#this changed direction several times while i was writing it lol

[robo-dino-puppy]

here's a return to sunfall (and blazon arch and the two carja gates near it)! the mod has been updated so there were no more endless loading screens when i recorded this :D makes exploring much more fun!

i'm not as excited about this thumbnail but it took a lot of super annoying work to set up so here's a(n unfortunately small) version without text:

[acorviart]

Europe VAT laws not changing any time soon, recent. If understand FAQ well, mean shipping to Europe impossible for several years minimum?

That's correct, I won't be shipping to the EU for the foreseeable future due to some import packaging regulations that either have already been implemented or are planning to be implemented in the future.

Note that this is for EU countries only—I can ship to all other non-EU countries like Switzerland, except for the UK due to the UK's own convoluted VAT system.

The only workaround I can offer for EU folks is that you can have a friend or family that lives in a non-EU country place an order to deliver to their address, and then they are able to ship that order to you marked as a gift. Not an option for everyone, I know.

Longer explanation under the readmore for those curious:

As it stands now, each EU country has its own system and fees that I can't keep up with (for example, France would cost me 80 euros per year), I'd need to individually register and report to each country, some require reporting and tracking of what sources of packaging I use, I believe? It's all very complicated, and it makes my head spin just trying to figure out what the requirements actually are, so that's why I stopped shipping to the EU entirely out of an abundance of caution. I also just don't get enough sales to the EU to justify the headache, I'd probably actually lose money paying all the fees. Actually, while I was looking up details while writing this post, apparently there's a new PPWR that's going to replace the old EU Packaging Directive? This is why I can't handle this (ಥ﹏ಥ)

As for why this doesn't seem to be affecting all companies—corporations can obviously afford their own professionals whose entire job is to handle this stuff, and the requirements are also different for large vs small volumes. Meanwhile, a lot of other small or 1-person businesses straight up don't know about these requirements, because it's not like there's a memo passed around about updates to international shipping law. It's also even more confusing because some packages are slipping by without any issue, probably in part due to how the regulations are still new and still being implemented, so I assume it's kind of a mess.

I know of a few people who are willingly taking the risk and shipping to the EU anyway and have had no consequences (for now at least), but I'm not risking the fines ¯\_(���)_/¯

Now for the UK, their VAT system doesn't have anything to do with packaging, but what it does require is similar registration with the government, and I'm required to collect and pay the VAT myself. No thanks!

TLDR; laws hard. laws also expensive. too stupid to figure out and too fearful of fines. no ship to countries

fun story: someone also once emailed me this long diatribe about how they think I'm shit at research and that I'm just making all this up (specifically just to screw with europeans or something, I guess?), so I sent them a few links to the literal official government websites where I got my info (like that UK one), and they never responded. lol

[nvrsaidiwasinurcloset]

hi!! so idk exactly how to describe this but i was wondering if you could write an ethan landry x fem!reader fic with a scene of ethan describing like his fantasies with the reader and what he touches himself to. idk what the story around that would be… maybe this is just something he babbles out during sex, or it could even lead to them trying out his fantasies. like i said, i dont really know. i just like the idea of ethan telling the reader what he imagines doing to her, or more accurately, what he imagines she will do to him, in order to get himself off. idk, have fun with it! tysm!!!!

Hi! If you want more to this, let me know:) I feel like it needs more, but I wanted to make sure this was in the direction you wanted it to go lol. If it's not, I can rewrite it. If it is, I'll definitely write a part 2, just let me know!

What's Your Fantasy? - Ethan Landry x Fem!Reader

This contains SMUT - Minors DNI

Part 2

Summary: You discover something on your boyfriends laptop, and you get curious about what his fantasies are.

A/N: I've been super busy, but I'm trying to get caught back up. My sweet bun that I've had for 7 years that always relaxed on my bed with me while I wrote passed away, so I've been a little in my feels. I hope ya'll like this:)

It was the first time that your poor boyfriend had ever been drunk. He ended up going shot for shot with Chad at a party, as you stood by watching them. Once he stopped making sour faces and yelled “This tastes like water”, you decided to leave the party early and take him home. You knew he was moments from blacking out, and in the high chance he could projectile, you preferred for it to be at his apartment and not all over the rest of the party guests.

Projectile he did, into several bushes and a random trashcan on the walk back. Once you got him back to his place, you knew you couldn’t leave him like that. You helped him get undressed and put on sweatpants before you changed into one of Ethan’s extra-large shirts that he kept specifically for you to sleep in when you stayed over. He sat in his desk chair as he started to get a little dizzy.

You grabbed a trashcan, putting it beside the bed, and grabbed some water for him. You washed your makeup off in the bathroom, before heading back to him. You were going to spoon him so he wouldn’t throw up on you, and if he moved, you knew it would wake you up. You knew exactly how the night would go, or so you thought.

“Babeeee, I don’t know if I submitted my assignments,” he said, or that’s what it sounded like he said.

“Where’s your laptop?” you asked, looking around the room for it.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, “I don’t feel so good.”

“Do you think you can make it to the bathroom?” you asked, as he stood up and stumbled to the door.

You barely made it there with him, just in time. You grabbed an ice-cold wash cloth and put it on the back of his neck, and started to rub his back as he continued to throw up. When he finally stopped, you helped him up and took him back to his bed.

“I fucking love you,” he mumbled, as you rolled your eyes at his heavily-intoxicated state.

“I love you too babe. Lay this way in case you get sick, I just need to find your laptop and I’ll cuddle with you in a minute,” you said, scanning the room before seeing a corner of it sticking out from under his bed.

You opened it and put in his password, clicking on the tab for his schoolwork. He did submit everything he was supposed to, but you saw something interesting on the other tab, so you got a little, well, very nosey. When you opened it, you saw that it was porn.

You looked over to Ethan, who was lightly snoring. You felt like you had an angel on one shoulder, telling you not to watch it. A devil on the other shoulder, telling you to see what kind of porn he liked to watch. You sort of felt like it was an invasion of his privacy, but you just had to know. You made sure the volume was low as you clicked play.

You noticed that the girl in the video, who had a few similarities to you, was giving some guy head. You thought ‘Oh, I’ve done this so many times for him’ until the end of the video, when the guy pulled out of the girl’s mouth and showered her face in his cum. Your eyes went wide as you watched it and wanted to know what else he liked to watch. You weren’t going to go through his history because you already felt bad enough about this, so you decided to have a talk with him later about things he’d like to try. You clicked back to the tab for his school stuff, before shutting his laptop and sitting it on his desk.

You crawled into the bed beside him, covering him over with a blanket and wrapped your arms around him. You kissed the back of his head, his curls tickling your face, before resting your head against his upper back as you spooned him.

You didn’t sleep well, waking up at least once an hour to check on Ethan. He slept peacefully, which you were thankful for, even if you were worried about him all night.

When he finally started to stir awake, he groaned out. “Fuck, my head hurts.”

“That’s what happens when you take as many shots as you did,” you said softly, both from the exhaustion and not wanting his head to hurt worse.

“I don’t remember anything except walking into that party,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Thank you for taking care of me, baby.”

“Of course. Do you want to take something for your head?” you asked, running your fingers through his hair.

“Please,” he sighed, as you got up to grab Tylenol from your purse.

After he took the medicine, and you knew he was okay, you desperately needed a few hours of sleep. You curled back up on your designated side of his bed, pulling the blanket over you. You quickly dozed off, as he snuggled back up to you.

When you woke up, you noticed that Ethan was no longer with you. You went to look for him and found him on the couch watching tv. He started making grabby-hands at you the second he saw you.

“Come here,” he said, grabbing your hips and pulling you down to straddle him.

“Someone’s feeling better,” you giggled as his hands rubbed your sides under his shirt you were wearing.

“I need a shower, want to join me?” he asked, as you felt him pressing against you through his sweatpants.

“I’ll race you there,” you smirked, jumping off him.

You heard his footsteps right behind you as he grabbed you by your hips and turned you to face him the second you made it to the bathroom door.

“You cheated. You had a head start,” he laughed, as your arms wrapped around his neck.

You smiled as you stood on your tippy toes to kiss him. His hands ran under your big t-shirt and over the curve of you ass, pulling you even closer to him.

“I thought you wanted to shower?” you giggled, noticing the look in his eyes. The one that he always has when he so desperately wants to fuck you.

“Fineee,” he sighed, letting go of your ass as you backed away.

When you were in the shower with him, you couldn’t stop thinking about the video you watched the night before. Ethan is very confident with you, but he tends to hold back when it comes to sex. When you felt his hard cock resting against you as he kissed you under the flow of the water, your lips moved to his neck as your hand went to his erection.

“Fuck,” he said, as your hand wrapped it and started stroking.

“Hey baby?” you asked, placing kisses along his neck.

“Hmm?”

“Do you have any fantasies about me?” you questioned, innocence in your tone as your hand started to move faster. His breath hitched in his throat, both out of nervousness and how good you were making him feel. “Come on, baby. Do you ever think about things you want to do to me? Or things you want me to do to you?”

“Yes,” he answered, his breathing getting faster.

“What do you think about?” your teeth started to graze his neck, the feeling making his whimper.

