#they both main all might in a video game too

[izukatsude]

kid Izuku and Katsuki just being the biggest All Might nerds

[anadorablekiwi]

Nightly existential despair has hit because i live in a broken world where the only job i can emotionally handle is part time produce clerk and my current income is so low i dont have to make student loan payments yet

[pastabaguette]

sorry for all the posts today, but this one is very important: alternian video game edits.

i actually have reasonings for all of their blood types, and a few classpects, so i'll dive into them here:

monika: i'm thinking that early in the game, during acts 1 and 2, she maybe masqueraded as a jadeblood or higher. only during act 3 does she reveal herself as a fuchsia to the protagonist.

gordon and alyx: gordon is probably a tealblood, or somewhere around there. fairly high, but not too high, i think. alyx is an olive, and eli is an indigo. azian was probably a gold. (or lime?) i did have to keep gordon’s orange HEV suit, though. surely you understand. okay, troll half life lore: i think on alternia, all the main characters in the half life franchise are like, olive or above. the rebels in follow freeman and the guards are all lowbloods, so that the player doesn't feel too bad about sacrificing them, or something like that. i think this would be something that would happen in an alternian video game, at least.

agent 47: 47 is actually a mutant, due to being manufactured in a lab. he's a weird ice-blue color. he's still got that piercing stare. i felt a little sad changing his iconic red tie, but i do have some thoughts on that as well. obviously, red in human culture tends to symbolize passion, among other things, and in this case, violence and aggression, because it's the color of blood. however, because trolls all have different blood colors, i think they might have different meanings attached to colors than humans typically do. i think that typically, the colors that would most commonly represent aggression in alternian culture would be blue (cobalt and indigo) and purple. now, i know that the sea dwellers exist, but since the vast majority of trolls are lowbloods, they would have a lot more contact with the land-dwelling highbloods, rather than the fish. so, 47’s tie is blue. (i also just think it looks cool matching his eyes)

chell: I made chell a bronzeblood. she’s a test subject, but not one of the special ones (astronauts, olympians, etc). she’s just another lab rat. (also, a lot of her outfit is orange…)

now for classpects! i only have two i’m sure of as of now:

gordon freeman is an heir of hope. this one is fairly obvious to me. a common belief is that heirs have the ability to become their aspect, in a way. in half life 2, gordon quickly becomes the main symbol of the resistance on earth. for the rebels, he himself IS hope.

agent 47 is a prince of life. again, it’s a common interpretation that princes are themselves void of their aspect, and they destroy that aspect in others. this is really literal, obviously, but as a hitman, 47 kills people. literally destroying life. as for his own lack of life in himself, it’s pretty simple as well. 47 is almost always described as entirely void of emotion and empathy. others often remark on his soulless stare, a lack of life behind his eyes. so, as a prince, he fulfills both criteria there.

holy hell, that was a lot of words. i didn’t intend to talk this much. feel free to add your own thoughts; i’d like to hear what others think. these descriptions were a bit rushed, and i don’t really consider myself to be very good at communicating my thoughts, so a lot of things may have been lost in translation. i’d be happy to try and elaborate on my reasonings for any of them.

(oh, also, please no alyx spoilers. i haven’t played it yet!)

[salmalin]

My sincerest apologies and warmest welcome to my rant about FF7: Crisis Core. Or, as I like to call it,

Propaganda: The Video Game

I say this with the utmost affection. Crisis Core ranks really high up there in my favorite Final Fantasy 7 installments. I played it when it first came out, borrowing it from a friend to play on a borrowed PSP. And, the more I learn about the game and the more I replay it, the more everything lines up.

This game is not about Zack Fair.

This game is about how Capitalistic Propaganda can sink into every aspect of life to the point where it is entirely indistinguishable from reality. And it’s very overt about it. So…

Here we go.

My treatise on Propaganda’s starring role in Crisis Core.

Part One: The Timeline

Something that a lot of people gloss over due to decades of Child Heroes in media—Japanese Shonen and Shoujo series in particular—is how young these protagonists are. We’ll hand-wave a lot of stuff in non-live-action series with just a little bit of suspension of disbelief. And that’s honestly just accepted these days. But here’s the thing about those hand-waves.

Final Fantasy 7 doesn’t do that.

Now, FF7 hand-waves a lot of stuff. For example, how far you can travel in a day by foot, the distance a man weighing approximately 165lbs can jump after being genetically fused with what might as well be a cocaine demon (Jenova), and how much hairspray one can reasonably carry on a cross-country journey while on the run from the feds.

Age is not one of them.

Exhibit A: Yuffie Kisaragi.

Do I really need to say more? She acts her age. So does Zack. And Aerith, even. Most of the characters in the original lineup were over twenty for a good reason. We see several kids in the series, and they all act their age, too—both the OG and the remake. Age is not a thing that FF7 really grapples with. It’s something they take relatively seriously.

Now, to the point.

Zack is 16 when Crisis Core starts…

… and he was 13 when he ran away from home without his parents’ knowledge to join the military.

Which accepted him.

At 13.

Without a parental permission slip.

Think about that for a second.

… Or for the next several parts of this breakdown.

Part Two: The Main Character

As I mentioned in the introduction, Zack is not the main character of the events of Crisis Core. Instead, he is the focal point of the second person POV. This is not the first time Square has done this. It was done most notably with FF9, FF10, and FF12. (I’m not going to go on an Akira Kurosawa rant right now, but please check out his film “The Hidden Fortress”. FF12 and Star Wars episodes 4-6 borrow heavily from this film.) The purpose and position of this character is such that they might best witness the effects the other characters make on the world as their stories unfold, usually in the role of a love interest. For Akira Kurosawa, it may have been told this way because these people are most effected by the decisions being made.

“Well, then, Sal,” you may be asking, “who would you say is the main character? Would that be Aerith, since she’s the love interest, like in the other games?”

No, actually.

It’s the antagonist.

And by that, I mean Genesis.

Hear me out. I used to hate Genesis, for I was once young, full of judgement for flamboyancy (thanks, internalized homophobia), and was led by the narrative to believe he was mean to his friends. Then I met my Lovely beta who loved him, so I wrote a fic for her as a gift. So for that I kinda just… read stuff. Because that’s the thing about Propaganda—you gotta read stuff to navigate it. I read the in-game emails. I re-watched all the scenes I could get my hands on with him. I read his wiki and tried to track down more information about him. Then I watched the scenes in Japanese and gained a better understanding of not just Genesis, but Sephiroth’s character. And I realized that Genesis was put on this road from the start. In fact, a big part of the fact that he’s seen the way he is in Canon—only at his most hostile and lowest points—is because the story is told through Zack’s point of view.

So before we get into the breakdown, here’s the hard facts about Genesis.

1. He was a test tube baby who may or may not technically be Angeal’s fraternal twin brother, which we are not going to unpack right now.

2. He was adopted by a relatively rich family.

3. He was a child genius (which requires not only resources, but drive to achieve), and at a tender young age of like… ten or something? He decided to mess around and literally invented pasteurization. Which is incredible, and really speaks to his knowledge of the world and ability to grasp complex concepts even at a young age. But, again, this is not the time or place to unpack that.

4. He was best friends with Angeal, who might as well have been the sweetest, kindest boy to ever walk the Planet. (I’m biased. I love him.)

5. As a teenager, he became fixated on Sephiroth, who had gained national acclaim as a SOLDIER despite them being the same age. (Please see part 1 and think about that for a second.) He then goes to join SOLDIER and brings Angeal with him. And Angeal brings his step-father’s puritanical “hard work is honorable” mindset with him. (On that note, Angeal and his father’s arc really are a wonderfully scathing letter to companies that overwork their employees and how toxic/unhealthy that line of thinking is. But. Again. We are not unpacking that right now.)

6. At one point he became consumed with LOVELESS, a series of poems with heavy prose and symbolism thicker than syrup. It got to the point where he was so well known for it that there was an entire fanclub dedicated to both him and analyzing the text.

7. While he was in SOLDIER, he repeatedly had his achievements publicly accredited… to Sephiroth.

Over and over and over again.

Everyone did, really. They mention it in the beginning of the game. Sephiroth even got public credit for Zack’s raid on the castle when he wasn’t even there. How much of his legacy is real? How much of it is made up? How much of it was faked? We don’t know. No one knows. But he keeps getting credit, anyways. And when Genesis confronts him about it, Sephiroth doesn’t care. In the Japanese version of their fight scene, you could even say he indirectly implies that he wants Genesis to take his place as the “hero”. In the English, Sephiroth’s line is, “Come and try.” But in the Japanese the line is closer to, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Which, depending on how you take his tone, can mean wildly different things—from mocking, to earnest, or even admiration—which is especially to tell because he might be annoyed with Genesis at the moment.

Fun Fact: In Ever Crisis, Sephiroth explicitly says they are making up his achievements in the press to target boys his age for recruitment. (Thus why they accepted Zack at age 13.)

My theory on this line is that he is being cynical; that Genesis doesn't understand just how harrowing and even humiliating his experience has been. This only enforces my theory that the "come and try" translation in the English not only does a disservice to a line as wonderfully heavy as, "Wouldn't that be nice?", but fundamentally misunderstands Sephiroth as a character.

8. Genesis then took the fight to Shin-Ra. Inspiring a good chunk of their staff to leave the company, he then staged multiple attacks on facilities, staff, and the main building—which also spilled out into the city of Midgar. He murdered his parents, buried them, killed everyone in town, and… Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. A lot of innocent people died simply because they were vaguely associated with Shin-Ra. These are the actions of a villain. What’s more, this is clearly a sign that he has been acclimatized to death and violence by Shin-Ra to the point where he doesn’t even consider taking hostages.

Except.

Except the entire town was a Shin-Ra town.

Banora, canonically, was a Shin-Ra built town, which means everyone there was basically an employee of the company. No one was safe. Everyone was a threat. And that…

That was how he was raised. And he finally knew the truth—that every moment of his life was touched, controlled by Shin-Ra, all the way down to his very conception. He has never known freedom. He has never known his own identity. And now that very cage was killing him, slowly and painfully, and turning him into something that couldn’t even be recognized as human. He was watching himself rot in the mirror, and it was all because of Shin-Ra’s greed. And as he searched for salvation, he sunk into LOVELESS as he always had, hinging his entire life on Minerva’s Gift because he knew he was dying and that was all he had.

9. And then he died…

10. … but then it turned out LOVELESS was actually kind of a blueprint, and he did meet the Goddess, and he did get reborn without his degradation so he was rewarded for his journey in the end.

So why wasn’t Genesis the main character of the game?

Simple.

His actions challenge the status quo without being about the status quo. It’s a story about revenge. It’s a story about retribution. It’s a story about answering mass violence with mass violence and ultimately being rewarded by it. And while, yes, the series is an action-based violence simulator, the violence in the original FF7 was a guided, tactical effort. (For all that the characters aren’t the brightest bulbs in the sun lamps.) But the biggest, most obvious shift in the narrative happened when they realized their role as terrorists—bringing mass violence to the company via bombing and open aggression—was just resulting in increasing levels of retaliation against uninvolved people. They might as well have been a child beating the ankles of a giant. The goals and themes of the game fundamentally change when they realize that answering mass-scale societal violence with mass-scale physical violence was not only unsustainable, but also wasn’t going to solve their problem.

FF7 is about change and learning when violence—and what kind of violence—is appropriate in the face of different threats.

Genesis’ arc undermines all of that, and making him the main character would contradict the very heart of the OG game.

