#there’s only one quarter or so of it left to go (not including a bunch of rewriting i plan to do for the prince justin + suliman plotline)

[cynicalmusings]

i’ve barely written any hmc today, which suffice to say isn’t great. i thought chapter sixteen would be easy to write, but that is not the case. the main thing holding me up is how to slip details, foreshadowing, exposition, etc. into the dialogue without it coming across as too obvious or unnatural. i’ll get it done eventually, but unless the writing gods shine every ounce of their power on me, it definitely won’t be by the end of the weekend.

[roosterforme]

Always Ever Only You Part 1 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: As newlyweds, you and Bradley know what you want. But sometimes wanting something isn't enough when those things suddenly seem unattainable. But you do have each other, and you fight to try to remember that.

Warnings: Fluff, smut, angst, swearing

Length: 3600 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

This was written to accompany my series Is It Working For You? along with a bunch of my one-shots and other series, but it can be read on its own! Check my masterlist for the reading order. Gorgeous banner by @mak-32 (This story as themes of Bradley and his wife trying to get pregnant.)

You woke up too early for work. Bradley was still sound asleep as you carefully rolled away from him and slipped out of bed. The feeling of anxious energy flowed too fast through your veins. You'd felt like this every day for the past week, and you couldn't make it stop. 

There was too much going on with work and at home, and now you'd reached the last week of January. Your boss had assured you weeks ago that he'd be putting your paperwork through for a promotion this month. You were supposed to be included with the first quarter cycle. But he hadn't said a word about it in weeks, months. And now you were going to have to schedule a meeting with him and bring it up.

"Morning, Baby Girl," Bradley rasped behind you. He startled you even though you'd been standing in front of the bathroom mirror, apparently staring at nothing. 

"Morning," you whispered before turning to face him. "It's early."

Bradley grunted and wrapped you up in his arms. His hands were immediately underneath his soft UVA tee that you loved to sleep in. "Mmhmm," he hummed. "Was hoping maybe you got up early so we could spend a little longer in the shower?"

You looked up into his big, brown eyes and at his messy bedhead. He was honestly the most handsome man you'd ever seen in your life. When he reached for your left hand and brought it up to his lips, you nodded as he kissed your rings.

"You know what, Roo...that's exactly why I got up so early." 

He smiled against your fingers, his mustache brushing your knuckles. He was big and a little hard now through his boxer briefs. And somehow that's all it really took. The feeling of need started thrumming through your body, slowly replacing your anxiety with desire for your husband. He'd barely touched you yet, one hand holding yours and the other at your waist, but you felt so much more comfortable when his hands were on you. 

"Is that what you want?" you asked him, running your fingers along the waistband of his underwear. You had been trying to delicately add an extra layer of consent to sex with Bradley ever since he told you about his first time. Maybe he noticed, maybe he didn't, but he bent down and kissed behind your ear.

"Of course," he rasped, and you started reaching for the shower door handle. The tee shirt and Bradley's underwear ended up on the bath mat, but he carefully folded up your glasses and set them on the vanity. You ducked under the spray of warm water, and a few seconds later, Bradley was there too, lips on yours with your back pressed against the tile wall. 

You laughed softly as he used one big hand on your butt and the other between your shoulder blades to keep the cold sensation of the tile from your skin. "What's funny?" he asked before sucking so hard on your neck that your laugh was replaced with a little squeal. 

"I was going to say you're sweet, but you're a menace, and I love that, too," you moaned as your back met the tiles. Bradley was running his knuckles along your pussy, separating you with his index and middle fingers before slipping his cock inside you. 

He fucked you hard up against the wall, your body jerking with each thrust. "You're so fucking perfect," he growled, licking the droplets of water from your shoulders and collarbones. "So tight and warm."

Your moans sounded wild as the noise reverberated off the glass shower enclosure. "Roo," you whispered, grabbing onto his biceps to keep yourself on your feet. But he was unrelenting, and you could feel the tiles digging into your spine. You could feel yourself slipping, but he held you in place as he fucked you. 

It was unspoken now, but every time you and he made love, it was clear you were trying for a baby. And as much as Bradley tried to be encouraging, tried to tell you nothing had changed, you knew he wanted you pregnant. But you probably weren't ovulating right now, and you were sure he knew that.

"Fuck," he grunted, rubbing your clit with his thumb as he went a little harder. So maybe he wasn't lying when he told you every day that he was never going to stop wanting you no matter what. 

"You're so deep," you whined, feeling so much pressure as you started to clench around him. "Come on, Daddy."

And that did it. His eyes were half lidded as he pinched your clit and wrapped his other hand around your neck. You came hard for him, and the smirk on his lips as you called him Daddy again was lethal. 

"God, Roo!" you whined as he came inside you. When he released your neck, he kissed you there dozens of times.

"I love you," he murmured, slowly fucking his cum a little deeper before withdrawing and starting to use the shower for its intended purpose. He soaped up your skin while you caught your breath, his hands squeezing your breasts while he smiled. "I think I'm gonna have a great day."

Although you woke up so early, you barely made it to your office on time. Bradley insisted on helping you get your hair pulled back for work, which resulted in the two of you laughing hysterically in the bathroom. You ended up having to redo it anyway, but he was so sweet all morning. He even got your travel mug of coffee ready along with some toast once you both realized how late it had gotten. And your spine was still a little sore for him pushing you up against the wall, but it was a good kind of sore.

As you unlocked your office door, your eye caught on your name placard hanging straight as a pin on the wall. Bradley hated that you hadn't changed your last name yet. He was so annoying about it, he even went so far as to snap your name tag in half a few weeks ago when you were having sex. You were currently sporting your spare on your uniform. 

It wasn't like you were even taking Bradshaw as your last name now. You were going to hyphenate. You'd earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering with your last name attached to it! Your diplomas were hanging up in your office! You liked your name! But you liked Bradley's name, too. And if you had kids, you'd want them to be Bradshaws. 

And then you sucked in a deep breath and closed your door behind you. Getting pregnant was the last thing you wanted to think about right now. So you tried not to focus on that. You'd already sent in your name change paperwork; as soon as that was completed, you could update your name tag and door placard. 

But in the meantime, you had to get to your lab and set up a meeting with your boss. You thought you deserved a promotion, and now you were going to have to ask him about it, which you really, really didn't want to have to do. When you strolled into your lab, Sonya and Macy were in conversation with Cat Coleman. When Cat's eyes met yours, she smirked and turned back to her computer. 

You weren't late, not really. Was everyone else early? And then Captain Bickel walked in, and you were the only one standing there, awkwardly holding your computer instead of doing your work. 

"Lieutenant, see me in my office," he told you before turning back toward the door. Your belly lurched and you swallowed hard as you followed him out. For the past few weeks, you'd been feeling like an outsider in your own workspace. Really since you hired Cat. If you were about to get reprimanded, you were afraid you'd burst into tears. 

"Sir?" you asked, your voice coming out a little strained once you were alone in his office. 

"Have a seat," he told you. Oh great, he wanted you to stay for a while. You sucked in a deep breath and slid down into the chair opposite his desk. 

"Sir?" you asked again, biting your lip.

"I just wanted to keep you updated on a few of our grant proposals. I am going to need you to write another one for submission to Annapolis in the next four weeks. We can get together to start it next week. I also need you and Lieutenant Coleman to re-code the entirety of project 27.12 before we can turn that over for testing."

Your head was swimming. You wished you had brought a notebook with you. How were you supposed to remember all of this? And how were you supposed to bring up a promotion now? He wanted you to keep proving yourself.

"And of course your promotion was finalized," he finished, looking at you expectantly. You had completely zoned out.

"My promotion, sir?" you asked softly, afraid you had misheard. 

"Yes," Bickel said, giving you a funny look. "We discussed this before? You should receive some mail about it soon. I just wanted to let you know it was finalized since you were going to place an order for a new door placard and name tags. You might as well update your rank at the same time as your legal name."

You felt tears pricking your eyes for a very different reason. You don't know why you thought this was going to be an ordeal. This man always looked out for you and everyone else who worked directly beneath him. He hadn't asked you for any details before offering to remove Josh from your lab. He made sure you were always busy and challenged. He always remembered everyone's damn birthday for crying out loud. And now you wanted to hug him, but instead you stood and shook his hand. 

"Thank you, Sir."

He squeezed your hand and said, "You work hard. It does not go unnoticed Top Gun."

You nodded once and he dismissed you. And then you started crying in the hallway. You ducked into the empty ladies' room, locked yourself in a stall, and then let out a muffled scream before jumping up and down. The sound of your boots echoed through the space as you pulled your phone out of your pocket. 

Bradley wasn't flying today, and now you needed to see him as quickly as possible. You sent him a text asking if he was eating lunch in the cafeteria. If not, you'd have to go find him in the tower or one of the simulation classrooms. And now that you knew it was happening, you were itching to tell him. And then you could call your parents tonight. 

You screeched softly before heading back to your lab. 

--------------------------

Maverick would not shut up. Bradley's stomach was growling so loudly now, everyone else kept turning to look at him.

"What?" he told Nat with a shrug, getting a little snippy.

"Did your wife not feed you a gourmet breakfast this morning?" she whispered.

Bradley just smirked. You and he had in fact not had time to eat anything together since he'd kept you in the shower so long. That's why he was famished now. Luckily Mav dismissed them a few minutes later. 

"No, actually," Bradley told Nat as they exited the classroom. "I was too busy to have breakfast this morning."

"Eww!" she said, covering her ears and storming ahead down the corridor. 

"What's her problem?" Jake drawled from Bradley's other side. He noticed you had texted him asking if he was eating lunch in the cafeteria. 

Bradley texted you back as he told Jake, "I was about to tell her I was balls deep in my wife all morning and didn't have time to eat breakfast, but she didn't want to hear it."

"Eww!" Jake responded. "When it comes to you and Angel, I prefer to avoid explicit details."

He stomped down the hallway after Nat, and Bradley was delighted to have a quiet moment to himself. He just assured you he was on his way to the cafeteria, and you texted back a million smiley faces. Bradley smiled. You must be having a good day. 

As soon as he could smell food, his stomach started making so much noise, he was actually embarrassed. Hondo looked at him with concern as he entered the cafeteria. In a flash of khaki, he saw you running toward him. 

"Bradley!" you called, shoving past Jake to get to him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, reaching for you. But you were smiling, your face positively radiant as you slammed into his arms. 

Bradley held you tight against him as you wrapped your arms around his neck. "I'm being promoted!" you told him. 

"Promoted?" he asked, a smile blooming across his face too. "Baby Girl!"

"That's Lieutenant Commander Baby Girl!" you told him, and then his lips were all over yours. Bradley could hear Jake whistling and catcalling, but he didn't care at all. 

