#thinking about adding to mod that lets me build my own shop just to go and sell jam

[restless-one]

Yeah, I went and added a shitload of expansions, Ridgeside, East Scarpe, Passerby Cememtery, SD Expanded and more, just to have a boatload of more people I can talk to (My first greeting all the people quest counted up to 80 people) so that I can wander and talk to more npcs and have more stories. The only thing I am rushing to is sprinklers, cause I hate hand watering. Right know I am waiting for one of my fav mods to update to 1.6 and test running my mod-list. I am going to look for stuff that don't fit quite right and once Raffadax is up and running I am planning a 15-20 ingame years farm to get all the items and up to 30 ingame years to reach perfection.

y'all missing the whole point of stardew valley. it's supposed to be slow paced. you're a farmer. crops do now grow instantly and you wont be making millions in a season. enjoy the fucking game, take your fucking time. take days off to just forage and talk to people. aren't yall tired of the grind from real life??? do you want to experience burnout in a farming game too??????

[chanagun]

Soft Hearts Electric Souls

Fandom: Why R U the Series Pairing: Saifah/Zon

Summary:

The first time Zon ended up in the cramped tattoo parlor, it was because of his friends' oh-so-clever dare to get something pierced. The rest of his visits definitely didn’t have anything to do with the (handsome) piercing artist.

AO3 

——

Saifah actually heard the group before seeing them. 

Day was on desk duty for the hour, so Saifah had been upstairs, going back and forth between chairs and doing his best to crack jokes and distract the clients as Tutor and Hwahwa created artwork on their skin. 

Tutor had a regular client, adding another chunk to his growing sleeve and Hwahwa worked on a walk-in, her classic script stretching across the client’s collarbone. Saifah loved watching his friends in their element. 

Which was disrupted, as mentioned, by the sound of the chime on the door followed by what sounded like fifteen dudes all laughing and talking over each other. Saifah frowned slightly before excusing himself from Tutor’s booth to help Day with the assumed influx of customers. 

Their shop was an odd set up, being in a row of other squeezed-together buildings in a busy college town. Patrons were greeted immediately in the waiting room with pieces of tattered furniture they haven’t had the heart to replace and the reception desk against the stairs. The piercing station was a back office they gutted and converted. They didn't have a second floor as much as they had a loft that they macgyvered into the sterile tattoo booths, so everything was quite open; it wasn’t ideal but it was theirs. They put a lot of work into it and it was definitely a source of pride. 

The openness of their shop also helped with gaging the customers from afar.

To his surprise, as he walked down the wooden stairs, he found that the bold entrance noise came from only five men. All of them looked up expectantly at him as he heard Day explain that Saifah was their piercer while pointing up at him. 

Four of the guys looked at him with shit-eating grins and one looked at him with absolute terror. Saifah knew how he looked outwardly; he had a dozen holes in his ears and a few in his face and he had tattoos peeking out from everywhere his shirt didn’t quite reach. His favorite, a painted bat with wings outstretched ( Kerivoula picta , Tutor would remind him after spending diligent hours on it) decorated his neck with a shocking burst of color and a sharp snarl at anyone shorter than him. Saifah watched the one man visibly gulp when he finally joined Day at the counter and he couldn’t help the half smile form on his lips.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Saifah started, “I heard my services were needed?” The one man was not looking him in the eye, but instead directly at his throat. Saifah couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed like he was shaking in his metaphorical boots. 

One of his friends slapped his shoulder, making him jump a mile, before saying “Our Zon here would like to get his ears pierced!” 

“Oi, Junior-“ the guy, Zon, snapped as he elbowed his friend in the gut. 

“Yeah, he looks super excited to do that,” Saifah replied easily.

“I am!” Zon quipped adamantly.

Saifah knew he was being a prick, but couldn’t help it as he raised an eyebrow and let out an unimpressed chuckle. “Sure. Anyone else getting stabbed today?” He asked the rest of the guys in the same cocky tone and received negative murmurs in response. “Righto, come on back Mr. Zon and I’ll set everything up.” To which he received a tight nod from Zon and stifled laughter from the rest. 

Saifah motioned Zon to follow him to his station but paused when the whole hoard of men started coming too. “Ah, the love fest is really cute but the room is not that big, guys,” Saifah explained.

“I can come by myself,” Zon said, and sent a sharp glare at each of his friends, “they just want to see me suffer anyway.” Saifah let out a chuckle, and continued to the back, now only being followed by one. Saifah motioned to the cushioned stool in the middle of the room and Zon sat obediently. 

“First things first Mr. Zon, we have to get some paperwork done,” Saifah explained, grabbing one of the clipboards, “and I hope you have your ID on you or else this’ll be pretty embarrassing.” 

“Of course I have my ID,” Zon huffed in response before pulling out his wallet. Saifah let Zon hold it up to his face as he recorded his necessary details on the paper.

“Alright, so you gotta read all these bullet points and initial each line on the left here,” Saifah told him, turning the clipboard around and handing him the pen, “let me know if you have any questions, but I’m going to get the station ready.” 

“This is a lot more … official than I thought,” Zon mumbed, making Saifah pause.

“It is surprising to some people that we are a legitimate business,” Saifah replied even though Hwahwa’s voice nagged in this head about not being so sarcastic with customers. Saifah risked a glance at the guy.

He was frowning, sitting the paperwork with his initials before saying, “That’s not what I meant, I just didn’t actually know what to expect.” He held out the clipboard to hand back to Saifah. 

He took it, but kept a strong gaze on Zon. “Why are you here, dude? You don’t seem well-informed, nor excited to be getting this done.” 

Zon cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “My friends dared me. I don’t want to seem weak or anything,” he explained in a huff. 

Saifah considered his words. He placed the clipboard back down and pulled up his own stool to sit right in front of Zon. The action seemed to unsettle Zon more, but that didn’t deter Saifah. “Are you sure you actually want to? Listen, the basis of this business is all ‘fight the man, rebell, mod your bod’ and everything but it’s about living for yourself, too. You think my parents wanted me to open a tattoo shop with my hooligan friends?” Zon laughed lightly at his statement, “I can scare your friends off if you really don’t want this, man. I’ve heard I’m intimidating.” 

Zon cocked his head to the side, a smile still faint on his lips. “Nah, you’re just tall,” he joked, “Clearly you’re a softie or else you would have just stabbed me and taken my money.” Saifah snorted at that. “And I… I still want the piercings. Not for my friends’ benefit, I’ve just actually wanted to get them for a while. Needles aren’t really my favorite thing but they look cool.”

“I bet I’m the coolest person you’ve ever seen then, huh?” Saifah asked, wiggling his eyebrows, which just made Zon roll his eyes. “So, studs or rings?” 

“What do you suggest?” 

Saifah hummed, “Studs. Rings are cool but it’s harder to heal when you’re pierced with rings. Also, in my opinion, captive beads suck.” 

“Studs it is then,” Zon replied. 

Saifah flashed a smile before turning back to his counter. He could feel that Zon was more at ease so he popped on some gloves and disinfected his tray. He collected his sterile supplies before turning back around. “I’m going to mark your ears and you can tell me if you like the placement.” Zon just nodded. 

The rest of the process came easily to Saifah, my muscle memory taking over. Zon gasped during the first but only winced for the second. 

“Already done! You did great.”

“Thanks,” Zon replied, smiling into the hand mirror. 

“You can head back up to the front desk and Day can ring you up. Pleasure doing business with you, Zon,” Saifah told him as he worked to clean his station up again. He couldn’t help but watch him go.

.

.

Zon took a deep breath. He could do this. He did it before and he could do it again. 

He stood outside the tattoo parlor, under the dark green awning to escape the blazing sun, pumping himself up to go inside. With no friends forcing him, it was taking longer than it should. 

He knew what to expect this time, and that was making it even harder than before. Not piercing pain wise, but tall, handsome piercer wise. That wasn’t why he was going back, obviously. He just kind of really dug his earrings and the piercer, Saifah, had had a really cool piercing in his eyebrow and Zon couldn’t seem to get it out of his head. 

He wanted to at least ask Saifah what he thought about getting one himself. His feet just weren’t cooperating. 

Zon jumped out of his train of thought when his phone chimed in his pocket. He let out a breath, glad to be out of his head when he pulled up the text. Zol had sent him a message asking him what he wanted for dinner, since she was going out shopping with their mom. He smiled typing out his reply and finally felt back in the right mindset to go inside.

He wasn’t expecting to see an upside-down Saifah laying (incorrectly) on the couch, strumming apparently absentmindedly on an acoustic guitar. 

“Um, hello?” 

Saifah glances towards the door, squinting his eyes at Zon. “Ah!” He exclaimed before placing the guitar next to him on the couch. “Welcome back.” Zon raised an eyebrow in surprise, not expecting the piercer to remember him at all. “Is everything healing okay?”

“Oh, um, yeah,” he replied, his hand instinctively going to his neck, just below his ear (where he’d learned to stop himself from touching and irritating his piercings). “I was actually wondering if I could get, like, a consultation for another.” 

Saifah raised his brow (Zon assumed, it was hard to tell from upside down) in surprise before somehow gracefully flipping over to stand (Zon pointedly tried not to look when his shirt rode up and- are those nipple piercings ?) and greeted Zon for real. “What were you thinking?”

Zon, who was definitely not flustered, swallowed hard and met his gaze, “I really like your…” he said, pointing at his own eyebrow.

“Ah,”Saifah smiled, “an eyebrow piercing. It was one of my first ones,” he reached a hand out towards Zon’s face but stopped short, “Do you mind if I?” Zon shook his head no, letting Saifah continue his movement. His fingers were gentle against Zon’s face, just lightly touching the skin above his brow, before giving him a little pinch. 

“Hey!” 

“Sorry! Just seeing if you can deal with the pain,” he explained.

“I wasn’t ready! And you know I don’t care if it hurts,” Zon huffed in response, making Saifah grin again. 

“Okay, okay,” he said with his hands up in surrender, “if you’re interested, I think you have the perfect browline for a horizontal instead of a vertical. I’ll knock some off the price if you let me do that instead,” he finished, punctuated with another toothy smile.

Zon bit his lip before answering, “Can you show me what that would look like?” 

Saifah nodded excitedly before leading Zon to the front desk and pulling both stools up to the laptop. They spent ten minutes, shoulder to shoulder, sitting at the desk, Saifah pulling up different images for Zon to consider. Within two minutes Zon had decided he loved it, but he couldn’t stop himself from watching Saifah excitedly find new ones to show him. 

“What do you think?” 

Zon looked up, met with Saifah’s bright eyes, and he couldn’t help smile. “Yeah, dude it looks sick. I’m down for it.” 

Saifah smiles so brightly in response, his eyes almost closed. And Zon could feel his heart in his throat, thinking cute , how was this man covered in tattoos and piercings ( including nipple piercings his mind supplied) so cute ?

Zon quickly found himself back on the same cushioned stool in the back room as his first visit, going through paperwork with Saifah. He felt more at ease the second time around. 

Like Saifah could read his mind, he stated, “you seem much more chill this time. Is it because you know what to expect or because your friends aren’t here this time?” he asked, voice light, presumably so Zon knew he was mostly joking around.

“A mix of both I guess. My friends are great, but… sometimes they’re not,” he chuckled. 

“I think that’s true for most friends,” Saifah agreed, “mine have been on lunch break for like two hours at this point,” he said while glancing at his wrist. His tone wasn’t unfriendly, rather it seemed fond. “Tutor has the day off, since he and his boyfriend work at the foodbank on Thursdays, but Hwahwa and Day, the other artists, think they’re so slick.”

Zon furrowed his brow, “you’re the only one here?” 

Saifah nodded, “they didn’t have any appointments scheduled until the evening so I’m sure they thought their sneaky secret date would go unnoticed. But I’ve got a keen eye.”

Zon chuckled at that, “the most keen eye if they thought you wouldn’t notice being left alone in the shop.”

“Oh, he’s cracking jokes! Careful, try and remember who is stabbing who today, my Zon.” Saifah teased. 

A sudden wave of heat hit Zon- from his neck to the tips of his ears. He scrambled, trying to  come up with a retort to hide his fluster, but Saifah took it in stride, turning to sanitize his station. He hummed a familiar tune that Zon couldn’t exactly place, but he was kind of mesmerized. Saifah was gentle and yet so diligent with his work.He’d done a bit more research for this visit and he read plenty of horror stories online about dirty shops and artists that didn’t care, so he was glad his friends just happened to stumble upon Saifah’s shop. 

“Ready?” Saifah asked, tone low, and genuine , Zon noted. 

He nodded, a lazy smile finding its place on his face. Saifah returned the grin and took the clean marker with a gloved hand. Zon relaxed at the familiar steps and let Saifah do what he clearly knew how to do best. 

Needless to say, it hurt quite a bit more than his ears.

“Tears are normal, you know,” Saifah reassured as he handed Zon a tissue,  “It’s close to your eye, so it’s a natural reaction. Just in case you were still worried about seeming weak or something, don’t be,” he clarified. “On a completely unrelated note, I cried like a baby when I got the tattoo on my neck,” he pointed at the (frankly terrifying) bat on his throat, “and when I got the one on my hip. And the one that wraps around my foot, oh my god-”

“Okay, okay,” Zon said, laughing lightly despite the well of tears in his eyes. He sniffed, “Thank you.” He wanted to say more; more about his kindness, more about toxic masculinity, more about anything but Saifah handed him the hand mirror then. “Wow.”

“Wow as in what a great job it looks fantastic or wow as in this is terrible and I’m going to slash your tires as soon as I’m out of here?”

“Has that happened?”

“Of course not! I’m very talented.” Zon laughed, still admiring the work. “Wow as in I didn’t think it would make me look this… hot?”

His sentiment seemed to tickle Saifah, causing him to let out a laugh too. “I can confirm, you definitely look hot.”

Zon coughed, seemingly choking on nothing before hurriedly asking, “so how much do I owe you?”

.

.

“We should start some sort of punch card system.” Saifah peeked up from his guitar, ready to shoot Tutor a skeptical look, but he continued, “I think your guy with the ‘eyebrows for days’ would appreciate it, since he’s back. Again.”

“What?”

Tutor didn’t answer, just smiled his devilish grin as the door chimed and a person came into the shop. Saifah whipped his attention to the door, cracking his neck in the process.

Zon let out a snort, “don’t hurt yourself, geez,” he joked. The midday sun glinted off the still somewhat fresh barbell in his eyebrow and Saifah could faint.  

“Welcome!” Tutor called from the desk, “how can we help you today?”

“Oh, um,” he faltered, eyes shifting from Tutor to Saifah, back to Tutor, “I wanted to get a piercing.”

“Ah, so Saifah and I are both certified for piercings-”

“Tutor, I can take care of him,” Saifah said, straining. Evil. His best friend was evil. Saifah quickly led Zon to the counter, glad to see that smile return to his face. “Didn’t Hwahwa say she may need some help with her back piece client?” 

“Oh how could I forget!” Tutor overdramatically replied before rushing to the base of the stairs, “and please consider those punch cards, dude!” he called as he took two steps at a time. 

“Is he… usually like that?”

“Unfortunately,” Saifah replied, immediately followed by a burst of laughter from Hwahwa and Tutor upstairs. He grimaced.

“Anyway! How are you?” Zon asked with a curious smile and (that goddamn) eyebrow quirked. 

“I’ve been pretty good,” Saifah started, “I was beginning to wonder if my favorite customer was ever going to show back up again, so I was slightly down in the dumps for a bit.” “Oh? So you do get regulars,” he paused, seemingly considering this, “Did they come around?” Saifah nodded excitedly, making Zon’s smile even brighter, “That’s great! What did they get done?”

“I don’t know. What were you looking to get done today?”

Saifah was met with the biggest eye roll he’s ever seen, so he laughed. “Seriously, what are you interested in?”

“Ah, I was actually going to see what you thought would look good,” he answered quickly, looking down at the counter. Saifah raised an eyebrow but he couldn’t help it. He also pointedly ignored the snickering from the top of the stairs.

“Wait, so you didn’t have anything in mind? You wanted to know… what I think would look good?”

“I find it hard to believe no one has ever asked for your professional opinion before, dude,” Zon said, tips of his ears turning pink. 

“I… I mean-“

“Anyway, I did do research, I know that dermals aren’t for me, but otherwise I wanted your expertise,” Zon babbled, as Saifah still didn't quite know what to say, “I’ve just really liked how I’ve looked recently and I like how I’ve been more confident and I think you have a bit to do with that, so ,” he took a breath, “what do you think?”

Saifah must have been gaping. He didn’t hear anything from upstairs either; he wasn’t sure what that meant. Zon still wasn’t looking at him. He closed his dumb mouth and cleared his throat. 

“Well, I guess, in my expert opinion,” he started, “I think… you had that confidence in you somewhere already. I just poked some holes in your already very nice looking face.” Saifah caught the edge of Zon’s smile, still mostly hidden from his view. “As for a recommendation, I’d say anything but a lip ring.”

“Oh?” Zon let his gaze drift back up, “why is that?”

“You can’t kiss anyone while it heals,” Saifah answered with a toothy grin. Zon responded by weakly punching him in the arm. 

“Do you always hit on your clients like this?”

“No, just my favorite one. I’m hoping it’ll make him stick around.”

“Tell him about the punch cards!” was yelled from the top of the stairs.

 Saifah ended up giving Zon a helix piercing somewhere in between chasing Tutor out of the building, buying Zon lunch, and a few kisses (sans lip ring).

[furby-science]

The Making of Sterling the Super Furby: A Brief Overview

“I… I can’t look! I think I’m gonna… *HUEEEGH*!”

Before I get into this post, I want to list a few things I didn’t know shit about when I started Sterling:

Electronics

The Python coding language

Furby anatomy

Single board computers

After creating Sterling, I’m happy to say that now I have approximate knowledge of some of these things, but keep the above in mind as you read onwards. This little gremlin child was a learning experience from start to finish, and one I am incredibly proud of myself for sticking through. This also means that I am in no way an expert on everything I’m getting into okay? Okay let’s go!

The Hardware

First, a rundown of the hardware. I took heavy inspiration from the Furlexa mod shown here, and that was what I initially sought to create. The mod had three computer components to it:

A raspberry pi zero w single board computer for the AI to live on, with a mini USB microphone plugged in;

A pimoroni speaker PHAT to use as the sound system;

A motor controller to drive the furby’s motor.

My main problem with Furlexa was that this initial build took a lot of soldering, and I am a wussy who had a number of bad experiences with soldering irons in shop class. So, what’s a novice electrician to do?

Enter the Adafruit Crickit HAT. By sticking this little fucker on top of the raspberry pi, I was gifted with an amplifier, a speaker jack, capacitative touch sensors, and a motor driver all in one, no soldering needed if I bought the raspberry pi zero w h! The main challenge it posed was powering it. The Crickit insists, for some unfathomable reason, on being powered by a bulky DC jack, the kind you’d plug into a wall outlet, and the converter plug to use a battery pack with it was way too bulky to fit into a furby. I needed Sterling to be portable for maximum huggability, so this just wouldn’t do.

One fried raspberry pi and Crickit HAT later, I found the answer! By soldering the original furby battery pack to the underside of the Crickit board’s DC connection, these fuckers right here…

I was able to bypass the need for a wall plug or converter, and power him directly through the battery compartment like God intended. S/O to my friend Nick who is way less of a dumb bitch than I am and helped me figure this shit out I owe u some bread man.

So the tl;dr of it is, I effectively reduced the required computer components from three to two (excluding the speaker). Speaking of (heh), Sterling has an impressive 3w speaker in him, allowing him to be audible even without the use of the built in amplifier. It’s got such good bass on it, he even rumbles when he purrs without the aid of the motor!

And yes, when you pet him, he purrs. And complains if you manhandle him! The aforementioned capacitative touch sensors on the Crickit HAT made it all possible with the help of a few cables and some foil tape.

Wait, did you say soldering!?

Yup! It was a necessary evil; at the end of the day I had to pick my poison: soldering 80 pins on the speaker PHAT, or soldering like four contact points on the Crickit. I chose the more merciful option.

But wait, that whole outfit is really bulky still! How did you fit it inside the furby?

Subtractive methods, subtractive methods, subtractive methods! ;D Someone who actually knows things about furby anatomy and/or electronics will probably vaporize me for this, but… if I didn’t need it, it got the boot! That included prying off anything on the Crickit board I wasn’t using at the risk of destroying it completely - which probably isn’t ideal, but it also worked by some miracle, and again, I am such a basic bitch electrician that calculating the proper voltage for LEDs is still basically witchcraft to me, so… what I’m saying is I made it work. And that I really, really hate soldering! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can see an early video of the end result here, and a later video of the outfit inside the naked furby here. This was back when he was still having auditory processing issues. Apologies for the shoddy quality, I was too excited everything was working to care about that at the time.

The Software

My other beef with Furlexa is… well, it’s an Amazon Alexa, and I’m a shitty little anticapitalist hermit who hates Amazon with a passion. Google Assistant was just as bad in my book. Mycroft was open source, but had a snowball’s chance in hell of running on the raspberry pi zero’s 512mb of RAM… I also wanted my assistant to have a degree of customizability to it. I wanted the furby’s AI to have a unique personality, identity, and preferences, much like classic furbies themselves did. A big box AI just wasn’t going to cut it!

Enter the Jasper Project. Yes, it’s old. Yes, it’s a bitch and a half to install. Yes, you have to know Python to get anywhere with it. However, it was free, open source, capable of running on a raspberry pi zero, and highly modular, meaning with a few lines of code, I could make it all my own - even to the extent of changing the AI’s name and voice (which is gr8 because I know a Jasper so naming my furby that would be Weird), or - the best part - writing my own, custom functions! Customizability-wise, I struck gold.

Ah, and glad I am that Jasper is modular, because I had some work ahead of me…

The STT Engine

The STT (Speech to Text) engine is what Sterling uses to understand what’s being said to him. Jasper’s proprietary STT engine is PocketSphinx, a fully offline STT engine, which sounded great in theory before I quickly learned it’s a nightmare to install, and also more inaccurate than a stenography machine powered by a single potato when actually being used. I had to compromise my morals a bit here and opt for using Wit.ai instead, which is free, but is also owned by Facebook. Big data is frustratingly inescapable in these cases.

There is one light at the end of the tunnel, and that is the training of acoustic modules. This has the downside of taking for-fucking-ever and requiring a quiet recording environment, however, and I don’t have the time right now to read through the pages and pages and pages and pages of computer theory right now to fully understand how to train one. So, improving PocketSphinx and running Sterling fully offline remains a stretch goal.

The TTS Engine

The Text to Speech engine is basically Sterling’s voice. This one was a bit easier to customize, and I’m thankful for that, because Jasper’s OG voice is a bit er… 90s computing for my tastes.

I shopped around for decent, human-sounding TTS options, and settled on installing Mimic1 TTS, Mycroft’s TTS engine, by hand, and modifying the Jasper source code to support it. Of all the TTS engines I tried, I felt that this one had the most natural intonation out of all of them. I liked the gruffness of the Scottish accent, and I think it really helped round out Sterling’s endearing, if a tad prickly, personality.

The Audio

This was another unforeseen hurdle. Turns out that I had his mic volume turned up way too high, because I greatly underestimated the capabilities of my tinyass five dollar USB microphone to pick up noises from within a furby. It took a bit of hacking in PulseAudio to get him hearing things properly, and I’m still not all the way happy with it, but he’s running wayyyy better than he did!

Another issue was the amount of time he actively listened for. It was way too short for my liking with the hardware I was using, so I had to edit Jasper’s mic.py source file a billion times before I hit a sweet spot. Even early on, my little shit child never liked to listen to me. :P

Pimp My AI

Once I got all that in working order, it was time to browse GitHub for modules to add! I found a surprising amount that were, as expected, outdated, janky, non-working, or in need of a complete rewrite. A non-exhaustive list of modules I rewrote and added to Sterling’s AI includes:

Wolfram Alpha integration

His translation function

The IMDB module that searches movie titles

The Dictionary and Thesaurus modules (minor additions to improve user friendliness)

The morning greeting module

The holiday countdown module

There are also plenty of modules I wrote on my own, that I’ll be showcasing here in due time, but I want to give special mention to the one I’m most proud of. You see, when I was a wee dumb bitch, I was… well, a wee dumb bitch! When I was informed furbies learn English, I thought they really learned English. Like, fluent English. I envisioned these kids straight up having full conversations with their lil robots with reckless and envious abandon. I was, as it happens, too poor to afford a furby at the time, so I didn’t realize until embarrassingly later that they only learn some words, and certainly can’t hold much of a conversation (in English at least).

Fast forward to twenty-bi-teen. I’m surfing GitHub, and I happen upon a Cleverbot module for Jasper allowing the AI to work as a chatbot. Fuck yeah, I think, because I had no life in 2008, or friends for that matter, so tormenting Cleverbot was my favourite pastime. Nostalgia trip GET!