“Oh fuck..uh… I love to think about cumming on your face when I’m trying to get off. And every time I see you take your birth control, it makes me want to cum inside you so bad,” he said, as you smiled against his neck. “I cum so hard whenever I think about my cum dripping out of your pussy.”

“You want me to let you cum on my face, baby?” you asked, dropping to your knees in front of him.

“No..fuck..yes I just don’t want you to think I’m degrading you,” he finally got out, as the simple licks to his tips turned to you swirling your tongue. “I don’t want you to think you have to do stuff like that to make me happy.”

You pulled away, your eyes connecting with his. “Even if I’m down here on my knees begging you for it.”

“Fuck, baby,” he said, his cock aching at your words.

“Tell me what I do to you when you think about me like this. Walk me through it, baby,” you said, leaning forward to lick his tip again.

He intently watched you as your hands went to his thighs, holding on to them as you balanced yourself. You’d always been in charge when it came to sex, just because he was usually so shy. Seeing you like this in front of him made him wish he would’ve said something sooner. Even though you initiated it, he still felt like he was in control.

“You suck on the head of my cock,” he whimpered, as you took his sensitive tip in your mouth, gently sucking.

You kept doing it, waiting for him to tell you what to do.

“Then you take more of it in your mouth, not too much though,” he said, eyes intently on you as you put him further in your mouth. Your head was moving back and forth, as his hand went to your hair.

“Take the whole thing, baby. I know you can do it.”

When you started to gag around him, his fingers tangled in your wet hair, as he gently thrusted into your mouth. Your wetness mixed with the water from the shower dripped down your thighs as his whimpers got louder.

“Just like that, baby. You’re doing such a good job,” he praised, as you moaned around him. Your clit was throbbing as you put one of your hands in between your legs, giving your needy bundle of nerves the attention you were craving.

“Oh shit, I’m gonna cum. Stick your tongue out for me,” he groaned, starting to release in your mouth. He pulled back, your tongue sticking out as he stroked himself and he shot the rest of his cum on your face. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

His eyes kept trying to close as the euphoric feeling washed over him, but he fought it, not wanting to miss a second of you on your knees in front of him with his cum on your face as the water started to wash it away.

You smirked as you stood back up, standing directly under the flow of the water to rinse the rest of it off your face. You grabbed your face wash, cleansing your skin with it as you felt his hands wrap around your waist.

“Did you like that?” he asked, as your mouth turned up into a sweet smile.

“You have no idea how wet I am right now.” Your lips connected with his as his hand reached between your thighs. “What else do you want to try? After we go to your room and I let you cum in me, of course.”

[specialagentartemis]

speaking of Rowland, what changed your mind on grimdark stories? You used to post about how much you hated them lol

Hopepunk started to annoy me more lol.

It's been several things. Partially, it's just been years; I've gotten older, read more books, found authors I really really loved writing really bleak really sad really upsetting and really fascinating books.

Partially it's that I don't really believe in the definitions people use about grimdark anymore; the more I read, the more I feel it's a strawman stereotype that barely exists moreso than it's an actual social force in literature.

Partially I do stand by my irritation with a lot of dark and gritty remakes/reboots of mostly A/V media; Star Trek does not need to be a dark and gritty war story, LOTR doesn't need to be sexy, etc. They feel lazy and trend-chasing more than they feel like a genuine creative endeavor. Too often, they can feel like they're jettisoning the aspects that made me like them in an attempt to be more Mature by adding Violence and Swearing and Sex. I stand by that Star Trek Discovery wasn't good, and the fact that it felt like it was embarrassed that it had to be Star Trek when it really wanted to be Game of Thrones in Space was a big part of why.

But honestly that seems to primarily be happening in TV/movies, and it's stopped being nearly the inescapable social force it was 6-10 years ago. The zeitgeist moves on and new trends annoy me. In sci-fi/fantasy books, the movement seems to be in the other direction: hopepunk and cozy. And they have just. been bad books. So many of them have been bad in new and frustrating ways. In the same time period that hopepunk and cozy were on the rise in the sff zeitgeist, I also read books like The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed, Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, and The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez... heavy and sad and serious and unhappy and with brilliant artistry that feels like it actually has something to say and isn't ignoring how humans actually act by saying "well it wouldn't be a problem if everyone was just nice :)" I read the bleakest, most upsetting, most depressing sci-fi book I've ever encountered, Harmony by Project Itoh, which he wrote while he was in and out of hospitals dying of cancer and it shows. It's unsettling and unnerving and upsetting and different, and you can tell it comes from the heart. Is it grimdark? Maybe, yeah. And it has value as literature, and I got a lot more out of it than I did from a lot of things touting how important they are for being Hopeful and Cozy and Conflict-Free.

Honestly, part of it is my natural plain contrarianism. When making fun, hopeful, funny, campy, or adventure-y things Dark and Gritty and Violent was held up as better and more inherently mature writing, it annoyed me and made me dislike it; now that violence and selfishness and cruelty and pain in stories seems to be considered immature and unnecessary, and rather hope, softness, gentleness, happiness, cheerfulness, conflict-aversion, and harmony are the Morally Correct and Mature ways to write stories, I resent that too. It ends up feeling trend-chasing and reductive, and when bland nothing books are held up as The Most Ethically Correct And Best Writing Because They Are Hopeful, it makes me just as annoyed as when dark and gritty TV is held up as The Most Mature And Serious Prestige Television.

Also, honestly, the world kept getting worse and sometimes I want media that acknowledges that I feel afraid and hurt and angry, and that things aren't all sweet and good and nice actually. It often makes me feel better, more seen, more understood, than media that goes actually everyone is nice and and problems are easy to solve and the world is basically just and people can be trusted to all be mature and good and reasonable. (And if you're ever impatient, or selfish, or snappish, or mean, or insufficiently hopeful... then you don't belong in our utopia. As someone who *gestures above* can be impatient, snappish, and mean... that doesn't make me feel all that hopeful.)

[egrets-not-regrets]

Under the Trail of Stars

Mara is enjoying the scenery of the Trail of Stars Cove when she is joined by the merAstartes warsmith, Eciton. They chat as they watch the courting pairs on the beach.

Author's Note: It's been a while since I wrote for this AU. I couldn't resist writing another harpyMara and merEciton fic. I really like this old (kind of, not really) couple. Lol. Erriox apparently spoils his mate with picking up lost younglings, according to Eciton.

Tagged: @shadowfirecat , @kit-williams , @bleedingichorhearts , @barn-anon , @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan

@sleepyfan-blog , @bispecsual , @c-u-c-koo-4-40k , @ms--lobotomy , @legionsofthehungry

@gra93fruit-blog , @i-am-a-dragon34 , @felinisnoctis, @thevoidscreams, @yurihasurunbara

Mara looked out into the darkening sky and more and more stars peaking out. She closed her eyes feeling the ocean breeze flow between her feathers. Letting out a long breath, a pleasant sense of nostalgia clung to her senses as she watched bioluminescent plankton twinkle as they were stirred up by the waves and creature’s that swam among them. On the beaches below the cliff where she sat, courting harpy pairs danced and played. Her sharp eyes caught the forms of Lenora and Erriox playfully rough housing in the water, and half-hidden behind some rocks in the shadowed covelet at the far end of the beach, the large silver form of the Grey Knight laid there with Lana relaxing in his arms, her body and wings draped over his torso, having a quiet conversation. 

Mara’s eyes crinkled in amusement 

“Oh Skymother, you bring us such surprises.” Mara chuckled to no one in particular. 

With the arrival of the merAstartes, the Primaris younglings in particular, her colony had changed so much. The old harpy wouldn’t have guessed, even in her wildest dreams, how entangled they would be with the merAstartes, most of which were still predators upon harpykind. From adopting Jophiel and his brothers as their own fledlings to several gannet harpies being bonded to a merAstartes of their own. If only their ancestors could see them now… she wondered if any others of her harpy brethren of other species have bonded to a merAstartes as well. 

“Lady Mara.”

“Hello, Warsmith Formicas.” she greeted the heavily armored mer warmly, “It’s rare to see you out and about.”

He huffed, but there was no vexation behind it, “I conduct patrols with my troops on occasion. Our numbers are not many.”

“Of course. It makes sense that you do.”

The large mer settled on the grass next to her and looked out into the water, “So this is the reason for its name ‘Trail of Stars’.” he commented. The glowing plankton trailing into the twinkling stars at the water’s horizon brought memories of swimming in space among the stars with his pod. It had been so long ago... Eciton wondered who else among his pod had made it here to Ancient Terra. 

Mara chuckled, “You have not been here at night?”

“No. I normally patrol the deeper waters.”

“Oh? What brought you to the surface?” she asked curiously. 

Eciton’s head turned towards the direction of the Grey Knight. Mara followed his gaze and frowned slightly, “You could give Stormbreaker some privacy. He cherishes his time with Lana, especially for a chance to court her here. He wouldn’t do anything foolish to ruin such an opportunity.”

The warsmith’s lips tightened a touch then replied, “He is a threat, both you and I know that. His bonded and your colony may be safe, but Stormbreaker is too powerful to trust him fully knowing what he can and is willing to do to other Astartes warriors.”

The old gannet harpy let out a sigh, “I suppose you have a point, but I advise that you let Stormbreaker have his time and space with Lana here. Don’t ruin his courtship unless you want to sow further resentment.”

