#the good thing is that indie games will always exist

[sitepathos]

From Gold to Mold

Chapter 3: The End (Warning: this will be dark. Read at your own risk)

The last bell of the day rings, letting everyone know that they’re free to go. In unison, your classmates begin shoving books and papers in their designer book bags before getting up and flooding the exit all at once. People begin to pair up with their friends, talking about hanging out and staying over at one another’s house for the weekend, but as usual, you’re left by yourself; when you first enrolled in GA, many students wanted to be your friend, but you could tell they were more interested in Bruce Wayne being your father than you because they talked more about Bruce than you. When Tim became Timothy Drake-Wayne, everyone flocked to him, starstruck that he was now a member for two of Gotham’s most elite families. Since you lack Bruce’s good looks and charisma, Dick’s athletic prowess, Jason’s brute strength, Tim’s intelligence, and Damian’s pure pedigree, everyone here has deemed you unworthy of a passing glance; you’re painfully average in every aspect and in a family as prestigious and remarkable as Gotham’s beloved Wayne Family, that’s an unforgivable sin.

It didn’t matter to you, though. You didn’t care that no one in school or in your “family” acted like you didn’t exist and think you unworthy of a fraction of their attention, you had your video games. When the silence of Wayne Manor became deafening to you, you had your faithful 3DS with multiple generations of teams full of loyal and strong Pokémon that have defeated the mightiest of champions and your preowned laptop that’s allowed you to play a wide variety of games, your favorite being Fallout New Vegas as it took place in your rightful home of Nevada and started off in your beloved Goodsprings. You’ve gone through countless playthroughs because you feel close to your childhood home, no matter how many times you go through the same dialogue options and quests.

In fact, video games have been a major influence on you that you’re determined to be an indie video game developer when you finally graduate. Your laptop isn’t too old to run a visual novel maker software that came out four years ago and you spent over a year scribbling away in a notebook that held all the details that would form your first game, staying up late for three months working on the plot alone and the remaining nine months on side quests, combat, dialogue, and everything else. Despite your best efforts, you’re not an artist like Damian (and how ironic that someone so spiteful like him has the gift to create beauty) or a musician, so the only thing you’re able to work on right now is the code, but you’re not tech smart like Tim so it’s full of bugs and errors and despite you following your Guide to Making Video Games book to the letter, the code just won’t do what you want it to do. With spring break around the corner, maybe you’ll be able to make progress on it.

As you step through the front door of the school, you see Damian and Tim being dragged into a bear hug by Dick, the little shit quickly breaking free; Dick laughs and ruffles his hair before all of them getting into the older man’s car and drive off, leaving you behind. That’s nothing unusual, though, Dick’s always picked up the two of them from school and you know they always go get ice cream or go to an arcade while you get left behind to find your own way home. You’ve never been offered a ride to or from school or asked if you’d want to go hang out with them and with how they’ve treated you over the years, you’d sooner have a tea party with the Mad Hatter before you ever got in a car with any of them. Knowing them, Damian would probably try to strangle you with your seatbelt, Dick would most likely try to guilt you to spend more time with your “brother,” and Tim would just sit there, not saying anything, no matter how wrong their words were or how upset you got.

You’ve been relying on Alfred to give you rides (always a block away from the school since you didn’t want them knowing you were relying on him), but Bruce gave him the month off. He tried to turn it down, of course, insisting that he had important duties at the manor (you knew it was because he was worried about what would happen to you while he was gone), but Bruce insisted. Only after you promised to text him everyday and call him the moment something went wrong did he book a flight to Essex. After taking care of a museum the size of the Smithsonian, taking care of a family full of assholes, and dealing with your emotional baggage, the man deserved to take off and relax for a while.

Since he’s been gone, you’ve used the bus to get to where you need to go and have kept a wide berth between you and the Waynes and so far you’ve managed to stay under their radar. Though, with you not even clocking on their radars, can you really claim such an achievement. Hell, you’re positive they wouldn’t notice you even if you were right behind them. World’s greatest detectives, your ass.

That’s right, you knew about their nightly activities of wearing bird themed costumes, jumping across rooftops, and battling with the demented freaks locked up in Arkham. Not because Alfred told you (and god knows they’d never tell you shit), but because your status as the unwanted and forgotten firstborn of Bruce Wayne is like an invisibility cloak allowing you to walk in plain sight without anyone noticing you and it’s thanks to that you’ve been able to spy on conversations. You’ve come down many times in the late hours of the night to find them sitting at the dining table, eating, talking, laughing, and enjoying their lives as if you don’t even exist. Sure, it hurt you to see them so happy while you sit above them, miserable, what hurt even more was the fact that Alfred didn’t tell you. Sure, you have no intention on joining them in fist fighting Joker or solving the Riddler’s Saw-inspired puzzles (not that you could, you obviously lacked the capabilities), but you thought that after all that they’ve out you through, you were entitled to know what was going on.

But, you know that Alfred is also in on it, providing support from cave under the mansion (that you found after investigating the library while they were all out) and since he’s helped you through the bad times, hugging you tightly white you cried your eyes out, you decided to keep your discovery to yourself. Besides, if the secret ever comes out, you have plausible deniability.

Your phone rings and when you pull it out to check the caller ID, you see a picture of Alfred and you on the screen.

“Hey, Alfred,” you answer.

“Good afternoon, Master Y/N. Did you have a pleasant day at school?”

“I did. Since spring break is next week, the teachers toned down on the lessons.”

“And how did you fare on your algebra test?”

“Fine, I guess,” you mutter. “I’m sure I got more right than wrong.”

Math’s always been your worst enemy (at least until you met Damian) and getting an A on an anything math related was always once in a blue moon. A B was always your goal back in Goodsprings Elementary, but with Gotham Academy being a prestigious institution, their math classes were as difficult as a speed run in Dark Souls. Sure, all your classes are hard, but math has always been your Achilles’ heel.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you prepare for it. Maybe I should come home—“

“No,” you quickly say, cutting him off. “It’s fine. I studied my notes and found some practice problems online. I’m sure I passed.”

There was a brief pause before the man said, “Very well, Master Y/N. If you’re sure. How have you been faring? I trust you’re eating three meals a day and sleeping enough?”

“Of course,” you say. You’re lying, of course. You skip breakfast and dinner since they’re all downstairs at the same time in the mornings and at night use before going out on patrol and only eat lunch at school, where lunch is prepared by five star chefs because their elite students will accept nothing less. As for sleep, you’ve been cramming for this test and trying to work on your game, where as soon as you fix one bug, three more come to take its place.

“Of course,” he says, obviously not convinced, but chooses not to call you out. Not over the phone, anyway. Had he been here in person, it would be a different story. “And how have the others treated you?”

“Like I don’t exist. So, things are status quo.”

“I know their behavior has been nothing less than unacceptable, but have you tried talking to your father? Maybe he’ll be more receptive to you if you approached him while he was alone.”

“We both know that’s not gonna happen, Alfred. Bruce can’t stand the sight of me because I’m his greatest mistake.”

“Master Y/N!”

“It’s true and you know it! Both he and Momma were young and stupid, one thing led to another, and I was their reminder why condoms were invented. He got stuck with me and he’ll never forgive me for that. You know it and I know it.”

His silence tells you he knows you’re right. You hate to say how you really feel since you know that Alfred raised the man after his parents were murdered and telling him things like this makes him feel like he failed as a father figure, but after being treated like shit for most of your life, you’ve really run out of fucks to give. Hell, when you turned eighteen last month, you had your bags packed and were ready to buy a ticket on the first bus to Las Vegas, but Alfred begged you to stay long enough so you could graduate and since it would be a pain in the ass to transfer this close to schools letting out for summer, you agreed. Plus, it’d look good on a resume that you graduated from Gotham Academy. .

“Maybe I could talk to him for you? I just don’t want you to leave hating your father so much.”

“Look, Alfred, I really don’t wanna talk about this. I gotta go, I’ll be late for work.”

“Very well, Master Y/N. Please be safe. You know I hate you being out at night all alone.”

“Don’t worry, I will. Talk to you later, Alfred.”

And with that, you hang up and head to the nearest bus stop to take you to Chinatown. When you turned sixteen, you decided that it wasn’t fair taking Alfred’s money (in your defense, you helped out in cleaning the mansion, but you were still taking his hard earned paycheck), so you went out and found a job working at Gotham Games, a small store in one of the few nicer parts of Gotham that specialized in video, trading card, and tabletop games. Your boss, Mr. Chen, is a sweet old man who loves to talk games with you, especially Pokémon; in fact, he always gives you a free booster pack when he hands you your paycheck, saying that it’s a bonus for doing a good job. You love your job and aside from Alfred always willing to lend an ear to listen to your troubles, it’s made living in this hellhole of a city actually bearable.

After arriving at the bus stop in Chinatown, you walks a few blocks to find Mr. Chen closing the door and locking it.

“Mr. Chen,” you say when you near him, making him turn around to face you.

“You’re always on time, Y/N,” he says with a chuckle, but you can see he’s sad about something.

“Is the store closing for today?”

“No, I’m afraid I’m closing the store for good.”

Your heart stops and you feel yourself losing balance a little and you quickly steady yourself. You quickly think for any reason why the store would be closing for good.

Poor sales? No, you helped Mr. Chen with the spreadsheet for last month and sales had gone up by 11% thanks to the Pokémon TCG tournament you hosted.

Too much theft? No, you keep a close eye on all the customers and last time you checked, all inventory was accounted for.

Threats? Please, Mr. Chen’s been here for twenty-five years and is a pillar of the community. If anyone ever had the dumbass idea to threaten him, all shop owners in the street would rush to his aid, yourself included.

So, why?

As if he read your mind, he says, “My daughter said she was worried about me when the Penguin broke out of Arkham the other day and his car chase with Batman ended when he crashed a block away from here. She said that she and her husband had already set up a room for me at their house and now they’re here to take me with them to Florida.

You remember hearing about that. Bruce devotes all his time to fighting Gotham’s crime problem and one would think all the time he doesn’t spend with you could go to keeping things like car chases with Arkham’s inmates far away from innocent people and their businesses, but guess that’s what you get for having expectations when it comes to Bruce.

“What will happen to the store?”

“Mark’s already taken care of it. He called up some company that owns plenty of stores that’s just like mine and they agreed to buy my entire stock. They’ll have some people here tomorrow to get it all.”

For the second time in your life, it feels like your entire world’s been turned inside out. Working here and being around Mr. Chen was the best thing that’s happened to you since you over to Gotham and with Alfred gone and the loss of your job and boss, you’re extremely tempted to get on the nearest bus and ride it out of Gotham right now.

“I also wanted to wait for you so I could give you this.” He hands you a neatly wrapped box that you just now realize he’d been holding this entire time. “To thank you for keeping an old man company.”

You take the box and with shaky hands, you unwrap it and open the lid to see a pristine aqua blue Game Boy Advance surrounded by several cartridges. When you take a closer look, you see that they’re all Pokémon games, ranging from the original Red and Blue to Red Rescue Team.

“You appreciate the classics and it seemed a shame to let that Game Boy and those games just sit around, collecting dust. Plus, it’s my way of saying thank you for taking care of an old man.”

At this point, you realize you’re crying and can’t help but hug your boss. “Thank you, Mr. Chen.”

“You’re welcome, Y/N. When you move back to Nevada and win big in Vegas, don’t forget to give me a call so we can celebrate.”

You laugh at that and it makes you feel better, but only a little bit. When he promises to call you when he’s set up in Florida and you promise to call him when you’re back in Nevada, you two separate and watch as he gets in his daughter’s car and drive off, waving at him until he’s out of sight.

As you neatly tuck the box into your backpack, you realize that your schedule’s totally fucked up now. Normally, Alfred comes and gets you when you get done working at 7, but with him gone, you’d been using the bus that comes at that time to take you to the closest stop to Bristol and walk the rest of the way to Wayne Manor, but that bus won’t be here for hours. And you’d sooner chew your own arm off before calling any of them for help.

You mull it over for a minute or two before deciding to walk to the nearest stop, hop on the bus, and ride it to as close to Bristol as possible. With the store closed (and your beloved job lost) you can use the time to get ahead on your spring break plans and work on your game, ironing out bugs and working on your art. You pull out your map of Gotham’s bus stops and see the closest station is over in the East End, a place no one with a half working brain cell goes. Still, it’s the closest bus stop and you’ll only be there for a few minutes. You’ve survived Wayne Manor for thirteen years, surely you can deal with Gotham’s trash can for a little bit.

With your mind made up, you make your way to the East End. As you cross into the district, you’re greeted by a group of kids playing Cops and Robber, but instead of cops, one of them plays the role as Red Hood, complete with two stick guns and a red plastic pail on his head. That’s right, East End is Jason’s territory and is well loved by many of the children. The thought of the brute gives you even more incentive to leave the area as fast as possible because you’ve heard Jason yelling at the others for entering the East End because it’s his to protect and he doesn’t want any of them unless it’s a really big emergency and even then, they need his permission. Knowing him, he’ll accuse you of invading and try to fill you full of lead, despite the fact that you’re not a vigilante and he ever pulled his head out of his ass, he’d know that, but you guess that being in a family full of distrust and paranoia has polluted his higher reasoning skills.

The further into the district you get, the closer you hold onto the straps of your book bag. With every step you take, you hear glass shattering, people screaming, and even a gun shot or two, making you regret ever coming here. You should’ve found another bus stop or just found something to kill time until your regular bus showed up. Still, you’ve already come this far and turning around would probably be more dangerous than continuing forward, so you keep your head up high and try to change your stride to be more confident, hoping that appearing more confident would keep people away from you.

You see the bus stop and pick up speed to get there quickly, but just as you get close enough to see the map and schedule, you feel something grab your book bag and you’re quickly yanked backwards. You turn to look behind you to see three men staring down at you and by the way they’re grinning down at you, you can tell this won’t end well for you.

“Well, what’s a little GA snob doin’ here,” one of them sneers.

“Surprised you’re actually walking,” the other jeers. “Thought all you little shits were carried around by your butlers and maids. Too good to use your own legs.”

That little joke actually pissed you off because you’re not like the rest of your classmates who have their private drivers open their car doors when they go to the airport to spend Christmas on their private islands. You aren’t using Bruce’s money to pay for every little thing you see (not that he’d give you any because he’s forgotten you exist), you actually have a job and work hard for your money, damn it!

“Bet there’s someone who’d pay a pretty penny for you,” the man, obviously the leader of the other two, says. “Looks like we’ve hit pay dirt, boys.”

You struggle to break free of their grasp, but the three of them are too strong for you. The leader pulls out a rusty pipe from his back pocket and the last thing you see is said pipe rushing towards your head before everything goes black.

“Wake up, you little bitch,” a gruff voice says as you’re overcome with feelings of sheer cold and wetness.

You open your eyes to find that you’re sitting on n extremely dirty floor. You look up to see a man looking down at you, a sadistic look on his face and a dirty metal bucket in hand. Your mind finally boots back up and you remember being stopped by three dirtbags and being knocked out be a pipe to the head. As if on cue, the memory triggers immense feelings of pain in your head and while you’re no doctor, you’re pretty sure that you have a mild concussion. When the rest of your senses come to, you realize that you’re tied to chair with thick ropes you have no chance of getting out, at least without a knife. Through blurry eyes, you’re able to look around to see you’ve been dragged to some dirty shack and based on what you see through the busted windows nearest to the door, you know two things: that you’ve been dragged to Gotham Woods and you’ve been knocked out for a while.

“Alright, now that you’ve had your beauty sleep, it’s time to get to business.” The leader squats down to your level, an old flip phone in hand. “You’re gonna give us a number we can call to ransom you off. Try any funny business and…” he trails off as he brings out a gun and points it at you. “You won’t live long enough to regret it.”

You hears the words, but all you can focus on is the gun aimed at you. You’ve known Gotham is a dangerous place and going to certain parts of the city at night is practically committing suicide, but you never thought you’d be in this position, where the slightest action or inaction was the difference in sleeping in your bed or being put to rest in a pine box when everything was said and done. Ever since you’d turned eighteen, you’ve kept a tally of how many days you have until you graduate and put this city of the damned behind you and now there’s a good chance you’ll die here, in a city you’ve hated since you were forced to move here.

“Hey,” he says, breaking you out of your stupor. “Number. Now.” He emphasizes his point by waving his gun.

At first, you’re tempted to give him Alfred’s number, knowing the butler would probably come to your rescue and kill these thugs John Wick Style, but you know that they wouldn’t appreciate talking to someone on the other side of the world and right now, you couldn’t take the chance on pissing them off; you need someone here in Gotham and as much as every fiber in your body wants to throw up at once just for even thinking it, you know Bruce is your only hope of making out of this in one piece. Even if he doesn’t care about you, he’ll be able to swoop in and bash in the heads of a bunch of kidnappers, so that should be enough of a reason to bring him here.

“Alright, you can call my father,” you say, the word “father” leaving a bitter taste in your mouth, but right now, you can’t afford to let your hatred for the man get the better of you; not when your life hangs in the balance. You give him the manor’s home phone number, which he dials and puts it on speaker.

You wait with bated break as the phone rings. After the third time, you can feel yourself breaking into a cold sweat and when you look up at one of your captors, you can tell he’s getting angry by the second; with every ring, his scowl gets more and more intimidating and the gun starts to shake in rage.

Finally, after an eternity, you hear someone pick up.

“Hello,” Bruce’s voice comes through, and based on the tone, he sounds pissed. Knowing the time, he was probably getting ready to go out on patrol. Still, you can’t help but feel just a little to relived to hear his voice. You just might make it through the night. “Bruce Wayne speaking.”

“Holy shit, man, we’re about to be rich,” one of the other men whispers to his cohort, who nods in agreement.

“We have your son, Wayne,” the man says with an air of confidence. “Do as we say and you—“

“No, you don’t,” Bruce says, cutting off the man.

“What,” the leader says, the wind obviously taken out of his sails.

“No, you don’t,” Bruce repeats.

“Fuck you mean,’ he shouts. “I’m looking at him right now! Don’t you know you’re missing a brat right now?”

“All my kids are right here with me and I’m none of them are missing,” Bruce says in a matter-of-fact tone that makes your heart stop.

“Did you really think we wouldn’t notice if someone was missing” Dick chimes in.

“Man, you’re fuckin’ stupid,” Jason mocks.

“You’re not the first to fake holding a Wayne for ransom,” Tim explains. “It hasn’t worked before and it won’t work now.”

“If you lowlifes put as much effort into finding a job as you did trying to steal money, you’d be rich,” Damian taunts.