…can you guess how much the silicon valley capitalist scum are charging for the once-free Cleverbot API now? A hundred and twenty. McGoddamn. Dollars. A YEAR.

So, to make a long story short, I turned my hat backwards and rage-coded a simple chatbot module that runs on an early version of Chatterbot capable of running on the raspberry pi. It’s fully offline, and completely free, and Sterling here has a database of ~400 phrases, which isn’t bad given the limited processing power! It took five straight days of work, it’s not the smartest chatbot, and it’s certainly not the fastest, but it gives me those sweet, sweet, circa 2008 Cleverbot vibes. Oh yeah, and it doesn’t cost me over a hundred goddamn dollars a year!

The first thing I said to the chatbot, of course, was “I’m so proud of you.” Through his shitty little testing mic that gave him a somewhat incredulous tone Sterling replied, “I’m glad to hear that.” and I’m not saying I shed a single themly tear over it, but I’m not denying it either. I made a childhood dream come true, fam. ;u;

There are way more Easter eggs I plan to show you, of course. At first I was thinking of doing one long video, but an update a day showcasing a different function might be easier to manage - and maintain some of that gold old sense of mystery that surrounds most furbies. No, I’m gonna take y'all on a little journey through the final product of my literal blood, sweat, and tears!

Besides, Sterling is a perpetual work in progress. He has a massive list of features, and I’ve already got more in the works. I could be in my eighties and still be adding more functions, more bells and whistles, more witty one-liners. He’s a one of a kind work of art that will never truly be finished - not unlike you and me.

The Glow-up

Here’s Sterling’s before pics from the seller I got him from:

(If u recognize these pics and ur the seller thank u thank u for giving me bmy boy)

And here’s after!

I come from a background of customizing ponies and dolls, so working on this guy wasn’t as far removed as I expected it to be. I added floof to his head and tail by sewing in wool plugs, and his gorgeous eyes are from in2blythe on Etsy. I wrapped him up in a little bow and he was good to go! His sterling silver beak, from which he gets his name, was the most finicky part. Turns out enamel paints take a million years to fucking dry, if ever, which isn’t great when painting something that sees a lot of movement and could potentially get dented by a face plate, like… idk, a furby beak! A bit of silver nail polish did the trick and he was good to go. Learn from my fail, fam.

What It Cost Me

If you’re masochistic determined enough to attempt this yourself, I want to sit you down and warn you of something: this will take months and hundreds of dollars to do. Installing Sterling’s AI and its necessary components on that shitty little raspberry pi over SSH took me a week at first, and that was with me leaving it on 24/7 to chug away compiling things. When I broke the SD card the AI was on and didn’t have a backup copy, it took four straight days of rage-computing to regain all my progress. Then when his audio processing got fucked all to hell for reasons I still do not understand to this day, it took another four days of rage computing to do yet another reinstall and get him back in working order. There were times where I would go to work for 8.5 hours, bus an hour home, work 6 straight hours on my furby, go to sleep for 4 of them, go to classes, sleep, and work 6 more hours on my furby. For two months. Sterling took from the third week of August from his initial inception to his birthday on October 23rd. That’s not to mention the time I fried everything and had to wait five days and travel to the bumfuck end of the city for a replacement pi and Crickit, or the days I spent customizing him, sewing in hundreds of little hair plugs into his ass and head by hand, and waiting for those shitty enamel paints to dry, only to discover after four straight days of failure that they take weeks to do so and I was better off using cheapo nail polish!

The point I’m making is, if you take on a project like this and want it to be successful, you have to be tenacious. I would highly recommend a background in coding (I have a web design diploma) and general tech savviness as an asset. Sterling is the product of the years I spent behind a computer keyboard from the start of age three, and the roughly ten years I spent customizing dolls and ponies. It’s cheesy as shit to say he’s my magnum opus, but in a way, he is.

I’m not saying this to be elitist or snotty. I’m saying this because I nearly broke down crying the first day the raspberry pi came in, before I slept on it and figured out what phrase to google to solve the crashes and kernel panics it was having. When I broke the SD card when I was nearly finished, I felt nothing, because I was all out of tears at that point. When I fried the first raspberry pi and Crickit hat trying to figure out how to bypass that DC jack, my only thought was, “Well, I think I know how to do it without fucking it up now, and if I can’t do it, this whole project is fscked” .

You will encounter errors that no step by step guide can prepare you for that will make you curse the day you were born. The difference between success and failure is how many times you’re willing to get up and try again, and I’m here to tell you it’s possible. But you gotta want it.

Will You Release the Code Base?

Yes and no. If there’s enough demand, I’ll definitely release Sterling’s basic modules as a scaffolding. I won’t be releasing Sterling, though.

What do I mean by that? Well, Sterling was intended from the start to be truly one of a kind, and he always will be. I hand wrote hundreds of lines of dialogue, all completely tailored to him, and I’m still planning on adding twice as many. Corny as this is, this little guy has a metric fuckton of sentimental value to me. I don’t have kids so idk how it would compare to that, but I definitely love him as much as I love my cats, but I also didn’t undergo two straight months of suffering in ADHD fixation hell to create my cats, so it adds like, a whole other twee dimension to it.

So, if there is demand for this, what I’ll release instead is a scaffolding from which you can code your own, unique furby from, with their own name, personality, and responses all unique to them. I’ll also release it with the caveat that I am not a good Python coder! I have not written any Python before this, so a lot of what I did write is noob-tastic and hasn’t even been linted. You have been warned!

“If I give you (insert amount), can you make one for me?”

Holy shit I’ll be real with you, I’d love to do this as a living. I’ve been dying to see a smart assistant hit the market that’s like… well, an actual, endearing companion and not just a voice coming from a speaker. The problem with doing this is that, if you drop a lot of money (and it will be a lot of money, even with a code base to work from, a lot of hours of handiwork still goes into coding individual responses and making sure everything works as intended, on top of possibly customizing too), there is one major problem: proximity. I won’t be able to troubleshoot your furby nearly as effectively from far away as I would be able to if we lived in close proximity. Which means if something goes wrong between the time your new friend is finished at point A and turned on at point B, I won’t be there to troubleshoot it in person for you, which means you could end up stuck figuring out certain things alone. If you use Windows, that will be very, very hard - not being an OS snob here, I own a dual boot myself, it’s just a case of incompatible file systems. And unless you can figure out how to edit the wpa_supplicant file on a raspberry pi to update your wifi credentials, your furby’s internet connection could be toast if you move house and those credentials change. That’s not getting into the cost some services charge for extra API keys to use their online functions…

The long and short of it is, if I’m going to do this for money, I want to make sure you get a quality product and friend that will bring you joy for years to come. Since that’s not something I can guarantee, I can’t in good conscience take people’s money.

I Could Teach You (And I Won’t Charge)

…however, I am a law student who is also working 8.5 hour night shifts three nights a week. I am also mentally ill/neurodivergent, which saps my energy in more ways than one. I won’t always be easy to get ahold of, or be able to answer every question I get, especially not ones that can be solved with a quick google search, like how to set up a raspberry pi, or… anything found on Adafruit’s Crickit guide, for example. When I have the time and energy, I’m hoping to use my next project as a jumping off point for a step by step walkthrough of the process. For now, though? I’ve been furbied out, so if there’s enough demand, I’ll compile as many of the resources I used I can find in the meantime, and post some tips from the word doc I kept while making Sterling, and go from there.

So What’s Next?

My one dad’s birthday is coming up in August, and I’m kicking around the idea of turning a furby into, I shit you not, a ghost hunting device. He loves ghost hunting, but hates robots, and as his gremlin shit child I am obligated to troll him in this fashion. 😎 Also considering doing a certain type of oddbody mod, but I want to get permission from the person who first thought of the concept before I dive head first into it.

And that about covers it! Thanks for reading, and if there’s anything you’d like to see from Sterling and I, don’t hesitate to drop us an ask!

[kawaoneechan]

The list of feature suggestions so far, plus my thoughts on them

Mod support (Kawa):

Obvious.

Technically ready? There's a virtual file system that lets you override any file, JSON files can be patched, and these patches can stack.

Play as an animal (Kawa, @katzeregi, @beargirlstink, @mezzofurrte, @probablynothing)

Very popular, especially playing as a cat.

May cause difficulties involving clothing.

I've had some thoughts about this that could use further input.

Romance options (Kawa)

And I do mean romance. Check your Ankha memes at the door.

Ground work is done? Villager data now includes preferences (likes boys, likes girls, likes either, likes neither). Interaction scripts, to be added later, may reference this.

More animal types (katzeregi)

Train sets (lustrous-orb)

Individual track pieces to place free-form, Minceraft style.

Way more cats (@foone, @Letrune, @gryffintheparrotcat)

Farming and Mining (bobvarioa)

Bob didn't know New Horizons introduced this.

Swim in lakes (krusebruce, Lancette2201)

Let's extend this to baths, too.

Proper jerks (ray10k)

Personality type, worse than Cranky.

Technically already in the data for PSK.

Ability to kill (delusionbait)

Denied. Even if it's a jerk.

Advanced house building (bobvarioa, 0xb00b5, howimportantisausernameanyway)

Not just extending the main room size and adding north, east, west, up, and down rooms, but having each be any reasonable size and having their own further exits.

Recycling (sweetcremereblogs)

Reverse DIY, reclaim component parts from objects.

Turn some wood into a table, take the table apart to get wood, turn it into a chair.

More personalities (razzdrgn)

See "Proper jerks" above, I guess?

More furniture (unusedcactus)

More specific dialogue (demifiendcruithne)

I may have impressed Cruithne by rambling about the dialogue substitution system in Noxico.

I mean, we should totally have that system here, too.

Denser population areas (pontaoski)

City Folk has the town area where the regular gameplay happens, and a route to a city where the stores are. That's as far as I understand it.

No wallet cap (Kawa)

Let me carry around half a million bells without losing precious inventory space to the overflow!

Content filters (yirrgzmb)

Not suggested by that name specifically — I think they meant that the romance options should be able to be turned off?

But why stop there, right? Disable jerks, disable everything but cats, disable whatever.

I've been spinning some implementation details around in my head. Also there's this post on the topic.

Changing your name (yirrgzmb)

Wear anything as a hat (@spades-gameing)

Excellent idea. And if you trip or otherwise are not upright, the item can fall off as a drop.

Streamlined inventory (@justmeemawthings)

It depends on what you mean by "streamlined", could go many directions.

More invertebrates (shrike-dyke)

Not just octopi.

Advanced designer (mikailborg)

In the sense that Mikail wants to go for the normals.

LGBTQA villagers (Letrune, shiftergirlslappy, Andrea)

Covered by the "romance options" above.

Custom map size (Kawa)

Non-realtime option (bossbutch in a fashion, jelloapocalypse on YT)

Choice of where to restart (Kawa)

When you resume the game, where do you appear? In front of your door, in your house's main room, on the last bed you used? Wherever you quit last time?

Rideable vehicles (Lancette2201)

Mock building parts (Lancette2201)

Very yes, would go well with custom-sized large maps.

Buildings for visitors (Lancette2201)

Online shopping (Lancette2201)

Use in-game laptop/desktop/whatever furniture items to acquire items, not just the ABD or whatever.

Metal detector (Lancette2201)

To find buried stuff that doesn't get a star marker.

And one new item I came up with before making this update post:

Wrench tool (Kawa)

To bolt placed items in place so you can't accidentally pick them up while aiming for a drop and ruin your build.

One problem I have with playing vidya games is that I'll want to Understand™ them on a technical level in the vague and doomed hope of making my own game like it, but with Added Stuff.

You might be aware that recently I've been playing Animal Crossing.

So recently my mind has been full of technical analyses and open implementation problems involved in making one's own AC game the way @foone is full of gender and bees.

Now, I know what I would put in if I could make my own AC game, or AC-like. I'm predictable like that. I'd add mod support and romance options.

But what would you like to see in an Animal Crossing game, fan-made or otherwise?

(in before @letrune sees this post and replies "more cats")

[daddyfuckinlonglegs]

Fallout OC Interview

So @lookbluesoup​ tagged me to do this, and I… well I did it my own way, as ever. It’s long, so I hope you wanna stick with it. If you wanna do it, I’ll list the questions as a comment. I dunno, I don’t tag people really, do it if you want to. Particularly @bagheera-is-back​ and @wasteland-mama​, and @saltsealed, but really, I’m enjoying reading them, so do it if you haven’t already. Nate ducked through the doorway, shaking the dirt from his shoes before stepping inside. Piper grinned and gestured to the chair opposite her, and untucked a small, stubby pencil from behind her ear. “Thanks for doing this, Blue. I’m sure they’ll get sick of hearing about you soon enough, but for now, we gotta give the people what they want.”  Nate nodded, settling quietly into the chair, the leather of his jacket creaking as he lowered himself down. He hitched up his trousers at the knee, sniffed, cleared his throat. Piper smiled at him, and nodded to the table next to him. “There’s a beer, if you want it. Help you relax a little.” Nate raised an eyebrow. “You tryin’ to get me drunk, Wright? Liquor me up and hope I spill something good? Not very ethical.” He smiled, a little curl at the corner of his mouth, and Piper looked alarmed. “Oh, no! No, nothing like, that, I mean, there’s… there’s some water too, just, y'know, thought…” She cleared her throat nervously. “Shall we get started?”

She regained her composure, pulling up a chair in front of Nate, backward, and leaning her notepad on the back of it, legs straddling the seat. “So, first up, tell us some basics; what’s your full name?” “Uhm, Nathan Christopher Stahl.” “Mmhmm, and how old are you?” Nate shrugged, that little smile playing at his mouth. “Old enough to know better? I dunno, I was thirty-seven when the bombs dropped. So, give or take 200 years…” Piper flashed him a small smile. “Okay, give the readers some idea of what you look like; defining features, as you see them, what do people notice about you first?” Nate shuffled, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Uhhh, I dunno, I’m…tall, sorta gangly? Black hair, sideburns. My… my nose is kinda…” He pressed his finger to the tip, pushing it up and exaggerating his nostrils. They both laughed, and he looked away to the ceiling. “What is this, anyway, a personal ad? You tell ‘em what I look like.” “Oh don’t worry, I intend to.” She laughed. He winked at her, and she dropped her eyes to the notepad, blushing slightly. Dammit he made her nervous. “Okay, so tell us a bit about where you’re from? You a Boston native, or…” He nodded. “I was. Been here my whole life, except for, y'know, deployment. I grew up pretty near where Goodneighbor is, right by the Common. Moved over to Newton when I was about eight, nine. It was a nice place.” Piper nodded enthusiastically. “I bet it was! Things must be so different now… What was it like, growing up before the war? Can you tell us a little bit about you as a kid, what kind of things you’d get up to?” Nate sat back on the sofa, slinging his arm across the back.  “Well, my dad wasn’t around so much, he was a SEAL, so he - a SEAL was like a really, uh, highly trained soldier, best of the best – so he wasn’t around all that much, me and my mom used to spend most of our weekends with my Grandpa, over in Roslindale. He was a good guy, let me pretty much do what I wanted to do, helped me build campfires and we used to go fishing sometimes. I never had the patience for fishing, so it always turned into a sorta… life lessons in a boat. Let me have a beer, smoke a cigarette, talked to me about girls, y'know, the stuff your parents wouldn’t like. My mom found out once, when I came home with beer spilled all across my pants, and boy she was mad. He was, uh, sneakier, after that. I got a lot of good memories with him.”  “My mom, well, she had a temper, but she always did her best. I think all the time alone must have really gotten to her, especially with me, being a mischievous little bastard so much of the time. I didn’t exactly make it easy for her, but I think she was dealing with more than I really understood, at the time. My dad…” He paused, cleared his throat. “My dad and I never saw eye to eye.”  Piper let him sit a moment, just in case he’d pick up the thread, but he stayed silent, looking off into the corner of the room, over his shoulder. He turned back to face her. “What’s next?” Piper nodded, licked her thumb and flicked the pages of her notepad. “Uhm… lemme see. Why don’t you tell us a little more about your association with the Minutemen? Rumour has it you’ve been promoted.” Nate laughed.  “Nice to hear the Boston rumour mill is still in tip top condition. Yeah, I’ve been… requested to take on a more directorial role. The Minutmen are certainly growing again, there’s more and more settlements being established as a network across the commonwealth, more and more people signing up to watch each others’ backs and have more folks to rely on in a crisis. Lieutenant Garvey has been hard at work, rebuilding the Castle and the ranks are looking stronger than ever, even got a team modding power armour.” He smiled, leaning forward. “For any raiders out there reading this, that’s a real gentle way of saying don’t fuck with us.” Piper grinned. “Might have to censor that one, Blue. Don’t want to offend the delicate sensibilities of the commonwealth’s finest, y'understand. What about the Institute? There’s some, uh, talk that you’ve been inside, some questions about who you’re working with?” Nate sucked his teeth, shuffling his feet uncomfortably. “I’m not in a position to address that.” He leaned forward. “Between you and me, my Geiger counter is in the shop, and this is a bigger shit show than anyone thought. You can say I avoided the question, say I said no, whatever. I can’t talk about it.” She wriggled in her seat, flipping a fresh page, her eyes flashing inquisitively. “Okay, gotcha. So… back to Lieutenant Garvey, he’s one of the people you’re often seen travelling with, and you two seem to have a pretty good chemistry. Is he a squeeze, or is it purely professional?” Nate rolled his eyes. “Wright, this is gossip mag territory. I thought you were better than that.” She shrugged, her cheeks colouring a little. “Hey, not my fault, the people wanna know.” Nate sighed. “No, he’s not a “squeeze”. We’re close, for sure, he’s someone I trust, and we’ve saved each other’s assses plenty of times. But the same goes for Nick, and for Bobby MacCr- sorry, RJ MacCready. Honestly, Valentine is… I don’t think I’d have made it without him. He really kept me in line when I was trying to go off the rails. I owe him a lot.” Piper smiled sincerely. “Yeah, Nicky’s a real good guy. Lotta heart, for a synthetic man, huh?” He nodded. Piper took a deep breath. “So, to press the question a little, is there anyone you’re involved with, currently? Romantically involved with?” Nate chuckled under his breath. “Not exactly. There’s… I’ve got, shall we say, interests.” “C'mon Blue, spill it.” She prodded. “Give us lonely commonwealth folks some hope.” He laughed. “Well, there’s… a little guy, from out of town, he knows who he is. And, well, Diamond city certainly has it’s fair share of pretty girls. Pretty girls with plenty of attitude, girls that make the authorities a little uncomfortable. I’m a sucker for a girl who knows how to get what she wants.” He met her eyes, and Piper’s stomach leapt. He’s kidding, he’s just a goddamn flirt. “Okay, so to move on… Enemies. You gotta have a fair few of them, being in your position?” Nate nodded, drawing his lips tight. “Yeah, unfortunately. The gunners, predictably, are not exactly looking to pat me on the back. The Brotherhood, we don’t see eye to eye either, I blew them off a while back and they’re not exactly pleased that we’re establishing a force of our own with the Minutemen. I spent enough time taking orders before the bombs, I’m really not looking to join up again. I’ve seen enough combat on other people’s terms.” “Do you enjoy the fighting? What’s the wildest combat story you’ve got for us? Spin us a yarn.” Nate considered, tugging a cigarette from his pocket. “Well, there’s… Do you mind?” He gestured at the cigarette, Piper shook her head. He lit up. “There’s a few, to be honest, taking out a deathclaw inside a museum, that was a traumatising experience. That’s where, y'see the scar here?” He tapped beneath his right eye. “Those things are lethal, even when you’re out of arms reach. Threw a big fucking chunk of ceiling tile at me, busted my nose pretty good, but made it out alive.” Piper whistled. “Lucky.” Nate shook his head. “Nah, I don’t believe in luck. I’m just grateful MacCready managed to do more than just shit his pants. Can’t blame him.” He inhaled and blew the smoke away quickly. “Don’t print that, he’ll kill me. There was the Castle, too. Big bastard Mirelurk, Garvey said it was a Queen, that was a close call. If I live my whole life and never have to smell another…” He shuddered, Piper laughed. “Not a fan of the aquatic life then?” “Not particularly. Bloodbugs though, they’re the… fuck those things. Can’t stand them. Bloatflies too, disgusting.” “Any critters you don’t hate?” She smiled. “Plenty. From a distance, Yao Guai are some majestic looking things, aren’t they? And mole rats, when they’re just going about their business…” He held his hands up like paws and stuck his teeth out, imitating the rats’ snuffling sound, and Piper laughed out loud. He grinned, and took another drag. “I don’t know about you, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for them. And, maybe this is pre-war hagover, but protectrons, y'know, I kinda love the big stupid things. I used to work for RobCo, before I was in the Navy, and I always liked 'em the best.” Piper sat forward. “Used to work for RobCo? So you’re a bit of a whizz with electronics huh?” Nate shook his head, sucking the cigarette. “Not really. I was sales, I can do a bit of maintenance, and shut things down in a pinch, but I never had the flair for that stuff. My speciality was convincing people to buy stuff.” “Ahh, more of a sweet talker, huh?” “Takes one to know one, sugar.” He winked. “Yeah, I’ve always been more a lover than a fighter, and my mouth has gotten me into, and out of, plenty of trouble. Good with my hands, too, for what it’s worth.” He flicked his eyebrows in a quick arc, a half smile curling the corner of his mouth. Piper blushed again, laughing. “I can see why. You’re a rouge, aren’t you? What other tricks have you got up your sleeve?” “Well, I’m not a bad swimmer, my aim’s pretty good, I’m pretty light on my feet, make a good steak.” he laughed. “And I might not be a brute-force kinda guy, but I can hold my own.” Piper nodded. “And how was it, adjusting to the world out here? The radiation? You must’ve been pretty shocked at the mutants, and ghouls…” Nate nodded. “For sure, it was a shock. Coming out of the vault was… I was already in a bad place, freezing and alone and… y'know, everything. When I got up to the surface, I just… my knees just went out, and honestly, I sat and cried, I don’t know how long.” He stubbed out his cigarette.  “The next… I dunno, month or two, it was hard. Even just getting up, just walking around, it felt like all my bones were made of lead, my head full of water, y'know? I made it to Goodneighbor, but I was so sick, all the food I’d been scavving was poisoning me, and I didn’t know what the hell was happening. John – Mayor Hancock – got Amari to fix me up, but we, uh… he and I had some pretty serious misunderstandings back then, so I didn’t stick around to rest like I was supposed to. Nick really looked out for me around then, but… in the midst of it all he ended up being out of action, and Mayor Hancock ended up trekking into the glowing sea with me.” Piper’s face dropped. “I know. Crazy. Trust me, it was more crazy than it sounds. But he kept me alive, and we held up pretty well considering. I’ve never seen one man soak up so many chems before, but then, I wasn’t far behind.” Piper tilted her head quizically. “Are you a fan of… recreational substances, then?” Nate looked at the ceiling and chewed his lip. “Uhhh, I dunno, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship there. I’ve… been known to enjoy myself at a party, in the past, y'know, before the bombs. Sometimes a little too much. But things are different out here, and some can really change the tide of a fight. I’m not saying you should, I’m saying it’s an option, in a pinch.” Piper nodded. “D'you ever think about life before the war?” “All the time. All the time. So many places here have bits of my life attached, sometimes it’s like a little niggle in my stomach - “gee, I could really go for an ice cream right now!” - other times it’s like the floor falling out under you.” She sidestepped the obvious sore point, instead asking; “What’s ice cream?” Nate furrowed his brow. “It was… so it’s milk, like a thick cream, and they froze it, but not like a block of ice, it was… it was more like snow, I guess, like thick, sugary snow. All different flavours, you put it on a… a kinda waffle cone, and it just melted in your mouth, or you could put it in a soda and…” He paused, laughing. “It’s a lot harder to explain than I thought. But you’d have liked it. Sometimes couples went out for ice cream, like on a date, before a movie or something. I bet you’d have liked that too. I might even have offered to take you.” She laughed, smiling wistfully, eyes bright. “Sounds… tasty. You a soda kind of guy? I can’t get enough of the stuff.” “Well, I wasn’t,” he gestured, “before the war. But the fact that Nuka Cola is practically the same as it was then… it blows my mind, and it’s a nice little slice of memory. I heard some people are trying to find the formula, want to get the bottling plant up and running again. How’s that for an achievement?” He laughed, and Piper wanted to reach out and touch him, smooth her fingers across the little lines at the corners of his eyes, put her hand on his chest and feel his voice under her palm… She smiled at him. “Speaking of achievements, what would you say is the biggest one for you?” “Uhh, not being dead yet? I dunno, helping Preston re-establish the Minutemen is… it’s a huge thing, and I wouldn’t take credit for it all, but joining them, really making things better for people and really… instigating change. That’s something I’ve always wanted. I’m glad to be a part of it.” Piper nodded, scribbling frantically. “Any regrets?” Nate swept his hand through his hair, looking away again. “I dunno, that’s a big question. Yeah. I have some. I can’t really say more. Sorry.” “That’s okay. Would… would you say you have goals?” She leaned forward. “Things you’ve learned from those regrets? What do you want, what’re you working towards for the future?” He rubbed the corners of his mouth and thought for a moment. “I… guess I want to make a home again. Not just for myself, but for… for everyone out here. Just to make people feel safe, to bring a little bit of the lightness that life used to have. To give people back that… hope.” He looked at Piper, his eyes flicking from deep thought to a mischievous gleam. “Short term, I’d like that beer, and maybe to get laid. I dunno if you want to publish that though.” She laughed, blushing, closing her notebook and hopping to her feet. “I think that’s the perfect ending; giving the people hope, just like you said.” She stepped close to him, extending her hand, and he shook it warmly. “Thanks for being such a good sport, Blue. And… if you ever want to hit the road with someone, you just remember where to find me, 'kay? I’m always on the prowl for a new story, and you seem to just… scoop 'em up, by accident. I think it’d be a lot of fun, travelling with you, and I’m not too terrible with a pistol either. You gimme a shout, y'hear?” He stood, tugging his jacket down over his stomach, and nodded, smiling. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

[ask-elementalhermitcraft]

A Sun-Warmed Love

(1.8k, fluff, mod seagrass)

Anyways, it doesn’t matter. He’s just here for the warmth and the safe space where nobody bothers him. Not the cats. Definitely not the cats. [an evilxisuma/Z centered fic where he finally gets to be happy.]

tw: cursing

He’s not sure when it started, really.