"Oh my god," he gasped between kisses. "I'm so proud of you!"

You wrapped him tighter in your arms, and the sound of your laughter as Bradley kissed your neck made him crazy. He was absolutely crazy for you. For his wife. So he kissed you in front of the cafeteria filled with probably hundreds of officers and ensigns without a damn care. 

"I feel so relieved!" you gasped. "Bickel called me into his office and told me earlier this morning."

"Did you call your parents?" he asked, cupping your face and kissing your forehead. 

"No! I had to tell you first!"

Bradley's heart swelled with love. You were his number one for good news or bad, and he was delighted to be your number one as well. "We can call them together later," he whispered against your ear. "I am so fucking proud of you, Lieutenant Commander."

You bit your lip and looked up at him. "It's a good thing I'm hyphenating my last name. Two Lieutenant Commanders Bradshaw would be very confusing."

Bradley wrapped his arms around your waist. He couldn't wait to see his name next to yours on your name tag. "I don't outrank you anymore," he said. "Soon you'll be an admiral. Admiral Baby Girl."

He watched you preen and lean up to kiss his chin.

"What exactly is going on here?" Jake asked, holding a tray of food and pointing to both of you with a fork. "Making out in the cafeteria? This is weird, even for you."

Bradley let you pull yourself out of his arms as you told Jake, "I'm being promoted! Lieutenant Commander."

"Well, shit," Jake replied, thrusting the tray into Bradley's hands and pulling you in for a tight hug. "Knew they'd get something right around here eventually. Congratulations."

Bradley listened to the sound of your laughter as you held onto Jake. After Jake kissed your cheek, he took his lunch tray back and said, "It's about time someone wasn't outranked by Rooster. Boss him around, Angel."

"I will!" you promised, pulling Bradley toward the food line. "Roo, you must be starving. I didn't have time to make you breakfast."

Good god, Bradley was so spoiled, it was amazing. He didn't have time for breakfast because he was dicking you down in the shower. He wanted to take you home and celebrate your promotion with you immediately. 

After he ate lunch with you, he made plans to pick up a few things on his way home from work. 

------------------------

"Oh, hell yes," Bradley growled, fucking you on the kitchen island while you held the bottle of pink champagne. You were wearing just the jacket to your dress whites, and both of you were a little tipsy. 

As soon as you got off the phone with your parents, Bradley popped the bottle of champagne and presented you with a cake that said My wife is a badass. Then he suggested you try on your dress whites since you'd need to wear them to your promotion banquet next month. And now here you were.

"Harder, Bradshaw! Harder, or I'll give you two hundred pushups!"

"Yes, ma'am," he grunted, slamming into you. His biceps were bulging as he held onto your hips, and you leaned toward him to kiss his tattoo. "You feel so good, Lieutenant Commander."

You moaned as he used your brand new rank title. "You don't outrank me any longer," you gasped as he went so hard, you had to hold onto his shoulders to stay seated. 

Bradley met your eyes with his hungry gaze and a smirk. "Are we racing to admiral, Baby Girl?" he grunted.

A laugh bubbled out of you before you moaned loudly. The thought of the two of you, decades from now, trying to one up each other and reach the rank of admiral before the other one had a chance... well, that actually sounded pretty perfect to you. 

"You're on," you told him, kissing his lips as he made you come on his cock. After he filled you up, he didn't move for a little while. He kept his hands tucked inside your white jacket, stroking up to your breasts and back down to your hips. His lips trailed along your jaw and neck as you casually sipped on the bottle of champagne. 

"So proud of you," he whispered. "You're so damn smart."

"Mmm," you hummed, letting the bubbles hit your tongue again. You couldn't think of anyone else you worked with who made it to Lieutenant Commander at age thirty one, except maybe Bickel himself. And you had just turned thirty one this month. You were pretty proud of yourself as you sat in a mess of Bradley's cum and ate some cake. 

"Sorry it's not confetti," he said, holding his hands up in surrender as you fed him a bite. "You could have given me a little warning if you wanted a better cake."

You laughed and said, "This cake is good. It tastes like success."

He smeared some of the frosting across your cheek as you gasped, and then he licked it off before kissing you. "Success," he murmured against your lips.

--------------------------

The following week, when Bradley had a little break in the middle of his day, he grabbed a cup of coffee and strolled out of the tower toward the main building with every intention of surprising you. If you weren't in your office, you'd probably be in your lab. Other than a meeting with your boss, Bradley remembered you saying you didn't have too much on your calendar for today.

Then he ran into Jake when he got out of the elevator, and he looked awfully suspicious. "What are you doing?" Bradley asked, eyes narrowing on him.

Jake just shrugged and said, "Uh... just going to see what Angel's up to. You?"

Bradley cocked his head to the side. "I'm going to see what she's up to, because she's my wife." Then he noticed the coffee in Jake's hand. "You brought her some coffee?"

"Yep," Jake replied, starting to walk toward your office, clearly unbothered that Bradley was there too. Bradley wanted to have a minute alone with you, but fucking Hangman had somehow mutated into your BFF. It was insane. 

"Can you say hi quickly and then clear out?" Bradley mumbled, stopping short in front of your office door. Jake strolled right in through the open door, and Bradley could hear your laughter. But his eyes were stuck on your brand new name placard. He smiled at your brand new title and your brand new last name. You'd been married for three months, and he'd been selfishly waiting to see Bradshaw after that tiny little hyphen. It looked and sounded perfect. 

When Bradley actually entered your office, you were sipping the coffee from Jake while he rambled on, something about at Cat. "I was thinking you might be in your lab, actually," Jake told you, "and your work is so interesting, so I was going to maybe stop by there for a few minutes."

But your eyes were on Bradley's before his gaze dipped down to read your name tag on your chest. He chuckled and rubbed his mustache. "Jake, get the fuck out," Bradley told him, never taking his eyes off your body.

You pressed your lips together and squeaked. "Jake, why don't you go wait in the lounge down the hall? I'll take you to my lab in a few minutes." 

Bradley watched you wrap one hand around his bicep and lead him out to the hallway. Then Jake turned around and looked back and forth between the two of you, his expression suddenly turning to one of disgust. "Seriously? I'll just see you tomorrow," he muttered, pulling the door closed behind him. 

And then Bradley was on you as you locked the door. "Lieutenant Commander Bradshaw," you gasped dramatically. "We can't be doing this here. It's strictly forbidden. Sir."

"Fuck," Bradley groaned, pressing his lips to your name tag before kissing your mouth and unzipping your khaki pants. 

"Do you remember, many months ago, when you swore you'd keep your hands to yourself at work?" you asked, reaching for his zipper as well.

"Yeah," he grunted, yanking your pants down. "But I fucking lied. Now bend over, Baby Girl."

And Bradley railed you over your desk while he repeated your full name and told you how much he loved you.

-------------------------

Thank you so much for reading another Roo and BG series! I'm so happy you are here!! Thanks to @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 2

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[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Why do people still go to Mostro Lounge if Azul enslaved 225 students? Like how is he not out of bussines

I DON’T KNOW 😭 I’ve never understood that part???? And how easily everything is resolved????

The end of book 3 tries to hand-wave it off as, “well, Azul implemented a point card system/promotion that was just so good that it compensated for all the negative rumors about the bad things he actually did” but like 💀 even then, I never bought it…

Consider the prices plus how the point card system and its perks work:

Assuming that you need 50 points to get that consultation with Azul + the items listed here are the only ones that qualify toward the point system, that means you'd be spending at LEAST 250 thaumarks (which I'm going to consider the equivalent to 250 USD for the sake of simplicity), if not 300 thaumarks. That's not including any potential tax or tip they may charge on top of the cost of the actual menu items. If you're going for the three-point card perks, you're easily spending 750 to 900 bucks on the Mostro Lounge. Maybe that seems like chump change to some of the rich, privileged kids that attend NRC but that's still a considerable amount of money to spend at one establishment... I'll concede that the argument can be made that this investment is "worth it" because of Azul's consultation being such a useful thing. It seems like you could ask him for anything, so long as its within his means. So yeah, it’s true, his services can be an extremely powerful boon to have on your side (assuming, of course, that he's capable of granting your wish and you agree to the terms set). The issue then becomes a matter of trust between client and Azul.

I don't know about you, but I cannot believe that after Azul tricked and enslaved 220+ students (over a QUARTER of the total student body) with his promises that everyone would so easily forgive what he did and suddenly trust that he wouldn't try pulling similar shit again. And since I doubt any mob would drop 250-300 thaumarks in one day just to get the consultation ASAP (but a bunch of food he can't eat), the points system would be a long term commitment... meaning mobs go into this establishment regularly, knowing that it's run by a guy that would double cross them if it benefitted him, weirdly trusting that he wouldn't???????? Trusting that he had a sudden change of heart and wouldn’t revert back to his old ways???????? Not holding grudges??????? Nah, I don't buy that one bit. AZUL'S REP WOULD BE IN THE TOILET, AND I DON'T THINK A GOOD DEAL ON EATERY LOYALTY WOULD REVERSE THAT... At that point, the mobs are practically begging to be scammed��� Also???? The only thing that Crowley technically told Azul he can't do is to take anyone's powers 💀 so literally nothing is stopping Azul from trying to one-up or cheat his clients out of other things... Agreements like the one where he tried to claim Ramshackle Dorm for himself would still be totally valid under Crowley's new but poorly defined restrictions. Why doesn't the headmaster just forbid Azul from running his shady side business altogether 😭 or at least revoke the manager position from Azul?????? The school gets 10% of the lounge’s profits, so maybe Crowley doesn’t want to lose that income—but if that’s the case, why not just put new management in charge and still reap the monetary benefits??? Even just upping the percentage the school takes from their earnings would be more of a punishment…

I'm about to cancel this man on Magicam for his crimes/j I guess this is easily explained by the mob students all being dumb/arrogant, but that’s such a cop-out 😭 My only hope is that volume 3 of the light novel adaptation will go more in-depth about the post-OB backlash Azul experiences (similar to how it did for volume 1) 💦 because the way the game presents it, it feels like he and the Mostro Lounge made an almost immediate comeback 😭 which isn’t realistic at all…

I guess all I have left to say is…

[thebaffledcaptain]

Things that happened at the 250th anniversary of the changing of command at Old Fort Niagara

as recounted by a humble fifer of His Majesty's 22nd Regiment of Foot, for his own records:

The unit got to sleep in the French Castle, which sounds much more luxurious than it was, but I’m still happy we had the chance to do it—it’s the main barracks building in the fort, with three stories that house officers’ quarters, mess halls, store rooms, and even a chapel. In period accurate style, however, the regiment was quartered on the third floor where something like a hundred soldiers would have slept on wooden pallets around the perimeter of the room.