“Wow, you’re a loser,” Cass laughs. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your life? Why don’t you get out of your mom’s basement and go outside to touch grass and maybe talk to a girl.”

They all laugh at that and you can feel your heart just collapse in on itself. Right now, you have a better chance of sprouting wings and flying out of here than this man letting you go after being insulted by every member of the Wayne Family. And based on the fact that his face is as red as a beat, this definitely won’t be for you.

“As you can see, all my children are home, where they should be. I don’t know how much you hoped to get out of this, but you aren’t seeing a dime.”

And with that, the call ends and so does your chances of leaving here in one piece. You always thought that your existence was a complete unknown to them, but to actually see something that proves it? You can’t help but begin to cry, both at how the call went and for the world of hurt you’re no doubt about to experience with your captors.

“Bet you thought that was funny,” the man says as he slowly flips the phone shut, indicating that he’s pissed off beyond words.

You decide that Alfred is the one you should’ve had him call, but before you correct your mistake, you’re filled with pain as he strikes you on the head with the pipe. He hits you again and the force sends the chair tumbling to the floor, but that doesn’t matter to the man; he’s pissed and all he cares for now is hurting you. He’s spouting off insults and threats, but all you can focus on is the immense pain you’re in. He never hits in the same place twice, spreading the pain to your head, arms, torso, and legs. You feel your skin tear, bones break, and blood shed and the pleas you’d been shouting since he began his assault finally die, opting for crying and sounds of pain.

By the time he’s finished, you’re in so much pain, you can barely think. All you want to do is die.

“Hey, look what I found in his bag.” You look up through swollen and blood filled eyes to see one of the other men is holding up your Momma’s pen. “Looks like real gold. Might be worth something.”

After the pen incident three years ago, you’ve lived in constant fear that Damian would take you pen in an act of revenge, so you’ve kept the pen on you at all times, even keeping it under your pillow as you slept, only taking it out when you were in the safety of your room. Up until now, it’s kept your most treasured possession safe, but it looks like it’s about to cost you dearly.

“At least it’s something. Anything else?”

“Naw,” the man responds as he rummages through your bag. “Just the regular school shit, a wallet with a few bucks in it, and…” He pauses before pulling out the box Mr. Chen gave you and opens it. “Holy shit, looks like an old Game Boy! And there’s a bunch of games with it!”

“Is it worth much?”

“Might be able to get something for it. A bunch of collectors out there looking for shit like this. Couldn’t hurt to check around.”

“Haven’t seen one of those in years,” the last man chimes in. “Had one when I was a kid. Someone stole it, though. Hey, if we can’t get much of it, can I keep it?”

“Not now, Butch,” the leader growls. “Batman’s busy dealing with that clown bustin’ outta Arkham and all we got out of this is a lousy pen and a stupid video game.” He looks down at you. “Since you didn’t give us a name to ransom you off to, guess no one’ll care if you go missing.”

He picks his gun up and aims it at you. You feel your heart skip a beat at the sight of staring down the barrel of a gun aimed at you.

“No, please,” you beg, struggling to spit out the words as you’re so badly hurt, it’s a miracle you’re able to talk at all, but right now, all that matters is that you do what ever it takes to survive this.

“What’re we gonna do with the body,” one of the men asks.

“There’s the chasm near Mt. Gotham,” the one called Butch says. “That thing goes down for miles. We dump him in there and not even Batman’ll find him.”

Is this how it ends? After everything you’ve gone through, you die from being shot by three thugs in the forest and you’re thrown in a big ditch like a trash bag when you’re so close to leaving this damn city behind. You try to open your mouth to say something, anything that will at least buy you a few more minutes, but whatever you wanted to say is drowned out by the flash of a muzzle and the bang of a gunshot.

Your world goes to black.

A/N: Sorry, we were a little under for on cliffhanger quota, so we had to up production. The original plan was to split this chapter into two, with the kidnapping at the end of the first and the shooting at the end of the second, but with October upon us, I think things are going to get really crazy for me this semester, so I decide to be merciful (this time) and make one big chapter that only has one cliffhanger. Enjoy the wait for the next chapter! Also, if you asked to be added to the tag list and don’t see your name, I promise it’s not because I didn’t do it on purpose, but because when I went to tag you, Tumblr didn’t find your blog. I always check twice before uploading a new chapter to ensure everyone who asked to be tagged has been added.

Tag List: @space1crow @bat1212 @minkyungseokie @solelifauna @nosyrobin @bunbunboysworld @kitty-from-daaaa-voidddd @feral-childs-word @l0serl0v3r @phoenixgurl030 @soriansick

[canmom]

a polemic

every so often you see a conversation on this website that goes like this:

based story game enjoyer: D&D is a limiting game because of xyz design assumptions. cringe D&D fan: actually I changed these assumptions by editing the game to fit my group's needs. it works pretty good. story game chad, closing in for the kill: have you considered playing the perfectly designed game for your scenario that surely exists out there in the indie game milieu? you wouldn't have to homebrew. you'd be having better fun. foolish and wrong D&D incel: but I am already having fun with "modified D&D" and I don't particularly see a need to do that thing you said. wise story game sage, a single tear rolling down their perfectly sculpted face: do you not see that defending D&D, the product printed by Hasbro Inc., by pointing out that you can modify it, is self-defeating? tragic. there is no hope for these people. 42069 notes

along such lines, i saw someone today refer to homebrew in TTRPGs pejoratively as 'unpaid game design' and like. my fucking god guys. i don't love D&D-as-printed either but you've lost the plot.

not only is it good to modify the games you play and make them your own, it is inevitable. nobody ever plays TTRPGs exactly 'by the book', it's always filtered through the dynamic of the group. yes, even in those games that literally tell you exactly what to say like the quiet year or whatever.

you will ignore rules and guidelines. you will put your own interpretation on the wording of this or that rule. you will develop your own rhythms and at some point, yes, you can, will, and should change the rules to better fit whatever you're doing with the game.

the designer may throw up their hands and say "you are no longer playing Sorcerer By Ron Edwards, you are playing some other game! you're messing up my perfectly tuned mechanism!"

let them. it's an understandable frustration, perhaps, but once the game is in the hands of the players, the designer has had their say.

play the game you want to play, even - especially - if you have to invent it. use whatever tools you find useful to help you get there - whether that's a printed RPG book, a blog post, a memory of another game, a story that inspires you. maybe you want to take some existing and familiar system, such as PbtA, and adapt it - awesome (I reckon 95% of indie game designers pretty much do this). maybe you want to start from scratch and make a bespoke system for that one story - also awesome.

'this book requires a lot of work to adapt into something decent' is a fair criticism. 'nobody even plays this game by the book, so it's a bad game' is dogmatism. what game do they play? how do they learn to play it? what function is the book providing in that game? if you want to criticise a game, you need to talk about actual practice. there can be plenty to criticise there, for sure. but that's where you gotta start.

and sure, if someone wants to design a game, particularly to print, I would definitely recommend they look beyond D&D for inspiration. there are some really fucking cool and creative indie games that come up with wild ways to approach 'making up a story through a game' that I'd never have imagined. very often it's fun to follow a designer's frame and discover something new.

but don't make a fucking religion of it lmao.

[makapatag]

realities, maximalism,and the need for big book™️

some gubat banwa design thoughts vomit: since the beginning of its development i've kind of been enraptured with trying to really go for "fiction-first" storytelling because PbtA games really are peak roleplaying for me, but as i wrote and realized that a lot of "fiction first" doesn't work without a proper sort of fictional foundation that everyone agrees on. this is good: this is why there are grounding principles, genre pillars, and other such things in many PbtA games--to guide that.

broken worlds is one of my favs bc of sheer vibes

Gubat Banwa didn't have much in that sense: sure, I use wuxia and xianxia as kind of guideposts, but they're not foundational, they're not pillars of the kind of fiction Gubat Banwa wants to raise up. there wasn't a lot in the sense of genre emulation or in the sense of grounding principles because so much of Gubat Banwa is built on stuff most TTRPG players haven't heard about. hell, it's stuff squirreled away in still being researched academic and anthropological circles, and thanks to the violence of colonialism, even fellow filipinos and seasians don't know about them

this is what brought me back to my ancient hyperfixations, the worlds of Exalted, Glorantha, Artesia, Fading Suns... all of them have these huge tomes of books that existed to put down this vast sprawling fantasy world, right? on top of that are the D&D campaign settings, the Dark Suns and the Eberrons. they were preoccupied in putting down setting, giving ways for people to interact with the world, and making the world alive as much as possible.

one of my main problems with gubat banwa was trying to convey this world that i've seen, glimpsed, dreamed of. this martial fantasy world of rajas and lakans, sailendras and tuns, satariyas and senapatis and panglimas and laksamanas and pandai... its a world that didn't really exist yet, and most references are steeped in either nationalism or lack of resources (slowly changing, now)

i didn't want to fall back into the whole gazeteer tourist kind of shit when it came to writing GB, but it necessitated that the primary guidelines of Gubat Banwa were set down. my approach to it was trying to instill every aspect of the text, from the systems to the fluff text to the way i wrote to the way things were phrased, with the essence of this world i'm trying to put forward. while i wrote GB mainly for me and fellow SEAsian people, economically my main market were those in the first world countries that could afford to buy the book. grokking the book was always going to be severely difficult for someone that didn't have similar cultures, or are uninterested in the complexities of human culture. thus why GB had to be a big book.

in contemporary indie ttrpg spaces (where I mostly float in, though i must admit i pay more attention to SEAsia spaces than the usual US spaces) the common opinion is that big books like Exalted 3e are old hat, or are somewhat inferior to games that can cram their text into short books. i used to be part of that camp--in capitalism, i never have enough time, after all. however, the books that do go big, that have no choice to go big, like Lancer RPG, Runequest, Mage, Exalted are usually the ones that have something really big it needs to tell you, and they might be able to perform the same amount of text-efficient bursting at the seams flavor writing but its still not enough.

thats what happened to GB, which I wanted to be, essentially, a PbtA+4e kind of experience, mechanically speaking. i very soon abandoned those titles when i delved deeper into research, incorporated actual 15th century divination tools in the mechanics, injected everything with Martial Arts flavor as we found our niche

all of this preamble to say that no matter how light i wanted to go with the game, i couldnt go too light or else people won't get it, or i might end up writing 1000 page long tome books explaining every detail of the setting so people get it right. this is why i went heavy on the vibes: its a ttrpg after all. its never gonna be finished.

i couldnt go too light because Gubat Banwa inherently exists on a different reality. think: to many 3 meals a day is the norm and the reality. you have to eat 3 meals a day to function properly. but this might just be a cultural norm of the majority culture, eventually co opted by capitalism to make it so that it can keep selling you things that are "breakfast food" or "dinner food" and whatnot. so its reality to some, while its not reality to others. of course, a lot of this reality-talk pertains mostly to social--there is often a singular shared physical reality we can usually experience*

Gubat Banwa has a different fabric of reality. it inherently has a different flow of things. water doesn't go down because of gravity, but because of the gods that make it move, for example. bad things happen to you because you weren't pious or you didn't do your rituals enough and now your whole community has to suffer. atoms aren't a thing in gb, thermodynamics isn't a real thing. the Laws of Gubat Banwa aren't these physical empirical things but these karmic consequent things

much of the fiction-first movement has a sort of "follow your common sense" mood to it. common sense (something also debatable among philosophers but i dont want to get into that) is mostly however tied to our physical and social realities. but GB is a fantasy world that inherently doesn't center those realities, it centers realities found in myth epics and folk tales and the margins of colonized "civilization", where lightnings can be summoned by oils and you will always get lost in the woods because you don't belong there.

so Gubat Banwa does almost triple duty: it must establish the world, it must establish the intended fiction that arises from that world, and then it must grant ways to enforce that fiction to retain immersion--these three are important to GB's game design because I believe that that game--if it is to not be a settler tourist bonanza--must force the player to contend with it and play with it within its own terms and its own rules. for SEAsians, there's not a lot of friction: we lived these terms and rules forever. don't whistle at night on a thursday, don't eat meat on Good Friday, clap your hands thrice after lighting an incense stick, don't make loud noise in the forests. we're born into that [social] reality

this is why fantasy is so important to me, it allows us to imagine a different reality. the reality (most of us) know right now (i say most of us because the reality in the provinces, the mountains, they're kinda different) is inherently informed by capitalist structures. many people that are angry at capitalist structures cannot fathom a world outside capitalist structures, there are even some leftists and communists that approach leftism and revolution through capitalism, which is inherently destructive (its what leads to reactionaries and liberalism after all). fantasy requires that you imagine something outside of right now. in essence read Ursula K Le Guin

i tweeted out recently that you could pretty easily play 15-16th century Luzon or Visayas with an OSR mechanic setting and William Henry Scott's BARANGAY: SIXTEENTH CENTURY PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY, and I think that's purely because barebones OSR mechanics stuff fits well with the raiding and adventuring that many did in 15-16th century Luzon/Visayas, but a lot of the mechanics wont be comign from OSR, but from Barangay, where you learn about the complicated marriage customs, the debt mechanics, the social classes and stratum...

so thats why GB needs to be a (relatively) big book, and why I can contend that some books need to be big as well--even if their mechanics are relatively easy and dont need more than that, the book, the game, might be trying to relay something even more, might be trying to convey something even more than that. artesia, for example, has its advancements inherently tied to its Tarot Cards, enforcing that the Arcana guides your destiny. runquest has its runes magic, mythras (which is kinda generic) has pretty specific kinds of magic systems that immediately inform the setting. this is why everything is informed by something (this is a common Buddhist principle, dependent arising). even the most generic D&D OSR game will have the trappings of the culture and norms of the one that wrote and worked on it. its written from their reality which might not necessarily be the one others experience. that's what lived experience is, after all

*live in the provinces for a while and you'll doubt this too!

[kchasm]

Ryu Number: Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer was a German-born philosopher, theologian, and physician. His personal philosophy was based around the idea of "reverence for life": He believed that there was nothing of the objective world itself that evinced any innate meaning or ethical quality, and that the world was composed of life seeking to sustain itself, which occurred at the expense of other lives. Schweitzer proposed a system of ethics founded on a thoughtful and constant awareness of the reverence for life—all living things—from which should result the effort—through actions—to strengthen and develop it. In short: It was good to maintain and further life and it was bad to damage and destroy life, and one ought to commit to the former as much as possible while minimizing the latter as much as could be managed.

…Did I explain that all right? I don't feel like I got that all right, not really. I suspect I'm mangling the guy's principles here in some way, and I can't do a lot more than apologize. I might not have failed my philosophy classes in university, but I can't honestly say I aced them, either. Just sort of floated through while managing to keep my head above water,

Anyway, praxis manifested itself notably in his running of a hospital in French Equatorial Africa (later Gabon)—founded originally in 1913 before World War I broke out and, as a German citizen in French territory, he was removed. He returned to the hospital in 1924, and headed its operation until his death in 1965.

Yeah, all of that was really heavy, wasn't it? If you want to take a moment before crossing the readmore, I totally understand.

If you didn't already know, here's where you learn that both Ryu and Darth Vader show up as guest fighters in Brawlhalla. There's always someone who doesn't know about Brawlhalla, and I love letting them know that Brawlhalla exists. (Rayman is there too.)

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga includes a trailer for the then-upcoming Lego Indiana Jones video game. Watch it, and you can buy Indiana Jones from the shop. And then play as him, of course.

Dude's a bit clean-shaven, but it's him. He's got the whip and everything.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was a TV show based on, uh, well, the chronicles of young Indiana Jones. These semi-edutainment stories would usually see Indy getting tangentially involved with real-life historical events and meeting momentarily with real-life historical figures. The episodes were later edited and released across three DVD sets as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, each the sets including a DVD-ROM that let you install a slightly more educational computer game version of one of the stories in the set.

Quality-wise, these games are a little, uh.

Also Indiana's really blond in these for some reason.

Still counts, though. Including the parts where questionably drawn Indiana gets to meet the various questionably drawn historical figures.

(Incidentally, for his work, Albert Schweitzer got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. This makes him one among a surprisingly large number of Nobel Peace Prize laureates with Ryu Numbers. Larger than you'd think, I'd mean. Or at least larger than you'd think if I asked you to guess how many Nobel Peace Prize laureates had Ryu Numbers and then told you you had only five seconds to answer.)

(It's more than ten, anyway.)

[lilybug-02]

The HK comic was very sweet and wholesome and I loved every second of reading it! :3

Also does Dewi give hornet back her thread? Im pretty sure she needs that for silksong when that eventually releases lol

Also to go off on an unrelated tangent/rant, people have been supposedly like up in arms about how "Silksong will never release!" and how "Its taking FORVEVER to come out!" But like.... First of all, its and indie studio. Secondly It was only announced in 2019, which, yeah, was 5 years ago, but with the way people were describing it I thought it was announced like way earlier. And hollow knight was released in 2017, but the way people talk about it makes me think its like a classic from early 2000's or something. Sure, its a good game, but why are people so stuck on the Silksong thing? Like at least you're pretty sure you're probably gonna get a full game when it releases. With other communities/fandoms you'd be lucky to get even an announcement. Like Deltarune for example. Not even Toby Fox was sure he was gonna be able to do it in the first place lol. And if you think 5 years is bad of a wait, imagine waiting for a new LITERALLY ANYTHING WHATSOEVER from Bethesda that isnt the 100th re-re-release gold ultra plus edition of fucking Skyrim again but now on the fucking smart watch or whatever. I'm 90% sure that most of Bethesda's existance as a company has been spent making something for Skyrim instead of working on anything new or original.

Sorry for the random rant btw

Anyways love your art, have a nice day, kay bye imma go die of awkwardness in the corner :)

First off thank you very very much. I am so glad to hear how much you like the Hollow Knight comic. And to answer your question, Hornet allowed Dewi to keep that thread. She gave it to him as a peace offering for helping the bugs get back home and to lead Dewi through the maze like cave. Don't worry, she has PLENTY of thread back in Hallownest.

And regarding the impatience of Silksong. I get it. I am the very lucky few to get into the game NOW. I haven't had to wait as long as the many other people waiting for Silksong to release, and in that regard I am quite spoiled. Yeah, Deltarune won't fully release in at least another 5 years, but I wouldn't want to say I'm morally better for my "patience". Waiting for a game or any kind of media SUCKS. The fandom keeps it alive, but even those can grow stagnant. As long as you aren't harassing the creators or fans of the project, you can be as angry or frustrated or sad as you want. I think it's normal and can help others feel less alone in their feelings as well.