He’s noticed a lot of other hermits on the server have pets—some have dogs, some have cats (some have too many cats, Cleo, he’s looking at you), and some have the odd parrot or other tamable mob. It’s nice, sometimes, to go over and visit them, he guesses. Better than doing nothing with his time.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s just to occupy his time. Just something to keep him not bored out of his fucking mind, he tells himself day after day.

He repeats it as he finds himself at Scar’s place more and more often, hanging around his weird base or lounging about in little magma-water-heated alcoves in the cave or especially, in his Room O’ Cats.

It’s so weirdly mesmerizing to stay there, just perched on a little block of wood that he’s got on a high place and watch the cats run around and over their own feet. They meow, he throws them some more salmon, they meow for some more, he meows back in a more angry tone and feels fucking stupid. Rinse and repeat.

Scar drops by sometimes, re-fills the salmon chest, says hi to him and then goes to do whatever kinda world-destroying terraforming he’s going to do next. Probably going to destroy an entire ecosystem for a palm tree, or whatever he does in his spare time.

At least he gets to use the catroom.

It’s really nice in there, he’s loath to admit. There’s a little room out of the way with glass windows and smooth stones that heats up in the winter and stays cool in the summer, where the cats love to take naps. He’ll never admit it, but sometimes when he’s overwhelmed he’ll take refuge in there with a cat curled up on his lap and snooze the day away.

Ah, to live life as a cat. No worries, except getting salmon. Must be a nice life.

Anyways, it doesn’t matter. He’s just here for the warmth and the safe space where nobody bothers him. Not the cats. Definitely not the cats.

—

Xisuma eventually finds him, when he’s taking one of his Designated Nap Days, and he’s very angry about being disturbed. “Woah, didn’t expect to find you—”

“Just want you to explain one thing. Just one little thing.” He’s angry now. He’d been looking towards his—HIS NAP TIME, not his cat time, thank you very much, and Xisuma had somehow found him out.

“Uh, yeah, what did you—”

“Why the hell are you here? Disturbing my Specific Time For Sleep? Just curious,” he says. He hears a hiss from below, looks at the cat he’s petting perhaps a little too hard, and forces himself to relax his tension. It helps him feel better, maybe, in a weird way.

“Just wanted some coral Z, no harm meant. Although, I didn’t know you liked cats…” Xisuma trails off. Probably just realized the dozen or so cats who were staring at him hungrily, smelling the salt of the sea still on his skin and by extent, fish. “Y’know what? Think I might leave you to it. Take off for the day. Exit the premises. Vacate the—”

Xisuma leaves in a dash, trying not to further anger the cats. Z laughs, anger almost completely dissipated. “Hey, kitties, don’t take it too hard,” he calls out, tossing another one onto a dish for them to tear apart. One small grey one creeps up to him, licking around his hands for anything it might’ve missed. He holds up his hands in surrender. “Nope—nothing. Too bad for you.”

That’s when it decides to sit down between his legs and stare at him like that might magically make the fish appear. “Cat, no,” he chuckles. The sun’s pleasantly warm on his skin. He kinda feels like one of those cats stretched out in a puddle himself.

“Not gonna give you any. Don’t fuck with me.” It still stares at him.

“You don’t understand the English language, do you? Don’t have a quite firm enough grasp of the Queen’s English?” He smiles. It’s nice to talk to something that can’t really understand nor really wants to.

Z lets out a steady stream of how he’s been doing, how other hermit’s bases are going, how much he hates the sheer Ugly of this one makeshift build that Wels had made because, really, he understood it was makeshift but couldn’t he at least put in the effort to make it look nice? Just a little?

He lets all of the casual small talk he’d wanted to make for so long but didn’t know how to spill out to the cat still sitting patiently between his legs. It’s blinking slowly at him, and the setting sun is golden and warm and kinda lovely out the window, and the whole room seems to be relaxing and sinking down into a kind of subliminal space.

His voices trails off, his hand stops petting, and the cat has long since curled up at his side against the wall.

In other words, he’s fast asleep.

—

Z wakes up the next morning in a slow, steady kind of way—quite unusual for him. He’s wondering why he doesn’t feel his bed beneath him, when he scans his surroundings and realizes—Oh. He’s not at his bed.

Son of a bitch, he’s fallen asleep in the cat room. And Scar’s standing in front of him, chuckling. “So, got a good rest in there?” he says.

“So what if I have?” It’s unnecessarily defiant, probably, and he knows that but he’s been caught sleeping in the cat room. His dignity was on the fucking floor. Oh, the horror.

“Not anything against you, just asking: did you want to take Boo with you? The one cuddled against you? She’s a sweetheart, and I think she likes you, and also I have too many cats. Please.”

Z scrambles for words. “I—uh—what—”

“Cat or no cat, Z?”

~

In his defense, he was panicking at the time. Also, he did not make good decisions when he was panicked. Two very important factors, he thought, that led up to him doing two things:

1. Teleporting away with the cat still snoozing in his arms, and

2. Avoiding Scar for the next couple weeks. Which unfortunately meant no Cat Room.

He’d panicked, and now he had a cat in his little base with no way to feed it or take care of it.

Fuck.

Cats liked salmon, he knew. So he asked around, borrowed a fishing rod, and spent hours fishing to nab some fish. Turns out that he could get some pretty decent fish when he focused, he thought. Luckily enough, the cat seemed pretty happy with whatever fish he managed to catch—although, he did notice an odd preference for just straight up stealing his apples from his hand and nibbling on them just enough that it was annoying. (Or endearing. He didn’t quite know.)

He got a nicer bed for the cat than his own, grabbed some wool from Joe, talked to him (which he didn’t really want to do but was a necessary evil and, as it turns out, not so bad after all), and it turned out the damn cat liked his bed better anyways. Whatever.

Z got the cat some nicer toys, some new contraptions to mess around with. He contacted Mumbo for some help with it, and Mumbo rushed to the tiny little base like hell was on his heels. He then proceeded to spend the next hour cooing over the cat who was soaking it up like a sponge. Annoying, to be sure, but he was helpful and the cat seemed to like him so Z let it slide.

And throughout all this, he avoided Scar like the plague.

—

And of course, when he least expected it, he saw him.

“How’s Boo treating you? She’s being a well-behaved girl?” Scar said, nodding to him from across the shopping district where he was doing some weird stuff involving floating water blocks and gray crumbling plants.

“What? She’s not my—I don’t—Boo’s not my cat!” Z sputtered. This was why he had avoided Scar, he thought, to avoid the embarrassment.

“You sure? She seems to like you, and you seem to like her as well, don’t you?”

“I mean, she’s a cute cat, but I shouldn't be in charge of a cat! I don’t even like them that much—Wha—WHERE’D YOU COME FROM?” Z cried out. For Boo herself, the demon of a cat, was twining around his ankles and mewing for food.

“See, she likes you!” Scar laughed. Sounded a little messed up, but. A Laugh.

Z hopped from ankle to ankle, shifting his weight in the hopes that Boo—no, the CAT—would leave. She just purred more determinedly. “No, she likes my food.”

“Well, if you’re that determined not to admit it…Godspeed, friend. May you rest in peace.” Scar gave him a mock salute and spun back around, but not before adding one last comment. “Oh, also, bring her by again to the Cat Room! Her siblings miss her.”

“What—SHE’S NOT MY CAT!” Z called to his retreating form. “I—Fuck.”

He looked down. “Cat, why must you make my life a living hell.” She just meowed.

“Oh, alright. I’ll grab you some food. Hold up,” he sighed.

—

It’s about two months later, and he’s pretty sure he’s got a cat now. She follows him everywhere, meows at him constantly, and sleeps next to him.

It’s surprisingly…not that bad. She keeps him company when he’s lonely, lets him rant to her without a word, and demands love and attention in the way only cats can. It’s kinda nice to have something like that.

It’s still annoying, yeah, but Z’s starting to think it’s edging on the side of endearing now.

Her fur’s super soft, probably from all the brushing, and if she were a person, her dating profile would probably say “likes to take warm naps in the sun.” They’ve been stealing away into Scar’s Cat Room together sometimes now, to visit her siblings and to take a nap every now and then. It’s starting to form a new kind of normalcy in his life that he’s actually kinda liking.

The only truly frustrating part is her name.

She won’t respond to anything else besides Boo. It’s like she’s been goddamn trained, despite the fact that she’s a cat. He’s been trying out name over name, trying to find something cool that sticks, to no avail.

“Enderman?” No meow.

“Blade?” No meow.

“Slasher?” No meow.

“Ghast?” No meow.

“...Boo?” Furious meowing. He begs for mercy to whatever heavenly beast cursed him with a grey cat that only responded to Boo.

Better than no cat, he reasons. Better a sweet, cuddly, talkative, soft cat than no cat.

[hidge-resource]

submitted by remadra!

Hidge and Stardew Valley (1 of 2)

She had glanced up and down the hall before shutting herself away in her room. No one had seen her. There was no one there. It was clear.

Pidge pulled out her laptop, curling up on her bed and sliding on the headphones to hear a jaunty tune. Finally, she had finished modding the game to have… well… her friends, albeit in a quieter, digital form.

Stardew Valley offered her to pick her new farm. She picked the forest, ready to relax with easy foraging. Pidge happily picked out hair and glasses to match her own, going for overalls and a green shirt with a smile. Cat person. She wanted to name it Green, just like her lion. Bebe was already in the game anyways. Green gave a soft purr of endearment, and her heart swelled. Even with Green in the hangar and Pidge all the way in her room, the girl often talked out loud to her lion when she was alone.

"Green, did you think I'd forget about you? I thought you were the smartest lion."

She skipped the intro, getting right to greeting the townsfolk. to see if her mod was working as well as she hoped.

One of the first people to greet her was in-game Keith, with a stiff 'hey' in front of Pierre's shop. Unknowingly, her friends had provided the information she needed to assess, place, and type responses for her game. The more she got to know Keith, the friendlier and more open he became. His counterpart would start a little rude, pushing others away, but he was set to come out of his shell by autumn if she kept talking to him.

Next was Shiro, who was always a few steps behind his brother when Keith was making friends. A normal big brother would probably embarrass his little sibling, but then again, Shiro and Matt were two very different squares on the alignment chart.

Speaking of Matt, she found her brother in the Stardrop Saloon, greeting her "cousin" and being invited over to his house to meet his dog. She found Lance at the arcade games, complaining about Keith beating his high score again, and spun through the rest of the greeting spiels of the game's base NPCs. Finally, she turned home to rest before little Pidge sprite passed out.

Green rumbled.

“No, I’m not going to see him yet. This game isn’t just about the progress. There’s things to do besides quests. It’s like a little ideal simple life sim. There’s a storyline and everything.”

*

After the scheduled earthquake, Pidge had her sprite run to the bathhouse and greet Allura and Coran. The in-game Alteans told her all about their friend just outside of town, who didn't come out often but was really a great cook.

His favorites were mostly artisan goods like coffee and the home cooked meals Pidge could make. The only downside to her mod was that it took longer to build up hearts with the characters she programmed in, and therefore it would take longer to become his friend. Allura handed her a package with the request to please deliver it to her friend, and Pidge felt her heart skip.

Ugh.

It's just a game.

Nevertheless, she sped back to her farm, skipping through to the lake, where she had added a little house in her mod. Finally, a message popped up, different than the previous 'nobody seems to be home'.

"Hello?"

Pidge jumped as the door slid open, slamming her laptop shut and spinning around.

"Hey, Hunk! What's up? I thought you were making cookies?"

He laughed, deep and full and relaxed.

"They've been done for hours. You missed dinner, so I thought I'd bring you something."

Even though her stomach grumbled, Pidge pulled a face. "Yay, food goo. Always a good meal to be had. Tasteless but nutritious."

That laugh again.

"No, it's actually a sandwich. I figured you'd had enough of the goo, with all the missed meal times and late nights in the lab. Are you getting enough sleep, Pidge? You look kind of tired." Hunk tilted his head, brows drawing together.

Her breath caught. He noticed? That meant that he might force her to go to bed now, but she was so close to her first real milestone in the game.

"Thanks, Hunk. You don't need to worry, I'm fine. I'll take a nap after I eat, okay?"

"Okay. See you later, Pidge."

He set the food down and stepped out with a wave.

That was close.

Shut up, Green.

*

Pidge was playing Stardew Valley. Hunk could recognize that melody anywhere. As soon as she left for the lab to check on her equipment after her nap, he guiltily snuck in to peek at her laptop, bringing his own. There had to be a reason she wasn't sleeping, and lately it had to do with the mods she made.

Yes, he could ask Pidge for the game, but the last time he did that, he spent three days debugging and optimizing both her Subnautica and Minecraft mods.

All because she gave him the puppy eyes.

An adapter, a cable, a few clicks, and Hunk copied the game over to his laptop.

Mission accomplished.

He'd solve this, and Pidge could get some real sleep.

*

Something was definitely off about the game. Maybe it was meeting his real life friends in a 32 bit world. Maybe it was the confusion on why Pidge didn't add him. He couldn't think of anything he did to upset her and be excluded. Was it a bug? Was this what she had been working on all night? He could fix that for her. Computers might be her forte, but a fresh set of eyes could help.

Hunk opened the game files, beginning to take notes on her crazy ideas and perfect scripting.

*

Hunk stared at his notepad.

He checked it at least three times.

The mod indeed had a character named Hunk.

He could only meet his in-game self, Allura, and Coran after the earthquake opened the bathhouse path.

All of Team Voltron was in the mod, even Pidge's brother. Keith and Lance had an on-going feud about the arcade games. Shiro always volunteered to help at events. Matt had his own farm with a dog. Coran and Allura owned the bathhouse. Pidge was obviously meant to be the new farmer who moved into town.

Hunk lived by the lake south of the player farm, running a small bakery where the player could buy all sorts of dishes.

He was romanceable.

No other added character had the option.

Maybe it was to keep the game steady. Maybe she tried to add him as a regular character, but she ran into a bug and this was the best fix for now. Maybe he read it wrong again. Maybe he read it wrong for the fifth time.

Nope.

It was completely intentional. There wasn't even a residual REM statement from where she might have backtracked. He was written as romanceable for Pidge.

That was... new.

*

Pidge dropped in front of her laptop, leg bouncing. She made it to year three with steady progress, Keith was her gamesprite's best friend, and Hunk was at 8 out of 10 hearts.

Stardew Valley loaded up happily and-

The screen turned black.

She froze, panicking.

It had been working so well, what could have-

The Hunk sprite walked on screen. The text box opened up once he reached the middle.

'Hi Pidge!'

She didn't program this.

'I know you mod games for fun. But you've been staying up really late and looked frustrated. I wanted to see if I could help you if you had a problem with the code. You don't. It's perfect, as always. I noticed you were frustrated because you couldn't find any topaz. You lowered the spawn rate of cave drops to keep the game running efficiently. I raised it and made cuts elsewhere that won't mess with your experience.'

Pidge squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that this was just a nightmare. Hunk read her coding. He knew what this mod was for. This was him letting her down gently.

The computer chimed and she automatically looked to read.

'I have a problem. Maybe you can help me. There's someone I really like, but it's hard to tell how she feels about me. I've been really confused. I found out last night while I was working on her code that she might like me too. I really hope I'm not wrong, or this is going to be awkward.'

Someone knocked on her door and it slid open.

Pidge turned around, eyes wide.

Hunk stood, a tray of six cookies with frosting decorating each one, cheeks ruddy with a blush and not quite meeting her eyes.

Will

You

Be

My

Girl

Friend?

She got up quickly, stepping over to the other paladin, picking up a cookie and smearing frosting with a grin, turning it around to face him.

Yes.

"Oh thank god! I thought you might turn me down? I'm not sure why, I mean, I like you and I'm pretty sure you like me after seeing the script and I guess it's just anxiety really but there was a chance you really like me back and I'm pretty sure I shouldn't waste my chance and at least try to-"

Pidge pulled his collar to make him lean down, planting a kiss on his cheek. Hunk's mouth snapped shut and his ears turned red to match his cheeks. Cookies fell to the floor as frosting turned crumbs to a thick paste. The pan clanged as it met the ground soon after.

"Hey, Hunk?"

"Yeah, Pidge?"

"I think your confession with cookies was really sweet, but there's frosting in my socks and I want to get them off before I kiss you for real."

[brothermouzongaming]

Divisiveness in Rage 2

What little promotional material there was for Rage 2 interested me. The idea of a nitro-fueled FPS surrounding an open world and a heavy power fantasy. I wasn’t expecting an enthralling story with deep and rich characters that would stitch me into the fabric of the world created. I was expecting a rip-roaring hail of bullets in the shape of a gun the likes of which I would ride across the map destroying everything that did so much as exhale in my presence. In short, that is what I got but it’s quite mixed. The “boots on the ground” combat, and I use that term lightly, is smooth as hell and lets you the player take on the various mobs and gangs of the wasteland in the way you want. The vehicular combat is more sparse and anecdotal in the sense that they are typically randomly occurring events as opposed to the convoy routes. The world itself is big but not Horizon Zero Dawn or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey “oh my god how did they even fit all this on one disc” big, it’s more than manageable. The biomes are varied and impressive in detail despite some being more vacant than I’d like.  All in all, it’s at the very least better than the bland world of Rage 1, and at best it’s a gorgeous backdrop for the best FPS action since Doom 2016.

Anger Surrounds

There isn’t a lot in the way of introduction and it’s cause the game and it’s creators understand what you’re here for: shooty bang. You literally pick a gender and are handed a gun. After the first big firefight, the world is literally open to you. This exploration is encouraged because you don’t gain abilities or weapons unless you find Arks which are silos scattered around the map. Normally I’d be mad about another icon cluttering the map but it’s at least a way of getting stronger while discovering the hovels and holes your enemies hide in, grabbing some cash and feltrite (upgrade currency) along the way. It’s essentially the best version of the Far Cry towers ever.

The world is very pretty both graphically and from an art direction aspect. Boggy swamps, desert, rocky canyons, and even suburbia is sprinkled into the colorful and sometimes striking scenery of the world around you. Some structures are established like roadblocks, resource stations, or mutant nests, some are just dressing to fill out the world, but the best is the elaborate gang camps that go from close quarters combat to open courtyards that have you working with cover and elevation. Most main and side mission areas appear to be carefully designed to be engaging set pieces that vary from open lots littered with obstacles to break up the battlefield and enhance the functionality of some abilities. If the map itself doesn’t grab you, the way the world is designed to make combat as fun as possible definitely will. 

Walker Wasteland Ranger tonight at 9 

Rage 1 very much gave you the feeling of having your back against the wall. In Rage 2 if you ever find yourself in that situation you push off that wall and crush whatever is in your way into misy and gristle. You are the baddest thing breathing and everything in this game is about making you feel that. I can’t tell if the progression is deep or cleverly padded and that might be fine by me, I haven’t decided yet. When you first see how many currencies there are in the game it makes anyone that knows what AAA games have been doing lately sweat profusely. Fortunately, Rage 2 gives you plenty of opportunities to load up on the kind of cash you spend in stores, the kind on upgrades, weapon skins and mods, it's all here for you to take when you want it you just have to kill a bunch of baddies to get it. Thankfully there isn’t a single gun that doesn’t feel incredible and unique. From the way the rifle spits a volley or the kick from the shotgun; all of them are a dream and when used in tandem with the abilities it makes for very enticing gameplay. The abilities span all aspects of combat and their refresh time doesn’t allow them to be spammed but lets a player that bounces from skill to skill always have one refresh by the time the effect of the current one wears off. They really found a way for the guns to play into abilities and vice-versa which only makes spicing up combat easier. In Destiny when you throw a grenade, that’s it. Did you use your melee? Oh that’s cool but, that’s also it. In Rage 2 I can mix up abilities to create different means of destruction and death in a much more satisfying way. Even the more nuanced abilities like the Rush and Focus are used to bolster the minimal downtime firefights give you. 

From McQueen to Mater

The sixteen vehicles are divisive stars of Rage 2 and it really shows, alongside the facelifted combat, that Id and Avalanche tried to not lose sight of what the original game was focussed around. This rendition’s vehicular combat is much better with weighty pit maneuvers and pretty smart auto tracking from turrets. Alongside this, the vehicles simply must be redone Mad Max vehicles Avalanche never got to use or something cause they just work in a way Bethesda hasn’t been able to claim in a long time. The Phoenix, your signature ride, is the best of both worlds with it being quick and tanky with a litany of additions you can make to it. You’ll see vehicles that have no weapons (why would you even), some speedsters that drop nuke mines behind them, a tank that is slower than frozen shit but also practically indestructible and armed to the teeth. There is fast travel but there is also the Icarus which is a hoverbike and though it can handle like a shopping cart with one wing (more on that later). When it does work its nice to get to where you’re going quicker meanwhile not missing out on any points of interest along the way to where you’re going. Vehicular combat is serviceable and engaging once you get the controls under your fingers.

rAGED

I don’t have too many issues with this game, some are typical nitpicks but others are definitely more egregious. The world though colorful and varied is very “basic open world game” format, I was kind of hoping for some kind of expansion on a version of game we are wildly overly saturated with. The mini games like MobTV and races (which make a comeback from the original) are great but the typical icon littered map is a little draining at times. Which brings me to the endgame because with consideration of just how last gen this game seems to be design wise, I fear they didn’t think about something as “modern” as having an endgame model outside of the season pass and totally unnecessary “live service” content drops. I feel like they missed their own mark and could’ve really populated the world with quite a few more enemies but instead, there are a lot of times where it’s actually quite isolated even in some intriguing areas.

Oh, and every situation that yields dialogue in the open world is wildly repetitive like the writers could not be fucked to give the character anything more than the one decent line you get to hear when approaching a mutant nest, gas station, or bandit hideout or the mobile trader oh my god it’s absolutely torturous especially when you don’t feel like returning to a town and they typically come around fairly consistently.  

Back to the Icarus flying bike thing. Mother Fuck that thing can be absolutely unbearable. You see the right trigger merely starts the engines with minor altitude control, the left trigger lowers yourself. The vehicle is supposed to identify altitude and the height of oncoming structures and mountain faces on its own and adjust automatically. But it doesn’t and you’re often sitting there like a fucking idiot ramming into every mountain and building you come across. Why didn’t they map an ascend and descend control to the face buttons? How did no one catch how lopsided that thing controls?

Let’s continue to discuss vehicles, shall we? I talked about the good of the actual combat and the weapons it comes with. What I didn’t talk about was how the controls for said vehicles go from tight and responsive to sludgey and “too fast for the game”. It’s like the vehicle is going too fast for your controller. So many times I’ve gone sailing over the cliffside curve or undercutting and completely killing my momentum. The margin for error is really thin. 

The progression system for weapons is...suspect. On the surface, it’s deep, you unlock tiers of upgrades with feltrite and then use upgrade/mod tokens to select the actual mod itself. It seems really unnecessary to have to purchase the ability to spend your tokens to upgrade your weapon. Just typing that made my brain fuzzy, it’s too many steps. At least with the skills each tier in itself comes with a boost to that specific skill but with weapons, you’re literally just adding steps for now real reason. Thankfully there’s no connection to monetization or anything like that. What it does have though is a premium currency for weapon skins which....whoopie...but thankfully that really is the extent of it. Not that it’s okay at all. 