Three of us, myself included, squeezed into the weird little nook between the two doorways and decided that was the most fun place to sleep.

In hindsight I can only assume it was not the most fun place to sleep because man was it hot in there. The site had the windows padlocked and some people had to go convince a staff member to open them so we wouldn’t suffocate the next night as well.

Two unfortunate souls swore up and down that they had an encounter with a ghost on the first night and immediately ran down to the chapel on the second floor. It was not until after I left that I discovered the site is rumored to be haunted by…. *checks notes* a Headless Frenchman?

There were a ludicrous amount of donuts for breakfast both days. Like, every flavor you could imagine, laid out across four modern folding tables. That was how the Fort justified not providing us with any sort of rations. Just… an absurd amount of donuts.

On the second day I ate my donut watching two highlanders struggle to set up a stretcher, assuming they were probably going to do some kind of medical demo with it later

As I’m walking back to the barracks with my friend I hear a voice behind me go “make way for the King’s donuts!”

I turn around and the same two highlanders are carrying eight donuts, each in a different flavor on its own individual plate, perfectly laid out in a line that spans the entire length of the stretcher. Here’s the visual because you need one.

Somehow I managed to lose the entire regiment on the first day. They said they were going off to drill and apparently went so far from the Fort that I could not find them until they returned—last out of every other unit drilling, of course

During this time the 54th doctor saw that I looked abandoned and offered me a seat next to his operating table and… dismembered limbs etc etc. I accepted for the shade though with some trepidation.

My fellow 22nd fifer abandoned me to be a man-at-arms this weekend. The 54th drummer and I got some quality bonding time as the only musicians in our battalion.

We did make kind of an executive decision to detach ourselves from the 43rd when we split into companies after watching them accidentally wheel themselves into a corner of some sort… but, you know. No one cares what music does anyway

In fact one of the 8th fifers aptly described our job as to criticize and/or commentate on the rest of the goings-on we had no part in, in a fashion I describe as being much like a bunch of little peacocks in the back. If I’m being honest that’s my favorite part of the role.

In accordance with this principle, my fellow fifer and I took it upon ourselves to put lavender sprigs in as many of the regiment’s hats as we could. We didn’t get very far but the sentiment was there.

Our sergeant took it upon himself to explain the origin of the word “cock” on multiple occasions because the fully grown adult men in this unit have the collective maturity of a 12 year old

Kind of disappointed with the tavern night (bad beer and not even in a historical part of the fort) but ended up having a long conversation with some 54th guys, so now I can say I was challenged to a duel by the 54th sergeant?

Alright, slight exaggeration there—both of us fence and while I saw him doing some friendly sparring with a few other people, we never got the chance for a bout, so now it's up in the air for the next event we're both at.

Also, he said "Spepsi" instead of "Pepsi" exactly one (1) time and I tormented him with it for the rest of the night. It's a good thing he's not my sergeant or I might be digging myself into a hole with that.

Watched two highlanders at the front of their files wheel decisively left when a right wheel was called and then sheepishly jog back to the rest of their unit

Greatly enjoyed hearing one of our guys’ “deaths” on the battlefield, which are famous for his Wilhelm scream-esque exclamations

On two occasions, the 54th sergeant turned to me (once on the battlefield, once in the middle of a very solemn memorial service) to tell me “it’s stinky over here”

I did not think this would be the event where I bonded with an NCO from a regiment I was not a part of but I’ll take it

The regiment bought $700 worth of Russian Drill from one of the sutlers. Cleared out his stock. Needless to say a pair of Russian Drill britches is in my future

On the second day for some reason the Drum Major decided not to do any kind of drummer’s call before forming up for battle and just told us musicians to be on the lookout.

I was there for that announcement and stuck with my regiment so I was fine. The 54th drummer, however, was not aware of this and the entire battalion marched past him as he was just sitting under one of the tents—I waved to him hoping he would join us but he just… waved back at me…

Cut to five minutes later—the 54th sergeant turns to me and goes “where’s [drummer]?” and I have to tell him we just… marched right past him. We give it another minute and suddenly, in the distance, the disheveled green figure of the 54th drummer frantically running to catch up to us… poor fellow. Not his fault nobody communicated to him. Which is a problem that could easily be solved by, you know, utilizing the Music (as would have been historically accurate), but apparently no one wants to do that…

I seem to be making a bit of a name for myself as the British Army’s Mandolinist in Residence, or, as some of my comrades have nicknamed me, “The Mandolier” (which. I have to be honest. Is a cooler term)

On Saturday night my fellow fifer and I stayed up until almost two in the morning singing despite the knowledge we had to be up at 6 to do reveille. However I did not regret this decision then nor do I now.

Nothing compares to the experience of singing Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald at midnight, sitting on a wall that drops off straight into Lake Ontario, at a centuries-old fort with no one around. This was Sunday night, when most of the units had left and we had the fort to ourselves and a handful of other souls who couldn’t bring themselves to leave the 18th century just yet—in fact, we had been about to finish our music for the night and our little group had been turning to leave when we started the song and the rest of them came running back.

Indeed, it’s been a week since and I am still not ready to be in the 21st century, nor am I ever, but of all the ways to end this event, I’ll take that one.

[bomberqueen17]

Big Easy

I am on vacation this week in New Orleans. There are many reasons for this but mostly they're not about me. I'm just here for the ride. Hilariously the one thing I found on on my own that I was like "oh i gotta do that while we're here" is also the thing that has been recommended to me by literally everyone i've spoken to including the Lyft driver from the airport, which is the WWII Museum, and conversely the more people recommend it the more I'm like :/ I might not enjoy this that much. WWII history was a childhood hyperfixation of mine but I've found the shit I was into about it is not the stuff other people like about it. This museum features a movie narrated by Tom Hanks so I feel like it's going to mm emphasize the bits I don't care about a lot. BUT I am going to go and I am probably going to devote a whole day. The upside of this is that probably Dude will not be deadly bored by it. He does tend to have the issue of not being into what I'm into sometimes... but this will probably be fine.

My hip is doing okay, the one I've been physically therapizing for ages? But what's popped up is that as the bad hip heals, the "good" hip starts giving me trouble-- I have prettty bad sciatic nerve problems on that side, and I didn't notice them so much because the cartilage tear on the bad side hurt enough to distract me. But lately it's like-- a little electric current of Badness inside the back of my right knee. No fun. But I've been doing physical therapy exercises for about fifteen weeks now (I just counted), three times a week, so I'd damn well better have seen some improvement LOL.

But mostly I can walk around, and I have a better idea earlier on whether walking is going to be good for me or not, so idk it's progress.

So far I have had a few bites of a shrimp po'boy (in the Atlanta airport, where we ordered something else and the waitress didn't hear us and just brought better food, no regrets on our part), some amazing gumbo, a bit of really good crawfish etouffe, and a really good Hurricane cocktail, and have seen the steamboat Natchez going up the MIssissippi with a brass band playing on it. Oh yeah there was a live band at the baggage claim? Apparently there were Many Doings in the French Quarter last night because of Cinco de Mayo, our Lyft driver was explaining they'd barricaded a bunch of the streets and she was delighted they'd moved one barricade because otherwise she could not have dropped us at our hotel. But by the later evening when we were out and about it wasn't quite so crowded but there were police cars and sirens and apparently some kind of disturbance a couple blocks away from our hotel. We kept walking because whatever it was was Not Our Business.

I'm mostly here for the food. I brought mostly me-made clothes. I was wearing a nice button-up shirt to fly in, and i sat at the gate during our layover and hand-bound two of the last three buttonholes on it (I'd cut and overcasted them at home but ran out of time). Relaxing and chill, honestly.

There are a couple of fabric stores I want to visit but apart from that I have zero agenda. Maybe Dude came up with something. I think he's mostly been researching restaurants.

I did not expect this, though: I know the names of so many of the places here from the news coverage of Katrina, and when I saw the Superdome in person i started crying, and had to explain to the driver that I'd been an airport bartender during that time and so had been stuck in front of huge TVs with 24h live coverage, and I'd had a bunch of online friends living there and I didn't realize until this moment how much it scarred me, so I could only imagine for the people here, and she talked about how she'd been a cleaner in an apartment complex at the time (I'd sussed that she was my age or older so I figured she'd remember it as well as I do, because to my shock that was 20 years ago now) and how many people had just left and never come back, had abandoned their possessions and just never came back for them because the power didn't come back on for two or three months.

She said "Now I know, when they tell you to evacuate, you get the hell out."

She also complained that nobody knows how to act, because it's all tourists. Which, fair.

... Anyway, anyone with recs for New Orleans feel free to tell them to me, I'm just here for the food and the vibes.

[wishing-stones]

hey there! first time asking and i am.. pretty nervous :') not sure how nightmare's body works for your au, but how would the boys™ react if nightmare was somehow weakened enough to have his passive body revealed under all the corruption and not die? (or yes die, if that's what you're about lol) thanks!

Awww don't be nervous! I don't bite.

Nightmare's body is largely permanently colored by the corruption, but it can weaken, and he's still a (mostly) complete, white-boned skeleton under it.

Without active corruption, Nightmare is around 5'6" (or your height) and has some damage around his right eye socket. The light still forms, but his vision isn't so great. (Still a far cry better than 'normal,' where he can't see at all). His eyelight in that socket is purple, and the one in his left is cyan, no matter what form he's in. Sometimes it'll be half-and-half, if he's especially weak or in his feelings, but he's usually got the full heterochromia thing going on.

Fortunately, it just kind of retreats into the inner void of his body/skull if it's too weak to fully encase him, so it's all or nothing with the curse/corruption. It won't kill him, but he is much more vulnerable when he's passive.

The guys would be surprised, to say the least, but they'd also make the (correct) assumption that he's not as sturdy as he usually is and should be guarded. Nightmare definitely tried to hide this, but with a bunch of intuitive, smart underlings, it's hard to maintain the illusion that 'everything's fine, I'm just going to stay in bed for a while.'

Still, no one's going to lose respect for him, or make fun of him (in any seriousness-- we all know Killer is Required By Law to give him some guff) in any real capacity. He'd get a little babied, actually, until he told them all to knock it off, and then it's only Axe who babies him. (He can't get Axe to stop.)

Everyone is sworn to secrecy, because he especially does not need Dream finding out about this. He'd never stop crying, and Nightmare doesn't want to deal with that, thank you very much.

This does happen every great so often, especially after things get reconciled with his brother. Without active malice and hatred to feed on, the corruption kind of ebbs away and 'rests' to regain strength, and then it comes back strong as ever. He's actually quite strong when it comes back because it's refreshed, and he usually feels his oats a bit when it comes back.

It's the only aspect of the curse/corruption that he can't really control. Since he doesn't have a ton of enemies anymore, or at least ones who would be able to take advantage of such a situation, it's just a mild inconvenience rather than a cause for alarm.