Not to say your points of contention above aren't relevant!!! Patience and kindness are always important to keep in mind with artistic projects. Art is HARD and can be very taxing. I hope I'm not dampening your message. ❤️ Thanks for sharing

[if-whats-new]

Meet the Team!

Who are we?

Just a few Interactive Fiction enthusiasts who love sharing their interests with the rest of the internet!

But we're also:

-=-

Heyo! I'm Aj (she/her)

I got into IF through the app called Choices way back in 2017 and since then there was no turning back. It wasn't until last year when I got into text-based IFs. A friend on tumblr reblogged 'Defiled hearts', it caught my interest and here I am deep down in the trenches of IFs.

Listing my favourites isn't an easy thing cause there are so many I love. So I will list some that have been on my mind for a while: Infamous, Press Play, College Tennis: Origin Story, Drink your Villain Juice, Golden, The Golden Rose, Our Life Now and Forever, We Wretched Creatures, TWC , The Lonely Shore, Blood Choke and Midnight Sun.

I mostly help out with finding IF news and game updates in the wild.

-=-

How you doing?!? I'm Bex (she/her) *on hiatus

I started my journey with Voltage (now Love365) and dating sims or Otome games on my PSP Vita *sheds a tear*. I honestly don't know how I came upon IF, but I fell in love with ​Our Life: Beginnings & Always around 2021?

My favourites? Hmm, currently it would be: Love and Leases, Adoriel's Tears, The Abyssal Song, Keyframes, Our Life 2 and a bunch of Kickstarters that I can't wait for!

Personally, I'm married with no kids! And I work full-time as an administrator. Boring, I know.

In regards to the Zine, I normally do the formatting. Basically taking everything the peeps have found and putting it all into the Zine. I try and write some of the Highlights and try to dabble in the Editorial (if my work doesn't get edited).

-=-

Hello!!! This is Briar! (she/her)

I am one of the interviewers!

I got into IFs this year, and boy, my eyes were opened, and I got so obsessed that I decided to write my own (The Mighty Shifter). My personal favourites are TWC, Infamous, God-Cursed, and Viatica.

I am a uni student who is studying English literature. What else...? Have an amazing day/night!

-=-

Hey, hi and hello! I'm Dion (they/he)

I started my journey into IF through Episode, but due to poor non-female MC representation, I soon began to look for something else. My friend then introduced me to text-based games through The Wayhaven Chronicles and Mind Blind. I've been going deeper down the rabbit hole since!

I'm literally majoring in interactive media. IF is my life now, send help. (/j)

Some of my favourites would be: Mind Blind, Shepherds of Haven, Reanimated Heart, Seven days in purgatory, Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder, seekL, LLLLL (aka LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST) and a lot of the stuff DOMINO CLUB does. (There isn't only IF, but that's what I usually go for. Definitely check them out if you're into creepy indie stuff!)

I'd call myself the jack of all trades concerning the zine. As of now, my main job is to be the social media guy and to do the different exports (playable Zine, Tumblr, PDF/.txt). But I also help out with news-searching and compiling + editing stuff for the editorial, column, highlight, letter and thanks portions.

-=-

Hey all, this is Jenn (she/her)

I am a youth sports coach (fútbol, softball, basketball) based in Los Angeles. I am in the process of applying for a master’s program (Sports psychology).

I did write and code a couple of IF games but never finished. I am a perfectionist and I couldn’t publish something not up to my standards. I started reading IF a couple years ago and I couldn’t possibly name my favorite. Some of the most memorable IFs are: The Exile, TWC, Crown of Ashes and Flames, Infamous, WWC, Zombie Exodus: SH, The Golden Rose, The Fernweh Saga, and Crown of Exile. I can definitely add more…

Basic responsibilities: Scouring the internet for IF news and frequently updating our existing database. I honestly enjoy the challenge. On a good day I can find upcoming IF titles and newly released demos. It’s so exciting to find new IF because I know someone will eventually see the same potential I do in that new IF.

-=-

Ssuuuupppp, I’m Sir tuskhany (He/Him)

I am one of the lovely interviewers who’ll be asking questions, you know grilling fellow authors on their IF, WIPS and favourite characters. The usual. As to why or how I started, I gotta say its cause of books and great authors like Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. And their respective series wheel of time and basically the whole Comsere universe. I tried following in their footsteps writing a few books of my own. But like every writer most of these ended up being WIPs I either abandoned or stopped. Still I didn’t let that stop me and started posting some of them, I am the writer of Borne of the sands a static webnovel with a few chapters and Dusk and Dawn my current ongoing project(Still a work in progress so forgive the grammatical errors. T-T).

My favourite series are the Keeper of the Day and Night, Infamous, Wayhaven Chronicles and Blood Moon.

The current story I’m working on was inspired by these however most of my inspiration came from static or interactive cyoas like the Slayers v4, Supernatural Investigator, Demigod v4, A Traveller!s Tale and Universal War. If you haven’t heard of them please give them a go they are amazing.

Have fun and stay posted!

-=-            

[publishinggoblin]

What Makes Confluence New?

Right now on Backerkit, Confluence: The Living Archive is in its final 11 days of funding. This is a Table Top Role Playing Game unlike any other, but not just for the reasons you might think.

Look, yes, it's a 6 book set with incredible art and layout and an amazing world to explore. This is all true. It's a true living world you get to dive into and experience at the table. That's great, truly!

But the thing that made Confluence different from any other project out there that I've ever heard of, is that in this industry, freelance writing for TTRPGs pays pennies on the word you turn in.

Some people were recently talking about how 10 cents per word is pretty good! You write 5000 words for a project? That's a nice $500. Other indie people were talking about paying 7 cents per word. But what they almost never offer is hourly pay, or pay for work you do outside the writing (including researching the game material you're writing for, or research for what you're writing!)

The Confluence Contract

Confluence has always meant the world to me. Truly. I tried to fund it and make it on my own multiple times in the past. When the Alleyman's Tarot was successful, I immediately wrote the contract with my lawyer for Confluence.

Everyone who worked on the project would make $25/hr for any work they do on the project. We would all feel we had equal pull and power here in that way, as it had to be collaborative.

Everyone would be paid an up-front Retainer of $10,000 if they were going to work part time, or $20,000 if they were going to work 30 or more hours a week. This was to alleviate current financial stress and give them space to explore the game with more freedom.

Everyone who worked on the project would share ownership with things they make. New cool mechanic? It lives in Confluence AND the creator can take it to their own games later. Awesome NPC? In Confluence and can be adapted anywhere else! I didn't want anyone to hold anything back. As far as I know, this has never been done before.

I did all this because, you see, I had an amazing team of people who came together to help bring this to life. People in the US, yes, but in Canada, the UK, Brazil, India, the Philippines. You can learn more and get links to them on the Pub Gob website here!

Do You Expect This to be the New Standard?

No, I don't expect all indie publishers to start doing this for TTRPGs. It's costly and not easy. But I want to stress that this is a unique situation we will likely never see again. And Confluence can only exist into the future with such an amazing team if we can step up support on the crowdfunding project!

This experiential game doesn't want to change the industry, but it changed the process behind the scenes already. If you believe in such a thing, a possibility for people to be paid fairly and have equal say and keep the rights for their works, consider believing in this project with us. Confluence needs your help to reach its funding goal, but it also needs your help to push further so the team can continue working in this amazing space to bring you even more materials in the future!

So check us out on Backerkit today!

[3liza]

thank you for speaking rational thought AS AN ARTIST into the ai debate. i get so tired of people over simplifying, generalizing, and parroting how they’ve been told ai works lmao. you’re an icon

some of the worst AI art alarmists are professional artists as well but theyre in very specific fields with very specific work cultures and it would take a long and boring post to explain all the nuance there but i went to the same extremely tiny, hypefocused classic atelier school in San Francisco as Karla Ortiz and am actually acquainted with her irl so i have a different perspective on this particular issue and the people involved than the average fan artist on tumblr. the latter person is also perfectly valid and so is their work, all im saying is that we have different life experiences and my particular one has accidentally placed me in a weird and relevant position to observe what the AI art panic is actually about.

first thing i did when the pearl-clutching about AI art started is go on the Midjourney discord, which is completely public and free, and spent a few burner accounts using free credits to play with the toolset. everyone who has any kind of opinion about AI art should do the same because otherwise you just wont know what youre talking about. my BIGGEST takeaway is that it is currently and likely always will be (because of factors that are sort of hard to explain) extremely difficult to make an AI like Midjourney spit out precisely wht you want UNLESS what you want is the exact kind of hyperreal, hyperpretty Artstation Front Page 4k HDR etc etc style pictures that, coincidentally, artists like Karla Ortiz have devoted their careers to. Midjourney could not, when asked, make a decent Problem Glyph. or even anything approaching one. and probably never will, because there isn't any profit incentive for it to do so and probably not enough images to train a dataset anyway.

the labor issues with AI are real, but they are the result of the managerial class using AI's existence as an excuse to reduce compensation for labor. this happens at every single technological sea change and is unstoppable, and the technology itself is always blamed because that is beneficial to the capitalists who are actually causing the labor crisis each time. if you talk to the artists who are ACTUALLY already being affected, they will tell you what's happening is managers are telling them to insert AI into workflows in ways that make no sense, and that management have fully started an industry-wide to "pivot" to AI production in ways that aren't going to work but WILL result in mass loss of jobs and productivty and introduce a lot of problems which people will then be hired to try to fix, but at greatly-reduced salaries. every script written and every picture generated by an AI, without human intervention/editing/cleanup, is mostly unusable for anything except a few very specific use cases that are very tolerant of generality. i'm seeing it being used for shovelware banner ads, for example, as well as for game assets like "i need some spooky paintings for the wall of a house environment" or "i need some nonspecific movie posters for a character's room" that indie game devs are making really good use of, people who can neither afford to hire an artist to make those assets and cant do them themselves, and if the ai art assets weren't available then that person would just not have those assets in the game at all. i've seen AI art in that context that works great for that purpose and isn't committing any labor crimes.

it is also being used for book covers by large publishing houses already, and it looks bad and resulted directly in the loss of a human job. it is both things. you can also pay your contractor for half as many man hours because he has a nailgun instead of just hammers. you can pay a huge pile of money to someone for an oil portrait or you can take a selfie with your phone. there arent that many oil painters around anymore.

but this is being ignored by people like the guy who just replied and yelled at me for the post they imagined that i wrote defending the impending robot war, who is just feeling very hysterical about existential threat and isn't going to read any posts or actually do any research about it. which is understandable but supremely unhelpful, primarily to themselves but also to me and every other fellow artist who has to pay rent.

one aspect of this that is both unequivocally True AND very mean to point out is that the madder an artist is about AI art, the more their work will resemble the pretty, heavily commercialized stuff the AIs are focused on imitating. the aforementioned Artstation frontpage. this is self-feeding loop of popular work is replicated by human artists because it sells and gets clicks, audience is sensitized to those precise aesthetics by constant exposure and demands more, AI trains on those pictures more than any others because there are more of those pictures and more URLs pointing back to those pictures and the AI learns to expect those shapes and colors and forms more often, mathematically, in its prediction models. i feel bad for these people having their style ganked by robots and they will not be the only victims but it is also true, and has always been true, that the ONLY way to avoid increasing competition in a creative field is to make yourself so difficult to imitate that no one can actually do it. you make a deal with the devil when you focus exclusively on market pleasing skills instead of taking the massive pay cut that comes with being more of a weirdo. theres no right answer to this, nor is either kind of artist better, more ideologically pure, or more talented. my parents wanted me to make safe, marketable, hotel lobby art and never go hungry, but im an idiot. no one could have predicted that my distaste for "hyperreal 4k f cup orc warrior waifu concept art depth of field bokeh national geographic award winning hd beautiful colorful" pictures would suddenly put me in a less precarious position than people who actually work for AAA studios filling beautiful concept art books with the same. i just went to a concept art school full of those people and interned at a AAA studio and spent years in AAA game journalism and decided i would rather rip ass so hard i exploded than try to compete in such an industry.

which brings me to what art AIs are actually "doing"--i'm going to be simple in a way that makes computer experts annoyed here, but to be descriptive about it, they are not "remixing" existing art or "copying" it or carrying around databases of your work and collaging it--they are using mathematical formulae to determine what is most likely to show up in pictures described by certain prompts and then manifesting that visually, based on what they have already seen. they work with the exact same very basic actions as a human observing a bunch of drawings and then trying out their own. this is why they have so much trouble with fingers, it's for the same reason children's drawings also often have more than 5 fingers: because once you start drawing fingers its hard to stop. this is because all fingers are mathematically likely to have another finger next to them. in fact most fingers have another finger on each side. Pinkies Georg, who lives on the end of your limb and only has one neighbor, is an outlier and Midjourney thinks he should not have been counted.

in fact a lot of the current failings by AI models in both visual art and writing are comparable to the behavior of human children in ways i find amusing. human children will also make up stories when asked questions, just to please the adult who asked. a robot is not a child and it does not have actual intentions, feelings or "thoughts" and im not saying they do. its just funny that an AI will make up a story to "Get out of trouble" the same way a 4 year old tends to. its funny that their anatomical errors are the same as the ones in a kindergarten classroom gallery wall. they are not people and should not be personified or thought of as sapient or having agency or intent, they do not.

anyway. TLDR when photography was invented it became MUCH cheaper and MUCH faster to get someone to take your portrait, and this resulted in various things happening that would appear foolish to be mad about in this year of our lord 2023 AD. and yet here we are. if it were me and it was about 1830 and i had spent 30 years learning to paint, i would probably start figuring out how to make wet plate process daguerreotypes too. because i live on earth in a technological capitalist society and there's nothing i can do about it and i like eating food indoors and if i im smart enough to learn how to oil paint i can certainly point a camera at someone for 5 minutes and then bathe the resulting exposure in mercury vapor. i know how to do multiple things at once. but thats me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[telekinetic-electronica]

Theft King is Wrong about Indigo Park and Here's Why

Theft King is an infamous YouTuber mainly known for the Kane Carter drama and not always having the best takes. He mainly covers Five Nights at Freddy's, and recently seems to be covering a lot more of Poppy Playtime, due to chapter 3. Recently, Theft King made a video critiquing the newest indie mascot horror game, Indigo Park.

Suffice to say, it is not good. This post will be going over why it is not good, and debunking Theft King's own points.

"Indigo Park is the least original mascot horror game ever made. Between the tired, cliched premise of returning to an abandoned children's establishment, the enemy designs, the unnervingly cute, mascot character, and multiple sequences that appear to be directly lifted from Poppy Playtime. You'd just think this was another Garten of Banban-eqsue cash in. In a lot of ways, it kind of is. But it's more complicated than that."

Through your introduction to this video, it is quite obvious that you are biased. For starters, to call Indigo Park the LEAST original mascot horror game ever made is a big claim to make. Like, seriously, out of ALL the games out there, Indigo Park is? While, yes, the concept of finding out what happened to an abandoned children's establishment isn't original, it has a unique twist to it. We have Rambley to accompany us through out the park. It actually FEELS like a place that could exist in real life. It's also obvious Geese is a fan of mascot horror and got inspired from Five Nights at Freddy's and Poppy Playtime.

Also to compare Indigo Park to Garten of Banban is literally insane to me. You are comparing the dedicated, passion, and willingly to learn with Indigo with GARTEN OF BANBAN? The POSTER child of what NOT to do with mascot horror? Also, Theft King through out the entire video compares Indigo Park to Poppy Playtime, specifically chapter 3. When Indigo Park was in production BEFORE chapter 3 came out.

Before the recent Rambley plush, Indigo Park was for free and the money came of Geese's own pocket to fund this game. To say this a "cash grab" is very dismissing the hard work and passion Geese and the Indigo Park team put into the game.

"The game begins with a really slick cinematic depicting the establishment of Indigo Park. Alongside it's founder, Isaac Indigo. Isaac Indigo?! Hold on. That's not a name that humans have. This guy's definitely a space alien. I'm calling that now"

While the last part is definitely a joke on his end, there's a lot of reasons to explain why Indigo is Isaac's last name. For one, Indigo is a REAL last name. It's just uncommon. Second, there is thing called suspension of disbelief. It is when something fantastical happens that can't happen in real life, but you suspend your disbelief because it is a work of fiction. If you can suspend your disbelief to a murderous lion and parrot, I'm pretty sure you can suspend your disbelief to this old guy's name being Indigo. And third, there is such a thing called legally changing your name. Besides, why is this even here? This is just a nitpick.

"As the game begins we find the park's main gates sealed. And upon heading into the service station next door, we encounter Rambley. The single best part of Indigo Park. Rambley is an AI, raccoon mascot that serves as our guide. Appearing on countless, conveniently placed televisions through out the game. He's fantastic. His dialogue is well written, his voice actor is great and his animation is expressive and charming. He's the single best part of the game, but, Rambley is a crutch that Indigo Park leans far too heavily on. Though, we'll get there later."

While he does say he'll get to it later, I would like to still address this point right now. Rambley is a core part of the game. Rambley is the second protagonist, and is obviously going to be very important to the plot. He's going to be accompanying us through out however many chapters there are. Chapter 1, like many introductions, are we are getting to know the characters. Rambley is in a big chunk of chapter 1 is because besides, Ed, he's our secondary protagonist, and knows the in's-and-out's of the park, and knows crucial information. This will be expanded more when Theft King gets to this part. Rambley isn't a "crutch". The game is literally setting up the characters and scene. Like, y'know, how many first chapters do.

"And enter the doors to the park and enter the Critter Corner, where we're given a Fazwatch from FNAF: Security Breach. It's useless. It's just a plot device to justify why some doors don't open until they need to."

Theft King, have you ever been to an amusement park before? Many amusement parks have bands on to indicate you are someone entering, and not sneaking in. If you did an ounce of research, the Critter Cuff is a reference to Disney's Magic Bands. Do you only get your information from indie mascot horror? Do you not think stuff like this doesn't exist in real life? While, yes it can be a reason why some doors won't open. But you clearly weren't even paying attention to the own game you are playing.

(Disney Magic Band)

(Indigo Park Critter Cuff)

(FNAF Fazwatch) The Critter Cuff looks NOTHING like a Fazwatch and has difference uses. Gregory can use the Fazwatch to see the map of the Pizzaplex, get emails, communicate with Glamrock Freddy, among other things. All the Critter Cuff can do is be a pedometer, heart monitor, and mood ring. The Fazwatch and Critter Cuff doesn't even have the same functions.

