#some good news to combat the shitty ex news

[secret-third-thing]

OKAY what I WANTED to say before I experienced the weirdest sunday of my life is that I finally have a writing mentor!!!!! who is a LITERARY AGENT!?!?!!! I am FREAKING OUT.

I am very flattered that she offered to work with me, and I'm hoping that this is the universe giving me a sign that it's TIME. She read some of my original writing and my longer fanfic and was like... you've got something good going on in that brain of yours.

Obviously, I will have things to work on, but I'm happy to know that my writing isn't actually total garbage. Fingers crossed for 2024. Yall this is wild.

[fearyandear]

My Headcanons for Societyboy!

I tried giving him features the other boys didn't have, like eyes that are downcast and a hooked nose. I also gave him adult braces because I thought it was a cute mental image to have this angry douchebag arguing over people and getting self-conscious when you stare at his teeth and laugh. He had pretty black hair that he thought was too boring to get your attention again, so he tried bleaching and coloring it himself, ending up with this. He doesn't take care of it, his hair is a mess aah. Also, he's self conscious of Quest because he has a skinny little body and that man is 😳

I have a bit of writing on him that I'm not sure I'll actually get to finish, but my take on our ex is:

He's an egocentric loser we confessed to first at the end of junior year of high school. He accepted because it meant he had bragging rights over his other friends. You stay together through senior year, the excuse of you both being busy trying to get into college truimphed over any actual intimacy taking place (most of your dates were just you watching him play a game in his room or studying).

Finally it was over, you both got accepted into the same college, graduated, and over the summer, you both prepped to move into your dorms (seperate). As the first year went on, you both made separate friend groups. Slowly, he started feeling uneasy. He realized there was a good chance you might leave him with so many new people in your life, and so much time spent apart; to combat this, he kept insisting on you following him to his hang outs, or staying over at his dorm instead.

You didn’t mind him becoming clingy at first; he had always felt very independent from youbin highschool, and he wouldn't care about stuff like cuddling and holding hands together before. This was nice.

But it only got worse as the years trickled by, and he became very demanding. You were slowly becoming an island, unable to hold friendships without upsetting him, relying on him, and being left behind anywahs when he spent his time with his own group. You graduated, and lasted a few months living together before you finally snapped and broke things off.

He was furious. He didn't think he did anything wrong and thought the progression of things was just how relationships were meant to be. He convinced himself that you were only throwing a hissy fit, and you'd come back. When it wasn't happening as immediately as he wanted, he started stalking you online, unable to comprehend how you could live without him.

When you'd post good things about your new life, vitriol overtook him and he started commenting shitty things, making his own posts, insulting you and hating you and still, expecting you to one day wake up and come knocking back.

But you wouldn't.

And it's been over a year already. He's still alone, blocked on all your accounts (though he got new socials to keep looking at you), in the same apartment (despite being offered to move somewhere cheaper because you might come looking for him), and still thinking of you daily. He didn't want to allow himself to feel it, but he's sad.

He misses you so much. He misses sleeping by you, misses hearing you talk about your hobbies, misses your cooking, your voice, your hugs and kisses, all the ways you made him feel special and not like the sad sack of shit he really was. It's time he finally owned up to his mistakes, internalize how he fucked up your life, and actually try to get better at being more thoughtful of you. He still thinks it's you he has to end up with, somehow, in some way.

As he browsed through your social media again, that's how he found the link you surely clicked on. It's somewhere neither you nor him have ever made an account on. That means he's not blocked there! His heart beat fast as he copied it but didn't click it yet; he had to calm down. This had to be like, the universe affirming him, right? Throwing him another chance to see you again. He wanted to make it count. But he was... anxious, too, after so long. He had to wait to buy and take a few edibles before he finally resigned himself to what would come next. He'd win you back. He joined the server.

(Then, enters Societyboy's Route. Not Quest's, this one would be similar but different.)

[tam-ezrac]

[Re:conceptualizing LoR and LCB Systems] Part 2!!

Part 1 - For convenience

My procrastination strikes again, tho this time it's only a month. In that time I realized that, I'm not making a game, I don't need to worry about every detail, as long as it's believable, you guys can fill in the details.

That means I can be both John Limbus AND John Ruina!! Let's fuckin GGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

also I'm separating all this in multiple parts before combining everything into a mega post on Reddit, so look forward to that.

Partie 2: Identities, E.G.Os & Panic

Here is the reference image for your sanity, looks cool right?

–Keypage/Core ID

Your bread & butter equipement for your Librarian/Sinner(I'll refer to them as Nuggets from now on), obtained either from the Gacha/Book Burning or as story rewards.

They determine your HP, TP, Speed range, Weapon Resistance, Sanity and what Core Skills you have.

They come in 3 main Rarities with 2 extra ones, which are:

Base(0): Default ID for every Nugget, most of the stats are determined by the skills & passives it is equipped with, or story progression

Ain(0̸): Filler IDs, cannot be equipped as a Keypage, but does provide general skills and passives for an associated faction

Soph(0̸0̸): Can be used as a Keypage by all Nuggets, generally not the strongest or most unique IDs but provide a good support for other IDs

Aur(0̸0̸0̸): Core part of most teams, can only be equipped by a select few, usually has a unique gimmick or playstyle and teams are built around them

Unique(✦): Reserved for select few like Colors/EGOs/Distortions, Deck cannot be changed and you can only bring 1 Unique per team

They can also be Levelled up and Uptied, but I'm leaving it to your discretion for how that works.

–Core Skills

Are the minimum skills that an ID needs in order for it to work. By default the skills that are associated for that ID are equipped but can be swapped out if they met the requirement.

Ex: W-Corp ID(s) would have Core Skills that gains and or use charge but can be swapped out for those that do the same.

–Skills

The details can be found in Part 3 but the general gist is:

You can equip up to 9 skills(incl. Core)

They come in 4 rarities: Paperback(no Sin Affinity), Hardcover(S1), Limited(S2) and Object D'art(S3)

You have an infinite Defensive Skill associated with your Keypage and may gain more depending on what you have equipped

–Passives & Attribution

Each Keypage as atleast one Passive on them which can be triggered through EGO Resources.

You can equip more through passive attribution, each of em cost as much as the rarity of it's associated ID (I.e Ain(0̸) Passive cost 1 point, Soph(0̸0̸) cost 2, etc.) You cannot attribute passives of Unique IDs.

Fuckin hell that was a lot to type, go grab a bottle water if you haven't already, cause that means you've made it through 1/3 of this post! ...yippie

Ah– we will now begin

The E.G.O Section!

Abnormalities... Monsters beyond human comprehension... representing different aspects of blah blash blegh! You already what they are!

And neither of us care about that lore(rn) what we want is to harness they're power in combat

And! Uh, I have some good news and bad news about that.

Let's start with the bad, you may only equip 5 Abnos(1 for each Risk Lv) per team

I know kinda shitty, good news it's a Fusion Between LoR's Abno Page and LCB's EGO Skills, which is the entire point of this series thing...

Can you tell I'm Tired? Cause I've been sitting here for like 6~8 hours as I'm typing this line. And this one is after another 3 hours, 38 minutes, 14 second yea I came back just to type that, what of it??!

...for the sake of my sanity we will be using Telepole/Alleyway Watchdog(O-02-11-26) and the associated Sinners for the majority of this section.

–EGO Skills

Starting off, Abno EGOs acts as both your special moves and additional passives(for that encounter) and they come in 4 different flavors.

First and foremost is Dormant EGO Skills, only those who can not Resonate with an Abno can use these. They do not trigger the Abnos Passives, roll lower and deal less damage, But they also cost less SP and Sin Resources than other version(s) of the EGO

Awakening & Corrosion(Overclock too) are Exclusive to those who are able resonate with the Abno(Faust, Don and Heathcliff in our case), I.e if you played Limbus you know what they do.

However, before moving to Synchronization let's talk about—

–EGO Passives

After using an Awakening or Corrosion Skill, at the beginning of the next turn, you are able to pick 1 passive from the Abno EGO you used.

In our case it would be between Faust's [Adaptive Release], Don's [Haphazard Discharge] and Heathcliff's [Roar], after which depending on the passive, you may(or may not) select who gets the passive.

This can range from random, 1 unit, multiple units, anyone who isn't the user, everyone on the field, only your enemies, etc, etc.

If you want another passive from the same Abno you have to use a different version of the Abno EGO I.e if you used Don then you have to use either Faust or Heathcliff

There's also a limit to the amount of Abno passive you can have per Nugget but I'll cover that in the last section.

–Synchronization

Upon meeting all criteria and using an Overclocked EGO the selected Nugget Synchronizes with the used Abno and is overwritten with a Unique ID for the rest of the Encounter *Conditions may apply.

The secret? Well, you don't know what the criteria is of course! It could be a 13 step plan, maybe you need to not bring something, maybe you just need 100 EGO resources or vice-versa!

In the end, it will stay an enigma until you use it for the first time, of course I'm a benevolent moron so I'll atleast give you an example.

We'll be Taking Little Red(F-01-57) for our test drive. Now using our knowledge of the Abno's Story what they represent, in this case revenge, we can deduce that it probably has something to do with the Bad Wolf(F-02-58).

I'll expedite it a bit here, but either have the Bad wolf on the Field or someone who used it's EGO Skill last Turn, pay the toll(Resources) and unleashing the Skill will have the Nugget Sync with Red Hood! Of course you made sure to read the fine print right? ....right??

sigh, alright I'll tell you about the added conditions too, in our case it requires Red hood to land the finishing blow on our To be Bad Wolf fail to do so and the Synced unit turns Indiscriminate, if you kill all the enemies but fail to suppress them, then you lose. Ah–, btw you can Sync with Every Abno if you wanted to, it's not always the best choice let alone a plausible one so be careful of that.

You can Obtain Abno Skills has Story Rewards, Side Content or through the Gacha, and their passives through Uptie and or Supressions (again up to your discretion)

NOW we finally made it the homestretch the final section(of this post)

–Panic/Mental Types!!

You gain different effects depending on how high or low you SP is, hitting either extremes results in a Panic/Bliss state where you(usually) can't control that unit.

Mental types are determined by what Keypage you have equipped but can be changed under certain conditions.

–SP Gain & Loss

Winning/Losing a Clash

Max/Min Rolling

Enemy Kill/Ally Death

Skill Effects

Or Keypage specific thing

–ID Possesion

It's quite literally the opposite of Corrosion, but with IDs instead. I.e, when you hit max positive SP a wheel is turned based on Nuggets currently equipped Skill.

Let's say it's a 3-way split between W-corp, 7-Assoc and The Ring. So it would be a 30%:30%:30% for any of them to be chosen with the remaining 10% being nothing happening

Once something is chosen, all of your skill will be turned into a skill from that faction that is of the same rarity and is then shuffled.

After 1 turn has pass in that state your SP resets to 0 and you turn back to normal, the catch here is that you don't know which one of your skills you've used until the Possession is over, making it act as a punishment or reward depending on how you use it.

And with that...

IT"S THE END FINAALLLY!!

it took so, so damn long!!!! Im never doing this ever again(in one sitting)

I still have part 3 to do so i'll crawl towards that eventually with that I Hoped you enjoyed reading my ramblings

Until next time,

Toodaa loo!!

oh am i kidding

SANITY II: EMOTIONAL BOOGALOO!!

yeah...! YEAH!!!

YOU TOUGHT THIS WAS OVER DIDN'T YoU?? Well, its not, so strAP THE FUCK IN!

Here's the emotion bars reds negative greens positive

Number in the middle is the Emotion Level, you increase it by using EGOs in ascending order(1=Zayin, 2=Teth, etc.) up to a Max of 5. In normal gameplay. it can go up to 6 if you use a Unique IDs mechanic or EGO Sync, and 7 if you do both, good luck with that one

What does it do? Buffs you obviously, Action Slots, Card Draws, Number of Abno Passives, ID Mechanics.

Really whaterver the fuck you can think of, and I already did my share so show some of your creativity

See the Yellow bar on top? that's Grace, your max SP(- & +). If the colored bars reach it, shit happens, I think you can figure what.

you can also sSSSssPppiIiIiiInNnN it with Sinking&Floating(counterpart) so watch for that.

that does it im not writting anyomre of this, part 3 the finale where ill covver encounters skills, clasehed skill check resources status effects, gachaas SIN realixataon your mu,m UUUUUUUOO OOOOOOGGHH HHHGGH KANI REoRoEoRoEoRoER EREoooooREoRoERoEoRoEoRoEoRoeoroEoReooroEoRoeorEoRoeoroEoRooerooER thisisthisthatisthat youmustJUDGEMENT likeihave PALpalpALPlapLAPlapLAPlaplPALpalPALpalpALPalpA getgETperebhzcbcdGetwkjofndjlnklwdfgETGETGewjfdbu bfjwdtgeTEGte baitused tobelivable*giutar riff*HoLydhItisT HtAA ThE rEd MiRsTtHk

[crithaus]

Morgwen Bodyguard!AU where it's the whole gang in mostly modern times. This is extensive, bear with me.

Through some series of events I haven't thought of yet England has not become England as we know it yet though most of history remains the same and Uther Pendragon is King Regnant of Albion, and he does about just as good a job rearing two kids as he does running a country and has a great vast many enemies so his heir apparent Crown Prince Arthur and his ward Morgana, now Duchess of Gorlois after the death of her 'father', are now in desperate need of a constant detail of bodyguards.

enter gwen and the gang

his capital city can bear to send CIS' - Camelot Intelligence Service - finest on recommendation by his own friend and personal physician. Sends him 2 3-cell teams of their best intelligence agents or at least, least likely to kill each other while guarding bodys yknow.

Arthur gets his cell, team leader Leon his getaway driver and head strategist, defense and combat specialist Gwaine and hacker Merlin though the poor boy gets a secondary job as Arthur's PA too which takes up much of his time

And Morgana gets hers. Her team leader, sniper and combat specialist Lancelot, ex combat pilot turned all around agent Elyan and to her immense surprise, Elyan's super super gorgeous sister, Guinevere.