More little facts about this:

He sounds different while passive. If he tries really hard, he can get into his normal, deeper register, but it takes a bit. He sounds a lot younger (still an adult, but younger and higher) and gets a little bit sensitive about it, actually.

He's also sensitive about his height. He loses 8 inches or better, and he doesn't like it. Yes, he wears platforms to make himself at least taller than the others (save Axe) if he's up and about, and not sulking in his room.

He views it as an inconvenience, but he hates feeling vulnerable. He's worn the corruption so long, to not have it makes him feel naked, and it's not something he handles terribly well.

He's also more sensitive to: temperature, touch, elements, and Intent. He gets cold easily, so he's usually close to some heat source. This sometimes includes the boys, and they have cuddle-puddled to make him feel safer.

He will break out his crown and wear it. It's a newer one-- his old crown won't fit because it didn't grow with him. he wears a silver crown with a more elegant crescent moon fixture (not entirely unlike this, but solid and without decoration) with a three-quarter moon taking up the void of the crescent, leaving a small gap between the two. He also wears much less gold and much more silver, although he does wear gold with purple, since it's very regal looking.

Hand-in-hand with the above, he breaks out good fancy clothing, too, since he's not in danger of staining it, and it feels nice on not-corrupted bones. Silk, satin, velvet... very fine clothing.

He also wears a weighted cape. While he doesn't always have his tentacles out, he will over-correct for their weight when they aren't present, and he's fallen over before when turning because of it. (After Killer was done laughing, he helped devise the cape.) It's a lovely little capelet that hangs over one shoulder, but drapes otherwise evenly across the back to the small of his back.

He's usually passive for 1-2 weeks, and then it won't happen again for a couple years, if he's lucky, or 10-12 months if he's not. This only started happening once Dream broke out of the statue, so while it's a fairly new development, it's one that he's learned to deal with and has procedures for.

I mentioned it before with Dream in R&R, but his bones have kind of a pearlescent sheen to them. Dream's is warmer (like a cream pearl), but Nightmare's is cooler (like a silver pearl). They're both Demi-gods, after all.

Interestingly enough, I've been working with this idea recently.

[mayimkjs]

Microanalyzing MeMe

Taken from the FOOL's MATE research doc.

This includes theories and thoughts from a bunch of different people.

I will be separating some things into Trikoto and Twokoto variants.

The moon is in its First Quarter. It’s halfway between the New Moon, which represents the beginning of a new journey, and the Full Moon, which represents the end of something or rebirth. And thus, it can represent a difficult time where decisions must be made and a point where strength of will is necessary. This could seen as John making decisions with Mikoto being left in the dark. That would explain why the moon only shows up in relation to John.

This scene could represent how their future is scattered, uncertain and messy as tarot cards tell the future. 

Throughout the murder, he is wearing a beanie, as if to conceal his identity from the viewer.

Trikoto: These scenes are mainly green, his eye is red and the bulk of the eye shine on the bottom. I see this as John and Midokoto working together in some way shape or form to kill someone. John would be the one to kill someone and Mido would be the one to deal with the aftermath. They are working together to keep this from Mikoto. Another thing that contributes to this theory is that only one eye is ever shown. 

Trikoto: So going off of that, this scene would be Midokoto doing his part of the job and handling the cleaning up.

Trikoto: He points at his head 3 times. As if signaling to the viewer that there are 3 of them. When the scene swirls out, it has an RGB filter over it. Each color is associated with an alter. Blue for Mikoto, red for John and green for Midokoto. Bundled with the line that plays during this scene (Switch, Shake up that brain), it seems that this is referencing Mikoto, John and Midokoto.

Mikoto wakes up in his inner world confused. There are tarot cards scattered on the table, so he takes one. We then see 3 shots of tarot cards. Each shot contains the same 10 cards in the same positions except the 3rd where 3 are moved. It then jumps to the Devil card before his actual card is revealed to be a blank card.

Back to the murder, we see John looking over something, possibly his victim. He could also be burying him but, given that there's a phone pole in the background. I don't think that's what's happening here.

John or Mido puts the body or other evidence in a trash bag and throws it into a dumpster. Their sloppy work makes me think this is the first murder. They also throw the beanie away. Both of these shots show that he is not a calculated killer as the murder was very sloppy. He threw away trash in an area where illegal dumping would be reported and he left DNA evidence. I also don’t think that the bat is in the bag. It’s likely just the body and his jacket. 

In this scene, it seems that Mikoto could be dissociating. 

In the mirror in the real world, you see Mikoto looking around confused and concerned. In the inner world, John is in the mirror. This shows that John has now fronted. Maybe Mikoto knows that somethings up. There’s also a chance that these shots aren’t sequential. This and the next scenes could also be him realizing that the person ruining his life is both not him and him at the same time. 

Mikoto is startled by this. He then falls and is given a card. He receives The Devil card without having a choice while he's fallen down in a vulnerable position. The card then turns black. He drops it and the room turns red.

He panics and John/Mido appears behind him with his hands in the shape of a gun to his head as if to threaten him. 

The surveillance footage can be interpreted as the altars watching Mikoto. Mikoto is stressed. He has likely come from work.

Trikoto: This could be Midokoto dealing with the aftermath of another murder since he’s smoking real cigarettes. 

Twokoto: Some people say that this scene is a suicide attempt. Personally, I’m hesitant about that. The shower and mirror scenes often are paired with the last as well as the suicide atempt theory. In this theory, he’s losing consciousness in the scene on the right.

Mikoto is addressing the audience/Es.

Here, he’s stacking the deck up neatly. He's trying to take control of his own destiny. Control of his life is very important to Mikoto. Or, he’s shuffling his deck to properly understand what is going on.

He snaps then the room turns red. Mikoto has now fronted and John is back in the inner world. This could also symbolize a switch. 

Trikoto: We don't see his head in this shot so this could be Mido.

John draws a card and shows it to the audience as if to say it's not his. His expression goes from cheery to cold. 

John is seems to be having a conversation with someone within the inner world. He then draws 8 more tarot cards and the conversation continues. 

The paintings in the corner of the room are shown. These are not a part of the spread. The chair is then shown again.

Trikoto: This is possibly Midokoto as his hair is covering one eye.

John hands someone a card and puts in on the table.

The next card to appear is The Chariot. The Chariot card is interesting. Mainly the bikes. One of them is fine, the other is exploding. These bikes could represent Mikoto and John in relation to John’s actions. The mannequin has direct control over one of them. But the other is exploding and the mannequin has a mace in the same hand that shares the chains connected to that bike. John just wants to protect him, but he does so in a harmful way and it destroys the control Mikoto wants to have over his life.

The last card he puts down is Death.

Trikoto: The Kayano that is receiving the card isn’t wearing a jacket. This could very likely be Midokoto. 

During the last scene, “John” suddenly looks surprised. I see this as Mikoto either fronting for a few seconds or somehow seeing what John is doing. 

The fourth wall being broken at the end shows that the MILGRAM system may have found something that isn’t a memory, but a conversation between John and Mikoto or Midokoto in the inner world. 

This entire MV is very out of order. Here is the order I think the events happen in.

Trikoto

Timeline 1 (John/Midokoto)

Mikoto comes home from work and has a breakdown because of the stress.

John goes to Midokoto and proposes a plan to get some stress off of Mikoto.

John kills someone with Mido watching.

Mido cleans up and deals with the aftermath.

Timeline 2 (Mikoto/John)

Mikoto wakes up in his inner world and does not know what's going on. 

He eventually encounters John after he has killed someone. 

Mido quickly has Mikoto front to avoid any type of confrontation. 

Twokoto

Timeline 1 (John)

Mikoto comes home from work and has a breakdown because of the stress.

John kills someone. 

He then cleans up the aftermath. 

Timeline 2 (Mikoto)

Mikoto wakes up in his inner world and does not know what's going on. 

He eventually encounters John after he has killed someone. 

Mikoto then fronts, leaving John alone in the inner world.

Other Details

Framing of the events of the murders as a horror movie speaks to how Mikoto views his actions.

MeMe takes advantage of the assumption that there is one Kayano.

MeMe is generally told from Mikoto’s POV.

John is portrayed as scary and evil because that's what Mikoto assumes is happening. 

[theuniversitychallengereview]

Dopamining

Yesterday I listened to a podcast about dopamine and the other 'feel-good' brain hormones oxytocin, seratonin and endorphins. It feels kind of like cheating to include endorphins as a single thing when there are actually a bunch of different endorphins, but it means you get to use the cool acronym DOSE so I can't begrudge the neuroscientists too much for it. Or should it be the neuropsychologists? The brain people.

We all know that we are on our phones far too much, and yet we continue to be on our phones far too much.

The little dopmaine hit you get from reading a tweet or scrolling TikTok or watching a hundred Instagram reels is a lot easier to get than the satisfaction you get from reading a book or practicing guitar, and it staves off the boredom that arises if you just sit there with, god forbid, nothing to do but think.

But you are never satisfied when you stop watching the Instagram reels, or when you finish a session of playing 5-minute blitz chess matches while waiting for the bus. You always want more. If you've played five matches you want to play five more. If you've watched thirty reels you want to watch thirty more.

This feeling then carries over into the moments when we are not on our phones too, because we have crashed our supply of dopamine meaning that it is harder to achieve the non-phone-based things we want to do, like cooking dinner or building a spreadsheet. So we go back on our phone and order something from Deliveroo then play a few more games of chess while we're waiting for the food to arrive.

We started the day with the intention of planning a holiday and assembling a bookshelf, but after we woke up and spent twenty minutes on YouTube shorts there was no motivation left for anything else.

Why, then, am I telling you this when I have posted this article on Twitter with the intention of hijacking your attention for the brief fix of a University Challenge review?

Because I am part of the problem too.

I am trying to steal your dopamine for my own selfish social media ambitions, to steal your motivation and get you hooked on these reviews just like Facebook is. The only difference is that I haven't used your data to become a billionaire.

So if you've come to me from Twitter then get off here now - leave your phone and your headphones behind and go find the nearest tree. Stare at it, touch it if you like, then come back and tell me how you feel.

Ah, I forgot one step - subscribe to the blog so that you don't need to rely on Twitter's increasingly spiteful algorithm to find me. Instead I will arrive fully formed in your email inbox and you can read me at your leisure.

Sign up for The University Challenge Review

Next week we can deal with oxytocin, but for now, let's get on with the episode.

Darwin College, Cambridge vs Birkbeck.