The Critter Cuff also just doesn't acts like this. It's hinted the Critter Cuff can keep away the mascots. When Lloyd was about to attack Ed, it let out a frequency that made Lloyd back off. Pay attention to what's happening on the screen and story, Theft King.

"Proceeding through an awkwardly placed loading zone, we find ourselves in some sort of subway, tunnel movie theater? I don't know the area's design wasn't very coherent. Look at that Poppy Playtime ass floor. Although, something is going on with the resolution or something. I don't know."

...As he says when the ride for this area is a train. Trains are often located underground. Also, apparently, according to Theft King any colorful, floor patterns is a rip off of Poppy Playtime when the ride is a reference to Mickey and Minnie's Railway. As for the "movie posters", Theft King the ride is clearly meant to introduce the park goers to the characters and other rides to this world. Please, pay attention and think before assuming something.

"After the train ride, Rambley gives us cart blanche to go wherever we want. Though, it's at this point, I noticed the game scaling. You know, the size of everything relative to your character? It's really weird. We are very short, I have to be perfectly honest. [...] When was the last time you walked up to a kiosk, a stand and your chin was like touching the table?"

This is just a nitpick. While, yes, it can look a little jarring, but out of all of things you're critiquing is the fucking counter "being too big"? Theft King, do you have spatial awareness? The counter is at Ed's chest, not eye level. Besides, you're not even fully looking up.

Also, for some reason, he genders nail polish for some reason? Either saying it was nail polish or a bad "fingernail texture"? Which. Okay? Men can wear nail polish too, Theft King. It isn't a gendered thing.

"The next area is probably the most visually striking in the game. A large fountain square with a strange clock tower and Ferris wheel in the distance. It's pretty cool. But there's a lot of empty sky box visible and it's fairly obvious that there's absolutely nothing beyond these buildings that we can see the illusion that this is actually outside is completely broken. And as a result, this area feels more like a sound stage or movie set than an actual place. It just needed a lot more low resolution buildings and rides and stuff in the distance. Because it's obvious behind this clock tower, is just an endless void."

Theft King, once again, have you ever been to a theme park? It's the entrance to the ACTUAL park. You don't get to see everything right off the bat, it's just a taste of the actual theme park. If Geese and co. added more buildings and rides, it would look VERY cluttered and jankily put in together. It would also be way overstimulating, and ruin the atmosphere of the decayed, left-to-rot theme park with all of these lights and colors. It is a horror game, Theft King. Atmosphere, setting, and lighting are important here. It just seems like if you aren't being entertained for more than 2 seconds you're crying out it's "boring and just looks like a set piece."

Besides, do you think all of the budget is going to be spent on the buildings, just so it be can be aesthetically pleasing? A problem Theft King (and the majority of the indie mascot horror critics I see) really need to stop expecting brand new, horror indie games to be AAA quality. Geese funded chapter one from his own pocket money. Geese is the only programmer. Geese is still a beginner and still in college. The fact he is still a beginner, and pulled this off shows that he's a fast learner, willingly to learn, and talented. Give him some slack.

"[...] But we find that the door [Jetstream Junction's] is locked. This fountain square station is huge, but there's really only one destination. Lloyd's Mane Stage Theater. [...] Check out the LOD's on this box. There's no bar code, bard code. No bar code, bar code. Indigo Park is made in Unreal Engine 5, and it's really pretty at times. Though, certain effects are obviously pretty janky. Yeah, the flashlight looks kind of like ass. The flashlight looming shadows are pretty janky. You can see them kind of wobbling and flickering around. I turned on all of the fancy features and while the game looks really moody and atmospheric when lights aren't moving, the flashlight doesn't really look well with it. The shadows flicker and jiggle all over the place and it just looks really bad."

Okay, if it certain effects are janky, how are they janky? What could they improve on to not make it less janky? For the flashlight bit, you are holding a flashlight and how it's meant to be done is suppose to be more realistic, according to Geese. Also, this is just really nitpicky. If anything, it's a a subtle thing and you get used to the flashlight feature pretty quickly. It kind of just sounds like you're picking this game apart, if it was an AAA game. The game is not perfect, by any means. But tearing and shredding to bit little, tiny, things when this project has ONE coder, who spent all of us OWN money, is still a beginner, and IS STILL in college.

When someone is a beginner and showing a willingly to learn, you have to take a different approach. It'd be one thing if Geese was doing programming for years, but he's not. You have to redirect your criticism and maybe, I don't know, give suggestions? You haven't really gone into what he could do to improve, and give examples to help him out. This is like treating someone who's a beginner drawer and expecting Michelangelo perfect details. They're drawing is still good, there's noticeable mistakes, but there's room to improve and grow. Also, Theft King, you literally have your settings maxed out. Maybe trying lowering them.

"Earlier, Rambley asked us where we wanted to go first. Implying, that we had a choice. [...] We don't. We go where exactly where Rambley says, always. That's the name of the game. Rambley tells you to go somewhere and you do it. Honestly, until the theater just now, every area in this game has been walk in, talk to Rambley, and walk out."

Theft King, asking a small, indie team to program a BUNCH of stuff you can do within an entire SECTION of an area is... a lot to ask, don't you think? Like, yes. I will admit I will agree there should be a lot more interactable with the items around that Ed can explore, I think that's a good point to bring up. But those would just be side things to do. You still have to progress the main story of chapter one. You can be patient for one minute. They are clearly building up to something. Besides, it's an abandoned theme park, I doubt any of the items inside would work. It's "walk in and walk out" to set the atmosphere of what's about to come, and let your guard down. It's not that hard to put two and two together.

Also, as I said before, to put pressure on one programmer to program so many things all at once is just not a cool thing to do. It sounds like you have to be entertained 24/7. Be patient, and wait. They're building up to something. Just wait.

"[...] Like I said before, the whole game is just kind of just walking into an area, having Rambley talk to you for a bit, and tell you where to go next. We find ourselves in Mollie's Landing Pad, which is a play pen highly reminiscent of DogDays from Poppy Playtime Chapter 3 or The Daycare from FNAF: Security Breach. This section presents itself as a puzzle, but it's really not. It's another fetch quest. Embedded in the walls, are five-colored that each can be set to one of four symbols. And throughout the area, we find paintings of shapes that correspond to the code. Again, it's not really a puzzle. It's just a slightly, contrived justification to make you wonder through this area and experience all of the scripted sequences." Rambley "tells you where to go" is because it is establishing how his game mechanic works, expanding on his personality, and him finding out the horrors of the park and what happened to everything. It's setting up how things are going to go down. Rambley is an AI park, GUIDE. Rambley is LITERALLY doing his job, GUIDING us around the park. Pay attention to what's going on.

Last time I checked, play pins are a big part of children's entertainment. Your local Chuck E. Cheese has this exact same, ball pit. Poppy Playtime and FNAF doesn't owe the rights to a colorful, play pit. See, through out his review Theft King calls Indigo Park a rip off of Poppy Playtime Chapter 3, and of Security Breach. But never goes into detail as to WHY and HOW it is. Sure, he shows via visuals, but never expands fully on his point on itself. Also, "fetch quest"? Fetch quests are something you get and return to an NPC. This, by definition is a puzzle. What are we exactly fetching, here? We're solving a puzzle to open the door. Also, wow! Scripted horror events in tight closed spaces! What a twist! Sarcasm.

"Unfortunately, by this point, the game had all but telegraphed that I wasn't in any danger and thus, I wasn't really scared."

...You literally have shown insistences of being scared? Through out when you were walking through Lloyd's maze thing, and when Mollie was peeking around the corners in the slides. You HAVE shown you were scared, or at least startled. Thus, it did it's job of being a horror game. Theft King, something doesn't need to be happening 24/7 to do it's job. Sometimes horror works better in subtle ways than just blaring red, warning signs all over the place, or having a scary chase scene.

"After pressing a button, with no visible indication of what it does."

...Look down. The fact that you couldn't even pay attention to something as something simple as this, tells me you weren't even doing a fraction or even cared to actually pay attention to what was happening, gameplay or lore wise. That's how much care was put into "reviewing" this game.

"As the leader of the FNAF community and for the former, top five greatest FNAF player in the world, I shouldn't have died to that."

Why are you running directly towards Mollie? You only died because you ran straight into the obvious "RUN NOW" part of the game.

"Yeah, it's literally the DogDays sequence from Poppy Playtime. It's literally the same thing. I criticized the DogDays chase in Chapter 3 for being boring, so, naturally, this cheap, knockoff is... even more boring. Normally, in my videos, the chase sequence is like a free 30 to 60 seconds of watch time. I just let it play because it's exciting. However, as I edit this video, I realized I have to cut this chase down, it's so boring. And I think that says a lot. [...] Then we see ourselves being chased through vents, just like Poppy Playtime Chapter 1."

Theft King, being chased down closed, liminal spaces isn't something Poppy Playtime owns. There are MANY differences. For one, in the DogsDays chase, you have to avoid the smaller creatures trying to get you, on top of the possessed DogDays chasing you, which is quite fast in the decrepit area. In Indigo Park, you're still the Landing Pad, going down slides, and jumping on things to get away from Mollie. Which leads into the Ranglers' room area. The areas look ENTIRELY different, and so do the vents in Chapter 1 of Poppy Playtime and here.

Also, you're not suppose to wait 30-60 seconds. You're suppose to be actively running away from the monsters. Y'know, the whole point of a chase sequence, and y'know, playing the game. It's "boring" because Indigo Park lets your guard down, when the chase is STILL happening until you see Rambley again.

"That was when it hit me. Despite Indigo Park being the definition of a shallow, walking simulator that that is in many ways, even less original than Garten of BanBan, I was still enjoying it. But, only thanks to Rambley. Rambley carries this game. Without him and his great dialogue and acting, Indigio Park would be entirely forgettable. For all of BanBan's faults, the game has this at least has this unique, bizarre, liminal style to it. Even if it's completely incoherent. Indigo Park's environments are generic. They're boring. There are some cool rooms and set pieces, but this doesn't really feel like an abandoned theme park. Like I said before, it feels like a sound stage. This is the video game equivalent to those haunted house rides that shepherd you through a series of rooms as scripted sequences play predictably each time. Rambley is the only thing keeps you playing because he's great. But, the longer Indigo Park goes on, the more and more obvious it becomes that he's a massive crutch that it leans on to mask the lack of any real subsite gameplay, interesting environments, or even compelling narrative.

We know that something bad happened here and it caused the park to be evacuated and closed down but once we get inside, we just see that place is trashed. There isn't much in the environment that hints at what actually happened. And without those breadcrumbs of mystery, the only real reason to keep moving forward is because Rambley tells us to. And HE IS, quite entertaining. However, I am skeptical, that this trick will work twice. Rambley kept me going for the roughly 1 hour it takes to beat Indigo Park Chapter 1, but it had started getting old. Fellow YouTuber, UniqueGeese is crowdfunding for chapter 2 right now and I think that's awesome. But they're going have to do more to have to do more for the follow up game and because chapter 1 has ZERO gameplay with which to build on, it's not really clear what a more ambitious sequel would even look like. Poppy ran into the same problem. Prior to chapter 3, the gameplay was just like... puzzles, scripted sequences and freaking Simon Says. With the latest entry, they added real gameplay mechanics and some would argue that Poppy suffered as a result. By failing to establish any actual, gameplay in chapter 1, Indigo Park either needs to introduce something totally new in chapter 2 or continue with the shallow scripted, walking simulator approach but just turn up the spectacle and fidelity." Out of all the points in this video, this one made me sigh the most.

To even COMPARE Indigo Park to Garten of BanBan is a huge insult. Garten of BanBan pumps out game after game, merch after merch, to make a quick buck and splash because right now indie, mascot horror is still popular. This game took over a YEAR to make, and had love and time, and passion, and giving a fresh, twist on it and to even say BanBan offered something better is just... really gross, in my opinion.

For the environments bit, you can see clearly where nature takes it's course through out the land with bushes and grass, and the decay of food in one of the cafes taking place. It's setting up the atmosphere of being decayed, left to rot, and feels like something's in the shadows. It's to make you unnerved that happiness used to be here, but now it's gone.

And YES! The lore IS there! You actively have to PAY ATTENTION as to what's going on. The problem with this point is that Theft King expects the game to paint the entire picture of what happened. When part of Indigo Park is it's mystery. Mollie repeats words of the workers abusing her, or the fact that Lloyd used to be the face of the brand, or the hidden cage within the arcade game, and Mollie saying "Get back in your cage, bird." Something Salem says within game. Or showing us the mascots got corrupted by something, and implying this isn't their original selves, but the actual cartoony mascots. You just have to wait, it's giving intrigue, but not painting the entire picture because it's just chapter 1. You'll probably see more of what happened later on. Be patient. A big part of Indigo Park's horror is how TERRIBLE the mascots were treated, and the abuse they suffered via the workers and people attending the park. That is interlinked with what happened to the park, 8 years ago.

With this point, it just seems like if nothing is happening 24/7, you're just bored. The phrase "walking simulator" has been done to death. We're being introduced to the basic game mechanics. Of course chapter 2 is going to be better than chapter 1. Literally all I have to say for this entire nothing burger of critique is "pay attention and let the devs cook".

"We encounter another information kiosk. Which lets us hear the dialogue for the remaining secret items we found. The mask during the chase sequence reveals a secret audio tape with objectively worse voice acting within the entire game."

How are you a FNAFTuber and not know what Dayshift at Freddy's is? It's one of the most popular parody FNAF games out there. The voice acting is bad on purpose because a.) it's mocking the text-to-voice speech the game uses b.) it's a joke.

Then near the end he says how his critiques were fair, and then states he likes the game, and says it's fun? Even though he spent the entirety of the game saying it's a boring, cheap knock off of Poppy Playtime and FNAF? I'm getting mixed signals here. All of this review was not expanding on any of his points, or if he did, it was something already within the game, and he clearly wasn't paying attention and actually looking around for secrets. You're suppose to be looking for clues, not getting handed to you.

This review was just "meh it's bad", and doesn't give any helpful criticism on how said game can improve, and even just downright insults the game multiple times. For the majority of the review, he just narrates what's going on, with spliced clips of him playing this on a stream. If anything, this just pads out the entire review, and waiting to get to an actual part of where he has a point. It, frankly, gets annoying after awhile, until he basically just sums up what he thought about the game just all at the end. It seems like Theft King really only made this video was to get clicks and views.

Now, everyone on YouTube wants this, obviously. But he really just seems likes poking the bear and making fun of people getting mad at him. Even if his critiques were not good. At all. Indigo Park isn't the best game ever or even the best indie mascot game made ever. It was entirely made out of bad faith, just to get a quick buck. A big problem I have with the video is the only harping on the "lack of gameplay."

I think people forget the games "feels sameish to Poppy Playtime and FNAF" is because they are horror games, who are first person and exploration games. Yes, you can tell there is inspiration but it does NOT copy the games at all, and just does homages to them and pays respects to them. Geese is a fan of mascot horror, and clearly respects them. It's not a "walking simulator", it's doing it's job as an EXPLORATION horror game. People have been using "walking simulator" as a critique and just have beaten that horse to DEATH. Give an actual, substance criticism or move on. Not to mention, he literally says that "they copied Fnaf Jr's death screen" when it was made by the same artist.

Also, for the obvious gotcha,

For him claiming it's "unoriginal" and a "ripoff", is coming from the guy who's VTuber avatar is just a white recolor of CatNap.

Just wanna add:

Listen. I know it's Theft King and he just does this to piss people off at this point but to just shame, put down, and put baseless claims of Indigo Park being a rip off, when it's inspired, not a rip off, of a passion project from a team that put so much love and time into it, is just really gross and needs to be called out.

Thanks for reading!

[the-boy-meets-evil]

take my hands (we can fall together) | lee chan | pt 3

(where you and chan are friends, but he's your brother's best friend. and you've always been just a little out of reach. until one season changes everything.) pairing: brother's best friend!chan (dino) x f!reader genre: friends to ??, pining, slow burn | fluff, angst, smut rating: explicit warnings/notes: mentions of unhealthy relationships (reader x boyfriend), mentions of food, mentions of drinking/alcohol, friendsgiving, chan is having a crisis, explicit smut in this part, kissing, body appreciation, fingering (f. receiving), oral sex (f. receiving), face sitting, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, protected sex (p in v), aftercare, chan is a tease, chan calls reader baby one time, i think that's it but let me know if it's not word count: ~9.2k (full fic is roughly 23.5k) notes on the characters: anyone used as a background character is meant to be an OC, i'm just lazy with coming up with names a/n: SHE'S DONE! i cannot believe that (not me sticking to a timeline). huge thanks to @svthub for hosting this fall collab. check out the full list of fics here. make sure you go back and read parts 1 & 2 for context. this is the last one 😭 (unless i return for a drabble/timestamp). also thank you to my bby indi for creating an amazing banner @classicscreations.

tagging: @christinewithluv @aaniag @dejavernon @tbzhub @bitchlessdino @seungkwansphd

part 2 | masterlist

Even though he feels a bit weird about it, Chan makes good on his promise to Carla and they reschedule. Instead of going out to a too-loud bar, Chan suggests a favorite restaurant of his. Some place with good food and a better atmosphere. The perfect place to try and get to know his date on a real level. Not only is she beautiful and genuinely interested in him, she’s kind, easy to talk to, and surprisingly funny. The perfect person to finally move onto a healthier, strictly friendly relationship with you.

Everything about the date goes even more smoothly than he expects. Despite how open she is while texting, Chan’s surprised to find how engaged she is in person. It’s like nothing and nobody else exists apart from the two of them. She talks openly about liking him, too, because she says she doesn’t see the point of dancing around things, playing some kind of game. Life is too short not to tell someone how she feels. There’s a warmth in hearing that, like something dormant being awoken. It’s not like his other feelings completely disappear, but it’s nice to have that kind of connection.

At the end of the date, they walk out together and Chan grabs her hand without thinking twice about it. She stops him just outside the restaurant to pull him towards her for a kiss. Maybe it doesn’t make him see stars or anything insane like in the movies, but it’s nice. Her lips are soft against his and seem to just kiss away any worries. It really has been the best date he’s been on in a long time. So much so that he considers coming up for a drink when Carla invites him. There’s just a little something in the back of his mind holding him back and so he politely declines. He reasons it away that he’s got Friendsgiving the next day. It’s been a great date, but he’s definitely not ready to bring Carla to meet his friends. It’s only been one actual date. Even if they have been texting a lot.