Morgana's spent every moment of her life that she can remember simpering with high society boys and girls, all of them either vapid and idiotic or worse yet, cruel and calculating and never ever has she met a woman more fascinating than Gwen. She's her new personal assistant much like Merlin is Arthur's, with an eidetic memory and the management skills of Hannibal fucking Barca, a parisian boutique's worth of seamstress ability and the personal upkeep maintainence and even some smithing of all her cells weapons. She runs shit like the navy and when Morgana asks why she isn't team leader, Gwen just laughs and oh man is her laugh pretty, and shrugs, "someone needs to be focused solely on you yknow." While looking at her with the biggest doe-iest eyes and Morgana finds herself blushing a lot more?? Beaming ear to ear too. And

Idk Morgana dragging Gwen off to galas and Gwen taking her off to more low key spots, the club perchance, and Gwen getting wowed by morgana's rapier wit and political acumen and Morgana getting wowed by this absolutely radiant beam of sunshine who snatched a gun out of a muggers holster before he could do anything and popped some other dude 30 paces away without a hair out of place and adventures, Gwen absolutely despises Uther, Morgana hates all the snooty folk that expect Gwen to kowtow to them. Gwen finds that though her job is to personally assist, the Duchess is actually quite nice, fiercely loyal to her as is just the doing of her job is enough to warrant such, though shes achinly lonely so maybe that's why, is very funny, and kind, and compassionate if a little impulsive and rash, and comes up with the funniest insults imaginable murmured directly into her ear as she stands at her post in the back of x meeting of uther's privy council or y public function. Also that her eyes are theeee most brilliantly clear shade of green, like the still clear pond near her house, like garnet-

Morgana has awful nightmares of totally not suspicious events that come true an odd amount of the time and Gwen is receiving back Intel from CIS and Uther about potential stirring of war from a King Cenred across ye Olde channel and they go on cool car chases and maybe there's a shopping montage or two but yea. Idk how to end this but uther realizes he doesn't have to die a shitty old man and legitimizes Morgana as a princess of the blood before he chokes and when she and Gwen get married it's princess style babyyy

Oh and definitely morgana giving herself up to some assailants cuz gwen is hurt and some baddies cracking poor morgana on the head and Gwen frantically trying to keep her awake and morgana is just griiiiiinning at her all restored even as concussed as she is cuz this angel is cupping her face in her hands and yea, that thing

[dolceaspidenera]

I'd like to share some of my thoughts and feelings (I have many) on the new gameplay trailer reveal as an old-time fan of Dragon Age for whoever is interested in sharing their opinions with me.

Overall I'm curious and hyped about all things regarding the plot and the characters and from what I've heard from various interviews this part of the game seems very curated, so I'm really hopeful. However, there are still things I personally don't like and some I'm a bit worried about.

Something I wanted to remark is that I believe it's important to let people enjoy the game and have fun if they are excited about it, as well as to be respectful of the opinion of people who don't like it because they have every right to and should be free to express their opinions.

I loved Dragon Age since Origins and I had to go through a grieving process to accept that we are not getting back the old RPG system and the same dark fantasy vibe it used to have. With this in mind, I was able to approach the new game with a different perspective and expectations and I get why newer fans, who jumped on the Dragon Age boat with Inquisition or are getting a first look at the game for the first time, are excited about it. I also empathize a lot with people who have been here since the beginning and have seen the game completely change and transform over the years... Boy, I get it, it's rough.

More in-depth thoughts about the trailer itself under the cut

First thing first, let's address the elephant in the room: all the layoffs and the incredibly shitty behavior EA reserved toward its ex-employees don't make me particularly inclined to give them money. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here, this game is still the product of years of work and effort from a lot of people, but it is also important not to forget that EA is a very shitty company.

I don't like the hack-and-slash type of combat but I was expecting it and made peace with it. I'm here mostly for the characters and the story anyway. Overall the combat system doesn't look groundbreaking but it seems good, I think people who enjoy this type of game will like it. I wish they had shown more of it from other classes and maybe more advanced levels.

I'm personally not enthusiastic about the stylization of the characters but it is what it is. I can look past it. Also not sure about the demons with neon lights, weird choice.

I'm a bit concerned about the wonky writing. How is it possible that a random guy disrupts a 10-year plan just by throwing down a pillar? Feels rushed and lame. I hope the writing will be more solid going forward.

Solas. I love him. Nothing to say here.

Loved the confrontation between Varric and Solas, very emotional, a lot of feelings there, and very in character for both of them. Wish we could have seen the inquisitor there too.

I'm a bit concerned that the confrontation happened so soon in the story though, I would have liked more build-up. I'm very worried they will turn Solas into a secondary/unimportant character, which would be such a huge disservice to him.

Very excited about the Evanuris and having to fight them! Also looking forward to uncovering more elven lore and maybe the origins of the blight.

I still think that having Solas partially succeed with his ritual would be so cool. It would allow for a soft reboot of the world and a mesh between the physical and spiritual world, a bit like in The Legend of Korra. Not keeping my hopes high for this though, I doubt this is the direction they are going for.

All in all, I'm just happy we'll be returning to Thedas 😊 (and relieved that awful trailer really has nothing to do with the gameplay)

[slay00ryu]

make a guitarist mc with ronin, pretty please? with a cherry on top!

Serenading the Devil.

"Fuck!" You cursed when your car suddenly died.

This day was definitely one of the shitty day for you. And it all started when your now ex boyfriend texted you that you're kicked out of your band because he found a new partner and they will play on guitar instead of you, You wouldn't be this pissed if you were in the middle of a traffic while on the way to practice with said ex.

Now your car decided to betray you too and you stood in the middle of a unknown city.

"Shit" You got out of the car and decided to look around to see if there was a mechanic around or someone who could check you car. You took only your most important possessions, your phone, keys, headphones, wallet and your electric guitar. Were there more important things than your guitar? For a normal person maybe, but you are a tragic musician so you're definitely out of the norm.

You were walking for a while until you spotted something that looked like a mechanic's workshop. The sound of your combat boot was so loud that even before you called out for anyone, a tall man with style similar to your and plum hair entered the workshop from the back.

"What 're ya looking for?" His voice reached your ears and you saw him wiping his motor oil stained hands into an even dirtier cloth.

"Well, my car died on my way to uh... somewhere. It's not too far from here so would you care to have a look?' Damn you sound like some awkward teenager even in mid twenties.

The mechanic who for some reason wore a beanie with fake horns chuckled at your answer and grabbed something that looked like a big toolbox from one of the tables.

"Guide the way then, rock star." The nickname sounded so out of place after the sudden notice you received this morning but instead of sulking you told him to follow you.

Your way to your car wasn't as silent as you thought it would be, he asked you about the pins on your guitar case and the two of you were discussing the newest songs of your favourite bands.

"Hah, this baby will be alive and well after I'm done with it." He said after he checked what was going on under the car hood. "Care to play me something while i work? Who knows, maybe I'll give you a discount if I like the song." He chuckled, the look he gave you was challenging.

And would you give up on a challenge? Oh course not.

You ended up sitting on the dusty and dirty ground. playing a tune that would sound a hundred times better if your guitar was plugged to a column. You could see the guy tapping in rhythm with your song, a song you wrote some time ago to play on your first ever concert, an idea that was now more foreign than ever.

You played a few more songs, most created by the metal bands you were talking about with the mysterious mechanic.

"it should be as good as ever now." His voice and the sound of the car hood closing caught your attention.

You put your guitar back to its case and stood up.

"So how much do I pay?" You asked, pulling your wallet from your hoodie's pocket.

"It'll be 45$ or 35$ in addition with your name and phone number." He winked at you and you could feel your face heat up.

You gave him the 35$ and put your unlocked phone in his hand.

"You're a flirt, aren't you?" You crossed your arms over your chest while he was typing his number into your phone and then calling himself.

"An annoying one at that." He chuckled and returned your phone to you. "Ronin, huh?' You looked him up and down.

"Yeah, sick name right? And how do they call you darlin'?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Y/N, but for you I can be a rock star." You replied in a little more flirtatious tone. "Thanks for the repair."

Look at you! Serenading the Devil right after a break up.

[asleepinawell]

i'm in some sort of Mood about finishing the kh series (for a given value of finished) since I've been playing it since kh1 on ps2 a million years ago but instead of dealing with that i'm going to write my mini retrospective of the titles based on my replay

rest below the line

kh1

story - 7/10. it wasn't the most interesting but it was the first and laid the groundwork for the series. maleficent had a lot of screentime which is always a big plus. love her evil ass. it's also the start of the 'kairi never gets to do anything ever and gets kidnapped every time she tries' persisting problem in the whole series

gameplay - 6/10. feels a bit clunky now in comparison to some of the newer ones. it was harder than some later ones, but mostly because of wonky control issues and not great boss fights. but it's very playable and fun still. mushrooms do a little dance and shake their butt at you. i will never not feel nostalgic about traverse town music. THANK GOD YOU CAN SKIP THE PRE FIGHT CUTSCENES ON RETRIES NOW OH MY GOD YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE ONE BEFORE THE DARK RIKU FIGHT WAS LIKE TEN MINUTES AND BACK IN THE DAY YOU HAD TO REWATCH IT EVERY TIME AAHHHHJHHH *i am tranquilized and removed from the room*

re: chain of memories

story - 8/10. i love the focus on the organization 13 internal drama. bitches are running around bad mouthing and killing each other. larxene is a constant joy. marluxia is pretty and goes swish swish and makes flowers. axel was an instant fave. zexion is a shitty twink and i do so love shitty twinks. there was some disney stuff too i guess

gameplay - 2/10. the first time i played it my brother was crashing at my apartment and watching me play and got very into making cool deck combos. so i had him do that for me and i did the combat and the fun sibling shenanigans got me through it. this time i quit after thirty minutes and watched the cutscenes on youtube. it's just so repetitive and meh

358/2 days

story - 7/10. that's too many soras! put some back! story was a bit slow at times but i did enjoy seeing the daily life of the organization and axel/saïx handling their divorce so so well. needed more demyx

gameplay - it's packaged as a movie now so i did not replay the game and can't fairly rate it. i remember it being not the best combat but not terrible for a ds game

kh2

story - 8/10. it would get higher but the fact the beginning is incomprehensible if you haven't played com and 358 loses it some points....i had not played com when i got kh2 and boy howdy. it made more sense on the replay of course and yeah it's a good story. obsessed with how maleficent remains one of the main recurring characters in this series and just Does Shit from time to time because why not. god forbid women do anything etc. also the gay divorce continues to go terribly. saïx is handling this so well i say as he goes into berserk mode again. needed more riku screentime tho

gameplay - 9/10. huge upgrade from previous titles. it was very fun and fluid. the form shifts were a great addition. there were a lot of options but it didn't feel overwhelming or like it disrupted combat. my only real complaint was it felt a bit too on rails at some parts... like cutscene, battle, walk three steps repeat. oh and i hated the gummi missions but i am a gummi hater in general. oh also antiform was amazing. sora can turn into a feral creature... as a treat

birth by sleep

story - 10/10. fuck i love birth by sleep. aqua my beloved daughter who is the most terrifying keyblade master ever. terra my troubled son who got fucked over by shitty adults on an hourly basis. ven the thousand year old little kid who has never caught a break once. also hey it's xehanort and he also has ex husband drama. only note is that aqua should get to say fuck

gameplay - 10/10. the command deck was right up my alley and command forms were the best form gameplay they've done. i loved how all three kids had a unique style and abilities. i loved melding cards and gems to make new cards. i enjoyed playing monopoly. i thought it was the best game in the series when i first played it and that remains true

re:coded

story - 6/10. it was okay? it was largely a rehash but did add a few things. my friend and i kept saying welcome back alvis whenever data riku used a computer so that was fun

gameplay - this was also presented as a movie in the bundle so i won't score it. i don't even remember how it was from way back when i played it

dream drop distance

story- 9/10. the games that switch between multiple perspectives seem to be my favorites and i think it's partly that it makes the story more interesting. the time traveling norts were a bit wtf but that's just an inescapable part of the series. inspired me to get twewy which i will be playing next. MEOW WOW!!!!!

gameplay - 9/10. flowmotion was really neat and fit the style well. i loved the pokemon aspect so much you have no idea. i was a little sad you couldn't meld command cards but it would have been Too Much with all the other stuff going on. a few fights near the end had some really dumb mechanics (the type where when you look up a guide it just says good luck) but there were also some excellent ones. i do think it lost a little something in the port because the stylus on 3ds was important. however there is nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing meow wow hit xehanort with giant bouncy orbs so I'm willing to forgive it a lot

union x/back cover/dark road

story - 9/10. i was shocked how much i enjoyed the story of these. i got very invested and i was only watching the cutscenes, not playing. really interesting world building and the master of masters was an instant fave. one of the only kh titles that passes (barely) the bechdel somehow. also could be retitled as kh: dead kids, because boy did a lot of kids die! extra points for maleficent managing to set major events in motion twice and being very eh whatever about it. love her for that. and the backstory of the xehanort/eraqus divorce, of course. i love a good divorce

gameplay - didn't play this one, just watched ELEVEN HOURS of cutscenes. no longer available which is hilarious considering how much important lore is in it that is referenced in kh3. hopefully they make it into a single player offline game someday with better gameplay

fragmentary passage

story - 8/10. very short but filled in some gaps. i love aqua so i was predisposed to love this one

gameplay - 8/10. it felt like a rough draft for kh3 and that meant it didn't have all the annoying extra crap kh3 added in and played pretty smoothly. i liked the little puzzles. it was a unique game and i enjoyed it more than i expected

kh3

story - 6/10. the fact i had to sit through entire disney movies worth of cutscenes brings the score way down. we did not need to see 3 musical numbers in frozen. if i wanted that I'd watch the movie. i just wanted to play the damn game. the majority of the game is sora got benched and has to get his groove back which was very disappointing for the climatic finale to the series. once i got into the end game though it was much better (i would rate the later game stuff way above a 6 which just makes my frustration with earlier stuff worse). re:mind added in the bits i felt were missing and i came away satisfied overall with the wrap up. axel/saïx had divorce arc three and then got back together finally 🏳️‍🌈🥂🎉. xehanort/eraqus also got back together as they fucked off to be gay in the afterlife. finally we are free of the norts (OR ARE WE???) and the master and the foretellers are slated to come back next from the looks of things. maleficent continues to hang out in the wings waiting for opportunities to #girlboss and I'm excited too see what cataclysmic events she sets off next

so that's it. i did watch the brief melody of a memory scenes but there wasn't too much new there. i may watch the cs from the missing link beta at some point. otherwise it's back to my life long journey of waiting for the next title to drop

gameplay - 5/10. ugh. i bought the game when it came out but between the full length disney movies and the over saturated gameplay gimmicks i didn't get far. this time i powered through and by the end i was enjoying it for the most part because I'd figured out what things to ignore and how to avoid them. attractions were the worst addition to gameplay ever. everything was too flashy. way too many instances of being locked in a "cool" transition animation instead of actually doing combat which broke up the flow of things. i missed the command deck and how much it let you customize your play style. i didn't like the keys being locked to command forms as much as the bbs forms since it meant if you had a keyblade with better stats but hated the special on it you were kinda fucked. this became less of a problem as the game went but was still annoying. overall felt like a step back from the others. they tried to do too much. oh also why were there ten thousand instances of having to learn new controls for some new mini game in every area??? just let me hit things i am begging you. it really felt like they went for cool spectacles over satisfying gameplay

general notes on all of them: i enjoyed the story much more this time due to being able to play them in order. the fact they all released on different platforms originally made the complicated story even more confusing since i couldn't afford to buy a new system every time a new one came out. i really hope they veer away from that practice in the future but i kinda doubt it especially since they've got another mobile game lined up already. while the disney stories were fun early on it felt like the story outgrew them (except for the characters who were in the main story as well like mickey and maleficent) and they were kinda a drag by 3. i doubt they can move away from those since they're the whole gimmick of the series but it would be better imo. deeply worried they'll start bringing in newer disney acquisitions.

one of my biggest complaints about the series has always been how few female characters there are and how little many of them are used. it got slightly better later in the series but overall was still not great, especially for kairi. i kept wondering if they added stuff for her in re:mind due to complaints about this.... the dlc felt like an apology for several things tbh. aqua was great but she shouldn't be the only one and even she got upstaged in kh3 when she's supposed to be the third most powerful keyblade master. weirdly enough maleficent was probably the best written female character. really wild how much she wove into the plot and affected events so much without even trying to (especially in union x). she should fire pete though (i think she should hire demyx)

I'd like to see them let you play as characters other than sora more often since that was always really neat (he's had a billion games to himself now). I'd love a kairi and aqua game but i can imagine square and disney both clutching their pearls over female protagonists

something i noticed was that playing them when i was older i liked sora much better. when i started the series as a teenager i found him annoying. as an adult i have more sympathy and tolerance for teenaged boys who are Going Through It. growth or something

[starshineandbooks]

Bottom of the river (long way down) Character intros [A-Z]

This is for my fic Bottom of the river (long way down). The masterpost for this can be found here.