This is Darwin's third appearance on the Challenge, losing a tight semi-final to St Edmund Hall on their debut in 2019. Birkbeck won the trophy in 2003, but didn't appear again until 2020, and they have made two quarter-finals since then

Here's your first starter for ten

Darwin captain Whitaker takes the opening points with Where Angels Fear To Tread, setting the tone for the rest of the match. His team is made up of three women, and the Birkbeck team also has two women, meaning that the men are numerically outnumbered, which is quite a rare occurrence.

The picture starter also goes to Whitaker. That's three for him - it's going to get more difficult to keep trackas the show goes on.

Van Onzenoort bounces back for Birkbeck with elasticity, and they mixed up their answers on glass-making processes, giving super-cooling twice rather than tempering and annealing. A second for Van Onzenoort wins Birkbeck a bonus set on Sicilian foods, including one on cakes which Skidmore isn't much help on because he's 'not that into cakes'.

Hamilton gives Whitaker his fourth starter of the night, and Max Factor (who was apparently a real person, after whom the makeup brand is named) continues his streak.

Evans takes the music starter with Frank Sinatra, but they can't maintain the momentum and Whitaker returns with David Hume.

Van Onzenoort keeps Birkbeck in it with Bayes, and Evans grabs the second picture starter to close the gap even further. When Moorthy takes her first points with All Quiet on the Western Front they are only 25-points behind.

Whitakeover

But it is at this stage that Whitaker takes complete control of the match for Darwin, with four starters back to back on a wide variety of subjects (Venus, Albanian refugees in Italy, Salisbury Cathedral and the 800s).

Have you been counting? I might have missed one out so I'll just tell you - he finished with eleven (11!) starters, which is the highest of the series so far.

He was also the only person on his team to get a starter, which might be a record of some sort. Look out for him in the next round!

Darwin 205 - 110 Birkbeck

I hadn't realised quite how impressive Whitaker was until I saw all of his plaudits on social media, but eleven starters is a stonking performance, and Birkbeck couldn't keep up with him at all.

In fact, his points from starters alone would have tied Birkbeck's total.

See you next week (by which time you'll all have subscribed so you don't have to crash your dopamine supplies on Twitter) for Durham vs Oriel, a rematch of the 2000 Grand Final.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Look! A Thing!

New Instalment this week! It's a web serial about broken people by a broken author on a broken website! I'm just yelling about it as hard as I can while everything burns down around me!

And the site itself!

You like obscure and indie? Just lookit these numbers!

Current known readers: 3 (hi!), 1st Goalpost: 10?

Current supporters: 2 (hi Kith and 5th!), 1st Goalpost: 5?

If you click this and you like it, you have the power to bring two of your friends and double my admitted readership! Hurry! Before success spoils me!

And I'm super distracted, so let me just snip an excerpt from today's thrilling chapter for your feed-friendly perusal!

Ann put up a hand. She drew Hyacinth farther from the door and lowered her voice, “John kidnapped Erik because they needed help and they knew we wouldn’t let him do this. Erik has been helping the Rainbow Alliance save coloured people and get them the hell out of this fucked up country, because Prokovia wants them dead, or… or worse…”

“De-magicked,” Maggie said. She took a sheet of paper off the bed. “It’s an apograph. Most of ‘em are, but you can read ‘em in the mirror. This is the important part. This is what Prokovia wants to do.” She held up the paper so both of them could see. It was divided into four equal parts, all of them moving and displaying text and images at once. “This is what happens when you try to take the magic out of an immie.”

In each quadrant there was a brief, animated snapshot, five seconds at most, followed by backwards text and further still images. They cycled endlessly, somewhat out of sync, as if whoever set them in motion had activated them one after the other, going clockwise from the top left.

The figure at the top left was a milk-white young man with threads of blond in his matching white hair. His complexion had the look of a broken mirror, with cracks running in every direction, except they weren’t open or bleeding. They were what Hyacinth couldn’t help thinking of as a normal human skin tone, but pale tan certainly wasn’t normal for this guy. He was smiling vaguely, almost vacantly, and holding politely still while the person with the camera moved to photograph him from either side. There was a round scar on each temple, just below the hairline.

The scowling blue woman to the right of him had a similar pattern across her face and bare shoulders, just a bit more fair. Her mirror had shattered more violently — there were patches of fair skin between some of the cracks, as if some of the glass had fallen out. She had a set of yellow hands holding her, and she was turning her head from side to side, not quite struggling but clearly uncomfortable. The five-second image ended with her swatting the camera and a split-second shot of a tile floor.

The orange child at the bottom left had no cracks at all, only patches, and much larger ones. The close-cropped hair suggested a boy, but it could have been either. Tears were welling in their eyes as they clutched a stuffed toy, curling their whole body around it and wincing from the camera’s flash. In the last two seconds, a brown hand intruded and gently nudged their head up, allowing a brief three-quarter profile view of a face with an olive-toned patch that included one dark eyebrow.

The final figure, another young man, did not seem to be coloured at all. His hair was dark, his eyes were blue, and his skin was fair. His hands were bandaged and bound to the chair he was sitting in. He was smiling, not unlike the other man, but his brief image also ended with the camera falling or being knocked over, for reasons unseen.

Honestly, the first thing Hyacinth thought was someone had painted up a bunch of coloured people for a weird theme party — except for the guy in the lower right. But then, as the image reset once more, she caught a thread of purple drifting across his face like smoke. It was gone so fast she wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all.

“What the fuck…?” She tried to pause the image and rack it back, dragging her finger from right to left, but it didn’t respond.

Maggie sighed. “It’s an apograph.”

“Smart paper has a backlight,” said the General. “It makes excellent apographs. Mr. Green-Tara seems to have figured that out at some point and copied a great deal of information he was certainly not supposed to keep, or share.”

“He did it for us,” Ann said. She touched the pile with the cardboard on top, but left it where Maggie had abandoned it on the bed. “It’s not much to read, it looks like he wrote it in a hurry, but he knew we’d come for Erik. He’s been trying to put things together for us, the whole time. The Rainbows haven’t told anybody because they don’t know who’s safe to tell…”

“I am the lone holdout,” said the General, “in insisting our government would not be complicit in an attempted genocide…”

“But they must know something is happening,” Maggie said. “They have intel. They’re not stupid. At the very least they’ve seen the ads, and they must know they’re not getting a bunch of coloured Prokovian tourists. It could be they don’t know because they don’t want to know. If they find out, there’s no guarantee they’ll help, and all this evidence is enough to blow the whole rescue operation out of the water if they take Prokovia’s side. The Rainbows aren’t wrong about that.”

“I am willing to admit,” said the General, “that it would be difficult to sell another war at this point, especially one with Prokovia, politically speaking.” She lowered her voice to a snarl, “Although it would be the only appropriate response.”

[Read More on my Disintegrating Website!]

[Or Read Soldier On from the Beginning, that's probably a more sensible place to start!]

[adapembroke]

Rethinking Chiron

I have many reasons to be thankful for Chiron. That may seem like an odd thing to say about the Wounded Healer. Most astrologers would say having Chiron in the 11th house like I do means that some of my greatest wounds will come from rejection by my communities. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Chiron wounds can’t be healed, they say. The best I can hope for is using my experience with the wound to heal others with the same wound.

When I learned this, I got angry. I knew there was something to this Chiron business, but I believe in hope. I was convinced that my community was out there somewhere. I just hadn’t found my people yet. I didn’t care how many astrologers I respected subscribed to that story of Chiron. I refused to believe that my Chiron wound couldn’t be healed. If I couldn’t find a community to accept me, I was going to make one. I was going to build the most welcoming community I’d ever seen.

Before I knew what Chiron was, I had already started doing the work. After college, I spent a year in a community organizing internship. I was supposed to be learning how to rally a community around social justice work. What I actually learned was how to create communities where people aren’t just lonely followers and observers. They are included and actively involved members of the community because they are seen and appreciated for their unique skills and interests.

Using what I learned from that internship, I used Discord to create the community that would eventually become the Narrative Astrology Lab. I wasn’t thinking of it as a place where people with rejection wounds like mine could find a place they belong for the first time. Yet, over and over I’ve heard newbies say, “I’ve never been one of the cool kids before!”

Recently, one of the members of the lab asked me about my experience with Chiron. Mars had just finished spending months activating their natal Chiron in Gemini. I have Mars conjunct Chiron in Gemini in my natal chart, and they wondered if the transit had taught me anything about that Mars-Chiron combination.

I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but that transit completely revolutionized my view of Chiron. I no longer see Chiron as the Wounded Healer. The wound is only a small part of the Chiron story. Meditating on the rest of his story has made my view of Chiron so much richer… and brought massive healing, as well.

The wound of Chiron is a narrative problem.

I have only been physically dragged into a church once in my life. I was in high school, and my youth group was planning a retreat. It was the last night to sign up, and I wasn’t on the list. I had no interest in going. As we waited for our parents to pick us up in the church parking lot, a group of the younger kids begged me to sign up, and I refused. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to budge, the group picked me up like the world’s smallest traveling mosh pit and carried me into church.

My memory of this event is vivid. When I close my eyes, I can still see the white doors of the church getting closer as I yelled, begging to be put down. I didn’t want to spend days cramped in tight quarters with a bunch of other church kids. I wanted to be left alone.

I don’t have an especially vivid memory. It’s rare for me to be able to recall images from the past clearly. It’s even rarer for me to be able to recall a random memory like refusing to sign up for a church trip. I have learned that when my unconscious keeps a random memory cryogenically frozen for decades, the memory isn’t actually random. These oddly vivid memories are artifacts of a personal narrative I’m carrying that is disconnected from reality and ready to retire.

The story I told about that day at church was that it was one of many examples of times when I’ve been rejected by a community I care about. Looking at it now, it’s strikingly obvious that I wasn’t being rejected. They really wanted me to join them!

How could I make such an obvious mistake? Because of my personal narrative.

I’ve always been a weird kid. Wonky knees kept me from running around on the playground. I wasn’t able to participate in gym class. I had to sit on the bleachers and watch. The other kids noticed and acted like my disability was a communicable disease, either teasing me or avoiding me. By the time I was in high school, I identified as an outcast. I told myself that I was looking for my people as hard as I could, but deep down I believed I was–and always would be–rejected by every community I cared about.

The story of being dragged into church should have contradicted this narrative. If I’d been able to look at it critically, it would have, but the conscious mind filters our perceptions of reality to suit our unconscious narratives. The narrative of rejection clouded my judgment, making it impossible for me to see the truth.

All was not lost, though. Like a grain of sand in the shell of an oyster, the memory of being dragged into church irritated me until the day I was ready to recognize it as a pearl.

Chiron’s house is the place where we are adopted by the gods.

A few months ago, I was captivated by an element of the story of Chiron no one talks about. The story begins with Chiron being rejected by his human mother who is horrified to have given birth to a centaur. This is the part we focus on, the pain and horror of childhood rejection. But it’s not the end of the story. Chiron is adopted by Artemis and Apollo.