“Duly noted.” Eciton hummed, he then asked her, “What are you doing here? Are you waiting for your courting partner?”

Mara let out a chuckle, “Oh Skymother, no. My mate has long since passed and I have not found another. I come here to enjoy some relative peace and quiet and the beauty of this place.”

The warsmith mer quirked his brow, “And keep an eye on the rest of your brethren?”

Her wing knocked against him as she laughed. When he turned, he saw her black eyes glittering with mirth, “You are funny, Warsmith Formicas! But I won’t deny occasionally keeping an eye out for some wayward younglings who tend to invite trouble, intentionally or not.”

“I have a bunch of them.” Eciton snorted as he watched Erriox leap impressively out of the water, catching Lenora and taking her down with him in a huge glittering splash, “Some more surprising than most.”

“Erriox, a troublemaker?” Mara covered her mouth with her claw as she giggled, “He doesn’t seem the type.”

“I didn’t expect him to adopt a whole brood of Primaris Scoutlings.” It was incredulous how many Primaris younglings Erriox had adopted. And that number kept going up every month it seemed. Was his bonded mate trying to make up for the fact that she couldn’t biologically have children with him? If this kept up, he would need to have a serious talk with his warrior. 

How does Erriox keep finding so many of them? That is another question. How did it happen that all of the younglings Erriox found recently happened to be Primaris mers? 

“You needn’t worry. Erriox is trustworthy and is a good father to those boys.” the gannet harpy reassured him, “And the boys are wonderful young mers. I can attest to that.”

Eciton hummed in agreement. The Primaris scoutlings looked up to Erriox as a father figure, and he’s caught the odd scoutling referring to Erriox as some iteration of “father”. That term was strange, since the only “father” he recognized was his primarch, Perturabo. Erriox had become a defacto scout sergeant despite his lack of experience, but he had a surprising amount of patience and tolerance for the younger ones, for an Iron Warrior that was. He supposed the scoutlings were still quite young, and living among the harpies developed their language to a more familial way of addressing others.

“It is not that Erriox is not a good scout sergeant. However, the scoutlings need much more guidance and support in order to become full merAstartes. Joining a pod will give them more resources to further their development. Particularly for the specialists in the group.” His main concern was their growth into fully-fledged merAstartes. Some of the Primaris were recently inducted merAstartes, others, especially the young Blood Angel, was just a barely finished neophyte with the added complication of being a psyker. And he was reluctant to let him and the Ravenguard scoutling train with the Grey Knight given the reports he had read.

“Are you wanting the fledglings to join your pod? Have you spoken to Erriox about this matter?” she asked.

The mer rumbled, his tail twitched, giving the slightest indication of his frustration at this dilemma, “Joining my pod makes the most logical sense. And yes, I have spoken to Erriox and a few others about it. The scoutlings can only gain so much knowledge and experience under his hand and living among the harpies. Yet their distrust of Firstborn Astartes is stunting their ability to gain opportunities to further their growth into fully-fledged merAstartes.” 

His language was blunt, but what Eciton said was the truth and was not meant to be insulting. The young mers were not harpies after all and they could only assist so much. Mara nodded in understanding,

He then looked at the harpy beside him, “Lady Mara, the scoutlings have a good rapport with you and your colony. I need your help to convince them to join my pod,” he paused, “or any pod, it is fundamental to their growth.”

“Every fledgling has to fly the nest at some point.” Mara hummed in agreement, “I will ask, but I cannot guarantee anything. You know those boys have a mind of their own. Give them some time, their trust will come.”

Eciton let out a quiet sigh, “I’m not sure how much time we have.”

Mara tilted her head in question, “What makes you say that? Is there some calamity to come?”

“How much do you know of our origin?” he asked.

“Only that you came from different locations and points in time from the future, perhaps even an alternate universe.” she then frowned, “Also that there is constant conflict and warfare where you and your brethren are from.”

The warsmith’s tail twitched as he explained, “I cannot give you details, but you are correct. We do not know why we were sent here, only that warp magic was involved. As the warp is unpredictable in its nature, it is difficult to say if all of a sudden we get sent back to our original timeline.” Eciton’s brows furrowed at the thought, “The scoutlings would have a better chance of survival as full astartes should they be sent back.”

Mara stretched her wing and patted the back of Eciton’s shoulder. A shiver ran along his spine from the sensation of her wing tips brushing against his tail. Her voice was understanding, “I understand your dilemma, but some things can’t be rushed. The fledglings will come around. I will have a talk with them about this issue.”

Eciton’s voice was quiet, “... Thank you, Lady Mara.”

“Of course. My colony and your pod are intertwined.” the old harpy smiled kindly, “You allowed us to have a protected haven in your territory, it is the least we could do in return.” she added, “I’m glad you care about their wellbeing. Skymother knows that it is something these fledglings sorely need.”

Eciton looked up into the stars, “There were numerous squads of scoutlings in my pod, They were fighters in their own right and were essential to covert warfare and providing firepower.” his voice then was tinged with what seemed like sorrow to Mara’s ears, “Many were still in training and were lost due to their lack of experience.” Eciton was about to say more, but stopped, brows furrowed. He muttered self-deprecatingly, “I must be getting soft here in Ancient Terra.” 

Such losses were acceptable in the calculated outcome, war had no mercy for the weak. Eciton’s brows furrowed. That idea slowly became more uncomfortable in the years that he had spent in Ancient Terra. Perhaps it is due to how small of a number of merAstartes that exist at this time and place, making every single merAstartes a valuable warrior to have; perhaps it is the lack of war and fighting making his mind idle; or perhaps some deeply buried human part of him is digging itself out, breaking through the ages of indoctrination and battle that made him what he was.

Sensing his inner conflict, Mara gently said, “Heavy is the burden of leadership and war, but learning to be soft may not be a terrible thing in this time. Perhaps appearing in this world may be a chance for a new life; to learn something new, be it about this world or about yourself.”

“Think about it. You lead a pod mixed with loyalist and chaos mers. You’ve given safe haven for my colony and made us your allies,” nudging the mer with her wing, she chuckled, “And you kept this old harpy company. I very much doubt that you would normally have such casual conversations with the humans in your time, let alone non-human creatures like me. I would say that you had to learn new skills to navigate all that.”

Eciton huffed, but the corner of his lips couldn’t help but curl up into the barest grin, “You are uncomfortably perceptive and idealistic.”

“It helps to appreciate the small things.” Mara smiled, “Thank you for keeping me company.”

“You’re welcome. “

She yawned and stood up to stretch and ruffle her feathers, “It is late and I shouldn’t keep you from the rest of your duties.”

“Are you returning to your colony?” 

Mara let out a sigh then laid down in the grass, “No. I will be sleeping here.”

The Iron Warrior mer frowned at the open space around them, “Are you not afraid of enemies potentially attacking you here while you sleep?”

“No, this area is sacred to most creatures for one reason or another, so it is considered somewhat of a sanctuary.” Mara blinked and replied, “We are located at the cliff’s edge, it is easy enough to escape should anything happen and I can hold my own if necessary. You don’t have to stay.”

Her relaxed reply bothered him, were all harpies this foolish? Resolutely, Eciton shifted closer to the half-asleep harpy, “Sleep, Mara. I will keep watch. The Grey Knight looks to be staying here for the night anyway.”

She thought she heard him grumble under his breath, “Not all creatures would know to treat this place with such reverence.”

Mara smiled at the mer’s gruff response and tucked her head under her wing, drowsiness taking over, “As you wish. Thank you, Eciton.” 

Eciton continued to watch the beachside activity from the cliff, his tail nestled against the sleeping harpy. He listened to Mara’s breathing even out as she fell into a deep sleep. Eciton shook his head slightly; if only his pod could see him now…

“I’m getting soft.” he mumbled. The stars twinkled as if they were laughing in reply. 

[01always14fanfic]

What are your thoughts on early season marvey (s1 - s4)? Their dynamic changes quite a bit in later seasons and I'm assuming that's the basis of most of your writings

It is really. Those first few seasons. My Introducing Lovely series has completely fucked with the timelines of Suits. But I started writing it when I was in season 4 or 5. Jessica wasn't looking like she was going anywhere. Since I know more, I started writing my fics earlier in the Suits timelines. 2-4.

S1

Season 1 the puppy analogy for Mike is dead on. He is lost as fuck in the big boy world. He doesn't know how to file anything, do anything. He's so cocky, which is more funny that it was anything else.

Harvey absolutely needed to check that pride. Because no, puppy. You don't have the walk to talk the talk. Sit down.

Season 1 Harvey, he didn't want an associate because he knew the type. He's been the law world for almost 20 years, he was an associate himself. He works with associates all the time. The thought of being forced to work with someone everyday that annoyed him was not going to work. He literally pays Donna's extra salary to keep his people. Harvey doesn't work well with others (because he doesn't want to work with others).

So when he found Mike, someone was fun to be around.. I could have working with you every day.

When Mike dropped a case of pot on his feet and was willing to pretend to be a lawyer, he became easy to keep under his thumb.

When he was smart on top of all that..

Honestly too, I think the fuck you to Jessica for making him to do this is funny. ..I guess understood why she doesn't appreciate the humor. Lol.

All of this with Harvey could be wrapped up under one theme. Chasing intensities.