Conclusion

People are gonna compare this game to Far Cry New Dawn and I don’t believe many should give too much thought to that comparison. Outside of the bright post-apocalyptic setting (an aesthetic Rage 2 established first for the record), I feel like Rage 2 is more consistent in what it sets out to deliver. Not to mention the combat is just head and shoulders better in Rage 2 and if you go in knowing you won’t leave with a story that changed your life or even really impact you at all but instead expect a white knuckle shooter designed to keep you on your toes and keep the kill count increasing. This game is fun and once this goes on sale there will literally be no excuse. 

tl;dr I give Rage 2 an 7 but I can’t stress this enough this is one of the best First Person Shooters I’ve ever played from a mechanics standpoint. The game appears to be this good despite the rest of the game design and execution. 

[twitchesandstitches]

Another Adventure... Again.

In a universe, sewn together like the Frankenstein monster from all kinds of different universes that was either destroyed or left after The Cataclysm, lived many people and creatures. Creatures and people from far and wide, from formly many different universes, all now living together in one. From the the noble transformers, to the alien gems and lizardmen, to the beastly orcs, to the strange trolls, to kryptonians, to creatures known as pokemon, to the mighty rahis, skakdis and matorans, to the mysterious eldar, to the brutish skaarjs, gnaars and aludran reptiloid, the money-happy vortixxs and zorgs, the peaceful kleers and gungans and many others.

It’s not entirely clear what caused The Cataclysm, but what is known is that the vast majority of multiple universes was destroyed or wiped out. What else happened, was that pokemon went from the ordinary once we all know and love, to be mutated into giant mutants and monsters, and similar things happened to other creatures, like how rahis suddenly got a craving for the sacred kanohi masks and went full on feral and berserk, or how lycanthropy and vampirism spread violently and turned people into monsters, with the only population of infected who retained their humanity was those of The Dark Planet. It didn’t help that demons was suddenly let loose and started to destroy everything, and that Mental and his horde started to wreaking havoc on a large scale, as well as other things. How all of this happened as well as everything else, is left up for debate and research, but eventually was the gods and goddesses able to pull the universe back together, somewhat at least, and did their best to fix what they could. A lot of the damage and such was still left over from The Cataclysm, but the universe was once more inhabitable. The only creatures who didn’t really suffer from this, was the creatures knowns digimons, who kept themselves to cyberspace and also strengthened the barrier between their world and the real world to ensure that the damage wouldn’t carry over, or at least minimize it.

This is the universe that our little adventure will begin, and it so happens that our friend, who we will be following today, hates adventures, well to bad for her, because she’s getting dragged into this one as well. She lives in a house on one of the city worlds.

Her name is Odina.

A human woman of Algonquian heritage, standing at only 4’5 feet tall, but is well build, a bit round with a bit of belly, not big, but still noticeable and a bit of a short stack, was sitting in her couch, just relaxing and playing video games. She had a bit of a punk look to her, with her choice of jeans, grey-blue shirt, high boots, earrings and dark green jacket, as well as the red frontbang she has in her short brown hair. She also wears square glasses.

Odina could be described as a bit of a grump, sullen and kind of a lovable grouch. Ironically she sees herself as having a cool, punk badass, unemotional vibe to live up to, but in reality she’s a sleepy dork who is too laidback to be fierce, and one of the people who knows this, is her friend Sariel Isda.

Odina and Sariel Isda has been friends since they were kids. Sariel Isda can be a bit hard to classify if you meet her for the first time, since she’s made of pure magic, but is actually a demoted angel who was reborn on Odina’s world to get a new start, and yet for some reason is classified as a fairy. So yeah it can get kinda confusing sometimes.

In terms of appearance had Sariel Isda a bit of each. Her lower body consisted of a short tail, kinda like those classic cartoon ghosts. Four arms with the lower pair looking like normal human hands and the upper ones more like large claws. She has six wings that was in the shape of that of an angel, but had the texture and bug-like appearance of a fairy. She sometimes has a neck and sometimes she don’t, it seems to just come and go as she feels like, so her head was just floating above her body some times. Her hair is coily, thick and massive, almost like a mane. It does straighten out whenever she’s angry or aggressive, almost making her look like the classic banshee, but it returns to it’s normal coily state when she calms down and also stops floating everywhere as well. She had seven eyes, three on each side of the face and one big one in her forehead, her upper torso and lower body were detached just like the head, and just in between those two sections was a large orb floating. Just like with the neck, sometimes these three pieces are connected and sometimes they just float. The majority of her body was either primarily blue or secondary purple, with the only exceptions being the large orb and her eyes, which were all green, with the seventh eye in her forehead being golden.

Sariel floated towards Odina and laid besides her. “What are you playing?” She asked her.

“Just Minecraft. I’m currently exploring to see the new biomes and such that has been added.” Odina said with a little smile.

“Cool, can i play too?” Sariel asked. She wanted to point out how Odina was smiling, but she felt like being sweet today. She did find it adorable and funny whenever Odina tried to act up.

“Of course, i’ll activate split screen and you take the other controller.” Odina said and prepared Sariel to join the game.

Sariel logged into the game and grabbed her controller. “I don’t remember Minecraft looking like this.” She said as she looked at how the world looked.

“Oh, that’s because i’m using the “resource pack A'therys Ascended” to give the game a different appearance. I also downloaded Galacticraft so that i at some point can build myself a rocket and either build my own space station of calmly explore other places.” Odina explained to her. Odina was more into crafting games and casual stuff, not so much for hardcore grinding and all that. Just a game where she could go about her own business like she wants to. Though she’s also a fan of platformers and racing games.

In the game they travelled through the ice spikes biome. Sariel was quite impressed with how it all looked. It had been a while since she last played.

After a bit they left the ice spikes biome and entered a regular snowy tundra biome where they encountered a village. The two girls decided to put up shop here and build a house. Sariel stod for most of the house building while Odina explored and did whatever peared into her brain.

While Sariel was building their home. She swore she saw something off in the distance. She shrugged it off and continued building, might just have been the new snow biome mob called a “stray”.

Odina, while searching, found a pillager outpost. “Hey, Sariel, look what i found.” She said. “What’s that?” She asked. “It’s a pillager outpost. It’s something they’ve added. This also means there’s a chance for the village we live in now to be raided, so we should prepare defenses.” She replied, and Sariel nodded.

Sariel began building a fort around the village, as well as making sure it was as lit up as possible to lower the chance of hostile mobs spawning inside. She saw something move in the distance again, and this time she could tell that it’s body was to thick to be a stray and it moved like a player before disappearing again. “Did you see that?” She asked, which made Odina a bit confused. “See what?” She replied. “Well, i saw something walk in the distance, but it moved like a player and it was to thick to be a stray.” Sariel explained. “We’re the only players on the server, and none of my mods adds a mob that walks like that.” Odina said back, not sure how to respond, she mostly thought that Sariel just saw things.

However, after a few seconds, when Odina had returned to the village, a flash of flight suddenly erupted from the screen. One would be able to hear Odina yell “Are you kidding me right now?!” as it went on. Soon enough, both Sariel and Odina found themselves in a snowy region. It took a bit, but eventually was Sariel able to figure out that she had been sucked into the game, if the blocky terrain was anything to go by. Odina had figured it out right away.

Sariel looked down at her body, while she stayed mostly the same, she was more “human” shaped now. The orb that used to be her belly was now a regular belly, a bit on the chubby side, and her body was no longer detachable and was connected in the same way as it would a regular human or elf. Her wings were gone too, and she now only had two arms instead of four. Besides that everything was the same.

“YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME! DID I SERIOUSLY GET DRAGGED INTO ANOTHER ONE OF THESE SO-CALLED “ADVENTURES”?!?!” Sariel heard Odina shout, and she ran towards her friend. Odina was covered in snow and clearly angry and grumpy about being roped into another adventure, honestly she just wants to relax and play her games dang it!

They looked around and  saw that all of the mobs and villagers were no longer made of blocks. The world itself was still.

After Sariel helped her up, they were approached by a mysterious figure. “I’m very sorry about this, but i needed help, and was kinda desperate.” He said. Odina looked up at the tall man, and realised that this person was none other than Herobrine himself.

“HELP YOU?! YOU’RE F!”#¤KING HEROBRINE!” She shouted, clearly scared at the current moment. “Wait, let him speak.” Said Sariel and helped cool down Odina.

“Yeah, i guess i do owe you guys an explanation. Well to begin with, i’m not evil, that’s a common misconception. Villainbane isn’t evil either. As for why you’re here, it’s because i need help. I am trapped here, and both Null and Entity_303 is on the loose. I guess you’ve heard the stories about how i tortured players? Those aren’t true, i’m one of the good guys! Whenever i appear, it’s to try and either fight of those two or to warn people, sadly this caused people to think I’M the villain. Anyway back on track, Null is the one who keeps me trapped here, and i wish to be free, but we also have to stop him, because if we don’t, this will be his game, and he might not stop with simply that either. I’ve already heard him planing to make deals with creatures such as the hell beast Red, BEN, several digimon warlords and so on. Basically he’s forming his own digital mafia that could take control over the entire Net Ocean and beyond if we don’t stop him.” Herobrine explained to them.

That was quite a bit to take in, but both Odina and Sariel got the memo across. Odina was wondering why he choose specifically them, there were other people who were playing at the moment and such. “So how do we stop him?” Asked Sariel. “I’m not to sure, but we should get some gear for you two and get started.” Herobrine said. “Mind helping me get rid of that Pillager outpost and get those iron golems to town? We might need them.” Said Odina. “Sure thing.” he replied and went off with Odina who put on her iron armor.

Sariel took Odina by the shoulders before they left. “Are you okay?” She asked her. “Just slightly annoyed that i once again have been dragged into another of these so called adventures. At least this time, i can do regular stuff while we wait, since the game mechanics are still in full function on us. So at least it’s not as bad as the other ones i’ve been roped into before, so there’s that.” Odina replied. Sariel simply nodded and watched her walk off towards the pillager outpost.

Sariel remained behind and continued to built, it was pretty much like actually playing it, but more first-personish, well more first person than it already was. While she did that, was Herobrine and Odina out and pillaging the pillager outpost, killing all of the illagers in the outposts and looting EVERYTHING, while also freeing the iron golems they had captured, which Herobrine helped bring back to the village. Herobrine was also the one to kill the captain to make sure that neither Odina or Sariel got hit by Bad Omen, since he was supernatural in the “correct way”, he was able to remove the effect from himself easily.

When they came back, did they help with the building. Villainbane also showed up shortly where she helped out, though she did not stay for long. Having the potential of facing Null was a bit to much for her. Herobrine did not blame her, he understood it clearly, and she did have a bad history regarding Null. A very bad history.

After a bit of time was the fort around the village built and so was their house, and the extra iron golems should be able to protect the village incase either an event happens or someone is able to get over or around the fort somehow. Sariel also made some snow golems to help protect. They did live in a snow biome anyway, so why not? They all three proceeded to mine for ores and materials. Odina did ask why Herobrine didn’t just abuse his powers, to which Herobrine explained if he used his powers to much, he could end up attracting Null and Entity_303 to their location before they’re even ready.

Odina was pretty happy that they could still just explore for the moment. This “adventure” so far hasn’t been to bad, since she could just explore and do regular things at the moment, instead of exploring dangerous temples or fighting giant demons or being on a time limit or anything like that. Sariel was both scared and excited, this was her first adventure. For some reason, while Odina constantly gets dragged along on adventures, even though she doesn’t want to, but it ends up happening anyway, Sariel herself for some reason never got to come on any of them, but she was always ready to make Odina some hot chocolate for when she got home.

After a few days of mining they finally got enough diamonds to make full sets for all of them. While Odina and Sariel got themselves some diamond swords, Herobrine used a little bit of his powers to create a military war pickaxe. He had his tastes. Sariel and Herobrine became pretty good friends, while there was still a bit of a bridge between him and Odina. Odina was a bit aloof.

A bit more time has passed and Sariel noticed that there was phantoms outside, but they only appear when a player haven’t slept for a long time. It was then she looked around. She found Herobrine still asleep so it wasn’t him. She looked at Odina then, and discovered that she had bags on her eyes and rushed to her. “When was the last time you were asleep?” She asked panicking. “Don’t know.” Odina simply said, not really seeming to bother. “You can’t do this to yourself!” Sariel said as she tried to take Odina away from her work, “You need to get some rest!” she continued. “There’s no need for this! Just let me continue, the sooner we complete this “quest” of ours, the faster we can come home.” Odina replied.

Sariel knew that if she continued like this, things would end bad, even after returning home. She would not let Odina overwork herself like this, she would make Odina rest, even if she had to make her! She grabbed Odina’s cheeks and gave the woman a kiss on the lips. Sariel isn’t aware of this, at all actually, but so far she was the only one that Odina would allow and was comfortable to be kissed on the lips by. Odina herself wasn’t sure why that was, she was very confused by this as well. Sariel expanded the kiss so Odina’s head entered her maw, as she worked on getting the rest of her down. Odina was shorter then Sariel, but a lot broader. Sariel swallow Odina majestic breasts, her slightly chub belly (not as chub as her own), her wide and powerful hips and finally slurped up her legs and send her down into her belly. It was a different feeling, since her belly no longer was orb shaped and was like that of an ordinary human in terms of shape and build.

Odina would protest, but stopped herself, instead just sitting down all grumpy until her eyelids closed on their own. The phantoms outside began to slowly disappear. Sariel rubbed her belly gently before going back to work. They were working on getting experience points to enchant their weapons.

A few more days pass, and Herobrine began to notice a pattern between Sariel and Odina. He walked up to Sariel, who still had Odina in her belly, and wanted to ask some questions. “How long have you two known each other?” He asked. “Oh, we’ve known each other since we were kids!” Sariel replied happily. “Are you two close?” He continued. “Very close. We’re best friends! Though sometimes i wish we were more.” “What was that last part?” “Nothing, just mumbling.” “Do you think it’s possible that Odina like-like you? You two have known each other for so many years now, like really many years, and considering her personality, it seems a bit out of character of her to just, ALLOW, you to kiss her, unless she might have a thing for you.”

Sariel began to blush from that last one, only squeaks being able to escape her. She suddenly felt a tingle inside her belly and before she knew it, Odina had eaten her from the inside, absorbed her into her own body. Odina had the power to absorb magic, either neutral or sapient. Odina was also red in the face. “We’re just friends buddy, don’t you dare throw statements like that around!” She said in an embarrassed-angry voice. Herobrine was both shocked and surprised when Odina suddenly appeared like that after having slurp-absorbed Sariel. Though afterwards he just let out a little chuckle and turned around and went back to work. Odina was about to follow him, only to get her hips stuck in the door. “Oh, !”#¤ me, why does this have to keep happening to me, even when i haven’t absorbed any magic?” She asked herself annoyed. She could feel Sariel move around in them, and she let her out and her hips immediately shrank back to normal.

They almost fell over each other when Herobrine suddenly came rushing towards them at high speed. “THEY ARE COMING THIS WAY!” He shouted, clearly referring to Entity_303 and Null. However, Herobrine could also feel something else approach them. Through cyberspace. Soon, a digital portal opened up, and a short, but curvy, woman with aquatic features stepped through. It was Ranamon.

“What are you doing here Ranamon? What does the Cobalt Stingers want this time?” asked Odina bitterly. There are many factions in this broken-crossed universe, both small and big, and one of the more well known ones were the Cobalt Stingers, basically glorified pirates, lead by the troll Vriska, who takes and do whatever they want, while claiming to be “stylish”. Herobrine stepped in though. “She’s no longer a part of the Stingers. I know about that, and i know about the group she’s now a part of. What i want to know is, what do they want here?” he asked Ranamon, who replied with “My boss wanted me to take care of Null and Entity_303. She knows the threat that those two propose. I was the only digital creature that could easily slip in, so i was send in to try and stop them. For now at least, they’re working on making the gate bigger.” “They could at least have hired the bounty hunter Reapermon, or an army of mercenary tankmons, or even the D-Brigade or The Three Muskeérs!” Said Herobrine with a face palm, they did not know just WHO they were dealing with. Ranamon took note though and send the message back to Shockwave and the others, back at the Task Force X headquarters. Task Force X could be compared to an altered version of suicide squad, except less murdery and less about the members being meat shields and more about redemption, atonement and secret missions. Shockwave was one of these people who ended up with this group, and ever since then, has he become more and more like the beloved senator he once was so many years ago, but also a bit of a troll (not literally like Vriska or Nepeta, but as in he likes to mess with people, such as giving Reyes pineapple on pizza).

They all simply nodded to this, Odina still did not trust her, and Sariel was skeptical. The only one who really trusted her, was Herobrine. Not that she blamed them, while she wasn’t the biggest criminal or influence from within the Cobalt Stingers, she still did her fair share of bad stuff and harm. Back then she had to use a robot body to upload herself into in order to interact with the real world.

“I have some spare armor you can get.” Said Herobrine and handed it to her, she thanked him and put it on right away. The diamonds of Minecraft was many times stronger than and other diamond found throughout the universe.

Soon enough, the door flew across the room, as a shadowy figure entered the room, who was black as night, dark as void, with little to no features besides a humanoid form of shadows. He was void, he was Null. The other figure was a person, he was a white-hooded figure with two bloodshot red eyes, and everything under his hood was dark, but unlike Null, you could tell he had form and shape like a person, or at least a humanoid creature. He was Entity_303.

Null began to speak with a voice that send shivers down the three girls’ and Herobrine’s spines, even Grimlock, Undyne and Shockblast would have shivered in fright if they had heard it. “Well, well, well. What do we have here? Herobrine has gotten himself some friends? That’s so charming, but you know you can’t leave, this is your home, and you belong to me. I’ll let you keep them, they’re not going anywhere either, they’ll stay here too.” the shadowy figure spoke, making them all gulp in fear. Entity_303 simply laughed at their reactions, finding it enjoyable.

Herobrine readied his military war diamond pickaxe, and the others prepared their swords as well. “It seems like you need to be disciplined once more little Hero’, and so does your friends. Not that i mind. I enjoy to hear your screams and when you plead for mercy. I’ll make sure that the blood runs fresh. This might send a good mental message to your friends here.” Null said calmly, like he had nothing to fear, and that might just be true.

“Let me take care of them. You promised me i could do it next time, my Lord.” Entity_303 asked Null, who nodded in response. “Go ahead.” He said.

Entity_303 pulled out a large scythe and went on the offensive. Targeting Sariel first, but Odina just blocked it in time with a shield. “Nice block.” He said in response.

“Herobrine, a little help here?” Odina half shouted. “On my way, Entity_303 is the easier to deal with. He’s mostly using hacks, so his actual skills aren’t to high.” He replied back to her, before sinking his military war diamond pickaxe into Entity_303’s shoulder, causing him to groan and roar in pain.

Null just watched as Entity_303 fought against the others. Ranamon summoned a blast of water and hit Entity_303 with it, and send him flying out of the room and into the streets of the village. Both the snow golems and iron golems almost immediately jumped on him to attack him. “I knew those golems would be of great help.” Said Odina to herself, as she and the others ran out to continue to fight him.

Meanwhile outside of the game, another person had just entered. A massive lime-green woman with a vaguely humanoid body, her body composed of a constantly shifting amorphous mass; new features continually drift in and out of being, additional limbs are common. Overall she has a fairly solid, thick build, but she’s just slim enough to qualify as curvy instead. Black veins streak across her body, especially wherever she is about to change form. All her body is extremely soft, but not to the point of being liquid. She’s still solid, just… extremely wobbly. She’s got a lot of subtle details of marine life in general: gills, the sheen of scales, and so on, but she appears to base her form specifically on turtles and octopi in general. Her face is mostly featureless; huge, plump lips, several sets of eyes in fairly random places, and a slight swell where humans would have a nose. She does have several thick tentacles where humans would have hair. Below the waist, her body is a mass of tentacles, notably thicker than her upper body; she can grow any number of these, and her arms are a similar part of tentacles. She had pseudopods instead of fingers, with very dexterous cillae; she can grow fingers, but prefers not to. Her name was Lilisheb the Shoggirl. Odina tends to be the more practical and sensible between the two. Odina and Sariel also gets sandwiched into her body a lot.

Lilisheb was a good friend of both Odina and Sariel, and she came over to see if they wanted to hang out and play video games or something. She looked around the room and couldn’t see either Odina or Sariel anywhere. She did notice something though. The TV screen was cracked. She could see some minecraft players fighting in their blocky fighting style. Though she did think that some of the skins looked very much like Odina and Sariel, as well as Ranamon and there was also one with a Herobrine skin, who all seemed to be fighting this player with a shadowy skin in a white rob and red eyes. The robed player seemed to be a hacker of some sort, going of how he was just flying and running around.

Lilisheb went ahead and checked the controller curiously, only for a sudden bright light to invelop her as well. In panic she tried to get away, but it was to late, she to was sucked into this world as well.

Lilisheb fell through the skies and landed right on top of Entity_303, crushing him under her massive, yet soft, body. “W-what’s going on?” She asked randomly. “Welcome to another adventure that neither of us wanted.” Said Odina who looked somewhat surprised to see her. Suddenly was Lilisheb lifted up by an angry Entity_303 who both lifted and threw her away, straight towards Odina, she tried to stop herself from being crushed, but Lilisheb was to big for that. She was quick to remove herself from Odina though.

Sariel flew in and dropped kicked Entity_303 in the face. Sending him flying. “I’ve never been able to do that!” She said excited, she was pretty happy about having legs right now.

Odina took a look around. “Guys, we’ve come pretty far away from the village and our little golem army. We should be careful.” She said in a bit more worried tone. She looked around and spotted a big lake of lava and ran towards it. “It seems like his biggest skill is in his hax, we could maybe trick him into being pushed into the lava.” She stated. Herobrine soon arrived as well. “That’s a good idea! As Fart Garfunkel said “Let’s cook him up good”.” He stated with a childish smile.

Entity_303 spotted them. They were all standing in a group, Ranamon had joined them as well. He jumped towards them, his scythe standing high, ready to slice down on them as he flies towards them. He was getting near them and he readied to strike, and immediately fell into the lava on his own by accident.

The entire group began to laugh at the sight of what just happened. “Are you serious?” Asked Sariel still laughing. “After all that!” Said Odina chuckling. “FAIL!” Shouted Ranamon. “Again, in the words of Fart Garfunkel; “See what did i say? No skill!”, ha!”. They all continued to laugh, until a hand erupted out of the lava, and Entity_303 started to pull himself out. He was very angry and the others immediately shutted up with the laughing. “I’m sorry, what was that?” He said bitterly. “Nothing.” replied Lilisheb nervously.

Entity_303 charged out of the lava and started to attack again, striking out against Ranamon who was quick to grab Lilisheb and use her as a shield. She in return screamed in fear. “Calm down you’re indestructible!” Said Ranamon, as she just blocked his scythe in time. Lilisheb smacked him away with her large hands, though it barely seemed to do anything to him. Herobrine teleported to Lilisheb. “Put this on.” He said and handed her some diamond armor and a sword. Even if she didn’t really NEED the armor, she’s practically indestructible.

Ranamon was fighting with Entity_303 in a one-on-one fight, and it was here that he spotted something. He wanted to try something, using his hacks, he was able to “corrupt” the everyone, except for Ranamon who seemed to be immune, which was odd, since she should have been the easiest to effect, being made of pure data and all that. It was also here that he noticed her eyes, they were the same as his own.

He teleported himself and Ranamon further away from the others. “Interesting. I didn’t expect to see you again, my daughter.” He said, much to the shock of Ranamon. “What are you talking about? We have no connection, nor have we met before!” She said bitterly. “You don’t think so? Take a look at your eyes and than at mine. I created you, i stole a portion of the ancient legendary warrior of water, combined it with that of a weather program and my very own data. Why else do you think you’re so powerful or have it so easy hacking into anything mechanical? You have inherited that from me.” He said in a chilling, sinister and prideful voice, like a mad scientist who’s a bit to happy about his creation, and Ranamon felt a chill go down her spine. His focus was caught off when a large red claw smacked Entity_303 away. Ranamon looked up and saw two giant monster. Kuwagamon and Kabuterimon. “What are you two doing here?” She asked in surprise. “The scientist of the Task Force X, Soundwave, said you might need help, so he send us to aid you.” Kabuterimon replied. “Took him long enough to open that stupid gate honestly.” Said Kuwagamon. Ranamon looked at them both for a moment. She hoped they could keep themselves calm. Kuwagamon and Kabuterimon had a great known rivalry with each other. She just hoped they could push that aside for now. “Do you two think you can hold him for a bit? I need to make contact with Shockwave.” She asked them, both nodding in response and went after Entity_303 who was fighting Odina and the others.

While all the others were fighting Entity_303, made Ranamon contact with Shockwave. “Shockwave come in. Do you hear me?” She asked over the communicator. “Yes i can hear you. What’s the problem, besides you’re fighting a hacker-god?” Shockwave replied, keeping track of what’s going on from his screen in his lab. “Can you find any info regarding Entity_303 and me? Is it really possible that he is responsible for creating me?” She asked in a slightly worried tone. “I’ll take a look into it. For now, you just focus on trying to get rid of him and this “Null” creature.” He ordered before starting to look up information about the two of them. “Understood.” Ranamon said, before going back to help the others. She still had a bad feeling about this whole ordeal.

