on hers, his hands caressing her skin, his head bowing as he licked the soft swell of her breasts.

They made love there, against the wall, their hands and mouths desperate as they held each other. She moaned when he moved inside her, willfully losing herself in his touch. She tightened her legs around him, rolling her hips to meet his thrusts. Gasping his name into his ear in lieu of the words she didn’t dare say.

When she first returned home, she would think of those moments when she was alone in his bed, trailing her hands over her body and pretending that they were his. Later, she would try not to think of them, cursing her memory and her imagination, that she could no longer separate fantasy from recollection.

She would also try and fail not to think about the next morning. Their sleepy embrace when she awoke in his arms, never wanting the moment to end. Greedy for each other, they made love all morning, only reluctantly stopping when she realized she would miss her plane.

When she grabbed her bag and headed for the door, he stepped behind her and wrapped her in his arms, ducking to press a kiss against the side of her neck. As she lifted her hand to run her fingers through his hair, he murmured against her skin, “Listen. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I think...when I get back, we should talk. About our future. There’s something I-I need to tell you.”

Alone in the dark, she would dwell on those words, mulling over the weight of them. Whispering them in the night to feel how they tasted in her mouth. She wondered at his tone, imagining pauses and emphasis where there had been none.

“I think we should talk,” she whispered into her pillow. Had he stressed that word, a dramatic portend of what was to come? Had she been so blind, so giddy to be in his arms that she’d missed it? Or was her mind playing tricks on her now that she realized what he had meant? “About our future? About our future?”

She groaned, pressing the pillow against her mouth the muffle the sound. She had mulled over those words, weighing them over and over in her mind, until she could no longer remember just how they had been spoken. But did it really matter?

It didn’t. Because the next time she saw him, he broke her heart.