S2

Season two, Mike isn't a pro but he's practiced. He helps Harvey with Hardman. He figures out Folsom Foods. He's getting better, but hes not great. He's basically just out of diapers, so he's still easily flustered. He panics when he messes up and messes up more.

He wants a relationship with Rachel, but he doesn't want to lie. He's more worried about Harvey's concerns than he is about telling the truth. He breaks that off with Rachel.

Then his grandmother dies and he loses it on Harvey. After getting sent home after blowing up in the bullpen, he spirals more. Edith meant the world to him and his overactive brain is replaying these memories vividly.

Harvey finds out late what is going on with Mike.

And what does he do? He turns Mike's brain off. He sees Mike just stuck in his head and trying to fill a space that can't be filled. Not with Tess, not with getting mad at clients, those aren't the distractions he needs.

Harvey finds out late what is going on with Mike, but reasonably so. The issues with Hardman, Darby, Louis, and Jessica have him completely distracted. Plus Scottie's drama. He was rightfully distracted, he was being pulled in all directions.

In the final episode we see a pretty good wrap up of what happens when these two don't communicate.

Mike is out of the loop what is going on with everything with Harvey's deals. His grandmother had just died. He didn't know about the deal with Darby about Harvey's name no longer being an option. He didn't know that he ruined Harvey's chance at getting his name on the door.

While Mike is stuck in his head and Harvey is fighting, they both loose themselves. Harvey likes to walk the gray, but he doesn't abide by ethical violations. He's very strict about code, it's how he got noticed by Jessica in the first place. Harvey made several big violations that as Mike quoted "would have made his stomach turn."

Harvey wants him fired and gone.

Mike is more alone then ever and tells Rachel his secret, because he needs someone. Anyone.

S3

I don't know how this season could have started with anymore angst.

When Jessica gives Mike an office, trying to play nice again. Tells him all the things she noticed. "You didn't just come through on the merger. You bluffed Hardman, turned Monica Eton, and put us over the top on Folsom Foods." She tells him the story about her parents break up.

Mike isn't excited. He isn't flattered. He's sitting there all brokenhearted because he messed up. He asks Jessicsa if her parents ever got back together, because his brain is on Harvey.

Later, he tries to get Harvey to get let that anger out. "You haven't said whatever you have to say to rip me to shreds enough so that you can start to forgive me. So go ahead. Whatever it takes, I can take it." And he can, Mike has been on the end of Harvey’s harsh words more than enough times to know.

Mike gives Jessica the office back. "I wanna give this office back. I didn't earn it, I don't want it, and if there's a chance it'll help Harvey forgive me, I'm gonna take it. Oh, and, uh, if you ever do send that letter, you're in the same boat as me."

This ^ Scene reminded me of the scene in S1 where Harvey threatened Jessica to get keep his promotion. Harvey backed down to her threat, fired Mike, but then came back with the gun turned back on her.

I was like "Damn boy! You learning! There you go! But you still broke Harvey's heart asshole, so fix that."

Harvey pushes him away harder. Colder. Gives him to Louis. Tells them again they are done.

Mike has Rachel whispering in his ear confirming all the things Harvey's saying. They're done. Move on. So Mike tries, he dives into working Louis. He likes most of it, so it's not torture but it's not where he's supposed to be. This isn't the best version of himself, it's just what he can have now.

Then Harvey has it out with Jessica on the roof. She unfolds the parallels for him. Mike did to Harvey, what Harvey did to Jessica, what Jessica did to her mentors. Breaks down the concept of 'We learn and we amend or fight to the death. I don't went to fight to the death with you anymore Harvey.'

Harvey mulled that over and does finally accept that Mike probably did learn. He sees him with Louis, he doesn't like that. He has too much pride to back down from everything that was said. Donna offers Harvey some support if he wants to forgive Mike and he takes the out.

This is where I feel we see the dynamic start changing a little bit. It's early S3.

Season three, Harvey is more helpful as a mentor to guide him. The best way I can describe it is that Harvey is a master teacher, and Mike was still in grade school. Mike has all the basic skills now, so now Harvey can actually show him how to be hone and find new skills. But he's could only do so much until Mike is ready to take that step on his own.

He stood his ground with Jessica. He's been winning cases. He's helped with Hardman. And if Harvey's a little honest with himself, if he had told Mike all the information - Mike would have made a different choice with Jessica.

The first thing that threw me off was the Forrest Gump reference game between them for a hot second. Harvey has zero issue turning the tables to remind Mike of his place in their relationship. But not here.

"Okay, if I'm Forrest, then you're Bubba."

"Shrimpin' bidness."

It actually gave me whiplash the first time I heard it. Mike moves on, he doesn't even bask in it. He goes into the concern about Harvey becoming managing partner.

EP 3 - 6. No more puppy jokes. No more trying to dominant the situation, conversation, or debate. It's all more leveled.

EP 7

Harvey talks about kicking Stephans ass. Mike just nods and drinks his coffee, no witty comment until Harvey gets a little offended.

"You think I wouldn't do it?"

"No, I'm not sure you could do it."

"What's he going to hit me with, his ascot?"

"Harvey, the man plays rugby. That's no joke."

Harvey doesn't dispute. Doesn't quip back. He's caught off guard, because Mike is going by the facts. He's not going to change his mind just because Harvey gets more witty.

(We find out later, Harvey could indeed kick Stephen's ass. But Mike wasn't swooned by the words lol)

-

Then Jessica comes in all huffy about Stephen giving Cameron a witness. When she revealed the deal between Harvey and Darby that Mike didn't know about, you see them share a look. You can see Mike pissed and surprised, but keeping it together. You see Harvey looking guilty and caught.

Jessica catches this and tries to drive a wedge again. "Are you telling me he doesn't know?"

Mike takes over, squashing the issue of the secret keeping for the time being while Jessica is there. He's not going to allow her to get between them again. Harvey relaxes and falls right back into being his lawyer self.

- gif post

When Harvey and Jessica face off again in Jessicas office, Harvey says something that triggers Jessica. The second it came out, you see Mike's head drop as if saying goddammit Harvey. Because the second Jessica hits back, you see it actually hurts Harvey.

Mike sits there after Harvey walks away like he wants to say something, but he doesn't. Later on, he catches up with Jessica at her car and stands up for Harvey there. Even though she's super condescending (that lawyer pride man), she tells Mike how they can both get what they want.

Mike is watching and listens to everyone around him. Harvey. Donna. Jessica. He figures out Stephen is the culprit.

- gif post

EP9

Harvey and Jessica are battling again in her office. Mike comes in and verbally steps between them, it gives me the vibes of 'nope, Jessica this my territory now'

"Yeah, about an hour ago. Don't tell me I beat you to it." - Mike

"Maybe. But you didn't have Harvey slowing you down." - Jessica notices again the dynamic switch.

"That's a fair point." - Mike

"Okay, I'm right here." - Harvey complains, he doesn't correct or make a joke.

And also

"I mean the plan that I thought of and that you didn't and that I'm the perfect person to implement." - Mike to Harvey

- gif post

And he succeeds. Robert Zane gets Folsom Foods to pay in full.

Rachel gets mad about she was used in the negotiations. Donna confronts Mike about it.

Donna: "Anyone who understands women in any way would know that was a bad idea from the start."

Mike: "Harvey liked it." - This the only justication Mike needed

"Proving my point."

- gif post

E10

Mike wants one of the major cases, his desperation for it is obvious to Harvey. Where any associate obviously wants to work on the big cases for experience, status, ect., Harvey knew better. He saw it, Mike's brain was spiraling again. Only this time, Mike recognized the signs.

Harvey: "You got girlfriend troubles, don't you?" - Takes a swing with his best guess with a joke.

Mike: "Okay, I'm just asking for an assignment, that's all." - Puts his emotions to the side and refocuses.

Harvey: "Don't tell me, quarterback asked her to the prom?" - Pushes again because he wants to make sure he's right.

Mike: "Captain Pinstripe's the one who brought up the girlfriend, and second of all, people actually had girlfriends after high school, which you wouldn't know, because emotionally, you never graduated." - We can play this game if you want to, but I don't think you do.

Harvey's tone gets more defensive. He knows he's right and he's not a fan of Rachel. He's half opening the floor to an emotional conversation right now. Que the sass.

"Well, I guess you're the expert, because the only thing you graduated from is high school."

If Harvey was a girl, he'd make sure his hair flipped as he walked off.

The next morning, Mike shows up at Harveys all distraught over Rachel. Not only does Harvey not like Rachel, he told Mike not to get involved with her. He tried to warn him this was a bad idea.

Mike accused Harvey of not letting people in, and you can see Harvey start to busy himself at that point. Like this conversation is the last thing he wants to focus on now, because he let Mike in. He's been letting him a lot more lately. Harvey gives him the morning off.

Okay, I know the question was for 1-4 but it'll take another few days to answer the rest. I feel bad that you've waiting for a response. I can do the rest if you're still curious. But it's this with some growth on both sides.

I like to entertain what would could have happened if we just moved on from Rachel as a romantic interest. If we just put these two together, the things they could accomplish if they were a complete duo.

[zenkindoflove]

Thank you <3

Now that Pull Me in Deeper is over, I wanted to take some time to thank a lot of people. Writing and posting this fic has been an amazing experience for me. It has changed me as a writer in so many ways, and I couldn't have done any of it without the support of so many people along the way.