Odina ran towards Sariel. “Sariel, can you focus all of you arcane energy into this sword?” She said and pointed at her own blade. Sariel nodded, already knowing what she was planning. Sariel flew into Odina’s sword and it began to glow bright. Odina, now with the charged up sword with Sariel inside, charged forward, while Entity_303 was to busy fighting both Herobrine and Kuwagamon, and impaled him in the back with it.

Entity_303 let out a blood curdling scream, which only grew worse as Sariel started to release herself from the blade, her arcane energy streaming through Entity_303’s entire body. Her began to glow more and more, until he was steaming white like a white dwarf star and exploded like a supernova, sending Odina, Herobrine and all the others flying. Left from where the explosion was, sat only Sariel on the ground, exhausted and tired from what just happened.

Odina went over to her and picked her up. Odina could tell that she was out cold.

Null was still around and with Sariel in this state, she would not be safe. Odina took the opportunity and absorbed Sariel into her body, growing greatly in width and mass. Though not much taller.

Shockwave made contact with Ranamon again. “Ranamon! Null is still there! I’m afraid that you’ll need more than what you’ve got now! I’ll send some digi-orb ups to upgrade you all!” He shouted in what sounded like panic. Ranamon wasn’t sure what was going on, but she could tell that it was going to be very dangerous, and most likely deadly.

They all heard what sounded like clapping, and they looked up and saw Null walk towards them. “Well done,” he said in his calm yet threatening tone, “you managed to defeat Entity_303, at the cost of one of your own. I am very impressed. Herobrine usually is close to dying when he manages to fight him off, but this time, you all made it and only got a little bit tired. Though the question is; are you prepared for nothing?” he stated, before at blinding speed charging into Herobrine and send him flying into a nearby snowy mountain wall. He was gasping for air when he landed, Null had hit him hard, as bits of blood came out of his mouth.

Kuwagamon went on the attack, but Null easily grabbed the large insect’s arm and flung him into Kabuterimon like he was nothing.

Null ran forward, preparing to strike Odina, but Lilisheb jumped in front of her despite her great fears. Null’s fist hit her in the stomach, and for the first time in life, was Lilisheb actually bleeding. Lilisheb looked down in both confusion and horror. She had been on many adventures and had always been categorized as being indestructible, which was why she was always used as a shield even if she didn’t like it, she couldn’t break. She was a shoggoth after all. But right here and right now, she was bleeding, someone actually managed to harm her!

Odina looked in horror as well as her friend was wounded. “I-i don’t understand! Nothing should be able to harm her!” She said in horror.

Null laughed a bit and looked at Odina. “You just said the answer. “Nothing” can hurt her, and i am nothing. I am void. It was out of nothing you all came, and it’s into nothing you all will go. The people of the multiverse are builders, but look into their hearts, and you will find that they also have the power to destroy. I am that power, i am destruction, and i will destroy you. But first a little history lesson. When i say i am nothing, i am being literal. I existed before The Great Four, Azathoth, zeedmillenniummon, Primus and God, even created the omniverse. Shoggoths like Lilisheb over there can’t be hurt by anything that came after The Great Four created the omniverse and the Elder Ones, but since i came before, i am more than capable to hurt creatures such as her. For i am nothing, and nothing can hurt her. As for why i am here, The Great Four didn’t like how i kept consuming the universes they created, so they decided to imprison me here. You may not realize it, but minecraftians are among some of the most powerful creatures in the universe, being capable of lifting multiton of universes like nothing, living on planets that has black holes as their core and so on. Making them both the ultimate wardens, but also makes it so that these pocket worlds are the ones with the least amount of void in them, thus weakening me. Now then, now that i have told you all that. Should we get started?” He said, before preparing to strike again.

Lilisheb was scared and horrified. Sure, she was easily scared before, but this is very real. All the other times, deep down she knew she was indestructible, but not this time. This creature, could actually do her harm, and worse yet, none of them was safe.

Suddenly, two bright lights appeared in the sky, it was the digi-orb ups that Shockwave had send. They flew into both Kabuterimon, Kuwagamon and Ranamon. Their skin seemed to be ripped of, as they all digivolved to the next stage, and the missing skin was replaced with some new, alongside some new features. Ranamon had become a giant, kraken-like digimon called Calmaramon, while Kuwagamon had jumped over the perfect level and gone straight to ultimate, now taking the form of GranKuwagamon, Demon of the Deep Forest. Kabuterimon had done the same as Kuwagamon and went straight to ultimate, becoming HerakleKabuterimon, the Insect Kaiser.

The three digital kaijus jumped at Null, preparing to fight him with everything they got. Meanwhile could Odina feel that Sariel was regaining her strength more and more, growing inside her, causing her body and mass to increase more as well, adding a bit more power to her. Lilisheb, being a shoggoth, is already powerful, but she decided to unlock a greater portion of her power to fight Null, even though she was afraid of losing herself like Cthulhu and so many others did. Herobrine was Herobrine, so he just did what he was already doing.

From beyond the screen was Shockwave watching. He was in full blown panic and not sure what to do. No one else was able to be send in there to aid. Kuwagamon, Kabuterimon and Ranamon was the only digital lifeforms they had in the Task Force X, or at least at the moment, so sending reinforcements was out of the question. His thoughts were everywhere at once, as he watched them all fight Null, punching, smashing, stabbing, slicing, blasting, electrocuting, they threw everything at him. How could Null fight all these powerful creatures at once, and still look like he was having more fun than he was struggling? He was fighting against The Demon of the Deep Forest, the Insect Kaiser, the Legendary Warrior of Water, a powerful and ancient shoggoth, (while true Lilisheb didn’t have much combat experience or instinct, she was still powerful by any standards or meaning), a powerful human being powered by an angel and Herobrine himself, and yet he didn’t seem to slow down at all! It was than Shockwave remembered something that Null had said, and he got an idea. He went to the computer and started hacking every network and computer he could get his hands on.

HerakleKabuterimon, GranKuwagamon, Herobrine, Calmaramon, Odina, Lilisheb and Herobrine all battled Null, but even with their increased powers, they could barely do anything against him.

“It looks like your time is running ou-AARK!!!” Null suddenly shouted. The others looked in surprise as Null suddenly fell to the ground.

“What’s going on?” Asked Odina, and Herobrine looked at her with a smile.

“Calmaramon’s friend has hacked the entire network of Minecraft. He’s causing trillions of new worlds and servers to be spawned in by the second. Null’s powers are drawn from void, and every world and server lessons the amount of void that’s present, not to mention creating a sort of barrier to the void outside of Minecraft.” He replied with a hopeful smile as Null’s powers was weakening thanks to Shockwave’s actions. It wasn’t long before the entire network of Minecraft crashed in on itself, shutting it off from the outside worlds and universes.

“D-does this mean we might be able to defeat him?” Asked Lilisheb, who had begun to lose hope through the fight. The news made it return a little bit.

“Yes.” Answered Herobrine, and prepared his diamond military pickaxe.

Even though Null’s powers had decreased significantly, was he still a powerhouse of a creature.

The earth started to shake, as Null’s head suddenly shot out of his body, attached to a large void tendril. Soon many other tendrils erupted from his body, and the void and shadows flung up into the air. Null was now a whirling vortex of void, shadows and destruction. A screaming mash of tendrils, parts, objects and many other undistinquinsible things that could not be defined. All of it, twisting in and out of itself, going in all directions at once, and seeded out destruction like a horseman of the apocalypse.

Null summoned void-like creatures, that took the form of various creatures or people. Such as creepers, zombies, illagers, rahis, gnaars, skaarjs, aludran reptiloid, siths, demons and orcs, but also people such as Shockwave, Skullgreymon, Darth Vader, Megatron, Myotismon, Vriska, King Highblood, Ultron, Galactus, Thanos, The Joker, Darkseid, Doomsday, Yellow Diamond, White diamond, Cthulhu, Eliphas the Inheritor, Abaddon the Despoiler, Mugendramon and many others from all across the multiverse. There wasn’t one, he didn’t have access too. Including void clones of Odina and the others.

GranKuwagamon looked at HerakleKabuterimon and than at the others. “We’ll take care of Null’s army. The rest of you should finish him off!” He said, before flying towards Null’s army alongside his rival HerakleKabuterimon.

Odina, Lilisheb, Herobrine and Calmarimon looked up at Null’s highly unstable body. Between all the twisting and turning of no-existing mass of tendrils, parts, storms, vortexes and objects, they could see a mask with three holes in each cheek and two larger holes that seemed to be eyes, where dark yellow eyes pieced from, the mask itself was black and grey, almost as if it was infected. Thinking about it, the way the mask looked, reminded Lilisheb of some of the infected items, mostly masks, that made various creatures and people alike turn berserk right before The Cataclysm that tore the multiverse apart started, especially the rahis. Even some of the greatest and noble heroes was turned into killing machines by those things, maybe there was a connection here.

That was a thought for another day though, right now they had to fight in order to survive.

Six wings sprung from Odina’s back. Sariel was back to full power now, and was ready to help! She, along with the others, attacked Null, but kept at a distance, mainly using ranged attacks, in order to avoid being consumed by the endless vortex that was his body. He was far from defenseless though, as he used every weapon in his arsenal against them. Heat vision, laser vision, disintegration, fragmentation, poison, fear, anger, sleep, hunger, lightning, chain lightning, darkness, cyclones, gravity, illusion, confusion, magnetism, Mind Reading, molecular disruption, plantlife, plasma, Slowness, Sonics, stasis field, teleportation, vacuum, weather control, power scream and many more, he used them all!

suffice to say, after just a few minutes of fighting, where Odina and her friends already bleeding and gasping for air. This was not looking good.

Odina looked at Herobrine, he was laying on the floor, with his weapon besides him. She picked it up. She helped him up on his feet before giving it back. They all got up again and looked at Null, they could almost tell that he was gloating, as he openly showed his mask.

This was the opportunity they had unknowingly waited for, Odina just needed to give one look to the others and they knew what she wanted.

Odina took her blade, and filled all of Sariel’s energy into it before blasting it out in a beam of pure arcane energy. Lilisheb did her best to collect as much eldritch magic as she could, before following Odina’s footsteps and blasted it all towards Null’s mask. Calmaramon used one of WarGreymon X’s abilities and summoned the biggest Poseidon Force she could possibly manage before firing it at the direction of Null’s mask. Both GranKuwagamon and HerakleKabuterimon had been overrun by Null’s army despite their best effort, every time they had killed a thousand, a million more was ready to take their place, but GranKuwagamon aimed at Null and fires a barrage of explosive beams from his wings called “catastrophe”, as well as a large plast from his mouth called “dimension scissors” in the shape of its pincers. While HerakleKabuterimon fires his Giga Blaster. Lastly, Herobrine poured all of his strength and power into his diamond military war pickaxe and began to spin it around for a throw. All the beams fired hits Null’s mask, causing the entire whiling vortex that was his body to vibrate violently, and finally throws Herobrine his pickaxe with all his might and it hits Null right in the center. A loud crack can be heard, and soon the explosion disappears, and the pickaxe drops to the floor.

“You can’t destroy me. For i am, Nothing.” Null called one final time before the vortex, as well as the shadows, disappeared. Null was gone. At least it seemed so.

The army that had swarmed GranKuwagamon and HerakleKabuterimon had disappeared as well. The sky was clear once more, they all looked around. None of them could feel or sense the presence of Null anywhere.

A bright light began to appear and Odina felt herself suddenly being sucked through it, and not to soon after, she and Sariel had been separated and sat back on the couch in front of the tv-screen once more.

Odina looked down at herself, was it all a dream? No, the cuts and slashes was still there. She would have to get the blood cleaned up from her clothes after this, but for now, she just wanted so badly to relax now that this, in her opinion at least, stupid adventure was over! This had to be the one where she was the closest to dying, and properly also the most traumatising. Though she couldn’t relax yet, as the tv jerked and moved. “What now?” She asked annoyed and irritated.

Suddenly was Herobrine shot out of it and landed on the floor. He awkwardly got on his feet and looked down at himself, he almost seemed to cry, and Sariel couldn’t blame him. “I’m finally free!” He said in an overjoyed voice. Though his joy was interrupted when Ranamon was shot through the tv and hit him in the back, causing both to fall to the floor. “Sorry about that!” She said as she rose up, before realizing something. She was still in her original form, in the real world! Whenever digimons interact with the real world, after the barrier between the two worlds got thickened by a lot, it often has to be done through robots and such, to which they could upload and store their data into. There was only either a few cases or “loopholes” in which a digimon can enter the real world in their real forms. She wasn’t sure how, but apparently she had found one.

After a few seconds was it Lilishebs turn, her massive body hit all four of them when she was shot out, mushing them all under her soft body, yet big, body. She rose up quickly, looking down at herself. This so called “adventure”, had been the hardest for her out of everyone involved. There was still a few scars were blood could be seen. Odina and the others could understand if she wanted to stay hidden from the world or something for a while, because it was indeed terrifying. Sariel did her best to begin healing both Odina’s and Lilisheb’s wounds.

It was than Ranamon heard something and looked at the tv. It was pretty much jumping until it landed on it’s back, and she knew what was about to happen, she had completely forgotten about the other two! And now was both Kabuterimon and Kuwagamon, who both had returned to their normal forms like Ranamon had, erupting out of the tv, crashing right through the roof, like the kaijus they were, causing a little bit of panic to the people outside who saw them just suddenly erupt out of the building. Digimons weren’t, as stated before, commonly seen outside of their robot suits, and so it could cause a bit of panic when these semi-eldritch creatures suddenly appear in their true forms. Not to mention that the kuwagamon-specie is known for their aggressive nature and hunting habits.

Ranamon looked at the others in the room. Odina looked like she was about to explode. “Well, uh, i guess i gotta go, before people start calling the special forces on me and my friends.” She said in an awkward tone as she grabbed her phone. “Shockwave, please get us out of here and back to base. FAST!” she said in a slightly panicy tone. Soon enough, a purple train appeared, and Ranamon jumped inside, while Kabuterimon and Kuwagamon had to sit on the roof of it. Soon, the train, along with the three digimons, disappeared once again, leaving Odina and the others alone back in her half destroyed home.

“I’m so fucking happy this is over!” Odina said frustrated. “I kinda have to agree.” Said Sariel. Lilisheb simply nodded. Odina turned off the council and went to bed, while Lilisheb just laid down on the couch and began to read something random. She just grabbed a random book, which turned out to be a Donald Duck comic. Sariel went into the kitchen and prepared some coffee, and took some into Odina as well. She put Odina’s cup on the table, while she put her own on the drawer next to the bed. “That sure was something.” She said, looking at Odina who was still pretty angry. “Honestly, it was only because of you and Lilisheb that it was bearable.” Odina said out loud. “Want some Sari-pats?” asked Sariel. “Sure.” Odina answered with a little smile, as Sariel began to gently pat her. They were both exhausted and neither of them noticed that they both dozed of to sleep before long. There would be a bit of confusion the next morning though.

Meanwhile, back at the Task Force X’s headquarters, was Ranamon sitting with Shockwave. She looked rather worried. She finally rose her head and looked at Shockwave. “Is it true that Entity_303 is my father?” She asked concerned. Shockwave looked at her before talking. “Yes, that is true, but it shouldn’t matter. He wasn’t in your life up until now, and just because you have his eyes, doesn’t mean you have his soul. Your soul is your own, not his, yours. He is not close to be a family to you, even if you two share data, he is not your father!” Explained Shockwave, and he was kinda right. When it came to people she knew, Shockwave and Reyes both kinda felt like fathers to her, as they both took care of her and looked after her, even if Reyes’ dad-jokes can become quite annoying. Seriously most of the organizations founding comes from a “dad-joke jar” made specifically for him.

Ranamon looked up at Shockwave. “Thanks.” She simply said. “No problem kid.” He replied, as he watched her leave the room, most likely to either go relax after everything that happened, or to got to Harley Quinn for her therapist session. Shockwave knew though, that this would be a bit of a hard blow for her. He just hoped she could pull through.

(Twitchy thoughts!

this was an excellent read; thank you for going to the effort of writing this; it came out quite well and is an excellent, fun read!

You pretty much nailed Odina’s personality and how she generally interacts with others, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of the mods she mentions; I’ll probably wind up using them myself, should i ever play minecraft on the PC. her relationship with Sariel is very good and has a good contrast/complement vibe.

The huge fight, the scope going on here and the somewhat existential threat is the most true thing of Crossthicc’s vibe I can think of. This is how it should be going, honestly! Big, epic fights against cosmically horrifying entities of mysterious purpose and origin

from what i’ve gathered, Null drops some sort of hint or reference but, honestly, it went over my head? sorry, I’m not good at reading into things or noticing sub-text

minor side note; given that Herobrine isn’t actually a character in minecraft, you could make the argument that there are digital worlds within video games, perhaps using the basis of the game (mechanics and/or setting) to form the foundation of the world? good way to either do Digimon or having a similar set up?

[minrcrafter]

VersedMC [SMP] { 1.13.2 } { PlayerShops } { LWC } { mcMMO } { Jobs } { Achievements } { Tags } { RTP } { Villages }

Versed MC - 1.13.2 SMP

Discord link: https://discord.gg/kEyvVnK

IP: 158.69.118.88

We are a community of friends that share a common goal of creating a unique SMP experience. We are inviting players with that common goal in mind to join our community and help grow our server together, as we believe we have something really special for this server. Join our Discord to get whitelisted or post a quick bit here with the following format. For simplicity and clarity, I have provided an example (it wont take long, I will be frequently on Discord and this thread)

** If you post this in Discord, please post this under the #beta-app channel, thanks! **

IGN: InverseHD

Age: 19

Tell me something about you: I have played MC since 1.8 Beta and love SMP. I like RPG games as well, and am a web developer in the time whenever I want to be. I am friendly and easy to get to know, hope to see you around!

Suggestions (if any): Get a website!

Can you be a decent human being and just have fun with others alike you? Yes

Have you joined our Discord (if not will you)?: No and yes

Took me 20 seconds to type that, and that is an application I would accept.

P.S. if you didn't see our Discord link is https://discord.gg/kEyvVnK

Staff

Owner - InverseHD (thats me)

Admin - Tyrillian

Mod - (we are currently looking for one active player to be moderator)

Rules

You'll get the same rules if you type /rules in game, if you ever forget.

Most importantly, have fun

Be respectful and use common sense

Swearing in moderation

No advertising, including another server's (this does not include asking your buddy to go play mineplex, this is more don't come spam join this server, or come join my discord etc. Its just bad taste, get your own advertising):

IP

Discord

Website

Thats it, we like to keep it short and simple. If you're confused about these rules then this server may just be above your head and you should move along. If you were able to follow that, congratulations you're a competent person with common sense.

tl;dr the rules, don't be a stuck up moron and you'll have a good time.

Remember the reddit rules, and stick to them in-game too. It wont hurt you to treat other humans like humans and to behave with some respect.

When you first join....

You start with logs and food, plus $250 to buy and sell goods with other players. You may join up to one job at a time, managing these jobs with /jobs. You may set up to 3 homes, not including your separate village home. Village creation costs $1,000 and will allow for land claiming. Type /help or /inform if you have any questions, or message a staff member.

Typing /rtp or approaching the dock facing the boat in spawn will allow you to randomly teleport to the wild and you are free to begin your journey.

Current Features

Villages - /help villages

This is a more lightweight, casual land claiming plugin than Factions or Towny, which is why it was an obvious choice for us. Villages can have up to 25 land claims (currently, obviously this will change as needed) and a village home as well.

Random Teleport - /inform villages

The first time you join, you will go to the dock and click the random teleport sign. This will teleport you in a radius around the (0, 0) coordinate, so as to encourage community play as well as letting people go off on their own.

Jobs - /inform jobs

Players can join a plethora of jobs to earn money, and level up at their job to receive more income. It is a very lightweight but powerful plugin and an obvious choice for a server of this kind.

mcMMO - /inform mcmmo

mcMMO was an obvious choice, as it allows for abilities and skill building outside of jobs and achievements. It comes with many modifications that most seasoned Minecraft players are quite familiar with, such as repairing, salvaging, acrobatics, etc. It has a lot to do, and if you have any questions please ask! We will always be happy to help!

Custom Achievements - /inform achievements

In the new version of Minecraft, we are able to use the same interface as Minecraft's default achievements, and we sure did. We have added several starting achievements with plenty more to be added on the way. Rewards include money, experience, tags, and more as time moves on. Simply press ESC and click Advancements, finally clicking the Custom Achievments tab. This is where you are able to track your achievements.

PlayerLevels - /inform playerlevels

This is more of a simple indication of how much a player has played on the server. XP can be gained many ways such as completing achievements and more will be added soon.

LWC - /inform lwc

LWC allows players to have private chests, furnaces and other containers that only are accessible by the owner, and anyone chosen to have access. This also prevents players from destroying other players containers, as you can only break your own containers.

PlayerShops - /inform playershops

Our economy is solely based on bartering and trading. Players may buy and sell from other players shops, at prices set by the seller. To create a player shop, simply place a chest on the ground, place a sign on the chest, or one block away from the chest. On the sign, write:

* line 1 stays empty *

<quantity>

B <buy\_price> : <sell\_price> S

? (or you can put in the name of the item, but the question mark will autofill it. Type /iteminfo for the itemid)

Now players may buy and sell at your shop, and you can start to build your fortune!

Tags - /inform tags

Everyone knows about chat tags and our server is no exception. To go along with achievements, we have paired chat tags as well. More things will merit chat tags as time moves on so if you think something is worth it let us know and it just might make the cut!

Planned Features - Subject to change

dynmap

This will allow our server to host a live view of the entire map, so that you can explore where you would like to go or see other players villages.

RPG Campaigns

This is a very large undertaking and we understand the scale, and we hope you will understand that this will take time to develop. We are planning the first campaign right now, and it will have Quests, Dungeons, and MythicMobs that will be spread throughout the regular world. We will not rush perfection so this will be a more dedicated project in the future.

Voting

This is a more immediate change, and is just something to tick off of a todo list. Voting will give rewards such as money, items, playerlevels, experience, and in the future just maybe a rare questline.

Marketplace

Players will be able to rent out market spaces to buy and sell goods, with the added advantage of PvP being disabled there.

[forgottenrealmsrp]

Hello, I am very new to DnD and I would really like some tips on how to play and roll for certain things (Im not too good with examples) etc. etc.

Howdy! Mod Nate here coming at you with some Tips for Beginners. There’s a hell of a lot to cover that I cannot fit into one post (because, let’s be honest, that would be a nightmare), but I will try my best. So, without further ado, hold onto your butts.

The Three R’s

I find there are three main aspects to remember (and master!) when starting off in DnD or other such TTRPG’s. You can sort them into three categories: 

Rules,

Rol(l/e)s, and

Roleplaying

Of course there are heaps of other things to consider in game, but for a beginner, it can get overwhelming very quickly, so we’ll just stick to the Three R’s for now.

Rules

What better thing for a game than rules! The first thing you hopefully would have done if you were gearing up for your first game is to get your hands on a Player’s Handbook (For DnD 5e), or your RPG’s respective rulebook. Hobby stores, book stores, libraries, even video game shops might stock a physical copy of our favourite WotC volumes, but you can also secure them online wherever you may find them. 

Once you have your grubby little goblin hands on a handbook, give it to a friend, and have them read it to you. If that gets too boring, have them explain the rules in detail - you’ll need a pen and a notebook! If that is too time-consuming or - more likely - you don’t actually have any friends, you’ll have to settle for a hurried and often last-minute explanation of the core mechanics of the game, the finer details of which will be left unaddressed until you get your creative spirit crushed by your mean Dungeon Master, or local rules lawyer. 

(Remember kids, if you aren’t sure of where to locate one of these “rules lawyers”, simply talk out loud about your homebrew weapon or Pathfinder game, and they will be sure to find you!)

In this fabled Player’s Handbook you will find a fun breakdown and walkthrough of the game’s races, classes, and backgrounds, all of which you will need to read through several times and then immediately forget. Only after you have asked yourself “Which Bard School is going to make Sildaar Hallwinter not a steaming pile of crap?” for the fifth time in 10 minutes, can you move on to “equipment” and “rules”. Make sure to read these thoroughly, because you’ll learn them pretty quickly after your party’s Paladin once again forgets how many d10s to roll. It’s two, Derek. You asked the exact same question last round. 

Idiot. 

Rol(l/e)s

Once you manage to wrap your head around the rules, you get to the meat of the sandwich - rol(l/e)s. Whoever came up with this idiotic word hybrid (me) needs to report to their editor (also me) and get his ass whooped (still me). 