So, instead, we are positioned as Zack, connected to him through a mutual friend. From there we see all the damage and horror this vengeance brings to those living under the status quo.

But also, that plotline’s a major downer in a lot of ways, so they needed to lighten things up a bit to keep audience involved. And that’s why Zack is, well…

Part Three: Zack is a Himbo

Please, for the love of all that is holy, keep in mind that everything I say here is with the utmost affection.

Zack is dumb as a rock.

He is a charismatic, enthusiastic sixteen year old jock who ran away from home at thirteen years old to join the military. Which, please know, why I say “military” I mean “private security guard force with a standard-issue Death Baton and a license to kill”. The first scene in the game is him being excited that he gets to murder a bunch of people in a simulation, which he is immediately scolded for by his mentor. He is a glorified, souped up private security guard who is canonically only in it for the glory at first. He wants to be a “hero”, but doesn’t seem to fundamentally know what that means. And, over the course of the story, the definition of that clearly changes for him.

Which tracks, because the story takes place over a period of time with high stress.

Occasionally I see people saying they wish that Zack had more complexity to him, and honestly? The game. Would be. SO. BAD.

Full Disclosure: I am not the biggest fan of Zack specifically because he lacks a lot of nuance. I wish he was a bit more complex, too. But I also know that would break the game. What’s worse, if he was still on Shin-Ra’s side because he understood Shin-Ra’s mission… Well… That would make him a villain, or a cog at best. That’s not main character material. It would make the ending more messed up, though.

Anywho, Zack was thirteen when he left home. He had no formal education. He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. He even joined without a permission slip from his parents. This means that Shin-Ra was accepting thirteen, possibly fourteen year olds into the military. (Some people will say this tracks because you can get a job at fourteen in many parts of Japan. But, and this is important, you aren’t allowed to be a security guard until you’re quite a bit older, and you need a specific license for it, much like in the US.) Clearly they didn’t teach this boy critical thinking skills. Not because he’s a himbo, but because having their Super-Powered Private Security Force With A License To Kill think independently would explicitly go against their interests. (EX: Genesis.)

Shin-Ra needs SOLDIERs to follow orders or the company would no longer be able to function. Seconds and Thirds aren’t even allowed to reject missions. (One could argue that sending certain someone on back-to-back missions would be a good way for them to eliminate undesirables within the ranks by sending them to their deaths, which… would make an incredible fic idea, actually.) We already know that First, Second, and Third Class rank assignments do not actually reflect the power of the SOLDIER. This is canon. I would instead argue that those who make the rank of First Class aren’t necessarily the most powerful, but are instead the most visible in the media, thus the easiest to market, and/or the easiest to manipulate and control. (For a great example of this, see The Umbrella Academy.)

The point is, Zack may have been elevated to his position as a first specifically because he is malleable and single-minded. Even after all he saw with Genesis, he stuck by the company to the very end, with the exception of the time Sephiroth was literally guiding him to fail a mission. Zack allowed himself to take Shin-Ra’s side every time, taking down their enemies and following their orders, preserving his “honor as SOLDIER” as he had been taught. The only thing that made him stop…

… was literally getting put in a jar.

It was when he was no longer a SOLDIER.

Part Four: Honor

There is no such thing as SOLDIER Honor.

I repeat: There is no such thing as SOLDIER Honor.

It is a fictional thing that is borne of an ideology based around hard work. It only has power because it is believed in. It is an intangible social construct similar to the law, mathematical order of operations, and gender roles. So why are Angeal and Zack obsessed with it?

Pretty simple.

Angeal’s step-father followed it.

Now, we know three things about Angeal’s step-father.

1. He was chill with the fact that Gillian was already pregnant when they started dating.

2. He was a very good father.

3. He worked himself to death trying to pay off the sword he bought Angeal.

This, of course, says a lot about Angeal considering he rarely uses the sword. He essentially sees that sword as the symbol of his step-father’s life. Everything he uses it for, he sees as more important than his step-father’s life. That thing is usually Zack.

Zack, who is the child who joined the military based on stories of heroes.

Zack, who rises against Angeal in the name of his own step-father’s ideology and tries to talk him down, even at the very end. But Zack fails because he fundamentally doesn’t understand what’s going on, partially because “Soldier Honor” is just one more aspect of this narrative he was given. It is a narrative that Angeal has had to step away from, even though he doesn’t want to leave the memory of his step-father behind. He was a good man. He was a good, hardworking man.

And that is why he died.

Corporations will use you up until there is nothing left, then honor your memory/sacrifice. Shin-Ra was doing the exact same thing the company his step-father worked for did; using up SOLDIERs until they outlived their usefulness. And Angeal was horrified to realize that his “SOLDIER Honor” wasn’t honor at all.

It was willingly submitting to control.

But, unlike Angeal, over time, this meaning changed for Zack. Partially because he didn't understand it fully in the first place. It became about acting with integrity. It became about helping people. It became about not lying down and watching the abuse Shin-Ra handed out in exchange for literal money; for maintaining the status quo.

At the very end, Zack understood what it meant to be a hero.

Part Five: The Conclusion

To sum up, Zack believed in and idolized the propaganda spread by Shin-Ra at such a young age, and was so convinced by it, that he ran away from home at thirteen to join the military.

He was their target demographic, so they happily took him into their ranks. What’s more, people think this is normal enough that we see no one opposing this, because the only people who oppose Shin-Ra are “extremists” or “violent terrorists”.

Zack then became their loyal puppy, groomed to fill his role as super-powered attack dog to sick on anyone they deemed appropriate, and he filled the role. He believed he was doing good. He didn’t think they were invading another country, because that’s not what he was told.

He went after Genesis, because that’s what he was told, and he wouldn’t let Genesis’ actions shake his faith in the company.

Then he went after Angeal, hoping to get answers, only to become more confused. Angeal taught him about SOLDIER honor. He taught him about a higher calling. He was the one who made Zack truly loyal to the company. This challenged everything Zack knew.

He went with Sephiroth, planning a small rebellion of their own (a white lie on paperwork) to get answers, only to find things he wasn’t ready for and couldn’t fully understand.

Zack is shaken by each of these events. Horribly. At times, we even watch him grieve. But time and time again, he doesn’t leave the company. He sees the damage they do first hand, and he doesn’t leave the company. The company isn’t the problem, to him. He reads their emails, does their dirty work, and “maintains his SOLDIER honor”.

Zack swallows what they give him right up until what they give him is torture.

Zack swallows what they give him until he becomes their victim.

Every step of the way, Zack is fed a story of how the world is. He was raised on it. He lived it. He became part of it. He was paid peanuts to enforce the status quo Shin-Ra installed in the world by force, and he was proud of it because it was, to him, something to be proud of.

Zack believes the propaganda whole-sale, and we get to watch, from the point of view of an outsider, as it slowly destroys his life before killing him.

Propaganda has the power to make suffering normal. Propaganda has the power to make murder righteous. Propaganda has the power to take a thirteen year old boy out of his home so they can give him a sword, and when they point him in the direction of their enemies he charges of his own volition, because they made him believe in their cause. And he believes in their cause because he believes that it makes life better for everyone.

But that’s not what’s actually happening.

That’s just what he was told.

Crisis Core is about propaganda, and the depths to which it can affect our lives. It changes our belief systems. It changes our perceptions of reality. And when it’s torn down around our eyes, it can make us go insane. It can make us violent and unreasonable as we realize just how much violence is being forced upon us—violence other people just plain do not see. It's just a a piece of paper. It's just a law. It's just a job.

It's just a war.

Final Fantasy 7 was about Fascism.

Crisis Core is about the propaganda that built it. It is told from the point of view of a boy, then a man, steeped in it. He watches until the people suffering around him—Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal—are twisted into villains by the truths and lies around them. Genesis and Angeal are tortured by truths, Sephiroth is transformed by lies, and Zack is subsequently hunted down to conceal them.

Crisis Core is Propaganda: The Video Game.

[oc-ology]

How to OC post without being an artist (or spending money)!

As much as I yelled about OC-posting, some people said that they struggled to know what exactly they should be posting. Obviously the answer is whatever you feel like but if you’re already aimless, that answer isn’t very helpful. Additionally, not everyone knows how to draw (which I think is an obvious method of OC-posting) so I wanted to give some ideas for what people could post for their OC! This will be split up into different sections.

Creating visual representations of your OC

Disclaimer: I will not suggest nor support the usage of generative AI. OCs are about creating something yourself, not allowing a computer to do it for you.

Outside of commissioning someone else for art, it can be disappointing and frustrating to not have any visual representation for your character. An easy way to get a representation of your character is to use Picrew, Meiker and other similar sites. There’s a large number of art styles, types of fashion, species, that can all be used to make your OC and that amount only grows by the day. Many of these websites can be accessed on PC and mobile and take very little processing power.

However, this can be limiting at times since you might not find exactly what you’re looking for, especially if your OC has a unique combination of features. For something with more customisation, you can use video games with character creation to make a version of your character. I personally would recommend games like The Sims or Skyrim as both have very active modding communities. This way, if a certain type of clothing or facial feature isn’t present in the base game then you can often find someone who has created a mod that adds it in instead. This does require you to have access to a computer that can run not only the game but the mods as well.

Another option would be using a program like Vroid Studio to make your character from a base model. This has both a mobile and PC version, although I will primarily be speaking from a PC perspective. The mobile app, while able to create a character from scratch, is a lot more limited than the PC version. The great thing about Vroid is that there’s a lot of user-made content that you can often get for free through websites like Booth, as well as many tutorials for beginners to follow along with. Again, this requires a computer that is able to run it. I would recommend against using Vroid on a laptop as it will likely be too intensive for it.

My final suggestion for character visuals is to take a character from anime or cartoons and simply edit them. This was actually how I first got into making original characters! You can recolour their hair or outfits with an editing program (with some free examples being FireAlpaca, Krita or GIMP) and even edit different images together to create something more unique. Please only do this with characters from existing media and avoid using fanart for this.

Other OC visuals

Other than just what your OC looks like, there are other ways to visually put together your OC. Moodboards are the most obvious example of this, but you can also edit other things such as putting together outfits for them or finding pictures of items they would keep in their bag.

If you have multiple OCs, you can create fake text conversations between them using a number of websites. These can be as silly or as serious as you like!

Finally, you can always build them a pinterest board. I am a massive pinterest enjoyer and not only can you use pins that others have posted to pinterest, you can add your own from off the site. 

Writing

Beyond writing out your characters’ story, there are numerous other things you can write. Keeping in line with what you’ve already written, you can re-write scenes from alternative perspectives. These can add context to what is seen in the main story, as well as flesh out background or side characters and their relationship to your other OCs.

Another fun thing to write is non-canon scenes. Write a beach episode! Write about a character getting sick and someone else having to take care of them! There are countless ways to draw your OCs interacting with their world or other characters that wouldn’t necessarily ever fit into the “main” story.

Next is genre changes. If you had to categorise the genre of your OCs’ current story, what would it be? Now image what if the genre was something completely different? Romance to mystery… Slice of life to horror… Part of the challenge is figuring out what story beats remain the same and what gets changed, including character dynamics! And of course… Alternate Universes. There are too many types of AUs to list but some of my favourites are superpowers, mafia, zombies, time loops and time-travel-fix-its. These are similar to genre-changes but often include a number of AU specific tropes. If you’re struggling to figure out the staples of a certain AU or what kind of AUs exist, there’s a really good page about alternate universes on Fanlore.org!

Other ideas

These are ideas that didn’t quite fit into the other categories.