Chan is up a little early the next day because he needs to run to the store to get some drinks before making his way to Seokmin’s house. That’s been their go-to place for bigger gatherings like this since he bought it because it’s got the most space. Last he heard, there were fifteen people coming for Friendsgiving. He’s also got to pick up Jay and Vernon on the way there so there aren’t too many cars. Jay should’ve been helping him pick up drinks. But, no. He crashed at Vernon’s. Which isn’t entirely surprising since Vernon’s new game is at the beta-testing stage and Jay’s always been the number one tester. It’s more than mildly concerning to see his two friends smirking when they get in the car, though.

“What?” Chan prompts.

“How was your date last night?” Vernon asks.

“Yeah, are we going to have to set an extra place at the table?” Jay adds on. 

“What are you talking about?” Chan questions.

“You went on a date last night, right?” Jay presses. 

“You know I did,” Chan confirms. “We live together.”

“And you took her to that restaurant we love,” Jay carries on.

“Yeah,” Chan says slowly, drawing the word out.

“Oh, cut him some slack. I guess you were so caught up in the date that you entirely missed that some of our friends were there too,” Vernon says and laughs at Chan’s face. “Yeah Jiyeon texted me laughing about how she tried to get your attention and you didn’t even notice.”

“Oh shit, I’ll have to apologize to her,” Chan says. 

“She was with Mina, Lisa, and my sister too,” Jay adds on. 

“They were all there?” Chan worries. 

“Yeah, I think it was my sister’s idea. A little bit of a girl’s night for whoever was free,” Jay says. “Rude of them not to invite us. But clearly you were busy.”

“So are we going to be seeing her today?” Vernon asks. 

“It was one date,” Chan deflects.

“One date that you kissed and then left with,” Jay adds on. Chan whips his head over to look at his best friend.

“Sorry, Ji had a lot to say about it. You know how she is,” Vernon shrugs. “And Jay wasn’t sharing the game so I had a lot of time to text her.”

“Great,” Chan says. 

“Hey, that’s a compliment! I stayed up playing a game and crashed on a couch, for you,” Jay complains.

The two of them carry on bickering while Chan’s head is a million miles away. Not exactly what he’s prepared for or expecting walking into Seokmin’s house. At least he knows ahead of time. For all the times Jay’s a pain in the ass, which is basically any time he’s breathing, he’s a loyal friend. He might be ribbing Chan for being so oblivious now, but he’s also giving him time to prepare before he walks in because Jiyeon is going to give it way worse. So, Chan takes the rest of the drive to figure out how he’s going to say. 

It’s hard, though, because entirely too much of his brain focuses on the fact that you were there, too. Something Jay kind of glosses over, probably trying to take the focus off. He’s never called Chan on it, but he’s known how his friend feels for a long time. You were there and you saw his whole date. Saw the way he was caught up. Saw the way he left with Carla. Saw the kiss. Saw everything. Because you were with Jiyeon and she would have been doing a live commentary. That’s just who she is. Not in a malicious way, she just hates being ignored. It’s stupid to be caught up on what you thought. He’s moving on. That’s what the date with Carla was supposed to do and he knows he can’t just live in this perpetual state of caring about you. Not when you’re in the middle of putting your heart back together. Not when you haven’t shown any interest. Not when you straight up said Chan was just a friend. 

He’s barely through the door before Jiyeon is harassing him. “So, what, you go on a date with someone you barely know and you just forget we’ve been friends for literal years?”

“Easy, Ji, I didn’t see you,” Chan repeats. 

“Well obviously,” she retorts.

“Did you call my name? Or send me a text to be like hey, over here?” Chan fires back. Fighting fire with fire is the only thing she responds to.

“No, you were too wrapped up in your little date,” Jiyeon answers like it’s obvious.

“Maybe you didn’t really want to get my attention. Maybe you just wanted to bitch today. Maybe you woke up and chose violence,” Chan says, earning an immediate eye roll. 

“Did you just call me a bitch?” Jiyeon asks with faux outrage.

“I said you wanted to bitch, I’d never call you a bitch,” he answers anyway.

“Well, where is she then?” Jiyeon asks as she makes a show of looking behind Chan.

“Carla? She’s not here. Obviously,” Chan says.

“Oooooh do you like her enough to use her name? Not just the girl you’re dating?” Jiyeon teases. 

“I hate you,” Chan utters without any bite.

“I know,” she sing-songs.

Almost involuntarily, Chan’s eyes find their way to you, looking for some kind of reaction to the whole scene. But, you’re sitting with Seokmin, like you aren’t paying attention at all. Like maybe you don’t even care. Which is good, right? Chan wanted you to leave Seungsik so that you could be happy and heal, not so that he could have a chance. Which is exactly what happened. It should be a good thing, seeing you happy. It’s just that he can’t help but feel like you don’t seem as happy as you did the day after leaving Seungsik at his aunt’s house. 

It starts as Chan thinking he’s overreacting. Throughout dinner, it becomes crystal clear that something is off. You stick close to Seokmin and Lisa, don’t even really mingle with people in the same way you do any other time everyone is together. Even with the friends you don’t get to see as often. There’s something a little dull about you, like the dimmer switch isn’t all the way on. And Chan never sees you without a drink in your hand, which is a little odd, too. Almost everyone drinks too much at Friendsgiving and then naps or sobers up before leaving. Drinking is normal. This isn’t that, though. 

The thing that hurts Chan the most is that you hardly speak to him at all. Several times, he tries to start a conversation, only to have you give short answers before excusing yourself to do something else. Or talk to someone else. Or be anywhere that Chan isn’t. That hurts on a much deeper level than any feelings he has or had for you. Over the past two months, it’s felt like you were coming to depend on him more as a genuine friend. Someone that you could turn to or be vulnerable around. More than just another person in a decent sized friend group or your younger brother’s best friend. There were even times when he wondered if he was in your inner circle. Things definitely shifted. But, whatever it was seems to have been short lived. The two of you are further apart than where you started. 

It’s not until Chan is back home at his apartment, leftovers from the meal tucked away in his fridge, and getting ready for bed that he gets answers. He’s not tired and he doesn’t want to go to sleep. All he wants is to get comfortable and watch something mindless. Jay seems to sense that something’s off and doesn’t even give him a hard time. Just lets him go off into his room and shut the door. His phone dinging catches his attention, though. 

You: today ws wierd and i hted it You: i mis m y channie 

The text catches him off guard for a lot of reasons. The first is that you’re clearly a little drunk, or maybe a little buzzed. You’re not usually such a sloppy texter. But, the much bigger reason is that you called him your Channie. You’ve called him Channie but never yours before. 

Chan: are you drunk? Chan: are you okay? You: ‘m fine You: not drunk Chan: are you home? You: no stayed at seoks Chan: good i’m glad You: do you like me

Chan stares at that message for a good minute like the words will somehow change. Does he like you? Are you asking as a friend or something more? Can he really try to get over you when you’re texting him like this?

Chan: course i do, we’re friends You: that’s not what i mean

Of all the ways the night could have gone, this was not one Chan considered. Things were definitely weird during Friendsgiving. He’s not sure how many people noticed. Jay definitely had, if him giving Chan space when they got home is any indicator. Seokmin probably noticed too, since you’re currently staying there. Before he can answer your text, his phone is going off with an incoming FaceTime. He answers without thinking.

“You answered,” you say like it’s some kind of surprise.

“Of course I did,” Chan breathes out. “What’s wrong?” 

“Do you like me, Chan?” you repeat. It’s so different watching you say it than seeing it typed. He’s trying not to focus on you sitting in bed just like he is. 

“I told you…” Chan starts and you’re shaking your head. 

“I know we’re friends, but do friends do everything you’ve done for me? Do friends go on train rides and apple picking and photoshoots and to pumpkin patches? Do friends spend an entire party not even bothering to talk to anyone else? Do friends support each other the way you’ve supported me?” You’re rambling, Definitely a little drunker than you want to admit, especially with some of your words slurring together.

“I don’t know,” Chan admits. 

You turn back and look straight into the camera. “Why didn’t you even see me last night, Chan?” 

“Well, I guess I was just…” Chan starts.

“What? Distracted? So distracted by your date that you didn’t even see me?” you ask. His heart breaks for how hurt you look. That’s the last thing he wants. 

“I’d already kinda blown her off once, over you, kind of,” Chan admits. Too honest.

“Over me?” you ask. Your eyes are wide like it’s not what you were expecting.

“I was, well I was with her when I saw Seungsik,” Chan says. “I made an excuse and left, but said I’d see her again another time.”

“Oh,” is all you say.

“Yeah, so I didn’t really want to do that to her again. She doesn’t deserve that,” Chan says quietly. 

“What about what I deserve?” you wonder.

“You know I think you deserve the entire world,” Chan insists. 

You pull your bottom lip between your teeth like you’re at war with yourself over something. “Do you think you could love her?” 

Before Chan can answer, he hears a door open and watches you turn to the side. Somewhere in the room, he hears Seokmin.

“I thought we said no drunk texting or calling or anything?” Seokmin reminds you, sounding very sober. 

“I thought you meant Seungsik,” you shrug, unashamed. Seokmin comes into the frame and sees Chan.

“Oh, hey, Chan,” Seokmin says, smile not quite as bright as Chan is used to. It’s clear that Seokmin didn’t just mean your ex.

“Hey, Seok,” Chan answers.

“I’m gonna take this and put her to bed,” Seokmin says.

“Good idea,” Chan agrees. 

Seokmin turns the camera to you. “Say goodnight to Chan.”

“Night Channie,” you call out.

“Night,” Chan answers. 

“Goodnight, Chan,” Seokmin says.

“Wait,” Chan says and watches as Seokmin’s face turns to him. “Delete the last few texts in our thread. That’s probably a better conversation to have when we’re both sober.”

Seokmin’s face relaxes and he nods, like he understands more than Chan does at the moment. Maybe he does. The entire conversation is weird and it’s leaving Chan with way more questions than answers. Why are you so curious about his feelings now? Why do his feelings for Carla matter to you? Why are you drinking like that? Did something happen with Seungsik? Are you finally processing and this is part of the grief? Why does it hurt to feel like an outsider to it all again?

The next time Chan sees you, there’s no mention of the brief FaceTime call or the texts. Things with you are somewhere between the total comfort of the party at his aunt’s house and how you were before all the Fall activities. It’s this weird limbo that he doesn’t really know how to process. It seems like nobody else really knows how to process it, either, and unfortunately, some of them are picking up on it. 

Then, there’s the issue of Carla. She hasn’t done anything wrong, but Chan also isn’t sure how he feels. On one hand, he really does think it’s best to just move on from his feelings for you because it’s all just been too much. On the other hand, it feels dishonest to keep going out with Carla when his head isn’t totally in it. But, she really is kind and she seems to understand some of his hesitation and even suggests that they do something a little more lowkey, like lunch during the work day, and that seems fine, right? Everyone has to eat lunch.

Wrong. 

Well, not about the lunch part. She picks a place that’s close by where they work, since they don’t work far apart, and Chan appreciates the slightly longer lunch. It’s a welcome break in his day and the perfect way to end the week. Carla is sweet, doesn’t push him to talk about anything he’s not ready to, though she can obviously tell there’s something. There’s a subtlety to the way she lets him know that he can talk to her about anything, no matter how awkward. And a grace when he says that he’s just not ready. She keeps all the conversation light, easy. There’s even something about it that feels a little more friendly than like a date. It’s really just an incredibly pleasant lunch.

And then comes the text. The text from you. Why on Earth did you need to send Chan a text saying you heard he went on a lunch date with the same girl from the other day? Why did you need to say that you hoped he had a good time? Why did it matter if he was spending time with someone else? It’s just kind of confusing because you’re definitely friends, but not the kind of friends that text like this. Not when it’s the first text you’ve sent to Chan since the ones he asked Seokmin to delete for you. 

So he doesn’t answer, doesn’t really know what to say. Instead he tries to make plans with Vernon to go for drinks after work. But, Vernon has other plans and Chan settles on just asking Jay. Although Jay is truly his best friend, he’s not Chan’s first choice when it’s you on his mind. Chan’s feelings for you, whatever they are, aren’t a secret to Jay, even if they’ve never talked about them. If he’s going drinking now, though, it might be too hard to keep avoiding talking about whatever he’s thinking. 

It seems initially like Jay might let Chan get away with just wanting to drink. They talk about work, about the holidays coming up, about upcoming plans. Jay mentions the big family Thanksgiving, which they’ll both be at. Chan talks about how he already feels behind on holiday shopping. They both talk about how crazy it is that Vernon’s so close to finishing one of his games. It’s just normal roommate shit. Much like lunch with Carla, everything is light and unserious. At least through the first drink. Everything changes when the bartender sets the second drink down in front of them. 

“We’ve gotta talk about it, man,” Jay finally says. 

“Talk about what?” Chan feigns ignorance.

“Whatever your feelings for my sister are,” Jay presses on, unwilling to let his best friend continue to ignore a problem. 

“Is this where you tell me that she’s fresh out of a relationship and give me some sort of speech about protecting her?” Chan asks.

“No,” Jay says simply. “She’s an adult and I’d never tell her who to date as long as she’s happy. Besides, you’re friends with her too.” 

“I really don’t know if we’re friends right now, things are weird,” Chan admits.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Jay says with a bit of a snort. 

“I went out to lunch with Carla today and then I got a text from her saying she’d heard about my lunch and hoped it was good. What am I supposed to do with that?” Chan asks, louder than he meant to.

“I don’t know,” Jay admits. “I don’t think she knows, to be honest.” 

“What do you mean?” Chan asks.

“Well, I’ll admit that I told her that you went to lunch with Carla because she’s been really weird about you since she broke it off with Seungsik. Probably before that, honestly, but it’s definitely been weird since then. I know she went to your aunt’s house the day after you told her and she confronted that asshole,” Jay says.

“Yeah, my aunt was thrilled,” Chan remembers.

“So was my sister, she said it’s one of the best times she’s had in awhile,” Jay shares.

“What did she say to you when you told her I was out to lunch?” Chan wonders.

“She just said oh good for him,” Jay says, “which I assumed meant she didn’t want me to know what she was thinking so I wouldn’t have to lie to you. I figured she was going to text you, too. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Chan brushes off. 

“Do you like her? Like actually like her?” Jay asks. 

“I don’t…I’m not sure, honestly,” Chan admits. 

“You were sure, though,” Jay presses. “I could see it in the way you looked at her. I remember thinking anyone would be lucky to have someone look at them that way.” 

“Yeah, I guess I wasn’t that subtle to anyone but her,” Chan jokes. 

“I think even she stopped being oblivious,” Jay laughs. “So what changed?” 

“I don’t know,” Chan shares. “I guess, I don’t know, it just felt like it’s been all this time and I was doing all these things with her when Seungsik didn’t want to. And I had this moment where I thought I could do things like that with her the rest of my life and be happy. But, then we were talking about him after I saw him out and she said something about how he always thought I liked her but she brushed it off. So I just kinda realized I needed to move on.” 

“Can you do that if she never knew for sure how you felt?” Jay asks. “Is it fair to either of you?”

“Is it fair to her when she’s only just gotten out of a relationship?” Chan challenges. 

“Like I said, Chan, she’s an adult. Just telling her that you have feelings for her isn’t the same as expecting her to jump right into something new,” Jay reasons. “If you love her, like I think you do, then she deserves to know that she isn’t crazy. Even if nothing happens. The only way to move forward is by being honest.”

“Love her…wait, why would she think she’s crazy?” Chan worries. 

“Because you’ve been weird too, bro. It isn’t just her,” Jay laughs. “She is going to absolutely kill me for this, but she remembers texting you and then FaceTiming you after Friendsgiving. She knows you asked Seokmin to delete the chat and dodged her question about how you felt. So, I think she thinks that she imagined you liking her.” 

“Shit,” Chan breathes out. “I was just trying to do what I thought was best.”

“I know that, but I’m not sure she does,” Jay shares. 

“Fuck it, I need shots,” Chan declares. 

He’s definitely not sober when he shows up at your apartment a few hours later. Despite Jay’s insistence that they eat something, he’s still very buzzed, bordering on the world having some blurry edges. Although Jay insisted this could wait until tomorrow, he’s still here at your doorstep. Doesn’t even look back at the Uber after he gets out. His fingers dance over the keypad to the building on autopilot because he’s been there enough times before. There’s no thought about if you’re home or what time it is. No thoughts about if you have company. All he can think is that he’s sick of this weird limbo. 

You answer the door with your hair piled on top of your head, oversized t-shirt hanging off your frame, and a look of complete surprise on your face. Whatever you see on Chan’s face makes you step aside and let him in without a word. It’s not until he feels the couch dip as you sit next to him that he really meets your eyes.

“What are you doing here, Chan?” you ask. 

“I’m sorry,” Chan whispers.

“For what?” you prompt.

“For so many things,” Chan answers. “For Seungsik, for not being a better friend, for not seeing you that night at the restaurant, for telling Seokmin to delete your texts, for not giving you a straight answer, for going on dates with someone. But mostly for falling for you when it’s the worst possible timing.”

“You’re drunk,” you say after a moment.

“A little, maybe, but that doesn’t make any of it less true,” Chan argues. 

“I want to hear all of this from you in the morning, when you’re sober,” you say. 

“Please, I don’t know if…” Chan starts.

“Come on, Channie, let’s get you to bed and we can talk in the morning,” you say. 

You stand and reach a hand to him. He’s not sure if it’s the thought behind the gesture or hearing you say Channie, but he takes your hand without questioning it. Before he knows it, he’s tucked into bed and his eyes are closing. It may be the most comfortable bed he’s ever slept in. 

The next morning, sun through the cracks in the blinds wakes Chan up and it takes him more than a moment to remember where he is. It’s only when he looks around and sees your familiar decorations everywhere that it dawns on him. Not only is he in your apartment, he’s in your bedroom. He slept in your bed last night. Somehow that realization has him feeling even worse than the slight hangover. Since life is really unfair, you walk in a minute later, looking far better than anyone should in the morning. You hand over a cup of coffee. Fighting his embarrassment, Chan sits up so he can accept it and take a sip. Of course it’s perfect. It feels like the reverse of the morning after the Halloween party.

“How are you feeling?” you ask.

“Terrible,” Chan admits ambiguously. 

“Yeah, well, that’s what you get for drinking so much. Jay said he wasn’t sure where you were putting it,” you chuckle out. You pick up your own coffee mug to take a sip.

“When did you talk to Jay?” Chan wonders.

“He was blowing up your phone and I don’t know your password so I figured he was worried about you. I texted him to say you were here and passed out and you’d text him today,” you answer. “He didn’t seem concerned once I said you were here.” 

“Yeah, well it’s not really the hangover that’s making me feel terrible,” Chan mumbles and you raise an eyebrow at him. 