Today, we know that psychological wounding we get in childhood sticks with us for the rest of our lives, but in the myth, we don’t see him pining for his biological parents. We can chalk that up to ancient ignorance of child psychology, but doing so diminishes the love of adopted families. Being adopted by the gods seems to suit Chiron just fine. He grows up to be a well-respected doctor and mentor of heroes.

What if Chiron’s place in our charts doesn’t just point to a rejection wound? I wondered. What if it also points to a place where we have been adopted by the gods?

I thought back to the times when I have felt most alienated. I realized that those were the times when I spent the most time at the library. Books were my mentors and closest friends, but I wasn’t completely lacking human support. I had teachers who recognized my bookishness and encouraged me to see my love of reading and writing as a way to connect with others.

Who’s to say those teachers weren’t messengers of Hermes?

Planets conjunct Chiron aren’t easy to accept.

If my story was a simple fairy tale, I would say that this realization about Chiron allowed me to see that I had been accepted by every community I had ever belonged to, that my perceived rejection was just an illusion. And then I lived happily ever after.

The truth is more complicated.

On the day I was dragged into church, I had set a boundary with my community. I didn’t want to go to the retreat. I told them I had no intention of going. They physically crossed my boundary and attempted to get me to go anyway.

I wasn’t rejected, but my boundaries were. My community wanted me… but without my Mars.

When I look back at the times I’ve felt alienated in communities, my Mars has been there like a berserker looming over my shoulder. I am not an aggressive person. When threatened, my first instinct is to fawn, not attack. Yet, I’ve always felt like people can sense my Mars like the smell of something feral.

“I feel like I was raised by wolves and am still learning to be civilized, don’t you?” one of my professors once asked me.

When I was a teenager, I was a punk on the outside. It was my way of exercising self-defense. Like a hedgehog, I wore spikes on my skin. Kicking a hedgehog is its own punishment. I hoped that my spikiness would send the same message. Then I went to college with the plan to disappear in the crowded anonymity of Boston. I shed my punk aesthetic for a peacoat and a knitted slouch hat. I wore them like an invisibility cloak. If I had the language of astrology then, I would have thought: There is no reason for my Mars to be here. Maybe now it will shrivel up and fall off.

I suspect Chiron feels similarly about his horsey backside. In myth, Chiron is the token centaur in a community that sees centaurs as brutish barbarians. He achieves an honored place in his community by playing by the rules, continually demonstrating that he is “different than all those other animals.” He is the civilized centaur, so educated and refined he is trusted with the mentoring of heroes. In the process, he rejects the animal part of his nature that is rejected by his community.

Embracing Chiron is necessary healing.

In one of the versions of the myth of Chiron, he does an odd thing. When he is wounded and discovers it is a wound he can’t heal, he takes the place of Prometheus, the rebel being punished for stealing fire from the gods. Seeing Chiron taking punishment he doesn’t deserve, Zeus frees him and puts him in the starry sky.

In other versions of his story, Chiron isn’t wounded at all. He is rounded up with all the other centaurs and killed in a centaur genocide. His willingness to conform doesn’t save him. Neither does his supposed immortality. When his community decides it is no longer willing to tolerate centaurs, no one cares that he’s the civilized one. He is killed, anyway.

I like to think that these two versions of the myth represent different paths he could have taken. Different paths we all could take when presented with the option to wound ourselves in the quest to fit in. And the consequences of betraying an aspect of our nature.

It is only when Chiron is willing to identify with the rebel Prometheus, and embrace the rejected parts of himself, that he is able to take his place among the stars.

The alternative isn’t silent misery. It’s the death of his soul.

[life-of-karma]

Daylight Robbery

The Market Hotel in Reigate, London 2002 was an unusual place to work as a Head Chef — only serving food for lunch and not on Sundays.

The manager was a paranoid, egomaniacal type who didn’t care about the staff. It was whispered that he had been robbed before, and now carried an alert button around his neck to call the police whenever pressed.

At night, the hotel was like a fortress; no one could leave or enter without setting off the alarm. Since I didn’t have access to the alarm codes, this meant I had to stay put in my room, kitchen and toilet facilities, so it felt like a prison.

One night I had my girlfriend over; when she left to go to work, the alarms went off, prompting the manager to come running — he yelled at us for leaving the door unlocked, so I could get back in.

He didn’t care much for me; it infuriated him when I won the competition hosted by the company that owned thirteen pubs in London.

At Christmas time, the chefs would compete to see who could make the highest profits compared to last year’s figures for each location. When I came out on top, I received loads of recognition from the owners, and a bunch of red and white wine was presented at one of the pubs. I gave those bottles away to all the staff.

He eventually got me fired when he learned that my girlfriend was expecting and we were planning to move to Australia in three months’ time. He used this as an excuse for dismissal, even though I had informed our superiors about what was going on.

On my final day of work, due to the terms of my contract they had to pay out a lump sum of 1200 pounds including wages and holiday pay. He pretended not to realize it was that day and said he didn’t have any money available.

I demanded my owed money from the manager, and with some subtle hints of how the money could be extracted, he knew I wouldn’t be leaving without it. He proceeded to frantically open cash registers and empty pokie machines of coins and I even made him empty his own wallet until he was still 60 pounds short.

I snatched up the collection of notes and coins without protest and headed for the bank next door.

The woman behind the counter raised an eyebrow at my bulging bag of money, then asked in disbelief if I had just robbed the pub next door? I told her ‘kinda’, then explained the whole situation.

She keenly assessed me before informing me that there was a 25 pound fee for converting currency at the bank but she had known the pub manager and her own words, he was an asshole and decided to waive it wishing luck to me and my new family on the way.

The same day I secured a chef job 30 minutes away, I started work in an opulent restaurant.

It looked like a lot of money had been spent on renovations, but the staff quarters was abominable. The walls were so damaged that you could have punched a hole through them, and mice ran around unchecked even in our mattresses at night.

Knowing I’d only be there for a few months, I got to work to save up for my trip to Australia. One unexpected benefit was that some of the staff worked cleaning at a local jail and would receive confiscated weed from prison officers, which they’d allegedly secured by flirting with them.

Despite feeling guilty about the inmates getting taken advantage of like this, it certainly livened up our nights! I ended up bumping into one of these co-workers five years later in Australia — we exchanged amazed greetings and shared stories before going our separate ways.

[parasite-core]

Last night in Pathfinder, we fought through a downed Dominion ship, had a death in the party, and faced the dreaded Lord of the Howling Storm and his Eoxian Bone Sage ally.

@scarlet-the-girl

Before us was the wreckage of the downed Dominion Dropship. But there was also the undamaged Golemworks that we could look into. We decided to check out the Golemworks first, and found a bunch of corpses meant to make a carrion golem, and some scrolls, but not the key we were seeking. The only way left was inside the Dropship, so we decided to explore the Dominion ship.

Inside Calio could identify some alerts going off as warning the remaining crew to be prepared for intruders—so the party knew they weren’t going to be getting the element of surprise on this one. Instead, we split up into two groups to try to pincer them between us.

Aenland flew in ahead of us. He saw the ship’s captain—a Deh-nolo—and what appeared to be a vat of ooze. Nevra breathed electricity at both. Aenland shot a slurry of arrows at the captain, bringing him dangerously low before he’d even acted.

Unfortunately, next up was the ooze—the Dominion Ship Mind—which aimed a plasma bolt at Aenland, shooting a beam straight through his abdomen when it crit.

A moment later more combatants joined the battle, as the door to the Captain’s Quarters opened and two Neshmaal appeared. One flew out, and caught Aenland with its Aura of Alien Dread—but he resisted it. Then it lashed out at him, but while he was hit by a small amount of tendril damage, he wasn’t level drained.

Greta joined the fight, but she was too far back to do anything immediately, except resist the Aura of Alien Dread herself.

Calio and Talsune flew in. Talsune breathed fire on the Neshmaal in front of them, then Calio called down a Flame Strike on the ship’s captain and the Dominion Ship Mind’s container.

The second Neshmaal entered the room and threw an attack at Aenland.

Then it was the Deh-nolo’s turn, and he placed his whole fury upon Aenland for the only attack he was going to get, casting Synapse Overload, a spell that doesn’t exist on Golarian at this time, which completely fried Aenland’s brain before he could even comprehend what had happened. Aenland fell dead, his eyes usually covered by a purple sheen now black.

Nestian entered the room, saw what had happened, and had to focus on the enemies around him instead, attacking the Neshmaal. Edeya joined him a moment later, hovering over his shoulder.

Nevra turned on the Deh-nolo that had killed her partner. With two graceful swings of her glaive, she took off the hand that had cast the fatal spell, and then skewered the creature’s head. Then she cradled Aenland’s body in her arms, until Calio told her to lift his body up to him and Talsune. She did as he asked.

Calio burned his Breath of Life scroll and resurrected Aenland—bringing him back with 6 hp above 0, so the Life Pact Calio had cast on him that donated 6 hp when he went unconscious made the difference.

The party turned things around, with Nevra getting Aenland to safety in the next room after he killed the two Neshmaal with Ghost Touch Arrows, Calio dodging the worst of the Ship Mind’s plasma after Nestian tanked a second crit from it, Calio damaging the tank with another Flame Strike and Greta and Nestian damaging it as well, and finally Aenland and Nevra popping the Ship Mind’s container, revealing the ooze within.

The Ship Mind tried to lash out at Calio, Greta, and Nestian—and tried to hit Calio with a Touch of Idiocy—but it missed everyone but Nestian.

We continued to chip away at it, until finally the ooze quit moving.

The party found some items—including the other half of the key they needed to pass through the illusory wall leading to Yrax’s chambers.

The party checked in with Aenland to make sure he was okay, healed, and then made their way to the wall. Calio activated the key, and stepped through the wall—still an illusion, still identical to how it was before, but no longer solid.

The party found themselves in a frozen over room with three ice pillars. The party immediately identified these as frozen elder water elementals. The elementals knew the party knew, and they smashed out of their icy shell and attacked, foregoing the surprise round.

As the party fought the water elementals, a white pudding ooze bubbled its way up out of the disposal pit that it had been resting within. Aenland tried to shoot it—but his arrow only caused it to split in half. So he spent the rest of his arrows clearing out a few of the water elementals. Greta went to slash at the ooze with her axe to the same effect—it split into two even smaller halves. Calio hit a water elemental and all of the oozes with a mass Inflict Light Wounds, which killed the two smallest oozes. Nestian bit the ooze, which didn’t cause it to split, and Aenland took out his Adamantine Warhammer and smashed the last remaining ooze, squashing it.