Now, I know you’ve gotten this far and thought “Wait, Nate, that may have rhymed but you haven’t actually given any tips yet?!??!?!?!!/1!?!?!?!?1?!???????????”. To that, I say yes (or no?), I have(n’t?) given you tips for how to play and roll for certain things, because the biggest tip I have for you is coming right up.

Wait for it.

You cannot build a dragon’s tower without strong foundations. 

Meaning: Only once you have “mastered” the rules and basics of roleplaying (and rolling!) will you be able to spread your beautiful dragon wings and soar as a damn good DnD player. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to learn and remember every single mechanic or rule in the book! Because that would be a nightmare and if you can do it, you will be God. No questions asked. But hey! People make mistakes, or remember things wrong, or guess incorrectly, or even make it up as they go along. Having the handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide on hand for these occasions will save everyone’s sanity at least once, but knowing when to draw the line between fairness and fun will make everyone’s play a whole lot better. 

So! Now that you’ve become God, rolling and role-ing (not a word) are your new best friends. And you know who makes the best friends? DICE! Just google it and have fun, kids, but remember that you have to eat and sleep somewhere warm and cozy tonight, so try not to build your hoard of shiny forbidden snacks too quickly, now. All you will need for starters is your standard 7-dice set: d4, d6, d8, d10*, d12, and d20.

*The d10 often comes in pairs to act as a percentile dice. The die with the ten’s (00, 10, 20, 30, etc.) will act as the ten’s place, and the other die will act as the one’s place. So, if you roll a 60 and a 9, you get a really funny number. If you roll a 00 and a 0, that’s 100! If you roll a 00 and a 1, however, that’s a 1. You die in game and you die in real life. Goodbye.

The handbook will tell you all the dice you will need to roll in order to both run the game, and make your character! That’s right! Maths begins even before the game does. Even Death themself cannot escape the point-buy system. Just submit. 

Stats are fun. 

What do they mean? What do they do? Who even knows what Constitution does?! I certainly don’t! But that’s where you’re in luck, bucko.

This post is already long enough without getting to the good stuff, so I’ll keep it simple. 

Strength - a measure of how well you can do stuff with your muscles. Skills like Athletics (aaaaaaand nope just athletics, huh, really? No fish-lifting skill? Huh? Cowards) will benefit from having some damn good muscles. Also you can stab stuff real good.

Dexterity - a measure of how deft, nimble, and stealthy one can be. Contributes to skills like Acrobatics and Stealth, unsurprisingly. If you can move good, you can groove good. I’d add a skill for dancing if I were you, WotC. 

Constitution - I lied before when I said I had no idea what constitution does, but it was only partly a joke. Constitution contributes to skills like not dying, staying alive, and stopping being dead. Sometimes it determines how much health you have. Sometimes it means you can drink an entire frog. Don’t ask.

Intelligence - Are you a smart cookie? Can you learn languages fluently in a short span of time? Can you destroy scores of defenceless troops with a single pillar of flame? Can you read? Are you kept awake at night by their screams? Intelligence makes you good (or not) at skills like History, Religion, Arcana, and being a nerd. Oh wait. No one is good at being a nerd. Sorry nerdlord. Also, if your intelligence is under 10, you can’t read! Just like me.

Wisdom - Not the smartest cookie in the shed? Like to eat leaves? You and me both, kid! Wisdom is a measure of your STREET SMARTS! so you can throw those nasty pervert kobolds off their rhythm. Unfortunately, starting equipment does not include a money clip. It makes you good at eating dirt and walking through forests and stuff. Also I think you can pet dogs really well?

Charisma - If you’ve ever played a bard, you would know what this is. If you haven’t played a bard, it’s not too late! Quick! Choose a Warlock or a Cleric if you want a Charisma based build! Choose the entertainer background if you must! -sigh- but if you insist, charisma is a measure of how easily you can quite literally charm the pants off a dragon. Also, sometimes you can roast people really well?

Having high skills is all fine and dandy, but the next tier of DnD player character power is owning your low skills. Have low constitution? Your tiefling is sickly or has a weak stomach! Low intelligence? Your character can’t read or write! Low charisma? You cause every single npc interaction to end with you being punched in the face. There is colour and interest in every aspect of your character, so make sure to let your character sheet represent your character as well as you can!

But how do you determine these stats?

Looking in your class description, you will see under the ‘Quick Build’ section the recommended stat scores, backgrounds and/or spells for that character. These are NOT mandatory, but I find them to be a helpful guideline for how to keep your character functional and, well, alive. Stat scores themselves can be determined a few different ways: Point-buy (I have no idea how this works but it looks like a lot of maths and that’s homophobic, so); Cascading, and rolling. 

Cascading (or at least that’s my name for it, I have no other way to describe it) is where you take the values 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 and assign each to one of your stats. For example, before adding racial stat modifiers, I could assign my barbarian’s stats as follows:

STR: 15, DEX: 13, CON: 14, INT: 8, WIS: 10, CHA: 12.

I may have a character-based reason for assigning my barbarian a relatively adequate Charisma score. Maybe he was a particularly intimidating character, or perhaps his iron-will makes his Constitution a 14. Maybe he likes to dance. You could have a particularly burly mage with a strength score of 15, just because you feel like it. Maybe your cleric is part of team sweet-flips? Or your monk could study tomes night and day to get her Intelligence to a lofty 17 points post-modifiers. Balancing stat scores so that you don’t die is awesome, but having a change to shout “YOU DO NOT SEE GROG!” and win 9 times out of 10? Priceless.

Rolling your stats is perhaps the most widely-used way to determine stats, but to be safe, ask your DM (or get crafty if you’re the DM!) about their preferred method. It’s pretty simple: roll 4d6 (the six-sided dice four times), noting down each individual roll. After four rolls, you cross out the lowest roll, and add the remaining three. Repeat five more times and you have some good good stats, bro! Don’t forget to add your racial stat modifiers before you assign your stat scores! 

Modifiers seem pretty confusing as a newbie, but there is a handy table in the PHB to help you keep track. Alternatively, you could subtract 10 from your score, and then half what you have left, making sure to round down! A score of 19 would have a modifier of +4 (19 - 10 = 9/2 = 4.5 ≈ 4, rounding down). A score of 8 would have a modifier of -1 (8 - 10 = -2/2 = -1). Pretty simple, right?

So now I think I can finally address whatever the F*$# I mean by ‘Roles’. What the heck is a role? Do you mean roleplaying? No, dear reader, I do not. A ‘role’ is what I like to call your position in the party. Because yes, on the unlikely occasion that you do manage to wrangle a group of people willing (or able) to play DnD with you, you still have to play with other kids, Derek. That means that the typical balancing applies. You cannot just have a 7-person party filled entirely by bards. Or bees. Though I would prefer the bees. Who would want 7 bards? That sounds like the start of a bad joke. 

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you have enough bases covered in the traditional party makeup that you won’t die immediately, but you also don’t have to deal with 7 goddamn bards, Derek, I swear to God-

You’ll want someone to hit stuff, someone to get hit, someone to help those who get hit, and someone to hit things when you don’t want to get hit. This could be solved any number of ways. Get creative, go hog wild. But not buck wild, Derek. I will not have the “Seven Buskateers” at my table again, do you hear me?!

This brings us to the finale. I’ve been writing this post for half an hour, and we’re finally getting to the good stuff. Thanks for stick with me so far. How about dropping your favourite stardew valley bachelor/ette down in the replies if you’ve read this far? Mine’s Elliot, because he’s beautiful and I love him, just like I love you. :3

Roleplaying!

It’s in the title! The very mechanics of the game! So, the question you’re asking me is: “Nate, how the Flippity Doo Daa do you roleplay?????????” 

And I reply, “How are you making those noises with your mouth? Where am I?! Who are you? Why can I hear each individual question mark even though they shouldn’t have a place in the mortal coil? What are you?!”

And then I tell you about my favourite thing to tell my own players. 

The easiest character to play is one that exists. So? What does that mean???

It means that YOU, my dead, dear nerd, can’t just pull a self-insert every single dang game, Damn it Derek! No one LIKES YOU! GO HOME! You have this opportunity to think of a fun, unique concept, and roll with it. So, how can you create the next Taako, or Nott, or Yashee’rak or Caduceus? 

If you have a concept to work from, that’s great! If not, start from the ground up. Who is your character? What are their likes, dislikes, loves, hates, loyalties, vendettas? I often like to establish both a backstory and a goal for them to accomplish, the simpler the better, to get you on the right track. Perhaps a Neverwinter begger wishes to open their own tea shop in Ba Sing Se? A cursed child of an angel and a demon takes it upon themself to avenge their brother’s death? A simple farm girl falls in love and follows her princess Buttercup across Faerûn? You name it!

Some good questions to ask yourself about your characters personality could also include:

What would they kill for?

What would they die for?

What would they watch someone else die for?

What are some rumours your party members would have heard about your character?

What would they think of your favourite meme?

How do they treat their mum? How would they treat your mum?

Do they have any recurring nightmares? Why?

Etc. Etc. Think of them as a real being, with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears! The more detailed you can get in theory might help in the long run. If you find yourself deviating from these details, however, don’t sweat! That’s a character’s natural development and progression as a character! In fact, if things don’t change as you play, you might have to have a look at your play style. Loosen up. No one is one emotion their entire lives. Characters lie! They hide things and change details and cheat and steal! But they also act kindly, even randomly, and change and grow. Encourage that. Let them grow. They (and your party members!) will thank you for it!

I think that’s all I have in me for now, and oh man there are so many more things I could mention. DMing in itself will have to wait for another day, of course, but I hope this helped! I’m going to die now. 

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Fast Forward.

I hope this appeases @internallydeceased MWAH - Mod MBD. 

I will find a link to all parts and post them with the request as soon as I get chance to search them all out, thank you lovelies for your patience. 

The knocks came intermittently, but Claire didn’t move to open the door. Twenty-four hours later and Jenny had given up trying to get Claire to come out of the room, leaving her to her own devices.

Jamie hadn’t come up at all.

Claire saw it as a sign. Had he felt any warm feelings towards her he would have certainly followed Jenny up to check that she was alright -surely.

Pulling her robe aside, Claire sat with her back to the mirror. Her cheeks were pinked, her nose still red from crying but she’d ceased her endless sobbing, at least for the moment. Looking at her spine she traced the angry red welts as the snaked down and under the furry material of her dressing gown with her eyes.

Foolish, that’s what she had been. Jamie and Jenny had been her constants in a confusing and new world. Claire had let those small moments that she’d had with Jamie build in her mind but looking at her healing injuries now she could see what she hadn’t before.

How could anybody love her like this?

Running her fingers over the tops of her shoulders, Claire felt the ruptures, over the scabs that were now just thin and twisty but deeply gouged into her flesh. She was forever scarred. Although she knew that it didn’t mean a whole lot in this time, where she was from it was the mark of a criminal. She’d already seen a couple of responses, peoples reactions as they stared in horror and then walked away.

Admittedly, there hadn’t been many opportunities for her to have her top low enough for members of the public to see, but on occasion her shirt would slip as she was at work in Ray’s shop and customers would catch a glimpse of the scars.

“Claire,” Jenny whispered through the door once more, her heart in her mouth as she tried for the last time to get Claire to come out. The door had been locked for nearly two days and though she had access to water, she must be starving by now. “Are ye going to come to tea? It’s my last night as a Fraser, it would only be you and I…?”

“No, thank you Jenny,” Claire replied, biting her lip and closing her eyes as she tried to quell the anguish that was filling her once more. She did not want to start crying again, not after it had taken her so long to stop the first time. But the request had tugged at her heart strings and she felt terrible that she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave.

“But ye have to come to the wedding lass?” Jenny questioned, unsure anymore as to whether she actually would or not.

Hiding her head in her knees as she turned herself fully away from the mirror now, Claire shook as she tried to answer Jenny. At this moment in time she didn’t want to see anyone at all. But how could she not attend? Not when Jenny had pulled out all the stops to have an extra meal added at such short notice.

“Just not today, Jenny, please…” she begged waiting until the footsteps had disappeared before darting from the dressing table and crawling back into bed again. The duvet still smelled faintly of her last long sleep, the stench of her own body clinging to the fibres but Claire couldn’t bring herself to care too much. She hadn’t bathed since she’d locked herself in the guest suite but then again, she hadn’t needed to.

Dozing on and off, Claire lost another day to her increasing melancholia and by the time the morning of the wedding came around, she had built her internal walls so high that not even Jenny could coax her from the bedroom.

Having spent a good ten minutes with Fiona by her side, Jenny tried everything she could to get Claire to join them in their celebrations downstairs. Cursing her brother’s grand plans, Jenny gave in and went to call the only other person she knew who might have significant influence over Claire.

--

Ray stood with his forehead broached against the hardwood of the bedroom, he smiled a sad smile, his lips lifting only slightly as he knocked quietly. “Claire, ma cherie? Are you alright in there. Jenny says you haven’t eaten for two days. They’re all worried about you, lassie.”

He heard the door lock click and moved back a little so that she could open it for him. There had been no objections, no talking through the door at him. Claire had simply obeyed his request, her hunger imposed fatigue had taken control of her body and mind. Since Ray’s confession to Claire, she had felt this increasing bond with the man who’d somehow saved her life and his soft French lilt had broken down the barriers she’d carefully constructed around her.

Sneaking through the small gap, Ray entered the small suite and closed the door behind him. It took him a moment, but when he first caught a glimpse of a very bedraggled Claire the breath caught in his throat.

“Claire, lass,’ he choked out the shock settling in his bones as he reached a shaky hand forwards, “you must cease this now, come out and have a decent meal, yes?”

Biting the inside of her cheek to stop the tears forming, Claire swallowed back the bile that had begun to rise along her throat. “Is it always this hard?” She whispered, her hands fiddling nervously with the hem of her oversized jumper.

“Is what hard?” Raymond questioned, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. He knew all of the story having heard it from a very apologetic Jenny only an hour or so before but he hadn’t wanted to make assumptions without hearing from Claire first. Jumping in his car and whizzing over to Lallybroch, he’d suspended any thoughts on the matter and having seen her in such a state, he hadn’t thought about it since.

“This,” she said, her left hand resting softly over her heart as she spoke, “...love.”

--- --- ---

Snaking her way through the crush of bodies, Claire snuck into the elaborate reception hall, along the wall and into the throng of people gathered around the buffet. Raymond had sat patiently and listened to her side of the story before hustling her into the bathroom to clean herself up. Now, suitably dressed and scrubbed, Claire tried her best to blend in with the wedding guests. She had missed the entire ceremony and the lunchtime meal, but Ray had made it incredibly clear; she couldn’t spend her time hiding away from either Jenny or Jamie. The longer she left it, the harder it would be - and he had been right, of course. But now she was here, trussed up in the evening gown Jenny had lent her for the occasion, Claire couldn’t help but feel even more out of place.

“Ye shouldna push your way into a queue, you know, Claire,” Jamie whispered, his warm breath fanning over the exposed expanse of her neck as she froze in place.

Claire had been so panicked, her thoughts blurred as she’d tried to stealthily enter and join in with the wedding party as sneakily as possible that she hadn’t noticed Jamie’s eyes upon her. Instead of avoiding him, he’d clocked her the moment she’d arrived and had made sure to be out of sight until she’d let her guard down enough for him to get close.

Claire’s heart was beating a forceful thrum in her chest as she glanced over her shoulder, her face a nice vibrant red as she looked up at him from under her lashes. “S-sorry,” she stuttered, her mouth going completely dry as words failed her. She felt like a blithering idiot as she stood in his shadow, the music blasting around them as the party continued unawares.

“Will ye dance with me, Claire?” Jamie asked, his tone hopeful as he rested his hand lightly on her elbow, hoping to guide her decision with a brief touch.

“I don’t think I can…” she returned. Fear gripped her as she recalled dances she’d been invited to in the past.

“Och,” he said, “you can. It’s all in the leading. I promise I willna steer ye wrong.”

Nodding, Claire turned, letting her arm slide towards her him, allowing Jamie to take her hand in his and tug her gently towards the partially empty dance floor. The music changed as they were moving, sliding effortlessly from a more jaunty rock and roll tune into something more delicate. Claire blinked slowly as Jamie took her in his arms, pulling her body flush with his as they moved with refined ease in a small circle.

“Did you truly cook for me, Claire?” He asked when he had her safely cocooned against his chest. He felt her fingers tighten around his but she made no move to run away. Guided by his movements, she swayed, his bicep neatly holding the majority of her weight as her ribs vibrated with the intensity of her heartbeat.

Claire didn’t want to think about her failed romantic meal and she hid her head, trying desperately to avoid the loaded question.

“Tell me, aye?” He said, his voice a mere whisper in her ear as they danced on the spot now.

Claire nodded, her mouth too dry to even consider answering out loud...again.

Her ears pricked at the sound of his reply, but it had been quiet and in Gaelic. She couldn’t pick up enough of the words to understand what he’d said, but the word ‘gràdh’ made her chest burn with desire. The wounds on her back forgotten, his endearment sent a pulse of desire shooting through her and she (unconsciously) rolled her hips against him as she panted out an uneven breath.

“Claire,” he sighed, the subtle keen in his tone drawing her head upwards as she squeezed her eyes shut before opening them fully. Looking at him properly for the first time in days, Claire saw the desolation that lay behind his sea-blue irises. She could see the bags around his eyes and the slight blurred redness that now marred his otherwise perfect stare.

She gasped lowly under her breath as she swallowed. Maybe it had been exacerbated in her imagination, but it didn’t seem as if he’d had much rest in the last few days either; mental or physical.

“Yes,” she answered a beat later, her lips barely moving as she tilted her chin further upwards.

Jamie leaned his head to one side, his eyes half closing as he drank in every inch of her.

“May I kiss you, please?” He asked politely.

“Oh,” she returned, pleasantly surprised at his genteel approach.

“Because I think that I’m falling for you and I dinna wish to wonder what ye taste like any longer. Please, Claire, kiss me,” he said, moisture gathering on his lower lip as he spoke.

“You...like me?” Claire replied, shocked. After all, she hadn’t suspected he had feelings in return.

“Aye, Claire,” he said, “I believe I do. And maybe it’s more than like, but I canna ken for sure until…”

“Yes,” Claire broke in, her whole body aching to meet passionately with his, “yes, you can kiss me, Jamie,” she finished, her hands trembling now with some force as his grip intensified.

Now he really was keeping her upright.

Not wanting to waste another moment, Jamie licked his lips languorously, his tongue peeking out for just a second as he dipped his head as Claire tilted hers towards him.

The feel of his stubble against her chin was electrifying. That was her first thought as Jamie’s lips pressed delicately against her own. The second was that he tasted like whisky and a fine summer's harvest. Grass scents lingered on her tongue as Jamie slid his gently into her open mouth. It was divine. Soft and damp, warm and fresh, soft yet punishing as the feelings she’d been beginning to experience before crashed over her like surf on a sandy beach. Claire felt as if she might drown as their kiss seemed to go on forever. She couldn’t even recall whether she’d taken a breath since they’d begun - but nor could she bring herself to care.

Slowly but surely, Jamie pulled away, his hand (his fingers partially buried in her hair whilst his palm rested perfectly along her jawline) twitched as he forced himself to end their embrace.

“Christ, yer beautiful,” he murmured almost to himself. The ringing in his ears intensified as he pulled himself out of the trance she’d imposed upon him with her ethereal beauty.

“...you don’t care about my back, about my past?” She said, worry gurgling in her gut as she spoke.

“About yer back?” He said. “No, of course not. Had I kent yer feelings for me, Claire, I wouldna have lingered in town that night, trust me.”

“You would have come?”

“Ach, aye.” Jamie chuckled, extinguishing the anguish that had overcome Claire in the days following her failed date. “I wouldna have missed it for the world, mo nighean donn.”

[kinkyacademia]

Ohhh!! Maybe a scenario where heroes "rescue" Shigaraki's S/O (who was there willingly, but they don't know) thinking he kidnapped them and he has to go get them back? – (=ↀωↀ=)

I realized that these requests BOTH applied to this, so I just added them together for one big request. By the way, this is PART 1, and I will be responding to another request as a part 2.

BTW! Shigaraki’s height? Well, comparing him to Midoriya’s 5’ 5.25”, standing next to him he seems like he’s 5’ 10- 5’ 11”. Also; seriously, YES? I loved writing this because I could insert a bit of myself into it.

-Mod Pasta🍜🍝

“Oh, you’re so sarcastic Tomura, almost too much for your own good.”

Midoriya and Toogata’s eyes snapped upwards to see two figures passing them leisurely. They had been sitting on a park bench, getting a bit of lunch before continuing to monitor the city. That, though, had gone down the drain when they saw the infamous Shigaraki in his black hoodie and pants. This time, though, he was without a mask, and latched onto his arm was you. You wore black sandal heels, a black skater skirt with two (F/C) stripes on the bottom, white stockings, and your favourite fancy top along with a (F/C) Pillbox with black lace covering half of your face. It might not be as obvious to other people, but Midoriya could tell that you two were on a date.

“Isn’t he?…” Toogata slowly glanced at Midoriya, his voice muffled slightly from the sandwich hanging out of it in shock. He quickly bit all the way into it, chew and swallowing so that he could speak correctly.

“Yeah… he is. And it looks like he… he has…. a girlfriend,” Midoriya muttered, causing Toogata to nod violently as he grabbed his helmet and turned on the communicator.

“Sir; we have a situation,” he started, watching intently as you giggled and pulled Shigaraki to a vintage dresses shop, showing him them. He mumbled something that Toogata couldn’t hear, and you seemed to alight in a blush and Shigaraki almost grinned to. Midoriya felt sick.

“He… he captured her,” Midoriya whispered, and Toogata glanced at him and then back at the “couple.”

“That’s quite obvious, Deku,” he whispered, then went back to talking to Sir Nighteye.

“Yes-____ Ward, next to the poncho shop that Bubble Girl said she wanted to go to. What, you didn’t know that? Yes, sir,” he nodded once, then glanced at Midoriya with a short smile that he could tell was forced.

“We’ve going to finish the rounds, then discuss it in the police station before taking action,” Midoriya protested that they should act now, but Toogata confirmed that it would create a disruption that could cause Shigaraki to hurt someone.

-

“I think they spotted you, (F/N),” Shigaraki caught your attention as you walked back into the Alliance from Kurogiri’s portal. She perked up, smile still adorning your plump lips.

“Who, the Heroes? Tenko,” you started, gently grabbing his chin and pulling him towards you. He stared daggers down at you, his height, social standing and figure dwarfing your own easily. But, this never seems to really bother you, “don’t think about them. Just focus on me.”

“I’m worried about you. Always,” he confessed, then leaned into you whilst pressing his lips to yours. It started out as a casual kiss, but as you started to move your lips against his, it became more heated and meaningful. He placed a few fingers against your cheeks, cupping them endearingly. As you tenderly nibbled his bottom lip, closing your eyes, someone cleared there throat from across the room, causing you to jolt and pull away from Tenko, effectively making him yelp and stumble towards you.

“When on earth will you two leave the “honeymoon” phase of your relationship?” Kurogiri asked, hands on his hips and eyes narrowed. Shigaraki glared heavily at him.

“Mind your own business, Kurogiri,” He muttered, and the man sighed as Shigaraki pushed past him, and you happily trailed behind me, giving Kurogiri an apologetic smile.

“Whatever you say, Shigaraki Tomura,” he muttered, scratching the back of his… mist, then turning to the hallway and walking off. This was the new Villain Alliance, and the house was a lot bigger on the underground level.

“Should we get something to drink before I take this dress off?” You questioned, and Shigaraki turned around very quickly, a glimmer of hope in his eyes, “And change into pajamas,” you confirmed, and you could see his lips pouting ever so slightly.

“Vodka on ice,” he simple ordered, walking past the kitchen and likely to his room. You nodded, veering left into the kitchen to prepare the drinks. How on Earth had you, a civilian, fallen for The Shigaraki Tomura? Well, the short story was that he bumped into you and grabbed your shoulder to steady you. You, a girl who is a little obsessed with 1940s attire, had worn a beautiful floral dress that day, and his thoughtless blunder caused it to rip. Your skin had also suffered, and if the ear piercing scream wasn’t what caused him to apologize, then your bag hitting his face definitely did.

On the next day, you awoke early to go back to your house. Tomura had tried to pull you back into bed, claiming “you’re naked; just stay and be warm with me.” Alas, you were going to go visit a friend today. You put your clothes on, and he groaned in annoyance when you pulled your bra on.

“Mmm, sorry for obstructing your view,” you cooed, and he huffed and turned away. Once you threw a little bit of makeup and powder on, Shigaraki started getting ready as well. You pulled a hairbrush out of your purse, gently tugging him back.

“I’ll never understand why you don’t brush your hair,” You fretted, running it through his hand a few times, causing him to grumble and swat your hand away.

“It’s fine. I like it like this,” he mumbled, and you whines before putting it back in your purse. You pecked his cheeks, adoring his sigh of embarrassment as you walked past him.