First is music playlists! There are two types of these. The first is a playlist of songs that describe a character and their story while the second is a playlist of songs that the character would listen to. Some people like to combine the two as well! There are no rules to this, simply have fun listening to music and picking out songs that remind you of your OCs.

Second is incorrect quotes. I remember these used to be beloved by fandom and now they can be beloved by you and your OCs! The concept of incorrect quotes is that well-known and funny quotes from pop culture (such as memes or movies) get written out and your characters are assigned a line of dialogue. While there’s a website that’ll generate these incorrect quotes for you, I personally find more fun in coming across quotes organically while scrolling social media and realising that they fit my OCs almost perfectly.

Finally, ask games. These typically take the form of lists of questions or prompts with emojis or numbers next to them. People can send in the relevant emoji or number and you then answer the corresponding prompt. There used to be a kind of “ask game etiquette” where if you reblogged an ask game from someone, you sent an ask from the list to them as well. This way, it allows the game to continue circulating and you can spread the joy of OC-posting with others! It can also lead you to making friends within the community.

And that’s it for my post! If you have other suggestions for kinds of OC-posting then I would love to see them!

[hxney-lemcn]

Best Friend — Idia Shroud x gn! reader

summery: Idia realizes that you might be closer than he thought.

tw: uhhh none I think.

a/n: idk if this is bad, I think I got Idia's personality right. This is kinda more platonic, but could be read as romantic.

wc: 0.6k

Master List

The more Idia got to know you, the more he realized you might’ve been less of a normie than he originally thought. Of course you were nowhere near Idia’s status of loser otaku, but you still surprised him. It started with you complaining about something called vocaloid? Idia hadn’t heard of vocaloid before, but when you explained the concept he realized it was your world's version of synthaloid. That was the first time he started to question his view of you. As you complained about not being able to listen to vocaloid anymore, he introduced you to some synthaloid songs. He watched as your eyes lit up, head bobbing to the songs as you scanned the lyrics. 

He hadn’t heard of normies liking synthaloid, but you were still too extroverted. I mean you had how many friends in how many dorms? Total normie activities. Yet you shocked him once again when you then started complaining about missing this one video game you used to play. Apparently it was really chill but competitive. When you mentioned it was called AFK Journey Idia froze, he played a game with an uncannily similar name. So he introduced you to AFK Adventure, and found his heart jumping as you gushed passionately, comparing all the similarities and differences. AFK Adventure was still growing, and the fact that you played your version only months after it was released…he once again questioned if you really were a normie. 

The final nail in the coffin was when you complained about how exhausted you were. The main reason why he classified you as normie was because you were social, you had friends, you barely had a phone! (That wasn’t your fault, you had no money after all). So when you complained that you were tired from all the socializing, that you found refuge in his room because you felt like you could truly relax by just playing video games…well he was a bit flustered to say the least. You found him comforting? You found his messy, gross room relaxing (Ortho tried his best to clean it before you arrived)? You enjoyed playing video games with him even if he would tend to blow up if someone annoyed him? 

Idia found himself sharing more with you. It seemed like everywhere he looked (online) he’d find something about you to connect it with. You’d really like this anime, it seemed similar to one you described from your world. You liked chill games right? Well there's this mobile digital pet game you’d like, you just have to friend him. Oh, fanart of your fav character…he’d send it to you if he had the courage. He had also set you up with a pc, laptop, and upgraded your phone without a second thought. It was only to encourage you to go on games to give him rewards…totally. 

And not to mention, when you first joined AFK Adventure, Idia kicked out a member from his guild to let you join. His other guild members were highly confused he let in a noob join since it was a whale only guild (don’t worry, you weren’t a noob for long…thank Idia’s credit card). 

One night, when you both were playing a video game together, you had fallen asleep on his bed. The laptop he had given you was still running, but it was pushed to your side. Idia couldn’t help but feel his face heat up, you looked so peaceful in his space. That’s when he realized he wasn’t truly alone anymore, even if he stayed holed up in his room, you managed to wiggle your way to join him. You would rant about nerdy things to him only, a special privilege you hadn’t bestowed to any of your other friends. He had come to a conclusion that somewhat scared him.

Idia Shroud had a close friend, he wasn’t alone anymore.

[snowthedemonfox]

So we got some screenshots for Ep 3, and I'm going to talk about some things I've noticed + some theories

I went off for over an hour in the bunnydoll burrow's VC talking about everything I noticed, but I'm realising writing it all down would be a smarter move, cause I know I'd forget it. If I've missed anything you think is important, let me know! I'll edit this post with new notes.

Let's start with the first screenshot, because that just makes the most sense:

The elephant in the room is the realistic human hand. I don't doubt this is the scene that has some level of blood and gore in it. We can't see what the hand is connected to, but whatever it is, it seems to be taller than Pomni and Kinger. They're both looking up, and the camera angle is facing down towards them both.

We can see 2 heads hanging from the wall behind Kinger, and what we can assume to be a 3rd behind the desk behind the hand.

One of these heads, as many have pointed out, seems to resemble Pomni. The face is entirely white, what I can assume is an eye seems to be the same size as Pomni's, and you can see that familiar looking hair on the side.

Even the other two things we see look like other members of the cast!

The head to the right of Kinger looks like Ragatha. It's got the hair, and even the face looks to be made of actual fabric, like a real doll. It seems whatever these things are, they're meant to look like more 'horror' versions of the characters.

(Side note, but if I had to guess, if Glitch releases a 3rd sticker sheet for episode 3, I wouldn't surprised if we got a new set of icon variations for the main cast. But instead of candy, we get these horror versions instead. I think that'd be cool, and I really hope that's what happens.)

You could even go as far to say the 'human' hand we're seeing is from the horror version of Kinger. Like I said before, the camera is looking down at them. Why would it be looking down? Because whatever's looking at them, is attached to the wall.

Moving onto other details in the room, we can see there's a chair behind Pomni with some kind of light on it. At first, I thought this might have been the tape recorder from the February trailer, but you can see the tape recorder is on a desk, not a chair.

And while there is a desk in the room, whatever is on there doesn't look like a tape recorder. It looks more like a photo, or some kind of radio.

The giant 'M' on the rug. We know the ghost lady's name is Martha Mildenhall, so this probably implies she owns the mansion the gang are exploring. Why would she need their help, though? Maybe whatever force is moving the hand in the screenshot, is some kind of 'evil' ghost, and that's why Pomni and the others are there to help. There's evil ghosts inhabitating the mansion, and Martha needs help to get rid of them. It's simple, it's your basic video game quest, it seems like a normal adventure plot that Caine would come up with.

There seems to be something behind the chair, but I can't make out if it's a door, some curtains, or some kind of closet. The lighting isn't doing me any favours. Either way, I doubt it's important to the episode, probably just background decoration.

As for my other thoughts that aren't as related to the screenshot itself, I do believe that everyone is going to be split up. Obviously Kinger and Pomni are working together, but I'm still not sure if Jax would be hanging with Ragatha & Gangle, or if he'd be off doing his own thing. As for Zooble, I'll get to them later.

And this might just be me looking into things too much, but it almost looks like one of Kinger's eyes is focused entirely on whatever is behind the camera, while the other isn't focused at all. Like he's half paying attention to the 'danger' he and Pomni are in.

But that's really all I have to say about the first screenshot. Let's move onto the main event:

Again, let's get the obvious out of the way: new Zooble design! They've got some new parts, like the arms, unicorn horn, and the blocky yellow and pink thing, but also some old parts, like the bluish-green ring, and their classic black and white antenna. So far, I like this design! I'm happy to see that they've decided to mix things up a bit. Not my favourite design, but still decent. They've got good taste.

Before I talk about Zooble and Caine, I first want to talk about the location they're in. At first, I thought this might've been Zooble's room, but looking closer, it's obviously not. Then I thought it was that little desk area at the end of the dorm hallway.

But nope, the hallway has different plants, picture frames, wallpaper, and no chairs to be seen. The plants we can see look similar to those seen in Caine's resturant realm from Ep 1, so I think I can safely guess that this is a new location, made specifically for him and Zooble to chat.

Speaking of that, I think that's going to be the driving point of Zooble's character development this episode. Something is going to convince them to join the future adventures, and it seems this will be that something. We know thanks to the AMA, that Zooble not going on adventures is important to their character, so having their episode focus on this topic makes sense.

What I can assume happened to lead up to this interaction is this:

Caine announced the adventure, and just like in both Ep 1&2, Zooble immediately expresses that they are not interested, and walks off. Caine can't really do anything about it yet, so he focuses on everyone else. Explains the rest of the adventure to them, and sends them on their way.

He then catches up to Zooble before they reach wherever they planned on going, and teleports them both to this new room. It looks almost like some kind of waiting room, or a room where they're both supposed to talk things out. It's got the comfy chairs, wall art, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little table between them.

Zooble, obviously, is not impressed. They don't care about Caine's adventures, and want nothing to do with whatever he has planned for them in the meantime. Caine, on the other hand, just wants to figure out why Zooble doesn't want to go on his adventures. He spends so much time figuring them out! Just for the humans! Why won't Zooble participate!?

This very likely evolves into an argument between the two. I like how Caine is clearly angry in this screenshot. It's nice to see him show some more variety when it comes to emotion!! Zooble doesn't care for whatever Caine is saying, and Caine just wants to understand why they don't care.

Something happens, maybe they do talk it out, maybe something else, but by the end of the episode, Zooble decides that maybe going on a few adventures isn't that bad. I think it's way too early to guess what happens in that huge timeskip, but for now, this is the best I've got.

I feel Zooble's arc in this episode might touch on a few topics, like how while they might think staying by themselves all day and doing their own thing is better for them, isolating themselves isn't doing anyone any favours, and that, for lack of a better term, going 'outside' every once in a while can't hurt.

... and that's pretty much all I can think of to say regarding these two screenshots! I'm sure we'll get to learn more as the episode release gets closer, but I'm excited to see how things turn out!! :3

[nmakii]

SO DIM THAT SPOTLIGHT…

for, M— maisie, or maybe even miya osamu; my twin, my superstar, and my biggest blessing.

inarizaki doesn’t need memories, nor do they need to rely on their team manager; everything that matters happens in the court anyways. but, the week you’ve disappeared from practice— they can’t help but find themselves missing you.

fem!reader, atsumu kinda clingy, writeen on 0 hours of sleep, sum1 MIGHT be ooc… AESPA FANS RISE

inarizaki doesn’t need their team manager. they’re very adamant on their independence, especially atsumu. sure, it’s nice to be coddled after a long day of volleyball, but it’s merely a bonus! they don’t rely on you, definitely…

“where’s s/o?” atsumu frowns, looking across the gym for you. “coach said she had a family emergency…” kita says, a hint of worry in his voice. osamu tilted his head in worry. “family emergency? is something wrong?”

kita sighs. “coach didn’t give any further details.” to this, atsumu whined. “whaat?! is she okay?!” he yelled out, going on a path that goes nowhere. “he just said he didn’t get any further details…” suna deadpans.

“well, we shouldn’t dwell on it right now. next week is the inarizaki winter festival… we’ve been instructed to create a promotional video with our most flashy moves as to get more people to support us during nationals.” kita explains.

atsumu rolls his eyes, hearing what a ridiculous idea it was. “setting up a video… we already have a crowd full of fans… we should be practicing…” he mumbles, not that anyone in particular cares to comment on.