The ice above them shimmered as the party took a moment to heal themselves before what was inevitably the final encounter of Ivoryglass. Above them, Yrax’s visage appeared once more. He claimed that as a gracious host, he would let us leave, despite all the trouble we’d caused. We essentially told him to shove it. We also got him to show us Cesseer—she was still alive and not controlled by an Intellect Devourer.

Calio asked Yrax if ‘his Battleflower’ knew what he’d been doing to all those other Battleflowers down below. Cesseer looked horrified as Yrax openly told her that he had let the Dominion experiment on other Battleflowers—but he assured her they were all weaker than her.

The party entered the next room after Yrax ended communications. Up above, on a 60ft wall towering above them, was Yrax the Lord of the Howling Storm, having some sort of tube removed from his back by the Bone Sage.

Aenland told him once again what a terrible host he was, while Nestian told him that we were going to stop the horrors he had brought to this land and its people. Calio didn’t bother talking to Yrax, instead telepathically reaching out to Cesseer and assuring her that they were going to get her out of here.

With a roar, Yrax broke a golden egg with the blood of a vortex dragon in his claws, and smoke began to billow out. When it cleared, the huge white dragon had changed. He was now gargantuan, with green markings pulsating across his body—reminiscent of a vortex dragon. On his back was the Bone Sage, who had formed a mental connection with him, like that of a Dragonkin—but for them it was a bond forged with the mutual desire to conquer and subjugate everything in their paths.

As the battle began, Aenland saw something cloaked in magic on Cesseer’s back with his special eyes. He couldn’t immediately make out what it was.

Yrax and the Bone Sage started us off. The Bone Sage dispelled some of our spells, while Yrax swooped down and breathed an icy cold breath over all of us, only to swoop back up to the safety of his perch afterwards.

Cesseer vanished from her spot and reappeared in front of Nestian. She mouthed an apology to him before going in for a kick to stun him—and missed.

Nestian decided that Cesseer wasn’t his priority, so he stepped around her—avoiding her attack of opportunity—and went after one of Yrax’s Dragonkin Riders instead.

Aenland got a better look at Cesseer now that she was closer, and could tell for certain the shape on her back was an Intellect Devourer—and it was poised to strike Cesseer’s spinal cord. Nevra and Aenland flew up level with Yrax and the Bone Sage, then Aenland messaged Calio through the Stone of Farspeech, telling him what he’d seen and letting him know that he’d need to take care of it, because Aenland had other things he needed to deal with. They turned their attention to the Bone Sage. Nevra hit the Sage and Yrax with a lightning breath, and Aenland shot a number of arrows into the Sage—only none of these attacks hit their targets, instead beginning to crack a barrier around the Sage and his enormous draconic mount.

Calio telepathically told Cesseer not to panic, but that the experiment Yrax had been talking about was on her back. Then he cast See Invisibility on himself from a scroll, leapt off Talsune’s back, and cast a Quickened Inflict Light Wounds on the Intellect Devourer. Talsune followed suit, using Calio’s senses to determine where the alien brain monster was and stabbing it with his greatsword.

Illivor, on Calio’s shoulder, began flaring out her small glittery fairy dragon wings as a distraction to help with Calio’s defenses, seeing that he was in a potentially dangerous position right next to Cesseer—who despite being betrayed by Yrax was obligated to fight to the death for him.

The Intellect Devourer tried to cast Confusion on Calio, but it provoked an attack from Talsune and the spell fizzled from the damage it took.

The Bone Sage tried to Disintegrate Aenland—he survived due to Edeya donating her last Hero Point to him. Then Yrax grabbed Aenland in his massive maw and flew him into the nearest wall.

Cesseer went to attack Calio, saying she wished this was in any other context. However she was fighting more defensively than necessary against an opponent like Calio, and she was pulling her punches—between that and Illivor’s distracting presence, none of her kicks or punches landed. Much to Calio’s shock.

Nestian took out one of the Drakelander riders, and was now only facing one Dragonkin and one pair of Dragonkin and Rider, instead of two pairs.

Aenland tried to throw his Suggestive Tea down Yrax’s throat, but the relatively weak magic of the tea didn’t take hold against a dragon’s willpower. Aenland told him that that’s how you properly host someone, you offer them refreshments. Yrax was enraged and seemed to decide what he was going to do with Aenland.

Talsune attacked the Intellect Devourer, once again striking true using Calio’s senses.

Then Calio decided he was going to finish it. He cast his final use of Slay Living on the Intellect Devourer. When it was still just barely standing with that, he cast Quicken Inflict Light Wounds, and used his final Hero Point to get past spell resistance when he otherwise wouldn’t have. He pulled the Intellect Devourer from Cesseer’s back, its body being eaten away by the negative energy and finally revealed from invisibility, as he whispered to her ‘I promised everything would be okay.’

Yrax grabbed Aenland in his claws and tossed him, then meteor punched him to the ground.

Nestian, seeing that there was no longer an Intellect Devourer on Cesseer, ran over to her and grappled her to free up Calio.

Cesseer, instead of trying to break the grapple, tried weakly to fight back—none of her attacks connecting. Yrax still hadn’t caught on, but the Bone Sage saw clearly what Cesseer was doing.

Aenland jumped back onto Nevra and they flew up. Nevra breathed a lightning breath at both the Bone Sage and Yrax, damaging the forcefield again. Aenland shot an arrow at the Sage, and shattered the forcefield. The rest of the arrows went into the Bone Sage.

Calio remained on the ground off Talsune’s back for the time being, instead running onto the battlefield and casting his final use of Boneshatter on Yrax. He resisted the worst of it, but still took some damage. Talsune flew up and tried to take a slash at Yrax, but his blade met hard scales and he retreated.

Greta took over the grapple from Nestian, transforming into her Winter Wolf form and placing a large paw on top on Cesseer to hold her in place while Nestian got in the flying Cauldron to join the fight.

The Bone Sage once again dispelled some of the party’s buffs, while Yrax breathed out his ice breath at those flying in range. Aenland was looking bad, but thankfully still had protection from energy: cold on so he took no damage.

Cesseer once again ‘tried’ unsuccessfully to hit Greta—who it only just now clicked for that Cesseer was pulling her punches on purpose.

Aenland peppered the Bone Sage with arrows. Calio Boneshakered him—leaving him on his last legs when he used a Villain Point to make the save.

Then Illivor popped up from around Edeya’s neck and finished him with a simple Magic Missile, ending his blight on this universe forever.

Yrax didn’t seem terribly torn up about it, commenting that he’d planned on betraying the creep at some point anyways.

Yrax had flown low enough to the ground for Nestian to charge in the cauldron, so charge he did.

Aenland peppered the dragon with arrows.

The dragon used his final Villain Point to act out of turn and tried to finish off Nestian in a blaze of glory, but he failed.

Calio saw the dragon was hurting, and used one last Boneshaker on it—trying to force Yrax to bow via his skull, but instead ripping his skull (and some of his spine) clean from his body.

With Yrax dead, Cesseer was no longer contract bound to fight us, so we let her go. She immediately challenged us to race her to Yrax’s treasure, and teleported up to the door, which Calio declared as cheating while he scrambled to get on Talsune’s back and catch up.

The party found a true dragon’s hoard—all free to take per their agreement with the Dragon Legion. And one item in it was the bearskin rug—the next key to the Dancing Hut that would lead us to the missing Baba Yaga.

[misscaptainbear]

A while back I wrote a blog on how I'd make a soulslike using retro hardware, I'm gonna repost it here :D

Yeah, so the twitter post where I first explained my idea was my most liked/shared post by like a factor of ten. Since there was so much interest, I figured I might as well make a mockup in Unity. Look what you made me do. 

Here’s a link to the build, and the controls are detailed on that page too. For the full effect, I’d also recommend using JoyToKey or a similar program to convert controller inputs to key presses, because I was too lazy to implement key rebinding for a mockup. See the itch.io page for suggested bindings.

Also, if you (yes, you!) want to continue this work, the zip file for the build also contains inspiration art, models, game data, and source code. It’s low polish code and almost nothing is systemic, but maybe it’s a springboard for someone who wants to push this project farther. I’d love to see it. The work that I have the rights to (i.e. everything except the inspirational art) is hereby released in the public domain.

Findings

Animation

The first and most noteworthy thing I’ve discovered while implementing is that there were more animations than I anticipated. Like, I figured there’d be a lot, and there were more than that. As of right now, there are 532 player sprites, each at 100x100 pixels, giving us roughly 6.4 mb of sprite data. (assuming indexed image format and smartly cropping fully alpha 8x8 blocks)

Bruh

One of the things we could to further shrink these is to run-length compress them, and also reuse tiles. I considered writing a python script to go over all 8x8 tiles within all sprites, and saving them in a massive lookup table. Then, it would go through all sprites again, replacing the tiles in the sprite with any similar tiles. This would mean, say, the thigh tile from one animation might be the cloak in a different frame if the pixel colors and shapes were sufficiently similar. However, I decided not to because it doesn’t actually have any savings on modern hardware, only on tile based renderers.

I could have also hand deleted specific entire frames of animations and reused similar enough ones - just by eye - but I also wanted to include all of the animations in the data that I distributed, just for the sake of it all being there for anyone who might need it, for whatever reason. I think these techniques might get the total data down to 50-60%, but that still means a ton of data just for the main characters sprites. 

I could also cut the animations in half by simply making the character designs so that the left-facing animations can be reused for the right-facing animations, but I felt that put a lot of constraints on enemy design and combat readability, so I didn’t pursue that either.

Turns out tons of animation variants work better on skinned 3D models (which is why I’m pitching my next souls game on the Nintendo 64. Hit me up Bandai Namco!) I chose to do one player model with no costume changes and just a boring sword. Any variants like clothing, weapons, or equipping a shield would have completely blown the animation data budget.

Framerate

You’ll also notice the game runs by default at a low framerate, 15 frames per second (The quality can be changed with the - and + keys during runtime if it causes discomfort). I did this for two reasons. One, it made the animations, which run at a consistent 10 frames per second, feel much more in line with the sprite movement and the camera rotation. Plus, it might accurately simulate the game running on actual hardware; making the game run a quarter at SNES framerate might be required for the “high-fidelity graphics” on show here. (Who knows if the hardware would actually allow that without awful artifacts though, ha). But throttling framerate is a tried and true tactic for better visuals. 

Environment

Another thing that surprised me is the amount of reuse on environment assets I was able to get. I was ready to put together a bunch of textures for the walls and floors, but I finished up what I wanted to achieve and found I’d only used 20 64x64 textures. I think the real game would benefit by focusing on unique tilesets to give each zone or level a special feel, and I think that’d be within the budget of a real game.