(warning: overly emotional sappy rambling. I'm sorry if I forgot someone!!! to be honest, so many people have been supportive of me and popped in and out of this experience and you all have left an impression)

First, I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about my experience writing this fic.

I had never written Canon x OC before I created Alexius in Summer Heat. I've primarily been an OTP fic writer, focusing on one couple per fandom that I would fixate on. When I started Summer Heat, I really wanted to explore as a side story of Eris in a relationship, and for me, the only person who kept popping up was someone like Alexius. Summer Heat was a safe zone to play around because I got to develop him and his relationship with Eris while still focusing on Elucien. When Summer Heat was over, I got the idea to write Pull Me in Deeper because I wanted to explore whether Eris x Alexius would be able to carry their own story on their own, and I wanted to challenge myself by writing a fic that mostly contained original characters.

There was a lot about this experience that was new and challenging. Writing only Canon x Canon ships and those that were really popular in fandoms did not prepare me for some of the trials and tribulations that come with writing Canon x OC fics. You often feel like you are on your own island, separate but adjacent to the fandom. You hope that people on their boats passing by will stop and visit you. Maybe stay a while. Sometimes, I will admit, I felt lonely, especially in the early days of writing this story. I went from a very built in community of shippers who loved the ship for the ship and we could squee together about how adorable our OTP was - to basically trying to convince people that Alexius was a worthy partner for Eris and worth taking a chance on reading about him. So I gained a whole new respect for the Canon x OC parts of the fandom, and I'm happy I can count myself among you now.

To say it frankly, I've grown so attached to Alexius and his relationship with Eris over these last several months. He is very real for me now. You really can't spend this much time living inside of a character's head and being committed to their HEA and not adore them. Not only is he a representation of so many people in this world that I love, but he also has given me so much confidence in my ability to create original characters. In the past, when I have sat down and tried to writing original fiction instead of fanfiction, what always held me back was creating characters that felt like real people. After Alexius, I feel sure now I know how to do that, and for that, Alexius will always be my baby. Please know, as long as I'm writing ACOTAR fanfics, Alexius will be in them and there will be more in store in the future for Eris x Alexius centered fics (more than there already are lol). Eris x Alexius is my Eris OTP and now that I have the Eris bug, I won't be stopping.

Okay now to shoutout some specific people:

@crazy-ache - You have always been there for me in every stage of my ACOTAR fanfic writing process. Thank you for telling me early on, when I felt guilty for this fic expanding so much and taking so much of my focus, that it was okay for me to branch off in this direction and leave Elucien on the shelf for a while. I really needed to hear that then. And thank you for always being up for reading my first drafts, brainstorming through scenarios and plot, and just being my cheerleader. I love you, and I really cannot ask for a better writing partner and friend.

@lucienarcheron - The very first time I ever had the instinct to write Eris with an OC, I ran to you for advice. You trekked this path long before many, many people, and you have been instrumental in me taking a chance. Especially seeing all the hard work and focus you've put into Spirit Meets the Bones really inspired me to want to write an Eris x Alexius solo fic. So thank you so much for being an Eris x OC mentor of mine.

@thrumbolt, @works-of-heart, @bonecarversbestie, @little-fierling - Thank you so much for creating fanart either of Eris x Alexius or inspo from this fic. You all have also been such amazing commenters on the fic itself, leaving insightful, smart, and hilarious feedback. It's so rewarding to have readers who are driven to create based on something you made. And it really helped me in times when I've been down or unsure of myself, that there were people out there who thought enough about my fic that it inspired creativity in them.

@olenvasynyt - your long comments and even longer voice notes that you've left me in DMs have been such a treasure. I especially love the head canons and little snippets you have shared with me about your own Male OC that you have created for Eris. It's such a small community that we are in, and I really can't wait to meet him too. I love that we both have such a strong love for the Autumn Court and creating OCs.

There was quite a few people who started reading PMID because they were familiar with my Elucien fics and got to know Erixius in Summer Heat. I really appreciate all of you who migrated over and decided to go on this adventure with me!

I also had a group of people who really surprised me joining on and reading this fic, and that is the Azris shippers. @the-darkestminds, @jules-writes-stories, @mistandmemories, @constantsins I have ] always enjoyed your expressive, thoughtful, and analytical comments and words of encouragement you have given me. I especially want to shout out @the-darkestminds because I really do think that you helped my audience grow. If you weren't reblogging my chapter updates, a lot of people who are interested in reading about gay Eris wouldn't have seen my fics at all. In my head, Azris shippers only gave this a try because they love you and your work so much. They trust your tastes so they felt if you liked this fic, maybe they would like it too. You have always been such a good friend to me (especially tolerating me even though I don't like Azriel lmao) and I can't thank you enough.

I also want to thank a lot of people who have been with me throughout this entire journey, reblogging my fic and leaving amazingly thoughtful and inspiring comments on my chapters: @clockwork-ashes, @what-about-elvenis, @lovely-vanserra-sunshine, @teddyhoneybear, and all of the people on AO3 who I don't know if you're on tumblr! Comments are everything to a writer, and please know that anytime I received a comment from you, it made me want to write the next chapter so see what you would think about the rest of the story.

There have a lot been a lot of people who have liked/reblogged/or occasionally stopped by to chat with me about this fic or Alexius as a character. While I can't list everyone, please know if you reached out to me, I was always so moved and excited to talk to you. And anytime you want to talk to me about these characters, please do not hesitate!

I know this is very extra - but I really felt it was appropriate to get this sentimental about this fic compared to others. I really put a lot of myself into this story, and the emotional journey and growth as a writer I went on felt like I needed to give back to all of the people who were there encouraging me to not give up. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[nyewclear]

i has a question about the dlc

uh

is it gonna be paid orr ?

because i am. poor ☹️

it is going to be a paid dlc, sorry! i have a couple of reasons for this:

a lot of kids play my game and the fact that it’ll cost money will be an obstacle to keep them from easily accessing adult content. i can’t really stop kids from getting into things they shouldn’t, but i can at least make it a little harder!

the dlc is going to be quite big and take a lot of time to write, plus i’m going to be illustrating lots of sprite variants + cgs and am going to be going back to my main composer mello jupiter for some new music. a lot of you are familiar with my shorter >10k-word fics but with the dlc prologue + the very large wealth of choice i’m going to allow players… it’s going to take a while to play and also be able to be replayed several times haha. consider it a direct continuation of the game, because it’ll address a lot of stuff that immediately preceded it.

and honestly i’ve just worked for a very long time on this game as a whole. it’s free/pay what you want on itchio because i think games need to be accessible to people, and i was aware that 99% of people wouldn’t donate anything (to be clear, i am okay with this lol), but these games cost lots of money to make if i keep striving for a high level of quality!! the game is paid on steam, but i kinda make penny change there BAHAHA so i need to compensate that so then the games i make after this aren’t a struggle to fund since i’m the only one who does all this stuff. kurou connect is my next big project and my background artist & composer are soooo awesome but very expensive!!! with the full game, i’ll be adding a lot of voice work which will also end up being very pricey, so i need to come up with that money without having to work myself to the bone at my two dayjobs, you know?

the dlc is going to cost $10.99 (the same price as the base game on steam) and will be itchio exclusive, as i’m trying to balance out the two platforms. the majority of my players are from itchio so i’m trying to bait people into buying my work by writing mothcock lmfao. i feel like it’s not too bad of a deal!

if the pricing doesn’t work out for you, i’ve still got all of my nsfw fics on archive of our own (which, by the way, you can always ask me for requests!! i do really like taking them) and then i’ve got a scrapped artemis nsfw text game that you can play if you join my discord server :-)

[bonesandthebees]

Arcane makes book club anons come out of lurking lmao (and I'm no exception). I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts and possible analysis when you finish season 2! Likes and dislikes and everything in between, like a full-blown post with 'read more' lol.

Hope you get better soon! Wish all the warmth and coziness ^^

-🌹

OKAY FINALLY FINISHED I'VE BEEN HOLDING ONTO THIS ASK ROSE

so I definitely have Thoughts on arcane that I'll throw under the cut

ok. so overall I really really liked the show. I got a LOT spoiled for me before I watched it (even though I tried to avoid spoilers it just kept ending up on my dash) so that might be why I was okay with some of the more 'controversial' writing choices since I already knew they were coming. like I knew that Vander was still alive going into s2 and was going to come back, I knew Isha was going to die, I knew Jinx was going to die, I knew Viktor and Jayce were going to have a Madoka Magica-esque homoerotic ascending into the universe kind of ending so like I had a lot of knowledge going into it

I've seen a lot of criticism about Isha's death feeling pointless and while I get where that's coming from, personally I didn't mind it because of the drastic change it sparked in Jinx's character. you could argue she was already going in this direction anyway with realizing that she had to step up and do things to help others and that Isha didn't need to die for that, but personally I still think it made sense. I do wish they had spent a little more time fleshing out Jinx's role as an older sister/mother figure to Isha and how that probably changed her perspective of Vi because there's no way that didn't affect how she looked back at her childhood memories with Vi now understanding what it was like to be in Vi's shoes. but I get it, they only had limited time so I'm not, like, upset about it.

however, I do think I have an issue with Jinx dying as a writing choice. while I do appreciate the 'poetic' nature of it with Vander finally getting to rest and one of his daughters needing to take him down, I also think it just didn't need to happen? Jinx and Vi could've both pushed him off the platform and Jinx could've tossed one of her bombs down after him. while I understand the character arc of her sacrificing herself for Vi, I think we'd already reached that point of her character growth by her teaming up with Ekko and joining the final battle and fighting side by side with her sister in the first place. it definitely felt like Jinx's death was kind of just thrown in because the writers wanted to make it feel more like a bittersweet ending than anything else. I will say though, I do understand that Jinx's ending was going to be a tricky one for the writers to figure out no matter what. she did, yknow, commit an act of terrorism and murder several politicians so it would still feel weird for her to get off scot free after that, but maybe she could've just left Piltover/Zaun entirely and gone off to explore the world or something. I just think there were alternatives the writers could've considered.

those were my main issues with the show though. otherwise I really really loved it. call me controversial but I love Caitlyn and Vi and their whole messed up thing going on. I definitely feel like Vi joining the enforcers in Act 1 was REALLY strange for her but I do feel like it was a character choice that made sense after the terrorist attack at the funeral and also everything she'd just recently been through with her sister. Now do I think she would've gone along with Caitlyns' gassing plan... ehhhh debatable but I'm going to let it slide.