“I hope I’m not making you feel terrible,” you throw out.

“No, I’m just embarrassed, really,” Chan says. 

“You don’t need to be,” you assure him, voice gentle. 

“I am so sorry for telling Seokmin to delete those messages, I thought it was the right thing to do,” Chan begins. 

“It’s fine. I’m not surprised my darling brother told you about that, though,” you say. 

“It’s not fine. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t really know what was going on and it felt a little overwhelming,” Chan says. 

“Yeah I can see that. To be fair, I’m not really sure what I was even trying to accomplish that night,” you say quietly.

“Can I try to say the things I wanted to say last night?” Chan asks. “Jay actually helped me realize some things.”

“He’s got his moments,” you laugh. “And yeah, I think I’d like to hear what you wanted to say, now that it’s morning and you’re sober.” 

“I could repeat what I said, but it really comes down to this. I like you. A lot, way more than I should and I know that it’s, like, the worst timing in the world because of Seungsik and the break up,” Chan rushes out. “I know it’s probably not fair to you to tell you now, but Jay also pointed out that I can’t really try to move on when I haven’t told you how I feel. I just, I got kinda freaked out to tell you when you said the thing about your ex thinking I liked you, but you brushing it off.” 

“Chan,” you try to interrupt.

“And, fuck, I was trying so hard to date someone and get my mind off you that I didn’t even think about it,” Chan carries on. “But the reality is that all the things we did all season long have been some of the best times of my life. I��m sorry, I know that I’m rambling.”

“Can I speak now?” you ask and Chan’s cheeks burn red. 

“Sorry,” Chan whispers.

“I like you, too,” you admit. “I’m not really sure when it happened. Maybe somewhere along the way of you just constantly being there.”

“Yeah, we’ve spent a lot of time together the last like two months,” Chan agrees. “Wait, did you say you like me, too?”

“I did and, like, we have definitely spent a lot of time together doing all the things I love to do, which maybe helped me realize, but I think it’s been there a lot longer. All this did was make me realize how you’ve been there for me for years and I didn’t see that it was more than just a friendly thing,” you say. “You probably don’t remember but back in college, that idiot broke my heart and you and Jay spent the whole weekend cheering me up. I get why Jay did it, he’s my brother, but you didn’t have to.”

“Of course I remember, that’s when I realized I had a crush on you,” Chan says softly. 

“Chan, that was like 6 years ago,” you say, nearly choking. 

“Pushing seven,” Chan admits.

“You’ve liked me all that time and I didn’t realize?” you wonder.

“Maybe not all that time, it’s not like I haven’t dated,” Chan points out. 

“Oh yes, because you’ve dated such winners,” you scoff. 

“Are you, were you jealous?” Chan teases. “You started acting weird when I went on the date with Carla and didn’t notice you or our friends.”

“I wasn’t acting weird,” you protest. 

“Yes you were, even Jay said so,” Chan counters.

“Oh whatever, you’ve liked me for seven years,” you tease with a roll of your eyes. 

“And you’ve probably liked me just as long but you’re stubborn,” Chan says.

He’s not sure where the confidence comes from now, but hearing that you like him too just makes it feel lighter. Even though there’s no telling what happens from here, it feels good to have it all out in the open. You’ve both abandoned your coffees at this point and are just sitting on the bed like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

“I am not stubborn,” you protest. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I must be thinking of someone else,” Chan teases. 

“Must be,” you agree.

“Hey,” Chan says, more serious. “I don’t know what happens next and I know you just got out of a relationship, so there’s no pressure or…”

Chan can’t finish what he’s saying when you press your lips to his. It takes him several seconds to get over the shock, though. It doesn’t matter that you admitted to liking him, too. That’s still a big step to go from that to kissing. You’re pulling away when his brain finally connects and he kisses you back. Makes him pull you back into him so that he doesn’t miss another second of the way your lips feel against his. Makes him dig his fingers into your hips when he pulls you on top of him. You pull away to gasp and catch your breath. Let yourself get situated with a knee pressed into the mattress on either side of him. All you can do is just look at him, pupils a little blown and chest rising with each breath. Loosening his grip on you, he looks down and watches his hands slide over your thighs and back up to your hips. When he looks back at you, he finds you’re watching the movement. 

“You don’t have to be so careful, Chan, I’m not that fragile,” you utter.

“I know you’re not,” he confirms. “But, are you sure?”

“About this?” you ask and he nods. “The most sure I’ve been about anything in a long time.”

He’s about to ask you again but you just shake your head before leaning in to kiss him. You’re giving him confirmation and permission all at once. Confirmation that you want this and permission to not treat you so gently. It’s all he needs to start running his hands up across your hips and then under your shirt and up your back. Your hands move from the sides of his face to fling your arms around his neck when he presses you tighter against his body. Kissing you isn’t anything like he imagined. It’s not soft and tender. It’s a little desperate and needy, but still completely full of affection. As if testing what you said about not needing to be careful, he nips at your lower lip. The light moan shoots straight to his dick and his hands travel back down your back to your hips. Gripping you tight but also making you slightly rock against him. 

It’s not enough contact, though. Now that he’s got you like this, he just wants more. It’s almost too much when he pulls your t-shirt off and he realizes you aren’t wearing a bra. Maybe this was in your plan all along. Chan pulls back and plants a light kiss on your lips, currently pouting and a little puffy from the kisses. When he kisses across your jaw and down to your neck, you arch into it. He wants to savor this, to take his time taking you apart. Wants to coax every noise out of you. Wants to be the reason you’re completely ruined. Doesn’t know that he’s already well on the way there. 

He kisses across the top of your chest, from one collarbone to the other and you let out a small please. Probably that you need more. That’s definitely going to take time, though. When he places a feather light kiss between your breasts, you whimper again, rock your hips forward over him again. It’s everything he can do to not get too turned on too fast. It doesn’t matter if you have a million more times after this. This is the first time and he wants to savor it. Slowly, he moves his lips over to one of your breasts, flicks his tongue across your nipple a couple of times. Nips a mark into your sensitive skin and laves his tongue over to soothe the sting. Your hands are tangled in the ends of his hair that’s longer than you remember it being before. Even if you won’t admit it, he can tell you like it by the way your hands keep finding it. 

As he kisses his way back up to your lips, he moves you a little further back on his lap. Misses the confusion cross your face. But, he’s got a plan. Once he’s kissing you again, one hand slides down your inner thigh and plays with the edge of your shorts. You squirm when you realize just what he’s doing. He can’t fight the groan when he realizes you don’t have any underwear on under your shorts, either. Jesus. He has to pull back for a steadying breath. This is about you and making you feel good. He can’t get too turned on too fast. His lips find yours again and his thumb runs along your slit, inside your shorts. Collects the wetness already between your legs. You try to pull away from the kiss to moan and he uses his free hand to anchor you to him. Lightly, he spreads your lips apart so that his thumb can brush over your clit. That’s when he finally let’s you pull back. 

“Fuck,” you utter immediately.

“Is this still okay?” Chan whispers against your skin before kissing the spot just below your ear. 

“Yes,” you hiss out as his thumb continues to caress your clit. 

“You can stop it if you want,” he tells you. 

“I will kill you if you stop,” you threaten, lust heavy in your tone. 

“Wouldn’t want that now, would we?” he teases.

“Stop being such a - fuck,” you gasp out when Chan slides a finger inside you. 

“Such a what?” he prompts. 

“A tease,” you finish. “Please, Channie, you’re moving so slow.” 

Instead of answering right away, he leans in to kiss you again. Captures your moans, but doesn’t increase the slow, almost lazy speed that his finger enters you. “You in a hurry?” 

“No,” you whine, “but I need more. Please. Please just give me a little more.”

The way words fall out of your mouth, begging him to carry on, makes his dick twitch. He’s thankful you don’t seem to notice because he likes having the control like this. Likes watching you squirm on top of him and knowing it’s all for him. Gives you at least a little of what you want when he slides a second finger in. Doesn’t tell you that it’s still just warming you up for something more. Something he’s been thinking about for weeks. 

“I want to feel you, please,” you beg when Chan pulls his lips away from yours again. 

“Not yet,” he tells you.

“Why?” you whine out.

“I want to taste you first,” Chan says, fingers stilled inside of you, but thumb still lightly circling your clit. 

“Can’t we just…” you start.

“Are you gonna make me beg, baby?” Chan wonders. Your eyes widen at that, both out of surprise and desire. “I will, I have all the time in the world.” 

“N-no, you don’t need to,” you stutter out. “How do you…”

“I want you to sit on my face,” he says simply.

“What?” you nearly gasp.

“I want you to sit on my face,” he repeats. “Just straddle my face and let me show you how good I can be for you.” 

“I’ve, um, well I’ve never…” you start, turning a little shy. 

Chan takes his free hand and tilts your chin up, so gentle that he doesn’t realize the act almost breaks you. “Never had someone eat you out like that?” 

You shake your head. “I, um, haven’t actually been eaten out much.” 

“Can I admit something too, then?” he asks, wanting to make you comfortable. You nod. “I’ve been thinking about what it would feel like to be under you since you got on my shoulders at the orchard and your thighs squeezed my face.”

It’s clear that’s not what you’re expecting. It’s something so honest that it’s all you can focus on. Where Chan would usually feel too exposed, he only feels comfortable with you. Like he can expose everything about him and he’ll still be safe with you. He wants you to feel that too. Doesn’t realize that you’ve never had someone take their time with you like this. 

“Well it was kinda hot, the way you picked me up like that,” you finally admit. 

“So trust me again, I won’t let you fall,” he urges. 

You mumble something under your breath that sounds suspiciously like too late. He’s trying not to focus too much on that, too much on what happens after this. All he wants is this moment to last forever. To be able to show you just how much he cares for you.

“So how do we…” you start.

“Here, get up for a second,” he directs you, gently moving you off his lap. 

In one quick motion, he pulls his shirt off and watches the way your eyes drink him in. His muscles contract as you reach out to run a hand along his stomach. Doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath and waiting for your verdict.

“Fuck me, you’re hot. I’ve seen you swimming, have you always looked like this?” you say, sounding annoyed and making him laugh. 

“Let’s get you out of these,” Chan says instead of answering and helps you pull off your shorts. 

He leans back and makes sure that he’s comfortable. Then, he directs you to straddle his face. Urges you to trust him, Promises you that you’re not going to hurt him. Reminds you that this is about you, but it’s about him, too. He’s wondered what it would feel like to have your thighs boxing his head in. To be so caught up in you. Just as you’re about to protest, he licks a strip up your core and you gasp. He continues to run his tongue up your entrance, sliding his tongue deeper into you as he goes. You start to squirm almost immediately and he reaches up to anchor your legs on either side of his head. 

It’s honestly far better than Chan was imagining. The noises coming from you were only encouraging him to keep going. Not that he really needed any encouragement. He could drown between your legs and be the happiest he’d ever been. It was unthinkable that nobody wanted to take care of you like this before. Your arousal coated his tongue as he pressed it deeper inside you between his licks. His nose bumped against your clit and he had to grip you harder again to keep you from arching off his mouth. As if sensing that he needed you closer, you leaned forward, gripping onto the headboard. He squeezed your legs and fucked his tongue faster into your pussy. 

“Chan, fuck, oh my god, your tongue, I just - fuck,” you curse out. 

He’s good with his tongue, he knows that. Knows he’s good at a lot of things. This is different, though. Every noise sounds so much better, every body spasm is that much more rewarding, every curse sounds perfect. It’s not until your body starts quivering hard that he realizes he’s never wanted to make someone come on his tongue more than this. You must be close because you start to get more incoherent, start to try and pull yourself off him. Instead, Chan holds onto you harder.

“Please, I’m gonna come,” you whine. 

Chan pulls away from your pussy just long enough to utter a single phrase. “Then, come for me.” 

And then he’s back to burying his tongue inside you, licking faster, reaching a hand around your leg to circle your clit with his thumb again. It’s nothing but a string of curses that you utter. Clench your walls around his tongue. There’s nothing hotter than how fully you trust him as you let go, coming on his face. He times the strokes of his tongue to guide you through the high before helping you off of his face so that you can lie back on the bed and catch your breath. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, fully aware that he hasn’t gotten it all, and repositions to lay next to you on his side. Your eyes are closed and he can’t help but brush a piece of stray hair off your face. The tenderness at odds with the previous moments. 

“Whoa,” you finally say when you open your eyes to look at him. 

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“That was…fuck, that was good,” you admit. “I don’t want to give you a big head or anything but damn.” 

“It’s a bit late for that,” Chan jokes. “I could feel how much you enjoyed it.”

You swat at him. “Fuck off.” 

He catches your hand and presses a light kiss to your knuckles. “Not before I fuck you.”

The contrast between the kiss and the statement nearly gives you whiplash. It’s plain on your face that you’re wondering where this version of him came from. 

“Unless you changed your mind or you’re too tired,” he offers. “I just remember you saying you wanted to feel me.”

“Oh no, I definitely still want that. I seem to remember you promising to show me how good you could be for me,” you say, regaining the confidence. 

“My pleasure,” he says and gets up from the bed. 

You’re about to ask what he’s doing when he pulls his briefs and shorts down in one motion, dick springing free. There’s a satisfaction to watching the way you take in the sight of him fully naked. He’s confident in his size, definitely confident he can make you feel good, but it’s still nice to see the way your eyes go big. Nice to see the way you swallow while watching his hand move lazy along his shaft. 

“Condoms?” he asks.

“That drawer,” you indicate. 

He reaches in to get one and rips the package with his teeth. He’s watching you as he slides the latex over his dick. Watching for any signs of second thoughts. There aren’t any, but he wants to check anyway.

“You’re still sure?” he asks.

“Yes,” you confirm, meeting his eyes. “And if something changes, I’ll stop you.”

“Good, because I still wanna make you come at least two more times before I do,” he tells you.

You shudder. “You sure you can do that?” 

“Positive,” he says with a smile that’s entirely too confident. 

Except he knows he can deliver. Knows that he can show you just how good he can be. Knows that he can make you feel amazing. He directs you to lay back on the bed and spreads your legs. Instead of sliding right in, he uses a finger to make sure you’re still ready for him. To make sure he’s not rushing it. You squirm against his finger and he can tell you’re getting impatient again. But, he wasn’t kidding. He’s going to take his time with you. 

You’re still so sensitive that he brings you almost to the edge just with his fingers. Delights in the way you arch into him. In the way his name falls from your lips like a prayer. In the way your fingers dig into the sheets at first before you grip one of his arms. Before you leave scratch marks along that same arm. Before you’re begging him just to let you feel him inside of you. It’s enough to finally make him give into your begging. He lines himself up at your entrance and presses his dick in slowly. Much slower than his finger was pumping into you. He wants to let you adjust to the stretch, though. Your hands make their way to his back and your fingers run down his muscles there. Gently at first, like you’re just exploring his body. When your fingers run down his back again, this time scratching along the way, he buries himself in you and pulls back to snap once, quick. The resulting gasp is music to his ears. 

He sets a varying pace. Mixing slow with fast. Shallow pumps with deep ones. Tries to find out just what you like the best and what pulls the best sounds out of you. He leans back so he can throw one of your legs over his shoulder and hit a different angle. That seems to be the one you enjoy the most and it’s only moments before you’re coming undone around him again. He pulls out when you start to clench around him because he’s not sure that he’s strong enough to hold back through that. And he really does want to make you come more before he does. 

It carries on like that, Chan constantly changing your positions, doing more than his fair share of the work, studying every inch of your body. It’s clear that your brain is going a little mushy and that you’re insanely overstimulated. In the end, he makes you come two more times, in addition to the two previous orgasms, before he finally lets go. It’s honestly the best release he’s ever experienced. The best high and the best sex. Everything feels magnified and also like the most natural thing in the world. He finds it’s really easy to figure out the things you like and they seem to line up with things he enjoys as well. 

He lies back on the bed and you curl into him after you take a minute to recover. Actually tuck yourself right into his side and nestle in with his arm underneath your neck. He wouldn’t ever move if he didn’t have to. But, you both definitely need to get cleaned up. 

“Where are you going?” you ask when he starts to move. Your eyes look a little worried. That kind of breaks his heart because why do you look so nervous?

He leans back onto the bed and presses the softest, most gentle kiss he’s ever given anyone on your forehead. “To get a towel to clean up a bit. And I was gonna start a bath for you, I know your tub is crazy nice.”

“A bath actually sounds really amazing,” you admit.

“Just stay here then and let me take care of you,” he insists. 

You nod and lay back onto the bed, closing your eyes and smiling. It makes his heart swell at the level of comfort you seem to feel. He also knows that you and him need to talk, to figure out what’s going on and where this is heading. Knows that he’s already in way deeper than he should be. But, all he focuses on now is cleaning himself up a bit. It’s a little hard to do, so he just hops in the shower to rinse off as quickly as possible. Once he’s done with that, he focuses on getting the bath running for you. 

When he feels like the temperature is right, that the bath bomb has dissolved enough, and that it’s all completely perfect for you, he walks back into the bedroom. He expects to find you asleep. Instead, you’re sitting up with some fresh clothes next to you. 

“I heard you in the shower,” you say and offer him the clothes when you get up. You wince just slightly. 

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. 

“I’m not,” you disagree. Chan helps you to the bathtub and helps you in. He blushes a little when you return the favor and kiss him softly on the lips. He turns around when your voice stops him. “Where are you going?”

“I was going to let you enjoy the bath,” he answers.

“I’d like it better if you stayed here,” you admit and his heart feels like it really will explode. 

“Let me just put on some clothes,” he requests.

“You could also just get in with me,” you offer. “Not in a sexual way, just in a closeness way.”

How can he argue with that, really? Your tub is plenty big enough, a sticking point for you even if the rest of the apartment was on the smaller size. The main bathroom was massive, comparatively. So he gets in carefully across from you and settles into the water. It does actually feel really nice. His eyes fall on you moving gingerly to wash yourself off. 

“C’mere,” he says, “turn around.” 

You do as he asks and settle in between his legs, with your back leaning against his chest. He picks up your loofah and takes over rubbing it carefully across your skin. You relax further against him almost immediately, which he takes as a good sign that he’s doing something right. There’s a lot he’s done or tried, but this is new territory for him. And he wants to be good at it, too. 

Once he’s finished cleaning you off, the two of you just stay like that, you leaning against his chest. It’s a comfortable silence that neither of you feels the need to break. It’s not until the water starts to feel cold that you both admit you need to get out. This time, you actually let Chan put his clothes on and you put something comfortable on as well. He helps you pull the sheets off the bed to throw them in the wash. 