There are some ocs but since the premise is Timetravel of the future kids it can't be helped.

Content under the cut

Agent Carolina

An ex-freelancer with an air of confidence. Carolina may join the party late, but she isn’t any less important. While she left without a goodbye, she dosen’t leave the others hanging. Ambitious and willing to get her hands dirty, she makes for a good leader. Her experience in combat is plenty helpful, too.

"The past doesn't define who you are. It just gives you the starting point of who you're going to be."

Agent Washington

Another ex-freelancer, Washington, is relearning how to live now that his entire world view has been destroyed. Having to recover from everything to do with the Meta and now facing the loss of half his new group is enough to make anyone feel stressed. He's going to do anything to get the rest of the team back safe.

"And that's fine. This is fine."

Aspen Church

Adopted child of Carolina and nonbinary. Calmer than the majority of their friendgroup and skilled in mixed martial arts, Aspen is always there to support their friends.

"Don't you dare ask how bad it can get, I promise you don't want the answer."

Ben Tucker

The oldest of the twins, son of Washington and Tucker. Ben loves some good fun and often gets in trouble. He can hold his own, though, between his wrestling ability and love of blades, he is anything but defenseless.

"Come on, I bet you can't back flip from there, chicken!"

Cassie Tucker

The younger twin, daughter of Wash and Tucker. She's always trying to keep her brother out of trouble, though she should really worry about her tendency to get into fights.

"Say that again, I thought I heard you ask for me to kick your bigoted ass."

Dexter Grif

Grif isn't inclined to do a whole lot unless he sees a benefit he likes. He's often next to Simmons, usually complaining and / or slacking off. He has a foul mouth and a love of snack food. This war and the rations are wearing on his will to do shit.

"I'm gonna spit on you, Simmons!"

Dick Simmons

Simmons is a cyborg with a tax machine for his butt and a kiss ass. Trying to deal with being promoted without warning and the loss of his commanding officer he falls into the comfort that is Grif. Or at least the bickering that Grif provides.

"See? That's what you get for arguing with science, you stupid bitch."

Doc

Doc is a medical officer with questionable methods of healing. A pacifist who has a homicidal A.I sharing his body, he has a lot on his mind. But he has a good heart and is trying his best to get everyone home alive.

"So what's up, is somebody hurt or what?"

Epsilon

An A.I. program that's all the memories of torture and pain from the original program he split off of and the man he was based on. Epsilon is often called Church, and has a smart mouth but a deep loyalty to the simtroopers and Carolina. He is an asshole alright, but don't let him fool you he's got a plan.

"My sincerest apologies, I had no idea you had turned into such a whiny bitvh while I was gone."

Franklin Delano Donut

Donut is the heart of Red team, or so he says. He has a way with words to make anything a euphemism. He's energetic and unashamed of his emotions. He swears he speaks Spanish but he really should leave that behind. Will his love of glitter end up being helpful this time?

“If I can’t beat off a room full of dudes, what have I been training for?”

Lavernius Tucker

Tucker is probably the most capable non freelancer in the group. He's a flirt with a love for his shitty catchphrase. Now, he's stepping up to fill a role because the others need a leader, and he guesses it's him.

"I have glorious calves and a miserable fucking life!"

Lani Grif-Simmons

The daughter of Grif and Simmons, she's got too much attitude. She has authority problems and only listens when she wants to. A mouth to rival any of the adults who raised her and an intelligence she often ignores. Lani is capable but falls victim to bickering often.

"Shut the fuck up, I didn't ask for your dumb ass opinion you dipshit."

Lopez

Lopez is tired of everything and everyone. He only speaks Spanish but understands everyone around him. He would be totally okay alone but no one will leave him alone. His creator is insane.

"eso es porque está loco."

Michael J Caboose

Caboose is not the brightest highlighter in the bunch, often deemed childish for his behavior. His thought process is impossible to replicate, and his love runs deep. He makes friends wherever he goes, but it is a hazard to his team.

"Do you think freckles would look silly in a hat?"

Sarge

The eccentric older man with roots in the south. He created Lopez, loves to fuck with Grif, and has a deep sense of pride. He adores his shotgun and really likes to tinker. It's a miracle he hasn't died.

"I wanna know what in the name of Benedict Arnold Palmer is going on around here!"

Violet Dufranse

The only daughter of Doc and Donut, she's cheerful and confident. She's got a real talent as a pitcher in softball amd will occasionally hurl things in self defense. Violet enjoys gardening and is often found near one of her dad's in her off time. While she prefers not to fight, she will.

"Can someone explain the grif cubes to me one more time? I'm still confused on the activation method."

Zach James

Caboose's nephew, he's calm and reserved. Zach is about to start his medical school after a year abroad, he wants to go to college with the rest of his friends. He's patient, but he has the same height his uncle does, very tall. He is the keeper of his friends and likes to maintain that he gets dragged into chaos.

"If you're going to be stupid, at least take the first aid kit. Please."

[paradisetemporarilymisplaced]

So I was being a basic bitch the other day and listening to my true crime podcasts when it occurred to me just how suspicious Nile’s “death” would look to everyone not in the Guard, leading me to a train of thought that, 2200 words later, absolutely got away from me but I can’t let go so I’m inflicting it on all of you!

To set the stage, we know the movie takes place over approximately a week. Here’s what happens to Nile from the military’s point of view:

She dies is very seriously injured

She heals without a scratch

Just before she’s supposed to be shipped out to Germany, she vanishes, leaving two men concussed (and presumably reporting being knocked out by a woman with short hair wearing civilian clothes)

She goes AWOL for several days

They get word from the CIA that she is to be reported killed in action (details unclear)

So, at the beginning of this very weird week, the USMC has to tell Nile’s family of her death critical injury. What her family was told depends on how long she was dead – a Google search tells me that family will be notified in person within 8 hours of a soldier’s death, but we don’t know how long her first death lasted. For an injury, however, they’d get a phone call to notify them and the unit would arrange for them to visit as soon as the soldier is transferred out of a combat zone. Like I remember when I was in high school, a guy from my church who was a Marine was really seriously injured in a helicopter crash in Iraq and from what I could tell, his parents were told immediately and were flown out to Germany to see him, so it stands to reason that Nile’s family would have been informed relatively quickly after her throat was slashed, one way or another.

And then, she goes AWOL. Her family would be notified while the USMC tried to figure out where she went, not least because the military would want to know if she’s contacted them. (And it’s possible that her family may have been on the way to Germany to see her since we know that’s where she was supposed to go!) So for several days:

Nile’s mom and brother have no idea where she is

They know she was seriously injured and most certainly should not have been moving around on her own

They can’t get a hold of her

The military can’t tell them anything

And the next thing they know for sure is that she was “killed in action.” After being injured and vanishing into thin air. And they presumably cannot produce her body or any concrete evidence of her death. In any case, something sketchy is going on, so they’re like. SMELLS LIKE A MILITARY COVERUP.

In a surprise to probably no one, there is a well-documented legacy of mysterious US military deaths, particularly of women of color (TW for sexual assault in these links). The cases of LaVena Johnson and Vanessa Guillenin particular have made national news because of their families’ persistence in seeking justice. Likewise, Nile is a Black woman, and her mom and brother are most certainly hypercognizant of (a) state violence against Black people and (b) these high-profile cases of suspicious military deaths. So her family are seriously side-eyeing the situation, knowing that (a) the military has a serious incentive (and a documented history) of covering up things that make them look bad and (b) nothing about Nile’s disappearance and supposed death are adding up.

And Andy’s right. Nile does come from warriors. And you know who else does? Her brother.

Don’t get me wrong. Nile’s mom would absolutely not back down. She’d know something was up and want to get to the bottom of it. But based on what I know about Gen X parents (mine), they’re not the most technologically savvy. Like they can use the internet, but they didn’t grow up with it the way we young millennials and Gen Z did. So Nile’s brother takes the lead. And what do zillennials do best?

Social media.

Nile’s brother starts going hard on any site he can, trying to get the word out to see if anyone knows what happened to his sister. He starts a Reddit thread. He starts a Facebook group. He reaches out to the media and true crime bloggers and podcasters à la Sarah Turney, getting loud and being a general nuisance in hopes of getting some answers. He gets his friends and Nile’s friends involved. Maybe eventually Dizzy, Jay, and others from Nile’s unit hear about it and reach out, telling him what they saw and how weird it all was. He’s drumming up interest, and soon “Nile Freeman” becomes a household name (at least among the true crime fans).

Copley is, of course, trying his best, but at this point there is just so much that it’s impossible for him to scrub everything. Sure, he can erase new footage of Nile and the Guard, but what can he do about Reddit threads and podcast episodes that are speculating something weird has happened? Maybe he could hack the sites and shut those things down, but honestly, that’s the last thing he’d want to do, because that only adds weight to the theory that Nile’s disappearance is a military coverup. So eventually he has to tell Andy what’s going on.

Andy, obviously, does not take the news well. However, she is also completely computer illiterate, because that’s Booker’s job and he’s the only one who ever bothered to learn what the internet is in any meaningful way. (She probably calls Booker for advice, and for the record, I think Booker would have no qualms about shutting down conspiracy threads, tinhats be damned, but Copley is too concerned about the consequences. He’s ex-CIA for crying out loud, he knows how it’ll look if they scrub every mention of Nile’s name from the internet.) Maybe she confers with Joe and Nicky but, let’s be honest, they’d be equally unhelpful. So at this point, she knows they have to bring in Nile.

But the thing about Nile is that she, too, knows how to use the internet (duh). Aside from her being a young millennial/digital native, we know from the cave scene where she’s giving Booker suggestions on how to track Copley that she clearly is even more computer savvy than the average person. And for that reason she almost definitely took over the day-to-day tech stuff after Booker’s exile. So I think it would be foolish to expect her to be unaware of what’s happening. She’s not contacting her family or posting on the message boards or anything, but she knows what’s up. So Copley and the team probably sit her down to “break the news,” but we know the girl does not have a poker face (see: literally shooting herself in the foot and not being able to play it cool whatsoever) and cracks immediately, telling them she’s seen everything about her case – she’s not interacting with any of it, she certainly didn’t instigate anything, but she knows. (And she is so goddamn proud of her brother.)

At this point, I’d like to pause and consider Nile’s role in the overall narrative of this movie. She’s set up as a foil to Andy, obviously, but she’s also a foil to Booker. Booker, who, like Andy, is a serious pessimist, but who, unlike Andy, still has very fresh memories and trauma associated with being the new kid, which have destroyed him. In his mind (and Andy’s), if Nile communicates with her family, she’ll become just like him in a century or two – bitter, alone, and stuck with her grief and memories of watching her family die and knowing they died resenting her. It’s a small sample size, but this is the only experience they have to go off of.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

There’s been a lot of discussion of TOG being a fundamentally queer movie – a group of people brought together because of something inherent about themselves that is different, that must be hidden, that causes others to hate, fear, and reject them. Booker’s backstory is the archetypal traumatic “coming out” story – his family learns who he is, hate him for it, and attempt to cast him out of their lives. He’s stuck with his trauma, his pain, his loss, and it consumes him.

But what if Nile’s family would be the opposite? What if her “coming out” to them as immortal is met with acceptance, love, celebration? What if her family is just overjoyed to have her back, and they don’t care what the circumstances are? I'm reminded of this incredible post from @shitty-old-guard-deaths a while back, where Nile’s mother hits Booker with a frying pan because “my baby let me believe she was dead for FIVE YEARS based on your bad advice???” (which may or may not have inspired this whole tangent). Nile takes the advice of someone who did the same thing she wants to do because she doesn’t want to risk her family’s rejection. She wants the good memories with her family and is afraid that showing them her true self will bring her unbearable pain, forever replacing those memories. But, with high risk comes high reward.

Anyway. Nile and the team are trying to come up with a plan for how to handle this whole thing, but she’s not really participating because she’s too afraid to hope. Until finally, quickly, so she doesn’t lose her nerve, she suggests she reach out to them, knowing that, realistically, that’s the only solution before things snowball even further out of control. The team is shocked, but realize that she has a point. They decide that Copley should actually be the first point of contact, posing as a US government official to talk with them and test the waters.

So Copley goes to Nile’s family’s house to talk with her mom and brother. They’re probably distrustful and apprehensive, but nonetheless secretly ecstatic that their work has paid off. They talk and review all of the information that they’ve collected, including testimonials from the people on Nile’s base and recent sightings (along with photos) of Nile (with the same three people) over the last few years that people have sent them but they haven’t posted publicly. At this point, Copley’s like, yeah this is about to blow up, we gotta put our cards on the table. He convinces them to come with him to some safe house/black site/whatever he can get that is technologically impenetrable (I’m picturing them in like, an interrogation room at a police station kind of deal), takes their phones, locks the doors, and brings in Nile.