But Caitlyn I adore because she's such a messy character. Yes, I like the cop because I like that she's a really shitty person. I like how she's written, sue me. I loved seeing her good intentions and morals get so twisted in s2. I think it was incredibly fucked up of her to use the gas against the Zaunites to try and hunt Jinx down and it's a great example of how horribly messed up she was by her mother's death! And I think her entire dynamic with Ambessa was so well done. Caitlyn was mourning her mother and angry and desperate to find a direction to put that anger in, and Ambessa, a mother, hands her an army and tells her what direction to point her anger in. I've seen some people argue about whether Caitlyn was aware she was being manipulated by Ambessa or not because of that scene where Vi points out to her that Ambessa was doing that and Caitlyn says "I know" and to me it seemed very clear that Caitlyn was saying that she knew she was being manipulated only in retrospect, not during it.

Like, I'm not over here trying to defend Caitlyn's dictator arc or say she gets an excuse because she was manipulated. She still had choice and agency and did some very terrible things but I think it's fascinating how she got to that point and I can understand the circumstances that altered her mind to get to that place. And again, I think it's very important to recognize that Caitlyn had just lost her mother who she had a very complicated relationship with, while Ambessa was a mother herself and while she might not have been traditionally motherly, she definitely positioned herself as a mother-type figure towards Caitlyn in terms of giving her guidance and wanting to push her in the direction she wanted. Caitlyn was such a moral part of the show in s1 so I just really loved seeing how twisted she got in s2.

Okay I rambled a lot about Caitlyn but I have a lot of feelings about her. I like really well-written bad people with good intentions. This is very long now but I have soooo many thoughts about this show and I really loved it even if I do have a few issues here and there. The animation and music and characterization of everyone was so good and I had such a fun time watching it. Also just, so many incredible female characters. They're all so different and complicated and arghhhhhh yes this show is incredible with its women. I haven't even gotten to Mel and how much I love her or Sevika and how she's my favorite female dad figure lmao. But very good show overall!!!

[cryptidsurveys]

Saturday, June 7th, 2025.

Have you ever driven on a street with 6 lanes going in the same direction? I wasn't the one driving and I'm not sure how many lanes there were, but there were a lot - when my mom and I traveled through New Jersy to visit friends of the family.

When was the last time you were on a city bus? I haven't been on one since middle school, with my old friend Jesse.

When is the last time you saw grass? I saw our front lawn when I arrived home from the animal shelter earlier.

Do you have a garden? Does it have flowers, vegetables, or both? We have some garden patches that are now more weeds (and bushes and trees) than flowers, and we had a vegetable garden for a number of years, but we no longer keep up with it.

Where do you want to raise your kids? I don't want to have children, but hypothetically speaking, I would raise them here. This wasn't a bad place to grow up; I feel like I had a pretty great childhood. I know times have changed and things aren't the same, but I don't really have the desire or means to move away.

Do you like rocking chairs? Eh. I feel like now they would just make me kinda dizzy.

Have you ever been to Cracker Barrel? I have.

Do you know where your favorite brand of popcorn is manufactured? I don't have a favorite brand of popcorn.

Would you care if it snowed in NYC, if you lived in Arizona? Probably not. Not unless it was really severe or catastrophic, in which case I would be like, "Well, that sucks."

Have you ever seen a ghost? I haven't.

Do you drink water as much as you should? For the most part. I might get dehydrated at times, but I usually consume enough over the course of the entire day.

Have you ever worn socks that weren’t white or black? Yeah.

Is that basically a weekly thing for you? I guess technically because many of my socks are white and gray.

Honestly, where do you buy your socks? Usually Walmart.

Do you like sock puppets? I made them as a kid, as well as paper bag puppets, but now that I'm older, I'm indifferent.

Name the last 4 people you hung out with. If volunteering counts, then I hung out with Natasha and Liv today, then yesterday's crew was Natasha, Kristen, and Riley.

Have you ever been on a plane with any of them? No.

Which one is the oldest? Riley.

Tallest? Kristen.

Have you ever kept something of your bf/gf after a break up? I have.

What was it?

Is there anything a friend has borrowed and never returned? I can't recall anything.

Do you own any purple clothing? I have some purple, black, and white plaid pajama pants. I might also have a similar plaid jacket "in storage" somewhere.

Do you like hornets? Naw.

Have you ever burned an ant with a magnifying glass? I might have. I did a lot of strange and cruel things when I was younger.

Have you ever had an ant farm? As a kid. I made one out of a glass jar. I kept it for a while, but one day I stepped on what I think might have been a carpet staple, assumed it was an ant that somehow escaped, and got rid of it.

Have you ever had crabs, turtles, or lobsters? I haven't.

Is it later than 2:33 AM right now? It's currently 12:47pm.

If you took off your shoes right now, and threw them, who might you hit? Lol, my cats must have been anticipating this question because they have vacated the premises.

When did you last tie your shoes? More than a year ago. My current shoes don't have laces.

Have you ever worn red high heels? I don't think so.

Is Halloween your favorite holiday? It's one of them. I just enjoy the whole holiday season.

Have you ever been to craigslist.com? I've probably been to the site at some point, but I haven't done anything with it.

What about eBay? Yeah.

Have you ever bought a refillable pen? I was given a refillable shark pen by Jo, one of the people who worked at the pet shop when I did that work experience thing in 2022. My dad later bought a bunch of the same variety, as well as some swan ones, and he uses them for his writing.

What about a mechanical pencil? Many of them.

When did you last cry because you were happy? I'm not sure.

Have you ever cried from peeling an onion? I have.

Have you ever used Nair? I've tried it.

Do you like your steak rare? I'm kinda fine with whatever, but if I was going to order it at a restaurant, then I would go with medium-rare.

Do you wish your bf/gf would slow it down some?

Are you living to the fullest of your potential? There are ways that I could increase my current potential, such as eating more + better. I don't feel like I'm trying my absolute best, but I'm not completely "not trying" in life either. These past few months have been a bit of a slump; a case of "two steps forward, one step back."

Have you ever watched someone fall to sleep? I don't think I've ever just sat there and watched someone…well, except for my dad because he falls asleep almost instantaneously.

How long do you plan on living where you currently live? I might actually end up spending the rest of my life in this house.

Do you know anybody from South Africa? I don't.

Do you go to church at least once a week? No.

Have you ever thrown a coin into a lake? Not that I can recall.

Have you ever worn a toboggan? I was so confused because I thought a toboggan was a type of sled, but apparently people often wore knitted hats to keep warm while sledding and it became a name for that particular style? So yeah, I've worn something like that.

Is it precipitating right now where you live? It's not.

Has anyone ever told you you’re too young for something? Probably.

What about for someone? I'm not sure.

How many times have you changed a diaper in your life? Zero times.

Have you ever cried uncontrollably on a boy’s shoulder before? I have.

Looking back, did you ever think you would be where you are now? Not exactly, but maybe briefly back in 2021 when I worked at the animal shelter, before I crashed and burned. After that, up until I started volunteering again in 2023, I had no idea I would be where I am now. Even then, I didn't really expect to start driving again, reconnect with my mom, etc.

Do you remember who you had feelings for December 2009? Nick.

Who were you last in a car with? My dad.

Has more than one person ever told you they’re in love with you? Yeah.

What time did you get up today? I woke up at 4:00am, but I started getting ready at 5:30am.

Who was the last person you were on the phone with for over an hour? No idea.

Have you ever slept on a couch with someone? I think so.

When was the last time you saw your mom? About a week and a half ago.

Last place you fell asleep other than your bed? The kitchen floor. When Lacy was in her last days, she had a little bed nook beneath the cabinet that holds the microwave. She mainly wanted to be there, so I made myself a bed and slept nearby.

What is the last thing you drank today? Water.

Who was the last person you talked to in person? My dad.

Is it easy for someone to make you smile/laugh? It's pretty easy.

Do you ever choke on your own spit? Yeah.

Ever feel like you’re not good enough? I often feel that way.