The two of you check your phones when you plop down onto the living room couch and Chan grimaces. He’s got a whole bunch of texts and missed calls from Jay. Some are from last night, like you said, but some are from today, too. He shows them to you and you show him a string of notifications that look similar. 

“Time to break the bubble?” Chan asks. 

“At least for long enough that he stops having a heart attack,” you agree. 

So, Chan dials and isn’t surprised when Jay picks up on the second ring.

“What the fuck, Chan, where are you? And why isn’t my sister answering either?” Jay asks instead of a hello.

“Uh, you’re on speaker,” Chan answers. 

“Hey,” you chime in.

“You’re still over there?” Jay asks incredulously. “How much could you possibly have to talk about?” 

“Worried I’m going to steal your best friend?” you tease.

“Or are you worried I’m going to steal your sister?” Chan asks and you laugh.

“No, you’re better than literally any person she’s dated ever. By a lot,” Jay acknowledges. 

“Oh my god, you really are just missing your best friend,” you groan. 

“And my roommate, he’s my roommate too,” Jay protests.

“We have things to talk about,” you say.

“How much do you have to talk about?” Jay wonders. “He likes you, you obviously like him. What else do you need to know?” 

“That’s between us,” you say as Chan starts to talk.

“We also didn’t talk last night because I was drunk,” he adds.

“Yeah and it’s late afternoon now, so what have you been…oh my god, that’s fucking gross, that’s my sister,” Jay sputters out.

“I didn’t even say anything!” Chan protests. 

“You didn’t have to. We’re roommates, remember?” Jay answers.

“If you miss me, just say that and go,” Chan teases.

“I do miss you, I made Vernon come over earlier and it’s not the same,” Jay says.

“Hey,” they hear Vernon say in the background.

“I think I hate this already,” you say and scrunch your face.

“Sick of him already?” Jay jokes.

“No, I don’t like you liking someone I’m dating,” you disagree. 

“Dating?” Jay and Chan ask at the same time.

“Oh, well, I just figured…” you start.

“I’m hanging up on you, bro, we have things to talk about,” Chan says. 

“Fine, but just be good to her, she deserves that,” Jay says.

“Yeah, she does,” Chan agrees, eyes on you. 

He hangs up the phone and just looks at you, unsure of what to say. Unsure of how to start figuring out what this is. You just got out of something that was really unhealthy and he’s not trying to rush you into something new or risk it being unhealthy because you didn’t heal. Couldn’t stand to be a rebound. He’s never thought this far.

“I didn’t meant to assume, I just…” you start.

“Of course I want to date you. It’s just, you just got out of a relationship and I want to give you time to get over that,” he says.

“I think I’ve been over it since the train ride, to be honest,” you say. “Maybe it took me a while to realize. But you showed me, time and time again, what it means to show up for someone you love.”

“I love you, too,” Chan says softly.

“So we figure it out together?” you ask, so hopeful.

Chan leans in and presses a kiss to your lips. “Yeah, we figure it out together.”

i'm sad this is over, but it was so much fun to write! i hope you enjoyed them as much as i did. and there's a very real chance i'll return to this with future timestamps/drabbles. but who knows when because of who i am as a person!

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, Introducing the Snoops!

Introducing the snoops! You just saw one right now in the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy logo! These shady little guys are kind of the mascots for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, found all over the rulebook* playing hero and villain alike. They are meant to invoke the image of an old-timey detective or spy, as you can probably tell.

We went through a number of little terms for them before settling on snoops for now, including “dicks”, but the rest of the team won’t let me swear in the rulebook. They're called snoops because they be snoopin', among other things.

They serve kind of a similar role in the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook to the role Vault Boy serves in the Fallout games. In fact, Vault Boy was a direct inspiration for this kind of iconography. Like Vault Boy, snoops appear unreal all kinds of different roles, sometimes hero, sometimes villain, but always there to iconografy some kind of rules concept or game mechanic.

Like here how Vault Boy appears dressed as the Grim Reaper to demonstrate the Grim Reaper's Sprint perk, and appears holding a all the types of weapons that get a damage boost from the Cowboy perk to demonstrate the Cowboy perk, we have—or plan to have—a snoop for every occasion.

Traits in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy are not exactly the same thing as Fallout perks, nor were they inspired by them, but in much the same way as how Fallout uses a Vault Boy for ever perk, we plan to have a snoop for every Trait. Here is a link to a post all about Traits.

as well as use them to demonstrate key concepts and mechanics in the rules themselves.

This is not only fun and looks good, but the snoops also help readers find exactly where to stop when scrolling or flipping quickly through the Eureka rulebook. If you’re trying to find the beginning of the Composure section fast, you just have to remember that that’s the snoop that’s breaking down into puzzle pieces. Also, here's a link to a post all about the Composure mechanic.

*unfortunately, art is hard and time-consuming, and that’s why relatively few snoops have made it into the existing prerelease rulebook and demo that you might've seen thus far. But, I have some good news, the next patreon update will include a bunch more, including many of the ones you’ve seen here.

If you want to play this game, you can get the full prerelease rulebook plus a bunch of other bonuses for just $5 on our patreon, or go to our website to download the free demo version along with a free starter adventure module. However, the free version has very few snoops. Sorry, you get what you pay for. The patreon supporters will be getting a bunch of snoops in the next big update, though, so stay tuned!

Also, we are running a TTRPG Book Club, where everyone nominates indie TTRPGs, votes on what to play, reads&plays them, and discusses! It has over fifty members at the time of writing this! You can find the invite link to the book club on our website!

By the way, the snoop that appears in our company logo below and who is also kinda the main snoop, his name is Conway.

[kebriones]

Idk if you have answered this before but how do you see the future for artists in Greece?

I know a small country with mostly agricultural and many people try desperately to meet ends meet and work a lot. Of course that's a global issue what work people prefer but i don't like art being discriminated.

In Greece how's it looking?

Unfortunately, greece is no longer a mainly agricultural economy. Tourism and shipping are by far our main industries.

It's true that many people struggle here, and the way things are going, will continue to struggle. And it's true that artists in general, not just here, always have the most unstable jobs and struggle.

It's not looking good. And for greece specifically everything seems to keep getting worse. The arts are overlooked on all levels, from primary school to university to funding for theaters or even exporting art. Nobody seems to understand how important it is for a culture to be producing and 'consuming' its own art. You slowly lose yourself when all you ever read and watch is from other cultures. Of course it's vital to interact with the arts of other cultures. But not exclusively that. Plus most of it is from the US/the anglosphere anyway.

All types of art are suffering here, but I see people keep trying. Not the majority, the majority of artists I know feel hopeless and defeated. But there are still artists who try to make it here. They make great music and comics and indie movies and great theater plays. And i do think that we can do so much more. The gaming and animation industries are almost non existent here, and there's so much potential there. You don't need some great infrastructure for those, you just need people who are willing to work, and a little financial support because so many people genuinely live in poverty right now. And it's these people who, upon given the opportunity will work the hardest. Many rich kids I know from art school don't care about working hard and making it, because it is actually very hard to be an artist, and it's easier to just go work for your dad's business than slave away in a moldy basement you're paying half of your income in rent for. In other countries with developed industries in these things, you don't need financial support to kickstart them, because there actually are studios you can go work for and learn in etc and the industry exists already.

The prevailing attitude here is that you need to migrate to find work, to be appreciated, to have a good life and do something that matters and not waste yourself. Which is, currently, the most reasonable route for an artist, and what I dreamed of when I was in highschool. But seeing a place like this destroy itself and become nothing but a fancy amusement park for rich foreign people sucks. There's talent and there's people with things to offer here and a culture that gets lost because everyone, including ourselves, sees our culture as just antiquity. Modern greek culture is seen as insignificant, wrong and bastardized, it's not something to care about beyond the tasty food, it's not as great as it should be and it will never live up to a past so idealized it's fake. This is connected to our perception of our own artistic production right now. You have Euripides, you don't need to worry about writing great plays yourself. You have all these ancient sculptures, you don't need any more amazing sculptors. A kot has been said about this problem modern greece has. Antiquity is inescapable and you need to look at it and accept it on one hand, but it is a crutch and a discouragement on the other. We struggle to exist alongside it in a healthy way.

Anyway I am hopeful that things can get better, because i think we can make them better. We just need to work harder and focus and make ourselves heard through our art, chase opportunities and build communities here and not give up when everyone around you is telling you you're better off in a soul-crushing job that will at least provide you with a steady salary for the next 40 years of your life that can barely afford you rent and groceries.

[gloriousburden]

Sometimes I get Lokius related shit on my dash and the posts are so stupid that I wish I could call them out and immaturely berate them, because how the fuck do you really think that Mobius had any love for Loki???? How are you that stupid? Did you watch the series with your eyes closed?

Like it just pisses me the fuck off so bad. I really do not want to see you comparing them to every single Taylor Swift lyric in existence when you understood NEITHER character. Fuck the whole thing about them not understanding Loki, they didn’t even understand Mobius. The guy’s an asshole, but no one talks about it because he’s played by Owen Wilson and is a male character to be shipped with Loki.

I don’t like being rude to people on here but Lokius shippers are dumb as fuck. And the fucking comparisons they do to basically every trendy M/M ship that exists right now??? “Time husbands” please shut the fuck up.

If people are going to ship them, I’d at least respect them a bit if they actually acknowledged how stupid it is and how wrong they are for each other rather than the rose colored version of it they’ve created, as well as demanding that it becomes canon. If they actually acknowledged how horrible Mobius was to Loki, rather than acting like he was always very kind to him and understanding. Once again, if Mobius were a female character… they’d be calling her morally grey and evil and you’d hear “UM. I support women’s RIGHTS and WRONGS!!”

Because at least I’ve seen SOME Sylki shippers acknowledge the dislike Sylvie has for Loki. They acknowledge that it’s an odd/‘toxic’ pairing, and that Loki’s character was neglected and put down to lift hers up. Something I will never see a Lokius shipper do.

Also please listen to more music. Not everything can be Taylor Swift.. really tired of this genre of person that’s been existing for the past… 3(?) years. Lokius shipper who loves Taylor Swift and is usually a fan of every trendy series for approximately 2 months before immediately dropping it for the next series or some indie game that probably has a good plot with good morally questionable characters but the fandom misunderstood it all so badly and instead of any kind of discussion about canon you get “He looks like a cinnamon roll, but will totally stab you!”

[mossy123302]

Ah yes, I am now deep in the KinitoPET brainrot. Why not combine it with my favorite pairing. So many au's...

Was inspired by the song "Everlasting Fun" by LongestSoloEver for this brainrot

Warning:

Implied Yandere & Horror

Missa's entire social life was admittedly....in flames. It was all bad timing that he just had to get into an argument with Roier about what happened to his cat, so now Roier won't speak with him and the fact Spreen just straight up vanished without leaving a message nor call. Missa wasn't very close with others, only knowing them via Spreen or Roier so ...what a way to spend his vacation.

Missa could catch up on his games, maybe teach himself to play another instrument than a guitar or...scroll the Internet and mourn his miserable non-existent social life. He sighed, running his hand through his hair which was a bit greasy...so he needed to shower, but first, maybe he should go on his computer and actually see if there were any indie games or something he could download while he showered.

Missa searched through the Internet, and searched through Reddit as well to help give him an idea of what game would catch his attention. The Adventure of Angel Death...

Hm.

Angel Death?

That sounds like something interesting, sounds like a horror indie game or something actually. However, to Missa's surprise, it wasn't a horror game but more or less like those ai pets that helps with browsing. It just happens to be more slightly advanced because it has built in story mode, it could do slight programming and vice versa.

Well ... It had its own story and it couldn't hurt to try something. He could delete it later if it's not much, since the ratings weren't really high for this one. Missa clicked download and with that, he headed off to take a much needed bath, unaware of his computer screen turning blue with multiple tabs opening.

Missa sighed, drying his hair with his towel, squeezing out all the water from his hair as he approached his computer. He was glad that the download seemed to be finished, as there was a tab open, awaiting for him to click some agreement terms, which he did.

He was not gonna bother reading through paragraphs of words, when it mainly repeated the same thing. With that out of the way, it seems he can now...finally play this game?

A crow appeared on his screen, seemingly looking lost for a moment with a green and white stripped bucket hat in its beak, until a figure appeared, seemingly chasing after this crow.

"Give me my hat, right now! Why are you always stealing my things!" The AI huffed, snatching it's hat back from the crow before looking up at Missa. "Oh! I didn't see you there, mate. Hello!"

Missa couldn't stop the smile growing on his face, and quietly hummed. Maybe the game won't be so bad after all? I mean this ...figure was really cute, or well looks like a better version of that anime character, that Missa cannot remember for the life of him. The developer must have gotten real inspired by the anime..but still added their own personal tastes to the AI, possibly to avoid copyrights.

Philza.

That was his name, and man, Missa hasn't had so much fun even if it was simple. Philza asked simple questions, like what is his name, his favorite color and hobby while he seemingly read a book that appears from thin air as Missa types his answers. Missa was honestly impressed with the programming, since Philza seemed to have full range control on his computer and was able to pull immediate results or answers when Missa typed a question into the search engine.

Now it seems Philza did have a story program set in him, in which he opens another tab for Missa. It was a simple game, he just had to do simple tasks assigned by his friends; Tommy and Techno.

Techno was quite easy, it was to decorate the cabin! He added a few wolves, painted the whole cabin in blue and purple and added way too many skulls. Philza had a good laugh out of that one, amused by the amount of skulls that Missa had added.

"Well, your room is certainly interesting" Philza laughed and Missa smiled. It's weird how this little ai knew how to make him smile or probably because he's just starved of actual contact

Speaking of that... Missa frowned when he spotted a message from Roier. He didn't realize how long he spent playing this small quest, the message was there for hours and Missa barely recognized it. He didn't know what to say exactly, in fact, he just wanted to ignore it entirely but...

"Hey mate, you've been distracted by that message for a while now" Philza spoke, his voice snapping Missa out of his thoughts. Missa closed the message browser and sighed.

"Good choice, mate" Philza said, a hint of amusement in his tone. "We have plenty of other tasks to do, surely you have enough time"

Missa did, so he followed the new instructions Philza gave him to add a new game mode it seemed.

Hide and Seek

Missa didn't know where he was, frankly. He was... somewhere, tunnels that closed in on him. He couldn't make out most of the tunnels, with how pitch black it was and all he had was this torch to guide his way. He faintly could hear humming and footsteps that clattered against the stone...

Missa peeked around the corner, and could see a red cape flutter and he immediately hid back, silently praying that he wasn't spotted or at least heard. He covered his mouth with his free hand, trying to keep his heavy breathing quiet.

"Found you, mate"

Missa shrieked, as he immediately sat up, his eyes immediately darting around and ... He wasn't in tunnels, where it was damp and cold. He was...back in his room, where it was safe and warm. The computer was still on...and Philza's persona was asleep, or at least shut down since it seemed Missa was inactive for a while.

"....Dios mios...That dream.." Missa sighed, running his hand through his hair as he tried to process what he just had. He winced when his neck slightly twinged, and he mournfully had to turn off his computer to actually get some sleep or else his neck will be the least of his worries.

Philza opened his eyes when he felt the computer turn off, and while Missa couldn't see him anymore. Philza will always still see him and he quietly sighed. He frankly hated these moments where Missa had to sleep, I mean, it's much better being awake and doing fun activities but ... He supposes that taking a moment to relax and wind down is admittedly nice to take. It gave Philza time to jot down future ideas, or references to the games Missa had in his computer and to delete the incoming messages from Roier and Mariana.

He admired their stubbornness, but it was starting to get on his nerves a little. Can't they see he's trying to have fun? He was so close, he finally got to tap deeper in Missa's own dreams...

Slowly, bit by bit, Philza will be the only thing Missa will remember. He doesn't need these other friends to make him happy, all Missa needs to do is enter his world...and be happy with him, Techno and Tommy. However, Philza is patient, he will...bite down the urge to pull Missa straight away. He needs more time to create the perfect world for Missa.

Just a bit more... information and soon, Missa will finally be in his arms.

"Just wait a bit more, my moon.."

"Soon, we'll have an Everlasting Fun in our beautiful world"

[ourladyofoldgotham]

right person (wrong time)

cillian murphy x male reader

NSFW 18+, minors dni

lovers to strangers to lovers, angst to fluff, smut

requested by @joy-dwaekki

3.5k words

summary

It's been thirty years since you last saw Cillian Murphy. When you reconnect at a film premiere, it brings up more than you expected.

It’s been decades. A life lived, oceans crossed. 

You see him across the room and it’s like none of them ever existed.

In an instant, you’re swept back across time and oceans to land right back in that Cork apartment watching him leave. 

The thing was that it was never supposed to end like this. Or at all. The two of you had plans together - plans that spanned the rest of your lives. He was going to be a rockstar. You were going to be an actor. In the back of your head, you thought you would be young forever. You’d always considered yourself a hopeless romantic, always given over to spinning tall tales about your future, but this was different. You thought it was different. 

The two of you met at 19. You see him up on stage, the lights behind him like a halo, and suddenly you’re the only person in the crowded audience when his blue eyes meet yours. It was a whirlwind. He’d never been with another man before, and neither had you, but you learned together. You can see it clear as day still - a dimmed room, bouncing between your shitty apartment and his. His hands on your body, wide blue eyes and a flush creeping up along his freckled chest.

You should have seen it start to go downhill by August, ten months in. He turns down the record deal- five whole albums. He gives you a million excuses - his brother’s still in school, it’s not enough money for the rights. You know better. You see the way he pulls his hands back from you in front of everyone else. He can’t commit to you - to music, to the lives you built together - because it means losing everything else. If you didn’t love him so much you’d hate him for it. As it is, you aren’t sure. 

That September, he went back to school. Law. You call him a sellout, joking around, but there’s something hollow behind his eyes. He won’t meet your gaze when he holds you anymore. You don’t even remember what the fight was about, now, but you know it was inevitable. It’s colder than your fights usually are - there’s no passion, only your anger and helplessness against a blank stone wall. You yell that if he doesn’t want to be with you, he should just go. 

You watch him slam the door behind him as he goes. You hadn’t seen him since - until now. 