“right… well, i think we should shoot atsumu’s shots first since he’s is the most popular after all” kita says, preparing the camera while ginjima had set up the tripod. “just… do a strong spike serve, okay?” he instructs as atsumu bounces the ball, preparing for his shot.

atsumu takes a deep breath, preparing for his shot; the look on his face so serious, you’d think he was in an official match. he throws the ball into the air…

before miserably missing the shot.

the silence in the gym so thick, you could cut it with a knife. until osamu broke the tension with roaring laughter. “hah! what happened to being so perfect all the time?!” osamu points at him, laughing like a middle school bully. “shut your trap! i was just thinking ‘bout somethin’!” atsumu yells back, angrily marching to retrieve his ball. “thinkin’ ‘bout what?! about how ‘ya can’t even serve properly cause your dear s/o is gone?!” osamu scoffs, not particularly set on admitting how much he’ll miss your presence this week. still, he doesn’t have much time to think about that before atsumu steers straight into osamu’s path. “you..!” atsumu huffs, grabbing osamu by his shirt collar and wrestling him.

omimi runs in between the two of them, trying to break the fight as suna records the two, turning to kita. “maybe this’ll make good promotional content, everyone loves to see these two fight...” and in response, kita can only sigh at suna’s nonchalant attitude, pressing a palm to both of the boys’ chests. “fighting won’t do anything. stop it, please.” he says, unknowingly placing a somewhat hostile tone in his words, scaring the twins into backing off of each other.

despite whatever complaints the team had, the week passed by fairly quickly and soon enough, it was the inarizaki winter festival. there were snack carts, game booths, and of course, on one of the main screens, starred the boy’s volleyball team promotional video. and, exactly as kita said, it persuaded many girls to come support the team by the time nationals starts.

as the miyas inattentively chatted with the girls carrying fans with their names on it, both their eyes roamed the festival for an excuse to leave— when the stage announced a name they were all too familiar with.

“when is s/o returning? it’s already been a week, and she hasn’t returned, much less answer any of our calls…” kita asks, clearly worried for your wellbeing. coach kurosu can’t help but let out a slight smile, waving off the boy’s concerns. “she’s fine. in fact…” he trails off, turning to the stage.

confused, kita furrows his brow, and follows his gaze as to what he could mean.

“and, without further ado..! s/o from class 3-4, performing a solo cover of supernova by aespa!”

even from how scattered they were across the fair, they all froze, looking for each other as if to silently ask ‘is this real..?’. the lights slowly flashed onto you, as you sang the lyrics in what they could only think would be recognizable korean. hell, even if it was absolute nonsense, you’d still sound amazing.

your distinct and sharp dance moves were complimented by the cropped black tee and the baggy jeans you wore, making you look absolutely graceful as you danced. even the very fact that you were able to wear those kinds of clothes in the middle of december was commendable enough.

sparklers popped from the edges of the stage, as if you were at your very own solo concert, the lights dimmed to from white, to purple, to blue, as confetti streamed down. and when it came to an end, the audience roared in cheer.

you waved to everyone and bowed respectfully before running off the stage. the entire team was more than shocked to see that, ‘family emergency’, as if! almost every single one of then dropped what they had been previously doing and ran to the back of the stage, ready to praise you.

“s/o, that was incredible!” atsumu yelled, giving you a big hug before yelling at you. “why’dya leave us for a week?!” he huffed. “ahaha… practice, of course! coach had to cover for me…” you giggled, shivering a bit from how cold the snow was. “you… don’t wear revealing clothes in winter, you’ll catch a cold…” osamu sighed, wrapping his tracksuit around you.

kita went over to you, observing your condition. “i’m glad you’re well, s/o. i was starting to get worried when you wouldn’t answer our calls. your performance was amazing.” he smiled. aran agreed, greeting you with a soft slap on your back. “you did great! the way you did this..! and then suddenly you..!” he fumbles, imitating your dance moves.

it seems he’s exhilarated just by watching you perform…

and finally, suna makes it over to the backstage, giving you a thumbs up and a smile. “you did great. i only recorded halfway…” he says disappointedly, looking over the clip he took. “pfft, that’s okay, suna…” you shrug. “i’m really glad to be back with you guys, though” you smile contentedly.

aran glared at you as if you dishonored his family, “what are you even talking about?! with moves like that, you shouldn’t be stuck being a volleyball team manager; you’ve gotta become an idol! in front of millions!” he encourages you, before atsumu argues back. “haah?! like hell! she’s gotta stay here with us!”

“it’s her life, she should have control over what she does in life.” kita says, in an attempt to mediate. sadly, his attempt falls on deaf ears as the two argue like a married couple bickering on their child’s future.

you laugh, missing the chaos in your life. “hahah… i don’t think i’m gonna perform again anytime soon… it was terrifying, not to mention— so much effort. for now, i guess i’m stuck here with you guys…”

that wouldn’t be a problem though. not when it’s you.

inarizaki doesn’t need the memories. cherishing the present is much better anyways. but, maybe it is pretty nice to have a team manager. especially when they’re as talented as you.

[starshapedb0x]

𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃 ✧˚ · .

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: you and carlos sainz have had your eyes on each other for so long, but the more you think about the each other the more jealous you get for others who get to spend time with the other. Who will fall first in this little game you’re playing?

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆: 18+ (minors dni and read at your own discretion.), jealousy, semi-public sex, party, unprotected sex, oral sex (f receiving), fingering (f receiving), poorly written smut (first timer guys), mirror sex, Rudy Pankow involved because I need a random celebrity

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: carlos sainz x model!fem!reader

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓: 2K+

𝐀/𝐍: very much inspired by “boyfriend” by ariana grande and social house music video. first time writing something like this, I might write more, requests always open.

There you stood in front of the big, dark wood door of the huge mansion where the party you’d been invited to was happening. Your stylist had picked a black sparkly short dress with stars on it, paired with under-the-knee high heel boots. Your ears and neck are adorned with silver jewellery, matching the bracelet around your wrist. The invite said to be there at around 21:00, but you are Y/N Y/L/N. You didn’t need to arrive a little late to make an impact on whoever was in there, but the team that worked with you knew how doing so reinforced that effect. And even if it was a private party, the paparazzi were going insane with your image spread on their cameras. Y/N, the epitome of beauty, the woman every magazine wanted on their covers, every designer on their runway, and every photographer in their studio.

You gave wide smiles to the paparazzi as you walked into the house. Other than the lack of light and the loud music all around, you noticed the main guests this party was for: all of the F1 grid. You were acquainted with them, but from the first meeting, you found them to be a nuisance to your job, to your image, and most importantly, to you, there were a few you tolerated but the way they messed with anyone that was involved in modeling threw you off. But.. him. Carlos Sainz, the one man you’d danced with on those warm summer nights in clubs, parties, or anywhere you were invited that enhanced your reputation. The black classic suit he was in, and to make it a little more informal, without the tie. The dress shirt unbuttoned the right amount, showing off just enough of the chest you’d rested your head on before. And under the lack of light, his eyes looked even shinier.

Throughout those months, Sainz and you had your eyes on each other. You only spoke to each other in person never through texting, but the amount of time both of you spent just looking at each other’s social media pages was too much to be safe for the average person. You saw every picture posted on his account, along with every one he was tagged in. But so did he. And every picture you took holding a man that wasn’t him a little closer than usual had him gritting his teeth and holding his phone a little tighter than usual. To be fair, you knew what you were doing without looking at it; you helped pick the photos for your social media, thinking about what reaction you’d get from the driver if he were to see them.

Of course, you greeted every one of them, talking loudly so you could be heard over the loud music. What a season! They deserve the break and whatever party is thrown for them, although you were sure they’d rather sleep. The other driver you actually got along with was Lando, so as soon as you went and said hello, the conversation went smoothly, catching up with the last few months. You couldn’t help but eye the Spaniard from the corner of your eye, sliding the tip of your fingers along the side of Lando’s arm as you laughed lightly at a joke he cracked. Carlos couldn’t just walk over and snatch you away from his friend and colleague, slapping his hand away even if it wasn’t touching you, so he decided to play your game.

Approaching another guest, she giggled as you watched the Spaniard move his lips, finishing with a grin playing on them. He eyed you almost directly, but somehow the woman in front of him didn’t notice. At this point, the conversation with Lando had faded out a bit, and he offered to go get you a drink, which, after turning back to him to stop looking at Carlos, you accepted. You stood there for a second. You weren’t going to let Sainz win the game you started. To your luck, Rudy Pankow walked right past you and, upon noticing, greeted you right away. Looking back at the Spaniard, who now had his hand placed very lightly, almost not touching the hips of the woman in front of him, as they both laughed, you hugged the blonde actor tightly and longer than usual. You held his arms, asking him how he was doing and how everyone was. He replied to you, but everything you could focus on was the Brunette man giving you a quick look, your eyes meeting for just a millisecond as the woman hugged him tightly while telling him something he genuinely didn’t care about at the moment.

"Rudy, that’s so nice." You said this as he told you all about what he was filming at the moment. He lowered his head slightly to hear what you needed to say, and reaching your mouth to his ear, you continued. "I really need to go touch up; I won’t take long, promise."

With that, you walked to the bathroom. It didn’t take you long to find it, but to your surprise, the bathroom was huge. There was a long counter with a sink and a vase with flowers placed on the other end, two round mirrors along that wall, and not one person was in there. Right after you left his field of vision, the one and only Carlos Sainz rushingly left the embrace of the woman, whose name he didn’t even remember, and without saying goodbye, basically ran after you.

As you looked at yourself in the mirror, carefully running your fingers through your hair to fix it up, a silhouette showed up behind you. And without even looking carefully, you knew exactly who it was. "Carlos Sainz. You looked like you were having fun over there."

"Cállate, Princesa." (Shut up, Princess.) He says it in a more joking way than anything else. He makes his way over to you, shutting and locking the door behind him swiftly. You turned to him, and the moment your eyes met, you couldn’t keep your hands off each other. The Spaniard’s hand flew to your hips, roughly gripping them. You threw your arms around his neck, letting your hands run along his dark hair. Both of your lips crashed into each other abruptly. Both of you lost the game. You lowered your hands to his chest, sliding them up to his shoulders under the black blazer he was wearing. It was far too hot in here for him to be wearing that. You slid your hands down just slightly, and Carlos placed his arms back, letting the blazer fall off, landing on the cold floor. His hands fell right back on you, and they roamed along your back. Every touch of his fingers against your skin made you press up against him, closing every air gap between you. He lowered his hand to the back of your thighs, picking you up and setting you down on that counter. As he set you down, you grabbed his shirt’s collar and pulled him towards you. It all felt so desperate and somewhat rushed. Both of you felt hot and in a trance; you both pulled away from each other. Carlos looked at you with those brown eyes of his, and you held your breath at the sight in front of you, his mouth slightly open, panting quietly, his once neat hair now messy. But you weren’t the only one in awe. Carlos looked at your face, lips red and swollen from the previous kissing, cheeks visibly warmer than before, and eyes carefully watching his every move. Nothing else mattered right now; the music was significantly lowered in volume in here, and all you could hear were your company’s panting along with yours. The Spaniard didn’t take long to place both of your lips back together, and you roughly roamed your hands on each other, moving almost savagely on the counter—CRASH! Only you looked at the fallen, now broken, vase on the floor. "Wait, Carlos—"

"It doesn’t matter, cariño." He said, his hands reaching the zipper on the back of your dress, sliding it down and placing his hands under it, sliding one of the straps down to reveal more of your neck, then sliding the other one down to reveal your breasts, your nipples hardening at the contact with the cold air. He trailed kisses down your jawline and neck, reaching them. He worked carefully on both of your nipples, giving them equal attention. His hands rested on both sides of your waist. You rested your head back on the mirror behind you and intertwined your fingers with his hair. You couldn’t help but let out a soft moan, breathing shakily. His hand moved to the side of your thighs, sliding to the inner side of them, and not long after, right under your dress, lightly touching your clothed clit with his fingers. At which point you gasped, feeling almost dizzy. He rubbed it on top of your black lace panties just the right way—enough to keep you shaking from pleasure in his hands but not nearly enough to make you cum. "Carlos.."