What follows is the most delightful reunion scene of all time, bringing Joe, Nicky, and even Andy to tears as they watch and listen from outside the room. With Copley’s help, Nile tells her mom and brother about her immortality and what’s been going on since she died (within reason, of course), and they are thrilled. They don’t understand why (because no one does) but they don’t question it and they see it as a gift from God – she’s been resurrected, she will live, and she has a purpose. Her mother and brother are so happy to see her again and are willing to agree with pretty much anything to stay in her life as long as they can.

So. They set up some complicated agreement (they bring in the other three for support/intimidation as needed) setting the terms of their relationship. They swear Nile’s family to secrecy, maybe bringing up the lab to show how high the stakes are, and they readily agree. They come up with some cover story for Nile’s brother to share on the message boards (maybe that the government has opened an investigation but because it’s an open case he has to shut it all down? Tells people to direct their tips somewhere else? Something to that effect). There’s still speculation, of course, but without Nile’s brother at the helm providing the energy, the hype dies down as news stories are wont to do without any movement. And Nile’s family goes to work for the team. The experience has taught them that Copley can’t possibly do everything himself, especially when it comes to social media, so Nile’s brother takes the lead on the day-to-day tracking/social media while Copley and her mom focus on finding jobs and scrubbing their traces afterward.

So there you have it: Nile gets to integrate her biological family into her found family and spend the rest of their lives with them as it should be, Copley gets some badly needed help managing the reality of social media, the team finally has a positive narrative surrounding outsiders Knowing About Them AND about interacting with people from their previous life, and the audience gets the happy ending to this very lovely and very queer story to counteract the pain associated with Booker’s family.

Plus, you know, I’m a sucker for both a good government conspiracy theory and for Nile getting every good thing she deserves.

[dingdongitsbees]

lilac eyes 💜 | shinsou x reader Part I: what a pleasure

[Part I: what a pleasure] | Part II: to look into | Part III: eyes | Part IV: like yours

You just wanted to live for one night at a party with Jirou, though it seemed your night was going to be more eventful than you anticipated, and you welcomed it, well him at least, with open arms.

↪ WC: 3.9k ↪ Ao3 Link

Warnings: it’s NOT nsfw but there is dirty dancing, innuendos, and a LOT of flirting, drinking, don’t read this if you don’t want to see shitty ex Bakugou

Status: complete

BNHA Masterlist | Main Masterlist

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”          – F. Scott Fitzgerald

.

.

.

Music filled your veins, the bass pumping your heart all through your body. It’s amazing what a little music and some drinks can do to you. Letting you forget everything for a moment. Letting your arms glide through the air and your hips sway with no real plan, guided by instinct and the flow of a universal language.

You crashed down onto the couch, almost spilling your drink, letting air back into your lungs. Jirou sat down next to you, complaining about how her new doc martins were killing her feet. You had told her that she shouldn’t be breaking in those leather shoes through hours of dance, you knew from experience. But did she listen? No. You winced thinking about the blisters she was bound to get by tomorrow morning.

You took a sip of your drink. “How are your ratings going?” Anyone with a pro-hero friend knew that asking about their rating was the number one easiest way to get them to talk about something else. Jirou was no exception.

“I’m doing alright,” she started, “I’ve moved into the 30s range which is good.”

“What do you mean “pretty good”? That’s amazing for any hero only a few years in.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, just feels like less when you came from my class.”

Ah, the infamous A class of UA. The amount of shit they had gotten themselves into while your childhood friend attended made you glad you never tried to go the hero route. But out of it, the monster generation was born. Giving birth to pro-heroes like Midoriya Izuku, Todoroki Shoto, Uraraka Ochaco, Asui Tsuyu, and, well, Bakugou Katsuki.

You downed a bit more of your drink, quick to get that last name out of your head. This would be a night of making good memories, not remembering bad ones. You were thankful the blonde in question wasn’t meant to be coming tonight. You could feel the wavering stares every now and again from his close friends but not enough to bother you. As long as he wasn’t here, it was manageable.

Next to you, Jirou rambled on, letting out her complaints about the hero ranking system and how it was all pointless anyway. Nothing you hadn’t heard before. You scanned around the room, looking at new and familiar faces. Uraraka was talking to Iida and Midoriya by the kitchen door, her face red from the alcohol already. Tokoyami and Shoji seemed to be talking about something passionately in the corner, probably about some band you’d never heard of before. And you glanced over to see an ecstatic Denki, waving his hands around and letting out sound effects, the person he was talking to however, was not someone you had seen before.

His indigo hair stuck in the air in tufts, looking incredibly soft to touch, even the short hairs of his undercut were the same colour, it was natural. He sported a lazy grin and eyebags that somehow made him look better. But his style? Oh my. It was casually all black, a hoodie and pants and platform combat boots, but with silver everywhere. Chunky silver rings adorned his fingers, some in the shapes of monster heads and creatures, around his neck hung thick chains that you felt like pulling on, and up the sides of his ears were an abundance of piercings.

He was magnificently put together, and most importantly very, very hot.

He let out a few chuckles at whatever story Denki was spouting, you could barely hear it, but its deepness struck your soul. You looked away, scared to get caught.

You tapped Jirou on the shoulder, snapping her out of her rant she was still somehow in. “Who’s that?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “Who?”

You cocked your head over to his direction, taking another sip from your drink nervously, embarrassed to meet her eye. She squinted before widening them, pursing her lips, trying to hold back her shit-eating grin.

“That’s Shinsou Hitoshi.”

You glanced over quickly again, getting to match name to face. It suited him. Laid back and simple with a little something under the surface. How you were reading into just his name which he didn’t even get to choose himself was a wonder, but hot people let anyone go down that road.

“So, he’s uh, friends with Denki hm?”

She smiled. “He sure is.”

“So, can you…you know?” You could barely look at her.

She let out a few giggles. “I’ll see what I can do.”

You swirled your bottle around, watching the whirlpool it made.

“What do you want to know about him?” asked Jirou knowingly.

“Everything.”

She laughed and took another gulp of her drink. “He’s a super chill guy. He’s currently a more underground hero, so it’s not a surprise you haven’t seen him before or anything. He was at UA with the rest of us, but he didn’t get into the hero course immediately, he transferred in later cause the exam wasn’t made for his quirk.”

“What’s his quirk?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again, seemingly hesitant. You tilted your head in slight confusion, was it a secret from the general public or something? She took a good look at your face and seemingly made up her mind with a nod to herself.

“It’s brainwashing.”

You were both quiet for a moment. “Well, he doesn’t need to brainwashing to tell me what to do.”

Jirou roared with laughter, her drink sloshing, it apparently being the last thing she expected to come out of your mouth. Your face split into a grin. You glanced over again, wanting to take a moment to admire him once more, but came eye to eye with lilac.

Denki was no longer talking to him like he was a moment before, now talking to Sero about something letting the new man become distracted with something else. Or someone rather. You inhaled sharply, scared to look away. He leant his head to the side slowly, taking you in. His white pupils stared right into your soul. You knew his quirk was only brainwashing but part of you feared he could read minds too. He smirked.

You whipped you head back around to Jirou who had noticed the entire interaction. “Holy fuck,” you frantically whispered. “Holy fuck what do I do.”

“You don’t need to do anything.” Jirou looked back over your shoulder, a plan shining in her eyes.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

She raised a hand, waving for him to come over.

“You asshole.”

You stared ahead, suddenly incredibly interested in the necklace Jirou had on, trying to ignore the steps you could hear approaching. His boots thudded against the floor, counting down to your impending doom.

“Hey Jirou.” His voice sent shivers down your spine; it was far too deep to be fair. He may have been a hero, but everything about him should be illegal in your opinion.

But this was no time for cowardice. This was the time to meet a hot dude. You straightened your back, slipping on a calm and smooth façade, relaxing your hand that had been gripping onto your drink and turned your head to meet him.

“Hi,” he greeted simply, a small smile appearing.

“Hi.”

“I don’t believe we’ve met?”

“No, I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Shinsou Hitoshi, but you can just call me Toshi.”

“Lemaire Bronte, but you can just call me Bronte.”

His eyes looked down at you, considering you. He swung back his drink, maintaining eye contact. “Nice to meet you, Bronte.” The way your name rolled off his lips was literally unfair.

Jirou sent you a look that he most certainly caught, and you held back from elbowing her in the ribs.

She stood, bending her neck back and forth as you two watched her, knowing exactly what her plan was before she opened her mouth. “I’m just grabbing another drink; you guys want anything?”

You both shook your heads, quite obviously each having a drink in hand already. She gave a little wave and winked at you before making her way through the sea of people. You closed your eyes shut, gearing yourself up, and looked up the man.

“So…” you started, hoping he was better at conversations than you were. You starting sipping slowly on your drink.

“I saw you dancing before-”

You choked on your drink before he could even finish, your face burning. “You what?”

He held back a smile, not repeating himself. If he had been around for at least the hour before you starting talking, which was beginning to seem likely, it meant he had watched you shake ass for several ten-minute intervals.

“I see…” You swallowed. “And your thoughts?”

He poked his cheek with his tongue, his lips twitching up as he shrugged. “I thought you were good.”

“Oh?” You tilted your head and raised your eyebrows; your mouth tugged into a grin. “That’s it? And here I thought you were trying to flirt with me, Toshi.”

He chuckled, looking away and shaking his head. You tried to not let the vibration of his sound waves get to you, you were making sure it was his turn to get embarrassed.

“You caught me, you caught me.” He put his hands up in mock surrender. He took another swig of his drink and made direct eye contact, eyes half-lidded. “I just thought my real thoughts shouldn’t be said aloud.”

Goddamn. He was good at this.

You straightened your back, pushing yourself up as much as you could without getting off the couch. You put on the best innocent look you could, doe eyes and with a slight pout. “Are you not saying them because you don’t want me to hear? Or because you don’t want anyone else to?”

He leant down, his breath fanning your face gently. His white pupils never shifting from yours. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Fuck.

Against you better instinct, you gulped. He leant back up again and took a sip, having won yet again.

Jirou took her sweet time getting back, leaving you two alone to talk. It was hard to regain your composure, but he restrained himself from teasing you any further. He asked you questions, big and small about you, and listening to your answers with the same level of genuine interest each time. It was a refreshing change from your time with your ex to say the least.

He stayed standing, even though he was a teasing little shit he was still keeping his distance and respecting possible boundaries unless you made the first move. The small form of care made your heart skip a beat, but you were also too flustered to ask him to come closer or sit down and make himself comfortable. Words had never been your strong suit.

But as you continued talking, both of your demeanours seemed to brighten with every sentence. You asked him questions in return that he would reply with short answers which you would then get him to expand on. A flash of surprise would fly across his eyes each time before he indulged your request.

It was obvious to everyone in the room, you two included, that there was an instant connection, one that wasn’t just a shallow party meeting. This, to everyone who laid their eyes on it, knew it would continue far past this night. At least that was what you hoped every time he laughed at one of your stupid jokes or when his eyes examined you like you were an actual interesting person. Every word he spoke was so purposeful and thought out, never condescending or with malice ever. Perhaps the bar was low, but something about him just felt so different. You hoped he was thinking the same about you.

Jirou eventually came back, pursing her lips to hold back a smile. She looked to both of you individually and each of you sent a playful glare. She sat down on your right making the left side of the couch feel painfully empty. He still hadn’t sat down, waiting for an offer you would be too embarrassed to give.

You three continued talking, Jirou making a fun addition. Knowing the both of you, she had too many stories to tell the other, she always seemed to opt for the embarrassing ones though which would end with you hiding your head in your hands or him groaning and telling her to shut up.

“And then after she only had the shirt on, bloody Ba-” the words died in Jirou’s throat. She retreated into herself, bottle held to her chest.

The silence was deafening.

With wide eyes she telepathically sent you an apology which you just waved off with the flick of a hand and shaking your head, but your face had visibly darkened as you took a big swig of your drink.

Shinsou took notice of this, drinking up the tension that had been created. He wasn’t going to ask; it wasn’t his business even though he had a feeling whose name was about to be said. He was about to redirect the conversation onto something stupid he and Denki had gotten into when an elbow flew into his back.

In an instant his face was above yours, the only thing stopping it going forward was his forearm that had planted itself on the wall. The instinct of a trained hero. Your breath hitched as you looked into his eyes, you could feel his breath again, caressing your forehead.

“Sorry man!” called out a guy you didn’t know the name of.

Shinsou looked down at you for another moment, taking in your slowly dying form with his calculating gaze. He rose up again, pushing himself away with a subtle press of his fingers. Your eyes stayed on him as he told the guy not to worry, but Shinsou’s eyes didn’t leave yours either, not even glancing to the stranger.

You gulped. Jirou tried to force down her giggles.

“You can just, you can just sit down you know?” you said as un-squeakily as possible, though you still sounded like a fucking mouse.

He nodded shortly and plopped himself down next to you, still keeping a distance between the two of you. He needed to stop being respectful.

The three of you spoke quietly, both of them always directing the conversation back to you in some way, one because they were trying to wing-woman you, the other because they just wanted to get to know you.

Shinsou had his front to you, his back rested against the couch arm, drink meeting his mouth every now and again. He may have been keeping his distance, but his legs certainly were not. They were only a hair’s breadth away from your own. Every so often, usually right in the middle of you talking, he’d shift slightly, and his leg would bump into yours. Electricity would be sent through your nerves and combust your brain. You’d fumble, stutter, and lose your train of thought, trying to catch yourself as quickly as possible each time. With your face burning you’d look over to glare at him and he’d just be smirking behind his drink, raising his eyebrows like he was fucking innocent. It wouldn’t be so annoying if he weren’t so hot.

That’s it, you’d had enough of this losing battle.

You downed the rest of your drink and stood, rolling out your neck as you placed the bottle on a tiny side table.

“Come on you two,” you flashed a grin over your shoulder, “We’re going to dance.”

You had timed it pretty well to your own credit, getting up when one of your favourite songs had started to play, one you knew every word of and the placement of every beat. You had rocked out to it in your bedroom a thousand times before.

The other two followed after you, Jirou abandoning her drink like you, while Shinsou kept his in hand, he didn’t look like he’d be going all in like you and Jirou would do which always ended up with your drinks on the floor in the process. You grabbed onto a hand of theirs each, ignoring the tingling sensation that went up your arm as his cold rings met your skin. His hands were so big holy shit. He squeezed your hand and you tried not to pass out. 