That December, you’d set off for America. There was nothing left for you at home. In the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, you’d built a life of your own. You met a girl in a bar, then divorced her. You bought a house, even if the roof leaked during the occasional rainstorm. You got a few parts and then found your true love in writing, working as a film critic. You weren’t a big name, but you paid the bills and had a little extra. All through it all, you’d remembered him. You saw the little tidbits in the papers as he became a rising star- first in little theater productions, and then indie movies, and then bonafide blockbusters. You’d always managed to skirt around reviewing him, although it got harder when he started rising internationally. It had killed you to not review The Wind That Shakes The Barley - you hadn’t been back to Cork in ten years, but it would always have a piece of your heart - and you’re sure you missed out on a good few paychecks refusing to review Peaky Blinders at peak virality. Still, you could never bring yourself to do it. It wouldn’t be fair, you reasoned, to judge the acting of a scorned ex-lover. Nevermind that you could have never hated him. Whether your heart skipped a beat when you saw him due to anger or love, you were biased. Of course, your game of keep-away couldn’t last forever. 

Oppenheimer was a cinematic groundbreaker. Nolan had brought practical effect film biopics back to the international spotlight like never before. It was a true masterwork, one that got the world talking. Of course, that meant that it was unavoidable for you. You were invited to the LA premiere, which meant not only poring over trailers and historical biographies but looking into the backstories of the main cast. You had a little experience with a couple other major members - you’d brushed with them at other premieres you’d worked - but you’d avoided everything Cillian you possibly could for years. Now, you had to dive headfirst into all of it. The first thing you learned about him was that he had a wife. Her name had been Yvonne - he’d met her at a show in ‘96, he said. It was just a couple months after the two of you had split up. You recognized her name vaguely. She’d been an artist, the mother of his two teenage sons. She seemed kind - just the kind of girl you’d have expected him to fall for. You wondered if he had ever told her about you. The second thing you learned was that had, in his case, was past-tense. She’d passed on a couple years back. He’d never talked about it in interviews much. He wasn’t one for publicity. 

It was a bog-standard premiere as far as these things went. Red carpet, flashing cameras. You weren’t a star and you didn’t intend to be one, so you laid low. It was a good movie, you got a couple decent soundbites. The afterparty was one of the nicer ones you’d been to- quiet and contemplative in a dim hotel ballroom. You hear the delicate shatter of glass on hardwood behind you suddenly, and when you turn to look, his eyes are fixed on you. Haunted. You could never decide whether you were hoping he’d have forgotten you or whether it would have broken your heart if he had. It’s clear he hasn’t forgotten you, but you can’t tell whether he wants to remember. The moment slips away soon - he brushes it off to his castmates as a slip of the hand, nothing serious really, just a moment of clumsiness. 

You have your answer. You turn back to the circle you’re chatting with, down the rest of your champagne, and don’t meet his gaze the rest of the night. 

It’s not until you’re leaving at the end of the night that you feel a hand on your shoulder. You turn and there he is. He looks as handsome as he did the day he left, the boyish charm turning to something more distinguished. Tired, and thin, and gone greyer than you, but he’s still your Cillian from all those years ago. Something in your heart that’s been waiting for a long, long time starts to melt. 

“Hi - I just wanted to say hello. You look sort of familiar, I thought I might know you.”

He’s tense, poised under a mask of perfect civility. You respond in kind. 

“You might - I lived in Cork for a while. You’re from Ireland, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I grew up near Cork. I think I might have run into you back when I was doing music.”

“I think you might have. A good couple of times, actually.”

The night is cool for a Los Angeles summer. The streetlights shine gold down into the dim night. The question hangs in the air for a moment before you ask it. 

“What do you remember?”

He pauses, the air still and heavy. 

“I remember the north train we used to take on the weekends to the cities. I remember you wanted to be an actor. I remember you were my -” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “I remember you were my best friend.”

“Yeah. Your best friend.”

You turn away, your jaw clenched and start to walk away. 

“I think I should head home. It’s late. It was nice catching up.”

You get to the bottom of the stairs before he speaks again. 

“I never forgot, you know. I never forgot any of it. I couldn’t. I tried.”

He follows you down the stairs, leaving the milieu of the party behind. The two of you are standing on the sidewalk. The street is the quietest you’ve ever heard this city be.

“When I saw you tonight, it was like seeing a ghost. I had no idea you’d be here. But I knew you were in the city. I tried to find you. I… I needed to see you again.”

“Why now?”

“I…” 

He takes a deep breath. You didn’t notice until now how tense he is. How frail he’s become. How quickly your youths have passed you by.

“I married a girl I met the month after I left. Her name was Yvonne. I told her everything. I loved her too much not to. She’s…” 

He’s hesitant to say it. You see him twist his wedding band, still on his finger. 

“She passed away. A couple years ago. She said I should find you. She thought… She thought I would need you when she was gone. I threw myself into my work, but she was right. When they told me I was going to LA for the premiere, it felt like a sign. I don’t think I ever stopped needing you.”

He reaches his hand to the halfway point between the two of you. Your hands remain at your sides. 

“I always waited for you, you know that? I never loved anyone else. I met a girl in a bar twenty years ago that I could have loved for the rest of my life, and I broke her heart. You know why? Because of you. I can’t do it like this, Cillian. You know that. I can’t replace her. Maybe… maybe we need to leave the past where it is.”

You didn’t notice until now that there were tears rising to your eyes. You hate the feeling of it, willing yourself to stay stoic. Not now. You can’t cry now. 

“I know you don’t mean it. If you really do - if you’ve really moved on, if you forget who we were back then, if you never want to see me again - I’ll go. I’ll go back to the party and I’ll go back to Ireland and we can pretend it never existed at all. But I don’t think you mean it.”

He grabs your hand. It still fits yours exactly. 

“I’m not in the city for long. All I’m asking you for is one night.”

“And why should I give it to you? It’s been thirty years. Who says you know me at all now?”

You can’t meet his gaze. You know the second you look into his eyes again you’re done for. You never could say no to those blue eyes. 

"I don't. But I want to. Please. Just give me one chance. We're old men now. What else is there left for us?" 

You pull your hand out of his and you watch his face fall. 

"I'm calling us an uber. You can stay at my house. Just for the night."

He nods, solemn. He puts his hands in his pockets, and the two of you stand there and wait until the headlights come around the corner, looking for all the world like strangers. 

The ride home is quiet. You don't speak again until you're unlocking the door for him to come into your house. 

"It’s not much. LA prices and all. But it's home." 

"No, no, I like it. It's nice. Cozy." 

"Always the flatterer. Sit down. I'll make you a drink." 

He looks out of place sitting there on the dingy sofa in his perfect suit. You pour two glasses of whiskey and bring them over to the living room, sitting down next to him. 

"So. How have you been?" 

It's awkward. What do you say to the man you loved? How do you talk about the decades you spent without him?

"I've been… keeping busy. Work and all. Peaky Blinders is wrapping up, but Oppenheimer was pretty intense during filming. I didn't go home much. The house has felt too empty since… well, you know. I felt terrible for doing it, though. My sons - they're staying with my brother right now. I know they need their father, but…" 

He trails off, slumping slightly in his chair. 

"But I can't be the father they need right now." 

He downs the glass of whiskey and sets it back down on the table.

"What about you, though? How's Hollywood?"

"It’s.. It's fine. You get used to it after a while."

"The good or the bad?"

"Both."

The two of you sit there quietly for a while. It's Cillian who breaks the silence first. 

"Do you remember that apartment you had back in the day? The one with that one window that never shut right in the wintertime?" 

"Yeah, the one with no wall decor or bedframe. Real bachelor pad. I loved that place. Having to move out after we ended things was sort of my last straw in terms of staying in Ireland."

"It was a comfortable bed for just being a terrible mattress though. Where did you find that thing, the dumpster?"

"Of course not, I had more dignity than that. It was on the curb." 

He laughs. His laugh hasn't changed a bit. 

"I have a real mattress now, though. My back's getting too old to keep on roughing it." 

"With a bedframe? From a store? Hollywood has given you expensive tastes, I see."

“Yeah, living it up over here with my bed from a store. Might as well be on a yacht with blackjack and hookers, right?”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve got a deck of cards around somewhere.”

“And the hookers?”

You raise your eyebrows at him.

“Well…. I was a pretty hot commodity back in my heyday..”

He grins at you over the rim of his glass.

“A hot commodity, huh?”

“Seemed to work well enough for you.”

You grin back. 

“God, you’re impossible.”

You lean over, and before you know it, your face is just inches from his, your hand on his chest. His pupils are blown wide, his hand on the small of your back. 

He closes the gap between you. He tastes like cheap whiskey and expensive champagne and water when you’ve been lost in the desert. You’ve never wanted anyone more. His hand caresses your cheek softly, holding you as you pull away, and it’s tender and nostalgic in a way that makes your heart feel like it’s about to shatter into a thousand pieces. 

You tangle one of your hands through his hair and lean down over him. When you slide one hand under his shirt, his breath goes shaky. You kiss along his jawline and down his neck, and he throws his head back, biting his lip. 

You trace your fingers along the bulge in his pants - he whimpers, already rock-hard under your hand. 

“Nobody’s touched you like this in a long time, have they?”

He shakes his head.

“It’s been… god, it’s been years. Couldn’t remember how good it felt, couldn’t even get myself off. Wasn’t enough.”

There’s a desperation in his voice, a silent pleading. You want to give him the world. You’ll settle for giving him what he needs instead. 

“Come on. We’re going to the bedroom.”

You take his hand and pull him up, guiding him to your room. He sits down on the edge of your bed, and you move to stand between his legs, unbuttoning his shirt slowly. 

“Let me take care of you, Cill. Just for tonight.”

You toss his shirt on the floor somewhere behind you and push him back to lie on the bed, leaning over him. He pulls you in for a kiss as you strip him down. 

“What do you want?”

“Fuck me. Please. I need you inside me.”

He’s beautiful like this, the flush high on his cheekbones creeping down his chest, his eyes wide and his hair messy. Gorgeous, even. It’s enough to drive a man crazy. 

“Turn over. Hands and knees.”

He scrambles to obey you, leaning on his elbows with his head resting in his hands. He’s almost impossibly hard, dripping precum onto the sheets. You grab the bottle of lube out of the bedside table and warm it in your hands, stroking his cock before you slip the first slick finger inside him. 

He tenses, and you slow down. You hear him take a deep, slow breath. 

“Do you need me to stop?”

“No, no, it’s alright, it’s just… it’s been a long time.”

You wait to move again until you feel him relax around you, and when you curl your finger into his prostate he groans. You take your time opening him up, watching how he shakes under your touch, listening to his pretty sounds filling the room. 

“God, stop teasing and just fuck me already!”

It’s sudden, startling in a way that almost makes you laugh. 

“I’m not teasing, I’m getting you ready. It’s half the fun.”

“Well, I’m ready enough. Please. I need you inside me.”

You pause for a moment, movements stilling. 

“I just… I don’t want to hurt you.”

The words hang in the air. Both of you know that you’re talking about more than just this.

“You won’t. I trust you.”

You pull your fingers out of him to unzip your pants and pull your underwear down, and he whimpers for a moment before you put him on his back and lean over him, pushing his thighs up.

You slick yourself up and enter him slowly. He’s hot and tight around you. The two of you had only ever gotten this far a handful of times back then, but it still felt just as incredible as it had the very first time. 

You wait until he’s adjusted to you fully before you really start to thrust into him. One of your hands holds his, propping you up beside his head. The other runs all over his body as you kiss him, one of his hands tangled in your hair. He kisses you like you’re air and he’s a drowning man. It’s better than all the times you ever dreamed of him. When you dreamt of him, you never let yourself imagine that he would love you back.  

“Fuck - Cill, I’m - fuck, I’m close.”

“Me too.”

He pulls back, his hand resting on your cheek and his thumb rubbing across your lips softly. 

“You’ve been so sweet to me…”

He looks at you like you hung the moon just for him. Like the two of you, here, now, are the only two people on Earth. It’s as dark as it ever gets out here, but you can still see the tenderness in his eyes in the dim glow of the streetlights and the ever-awake city through your window. Something tugging at your heartstrings tells you you’d be able to see it in complete darkness. 

“Always.”

You turn your head to give his palm a kiss and something in his expression melts.

Your forehead leans against his as your movements slow to a deep grind against his sweet spot, and before long he’s moaning as he cums over his stomach. You follow suit soon after, pulling out and stroking yourself overtop of him until your release is coating his chest. 

The two of you lay there for a while, basking in the afterglow. 

“My back’s going to be killing me tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Oh, absolutely. At least you weren’t bent in half like a contortionist half the time.”

“Hey, I didn’t hear you complaining.”

He laughs, soft and quiet. 

“Do you want me to get you some water? I’m going to go get a washcloth or something to get you cleaned off.”

“Please. Water would be very nice.”

You kiss him on the forehead before dragging yourself out of bed to get a warm washcloth and a glass of water. 

You’re back before long. Cillian grins as you walk back into the bedroom, turning on the lamp on the bedside table. 

“Missed you.”

“I was gone for two minutes.”

“Still.”

There’s a melancholy in his eyes, one that you try not to think too hard about as you wipe the cum off his stomach and toss the washcloth in the laundry basket to deal with later.

You climb back into bed with him as he takes a sip of water. The two of you don’t speak. You don’t need to. Before long, he turns the lamp back off, and the two of you fall asleep holding each other in the soft summer night.

we heart old man sex also sorry this took like SO long lol

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[coldsaturn]

Bookrecs 2024

Ok I received an ask requesting bookrecs, and I realized I haven't added anything in years to this blog. Truly tragic.

The thing is, the past few years have been hellish enough that my reading habits changed from "hunger for literature" to "desperate coping before sleeping". So we're talking about a lot of Jikook fics and gorgeous videogames (which I tend to equate to books and movies etc. in terms of ability to deliver a compelling narrative), but not that many books, let alone the indie ones I used to hunt for fun.

But. That doesn't mean I am empty-handed, so here a few titles that still hadn't turned up in my tag. I'll add a TW next to the titles that IMO contain sensitive topics (I don't differentiate between positive/neutral/negative depiction), so mind where you walk.

Contemporary

Circe

I am a sucker for Greek mythology always and forever, so this didn't have to try that hard to be a win, but I was still left pleasantly surprised. It wasn't earth-shattering or anything, but I really appreciated the character-driven slow pace of it, the way we follow a woman finding herself and then discovering others through herself. One doesn't need to know about the mythological events we encounter to still follow along with the journey, but if you catch all the references, the POV is a nice twist. The end-game pairing is also the sweetest <3 Just good vibes all around.

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things TW

Intro: Back when the anti-shipping wave truly hit social media and equating fiction with reality became the norm, I started making a list out of spite. Every time some random fan on tumblr.com screamed against another fan because their fanfiction or ship would bring the end of our society, I added one more title to the list. It's published books they wouldn't be able to fathom they exist, so utterly convinced they are that the only way to deal with problematic fiction is by writing on ao3 and then being cancelled for it.

All the ugly and wonderful things is an incredible journey. I deeply respect books that challenge the reader into stepping out of their comfort zone, and this one demands to see the greys, asks you to sit with your discomfort and shut the hell up if you want to keep on reading. Many didn't. It's one of those stories where people give 1 star and DNF not because of how it's written, but because of what is written. If you stick to the end, you're rewarded with a story of humans being humans, in all their ugly and wonderful sides.

Flowers in the Attic (the entire Dollanganger series actually) TW

Another title on the list. This one is a Classic for older generations as it was a school read for many. Back when school reads were fun, apparently. You keep on reading, book after book, not exactly because of its writing style, but because it's a delightful trainwreck, and you just keep on sticking around to see where the characters end up after that absurd (and amazing) premise. If "this might as well happen" was a book.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

This was just a genius idea. Full on "I hate I didn't think of this first" I don't have many books where the very opening line forces me to stop and stare at it for 20 minutes because of how brilliant it is writing-wise, and how successfully it immediately sets the tone for what you're about to read.

"I forget everything between footsteps."

I assure you in Italian it somehow manages to sound even better. They did a fantastic job with the translation. This was such a fun read I took two whole weeks to finish it, even though I really could have done it in 2-3 days. But I liked what I was reading so much that I deliberately slowed down, savoring every word. What a fun experience.

Only downside: I didn't like the ending, it wasn't where I would have gone with it. Still, incredible job, double thumb up.

Classics

The Age of Innocence

I wasn't really expecting this, but I was vibing so much. I was sending screenshots to friends screaming about how scandalous our pompous, self-important protagonist was acting in certain parts. Like fellas is it proper to touch the naked wrist of the woman you have a crush on, when you're all in theater and your fiancée is sitting a few feet away? Things like that. Absolutely delightful. If not for the ending where I was screaming because of course it's 1921, what was I expecting.

Les Liaisons dangereuses TW

Well I can't defend Age of Innocence at all because this was 1782 and it delivered so hard. Really this book had no business being this fun. I read it because of a book club here in my city I join every now and then, and I had sectioned the amount of pages I needed to read daily to arrive at the date of the meeting with a finished book. I ended up reading it in less than 2 days. I could not put it down. I strongly suggest finding a good translation because with classics (especially ones not in your mother tongue), translations will make or break the book for you. I looked around reviews and blogs before I selected the Italian translation that I knew would match my vibe, and oh my god. I was giggling and gasping and "no way!!!!"ing my way through the entire thing. Instant fav.

Jane Eyre

This one I had already read when I was a teenager, but decided to give it a fresh, more adult spin on it by rereading it after a careful dive. I rediscovered the pleasure of studying what gets a book to be created in the mind of the author and its place in the literary trends of its time, as much as getting to know its story. The more I grow, the more I find out that no, mum, it wasn't just a phase, I'm really a sucker for everything gothic.

The turn of the screw

Another classic that I had already read and studied in high school, but that I decided to rediscover through a more mature lens. I decided to follow the advice of the Hardcore Literature book club about reading it in the original installment order and pacing, and it absolutely paid off. This was already a story that I loved because hello - horror and goth and psychological damage and if you take a certain way to read the events you'd need to add a TW to the title, and it was really beautiful to discover how I could still make it new and dive deeper into it by simply changing how I approached the text as a reader.

Self-publish

Underland

Have you ever played Bloodborne and hoped you could find a book that gives you the same lovecraftian gothic vibes? Well, look no further!

I have a love/hate relationship with RR and the dudebro high-brow stories in it, but occasionally I find something that catches my attention and also manages to keep it. Great worldbuilding, and a very nice ability to portray it by the author. Of course, being a serialized story on RR, sometimes it drags and/or indulges a bit too much in the vibes rather than in the actual juicy part of the story where things happen. Bloodborne sits undefeated in story and lore and everything in between, but this was still a nice experiment by the author.

As writing paradigm, we are diametrically opposite fanfictions. Which makes it a very interesting read even just because of that.