"Dime, niña bonita." (Tell me, pretty girl.) He whispered lowly in your ear.

"Please, please make me cum." You desperately told him he slid your panties down your legs, you whining at the loss of contact in between your legs, and threw them near his blazer, and in a second he got on his knees in front of you, leaning his head against the inner side of your thigh. Your hands still rested on his soft hair as he pulled you towards him, sliding you on the counter. He pulled your dress up and guided his finger on your folds, hovering over your clit before pressing down. His finger slid slickly inside you, earning a choked moan out of your mouth. His tongue started working on your clit, and at the contact, you abruptly gripped his hair and practically screamed. As he got quicker, Carlos added two more fingers, and you could do nothing but let him, at this point only seeing stars. His pants were getting tighter as your moans became louder and your legs shook under the influence of his actions. Your legs instinctively closed around him as your eyes rolled to the back of your head, and you let out a string of moans, calling out his name. The Spaniard pried your legs open and got up. "I don’t remember saying you could cum, cariño. Fucking the obedience back into you doesn’t sound like a bad idea."

You panted, fucked out, and were sensitive from the orgasm you’d just had. Carlos didn’t seem to care as he slid you down from the counter and turned you around to face the mirror. You could see him with his hands lowered in the mirror, but what confirmed he was unbuckling his belt and undoing his pants were the noises, the clinging of the metal part of the belt and the unzipping of the dress pants. After doing so, he looked up at you, placing his hand near your mouth and resting his fingers on your lips. You took them in your mouth, sucking gently on them and coating them with the saliva built up from simply looking at the male behind you. Carlos stroked himself a bit, sighing, before pressing his cock against your pussy. "Fuck. Carlos, just do it." You moaned out, lowering your head with both hands to your sides and supporting yourself on the marble counter of the bathroom. He stopped himself.

"What do you want me to do, Princesa?" You shivered under his touch, one of his hands going up to your breasts, flicking the hardened skin of your nipple between his fingers, the other under your chin, almost wrapping around your throat from the front. He made you look at yourself in the mirror. "Look at you. I bet none of those guys have ever left you like this, have they? I know you posted all those pictures just for me. You get off at the thought of me getting jealous over you, huh? Princesa?" 

You looked at yourself in the mirror; the mess you were in under his touch was unmatched. Fucked out and breathless, still waiting and begging for more, your hair falling on both of your shoulders, your skin glistening with sweat and desire, He was right; no one to ever touch you had touched you like he did; you were ruined for other men after today. "I need you right now, please, Carlos, please." You begged, looking at him through the mirror.

"Only because you asked nicely, niña bonita." He slid his cock into your pussy slowly, groaning.

"You had to put it all in, you fucking asshole." You said that, struggling to keep your legs still so you wouldn’t fall.

"Perdóname, but I’m not halfway in." (Forgive me.) He cooed, leaning against you and tightening the grip on your throat to hold your head up still. Your knees gave out slightly, and you tried to keep your strength on your arms. The unstoppable noises slipping out of your lips could only encourage Carlos more, as he finally thrust in everything he could, earning sharp panting for you underneath him. He started thrusting into you at a slow pace, although it didn’t take him long to speed up, and it didn’t take long for you to feel that pit in your stomach again. Finally, it hit you—that sweet spot you liked so much. Your whole body trembled as Carlos hit it, and noticing it, he angled his thrusts towards that same spot. It was being used and abused, and you couldn’t hold out like this much longer. You were practically screaming; no one outside could hear you both with the loud music and chatting of everyone, but even if they did, at this point you couldn’t care less. "Y/N, Y/N.." Carlos chanted, his thrusts getting sloppier, his breathing getting heavier, and his moans getting louder.

"Please let me,.. ugh.., please let me cum, Carlos." The way his name slid off your tongue drove him wild. "Cum for me, Princesa." He almost begged in your ears; you felt yourself tense up, and from there you were lost, crying out his name, gripping on anything you could around you, and your legs shaking from the wave of pleasure that shot through you.

As you rode out your high, you felt Carlos halt and pull out, spilling his seed onto your thighs, holding you against him, and pressing open-mouthed kisses anywhere he could reach on your skin.

__________________

Carlos was sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out, his blazer on the floor next to him. You sat on top of him, head leaning against the counter; you were dressed now, and you innocently giggled at whatever he was saying. He had his fingers running along your cheek, and you had your fingers gripping the collar of his shirt. Your lips inches away from his.

"Estás tan hermosa—"

An unlocking noise was heard, and Lando walked in. Both of you halted and leaned back away from each other’s touch. Lando looked at the both of you, still you sat on Carlos’ legs, furrowing his eyebrows and visibly gritting his teeth. He looked at the broken vase on the floor and at the way you were now adjusting the strap of your dress while Carlos buttoned his shirt back up. And before any of you could speak, he just backed away.

[rallamajoop]

The Complete Guide to Eye Colour In Resident Evil 7

An addendum to my guide to eye colour in RE8: here's everyone from RE7 too! Getting close-ups of these was way harder than for RE8, because RE7 does not come with a model viewer, so I'm stuck using in-game screenshots and promotional images.

Once again, we'll start with the cheat-sheet version:

The whole Baker family: Blue (except when...) Mia: Brown (FOR NOW) Eveline: Green Alan: Hazel/green Deputy OneSceneWonder: Brown Chris: Hazel/brown (FOR NOW) Clancy, Andre and Peter: Brown Ethan: Still hazel

But it can never just be that simple, can it? So, further notes below.

The Baker Family

The Baker family all have blue-grey eyes. In fact, post-infection, they all have the exact same blue eyes (see top line in comparisons below). You could maybe put this down to genetics for Zoe and Lucas, but when Jack and Marguerite have the same eyes as each other too, that's when you start wondering just how many backwater-hillbilly-stereotypes are in play here.

Mind you, they do have slightly different eyes in the pre-mould flashback that is the Daughters DLC, which you can see in the second row above. All are brighter blues, pre-infection, and Jack gets smaller pupils while Lucas gets a slightly larger iris (Zoe gets nothing, as she's the viewpoint PC and we're not redoing her face if you're not going to see it). So maybe we can hope there's some genetic diversity in the Baker-clan (renders of their eyes in their actual faces also look a little more distinct, but maybe that's a lighting thing). Either way, the Bakers = blue eyes! Got it!

And then we meet Uncle Joe in the other DLC who... has hazel eyes?

IDEK, maybe Uncle Joe's real dad was a different mailman.

Once we get deeper into mould-monster territory though, things do get a little more interesting.

Both Marguerite and Lucas appear with much creepier whitened eyes later in the game ‒ Marguerite's during her boss-fight transformation. Lucas, however, remains steadfastly human-shaped throughout the main campaign, but his eyes are whitened in his video message to Ethan, and in his (pre-monstrous transformation) DLC appearances too. Jack, by contrast, doesn't seem to get new eye textures even after blowing off the top of his own head, or in the boss fight that follows (monster!Jack from the fight in the boat house has completely different eyes, of course, and more of them). Mia, too, has her own set of creepy-alternate-mould-monster-eyes, but they're completely different again.

So what's the internal logic here? I could speculate that Lucas' eyes-only transformation is a sign he's in control of himself in a way Jack and Marguerite aren't, but it doesn't quite add up. If anything, those eyes make more sense as something Lucas was given because we never see him transform like Marguerite, or blow pieces of himself away like Jack: Lucas may look human, but the eyes are there to remind us he's not. There'll always be some details that end up being more about effective storytelling than cohesive lore.

Interestingly, though they don't appear in the game, there are also promotional pics of all four members of the Baker family with glowing white/silver eyes, which are definitely a supernatural feature. It's tempting to try and associate the effect with Rose's glowing eyes from the Shadows of Rose DLC, or perhaps even the general pale-grey-eyes of Miranda and the Lords (more on both in my post on eyes in RE8). But that's territory that really needs its own post or we'll be here all day.

Clancy, Andre and Peter

These are the three ill-fated crew of the Sewer Gators tape you'll encounter early in the game. You may notice Peter (rightmost in the pic above) seems to have even more dilated pupils than the majority of the cast. Amusing as it might be to theorise that he's just on drugs or something, I think there is an explanation: the closest shot we see of his face (and the first shot of the tape) is a close-up into a camera while the team is outside in the dark. His pupils would naturally be dilated in this sort of environment.

So why aren't Andre's dilated too? Well, the closest look we get at his eyes (also pictured) are the final shot of the tape, where he's already dead, and his eyes are covered by a red film. Medical plausibility aside, dilated pupils presumably didn't add to the effect here, so Andre gets regular pupils.

Speaking of assets, there is actually one photo of the three of them in the game, from the pamphlet you can find in their van at the start. You can even almost make out Clancy's face!

Clancy's own eyes are their whole own kettle of worms, but we'll get to that below.

Chris Redfield

Is an odd one: I can't share an eye-texture asset for Chris, because he doesn't actually have a character model at all in the main RE7 title. And explaining that one is gonna take some context.

While RE8 renders nearly all cutscenes using in-game models, RE7 stores far more of its major cutscenes pre-rendered in .wmv format. The opening is pre-rendered, video messages from Mia and Lucas are pre-rendered ‒ even the big moment when Eveline blows out the windows of the tanker and throws Mia into the river is pre-rendered. Not all cutscenes work this way, but basically anything that would require loading a lot of assets that aren't needed in gameplay (eg. the view of the river and tanker for outside) seems to have been pre-rendered as a video instead.

And since Chris' only scene in all of RE7 is in the pre-rendered ending sequence, he doesn't have a model at all (or at least, I couldn't find it). We do see Chris in openings and endings of the Not a Hero DLC as well, and the End of Zoe ‒ but these too are just .wmv files, presumably for all the same reasons.

Now, obviously, Chris is also playable in the DLC, so he does have a character model there. But we still don't get eye textures for him for a couple of reasons: firstly, he wears a face-concealing mask that only comes off for opening/ending cutscenes. But even without it, we might just hit other weirdness surrounding player character models...

As I've already noted, both Chris and Mia get completely different new blue eyes in RE8, but back in RE7, Capcom seemed a little more aware that brown or hazel eyes were a real thing regular white people do have sometimes.

A note on player-character models

Although we mostly just see the hands of whoever we're playing as (usually Ethan), gameplay still uses a full-body model, presumably to aid in rendering dynamic shadows, and give enemies something to cover in blood. Things get weird around the character's head, which isn't actually visible so it can't get in the way of the camera floating inside it, but will still cast shadows and still has textures associated with it (though usually in much lower resolution than other models we'll actually get to see). There are three playable characters in RE7 proper: Ethan, Mia, and Clancy (from the video tapes) ‒ each with their own model and textures.

Ethan and Mia also have more detailed 3rd person models, since we see plenty of Mia playing as Ethan, and a little of Ethan playing as Mia (if only from behind).

Why does this matter? Well, distinct as the three PCs are otherwise, their player models all have the same eyes ‒ top row above shows Ethan, Mia and Clancy, in that order. And they look nothing like Ethan's and Mia's eyes have ever looked elsewhere, which you can see in the comparison below.