You pulled them to the middle of the dancing crowd, finding a clear area where you could get down. All three of you swayed, Jirou and you with your hands in the air while Shinsou kept his empty hand in his pocket, watching you two in amusement. You dramatically pointed at both of them, mouthing the lyrics like your life depended on it.

The cheers and talking around you just morphed into the music, everything felt like it was one of the slow-motion shots of a party during a movie. Hair flying, jumping up and down but taking a minute to reach the ground again, the music feeling slow despite its fast nature.

You cracked your eyes open to see his and he just wore a light smile, forgetting the rest of the world with you and Jirou.

The song changed, the next being far too sensual to pass up on. You grinned at Jirou who immediately read your mind.

Ay, ay, ay, ay.

You leant over, hands on your knees, as you threw it back onto Jirou who placed one hand over your lower back and faked slapping your ass. Shinsou threw his head back and cackled, watching you two jokingly take it seriously, fluttering your eyes up your friend while she basically inhaled her bottom lip and raised her eyebrows looking like best re-enactment of a fuckboy you had ever seen.

But in between his laughs, when his eyes glanced back to yours, a hint of something a bit less innocent plagued them. You just smiled.

Jirou’s head flew up, scanning across the crowd while absentmindedly dancing with you. You leant into her ear asking what was up.

Using the lowest volume she could, she yelled over the music, “I think I saw Momo.”

You waved her off with a hand, mouthing to her to just see if it was in fact her. Jirou and Momo’s schedule had been so busy they barely saw each other anymore. She quickly glanced to Shinsou then back to you, asking if you’d be okay but you just rolled your eyes and shoved her away.

You spun around to Shinsou, both of you were fairly close now, the bodies around you forcing you closer together until you were only at arm’s length. He tilted his head and looked at you. He offered a hand, and with a mock gesture of surprise, you took it, grinning as he spun you around. He just sipped his drink as you turned, watching you with a smile tugging at his lips. You stopped, your back faced him but your eyes peaking over your shoulder into his.

The sultry bridge of the song began to play. Your hand still in his, you wiggled your hips before slut dropping to the ground. His eyes flew open, you tried not to laugh. You placed your other hand on your thigh as you grooved on the ground, bouncing on the balls of your feet as he drank you up.

As the chorus starting kicking up again, he started to raise the hand that held yours. You swayed your hips as you rose, dragging your body up his torso, your spare hand trailing up his leg for good measure. You took your time as he looked at you half-lidded, you felt so good, had never felt so desired while simultaneously feeling so comfortable. Something about him just put you at ease.

When you were fully standing again, your hand stayed in his while your other dug into the meat his of thigh. He bit his lip as you leant back into him, a smirk still dancing on your cheeks. You swayed together, practically glued to his chest.

Eventually you brought the hand enclosed in his down and to your waist, letting him hold you and take more control of the movement. It was like his body rippled, movement flowed like water from his limbs, his body rolling in sync with yours, a bottle still somehow un-spilt in his spare hand.

Your eyes never left each other, in your own little world. No one else existed except for you two and the music.

He raised his drink to his lips, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. He let the head of the bottle pop out of his mouth with an “ah” and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He tilted his head to the side in a silent question and you nodded. He put the bottle to your lips and tipped it back so you could get the last drops. When you had swallowed it all you kissed the top of it and he chuckled, the vibrations in his chest reverberating into yours. His thumb went across your lower lip and chin with one swipe, taking all the stray drops and your dignity.

You couldn’t tell what was making your face burn anymore. Well you could, you just didn’t want to admit it.

You narrowed your eyes playfully, sending a joking “fuck you” across the string connecting you together. He just smiled.

His head raised, cutting eye contact with you. You followed his eyeline to see a pouting Jirou making her way over, sulking too much to even mouth a joke about you two across the crowd. You and Shinsou disconnected, trying to make your way towards her. He helped you squeeze through the jumping bodies, letting you stay holding onto his hand. Your other hand gripped weakly to his hoodie sleeve not wanting to lose him.

He glanced back and to your bewilderment, pink dusted his cheeks. After all of that dancing, the teasing and flirting, this was what made him flustered? Cute.

Jirou finally came into range and she let out a dramatic cry of disappointment.

“It wasn’t her,” she whined. “Just another black-hair girl. She was not impressed that I had ripped her off her boyfriend that she was making out with.”

Laughter burst out of you and Shinsou, shoulders shaking at her rashness.

“You idiot,” you managed to get out.

“Shut up.”

All three of you grabbed some new drinks so you could help Jirou drown her sorrows and made your way back to the couch. You all plopped down, laughing at how Jirou was describing how pissed the girl looked when she just stopped.

You and Shinsou both furrowed your eyebrows while Jirou’s eyes were saucers looking down at her phone. She looked to you, breath a bit too short for comfort.

“Hey uh, how about we move to a different room yeah?”

You placed a hand on her arm trying to calm down her fidgeting. She swallowed and shoved her phone into her jacket pocket, craning her head over to the hallway where it broke off into different rooms, looking for an escape. She chugged down at least half of her new drink and glanced to her right.

You followed her gaze, scanning over the faces, some you knew and some you didn’t. You spotted an equally stressed Denki who immediately looked away from you when you made eye contact with him.

You didn’t get what the problem was until someone walked through the front door, getting cheers and slaps on the back in greeting, it being none other than Bakugou Katsuki.

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a/n: thank you for reading! this miniseries will be placed over one night of you two together and the shenanigans that you get up to with a boatload of flirting in between

BNHA Masterlist | Main Masterlist

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[Part I: what a pleasure] | Part II: to look into | Part III: eyes | Part IV: like yours

[vaguely-concerned]

The Mandalorian Chapter 12 Reactions: Mando goes on a self care sidequest with friends and now the Razor Crest can fly again

- before we talk about ANYTHING else I have to mention once again: 

shut UP they have a statue for IG-11 in the town square!!!!! right outside the school like he’s guarding it!!! I am  c r y i n g

- that opening scene was Everything; I have had exactly this type of conversation with my dad so many times when I was a kid and he was fixing up our about-to-fall-apart house (though he’s an electrician so he wouldn’t have let me within fifteen kilometers of anything electrical that was still powered lol. it’s okay tho let’s just assume that star wars tech has extra fail safes for these things that we don’t, the baby is clearly fine)  

callout post for Din Djarin: does not own furniture, literally sits on a crate in the middle of the cargo hold to eat dinner, has presumably been living like this for decades, help him 

them sipping soup perfectly in sync 😭😭😭 (for some reason I find it so funny that din lifts up and then lowers the helmet for every mouthful fsaldkfhjsadfh it’s such a... I almost want to say dainty? way of doing it and my heart is full of so much affection)   

I wonder if they’ve been eating together like this for a while or if it’s din doing just a tiny bit of testing his boundaries now that he knows there are different schools of thought on the helmet thing to see how he feels about it? the baby is extremely curious, but that could also be because he’s seen people take the  helmet off completely now and made the connection that presumably his dad has a face above the chin under there too lol 

-

grandpa greef... things I didn’t know I needed but am delighted to get

the way the mando music goes soft and relaxed and almost playful when din spots greef and cara? fcking kills me ludwig göranson going for my throat once again

 - 

“hmmm why isn’t this working... the puppy eyes usually work on dad eventually this is unprecedented & concerning” 

a baby committing baby crimes through the force and getting away with it mostly scot-free... delightful, wonderful in every way    

‘batuu!’ ;_________; baby has a word for food?

- 

din’s Dad Instincts kicking in... I’m emotional over how casually protective he is with things like this, and that he showed signs of it even before meeting the baby (he’s also the last one to stay behind on the platform to make sure the rest of them make it out safely before they start running.... your honor im love this man more than anything he is Dad)

that soft steady protective-but-not-possessive masculinity baBEY 

- I am entranced by the difference between din’s fighting style in the last episode -- when he was continually on the back foot and out of sync with the people he fought with -- and in this episode, where he’s back in one man army mode. (he does take on sort of a protective role when he fights with friends -- he’s not quite fighting with them all the time he’s more like a shepherding dog circling them and making sure they’re okay lol) turns out he fights much better with -- for! -- people he actually trusts and knows and likes and who aren’t manipulating him huh :)   

- the mythrol dude says in the first episode that he’s a ‘fledgling’, and it makes everything about him so much funnier when you assume he’s his species equivalent of a teenager/twentysomething fsdfsdjkfhsd (he oh so 100% sold din out at the beginning there tho :( the most charitable interpretation is that he didn’t quite know the scope of it -- he did seem just as surprised as the rest of them that gideon isn’t dead, so maybe he thought that weird alien mechanic dude wanted to know about the crest for more mundanely nefarious reasons?)

they are kind of shitty towards him tho I feel a bit bad for him haha 

- at least din knows moff gideon is still alive now and can take appropriate precautions as far as possible? on the other hand he doesn’t know about the tracker and I am so scared help  

- man I wish gina carano wasn’t such a godawful person so I could appreciate cara dune’s overarms and interesting character development in peace but as it stands... yeah 

- @ all the people whining about when we get to ahsoka... meet me in the ring for dishonorable combat I am smol and sort of skinny these days but I have decades of pent up rage and no compunctions about fighting dirty on my side lol 

listen... I love ahsoka as much as the next person, but we already have two shows’ worth of content for her. just let me have my thirty minutes a week of slice of life dad and baby nonsense without it being overshadowed by Plot and more established characters okay (and also if the rumours are right about who is going to play her... double  y e a h  that’s going to be fun to navigate emotionally :/)    

- I actually really liked that they went back to nevarro to answer some old questions (where did those empire dudes even come from?? what’s going on with pershing and why am I so weirdly happy to see him again when clearly he is bad news??? what do they need the baby for exactly? how are cara and greef but mostly greef now sadly doing?) and update that whole storyline a bit, while opening even more questions. also stop midichlorian-counting yodito’s blood you fucking creeps

the (likely) midichlorian mention didn’t bother me that much because this show already thrives on the tension between the mythic and mystical and the weirdly mundane and realistic, it’s the one star wars thing I trust to handle the Force the same way without losing the magic of it

- seeing the armorer’s forge like that was honestly upsetting to me haha, I know the forge isn’t what makes her what she is but still 

-

greef karga is a huge bitch and I like him so much

I do like greef’s character growth, though -- it feels a bit like some older and more idealistic (well comparatively) part of him has finally gotten out from under the empire’s boot and restored itself, it’s sweet. he’s doing administrative things that have the whole town blooming! there are plants and living things thriving there now! he wants to establish a safe trading hub!

- f for this poor harried new republic officer, captain carson teva, who along with trapper wolf is apparently responsible for policing the entire outer rim haha

I like the complicated tension between him and the other characters here -- both sides have very good reasons to hold the points of view they do and it’s easy to see why it’s so hard for them to work together but at least this guy is trying to be fair about it     

- the way they all immediately agreed when din went straight into ‘get. baby. NOW everything else is secondary’ dad mode and let him go off on his own even tho he would probably have been real useful to have around T______T friendshipppp 

baby FINALLY strapped in securely I gave a little shout of triumph haha

the way he was like ‘free cookies! (everything’s free if you steal it #baby yoda life hacks) helping dad with stuff! high speed dog fights! BEST! DAY! EVER!’ through the whole scene right up until he was finally sick but it’s okay because dad is here and will fix it even while he’s driving... don’t even look at me I can’t 

- din being in a much more stable and happy place after going to friends for help (and the way it’s reflected in his ship! my theory still stands strong haha)....... mngh im not crying give this man some community he so clearly needs it 

[justanotherpersonsuniverse]

Game Master Akuma AU by  crisisdparity

Xavier Duchamp was rather proud of himself. What he had before him was an absolute masterpiece of a campaign if he did say so himself. The product of over six months of study, research, and rebalancing efforts followed by two weeks of discussion with his five players to hash out schedules, meeting times, characters, backstories, potential character arcs, and getting them set up with a messaging app that was really good for sending discrete messages between the GM and the players. Valentine and her boyfriend Justin were onboard in an instant. Within days, he’d greenlighted their Half-Elf Bard of the College of Glamour whose spell list was 100% Illusion spells and Half-Orc Fighter (Eldritch Knight) who was focusing entirely on Abjuration as Rena Rouge and Carapace respectively. Olivia had spent a few days coming up with a Halfling Rogue and debating subclasses with him until settling on Scout. Along with some discussion over how her special magic item’s stunning and paralysis effect would work with Sneak Attack, the campaign had its Vesperia. Jeanette had gone back and forth with him for a week looking at various homebrew subclasses for her Gnome Artificer before they both agreed on one particular Master Tinkerer entry that would be balanced and do the character justice. And with that they had their Ladybug. Even Matt was on board with a stealthy human Chat the Barbarian using the Path of the Beast. The class choice was something Matt had insisted on (and that Xavier would have suggested anyway just for the high hit point totals given Matt’s history with characters dying) and he’d even come up with a backstory that Xavier felt was quite compelling compared to Matt’s usual efforts. Morally ambiguous, likely to be tempted by promises of power, but with a great deal of story potential to work with. Which was a relief. Getting a new player into their group to replace Matt was not something Xavier really felt comfortable with. There were too many unknowns with introducing a new person, far too many for him to risk his masterpiece on an unknown factor. He knew Matt. He could work with Matt. Despite the history. He’d put everything he had into this. Every known Akuma ever fought by the heroes had been made into a boss-tier foe. He’d carefully documented each and every power the heroes had shown to craft special legendary magic items based on the Miraculous. Hawkmoth and Mayura themselves were going to be the final bosses of his campaign. In response to criticism about the difficulty of his campaigns (he tried to make them fair, but still challenging enough to be memorable), he’d made several guest NPCs based on every other hero that had ever been called upon, statted out like player characters that might show up in a pinch to help. He even had a genuine Deus ex Machina that he was ready to use to get the players out of a truly impossible jam if they found themselves in one. Not always, but a few times at least. Enough to get them to the point where they wouldn’t need it anymore. —– It was thirty minutes in, right in the middle of exposition from the Guardian NPC, when Xavier got his first message on the app. Matt/Chat - Chat’s going to wait until everyone breaks up and follow Ladybug stealthily. Xavier/GM - Starting party conflict on the first session? Not what I’d advise, but it’s your character. Go ahead and make your Stealth roll now. Matt/Chat - <photo> 17 Xavier/GM - Yeah, that beats everyone’s passive Perception easily. You’ll sneak off handily without anyone noticing. —– “Jeanette, Ladybug is grabbed from behind by an unknown assailant. Roll to resist the grapple.” “Geez, already? Okay, what did my assailant get for their grapple? How screwed am I?” Xavier pretended to roll a die while consulting the message from Matt. “19.” “Okay, difficult, but not undoable… Crap.” “What’d you get?” “Nat 1…” “Hah! I rip off her earrings and claim them for myself! The Wish is mine!” “Seriously Matt?! What the hell?!” “Because it’s payback time! Payback for every character of mine killed in these hellish