Environment took about 20 textures total

I also quickly abandoned the differing-heights-of-walls idea I talked about in the first blogpost. The requirements of the way walls are rendered described in the post made certain arrangements of walls impossible, and those were kind of the only level designs I wanted to use. That’s confusing, here’s some drawings to explain what I mean. Basically, having shorter walls in front making a visually tiered level with hedges that obscure the walls behind them just isn’t possible using that technique.

The rendering technique causes gaps where there would be walls behind walls.

While we’re on the topic of environment, I guess I skipped over the way we’d have to z-sort sprites to allow walls to layer correctly over them, and for sprites to draw back to front. That’d be a performance issue too probably. 

Palette and Rendering

One of the big wins I had was the palette I set up, I felt it was super moody and conveyed the tone I was going for. It felt muddy and sad and tired. It had pops of blues and greens, but even then they muted and melancholy. To achieve this look, there were three mechanisms here. First, all the sprites and environment textures were palletized to those colors. Then, in-game, I used a fog effect to fade the world to black. Finally, a post processing shader took any pixels outside the gamut and palletized the final game render, so every pixel displayed is within that palette.

The palletization is most noticeable in gradients, where it slightly changes the tone of colors. In a cool retro way, I think.

To create the sprites, I was kind of forced to do it by rendering 3d models (blender files included in the data!). This was due to time and money. As mentioned previously, I would have loved to dress up in costumes and downscale, pixelate, and rotoscope real pictures, but that costs stuff. Also, I’m sure hand-pixelled sprites would absolutely look more appealing, but like I said above, there were just so many animation sprites. The upside to hand authoring is you can have more control of implied movement during animation, and therefore probably fewer frames. All said, I don’t dislike the rendered results, it has a bit of a Diablo 2 look to it, but I wish I had been able to experiment with different techniques, mostly for fun.

I remember loving to see these render breakdowns in gaming magazines and websites back in the day

I think if I had lower-resolution-better-looking sprites, fewer animations using the techniques described above, and designing levels so as to not have to  z-sort sprites, it just might be able to run on SNES. Just maybe. A commenter mentioned it might actually run on GBA, and I could see it being possible. Shoutout to the most impressive 3D gba game ever.

One final design note I liked: The ducking mechanic was inspired by Super Mario World. I felt that was a nice homage, and there wasn’t enough buttons for more soulslike interactions like parrying, so it felt like it was a good choice with some mechanical depth with the limited inputs I had available. And, this game being simpler is alright by me - we are theoretically in the realm of before King’s Field. 

Summary

So there it is. I said I didn’t have time to implement it, and I did anyway. This is all your fault.

But for real, I really enjoyed tinkering with this, and I’d love to see anything that gets made out of this idea. Hoped you enjoyed reading this!

[the-firebird69]

This is all that's left of the tiki hotel and bar and a lot of people call it that they had a name but they should probably put it in with that name probably make a fortune but really they have a different design already and it is not the greatest design people are not going to like it it doesn't fit in that son thinks he saw it but it's not that one either and it's going okay we have a couple people that are getting affected by this stuff

--right now in town there's a bunch of radiation blowing through it looks like it's from more than the three but it's not they were steaming like madness and there's a ship above and it's one of the engines keeping the steam from coming this way but it doesn't keep the radiation out. Does blowing up here and it's up here now at about 1.7 rad it's been up here for about 20 minutes he's been outside for 20 minutes and people are following him around and they're getting sick it will go up to about 1.9 rad for 20 more minutes and it's an intense dose enough really for our son but he needs to clear some of this s*** out and it's true he's getting slightly bigger but it's not really that noticeable only if you have the right equipment can you tell and we we know where and he'll be surprised a little bit and he says it's forearm has changed a teeny tiny bit and bicep looks the same but the tricep is a little bit longer and bigger and those two things are true it's really hard to tell this kind of stuff it says something's going on with the lower legs they're clearing up a little bit and it doesn't look it but it kind of is and he's had that red stuff around most of it now it's disappearing it's a very good sign. After today because this is going to go on until probably 2:00 p.m. and it will go down and then it'll go back up at 4:00 p.m. he'll probably be inside at 4:00 p.m. if he stays out till 2:00 and it'll off gas tonight fairly quickly. He will be at 73% and we predicted 75%. So it's good it's still too high but we got to take it slow the radiation kind of leaves is the issue but overnight we anticipate the five quarter mile or better blowing up here at about 2.5 rad completa and in the apartment will be 1.5 rad for about 45 minutes and then another burst of 30 minutes so by tomorrow morning he'll be at 70% and it will continue along these lines that'll be Friday and he'll be inside no he comes out at 2:00 for 15 minutes and it depends which bus usually they have it on recycle and it gets reduced very low but does hardly any air so it's terrible but if it's one of the windows it's like 1.7 but they may not want to open it and throughout the duration of the ride some of them open the window if they do you'll have an hour of 1.7 and usually he goes inside cuz he's tired but they could be outside in the morning and then in the morning it's going to be 1.3 and Justin is going to start having a hard time and that will be and they plan on going to probably Perkins or the Olive garden and that will be about 45 minutes at 1.3 rad all together tomorrow night he'll be at 65% and it will continue to go down and about 5% today it's not really that much cumulative it is a little bit it goes away after a few days even if it accumulates more by the end of the weekend he'll be at about 45% and a few more days and we'll start to heal a lot more right now it's gross

--we have new figures for the day it's noon this morning we had figures of around 400,000 right now the total of the new Total but not in addition it's a new Total is 600,000 that's off of the original Macklemore lock hierarchy including a pseudo empire the numbers they were at 5.5 million now they're at 4.9 million and it's going down steadily and yeah some of them are real food cakes and think they're a big man they'll say have a similar shape and his part giant but he is not going to do well.

--we expect probably another 400,000 but our son says sometime in the afternoon it depends what they're doing but in the hospital they give way so it might change it's absolutely true it's a different time now and they're exhausting themselves and we do hear reports that they're a lot of them have accumulated in the bone and it keeps coming out but we have estimates from 400,000 to 1.2 million but our consensus is around $650,000 so that brings them down to 4.25 million and there leadership be about 2.1 no it's 1.9%. and they're fighting over going out there the pseudo empire is at 4.5% with today's losses so so far at the end of the day probably 4% and they're both doing miserably it's going to keep going this way and they're going to all have a lot of problems tonight these guys are sicker than hell and have to leave and they haven't but they plan to leave and they plan to try and run their plan which is to try and eliminate the weaponry by flooding the taverns and causing an explosion and riding the pseudo empire onto Tommy f and causing a distraction and he's not aware of who's moving in in a few days he won't have anything again and that's how it goes and we're pretty confident nothing will happen. But he probably won't leave until he's forced out completely and says it's natural law so our son says it depends who's forcing you out and he says yeah it's true so he's going to sit here until he's almost dead right now he has about a 70% chance of living and his son has a 65% chance of living and on today's standards and with what they do and by the end of the weekend they'll both have a 50% chance if they stay in those bodies more shortly

Thor Freya

Olympus

Zues Hera

[nightcall99]

Dream from 22.9.23

I’m staying in some strange in-between place, some kind of military base that people wait in. There's a camping area for my course and my classmates are here. I had just woken up and was getting ready for the day in our shared quarters. Then I go to the kitchen area to make breakfast and there are a bunch of people in there, including JD, who is sitting at the communal table. He is watching me as we make idle conversation. I know he is attracted to me, but his attention and hovering is getting annoying so I make an excuse to eat breakfast back in my room.

Then I go and spend some time with AJ. He is with his other friends and it feels weird between us. Something left unspoken. I'm glad to see him anyhow.

Then I am with my sister and there is a fridge of different ingredients (mostly different kinds of jelly), for a Vietnamese dessert named 'che thai', which is a kind of fruit cocktail with an array of toppings. It is the type of fridge that has clear sliding doors and opens from the top. It feels like we were only supposed to choose one ingredient and eat that on it's own, but there were a few trays inside of jelly that were left open and partly eaten, so we thought we might as well make a proper che thai, by adding more ingredients.

Then we felt someone approaching us, like a sergeant or one of the higher-ups in the base. For some reason, we didn't want to get 'caught' eating dessert, so we hauled out a bunch of bamboo sticks from somewhere and made out like we were busy laying them flat over the fridge compartment door, in order to make it light-proof. As if this was a job we had been assigned to do, and we were deep in concentration to complete it to the best of our ability. Each stick was of a different length and had a slight bend to it, so it was like arranging them in order in a jig-saw puzzle.

But then the sergeant man, who doesn't seem to notice, comes up to us and says we have to go now. We have to go via a helicopter and get out of here. He takes us to the launch-off spot, like an airport. I am waiting in a sealed-off compartment for the signal to get on board. I'm looking through the window at the tarmac.

[fanthatracks]

We have a stretch goal available for folks who have already supported the R2-KT repair crew, and it's a doozy. Over to Albin Johnson for more details on how to get involved. KT friends and family Phase One completed! Thanks to all you new Repair Crew members, Pat and Alex were able to complete phase one of restoration and are moving quickly to phase two. Meanwhile, a magical thing happened. Our friends in the coin biz were inspired by the Vader's Fist coins we did last year and whipped up a prototype of the first-ever R2-KT stained glass coin! The first prototype was rather plain (only the blue and gold spots were translucent). I asked them to make it FULLY transparent and the results are spectacular. I was so impressed I pre-ordered a bunch and WOW do these things look beautiful in person! Unfortunately there is a very limited quantity and the coins are 4x the cost of others to make, so I've wrestled with how to offer these in a future fundraiser. Instead, it made me think: how else can we make being a Repair Crew member special? So, I thought why not treat these like a "Stretch Goal" for this fundraiser, offering them to existing donors as a second tier. [gallery link="file" columns="2" size="large" ids="144844,144845"] And that's what this is about. Any R2-KT Repair Crew member who would like to claim one of these coins can simply bump their donation by $20 and we'll add a coin to your Repair Crew Membership kit. No additional charge for shipping, it will go out with your kit. Just drop $20 via PayPal to r2kt@r2kt.com and include the message "Shiny!" and I'll add a dazzling stained glass coin to your existing Membership Kit. Stained Glass coins are available only to Repair Crew Team members, because darnit you guys really came to the rescue. I'm so glad to share this news with you and I'm so happy to offer an exclusive to our Repair Crew members. Just another way for me to say 'thank you!' to everyone helping us with KT's long-overdue repairs!!! As always, please let me know if you have any questions. One week left and we close the fundraiser (June 15). So tell your friends if they want to join up. After next week the work continues on KT and I will keep you all posted on our website. As we said before, any funds left over (if any) after this project go straight to our Make-A-Wish fund which we can add to our fourth quarter donation to MAW. Win-win! So much happening and it is all exciting - and all thanks to you. Thank you and MTFBWY!!! [amazon box="0593597915"]