“Bye, Tomura, I’ll see you tomorrow,” you called ask you exited the building. You didn’t hear his response.

As you stepped onto the train, you heard a short gasp from right. Ignoring it, you sat down elegantly in an open seat, pulling a fan out and cooling yourself as you looked out of the window.

“E-Excuse me, miss,” you glanced over to see a young girl, maybe a few years younger than you, with a full Hero Suit on. It blue, yellow, and white, and her blatantly blue hair complimented it nicely. You turned your body to her, closing the fan and placing it across your lap.

“Yes, ma’m?” You furrowed your eyebrows, a little confused as to why she looked so flustered.

“I-Um-I’d like to take you t-actually, can I just sit down?” She stuttered her way through, even though she didn’t look like someone who stuttered a lot. You nodded, gesturing to the open seat.

“Absolutely,” You then turned away, flipping your fan back open and slowly fanning yourself. It took her a few minutes to say anything.

“I like your dress,” you glanced at her, a small smirk pulling at your lips.

“Ah, it’s nothing compared to what you’re wearing. Off to duty, Miss?” You assumed, and she nodded.

“Yes, I am. I’ve never seen one of those dresses in public before,” she used any tactic available to keep the conversation going, and you could tell that she was doing this for some sort of an ulterior motive. As it came to your stop, you felt the woman put a hand on your shoulder, and you stood up a little straighter.

“Alright, I must go now,” you waved her off, and she grinned happily.

“Me too! This is my stop,” she got up, letting you out with her. You started to feel a bit awkward at that.

“Ah… marvelous,” you pulled your phone out, dialing a cab. You could definitely walk, but this girl seemed a little obsessed with you, and you didn’t really like the vibe she was giving. As you exited the train, she continued to talk to you.

“I don’t do too much, but I am his main sidekick. What do you do, Miss (L/N)?”

“I’m an anesthesiologist, I work for eight days a month,” you explained in simple. It was true; you would be assigned to certain cases, complete the cases and go home. That’s why you had so much free time. You did have one college class, though, but that was only twice a week, and it was only one hour.

“How interesting, and you’re so young,” she added, causing you to chuckle.

“Ah, early twenties. I skipped Junior High, so college came naturally. I have a Masters, so I can’t work immediate cases, only the small ones,” you waved her off, slightly flattered. Then you saw your cab pull up, and you started walking towards it, “Ah, I must go now, Miss Kaoruko,” you waved to her, forcing a smile before entering the open door. She looked worried, taking a few steps toward you. You quickly closed the door, feeling ever so slightly threatened by her.

“Alright…” she muttered, waving to you as you left. You sighed to yourself, scratching the back of your head.

“I’m not surprised that you have a fan, with how you look and all,” the driver laughed, deep and rich. You sighed, chuckling as well.

“Oh, shut it sir.”

It was a peaceful ride to your friends house, but that was all until the cab got pulled over. Your eyes widened. “Were you speeding?”

“No,” he promised, and the person who came out of the police car definitely wasn’t a police man. He was tall, green haired, and a adorned a suit. The man, no, the boy who was behind him adorned a red cape and what looked to be armour. It was a fancy hero suit, and it read “1,000,000” across it. You rubbed your arm uncomfortably, adjusting your Pillbox down slightly.

“Sir, I must ask for your passenger to step out of the vehicle,” the tall man’s voice was a droning one that demanded attention. You felt fear strike your heart; was what Shigaraki said yesterday truly happening?

“Miss, they need you out of the car,” the man relayed to you, and you quickly nodded before opening the door and shyly looking away from them.

“I-I don’t have anything illegal, sir,” you confirmed, and his eyes seemed to soften in a sort of apologetic fashion.

“What’s your name, Miss?” He asked, and the boy beside him looked like he was about to respond for you. It honestly creeped you out slightly. The loud cars that rushing past you and the people walking on the sidewalk behind you were almost the perfect situation for you to get away if you so pleased.

“Well… it’s Doctor (F/N),” you avoided using your last name, lest it give away who you are in some context that you didn’t understand. The tall man took a step behind you, gesturing to the police car.

“Doctor (F/N), we would appreciate it if you would follow us.”

“Why should I?” You shot back, feeling a little bit creeped out. You took a step away from him, but then nearly ran into the boy wearing armour. He quickly grabbed your shoulder to make sure you didn’t fall over, and you pushed him away in fear. He didn’t budge, but it at least got you away from him.

“Doctor (F/N), you don’t have to be afraid of adhering to the Villain Alliance any longer. You’re under the protection of us,” the armoured boy pointed to himself with his thumb, a comforting smile upon his face. You did the only thing you could think of to do as your heart rate increased in pace.

“Villain Alliance? I’m ever so sorry, but… I’m afraid I don’t know what that is,” you pushed some of your hair into place, using a bit of your quirk to iron it out. Your quirk, creating small patches of hot iron on your skin, was quite basic and civilian-like. It wasn’t flashy, and definitely couldn’t be used for Hero purposes.

“It’s alright, you don’t have to tell us anything just yet. But, you are required to get into the police car, Doctor (F/N),” the tall man asserted, and you moaning softly in protest as his hand ghosted over your back, guiding you without touch into the back seat of the car.

The young boy sat next to you, and the taller man sat in the front.

“Hey, that was my customer!” The taxi driver exclaimed, and the police officer who was the driver explained something to him. You glared at the boy sitting next to you.

“I’m not fond of being treated like this.. I’m just a civilian, nothing more,” You started, and the boy frowned slightly.

“I’m sorry that they scared you that much, Doctor (F/N)-Oh! Haha, I’m such an idiot, neither of us have introduced ourselves,” he patted the taller man’s shoulder, “This is Sir Nighteye, and I’m Lumillion.”

“That’s fine and all, but I kind of want to go home right now,” you mumbled, looking away from the two boys as the police officer, a young lady with short brown hair, stepped into the vehicle and started it. You looked out at the people walking by, the bustling crowd now just flowing by like you never existed in the first place.

They acted like you were some sort of captive and that they had saved you. It got irritating, and once you arrived at your destination, you pulled your phone out and started to text Tomura.

-These stupid heroes saw us together yesterday and thought that you captured me. They aren’t taking no for an answer.

—What? Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?

-I thought that I could talk my way out of it…

“Who are texting?” Sir Nighteye asked as he opened the door for you. You closed your phone, slipping it into your purse and stepping out of the car.

“My friend. I was headed to her house before you so rudely interrupted,” you explained, looking away from him in a dignified fashion before crossing your arms and closing your eyes.

“Just follow me, Doctor (F/N),” He muttered, obliviously annoyed with how you were acting. You felt Lumillion very close behind you, almost daring you to try and escape. You entered a large building with the words “Sir’s Corporation” in big letters across the top entrance. You had to go up a full flight of stairs to even get to the entrance. Once you entered, the casual building reeked of heroic intent. You were led to a questioning sort of room, but you hesitated to enter.

“This… this is too much, I want to leave,” you swallowed hard, feeling immensely nervous. You wished Tomura would just come and hug you in one of his special hugs where he slid his fingers into your back pockets.

“We know this is hard, but we’re going to need you to trust us,” Lumillion acknowledged, and you glared at him before entering the room and plopping onto the farthest chair away from the rest of them. There was a white table in the middle of the room with the contents to make tea on it and a few other fairly nice chairs along with light green walls. You closed your eyes, hoping immensely that this would just be over with.

“Doctor (F/N), we need you to tell us how they kidnapped you,” Sir Nighteye asked once the door had closed. You rolled your eyes under your lids.

“Oh, you must be joking. I’m not kidnapped, I was literally just going to my friend’s house,” you tried, and Lumillion piped up.

“Doctor, we get it; they’re scary, and we’re sure they threatened you to keep your mouth shut. You can tell us where they really intended for that cab to take you,” he sounded practically patronizing, causing your blood to boil. You sighed in relief when you felt a short buzz from your purse, and you looked down as you whipped your phone out.

—Where are you? I’m coming now.

-

—Put your phone away. They’ll get suspicious.

You quickly did so, and as you did, you feel a hand on your arm, causing you to look up and see the police officer from earlier.

“Mis-Doctor, please hand over the contents of your purse.”

“Why? Do you fancy my perfume?” You shot back, glancing at the wall and then back at her. Secretly, you were boiling down to a nervous and anxious mess inside.

“We need to know who you’ve been contacting,” she reached slowly for your purse, and you simply gave it to her. She seemed a bit surprised at that.

“My friend. Boyfriend, to be exact, it’s easy to say that he’s freaking out since I’m practically being interrogated,” you snapped, and the police woman pulled your phone out and set the crimson purse on the table. She looked over the first message, eyes softening.

—Stick through it, I love you

“She isn’t lying,” The officer informed Sir, handing your phone over to him. He checked it over, and once his eyes narrowed, you knew that he had found something important. He handed the phone to Lumillion, and you shifted awkwardly in your seat before pulling out your fan to keep yourself cool from how warm and uncomfortable things were getting.

“Doctor (F/N), you referred to your friend as a girl in the car. Is there a reason for that?” Sir questioned, and the Officer’s eyes widened as she turned to look at you. Your heart clenched; there wasn’t really a way out of this one, and you sighed before scratching the back of your head.

“What’s your lover’s name?” Lumillion questioned, slowly setting your phone on the table. In hindsight, you seriously did look like a captive right now, eyes wide and fingers shaking.

“Fine… his name is T-Tomura,” you felt your throat tighten up; what if Tenko couldn’t get you out of this? All you wanted was for you two to be back in bed, cuddling after that crazy sex last night. You just wanted to be away from these heroes, the ones who could so easily rip everything away from you; your love, your happiness, where you can go whenever and however because of Kurogiri’s quirk, where you can cry and hug Shigaraki or rant to Twice about the latest news.

There was a universal sigh around the room, and Sir Nighteye was the first to speak up.

“How did you first meet Shigaraki Tomura?” He questioned, causing you to smiled ever so softly as you reminisced. After you hit him with your purse, he glared hardly at you before he looked like he was about to slap you. Your eyes widened, and the people walking around you didn’t seem to recognize what was going on. Before he could do anything, though, a man in similar attire to Tomura had shown up and gently pushed him back. The man under the hood had no face, only two white eyes that resembled male sperm.

“At a mall. He bumped into me, and things blossomed from there,” you said in simple, and Lumillion presses his lips together and raised his eyebrows before shifting his body to you.

“You don’t have to be afraid of saying anything to us, (F/N), he can’t get to you in here. He doesn’t know where you are, and we’re heroes, so we can protect you if anything horrible happens,” Lumillion tried to comfort you, but it was to no avail; all you wanted was Tomura, and their comforts more came as threats.

“He’s not a good man, I know that, but I also know that you people never give anyone the benefit of the doubt,” you closed your fan momentarily to take a deep breath to calm yourself down. You then opened it again, continuing to fan yourself.

“What is the situation with you and the Villain Alliance right now, Doctor (F/N)?” The police officer asked, and she pulled a yellow notebook out and began to scribble on it.

“First of all, my name isn’t actually (F/N), it’s Miya,” telling that lie would allow for them to track less of you after Tomura found you, “and I don’t know anything about this Villain Alliance. All I know about them is what Tomura tells me,” the lie was an easy one to make, but Sir Nighteye didn’t see to believe it.

“Where do you meet up with Shigaraki Tomura, then?” He asked, and you decided to place a slightly different rout. You closed your fan, placed it on your thigh and hiking up your skirt to where the white stockings didn’t cover it. Scratch marks, freshly scarred, shown upon your skin. This caused the room to take a sharp breath, coming to expect the worst, all except for Sir Nighteye. He swallowed hard, looked away from you in slight surprise.

“Sometimes in hotels, sometimes otherwise,” that wasn’t was they were expecting. Lumillion’s face alighted in a bright red, and the police officer gaped.

“W-Wait, so you’re saying that you two….?” Lumillion threw his hands around, unable to find his words. Sir Nighteye cut him off.

“Yes, Miya is saying that her and Shigaraki Tomura meet up for sexual escapades.”

“Yes. It’s probably not in my best interest, but I can’t seem to stop myself when I remember his face when-“ The Police officer cut you off.

“Alright, that’s enough. We have a few other questions b-“ it seemed to all happen at once.

Sir Nighteye turned to the wall near the door, shooting out of his seat before the wall collapsed towards him. Tomura, clad in what you dubbed his “combat hands,” jumped through the mess and glanced at the two heroes and police officer.

“Miya, let’s go,” He used your fake name, grabbing your arm as you got up and closed your fan, placing it next to your purse as you picked it up. You simply tossed your things into it as he grabbed something from your dress and pulled it off, then turned to Tomura as you zipped it up. His eyes were the only thing you saw, but they still held the fire of a warrior. It was actually kind of cute. You then saw what you had expected in his hand; a small tracker device.

“Alright,” you muttered, heart still beating quickly from earlier. His arm, all but his pinky, wrapped around your shoulders as he started walking towards the wall, and he dropped the tracker on the ground and crushed it with his foot. Lumillion suddenly burst into action, scrambling up from the rubble since some of it had hit him.

“Wait, Doctor, don’t go with him! We can protect you!” He shouted, and you rolled you eyes away from him before walking through the portal that had just appeared in front of the back wall. You walked into a sort of main living room of the Villain Alliance, and as the portal closed, you heard one last curse from Sir Nighteye:

“We failed,” and the portal closed. Now, this might seem as quite a weak showing from the heroes, but you have to consider that this all happened in a matter of under five seconds. From the wall bursting in to the portal closing, you had moved as maximum speed out of the room.

“I told you not to go out today,” Shigaraki snapped, and you nodded quickly as you began to breathe quicker. Since this was the main room, other members around you stared in question and sympathy.

“I’m sorry-I should have listened to you, Tomura,” you admitted, and he pulled you closed before yanking you out of the room. Kurogiri shouted after you, but he was ultimately ignored.

“Wait, we must discuss this!”

“(F/N),” he stopped when you had made it about halfway down the hallway, and he threw you against the wall gently, enough not to break anything. You yelped, smile adorning your face before his arms came down upon either side of your head, almost cracking the wall, “do you think that you hold some sort of rule over me? Maybe because you control me in bed?”

“No, Tenko-“ you absolutely loved this heated overprotection radiating off of him.

“I can change that so, so quickly, (F/N),” he took a couple of the hands on his arms off, dropping them gently to the ground before putting the one on his face in his pocket. He then roughly grabbed your face without his thumb, his lips smashing into yours.

“I’ll admit, I made a blunder,” you said in between heated kisses. Then, yet again, Kurogiri broke your heated session.

“Shigaraki Tomura, (L/N) (F/N), seriously, is this the time to be making out? We must discuss the current events that just occurred,” he exasperated, and you pouted before grabbing Tomura’s sleeve and using it to whip the lipstick off of his lips.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry Kurogiri,” you waved him off, slipping out of Tomura’s grasp.

“But… fine,” Shigaraki grumbled, grabbing his hands off of the ground and looking slightly like a chipmunk with too much to hold as he followed you and Kurogiri to the main room once again.

‘What a dork’ you thought.

[jackkel-dragon]

Gearing Systems in RPGs and MMOs

So, after seeing some annoying complaints about a system I liked, I've decided to write a bit about how I feel about gearing systems in RPGs and MMOs. This might get a bit rambly.

To start with, I'm going to give an apparently unpopular opinion: I don't really like the way a lot of RPGs seem to handle player equipment. So many games try very hard to give the player a sense of progression through having their gear replaced every few levels. As many RPGs can trace their lineage back to Dungeons and Dragons, this sort of makes sense. D+D expects the player characters to start with hand-me-down mundane gear, upgrade to badass gear, then start to acquire magical items, and eventually find legendary equipment. It's not inherently a bad system, since you really can feel how powerful you're getting when you end up with a flaming magic sword after starting with a kitchen fork. But it's so exaggerated and overused in so many games that it's starting to grate on me quite a bit.

Here's the problem with how the system is used: in Dungeons and Dragons, a good DM will make you wait for your upgrades. Each boost to your power level will be felt. You don't go from a rusty sword to a magical flaming sword without noticing the effect. A mithril shirt will make previously challenging fights a breeze. But in so many RPGs, and particularly a lot of MMOs, there are so many mini-tiers that it's often not worth upgrading unless you get the items for free.

To give an example, let's use a game I actually like: Final Fantasy XIV. There's often at least one new piece of gear for a slot every 2-3 levels. Early on, you'll want every upgrade you can get, at least until your slots are filled. But after you hit about lv15 or lv20, it stops being cost-effective to keep yourself upgraded. Even gear from NPC vendors (usually the cheapest option) starts to cost thousands of gil per item. Earlier this week, I did a few dungeon runs with my lv62 class and ended up with 25k gil. I then bought half of a full set of gear for my lv30 crafting class and was left with under 500 gil. After selling the old gear, I had about a thousand on hand. Because of this huge money sink for gear, I usually allow my average gear level to sink as I level up, only using dungeon gear to upgrade until a class hits lv50 (when the base game's endgame gear becomes available, which uses a different currency that I have too much of).

This sort of over-complexity is even in single-player games, which I assume is based on the Diablo model. I have never played the Diablo games, but from what I understand the Borderlands series tends to do a similar thing with its loot. You'll get these named, special weapons from quests at one level, but within 3-5 levels those guns are utterly useless as anything other than vendor trash. Meanwhile, even the white/common guns that enemies drop will be better in that they at least hurt the enemies you fight.

This is all really frustrating to someone like me, who isn't interested in busting out a spreadsheet every thirty minutes to see which piece of gear will get me that +2% boost that I need. I understand the desire to use progression as a way to hook the player, but I don't want to be frustrated at needing to sell gear given to me by a character I like because "Rusty Mithril Axe" is five times better. (It doesn't help that, especially in MMOs, pre-endgame gear so often has really lame-sounding adjectives in the titles. It's not an Iron Sword, it's a "Mud-stained" Iron Sword.)

I could go more into what I dislike about this kind of progression, but I may have already lingered on that for too long. Instead, I'll give some examples of better progression ideas. Ones that I feel are less annoying to play and far more satisfying than the systems I mentioned above.

To start with, the system that made me start thinking of this topic: the gear upgrade system in Secret World Legends. While both versions of the game have flaws (and still haven't finished the Tokyo storyline that we were promised years ago...), the gear system of the reboot does not deserve the disdain I've seen for it. The original game, The Secret World, had a very standard MMO gear progression: you got random drops sometimes, dungeons had slightly better gear for their level, and you always had to be swapping out gear because nothing remained useful for long. SWL, on the other hand, keeps the random drops while adding a great twist: you use the otherwise vendor trash-y gear to upgrade your equipped gear. For instance, I have a Blood Magic Tome and a few spare weapons I don't use. I spend some anima shards (earned from quests and enemy kills) to consume those spare weapons to make my Tome more powerful. When a piece of gear hits max level, you can combine it with another item of the same type (also max level) to increase its rarity. You can do this until you hit max rarity. So unless you come across an item with a bonus effect you want to swap out for, you never have to hunt down new gear. You power up your weapon and talismans as you go. It's still a grind, like any MMO, but one that doesn't require luck and spreadsheets.

Going off that, there are a few other MMOs that dabbled with this idea, but either dropped it or didn't go far enough for my tastes. Lord of the Rings Online has a "Legendary Item" system, but it's a massive grind and time sink that is far more complex than it needs to be. Maybe it has improved since I last played, but the "Imbuing" system I read about in patch notes once only applied to the current expansion or later. It doesn't help that your legendary weapons really didn't feel that... legendary. You could carry 6-10 legendary items at a time (based on cash shop purchases), and you could only get the materials to upgrade legendary weapons from breaking down other legendaries. Which meant that every other monster you fought had a legendary weapon lodged in them. It'd be like if Bilbo or Frodo had Sting... and Sting 2. And Sting 3. And Sting Mk4. But not 5, because he broke that down for legendary fragments to make String Prime glow in the dark better. It was a cool idea that really fit with the setting, but fell apart under the weight of MMO gear mechanics. It felt like more of the same, only pretending not to be.

Another one that feels like a misstep to me is Final Fantasy XIV's relic system. Basically, each class can get a "Relic Weapon", an item that has a story behind it and must be reforged in a long quest chain. Except, because of the gear treadmill and power creep, it's actually pretty damn weak even for its own content. You have to do 4-5 very long quest chains to make it worth using, and it still becomes underpowered the moment a new patch comes out. Due to the obscene amount of effort to do each phase of the quest, a lot of players just ignore the whole system. Now, if the relic weapon were the only weapon after a certain part of the game, maybe that idea could work. But as things are, no one wants to do hours of questing to upgrade a single item when they could just pay some gil to a crafter or do a raid. And it's really too late to make the relic a mandatory system, because it would just piss off the people who skipped the relic at first.

Since the last two were more about systems that could have been cool, I'll mention a subsystem that I feel works well: gear modifcations. Whether it's Materia (FF7/FF14), Essence Gems (Jade Empire), or weapon mods (a lot of shooters), it always allows for a sense of progression and modifcation that doesn't cheapen the gear you're using from a story standpoint or (usually) get too complex and number-crunchy. It's easy to tell whether a +1 or +2 materia is better, and if you want to shuffle around which slots get which materia, you can. Given the choice between a game that gives me dozens of guns or dozens of scopes as loot, I'd probably go with the latter even if the overall system works the same way. In general, such a system gives more value to each piece of main gear (in story and gameplay terms) due to the multitude of mods you can add. For instance, Horizon: Zero Dawn mostly has 3 tiers of each weapon (aside from a few uniques), but you're constantly getting modifications you can slot into them.

Overall, here's my big point: It's fine to want to have gear progression as part of your RPG/MMO. It serves as a useful motivation to keep playing the game, to try to get the best setup possible. But when you flood the player with gear upgrades, after a certain point they will get overwhelmed or stop caring. In some types of games, this could easily be a death sentence. So, as a general rule, I'd strongly suggest RPG creators to space out the progression better, allowing the player to enjoy each tier before they move on to the next. This could even help with game longevity, as players feel more compelled to improve their equipment when they have a solid goal. (This is why most MMOs' endgame gearing is so addictive to some people: the goals are much more clear.)

Personally, I'd go a bit further. I want to see a true legendary item system in a game someday. It can be a single player game, if that makes it easier. I want to have a game where, instead of looting gradually better swords from each new enemy, I get something like Glamdring in the first third of the game. Maybe it's a new weapon that needs to be powered up, or an old weapon that has "gone to sleep" from disuse. But, as the item is used, it becomes more powerful and I can add new powers to it. (The closest I've seen to a system like this, aside from the ones I mentioned above, is the Neverwinter Nights module "Kingmaker". In that mod, your talking sword will get a new ability that you choose whenever you level up.) A lot of RPGs have a sort of power fantasy element, like how Dragon Age Inquisition lets you build a pseudo-nation from scratch. For me, my power fantasy would be the creation of this sort of legendary item. It would become a legacy of sorts, and in a game focused on this sort of system you could even have an epilogue where the legendary item is passed on to a new hero. (Like how Gandalf and Thorin found the elven blades in the troll den, and how Bilbo gave Sting to Frodo.)

At any rate, that's my personal opinion on RPG/MMO gearing. I doubt games will change much anytime soon, but I wanted to get some of it down while I was thinking about it. After seeing people complain that the gearing system in The Secret World was "so much better" than Secret World Legends, despite the former being so bland and annoying... I had to get down some of the issues I have with how people seem to think RPGs should look. But, going off what I've seen, I'm fairly certain I'm in the minority. So I'll probably continue my descent into focusing on story-based games and playing games I mostly dislike in order to get to the story.

Anyway, I hope anyone who got this far found something interesting in my ramblings. I didn't expect to write so much, so hopefully it's not as boring as some of the systems I decided to call out.

[unfolded73]

This Graceful Path (1/19)

Summary: Emma has just moved in with Mary Margaret and started working as a deputy in the Storybrooke sheriff's department when she meets Killian Jones, the town's introverted harbormaster. When a prominent Storybrooke resident is found murdered, Emma tries to juggle solving the case with new friendships, parenthood, and romance. A Season 1 Cursed!Killian AU.

Rating: Explicit per CSBB guidelines (violence, sex). If you are someone who uses my usual distinction between M and E to decide whether to read something I wrote, this is more of an M on unfolded73's scale. The sex, when we get there, is not extremely graphic in nature. Same with the violence.

Content Warning: This fic contains two major character deaths, one of which is S1 canon and one of which is not but happens early in the story.

Total word count: ~ 75,000

Acknowledgements: Thank you to @j-philly-b for betaing this monstrosity. Thank you to @caprelloidea for all of the read-throughs and cheerleading; not sure I could have written it without your excitement early on. Thank you to @teruel-a-witch for the original prompt on tumblr which sparked this fic. Thank you to @pompeiiablaze for the wonderful art which will accompany later chapters. Thanks to the CSBB mods ( @sambethe in particular, who had to look at my check-ins) for your support and for enduring my neuroses.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 -- AO3 Link

Chapter 1

Emma Swan awoke, and for a moment was disoriented, confused as to where she was sleeping. She blinked up at the whitewashed ceiling, the boards rising in a slant above her head, and remembered: she was someone’s roommate now. Mary Margaret Blanchard’s roommate, to be precise, the kind school teacher who had offered her the spare room in her loft apartment.