I mention this mostly because it's pretty easy to find Ethan's player-model in the game files, note those generic-hazel eye textures with it, and go, "hey, you got his eyes wrong!" But these aren't the same eyes that come with his higher-res texture, or the ones that were copied over into RE8. In fact, the existence of the player-character-default-eye-texture back in RE7 is one of the reasons why I do tend to take full-res Ethan's eyes as 'canon', even though we never see them in either game: someone took the time to repaint Ethan's eyes for his full-res model, and make them distinct from the low-res default used for everyone in 1st person mode. That at least suggests there was some real, intentional effort put into deciding what colour eyes Ethan was supposed to have.

This does leave poor Clancy in more ambiguous territory, however: as he's never seen by any other character, he has no high-res model, and thus no eyes but the default-hazel that Mia and Ethan are rendered with in that mode too. So is this to be taken as Clancy's official eye colour? It may as well be, I suppose. We see so little of Clancy in any form that I was genuinely surprised to find out his he's actually got a player model which is completely distinct from anyone else in the game, with curly greying hair, a neckbeard, and a baseball cap worn backwards.

Render by nightsatkendalls over on deviantart.

I do not have the skills to produce a render of this quality myself, but I can tell you that the cap he's wearing has the logo for the RE Engine on the front (the in-house game engine behind all the modern RE titles, and many other Capcom games).

You'll never see it in game, of course ‒ you'd need both a freecam mod and a mod to make his head visible. But it's there as a weird little easter-egg nonetheless.

Eveline

Eveline is perhaps the only character whose model may not have been updated at all for RE8, but given she's only a hallucination or ghost, that stands to reason. In RE7 though, she also appears as her aged 'grandma' self, who pops up around the house in her wheelchair looking spacey. Grandma-Eveline has two different eye texture assets ‒ one far more washed out than the other. There's next to no good official pictures of her, but fortunately, since she doesn't move around or attack you, she was one of the very few characters I was able to get a decent close-up shot off with the free camera mod. And inasmuch as you're ever in a position to look her in the eye in game, only the faded version of her eyes ever seems to show up. Is the clearer version actually used somewhere I didn't catch? I have no idea.

What really stands out about granny-Eveline's eyes, though, is that they don't look anything like her child-self's eyes do. Child-Eveline is basically the only character in either game with distinctly green eyes. But Granny's are hazel, and not even a particularly similar shade of hazel.

In fact, they look far more like the generic-default hazel of the player character textures than they do like her younger self. Close-up comparisons below.

You could speculate that it was deliberate that Granny-Eveline's eyes don't look anything like kid-Eveline's eyes to avoid tipping off the player that they're one and the same ‒ but realistically, no-one without free camera mods is ever going to get a good enough look at either of them to notice. And it's kind of a shame they didn't just take young-Eveline's eyes and apply the same kind of distortions they seem to have applied to the generic-hazel template to age them up ‒ that would've been a lovely, creepy little detail to find in these textures. But no, generic old hazel it is.

Then again, whatever the real logic at play, the fact Granny-Eveline's eyes are effectively a faded, distorted version of the very same eyes the player themselves never does get to see in the mirror is a pretty creepy idea itself. And intentional or not, that's what I've got to leave you with.

[sirfrogsworth]

I'm moving out of the city and I'm going to have to learn to drive. Any advice for someone (reluctantly) looking into cars for the first time?

Sorry for the late response, but I really wanted to answer this because I think I have some relevant advice.

I started driving the very day I was allowed to get my learner's permit. I took it very seriously. My dad was a mechanic, my brother literally built a car when he was 16. They were car guys and I was the goofy comedian they didn't really understand. So I wanted to be a really good driver to impress them.

I practiced every chance I got. I took driver's ed in school and got a 100% in the class. And I got a perfect score on my written driver's test and only got dinged for 1 thing on the main exam (it was bullshit, but apparently there is no way to protest a near perfect score).

But then I got sick and it didn't make sense to pay for car insurance and maintain a vehicle. So I didn't drive for roughly 15 years.

Then both my parents got sick and they became dangerous drivers and so I had to figure out how to drive again. And at first I was nervous, but after about a week of driving, I was nearly as good of a driver as when I was younger.

The reason?

Muscle memory.

Muscle memory will save your life over just about anything. The less you have to concentrate on the physical actions and habits required to drive, the more you can concentrate on situational awareness. If you don't have to think about turning the wheel, or braking, or even activating the turn signals, you can use all of that brain power to pay attention to all of the dumb fucks they let drive cars.

So my biggest piece of advice would be to break down all of the physical actions required to operate a vehicle. Even the tiny stuff like switching the station on the radio or turning down the fan on the A/C. Then find a way to practice these things over and over and over until you have that muscle memory embedded into your brain. My muscle memory was so deeply ingrained that it lasted through 15 years of not driving and a batch of mind-wiping electroshock treatments.

Find a safe place to practice and just repeat things until they feel like second nature. Especially checking your blind spots. If you can get checking blind spots to the point where you do it without even thinking about it, you will increase your safety substantially.

Other tips...

Small cheap cars are best first cars. Big cars can make you feel disconnected from the road. Almost like you are piloting the vehicle in a video game. I started on my grandma's 1987 Chevy Cavalier. It was tiny. It had no power. It was free. But I could feel everything I was doing. I could feel the turns. I could feel the road. I could feel braking and acceleration. And it really helped me understand the relationship between driver and vehicle. It was like a big go-kart but I think having that as my first car really helped me develop my driving skills.

And my last tip is to learn gradient braking and acceleration. It's mostly for the comfort of your passengers. It gives them a smoother experience but it also makes them feel safer driving with you. Basically you want to figure out how to apply pressure to the pedals in such a way that almost no G-force is felt. So you start with very light pressure and gradually transition into the max pressure you need. And you need to do it quick enough to stop and accelerate at the proper rate. If you don't transition fast enough you might not stop in time or be able to merge onto the highway. And if you transition too fast people will be lurching back and forth in their seat. But, again, practice makes perfect.

My brother is horrible at this, though mostly on purpose. He likes driving like everything is a race. And with his muscle cars, that can be fun at times. But when you are just going to the store it can make one a little nauseous. I find myself just grabbing the "oh shit" handles and never letting go.

But if you can smooth out your acceleration and braking to the point it is barely felt, all of your passengers will thank you for it.

Hopefully that helps. And maybe other folks can reply with additional advice. And if you have any more specific concerns feel free to ask. I wasn't sure if you were more worried about driving or picking out a car, so hopefully we can collectively cover both.

I wish you luck and hope you learn to love driving. It is pretty cool once you get the hang of it.

[freaksnvans]

The time i publicly destroyed a TF2-playing bigot at school

TF2 fans are actually all around us, and I was unlucky enough to have a really unsavory interaction with a guy who hates fangirls. This might sound fake, but trust me, my life really is stranger than fiction.

Me and my friend in class were peacefully talking about our favourite ships (Her favourite was HeavyMedic and mine is SniperScout, as it should be) as well as who we main ingame. (She plays Spy and I played Heavy.)

Suddenly, a short guy came up to us. He looked really mad already, having heard that we're girls who play TF2.

Manlet: Uh, you REALLY play TF2? You know you have to be good to play Spy, right?

I raise my eyebrow at him, and my friend laughs a little bit.

Me: Uh, she really DOES main Spy. Who do you play?

Manlet: *beginning to shake a little, realizing that we're not kidding* Uh, I play Scout. I bet you're not even good at TF2.

My friend started chuckling, and then I giggled too. We were both thinking "of course this guy plays Scout, he's so annoying, he even looks a little bit like Scout!"

Manlet: What? What's so funny? What's wrong with being a Scout main?

Me and my friend shake our heads and insist that there's nothing wrong with playing Scout, because we can tell this guy is about to blow up on us.

Manlet: I bet you main Soldier, cunt!

By now, me and my friend can't help but giggle a little. He really was serious about this. But what he says next shocks us.

Manlet: I bet you're one of those fangirls who looks at gay TF2 fanfiction on Tumblr and Wattpad, you probably don't even play the game!

My friend: *laughing* What's wrong with reading fanfiction? And yes, we do read TF2 fanfic. I just finished a really good HeavyMedic fic the other day.

By now, more of the classroom had noticed that me, my friend, and the homophobic Scout main were in a fight. Multiple people turned to look at us.

Me: Right. Fanfiction is a perfectly acceptable way to engage with a video game you like. I bet your next line is going to be something along the lines of "the mercs aren't gay!"

Manlet: It's just weird! The TF2 guys aren't g- *He stuttered. He seemed absolutely shocked because I guessed his next line.*

Me: Typical homophobe, as expected. Anyways, I've got a SniperSpy fanfiction to read, if you would so kindly leave me and my friend alone. We're proud fangirls.

Suddenly, the teacher spoke up from the other side of the room. Our heads snapped to the side to look at her, it seemed like she'd been listening to our entire conversation like the rest of the classroom.

The teacher: I agree. It's never okay to make homophobic statements, and reading fanfiction is entirely okay! Don't bash people for their hobbies, [Manlet's real name]!

The manlet froze in place, jaw gaping. He didn't even say anything, just a couple squeaks came out of his mouth.

The teacher: Also... did I hear SniperSpy? I'm a fan of TF2 as well, I can't lie! What fic are you reading?

By now, there were tears rolling down the manlet's face. He covered his face with his hands and stormed out of the room crying.

And then, me and my friend went back to talking about TF2 ships in peace. Even the teacher joined in. It really is true that there are fangirls everywhere!

[lalunanymph]

Speculations for Caleb's myth based on what we Know So Far (Dawnie's Version) (Infold please don't sue me) 

Disclaimer: THIS IS ALL PURE SPECULATION after discussing with the caleb gc and i thought i would share it here, too‼️

CalebMc is not your typical love story because of two things: 

Caleb’s established relationship with her

Infold’s commissioned art depicting CalebMc as the seduction of eve 

ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP

Caleb and Mc were both adopted by Josephine, though it is noted that he does not share the same family name as her and retains his own surname (Xia). However, due to the close nature of their relationship, it is not socially acceptable to simply just show his love to Mc… but what if there’s something deeper? 

SEDUCTION OF EVE

Eve is a biblical figure known to be the first mother of humankind. During her time in the Garden of Eden, she is seduced by the potential knowledge from the serpent. Most interestingly, Infold has commissioned a drawing of Mc and Caleb in this exact scenario which implies: 

Caleb has knowledge Mc wants

The desires within the both of them need a catalyst to grant them that knowledge 

OR

Caleb is being set up as someone to corrupt MC. 

BUT, WHO IS CALEB?

He is shown to be someone kind and charismatic, witty and good at cooking. It is implied he is a charmer and is highly intelligent due to his high-risk job as a fighter pilot in the Deepspace Aviation Academy. 

WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?

After the explosion, Caleb is presumed to be dead. However, with his name already listed in the beta, it is highly probable for us to deduce that he will be returning back to the game. Further proof: In the trailer for the Visions Opposees music video, we see a man falling from the sky after the 4 LIs are shown with MC. There is some speculation that this might be Caleb. 

As he falls between time and space, there are suspicions that because of his Evol or the Spatium Protocore, he is currently in a different plane of existence.

But, where he is or when he will come back is not what we’re here to discuss. We’re here to speculate about his myth. 