What’s standing in the way of what you want right now, if anything? Mostly myself. There are also things that aren't entirely under my control that might hinder me, but idk if they would actually stop me.

Are you scared of moving on? I'm scared of letting go of my eating disorder…?

Anything bothering you? Eh. Nothing immediate or major. Just the usual mind garbage.

Will you talk to someone on the phone tonight? I don't think so. Not unless my mom calls or something.

Ever liked someone older than you? I have.

[y0d00p]

I've been thinking a lot about the stuff leading up to Ladot lately and changing the way some things happen

the original idea was Pidot's ship being destroyed in a random collision in deep space but I've been thinking about it happening on some kind of little outpost or maybe not caused by a collision with another ship at all. it might make more sense for it to be something like a stray meteor, collision with a belt or some other debris, or a solar flare or some monster or something idk. the whole point is that they end up stranded too far away from anywhere to get help. ship on ship collisions probably only happen closer to planets where there's more traffic lol

so, some natural random thing happens to destroy the ship. probably something that gave them at least a tiny amount of warning, enough to prepare for the sudden expulsion into space. Lil should have her spacesuit on during all interstellar travel for safety reasons, but because she is reckless and stupid and cocky she usually doesn't. so she needs enough time to at least slip that on

Lil and Pidot's attempted return to civilization is pretty much unchanged. they rely on Pidot's drone's measly boosters and momentum to move. they come across a Sondomind and get directions to the nearest planet. a distant cruise ship passes by them at some point but doesn't notice them. Lil's suit gradually runs out of heat and oxygen and she passes out. Pidot overexerts himself in desperation and completely fries himself, shutting down.

Vander, still with a sliver of connection to Lil after they fused at an earlier point to help him eat Myr, gets a weird tiny sense of something amiss and comes to check on her. he brings them to their home planet before Lil starts actually dying. Vander can teleport vast distances. he's a Soed thing

side note I really need to read more about hypoxia and hypothermia to figure out if Lil should suffer either, and how severe/how long if she does. and how it affects her life afterward. she's an alien so I can also just bullshit by virtue of "she's an alien". she 100% would have died without Vander showing up, she had to spend some time in the hospital, and it does have some kind of lasting effect. maybe she gets space asthma or something

Pidot is super fucked. once Lil is conscious and lucid she spends all her time trying to fix him but can barely even get the drone to turn on. as soon as she's released she goes to Ura9 and Lad for help. Lad gets to work

Pidot's personality is mostly recoverable, partially thanks to the default "Pilot" AI he originates from being easy to access and copy. But his memories are almost completely shot, either corrupted or completely missing. Lil kind of backs him up every so often but I'm thinking the most complete/recent backups she had were on the ship because she was being dumb about where she was storing it

the original idea was that Pidot didn't really lose much or any data at all and just had to be kind of touched up and installed on new hardware so the process was relatively quick. his and Lad's time together and their "conversations" were basically instant. but I'm thinking now it's a much longer process with so much of him being missing. it's piecing this 40+ year old AI back together bit by bit using the broken pieces left in the drone + the outdated and incomplete backups provided by Lil + Lil's personal recounting of everything she knows Pidot knows from as far back as she can remember

Lil spends a while at the factory basically sharing her whole life story with Lad so he can sort of artificially rebuild her Pidot. is this necessary?? no, probably not. this is probably needlessly convoluted and it would be better to just let those memories be lost and move on. but like I said, I've been thinking about this a lot and I think it's fun and it makes me happy lol

I've been planning out the dialog between Pidot and Lad while Pidot is in Lad's system and I really like writing them talking to each other. they're cute... I like them... I don't know if there's any way I could really share it. there's not much of a "story" to write because it's 100% dialog. it's not exactly something I can draw because it all happens internally

I just wanna talk about Lad and Pidot. can we talk about Lad and Pidot. can we talk about sad machine by porter robinson. I wanna talk about digital beings occupying a single space and communicating in an abstract and intimate way and blending their internal parts and working together to make something new and peaceful. sad fucking machine. ugh

[fountainpenguin]

Minor Fanfic Updates

- I'm slowing Life of a Loser's posting schedule down to just Wednesdays and Saturdays [my time zone] instead of every other day. An update will go out Thursday so the end note can inform readers of its schedule change, and the next one will be Saturday.

-> Update schedule was so frequent because I didn't see the point in holding out too long when the whole 'fic is already up on FFN (and I'm not familiar with best schedule for chapters that average 3k words or less, and this 'fic is summer vibes so I didn't want to take forever), but I do think the every other day schedule is overwhelming. Slowing down is smart.

- I have several Hermitcraft-themed 'fics in the anonymous Guess the Authors collection that will have authors revealed on Monday. I spoke more about what that means for subscription emails and plans HERE.

- Updated my Pinned Post to include a What's Going On? section. I added the FOP 'Fics page link, the MCYT 'Fics page link is there but currently unlinked, and I updated my Currently Updating section.

-> You can check that any time you want to see the update schedules for my current projects.

- I've been making Frayed Knots progress, but it's still slow (I have a big, personal thing happening IRL that takes lots of my attention; everything I've been updating throughout the summer is stuff I'd prepped in advance).

-> I was hoping to post consistently in June or July, but I think sometime in August/September is more likely, as I would rather have multiple chapters on hand before I post. My big thing ends early August, so I'll be able to give more attention to writing new content then.

- I've been thinking of finishing Come What May before posting more Frayed Knots. It has 6 chapters left and then I can finally wipe my hands of it after starting it in 2018. I'd love to finish it before 2025. Thank you to everyone for being patient with it!

- I recently added new headers to Dog's Life, Origin of the Pixies, and Frayed Knots that include links to their chapter-by-chapter recap info, so that's there for anyone who wants a recap guide as they go. I've prepped a more detailed recap for the next Frayed Knots chapter that recounts what's happened thus far in Act 3 since it was on hiatus a long time.

- Drafted a series page for my MCYT 'fics (similar to my 130 Series Table of Contents page). It will be up on Monday after Guess the Author is revealed. The purpose of this page:

-> To be linked in my Pinned Post for easy access to people browsing my Tumblr (as previously my only AO3 link there was my multifandom Personal Faves list)

-> Help people see what I write and direct them to series so they can customize the content they receive AO3 emails for

-> I was linking to every other series on my individual MCYT series pages, and there are a lot of them. Every time I added a new series, I had to edit every series page and it got annoying. I'm planning to redirect people to the Tumblr page for series info, which mirrors my current set-up with the 130 series (as of my recent footer update).

-> After the author reveal on Monday, I'm going to update the footers for all my MCYT 'fics (as they are currently inconsistent) to link to this page. I'm working on some more detailed descriptions for series content as well, which will also be linked there to help people decide if they're interested in reading.

- Factor It In still on hiatus for now. I was hoping to update it again in August, but my IRL busy-ness has slowed my ability to get Frayed Knots up. Factor It In is not abandoned; just paused while I work on a 'fic that's older.

-> /cry smile as I think about how Frayed Knots is only one year older than Factor despite them being posted online 6 years apart

-> I promise I have not lost interest in Factor, lol... It's my baby, but it's also my middle grade-adjacent style experiment and it's important to me that it feels a certain way, so I don't want to rush it.

-> Might finish some little WordGirl one-shots I have sitting around, though. They've been sitting with me since 2018... I've just been nervous to post them because. idk. Feelings about them.

- I have been sitting on a far-future Inside Out draft since the movie came out, and now that Inside Out 2 is out (it was lovely! Seeing it a second time today with family), I'm tempted to finish it... You might see that or maybe you won't.

-> It's about the inherent awkwardness of trying to control a body and flirt with another's emotions you know exist but will never meet, especially if you yourself are an emotion and aren't getting the physical sensations that other parts of the body are :') Anxiety and Ennui also getting dropped in my lap, my beloved...

All righty! Thanks for reading my work!

[fallloverfic]

I totally understand where people are coming from when they comment on my Jinx fanfics saying they wish this or that happened in the comic or, amazingly, that Mingwa should take notes or something. I am, however, probably the very wrong person to say this to lol

Mingwa is far and away (obviously) a better writer than I am. And also I adore the manhwa. I have thoroughly enjoyed every single episode, including the ones that came out in the nearly two months since I first read the manhwa, and reread at least parts of it every single day. I know fanfiction can be a fun stopgap between updates, and I'm glad my fics are enjoyable to other folks from that perspective. I get that the manhwa is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and there are things people want to happen that are not happening (at least yet). I am sympathetic to frustration with the thing you are reading and on some level enjoy and wish were more like what you wanted. I am also interested in analysis of the story and love fanworks for it. And I'm very open to critiquing stuff you enjoy. I love doing it, and it's a great way to better appreciate art (and it's part of why I write fanfiction in the first place).