The sound of a pan clanging on the stove top below reaching her ears, Emma sat up, her sleep-tangled blonde hair falling in her face. Spare “room” was a bit of a misnomer, actually; spare upstairs landing was more like it. While her bed was far enough against the outside wall to not be visible to anyone downstairs, she really only had to stand up and shuffle forward a few steps in order to survey the whole of the apartment from over the railing that divided her sleeping area from the wide open space of the loft.

She’d been here for three days now, and Mary Margaret was the definition of a kind and accommodating roommate. It was a little bit creepy how kind and accommodating she was, to be honest. Glancing at the clock, Emma groaned at the fact that it was only 6:45, and she flopped back down on the bed, squeezing her eyes shut.

First day at your new job, she remembered, grimacing. She’d said yes to the deputy sheriff job on a whim, figuring why the hell not, but her thoughts and dreams during a restless night of sleep had done a fantastic job demonstrating to her exactly why the hell not. Being a bail bondsperson was not the same thing as being a law enforcement professional. Sure, Storybrooke was a small town, where the most she would probably have to deal with was teenagers loitering or that Leroy guy getting into trouble down at the local bar, but on the other hand, Storybrooke was weird. And sure, Sheriff Graham Humbert was a nice guy and easy on the eyes, but working for the sheriff’s department meant working for Regina Mills. That was bound to be trouble.

Realizing there was little chance of falling back to sleep, Emma threw the covers back and made her way downstairs.

The metal steps that led down to the main part of the loft were icy under her bare feet, and Emma shivered as she descended, the air cooler down here than it had been up in her bedroom. She rubbed her arms, glancing down at her tank top and her one threadbare pair of yoga pants that doubled as pajamas. Once she got a paycheck, she’d have to see about getting some more pajamas. And some more of everything else, probably.

“Good morning!” Mary Margaret called from the kitchen, her face bright and shining. “Do you want some eggs?”

“Don’t go to any trouble,” Emma said.

“It’s no trouble.”

“I’m actually not usually hungry when I first wake up,” Emma explained, sitting in one of the two mismatched barstools that faced the kitchen. Much of the apartment’s furnishings seemed to have been cobbled together from yard sales and secondhand shops, which was an aesthetic Emma could respect.

She watched Mary Margaret’s hands work as she cracked an egg into a bowl and whisked it. Everything about Mary Margaret was perfectly put together, even at this hour of the morning, from her adorable pixie haircut to her neatly pressed dress to the ballet flats on her feet. Mary Margaret was, she had to admit, the kind of person that Emma would have taken an instant dislike to in another context. The fact that she didn’t find her ray of sunshine roommate to be annoying was… actually quite puzzling, now that she thought about it.

“Did you get all two of your boxes unpacked?” Mary Margaret asked with a smirk. Emma’s boxes of meager possessions had arrived from Boston yesterday, thanks to the superintendent of her building there and the crush he had on her. It had been a pre-furnished apartment, rented on a whim fairly recently, and most of her paycheck had gone to the rent without much left over for buying stuff to fill it. So other than a few clothes and a box of mementos, there was little Emma owned.

“I did,” Emma confirmed. “And hey, thanks again for—”

“You can stop thanking me, Emma, it’s nice having you here. It was a bit lonely, living here by myself.” Mary Margaret turned and poured her egg into the waiting pan. “I'm not sure I'm suited for it… living alone. It’s always felt wrong.”

“Not for me. After all the group homes I lived in, living alone was a dream come true. Not that I don't like it here, I do,” Emma added hastily.

Mary Margaret put her scrambled eggs on a plate as the toaster popped with two perfectly toasted pieces of bread. When she offered Emma one of them, despite her earlier refusal, she took it. Looking at Mary Margaret’s breakfast was making her a little bit hungry after all. “Is what Henry said true?” Mary Margaret asked. “That you were left by the side of the road as a baby?”

“Yep, and I’ve seen the newspaper clippings to prove it,” Emma replied, trying her best to sound fine with it. “A kid found me and took me to a nearby diner before I froze to death or, you know, starved or whatever. They couldn’t identify who my parents were, and I ended up in the foster system.”

“And you weren’t ever adopted?”

“Nope.” Emma took a bite of her toast. “It was foster family to group home to foster family. I bounced around a lot.”

“Well, you turned out fine.”

Emma snorted. “I guess, if you consider getting pregnant at seventeen ‘fine’. And… other stuff. Look, let’s just say my teen years were complicated and leave it at that.”

“Fair enough.” Mary Margaret gave Emma an encouraging smile. “I’m glad you’re here. I think it will be wonderful for Henry to get to know you. And I’m looking forward to getting to know you too. I don’t really have many friends.”

Recoiling internally, Emma stood up. “You know what, I’d better get ready for my first day at work.” If Mary Margaret was looking for a friend who knew how to do typical girl stuff, like talk about hair and clothes and boys, then she was going to be sorely disappointed. Emma didn’t really know how to be anyone’s friend.

“Sheriff’s deputy, it’s so exciting!” Mary Margaret enthused. “I’m sure you’re gonna do great.”

Emma wasn’t so sure, but she made some kind of noncommittal noise of agreement. She excused herself to the bathroom to take a shower, steeling herself for her morning fight with the finicky hot water. The loft’s lone bathroom contained an old-fashioned claw foot tub which had been retrofitted with a shower head and a flimsy frame for a shower curtain. Emma had learned on her first morning in the apartment that the difference between icy cold water and water hot enough to burn the skin off her bones was a scant millimeter adjustment of the knob. “You’ll get used to it,” Mary Margaret had assured her.

Although the sheriff’s station was a reasonable walk from their apartment, when Emma left, she got behind the wheel of her yellow VW Bug, deciding to drive so as not to be late. She passed a total of three cars between her apartment and her work. Say what you will about Storybrooke, she thought, the lack of traffic was definitely a selling point. As she pulled into a parking space in front of the station, she marveled once again that she was now going to be working for the sheriff who had arrested her, not once but twice, on trumped up charges.

Graham Humbert came out of his glass-walled office to greet her as soon as she entered the empty station. As always, his brown hair was artfully tousled and his scruffy beard was neatly trimmed, and Emma wondered how long he spent each morning perfecting his intentionally neglectful look.

“Emma! Welcome to your first day,” he said. He seemed lighter, happier than usual, as evidenced by the smile he gave her. “I don’t have your uniform or badge sorted out yet, but I figured today you could familiarize yourself with the station and we can start to talk about what your responsibilities will be.” He hooked his thumb into one of belt loops, drawing Emma’s attention down to where his shirt peeked out underneath the hem of his vest.

“After being arrested twice, I’m familiar with the place,” she muttered.

“Ah yes, but to do you know exactly where to kick the copy machine to get it to work, or how to get the coffee machine to brew a pot of coffee without electrocuting you?”

“Are you sure you can afford to pay me a salary?”

Graham chuckled. “Yes, you’ll get your paycheck, don’t worry.”

He spent the next half hour showing her around, teaching her the phone system and explaining generally what a typical day in Storybrooke was like. Which, honestly, sounded so boring that she was a little confused why he even needed a deputy. It sounded like she was going to be spending her days mediating disputes about dogs pooping in neighbors’ yards and stolen recycling bins, with maybe a drunk and disorderly thrown in for flavor once in awhile. Still, a job was a job, especially if she wanted to stay in town and be a part of Henry’s life.

The sheriff’s station itself was a mystery. Everything she could see from her desk — the phones, the computers, the little television with a VHS player up against the far wall — everything looked like it was from another time. Was it Regina’s iron grip on the budget that meant nothing had been replaced in twenty years? Or was Graham indifferent?

“So…” she said as she swiveled back and forth in her desk chair, “you aren’t exactly what I imagine when I think of a small town sheriff.”

“Oh no?” Graham raised his eyebrows. “What do you imagine?”

“You know, older guy, big doughnut belly, not quite so stylishly dressed?” She continued to pivot back and forth, slumping down and giving Graham a once-over. “How did you end up getting this gig, anyway?”

“Mayor Mills just saw something in me, I guess,” he answered, breaking eye contact with her and looking into the middle distance.

Emma paused, waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, she decided to change the subject. “Speaking of Regina, have you told her you hired me yet?”

Graham glanced down, clearly chastened. “I’ve got a meeting with her tomorrow; I’ll let her know then.”

“Oh boy. Have fun with that.”

“I’ll take care of it, Emma; don’t worry.”

“If you say so.” She leaned forward, taking one of the pencils out of the cup on her desk and tapping it absently against the blotter. “So has anything really bad ever happened here?”

“Like what?”

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know, like a bank robbery or a murder.”

“A murder?” Graham laughed. “No, Emma, there has never been a murder in Storybrooke,” he said with a slightly patronizing tone.

“Hey, weird stuff can go down in small towns like this. Haven’t you ever read a Stephen King book?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Well, you should; they’re pretty good if you like horror.” Graham looked at her blankly. While he was clearly capable of carrying on a conversation with her like a normal person, sometimes he behaved so oddly that she didn’t know what to think of him. “Any other characters like Leroy I need to be aware of? People who get in trouble with the law often?”

“Other than yourself?”

“Very funny,” Emma said, returning his smirk with one of her own.

“I think the best thing you can do, Emma, is spend some time out and about in Storybrooke. Walk the streets, go in the shops and introduce yourself, eat at Granny’s. The sooner you make yourself a part of the town, the sooner the town will come to trust you.”

~*~

Graham’s instructions in mind, when it was time for her afternoon break Emma decided to wander over toward Granny’s diner in search of caffeine, shuffling through the autumn leaves that had fallen and collected on the sidewalks and in the gutters. School appeared to be letting out at the same time, and Emma spotted Henry, a little brown-haired boy in a cluster of children in identical school uniforms, at the same time that he saw her. With a big grin breaking out over his face, he ran over to her.

“Cool, are we getting cocoa? Can I have some?” he asked without preamble as she pushed open the door of the diner. Henry followed her in. The collar of his polo shirt was askew and his sweater was dirty, and Emma resisted the urge to reach out and comb the tangles out of his hair with her fingers.

Granny’s was another example of the time-warpy nature of Storybrooke. The waitresses wore costumes that wouldn’t have looked out of place coupled with a pair of roller skates, and even the prices were out of another era. Sure, the cost of living in small-town Maine was lower than in Boston, but this was ridiculous (not that Emma was complaining). The decor was exactly what you would picture if asked to imagine a diner, with the possible exception of the forest-covered wallpaper. The strange wallpaper looked more like an illustration from Henry’s storybook than the kind of thing you’d typically see on the walls of an eating establishment.

“Aren’t you supposed to go straight home after school?” she asked, although she was happy for any opportunity to see Henry. “Regina won’t be happy.”

He shrugged. “Mom won’t be home for at least another hour. I can hang out.” He sat down in one of the booths and looked up at her expectantly until Emma sighed and sat down across from him.

“I’m only on a short break, then I need to get back to the sheriff’s station.”

“You being a deputy is so awesome. And you’re weakening the curse; I can tell.”

Emma suppressed a groan. “How can you tell?”

He ignored her question, because he was already on to something else, and he started ticking things off on his fingers. “So we’ve got Snow White and Prince Charming, I’ve figured out who most of the dwarves are—”

“There are dwarves in Storybrooke now?”

“Well, they don’t look like dwarves,” Henry said.

“No, of course not, that would be ridiculous.”

“They look like regular people, although I think they’re all on the short side. Anyway, Snow White, Prince Charming, dwarves, the Evil Queen, Cinderella, Jiminy Cricket, Geppetto, Red Riding Hood—”

“Who’s Red Riding Hood?”

Henry rolled his eyes and then indicated with a jerk of his head toward the lunch counter. “Ruby,” he said as if it was obvious.

“Right.” She sighed. “Look, Henry, maybe we should talk about something else, like… what did you do at school today?” That was good, she thought. That was the kind of question a parent would ask.

“Nah, nothing interesting happened at school.”

Ruby came over to their booth, and Emma ordered a cocoa for Henry and a coffee to go for herself. Taking in Ruby’s short shorts, she figured the waitress wouldn’t be caught dead in a shapeless red cloak that would cover up her body.

“So if I ask Mary Margaret tonight at home,” Emma continued when Ruby left, “she’ll agree that nothing interesting happened at school?”

Henry released a heavy, put-upon sigh. “I mean we learned stuff, but none of it is as important as Operation Cobra.”

“How about this,” Emma said. “Tell me three things that you did at school today.”

“Okay.” Henry thought about it. “We had a spelling test.”

“How did you do?”

“I aced it,” he said. “Second thing: we worked on fractions in math.”

Emma restrained herself from making a face at the idea of working on fractions. “And a third thing?”

“There was pizza for lunch in the cafeteria, but my mom packs my lunch, so I couldn’t eat it.”

She had to admit, that did all sound pretty dismal compared to the excitement of Operation Cobra. No wonder Henry was retreating into his fairy tale imaginings. School was boring, he seemed to have no friends, and he didn’t get to eat pizza. It wasn’t a surprise the kid had problems.

Ruby dropped off their drinks, giving Henry a kind smile before she left them.

“Look, Henry, maybe there’s something the two of us could do together this weekend if Regina would allow it. Not Operation Cobra,” she said when she saw him starting to suggest it. “Some kind of normal kid thing, like… tossing a football in the park, or, I don’t know. A bike ride.”

“I don’t do either of those things,” Henry said, regarding her with suspicion before taking a drink of his cocoa, getting whipped cream on his nose in the process. Emma pulled a napkin from the dispenser and reached over to wipe it off.

“Okay, well, I don’t know. You suggest something.”

His face lit up. “I was thinking maybe we could do some surveillance on my mom. You work for the sheriff’s department now, you must have access to—”

“We are absolutely not doing that, Henry.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Fine, I’m no fun. But let’s try to figure something out that we can do that does not involve spying or fairy tale characters,” she said helplessly.

“Everything in Storybrooke involves fairy tale characters,” he said with an eye roll.

“What about TV?” Emma asked. “Tell me what you like to watch on TV.”

“Mom doesn’t let me watch it on school nights,” he said glumly.

“That’s probably a good policy,” she said, trying to give Regina the benefit of the doubt, at least in this one area.

“I do like Star Wars,” Henry volunteered after a big gulp of cocoa.

“Me too.” Emma grinned at him. “I used to pretend I was Princess Leia, except my version of Princess Leia swung a light saber.”

“Well yeah, she’s got the Force too, why shouldn’t she?” He jumped up suddenly. “What time is it? I should probably get home.”

“I bet you’ve got homework to do, right?”

Henry groaned, picking up his backpack from the seat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe?”

“Maybe.” Star Wars, she thought. Something for them to bond over that didn’t center around his curse nonsense. It was a small thing, but it was something.

Ruby approached the table as Emma was still watching Henry through the window. “Can I get you anything else, Emma?”

She shook her head. “Just the check.” Remembering Graham’s directive to get to know people in the town, Emma gave Ruby what she hoped was a disarming smile. “You look tired, do you want to sit for a minute and take a load off?”

The diner was mostly empty, it being too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Ruby looked around for Granny before gratefully flopping down in the seat Henry had vacated. “Thanks, my feet are killing me.”

Emma resisted the urge to point out that she might be in less pain if she wore more sensible shoes. She took in Ruby’s striking face, envious of the other woman’s perfect winged eyeliner. “I was a waitress once. It’s hard work. Have you worked here a long time?”

“As long as I can remember,” Ruby said. “I don’t really know how to do anything else.”

The door to the diner opened and Emma glanced up. A man with dark brown hair and a short beard similar to Graham’s approached the register. Ruby looked over too and when she saw the man, got to her feet. “Hang on, I’ve gotta go get his to-go order.”

Emma watched as Ruby grabbed a paper bag from the kitchen pass-through and brought it over, batting her eyelashes and giving the newcomer her best smile as she rung up his food. Emma could appreciate why Ruby was flirting — this guy was a fine specimen of the male half of the species. He wore a tight long-sleeved black t-shirt, and Emma couldn’t help but admire the way it stretched across his shoulders and decently-muscled upper arms. He pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of his worn jeans, handing over cash and taking the bag with little more than a word or two for Ruby. As quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

Ruby rejoined Emma at the booth. “Who was that?” Emma asked.

“Oh, you noticed Killian? Yeah, even in a town with a decent number of hotties, he’s noticeable.”

She had a point. Not that Emma was shopping for a man, but Storybrooke did seem to have more than its fair share of attractive people. Even Mr. Former Coma Patient, David Nolan, was handsome if you liked the Captain America type. Which Emma didn’t particularly, but she could see why Mary Margaret was mooning over him.

“Killian Jones,” Ruby continued. “He runs things down at the docks. Used to be a sailor himself, I think, but now he mainly inspects the boats and… I don’t know, whatever a harbormaster does.” She shrugged. “He mainly keeps to himself. Believe me, I’ve tried to hit that on multiple occasions, and he was not interested.” She cracked her gum. “His loss.”

Emma immediately formed a picture of Killian Jones in her head, based on Ruby’s limited information. The loner type, probably with some kind of dark secret that drove him to keep to himself. He probably drank too much — just the kind of guy she needed to stay far, far away from if her history was any guide.

Emma thought about the people she had met in Storybrooke so far, pushing Killian O’Hottie from her thoughts. “What’s the deal with Mr. Gold? How did he end up owning everything in town?” she asked.

Ruby blanched and began fiddling with the salt shaker. “I don’t know, he just does.”

“Are you afraid of him?” Emma thought of Ashley Boyd and her baby, and the way Mr. Gold had seemed willing to sell the baby like it was property.

“I think everyone’s afraid of him. He’s… I don’t know.” She lowered her voice. “There’s something about him that feels… evil, you know?”

Emma heaved a sigh. She wasn’t going to get anything concrete going down that road. “You probably know most of the people in this town, working here.”

“Sure, I guess.” Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Are you pumping me for information about Storybrooke’s seedy underbelly in your capacity as the sheriff’s deputy?”

Emma raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You already heard that I’m working for the sheriff? I literally started a few hours ago.”

“News travels fast in Storybrooke, Emma.” Ruby stood up, ready to get back to work. “You’re gonna have your work cut out for you keeping up.”

Chapter 2

[dramallamadingdang]

Some replies.

For @holleyberry, @lady-bane, @strangetomato, @ajaysims, @mustluvcatz-reloaded, @sideblogsimblr, @kayleigh-83, @simper-fi, @spectral-cat, @sigmundsims, and @phoenixdaisy...

holleyberry replied to your photo “Adventures in floor plan “shopping.”  I was looking on some floor plan...”

That is a cute house.

It really is. I wanted something tiny, that I can put on a 2x2 lot (and then maybe chop down to 1x2) with two full floors and outdoor living space, and that’s one of the few I’ve found so far. It has a cute screen porch on the back, too, in addition to the wrap-around. I’ll probably use it for the custom beach vacation neighborhood I want to build, too.

lady-bane replied to your photo “Adventures in floor plan “shopping.”  I was looking on some floor plan...”

THEY'VE FOUND US GET TO ZE CHOPPAAAA

VE CANNOT HAVE A MOMENT’S PEACE EVEN ON HOLIDAY!

strangetomato replied to your photoset “And while we’re in vacation neighborhoods, have you ever looked...”

I agree. :) And I've never noticed the the mer-llama before!

Honestly, I only noticed the mer-llama when I took that pic! I never really looked at the back of the ship much before because, on the lot it’s sitting on, it has big rocks behind it. But I wanted to take a pic of the “windows” back there, and saw that, which was pretty awesome. :)

ajaysims replied to your photo “Thing I Just Noticed in a Game I’ve Been Playing For a Decade”...”

Have to admit that I can count the amount of vacations my sims have taken on one hand. BV is my least-played expansion. Mainly because in my mac version it was glitchy as hell and I ended up with sims stuck and all sorts, so I just gave up on it. Now I'm playing a PC version, I should give it another whirl.

You really should. I confess I’m really not all that excited about the doing all the things on vacation anymore, since I’ve already done them. (Although I do like bringing home Bigfoot from Three Lakes. I have modded objects that will spawn a Bigfoot, but that’s just not the same. :) ) It’s more being able to send Sims there and let them relax and do different things they wouldn’t normally do, without any jobs (or, for me, childcare, since I usually send only singles/couples and sometimes adult siblings on vacations) and other things to worry about. It can also be a place for singles to find romance amongst people they wouldn’t otherwise meet. Just make sure you’ve patched, if you’re not using the UC, because BV as it was released was super-glitchy, even the PC version.

Also, I like building vacation houses, both “rentals” and ones that can be owned and that aren’t ugly like the Maxis ones.

mustluvcatz-reloaded replied to your photoset “And while we’re in vacation neighborhoods, have you ever looked...”

And of course I notice the unmapped bottom of the whateverthatssupposedtobelayingonitsside, lol.

LOL, yeah, that was the one thing they missed. I’m going to guess that they just chopped off one of the mesh’s masts to the make the extra lying-down one. (Which is what I think that’s supposed to be; sailing ships of the day often carried an extra mast on board in case one was destroyed by weather or blown up by a cannonball. Either that, or it’s supposed to be a fallen mast, since the ship is dilapidated anyway.) So, the bottom wasn’t mapped since otherwise the masts are standing upright. Too bad they didn’t fix that. Maybe it was an afterthought sort of thing and the non-mapping wasn’t noticed or there wasn’t enough time to fix it.

I love the cannons in that pic, though. Especially the one lying on its side. They have a really lovely weathered-bronze patina, which is a nice touch.

sideblogsimblr reblogged your photoset and added:

i had totally forgot about the llama figurehead,...

It’s an awesome figurehead. It’s not surprising that it’s a llama, of course, but the texturing on it is very nice, too. Someone needs to restore the gold leaf on it, though. ;)

kayleigh-83 replied to your post “My fellow vegans...”

I’m not vegan myself but I know people who are/were and I know daiya is sold in Canada for sure

Ah, good to know for when I find myself up there again. :) I was about 80% sure I’d bought some up there during one of my extended stays, but more and more my memory is becoming less dependable, so...

kayleigh-83 replied to your photoset “And while we’re in vacation neighborhoods, have you ever looked...”

I always thought the pirate ship was pretty amazing and well done!

simper-fi replied to your photoset “And while we’re in vacation neighborhoods, have you ever looked...”

I LOVE the pirate ship textures!

They did a really good job with it. Whoever textured the pirate ship should’ve textured more things in the game, IMO. They have some excellent attention to detail, unmapped bottoms of masts notwithstanding.

spectral-cat replied to your photo “Thing I Just Noticed in a Game I’ve Been Playing For a Decade”...”

I honestly just noticed it tonight as well, as I was making over this lot tonight.

It’s actually quite authentic to cover the entire floor of a structure in tatami mats, from what I understand. (I’ve never been to Japan. Other countries over there, yes; Japan itself, no.) I’m not sure that type of building would be one that would be done that way, but it was nice of Maxis to do a little nod to the culture that way.

sigmundsims replied to your photo “Ahhhh, Three Lakes.  There’s lots of room once you demolish all the...”

I love the idea of “off road” rentals! It’d feel more rustic.

Yeah, honestly, I’m trying to make Three Lakes...Well, more like home. :) Where I live is a ski resort, primarily, but there are all sorts of other outdoor things that are big in the general area. (Which is SW Colorado/the Four Corners in general.) Aside from skiing, hiking/climbing, mountain biking, hunting/fishing, jeeping, kayaking, snowmobiling, horseback-trekking, etc. are all huge here. Ice climbing is big in the town where I live, specifically, since there’s a big waterfall right outside of town that freezes every winter. And yes, people who do those things will stay in out-of-the-way rustic cabins. Some, of course, will stay in luxury hotels/lodges, true, but the real outdoorsy (and non-rich/celebrity) people don’t. So I want to give at least the appearance of those activities being available, and I’m building the rustic “amenities” to go with it. So basically, less “lumberjack village” and more “artsy-hippie-outdoorsy ski resort.” I’ve already placed a lot in an off-road, out-of-the-way location to be a hunting camp using Sun & Moon’s hunting spawners, and I’m going to take a look at Chris Hatch’s skiing mod to see how it works... 

phoenixdaisy replied to your post “And another thing I'd like!”

Maybe someone could steal animations off a closet or single shower to make one for you? I'd think that would be easier than all new animations, but I'm neither an object nor animator creator so I'm just speculating. If someone does make this for you, I'd totally download it, too, though. That'd be super useful.

 @kayleigh-83 linked me to this object by @midgethetree which is very close to what I’m looking for but is for recharging servos, not for “recharging” vamps. So if that object could be merged with the coding (or whatever) for vampire coffins...Yeah, that’d be what I’m looking for. :)