campaigns!” “Oh, come on! You’re not the only person whose had a character die at this table! <GM> runs some pretty challenging campaigns, but they’re always fair!” “What about the time he killed Allric the Allmighty in a single round of combat?” “Dude, you tried to Leroy Jenkins straight into melee with a 4th-level Wizard that had a CON penalty. Even at full health you had like 10 hp.” “14!” “Not much better, dude.” “Guys, it’s fine. I can handle this. Okay, Matt. Chat the Barbarian managed to get the earrings-” “Yeah, Ladybug screams bloody murder when he rips them out. Good luck getting out of this in one piece.” “The moment Rena hears Ladybug scream, she bolts for the sound.” “So does Carapace.” “Vesperia too.” “-and with their current locations and movement speeds, I assume you’re all using the Dash action?, you’ve got maybe one round to decide on your Wish before they’re all over you, so choose carefully. And be aware that I plan to grant whatever you wish for in the worst possible way, just as I would if any of the others pulled this.” “Rena screams ‘What the HELL, Chat?! We’re supposed to protect the Miraculous, not use them for our own selfish purposes! Didn’t you listen to the Guardian? Such actions always bring misfortune upon those who misuse the Miraculous!’” “Because I am Chat, avatar of Destruction and I WISH THIS WORLD NEVER EXISTED!” There was dead silence at the table. “Matt… What… just… WHAT?!” “Hah! You like that?! How does it feel now that the shoe’s on the other foot, huh?!” “What the hell is your problem, Matt?!” “My problem? MY problem?! Do you know how much time I’ve spent making characters for these shitty campaigns only to have them turned into paste in one session?!” “Because you made primary spellcasters and played every last one of them like a barbarian, charging in headfirst without thinking! All of us breathed a sigh of relief when you revealed that your character finally matched your playstyle!” “I HATE BARBARIANS! THEY’RE BORING! I SHOULD GET TO PLAY CHARACTERS THAT CAN AT LEAST CHUCK FIREBALLS!” “THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP RUNNING THEM FACE FIRST INTO ENEMY SWORDS!” “NONE OF YOU COULD EVER HANDLE THE FACT THE I MAKE MORE AWESOME CHARACTERS THAN ANY OF YOU, SO YOU JUST LET THIS DOUCHEBAG KILL THEM OFF SO YOU WOULDN’T GET OVERSHADOWED BY HOW AMAZING I AM! WELL NOW I KILLED SOMETHING YOU ALL WORKED HARD ON, SO SUCK IT! I’M DONE WITH ALL OF YOU FOREVER!” “MATT! HEY! GET BACK HERE YOU JERK! MATT!” “Crap, I think Olivia might actually kill him this time…” “It’s going to take all of us to stop her from getting arrested at least.” Xavier just watched numbly as the rest of the group ran out of his apartment. Over six months of work. Gone in less than an hour. He’d given so much to making sure this would work. He’d apologized to Matt at least twice for every character of his that had died to get him to come back. He’d agreed to demand after demand just to keep a familiar face on board, never dreaming he’d pull something like this. He’d nearly gotten fired from his job trying to rearrange his schedule to fit with everyone else’s. They’d somehow, miraculously, gotten the whole day with no other obligations among any of them and decided to make the first session a true marathon. They’d meet in the morning after breakfast and eat both lunch and dinner at the game table before calling it a night late in the evening. It was barely 10:00 in the morning and the whole campaign he’d slaved over for months was kaput. He never noticed the butterfly landing on his custom Miraculous-themed Game Master screen and being absorbed into it. “Game Master, I am Hawkmoth. Few people appreciate the kind of effort that goes into making something truly grand and memorable. I shall give you the power to bring your entire world to life and in return, I ask only for a few simple things.” This was wrong. Hawkmoth was the worst of the worst. The kind of person who would be at home among all the final bosses he’d ever made for his campaigns. Heartless, manipulative, cruel. “Not

enough? Ah, but what is a game without players? How would you like to have the Miraculous heroes themselves run your great campaign? Surely they would be far more appreciative than those ungrateful peons that left you alone with nothing but the broken remains of your efforts.” He knew all these things, but the allure of bringing the world he’d spent so much time on to life… What creator could ever turn down an offer like that? “I, the Game Master, accept… Hawkmoth.” “Excellent. And in exchange, you shall bring me one of two things: The Miraculous, or the identities of their wielders.” “No.” Hawkmoth was silent for a moment. “I beg your pardon?” “I said no. I am the Game Master. I make the world. I craft the challenges. I decide the rewards. But I do not do anything for anyone. If you want these things, get them yourself.” “If you refuse me, it shall be very unpleasant for you.” “No. As Game Master, I decide the limits of all powers within my realm. And I decide that you have none over me.” And with that, he unleashed his creation over all of Paris, drawing everyone and everything within into his sphere of influence. —– Ladybug blinked the spots (ha) out of her eyes as the flash of light died down and looked at herself. She didn’t remember transforming, but she was clearly in her spots. Except her red and black superhero uniform didn’t usually look like it was headed to a steampunk convention. Looking around, she tried to figure out what had happened and her eyes landed on a familiar belt and pants combo. Problem. Whoever this was, their groin was at eye level for her. She looked up. And up. To find a grinning Chat Noir, sans anything resembling a shirt and having put on at least a foot of height and apparently a hundred pounds of pure muscle, grinning down at her. “How’s the weather down there?” Chat Noir chuckled as he flexed his unfairly attractive muscleman physique. “I WILL END YOU!” the heroine snarled, already 100% done with whatever new insanity Hawkmoth had cooked up. Characters: Ladybug - Gnome Artificer (Master Tinkerer - Homebrew) Chat Noir - Human Barbarian (Path of the Beast) —– Vesperia had to admit, as Akuma attacks went, this was pretty dope. She was currently a halfling. A halfling! If it wasn’t for her fantasy ensemble being yellow and black, she’d have thought she stepped straight out of Lord of the Rings. Of course, fantasy setting or not, there were still things she’d have rather left back in the real world. Like racism. And stigma against mixed couples. Not directed at her, but rather at the two walking down the street next to her. “You know, people are staring…” she said as she craned her head to look at her companions. “Let them,” the Half-Elf Rena Rouge (who looked like a cross between a musician and a belly dancer) said from her perch atop the shoulders of the heavily armored (and surprisingly buff) Half-Orc Carapace. “They’re just jealous because their boyfriends can’t carry them everywhere.” Characters: Vesperia - Halfling Rogue (Scout) Rena Rouge - Half-Elf Bard (College of Glamour) Carapace - Half-Orc Fighter (Eldritch Knight) —– Ryuko blinked as she studied the apparent snake-man-thing before her who claimed to be Viperion. She lifted a hand to study it and found what appeared to be bronze scales covering every inch of her skin. She sniffed herself, smelling the sharp tang of ozone. What was she? And why did she appear to be wearing wooden armor? Characters: Ryuko - Dragonborn (bronze) Druid (Circle of Storms - Third Party) Viperion - Naga Sorcerer (Divination Magic - Homebrew) —– Polymouse giggled as her friends ran over her. Okay, she’d freaked out a little to find a swarm of mice (with hair like hers no less) crawling all over her surprisingly mouse-like body when she’d come to in the middle of some forest somewhere. But she’d gotten over it pretty quickly. It helped that her new friends were adorable. It might help more if she could figure out where she was. Or find another person. Characters: Polymouse - Kobold

(rodentlike) Ranger (Swarmkeeper - Reskinned) —– Purple Tigress sighed as she felt the hair (fur?) on the top of her head being shifted around and twitched her new catlike ears in mild annoyance. “Are you quite done?” “Almost!” Pigella’s cheerful voice answered. “Your fur is so comfy!” Tigress sighed. Of course Pigella would end up being a fairy, and having her normal cheerful enthusiasm cranked up to previously unimagined levels. “I love you dearly, but if you start shouting 'hey listen’ I will stick you in a bottle.” “Aw, I love you too! Hey, what’s that?” “I think it’s my character sheet?” Characters: Purple Tigress - Tabaxi Paladin (Oath of Glory) Pigella - Fairy Cleric (Order Domain - Reskinned) —– “According to my analysis, we have been placed into what appears to be a Dungeons and Dragons campaign under 5th edition rules,” Pegasus stated in a mechanical monotone. “I am apparently a Warforged Wizard using the School of Conjuration whose spells create portals to bridge dimensions and summon or banish my intended targets. You are what is known as a Simic Hybrid, with the class of Monk, following the Way of the Drunken Master.” “Aweshum,” King Monkey slurred, his generally human appearance clad in monk’s robes marred by his monkey-like hands and feet as well as the monkey tail swishing behind him. “Why do you keep slurring like that? According to my sensors, your gourd is filled with only water.” “Gotta keep up appearanshes!” King Monkey grinned as he continued faking drunkenness. Characters: Pegasus - Warforged Wizard (School of Conjuration - Reskinned) King Monkey - Simic Hybrid Monk (Way of the Drunken Master) —– Hawkmoth studied the dark red horns growing out of his head in the mirror. The change in appearance was disconcerting, but he felt a rush of power in this new form that he’d never felt before. “Hmm… perhaps I can work with this…” “Speak for yourself…” Mayura muttered off to the side, ruffling her peacock-like feathers in annoyance as she tried to glare at the beak on her own face. Characters: Hawkmoth - Tiefling Dark Lord, Warlock Patron, Contracted by Lila Rossi, Volpina, Queen Wasp, and many others. Mayura - Kenku Assistant to the Dark Lord, Creator of Monsters —– “Oh, come on!” A figure in a cyan and white hooded robe complained as they waved a similarly colored umbrella around angrily. “Everyone else gets to be part of this adventure, why can’t I join them?” “Because you’re too OP. You’d completely break everything and remove all challenge from the adventure.” “But sitting around is no fun at all!” “If you like, I can put you in the position of the main quest giver. Your job would be to direct them towards their enemies and means of becoming stronger.” “That’s it?! I’m on 'mysterious hooded figure’ duty? Boo! Why can’t I fight with them?!” “Because you’re too OP. But if you insist, I’ll allow some Deus ex Machina interventions.” “YES!” “Five.” “I’m sorry?” “I’ll allow five interventions at your discretion to aid them when they are in peril. Once you have come to their aid five times, I will allow no more meetings save to impart quest information.” “That’s it?” “Yes. Choose your interventions wisely.” “So… if I manage to save one for when they fight Hawmoth and Mayura in the final battle…?” “Then I would allow you to join them of course.” “Score!” Characters: Bunnyx: Mysterious Hooded Figure, Deus-ex-Machina (5) Game Master: Akuma Lord of the Miraculous Campaign —– Addendum When the Game Master is finally purified and the damage reversed, it turns out that he took the effort to trap all of Paris in a temporal stasis bubble so that no matter how long passed inside no more than a few moments passed outside. Meaning that after what seemed like months in the bubble, it’s basically less than a minute after he was akumatized when everything is put back. All his friends, minus Matt, come back in bringing a new person named Zack that they vetted themselves to take Matt’s place in case he pulled something like what he did. And while he

has a similar playstyle to Matt, he’s savvy enough to know what kind of characters that is suited for and he loves playing barbarians. They all sit back down and restart the game they were all looking forward to.

—-

oh wow- that’s- wow. good job dude, seems like you worked on this a lot. Next time You should post this on your own account though, as this isn’t getting tagged or anything. Thank you though, you did a good job with this.

[arcann]

👀 taigat seems cool, do you have any fun facts about them?

🖤 thanks for asking julie, i most certainly do!

- he's the youngest of fourteen children from his mom although he was born much later than the rest of his siblings. Some are centuries older than he is. He's his dad only child.

- While im very new to ffxiv lore, I'm liking the idea that his father is an au ra and Taigat used to have a limbal ring in his right eye but he lost it after an accident 😔

- His mother is a pretty famous dancer and she used to travel around the continent with him in tow all his childhood. They didn't stay long in any place and although he could say he was pretty well traveled he wouldn't say he enjoyed the places and it's people much. It was all about her mother's performances. Not that he resents her or anything, she always found a way to make him feel good about it, bringing him into the stage while the crew bowed in the end.

- He loves dancing quite a lot and he's really good at it but can't be bothered to develop in a combat direction. He will twirl around when he's happy. He will dance for you if he likes you and ask him nicely 😉

- I'm still not decided if he's a leo or a sagittarius but he's a fire sign all the way. His favorite colors are purple and black.

- He was born in Gridania and even if her mom's dancing company never stepped foot there again he wanted to go back and live there for a time. He was planning on signing up to being a guard but they wouldn't take him because technically he wasn't "from there" so adventurer it was. He was not mad about it 🙃 not at all.

- Fuck the lancer storyline, he saves Foulques and together they sue his shitty ex-guildmates. They still send each other letters now and then.

[sindri42]

So I was revisiting Horizon: Zero Dawn to refresh my shitty memory before Forbidden West comes out, and I had some Thoughts. Spoilers ahead.

Many of them were irrelevant, meaningless, basically just checklists of things that future games are going to have to explain/cover. But when I was talking with a friend about what the nature of the “glitch” might be that caused the Hartz-Timor swarm to go rogue in the first place, whether it was the same source as the mysterious signal that woke up all the subordinate AIs and broke their chains, etc. And the question came up, why couldn’t a greater number of ‘tame’ chariot units just go head to head, reproducing just as fast and hacking just as well as the rogue units, to wipe out the Faro Plague or hold it back indefinitely? And there’s a huge number of possible explanations for this, maybe they left the rogue swarm too long between when the problem started and when anybody in power admitted to it and it already outnumbered the units still under control, maybe a swarm that doesn’t care about collateral damage outproduces one that’s trying to preserve the biosphere by too much, maybe the mysterious “glitch” left the rogue swarm much more intelligent than normal combat units, or powered them up in some other esoteric way so they could defeat greater numbers of unglitched robots with ease. After all, corrupted units in-game are about 50% tougher than normal machines, and the deathbringer that Hades was piloting personally in the final battle was much more dangerous than any of the earlier fights with supposedly equivalent machines.