THE MYTH OF THE WHITE SNAKE

Snakes are an important figure in Chinese myths, and the biggest one is Bai Suzhen. She is a white snake spirit who became immortal and could take human form and is the main character in the Legend of the White Snake, one of China's four great folktales. She notably met her husband in a past life and risked her life to steal herbs from the monk of the South pole to revive him back from the dead. 

THE COWHERD AND THE WEAVER

Another big Chinese myth. This one centers around forbidden love between a celestial weaver and a cowherd. Long story short, she returned back to the heavens after living a life with him and bearing him two children, but because of her grave error in tarnishing herself with humans, the gods separated them by heaven and earth—forcing a milky way between them. They are only allowed to meet once a year by crossing a bridge of magpies. 

SPECULATIONS FOR CALEB'S MYTH

If we follow Infold’s style according to the other LIs’ myth, MC is always someone who is shunned and ostracized by society in order to set up a connection between her and the LIs. However, taking into account all the myths listed above running in the same vein as Caleb’s general vibe, they have one thing in common: forbiddenness. 

Forbidden love. Forbidden knowledge. 

Mirroring Caleb’s love for MC which is forbidden because they were raised together. 

What I speculate is this:

MC is someone who is of high importance and meets Caleb through a chance encounter. Her life is sheltered and she yearns to learn more—to experience more (kind of like Abysswalker’s MC). But, she is not used for the powers of her Aether core, and is sheltered from that knowledge. Enter Caleb who has an inkling of what she is and what is her potential. He shows her a different world, one where she can’t be used as a pawn in anyone's game and gives her a taste of true power. In turn, she becomes drunk on it and seeks him out more to learn about her true purpose.

Somehow, they fall in love with each other and he admits his feelings. But, what she doesn't know is he has a different form, and only lives among humans to [insert motive because I am not Infold’s writer goddamnit]. However, something happens to her and she gets seriously injured. To save her from the brink of death, Caleb has to steal something from a deity or whatever. He goes to the heavens and steals a herb that can bring her back to life but unbeknownst to him, MC is actually the child of a god/higher up being/etc and this could be alluded to be Josephine. 

Knowing what he has done to her granddaughter, the Queen Mother Cvnt of heaven casts him away and keeps him from MC in the heavens, where she thinks he has abandoned her during her weakest moment. Someone saves her and it's Josephine, who brings her back to life but only poisons her thoughts about Caleb as the subsequent days go by. 

But, seeing how much Caleb loves MC, her heart softens and she allows them to meet once a year, under her watchful eye (EVER WHAT’S UP). 

….. Okay that’s it…. That is the only way I can connect the dots. 

THE END 

[salemrph]

Breaking down "Where Drakeshadows Fall"

We are far from done, breaking down Sylus Myth. Grab pens and paper. This feels like connecting dots on a crime scene.

I came across this comment under a video on TikTok, the creator explains everything so well. Here is the video: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGd6j4Eb2/

@Gem: sylus mentions that one of those weapons in the cave was used 108 times or something, and I thought "maybe the 109th time it will actually work with MC" and then I thought "109....109??? 109!!"

I will try to connect every moment we have seen on the current timeline to reference the Myth. (If I'm forgetting something, leave it in the comments)

We start at the very beginning. Sit back this may be long.

Our first encounter.

Violent, just like the first time they met in the Abyss.

MC attacks Sylus with her knife, cutting under his eye.

He strangles her. In the Myth, she is the one—

The voice in her head urging her to claim the power inside Sylus’s eye.

"After all, you and I are the same. True kindred spirits." This hit different too. Now that we know that they're bond by their soul.

And again, the second attempt. He hands her the gun and pulls the trigger himself. MC doesn’t truly want him to die, so she presses against the wound, and Sylus heals.

"Save that for the day you actually succeed in killing me."

Main Story: Cap. 1-8

MC and Stylus are at Philip's Lab (I think that was the name of the Shopkeeper). So, Sylus is desperate to resonate. And Philip is just like "she is either rejecting you, scared of you or disgusting by you..."

Um… yeah, that must’ve hurt. A lot.

There she is—his beloved, weak, without her memories, and outright rejecting him. Maybe he’s angry at her, but maybe he’s also furious about whatever happened to bring them to this point.

We know he isn't a patient man.

Main Story: Chapter 2-1

Little Girl "... He's a monster with huge wings that never dies. And he has horns!"

Midnight Stealth

MC sneaking in the cave, where Sylus was laying on the a pile of treasures. Obviously he caught her because her footsteps were too noise. Well, we have the same with the brooch.

Sylus recreating the scenario with MC, playing that game to get the brooch. Which I think never was important. He would have helped us, anyways, right?

Oh, and the drawing of Sylus with horn and tail.

The Auction: Chapter 2-10

Of course we have the flashback to the Myth before MC is finally able to resonate with Sylus.

"That life you own me—now is not the time to repay me."

When they return to the base, the MC brings up her vision, asking if it was real. His response:

"If I say yes, will you give me a sincere apology?"

I suppose the apology would be related to the curse—like, "Hey, you killed me, and then you brought me back. So…"

Nightplumes

"Do you know what you look right now?"

We hear in both the same sentences. I just love Nightplumes.

Midnight Warmth

"I want to leave a mark too"

Even if he isn't a vampire, the need to leave a mark on MC. Argh... Just beautiful.

Continuous Symphony.

The song and the conversation.

*A wounded person might never wake up again if they fall asleep"

We have the dream and the song. I don't need to explain but...

MC asked him why he stopped playing the song and him replying "There is no “after”". Which is not the whole true. She refused to continue because it’s a requiem for the departed. Since he was injured because of her, she didn’t want to be the last thing Sylus heard.

"Sincere feelings are hard to forget"

Grassland romance

Both talking about where Home is...

"I can adapt to any location and call it home as long as I'm willing. But... now I have one condition. If you're not there then I am not interested"

I would relate this to their conversation and this dream-like memory we have in black Chapel. Being their home.

This happens in the Event of Grassland. When Sylus gives MC the self-made crown, maybe he is just responding to the flower MC put him in hair at the Chapel.

Melodic Weave

"Unfortunately... the string of fate connecting us can't be cut that easily."

Immobilized

The Snake analogy about their evol linkage, made me remind what MC said in the Myth: "...Sylus, did you already know that we would instinctively want to devour each other?"

This also a reference the curse they share.

"When two snakes are devouring each other, one will inevitably be crowned the victory"

I'm 90% sure that Sylus must know why the evol linkage appears.

"Does this mean, that one day, even without the linkage, you'll choose to stand by my side?"

Destiny Café

The Hand interaction: Sylus bites our / MC hand. Like she did before.

Heartbeat cheeking: "If our heart rates sync up, then maybe we can resonate" After bonding their soul, they were like one. More coordinated then begin just one. This made me think about Luke and Kieran. (That's another topic).

Outfit "Soft Distance": The Golden Crow's Feather of Eternity was something from the cave—can’t remember if it was a weapon or not. Either way, there’s a little nod to it in his outfit: a golden feather on his shirt that ties back to the artifact.

Maybe there is more, but I'm just Lvl 76 with Sylus.

Anecdotes

MC and Sylus are the two faces of the same coin. Is insane.

Searing Touch & Call: Remote Support

I'm mentioning the call because, with Searing Touch, we learn or in another way, he admits once more that MC is his biggest weakness.

"Who could ever do anything to me except you?" (Call)

After the Myth, we have the absolute and devastating confirmation: She is life and death for him. In the broadest sense.

MC asked him about why he was at that place. Half joking if it was because of her. Well...

"Yeah, you're right. I went there for you."

"I'd rather risk exposing my weaknesses when I protect you then see you injured."

Again, he would rather sacrifice himself...

Gem Hunting: Charon

No need to say much, the N109 Zone is basically Taurus City. No need for over-explaining.

If destiny continues their way, maybe MC will leave the Hunter Association. Maybe she’ll end up branded as a traitor. But like Sylus said, if she really wants to understand his world, she has to step beyond light and shadow.

Back to the event. I love their interaction and the style.

By the end, after finding the gem split in two, MC comes up with a great idea. She decides to use the gem and add it to the two bracelets she bought.

MC doesn’t care about the bad omen—in fact, she actually prefers it this way. Once again, she gives Sylus the curse of being tied to her forever.

"Living and dying by your side doesn't sound like a bad curse"

So that all, for now. Maybe I update this when I find more connecting points.

[drakorn]

Rewriting Veilguard Part 1 - The World State

Disclaimer: I don't hate the game, I actually think it's quite great given the development hell Bioware went through in those 10 years. This is more of a hypothetical universe where there was less of that behind the scenes drama. Just a fun writing exercise.

Expanding Veilguard's World State Editor

Like many of us, I was disappointed with the total amount of choices carrying over from past games being only three, one of which dealt with romance, two with decisions made in the Trespasser DLC, and all of them being from Inquisition. This already set the precedent that we shouldn’t really be expecting the game to be as connected to our unique Thedas as we have come to be used to from previous titles—no more uniquely flavoured codex entries, no more small but sweet cameos here and there that make the world itself feel like a larger place that we had helped shape.

Given The Veilguard’s very troubled production history of multiple delays, staff layoffs, and all-around restarts of the entire project, it is honestly a surprise that we even got three choices, so credit where credit is due. They made with what they had. But what if The Veilguard had this vision from the start? What if there wasn’t any of this meddling? What if Bioware simply had more time and control? What if they could truly let us import the World State this game deserved?

Now, for this hypothetical rewritten playthrough, I’m going off from the fact that the Dragon Age Keep will not be used; I actually found it a neat idea to tick my three choices in the character creator, and it would have probably been better had Inquisition done something similar. Why do I think that? Because it means we are not running into any dangers of servers potentially shutting down, leaving us trapped in the canon we happened to have imported last. Converting the Keep into an offline editor was a good idea, but unfortunately not executed nearly enough as, let’s face it, we all expected. So we’re gonna have some fun for Veilguard.

Disclaimer: I’m going to refer to the game’s title as Veilguard from now on, not “the” Veilguard. I really don’t like the change of having a “the” in a series of otherwise one-word, or one-number, titles.

Of course, we have to be realistic about this. It is virtually impossible to implement every single decision from across all three games, and those that can be implanted can’t alter the main plot too much. Certainly, we like to imagine and picture things, but let’s approach this from an actually doable point of view.

Right, so imagine you just finalised your Rook, and then get a screen titled “Past Adventures”. Not just “The Inquisition”. And it would take up the entire screen instead of being shoved somewhere in the corner of the final CC page, which many people missed. I could have missed it too, had I not known beforehand that it was going to be there!

It would say something akin to “You can customise the protagonists and several events from the games Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. These choices will have both major and minor effects on the plot of Veilguard. If this is your first Dragon Age title, you would be advised to skip this section for now, as you may otherwise risk getting overwhelmed. A default World State has been pre-generated for the game.”

Why did I add this disclaimer? Because it would show us, right from the get-go, that we respect both new and old players. If you’re a new player, feel free to skip this part as it won’t matter to you anyway and, quite frankly, you wouldn’t want to spend an eternity in the character creator doing things you might not even be familiar with. But if you’re a returning player or someone who has read up on recaps and watched countless lore videos, come on right in, we’ve got you covered, don’t worry! We know how much time you spent meticulously crafting your World State for Inquisition, so join us and customise to your heart’s content.

If you choose to not skip ahead (honestly the only time I would click “skip” on that shit is if I was a new player), you will be presented with three tarot cards, one shows the griffon, the Grey Warden symbol, one shows Kirkwall’s heraldry, and one shows the Inquisition’s banner. Here’s your previous three games. And now we get to customise them a little. The little gremlin in me would be quite gleefully rubbing his hands at this prospect.