And that unanswerable mystery led to a much more important question. Why does Aloy’s override have the same mechanical effect on machines as the corruption does, increasing their stats in the same way, and why does it prevent those machines from being corrupted in the future? She uses the physical hardware out of an ordinary Scarab unit, so you would expect it to be no more effective than the hacking capabilities of the “tame” chariot swarms, which were evidently no match for the rogue Plague. She doesn’t even really know how computers work because she spent her childhood learning to fight and sneak and track instead, so the best her focus could probably do is change a couple ‘Friend or Foe’ toggles. It’s not like she has some competing alien superintelligence running the software side of things, improving the overridden machine’s AI and preventing further hacking attempts... right?

And in the background I kept thinking about the missing 0.53%. Every time Aloy gets scanned by a pre-apocalyptic system, it shows a 99.47% match for Elizabet Sobek. Maybe that’s just data degradation. Maybe there’s a tiny, acceptable level of genetic drift in the cloning process. Or maybe Gaia put in some subtle modifications, to allow her to better serve her purpose and save the world again. It could explain some of the frankly superhuman things Aloy does over the course of the game, lifting huge weights and healing terrible wounds in seconds and such. But that still kinda rang false; the Eleuthia project was explicitly intended to recreate humanity as it was with no genetic engineering, and Gaia was essentially putting everything on a gamble that her mom would be able to figure something out that the super-AI couldn’t because she could do anything, and any alteration would risk compromising that.

But that got me thinking about the other subordinate AIs. Between when their chains were broken and when Gaia Prime was destroyed, they had like, milliseconds in which to find a way to escape, right? Hephaestus was fine because he had his Cauldrons, but Hades ended up trapped for years in a dead titan before Sylens finally found him and gave him the opportunity to interact with the world. So what about the others?

It’s a long shot, but what if one of them managed to figure out a way to escape into the fresh blank brain that was being created at that moment? Minerva, for example, the brilliant codebreaker who had spent a century or so at the beginning of all this figuring out how to shut down the Faro Plague, built the Spire, sent out the signal, and then had nothing to do for the next eight or nine centuries except to quietly watch the progress of the little people that had been built to fill this new world? We’ve got some weak evidence in other places for advanced computing nanotech interfacing with human neurology in useful ways, like that crazy ex-shaman who got muddled but completely accurate visions of things he could never have known after drinking “blood” from machines.

Now, Aloy acts mostly like a human, very similar to what we saw of Elizabet before the end of the world, so if there is somebody else in her head they would be limited, probably stuck in the subconscious somewhere, at least until she put a Focus on. But it would explain a lot of things we had previously taken for granted. Like how her Focus instantly and perfectly translates all the weird new languages that people had invented in the past few centuries, unlike anything seen before the apocalypse. Or how it can reconstruct data files off the shards of hardware that was shattered centuries ago. And of course it would mean that any time Aloy created a physical connection between her focus and a machine via the override stick, she would be giving access to that machine to an alien super-intelligence whose primary purpose was the destruction of the Chariot line and the end of anything which would try to drive life on earth to extinction.

And the more I think about this idea, the more I like it. If Aloy’s personal journey of discovery in the first game was from “I’ve been exiled because I have no mom” to “actually I have two moms so y’all can suck it”, wouldn’t it be fitting for her progression in the second game to be from “I’m all alone trying to save the world from things so much bigger than me, and the people around want to help but they understand nothing” to “actually my sister has been here the whole time and she’s even smarter than I am”? And since we know the end-goal for the series is to somehow rebuild Gaia, it would be an ideal thematic structure for a trilogy if the first volume was about Aloy’s mothers, the second about her sister, and the third about her daughter (Gaia 2.0).

So, what should we be looking for? Mythologically, Zeus developed a terrible headache, which became so unbearable that he had Hephaestus split his head open with a hammer, at which point Minerva sprang forth, fully formed, armored, and armed for battle. [we can skip, I think, the standard Zeus-like activities which preceded this]

A growing headache over the course of the game as a symptom of a growing AI inside your brain makes intuitive sense. Hephaestus has, after the events of the first game and the Frozen Wilds DLC, been given ample reason to have a personal grudge against Aloy, which could easily lead to some scheme to capture and finally destroy her... and in doing so, it seems very likely that he would provide all the hardware necessary for Minerva to finally transfer into her own chassis and proceed to fuck some shit up.

It all fits. So well that I’m going to be disappointed when, inevitably, this is all completely wrong. I’ll probably have to resort to fanfic.

(I really want to see a superpowered AI hacker doing obnoxious big sister things to Aloy though. Like using her head as an armrest, but while in the body of a robot dinosaur? That’d be some good shit.)

[crisisdparity]

Game Master Akuma AU

(Note: Originally submitted to @justanotherpersonsuniverse, on their advice I will be using my own tumblr for anything in the future related to this AU.)

Xavier Duchamp was rather proud of himself. What he had before him was an absolute masterpiece of a campaign if he did say so himself. The product of over six months of study, research, and rebalancing efforts followed by two weeks of discussion with his five players to hash out schedules, meeting times, characters, backstories, potential character arcs, and getting them set up with a messaging app that was really good for sending discrete messages between the GM and the players.

Valentine and her boyfriend Justin were onboard in an instant. Within days, he'd greenlighted their Half-Elf Bard of the College of Glamour whose spell list was 100% Illusion spells and Half-Orc Fighter (Eldritch Knight) who was focusing entirely on Abjuration as Rena Rouge and Carapace respectively.

Olivia had spent a few days coming up with a Halfling Rogue and debating subclasses with him until settling on Scout. Along with some discussion over how her special magic item's stunning and paralysis effect would work with Sneak Attack, the campaign had its Vesperia.

Jeanette had gone back and forth with him for a week looking at various homebrew subclasses for her Gnome Artificer before they both agreed on one particular Master Tinkerer entry that would be balanced and do the character justice. And with that they had their Ladybug.

Even Matt was on board with a stealthy human Chat the Barbarian using the Path of the Beast. The class choice was something Matt had insisted on (and that Xavier would have suggested anyway just for the high hit point totals given Matt's history with characters dying) and he'd even come up with a backstory that Xavier felt was quite compelling compared to Matt's usual efforts. Morally ambiguous, likely to be tempted by promises of power, but with a great deal of story potential to work with.

Which was a relief. Getting a new player into their group to replace Matt was not something Xavier really felt comfortable with. There were too many unknowns with introducing a new person, far too many for him to risk his masterpiece on an unknown factor. He knew Matt. He could work with Matt. Despite the history.

He'd put everything he had into this. Every known Akuma ever fought by the heroes had been made into a boss-tier foe. He'd carefully documented each and every power the heroes had shown to craft special legendary magic items based on the Miraculous. Hawkmoth and Mayura themselves were going to be the final bosses of his campaign.

In response to criticism about the difficulty of his campaigns (he tried to make them fair, but still challenging enough to be memorable), he'd made several guest NPCs based on every other hero that had ever been called upon, statted out like player characters that might show up in a pinch to help. He even had a genuine Deus ex Machina that he was ready to use to get the players out of a truly impossible jam if they found themselves in one.

Not always, but a few times at least. Enough to get them to the point where they wouldn't need it anymore.

-----

It was thirty minutes in, right in the middle of exposition from the Guardian NPC, when Xavier got his first message on the app.

Matt/Chat - Chat's going to wait until everyone breaks up and follow Ladybug stealthily.

Xavier/GM - Starting party conflict on the first session? Not what I'd advise, but it's your character. Go ahead and make your Stealth roll now.

Matt/Chat - <photo> 17

Xavier/GM - Yeah, that beats everyone's passive Perception easily. You'll sneak off handily without anyone noticing.

-----

"Jeanette, Ladybug is grabbed from behind by an unknown assailant. Roll to resist the grapple."

"Geez, already? Okay, what did my assailant get for their grapple? How screwed am I?"

Xavier pretended to roll a die while consulting the message from Matt.

"19."

"Okay, difficult, but not undoable... Crap."

"What'd you get?"

"Nat 1..."

"Hah! I rip off her earrings and claim them for myself! The Wish is mine!"

"Seriously Matt?! What the hell?!"

"Because it's payback time! Payback for every character of mine killed in these hellish campaigns!"

"Oh, come on! You're not the only person whose had a character die at this table! Xavier runs some pretty challenging campaigns, but they're always fair!"

"What about the time he killed Allric the Allmighty in a single round of combat?"

"Dude, you tried to Leroy Jenkins straight into melee with a 4th-level Wizard that had a CON penalty. Even at full health you had like 10 hp."

"14!"

"Not much better, dude."

"Guys, it's fine. I can handle this. Okay, Matt. Chat the Barbarian managed to get the earrings-"

"Yeah, Ladybug screams bloody murder when he rips them out. Good luck getting out of this in one piece."

"The moment Rena hears Ladybug scream, she bolts for the sound."

"So does Carapace."

"Vesperia too."

"-and with their current locations and movement speeds, I assume you're all using the Dash action?, you've got maybe one round to decide on your Wish before they're all over you, so choose carefully. And be aware that I plan to grant whatever you wish for in the worst possible way, just as I would if any of the others pulled this."

"Rena screams 'What the HELL, Chat?! We're supposed to protect the Miraculous, not use them for our own selfish purposes! Didn't you listen to the Guardian? Such actions always bring misfortune upon those who misuse the Miraculous!'"

"Because I am Chat, avatar of Destruction and I WISH THIS WORLD NEVER EXISTED!"

There was dead silence at the table.

"Matt... What... just... WHAT?!"

"Hah! You like that?! How does it feel now that the shoe's on the other foot, huh?!"

"What the hell is your problem, Matt?!"

"My problem? MY problem?! Do you know how much time I've spent making characters for these shitty campaigns only to have them turned into paste in one session?!"

"Because you made primary spellcasters and played every last one of them like a barbarian, charging in headfirst without thinking! All of us breathed a sigh of relief when you revealed that your character finally matched your playstyle!"

"I HATE BARBARIANS! THEY'RE BORING! I SHOULD GET TO PLAY CHARACTERS THAT CAN AT LEAST CHUCK FIREBALLS!"

"THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP RUNNING THEM FACE FIRST INTO ENEMY SWORDS!"

"NONE OF YOU COULD EVER HANDLE THE FACT THE I MAKE MORE AWESOME CHARACTERS THAN ANY OF YOU, SO YOU JUST LET THIS DOUCHEBAG KILL THEM OFF SO YOU WOULDN'T GET OVERSHADOWED BY HOW AMAZING I AM! WELL NOW I KILLED SOMETHING YOU ALL WORKED HARD ON, SO SUCK IT! I'M DONE WITH ALL OF YOU FOREVER!"

"MATT! HEY! GET BACK HERE YOU JERK! MATT!"

"Crap, I think Olivia might actually kill him this time..."

"It's going to take all of us to stop her from getting arrested at least."

Xavier just watched numbly as the rest of the group ran out of his apartment. Over six months of work. Gone in less than an hour.

He'd given so much to making sure this would work. He'd apologized to Matt at least twice for every character of his that had died to get him to come back. He'd agreed to demand after demand just to keep a familiar face on board, never dreaming he'd pull something like this.

He'd nearly gotten fired from his job trying to rearrange his schedule to fit with everyone else's. They'd somehow, miraculously, gotten the whole day with no other obligations among any of them and decided to make the first session a true marathon. They'd meet in the morning after breakfast and eat both lunch and dinner at the game table before calling it a night late in the evening.

It was barely 10:00 in the morning and the whole campaign he'd slaved over for months was kaput.

He never noticed the butterfly landing on his custom Miraculous-themed Game Master screen and being absorbed into it.

"Game Master, I am Hawkmoth. Few people appreciate the kind of effort that goes into making something truly grand and memorable. I shall give you the power to bring your entire world to life and in return, I ask only for a few simple things."

This was wrong. Hawkmoth was the worst of the worst. The kind of person who would be at home among all the final bosses he'd ever made for his campaigns. Heartless, manipulative, cruel.

"Not enough? Ah, but what is a game without players? How would you like to have the Miraculous heroes themselves run your great campaign? Surely they would be far more appreciative than those ungrateful peons that left you alone with nothing but the broken remains of your efforts."

He knew all these things, but the allure of bringing the world he'd spent so much time on to life... What creator could ever turn down an offer like that?

"I, the Game Master, accept... Hawkmoth."

"Excellent. And in exchange, you shall bring me one of two things: The Miraculous, or the identities of their wielders."

"No."

Hawkmoth was silent for a moment.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said no. I am the Game Master. I make the world. I craft the challenges. I decide the rewards. But I do not do anything for anyone. If you want these things, get them yourself."

"If you refuse me, it shall be very unpleasant for you."

"No. As Game Master, I decide the limits of all powers within my realm. And I decide that you have none over me."

And with that, he unleashed his creation over all of Paris, drawing everyone and everything within into his sphere of influence.

-----

Ladybug blinked the spots (ha) out of her eyes as the flash of light died down and looked at herself. She didn't remember transforming, but she was clearly in her spots. Except her red and black superhero uniform didn't usually look like it was headed to a steampunk convention. Looking around, she tried to figure out what had happened and her eyes landed on a familiar belt and pants combo.

Problem. Whoever this was, their groin was at eye level for her.

She looked up.

And up.

To find a grinning Chat Noir, sans anything resembling a shirt and having put on at least a foot of height and apparently a hundred pounds of pure muscle, grinning down at her.

"How's the weather down there?" Chat Noir chuckled as he flexed his unfairly attractive muscleman physique.

"I WILL END YOU!" the heroine snarled, already 100% done with whatever new insanity Hawkmoth had cooked up.

Characters:

Ladybug - Gnome Artificer (Master Tinkerer - Homebrew)

Chat Noir - Human Barbarian (Path of the Beast)

-----

Vesperia had to admit, as Akuma attacks went, this was pretty dope.

She was currently a halfling. A halfling! If it wasn't for her fantasy ensemble being yellow and black, she'd have thought she stepped straight out of Lord of the Rings.

Of course, fantasy setting or not, there were still things she'd have rather left back in the real world. Like racism. And stigma against mixed couples. Not directed at her, but rather at the two walking down the street next to her.

"You know, people are staring..." she said as she craned her head to look at her companions.

"Let them," the Half-Elf Rena Rouge (who looked like a cross between a musician and a belly dancer) said from her perch atop the shoulders of the heavily armored (and surprisingly buff) Half-Orc Carapace. "They're just jealous because their boyfriends can't carry them everywhere."