Past Adventures: The Blight

We open the first slide and are immediately hit with a crimson screen and an ambient reprise of several of Inon Zur’s themes from DAO. I loved this part in the game, when you click to customise your Inquisitor and are immediately hit with “Calling the Inquisition”. Really great stuff for early emotions. Now let’s actually customise things.

The Hero of Ferelden

I do not expect us to actually be able to recreate the Warden in the flesh, but I believe they should be at least brought up in conversation or mentioned in codex entries and letters. Here are the things we get to customise about them specifically:

The Hero: Here, we get to tick the race, gender, class, and background for our Warden. Again, no character creator, just fancy tarot cards. But guess what? That would already be more than enough for what we can do. At least we know the game acknowledges their continued existence.

The Warden’s fate: Did the Hero of Ferelden perform the ultimate sacrifice?

Romance: Who did your Warden romance, if at all?

The Companions

Now that our Warden is set, we jump over to DAO’s companions. Each companion has their own little mini-section. The first few questions will always be “Did you even recruit them? And if so, did they survive? If so, were you on good terms or not?” These questions, depending on the answers, will immediately lock or open the more specific ones. Which are, as follows:

Did the Warden have Morrigan perform the Dark Ritual?

What is Alistair’s ultimate fate?

Was Sten reunited with his sword?

What happened to Loghain?

What happened to Marjorlaine?

The Battle of Ostagar

What happened to the prisoner at Ostagar?

The Arl of Redcliffe

What is Connor’s fate?

Is Isolde alive?

Did you help Bevin and return his sword?

The Urn of Sacred Ashes

What happened to the Urn?

The Nature of the Beast

How was the situation between the Dalish and the werewolves resolved?

A Paragon of Her Kind

What happened to the Anvil of the Void?

Who rules Orzammar?

Did the Warden help Brother Burkel create a Chantry in Orzammar?

Did the Warden prove the Legion of the Dead was connected to a noble house?

Did Orta join the Assembly?

Warden’s Keep

What happened to Sophia and Avernus?

Denerim

Did the Warden complete Slim Couldry’s crime wave?

Who rules Ferelden?

Who killed Urthemiel?

Awakening

What happened to Nathaniel?

What happened to the Architect?

What happened to Vigil’s Keep and Amaranthine?

As you can see, I have not included all the choices, just the ones I think can be carried over in both realistic and interesting manners. Not all of them will heavily feature in the game; in fact, many of them are for flavour and codex entries only, but there is still merit in those. We know there is a whole lot of stuff happening in the South thanks to the letters the Inquisitor regales us with. So let’s put some world-state uniqueness to those letters. But in this rewrite, some of these choices will, in fact, feature in a more substantial manner.

And that’s Dragon Age: Origins done! Moving on to the next one!

Past Adventures: The Tale of the Champion

When we enter this screen, the CC assumes Kirkwall’s orangey-yellow tone and we get a reprisal of the key DA2 themes by Inon Zur, the most prominent one being, of course, Hawke’s family theme. This one is not going to be as big as DAO, but there are a few important factors nevertheless, especially concerning possible deaths and survivals.

The Champion of Kirkwall

Unlike the Hero of Ferelden, Hawke will actually be customisable in this one. Because no matter whether or not they were sent to the Fade or Weisshaupt, there is always the potential for them to still be alive. So, here are the choices regarding Hawke:

The Champion: Here you can customise Hawke’s gender, class, and personality.

Who did Hawke romance, if at all?

The Party

Pretty much every companion’s card, aside from a few, will have the questions “Did you recruit them?”, “Are they still alive?”, and “Were they friend or rival to Hawke?” at the forefront. Most of it is gonna be flavour, but it’s still my flavour, dammit!

What happened to Bethany or Carver?

What happened to Isabela and the Tome of Koslun?

What happened to Fenris and Danarius?

What happened to Merrill, her eluvian, and Clan Sabrae?

What happened to Bartrand?

What happened to Anders when the Chantry exploded?

Did Hawke approve of Anders' actions?

Did Aveline marry Donnic?

The Tale of the Champion

Did Hawke protect the Bone Pit from all its dangers?

What happened to Feynriel?

Did Hawke let Zevran go?

Did Nathaniel survive?

Did Hawke side with the mages or the templars?

Fewer choices are carrying over here compared to DAO, but many of the events that occurred in DA2 are only relevant to Kirkwall’s immediate fate, which is already resolved by the time of DAI. Many of these will be flavour again, but some of them, I’m not going to say which, will definitely have a bigger impact.

Right, we’re done with DA2, let’s move on to the last one!

Past Adventures: The Inquisition

And here we get to the big one, the game that most directly impacts much of DAV’s story. We click on the last page and get the green shades and DAI’s ambience themes, a beautiful reprisal of Trevor Morris’ great hits. I would like to once again reiterate how emotional the CC music made me feel here when I was playing the game. Let us now customise our choices.

The Inquisitor

While the Hero of Ferelden will be a background figure in letters and codex entries, and Hawke more of a minor character with a significant role, the Inquisitor will have a much larger presence. Just how large, you’ll find out soon. But for now, let’s customise them:

The Inquisitor: Here you can customise your Inquisitor’s race, gender, class, and specialisation. Their personality as well, for while it wasn’t as apparent as with Hawke, the Inquisitor does still have a distinct range of dialogue choices. You can still be diplomatic, lighthearted, or even rough.

Who did the Inquisitor romance, if at all?

The Inner Circle

As with the other companion sections, pretty much all slides here will feature the “Did you actually recruit them?”, “Are they still around?”, and “Are you friends or not?” questions. Alongside a few specific ones that will definitely have more of an impact here.

Did Dorian resolve the issue with his father?

What happened to Blackwall?

Did the Iron Bull remain loyal to the Qun?

Did Cassandra rebuild the Seekers of Truth?

Did Cassandra discover the book of secrets and what did she do with it?

What happened to Harmond?

Which path did Cole choose?

What happened to Solas’ friend?

Did Varric track down the red lyrium source?

Did the Inquisitor give Vivienne the heart of a snow wyvern?

How was Cullen’s lyrium dilemma resolved?

How did the Inquisitor help Josephine resolve her family’s fortunes?

Was Leliana hardened or softened?

The Path of the Inquisitor

Did the Inquisitor embrace or denounce their title of Herald of Andraste?

Did the Inquisition side with the mages or the templars?

What was the general principle upon which the Inquisition was founded?

Who rules Orlais?

Who stayed behind in the Fade?

What happened to the Grey Wardens after Adamant Fortress?

What happened to Samson or Calpernia?

Who drank from the Well of Sorrows?

Did the Inquisitor respect the rituals at the Temple of Mythal?

Who became Divine Victoria?

The Inquisition’s Influence

Did the Inquisitor ally with the Hinterland cultists?

Was the rift in Crestwood closed?

Was Caer Bronach captured?

Did the Inquisitor make a deal with Imshael?

Was Suledin Keep captured?

Was Griffon Wing Keep captured?

Was Sutherland’s company formed?

What tone did the Inquisitor’s judgments take?

Jaws of Hakkon

Did the Inquisitor learn Ameridan’s fate?

Was Hakkon slain?

Did the Inquisitor share the truth about Ameridan?

The Descent

Did the Inquisitor stop the earthquakes from destroying the Deep Roads?

Trespasser

What is the ultimate fate of the Inquisition?

What is the Inquisitor’s final goal regarding Solas?

Again, this looks like a lot, and it is, but bear in mind that a lot of these will only have minor impacts on the story in the form of cameos and codex entries. However, there are several major DAI choices that will have significant impact.

For our hypothetical rewrite, I shall not list every single choice I made for my imaginary playthrough. Instead, I shall reveal them as we go along so as not to clutter the space too much. And it’s a bit more fun this way.

And that’s the World State editor finally done! I believe all of these choices are able to feature in some capacity, be it big or small. But no matter if it’s a big world-changing consequence or simple flavour texts and cameos, it will still be our Thedas, our own unique version of it that we helped shape.

Now that the past is dealt with, let’s look at the present. Next time we’ll talk about Rook, the six factions, and why a DAO-style origin story selection would have not only been beneficial but very doable.

Rewriting Veilguard Part 2 - The Shadow Dragons

[rekino2114]

Could we please get some Halloween headcanons for Ann, Makoto, Futaba, and Haru? Stuff like how they'd celebrate it, costumes they'd wear, activates they'd do with their s/o? Up to you on what you want to cover. Thanks!

the phantom thieves girls celebrating Halloween with you

Halloween post #7

Ann takamaki

Ann enjoys celebrating holidays, especially when it's with you, and Halloween is no exception. She'll go all out to have fun together

She really likes dressing up in costumes. She'll ask if she can do a Halloween themed photoshoot so she can wear a lot of costumes, and when she can, she'll definitely get you to dress up with her (her personal favorite couple cosplay is catwoman and batman) she'll also post the photos online and just smile at all the comments saying how cute you look

She likes to lightly scare you so she can tease and kiss you. She'll jump out of a dark place and hug you from behind and later kiss you while giggling. She'll never go too far, though

Trick-or-treating with her is a must. She'll ignore anyone who tells her she's too old for it and give you puppy eyes until you say yes. She loves sweets too much to miss this opportunity

"Boo! Eheh, did I scare you? Sorry sweetie, would some kisses make you feel better?"

Makoto nijima

Makoto isn't as into Halloween as ann is, but she's still happy to celebrate, and even more to spend time with you

She actually likes watching horror movies while cuddling on the couch, mostly because she particularly enjoys holding you close when you get scared

She didn't really have any ideas about what costumes she should wear, so you recommended she'd be a classic vampire since she already has the eyes to pull it off

She'd also enjoy going to haunted houses if you suggest it, partly because of the same reason she likes watching horror movies together, being able to hold you when something scares you and also she just likes going around exploring the place

"Hm? Are you alright y/n? Don't worry, I'm here. I'll protect you, I won't let any monster or anything hurt you"

Haru okumura

Haru really loves holidays, probably even more than ann. She looks forward to every Halloween so she can celebrate with her favorite person

Pumpkin carving is definitely her thing. She might even grow the pumpkins herself if she feels like it and choose her two favorites so you can carve and decorate them to put them outside your house

She won't just decorate your porch, though, but she particularly loves decorating your house, while you help her of course, she loves going shopping and choosing the decorations you both like and putting them all over your home

She does enjoy dressing up, and this Halloween, she decided to go for a classic witch costume. With the hat and everything, she blushed but really appreciated it when you told her she looked adorable I'm that too

"Oh y/n, you did a wonderful job with that pumpkin, it looks amazing. Oh y-you think I did a great job too? T-thanks darling, I appreciate it"

Futaba sakura

Futaba does enjoy celebrating.....in her own way, she won't really go out to celebrate but will just stay inside with you and just have a good time while staying on theme

Playing horror video games is definitely the main activity. She doesn't handle them that well, so there will be moments where she'll cling to you after a jumpscare, but you'll mostly have fun together

When it comes to costumes, she doesn't love dressing up, but she'll still do it in this special occasion, she'll probably cosplay as an horror game character and would love it if you do the same so you can match

She also likes watching horror movies while munching on snacks and cuddling. In this situation, the instances of her clinging to you become more common since you're already so close, but you always let her since she looks cute like that

"Woooh y/n, this game's pretty scary, right?...I-I mean, I'm not saying I'm scared just....I wanted to make sure you weren't...y-yeah"