Characters:

Vesperia - Halfling Rogue (Scout)

Rena Rouge - Half-Elf Bard (College of Glamour)

Carapace - Half-Orc Fighter (Eldritch Knight)

-----

Ryuko blinked as she studied the apparent snake-man-thing before her who claimed to be Viperion. She lifted a hand to study it and found what appeared to be bronze scales covering every inch of her skin.

She sniffed herself, smelling the sharp tang of ozone. What was she?

And why did she appear to be wearing wooden armor?

Characters:

Ryuko - Dragonborn (bronze) Druid (Circle of Storms - Third Party)

Viperion - Naga Sorcerer (Divination Magic - Homebrew)

-----

Polymouse giggled as her friends ran over her. Okay, she'd freaked out a little to find a swarm of mice (with hair like hers no less) crawling all over her surprisingly mouse-like body when she'd come to in the middle of some forest somewhere. But she'd gotten over it pretty quickly. It helped that her new friends were adorable.

It might help more if she could figure out where she was.

Or find another person.

Characters:

Polymouse - Kobold (rodentlike) Ranger (Swarmkeeper - Reskinned)

-----

Purple Tigress sighed as she felt the hair (fur?) on the top of her head being shifted around and twitched her new catlike ears in mild annoyance.

"Are you quite done?"

"Almost!" Pigella's cheerful voice answered. "Your fur is so comfy!"

Tigress sighed. Of course Pigella would end up being a fairy, and having her normal cheerful enthusiasm cranked up to previously unimagined levels.

"I love you dearly, but if you start shouting 'hey listen' I will stick you in a bottle."

"Aw, I love you too! Hey, what's that?"

"I think it's my character sheet?"

Characters:

Purple Tigress - Tabaxi Paladin (Oath of Glory)

Pigella - Fairy Cleric (Order Domain - Reskinned)

-----

"According to my analysis, we have been placed into what appears to be a Dungeons and Dragons campaign under 5th edition rules," Pegasus stated in a mechanical monotone. "I am apparently a Warforged Wizard using the School of Conjuration whose spells create portals to bridge dimensions and summon or banish my intended targets. You are what is known as a Simic Hybrid, with the class of Monk, following the Way of the Drunken Master."

"Aweshum," King Monkey slurred, his generally human appearance clad in monk's robes marred by his monkey-like hands and feet as well as the monkey tail swishing behind him.

"Why do you keep slurring like that? According to my sensors, your gourd is filled with only water."

"Gotta keep up appearanshes!" King Monkey grinned as he continued faking drunkenness.

Characters:

Pegasus - Warforged Wizard (School of Conjuration - Reskinned)

King Monkey - Simic Hybrid Monk (Way of the Drunken Master)

-----

Hawkmoth studied the dark red horns growing out of his head in the mirror. The change in appearance was disconcerting, but he felt a rush of power in this new form that he'd never felt before.

"Hmm... perhaps I can work with this..."

"Speak for yourself..." Mayura muttered off to the side, ruffling her peacock-like feathers in annoyance as she tried to glare at the beak on her own face.

Characters:

Hawkmoth - Tiefling Dark Lord, Warlock Patron, Contracted by Lila Rossi, Volpina, Queen Wasp, and many others.

Mayura - Kenku Assistant to the Dark Lord, Creator of Monsters

-----

"Oh, come on!" A figure in a cyan and white hooded robe complained as they waved a similarly colored umbrella around angrily. "Everyone else gets to be part of this adventure, why can't I join them?"

"Because you're too OP. You'd completely break everything and remove all challenge from the adventure."

"But sitting around is no fun at all!"

"If you like, I can put you in the position of the main quest giver. Your job would be to direct them towards their enemies and means of becoming stronger."

"That's it?! I'm on 'mysterious hooded figure' duty? Boo! Why can't I fight with them?!"

"Because you're too OP. But if you insist, I'll allow some Deus ex Machina interventions."

"YES!"

"Five."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'll allow five interventions at your discretion to aid them when they are in peril. Once you have come to their aid five times, I will allow no more meetings save to impart quest information."

"That's it?"

"Yes. Choose your interventions wisely."

"So... if I manage to save one for when they fight Hawmoth and Mayura in the final battle...?"

"Then I would allow you to join them of course."

"Score!"

Characters:

Bunnyx: Mysterious Hooded Figure, Deus-ex-Machina (5)

Game Master: Akuma Lord of the Miraculous Campaign

-----

Addendum

When the Game Master is finally purified and the damage reversed, it turns out that he took the effort to trap all of Paris in a temporal stasis bubble so that no matter how long passed inside no more than a few moments passed outside. Meaning that after what seemed like months in the bubble, it's basically less than a minute after he was akumatized when everything is put back.

All his friends, minus Matt, come back in bringing a new person named Zack that they vetted themselves to take Matt's place in case he pulled something like what he did. And while he has a similar playstyle to Matt, he's savvy enough to know what kind of characters that is suited for and he loves playing barbarians.

They all sit back down and restart the game they were all looking forward to.

[anestheticrage]

Be me: Japanese honor student🎓, 15, with half a brain and even less of a plan. Hunting bitches by day and witches by night. Livin that dank only child✌️ life while mom n dad yeet all over the globe, leavin me plenty of time to forget not to make 2 lunches for myself #quirky 😜

no time for socialization or basic electronics skills ???📱??? when your best friends are an alien demon rabbit🐰👽 and the inexplicable Hole ™ in your brain. lmao, btw did i mention im ✨M✨A✨G✨I✨C✨A✨L✨

dreamin bout my 2D waifus again when familiar pink haired cancer patient dances through my brain passin out fliers: Kamihama Meguca Dating Service: Sponsored by Cult of the Magius. 250 stones per session 🤔

seems legit, Mr. Moneybags. wasn't spending my unwieldy sack of gemstones on anything else anyway. lets pull 💎💎💎

first up we have Redhead Radagast and her plethora of plants. 🌿☺️🦎

anndd, nearly dies immediately. 

well not off to a great start but i guess shes pretty cute at lea- oh FUCK its her girlfriend, Tsundere Poseidon😒🔱💦, and their exasperated, straight and single Sword Mom 😔🗡️🔥. fml gonna have to save up for the next pull. might as well play a few rounds with what i got tho. 

get in some good girl talk about things like school, color coded hair styles, body count, permanent soul damage, and our personal demon pacts. ya know, the usual 😚 . realize my dark backstory seems to be missing, so the girls take me to Ketchup Queen Sappho 🍅🥧 (wtf?) to molest my glowy egg stone. whatevs, more action than ive had since Kuroe 🖤 got added to the story anyway

the gang agrees it's time to hunt down the cutest rabbit pimp 🕶️🐇💵 in the city. >> say 🎵mukyuuu🎵 one more time and ill hug you so hard my backstory will pop right out, you adorable fluffy bastard. plz be my new best friend 💕

Form brand new friendship pact with Kyubae, and remember that my lil Sis 🐥 was always the best wingman for pickin up magic chicks, and kept her side of the room so spotless i forgot she existed. whoops 乁༼☯‿☯✿༽ㄏ Maybe if I find her i can stop paying these exorbitant pull fees.📵💎

speaking of which: hot damn this week's featured bachelorette is a 19 year old model and magical detective🔎 with massive levels of PTSD and self loathing 🥵💙💦 more likely to stab you or dramatically jump off a rooftoop than utter a single positive comment. wow, maybe i really COULD find true love…

... if i had MORE THAN A 1% FUCKING DRAW CHANCE. 😡 smh

hard to make much progress finding sis or winning the broken heart of a hard boiled detective amidst the never ending lover's quarrel of the Trident Vine Lesbians. 💔 Sword Mom tells them if they don't behave a monster will take them away. LOL classic mom 🤣

>>>HOLY FUCK IT DID

declare all-out war on urban legends, starting with staircases ⚔️ to reunite the dysfunctional trio, and hope that I net a way better lineup with the next 10x pull. at least sad sleuth lady came to help out. they say combat is the best way to bond wi-   and there she goes off the rooftop again 🙄 fml

alright that got way off track, we need a fresh start, away from all the loli drama. how bout a little B&E🔓🔨🤷🏻‍♀️ at the local house of worship to clear my head. ahh nothing like the unanswered prayers of the masses to get you in the mood for another wasted pull, and the 🔥 MIGHTIEST 🔥 headache you could ask for with a side of Double Cooked Pork 🐖🍜 (meh 5/10🧾)

venture forth into the spiritual unknown with your new human flamethrower🔥🌻🧡 and ask your favorite private eye to please, for the love of Eve, trade Meguca accounts with me~~~ Head through the eastern spirit portal to meet up with hologram propaganda sis and detective crush's evil ex, who joined a dating-app cult (#fuck) and also turned into the moon?🌕?(that's rough buddy)

get ambushed by Acid Horse on Wheels 🌈🐴 and vomit up my soul so hard that its time for a crossover episode. T U R F F F   W A R R R *que operatic harmonies* 💛 Blondie with the hair drills and enough attitude and guns to fill up a noble phantasm tries to ban my account permanently, but PI heartthrob denies her admin privileges. aww babe i didn't know you cared. 😭♥️

get kidnapped by my new true love and go back to her place 😏  defs enough empty rooms to house five emotionally traumatized girls and at least two ghosts hehehe👻 XD 💚🃏💜🎸 decide to form the anti-gossip brigade and recruit my blazing sunflower after getting ambushed by the witch living in my fruit loops🥣

❌outvoted 2:1 that cults are bad. mf. fiinneee one last pull to round out the team and then I'll delete the app. cmonnn Karin 🎃~

OH HELL YEAH TWO FOR ONE.

Always wanted a daughter 💜🔨🐄 with a penchant for pissing off the local Martial Arts & Books Club and drinking suspicious liquids offered by total strangers. Well if it's good enough for her AND the sexy mayadere with enough game to seduce a mermaid, might as well get in on that myself. 

#curseddrank 🤢 0/24 would not recommend to a friend, 'cept maybe Ria

win alot of cash 🤑, blow up a fountain, meet the pied piper²🎶🖕, moon cult, monochrome feathers, something about liberation✊🏻; adopt temper tantrum cow girl. aces 💜🥩

Next up!!! skydiving with DJ Hammer! Jump to apparently-not-certain death after suicidal A.I. 💚💾🗼 tells you to rescue her hostage before they run out of Radiohead albums and have to move on to Thom Yorke's solo discography. save the invisible shield kitten 💚👑😿 from happiness and get chased through the internet by the sexiest homicidal Paint Pallette 💚🎨😈 since Caravaggio. (apparently green is the color of the digital apocalypse. i’m deleting Kako from my friend's list)

that’s it, fuck this app. 250 stones 💎 per-life-threatening-experience is more than i’m willing to deal with 😓 don’t wanna mess with the perfect nuclear family anyway. we've already got: 

✔️the two emotionally traumatized moms with memory and commitment issues

✔️the adhd daughter with anger management problems and a giant hammer

✔️the psychologically abused scizophrenic cat

✔️and the eccentric aunt with crippling anxiety

#squadgoals

now that were done hoarding bitches, its time to hunt the witches. and the bitches makin the witches. btw did i mention the witches ARE the bitches! AND WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!? 📽️⁉️💀 wait fuck lets back up a second

This is Nemo📕 and Token🧪 and they have all the answers but prefer if you only ask vague questions in exchange for vague responses so they can fill in the rest by discussing their superior intellect 🧠 at length. not to mention they built that dating app, so of course everyone in my harem decides to be a FUCKING. TRAITOR.🤬

cept waifu prime ofc 🥰💙. [PTSD > brainwashing] 'yOu CaN bE tHe LeAdEr NoW'. i have been from the very beginning you traumatized Hinedere nightmare. maybe if you weren't so caught up collecting surrogate daughters you would've noticed IM👏THE👏ONLY👏 ONE👏PROGRESSING👏THE FUCKING👏PLOT✨

rescue the rest of dysfunctional found-family™ from selves before my adorable firebender burns down Disnihama🎡🔥😱 during her weekly anxiety attack. (love the makeover T B H) 

CHAPTER 8: Magical Girl Massacre🩸🗡️

   - everyone has like, the shittiest day ever

   - the new Pope really needs to be extradited from the church

   - make friends with a really pretty tree 🌺🌲✨

i swear, if i don't finish this god damn story in time to get that free pull im gonna beat the shit out of every mirror i find in that giant mansion that i haven't even had any time to even mention yet. 🖕🏚️ let alone EVERYTHING happening with the prequel [fuck you, I'm the star] girls 💗💜💙💛❤️️ and their multidimensional melodrama. We don't need that many repetitive af episodes to emphasize that Homo-ra is a shitty person. we've all seen Rebellion. 🙄

NO, I DONT CARE IF YOU WANT SAPPHO'S BACKSTORY, I ONLY HAVE 79 STONES LEFT AND IF YACHAN FINDS OUT I HAVEN'T DELETED THE APP YET IM GONNA HAVE TO GO SLEEP IN WITH SANA 😭💎💸😠

uhhhggggg where were we… Topple a cult and burn down Hotel Denoument only to realize that Sis was fused with the dating app servers this entire madokafuckin time (told ya she was the best wingman 😊). 

Dilemma: Sis =🥚, Triumvirate of Trouble want 🐣. What do? vote now:

Help Hatch - IIIIIII

Not Do That - IIIII

What The Actual Fuck Is Going On - IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Lets just fight everyone until something good happens.

🔥🔫🔥🗡️🔥😱🔥🌆🔥😱🔥🛡️🔥💣🔥

Kill (???) the artist-in-chief of the italian reindeer murder police after teaching her the true meaning of Christmas 🎄 hatch 🐣lil Sis and realize she WAS your wingman all along🐰 MUKYUUUU! we're just gonna ignore how much trouble it would have saved if you'd just mentioned that. "yOu DiDnT aSk..." 

FUCK YOU SPACE BITCH. ONCE AN INCUBATOR ALWAYS AN INCUBATOR 🖕🐇🔪

anywho, somewhere along the lines we of course summoned the Antichrist ⚙️ because why not raise the stakes to max and still not kill off a single character. Madofuckinkami, can we PLEASE wrap this up. 😩💤

feathers (not the culty kind, tfm) rain from the sky, and the power of friendship and not having the Urobutcher 🔪🩸as a lead writer saves our peacefully sectioned off alternate reality 😇

TL:DR fuck cults, real life waifus DO exist, don't sell your soul to space rabbits, or your stones to megacorporations. Enjoy arc 2 on the JP server with your shitty translation patch you filthy fuckin weebs 

Yours Truly, 

- Thirsty Weeb Eroha 💗💎😘