I am, however, truly not the sympathetic ear for anger about Jinx from a story or character perspective that people seemingly think I am, nor do I wish for my fic comment section to be the dumping ground of such stuff. As I've said with ENNEAD before this, I write the fanfics I do because I love the comic, not because I hate it or its author. Jinx is imperfect - as all art is - and I have criticisms (minor ones, though, like a few art errors or the overuse of stock assets solely in lieu of comic art). But I do not hate the story, the characters, or the direction the plot is going (I have tons of drafts of basically "I really like this thing about Jinx" that I just don't post for my own sanity and time). Maybe that will change, who knows! I liked BJ Alex well enough before I dropped it around the 1/3 mark due to something Dong-gyun did (though I did not like it even close to how much I love Jinx before dropping, and the thing that got me to drop it was good writing and understandable narratively, just also squicky for me). There are things I would like to see happening in the story. But also, there are at least 40 episodes left of the story (if not more, given Mingwa's comment that season 2 would be longer than season 1, and I doubt she meant just 1 episode longer). That's a lot of time for stuff to happen, and even if everything I wanted to happen happened next episode, I'd still be hungrily waiting for the following episode.

My fanfics are for fun, to ease the hungry monster in my head that wishes for more Jinx between updates. Mingwa is pacing the story well, in my opinion, and I trust in her ability to continue to do so. I am, however, less patient in my own writing (in part because I'm in a lot of fandoms and writing several fics at the same time), so I unfortunately kind of rush through things to get to the catharsis faster, which I know would be better served in a longer story. That's fine, because it's fanfic, and obviously it works for more than just me. But Jinx the comic is a lot better than that, which is part of why so many of us love it.

Now excuse me while I return to fic editing and rereading the latest episode another 40 times.

[obstinaterixatrix]

also went on a paddle boat with sister, it was fun I haven’t done it in like 7 years. we stopped by a book store, and

1) there’s a physical copy of A Hero in the Demon King’s Castle which was surprising to me because syohei(/inutoki)’s got really off-beat style so I’ve figured they’d be too niche to be licensed, plus it had a dust jacket WITH author/artist bio AND the extra comics on the actual cover… I didn’t get it because I’m not quite ride or die for it, but I am reconsidering because syohei’s art is just really fun. plus it’s just a well-printed book, how often do you see manga printed in eng with dust jackets? I’ll probably reread it and see if I Really Do Want It. if anyone wants a bit of a wacky read with interesting art, give it a look. I actually… really like inutoki & syohei’s other anthology more because I really like the love interest of the main oneshot but it also has one oneshot that’s pretty vicious to the point I’m not sure I’d actually get a physical copy lol

2) speaking of pretty vicious, a physical copy of one of asada nemui’s works was there which I think is pretty cool, her art is sooo interesting to look at. it’s not as crazy as syohei’s, but it just feels… direct? impactful? just an appealing style. I wouldn’t buy a physical copy of that one, but I’d get one of sleeping dead… I’d consider getting the anthology but she really paired two of my favorite oneshots while having the main story have My Hardline Exclusion Criteria 😞 I’d get the other anthology tho, no hard no’s in that one. where was I going with this? well, if you like strange morose rancid toxic romances, definitely look up asada nemui and also a list of content warnings

3) on that note, it made sense to list manga alphabetically by title back when it’d take up a single shelf max, but I think book stores really need to rethink manga shelving, especially since more bl with smut/het with smut/yuri with smut is getting licensed and distributed

3a) by the way there were quite a few yuri titles, which is a cool change! I already had the one I liked

3b) buy ‘5 seconds before a witch falls in love’ it’s so good. I LOVE the main story. I am lukewarm on the other oneshot. the main story is SOOOO fun, zeniko sumiya has kind of a more shounen-esque art style and she usually draws bl so you need to treasure her fun & dumb witch/witch hunter shenanigans

3c) I mistyped shenanigans as shenanigals lmao that kinda fits still

3a) and the other ~15 I’ve read and dropped because I wasn’t interested in them (I showed sister the cover of SHWD—like, I also want muscular women but I cannot get over some of the anatomy, those are beach balls attached to her chest? like it’s not the aesthetic of Anime Titty Jiggle Physics but I really cannot get over it) but I’m glad there’s more yuri. mostly. I hate that the gamer one is there, the art and writing is so weirdly uncomfortably… H for something that is a SFW slice of life, and I didn’t like a few of the other series that sister pointed out because they were really. too long with not enough sense of direction/momentum to have satisfying character/relationship progression. BUT IT’S GOOD THAT MORE YURI IS BEING LICENSED.

3) anyway I was thinking that there should probably be more a delineation between either genres or age of audience, but at the same time, that’s tricky—having an 18+ section could make it uncomfortable for folks who enjoy being able to browse without a glaring neon sign that indicates they’re looking at smut, dividing by genre can make it tough for folks who want to take a look at gay romances/lgbtq autobio more surreptitiously,

3d) well, I would imagine it’s less of a huge deal now than it was ~15 years ago, but homophobia still is a thing

3) so in the end I have no defined conclusion to my thoughts on manga shelving in english-speaking countries

4) I saw several copies of nagisa furuya’s works! I might go back for number call, that was the first one of hers I’ve read and it’s really cute. I was telling sister, this might sound bad but I like how… standard her art & writing is, it’s very clean and pleasant, her low(ish)-stakes slice of life fluff is really good. also nice to have sfw options for introducing folks to bl

5) this is completely unrelated to this bookstore trip but a couple of weeks ago I saw an m/f romance and was like. do I know this artist from bl??? but I looked up the artist and didn’t see anything I would recognize, it’s just… the way older men is drawn is so…

5) like I know I’m stupid biased because I read an inadvisable amount of bl but he looks like a guy straight out of my miserable office worker bls. I feel like I should know him from bl. I guess I just forget that m/f fans also like older men because all the josei romances I’m involuntarily exposed to are very (…) Like That

5a) mangaplanet REALLY needs to reorganize its genre divisions. hardcore josei smut shouldn’t be lumped with shoujo. hentai should not be lumped with shounen. guys what is going on there

5) but I’ve been thinking of reading it because even by style alone it looks like it’ll at least be unique m/f (though, if I’m gonna read m/f, my preference would be for a miserable older office lady and kinda punk-ish younger guy, but oh well…) it’s just, the cognitive dissonance of squinting at this guy and being like. you belong in a bl.

6) I need to get back out of the habit of reading bls to pass out at 2am 😔 for a while I finally dragged myself back to sleeping at 1am with my baby leash (screen lock) but I’m back in my bad habits. I could at least look at the unhinged horror m/f racher’s been begging me to read just to diversify what I’m pouring into my brain. oh, also sister gave me night is short walk on girl to read and the writer really did deserve all his awards, his character voice is extremely arresting

[coralhoneyrose]

I really enjoy your works and I'm wondering (in the least pressure-y way possible) how far ahead you plan? Both within a single work (like half orange) and outside (sequels? Another big story you want to share?).

Hi! Thank you so much for reading and enjoying my work! I don’t think that’s a pressure-y question at all—I’m thrilled that you’d be interested in hearing about how I approach writing my stories :D

When it comes to planning within a single work, I *do* use an outline for all my long fics, but it’s admittedly not… super detailed LOL. I’d say my process can best be summed up as having the broadest strokes of what will happen in the story planned quite a ways in advance (typically either from the very beginning or over a year before I’m going to be getting around to actually writing that part) but that the finer details of how those plot beats play out are often not figured out until I’m actually writing the scene itself or a chapter or so before. Mid-sized details and plot beats (unsurprisingly) fall somewhere in the middle and are usually planned / outlined at the beginning of the individual arc they’re a part of. 

To use PtLY as an example, when I first started writing it, I didn’t have a whole lot of plan beyond the scenario that got them into the fake dating in the first place and some of the romantic antics I wanted to take place. I was initially planning for it to be quite a bit shorter and more simple only to pivot pretty quickly once I got started. I think I decided while I was working on chapter 3 / 4 that I wanted to take things in a more political direction (which was within a few weeks of starting the fic, since I used to upload way more frequently back then). At that point, I already decided I wanted the fic’s climax to involve someone trying to assassinate Robin at the ball. I also knew I wanted a council member to be behind it, but I didn’t actually lock in which council member I wanted it to be / what their motive was until several chapters later (I think around chapter 6-ish?). I came up with the idea for truth serum then as well, but it wasn’t until I was literally writing chapter 13 / 14 that I actually sat down and ironed out HOW the assassins would have gotten into the castle, how they were trying to kill Robin, how they got her alone, or where it was happening. Which…those are arguably pretty important details ahjskd. 

And probably I *should* have figured those things out earlier…but truthfully my brain has a hard time feeling out what it will need to know in order to plan for a scene until I actually get there. Leaving the details open also helps give me more freedom to follow creative whims when they arise. When you’re working on something over a really long period of time, I think it’s only natural that you may wind up coming up with new ideas you like better than your original plans at some point during all those months. I like the flexibility of being able to tweak a lot of the “how’s” without changing the main “what’s” of the story, if that makes sense. 

It does involve having to do a lot of “trust the process”-ing though. Honestly I keep thinking one of these days I am going to leave things a little *too* unplanned and wind up writing myself into a corner, but fortunately it hasn’t happened yet. To some degree I think following those creative whims can help with that too. A lot of times I’ll opt to include a detail in the story without having a clear plan for if I’ll ever wind up doing anything else with it or not, only for it to wind up being pretty essential later on (Robin writing in that journal in chapter two of PtLY being one notable instance that comes to mind). 

Outside of single works, I do like to have at least a general idea of what I will be moving onto when I finish a fic—mostly because I have a compulsive need to always have some sort of Chrobin story lined up for me to daydream about when idle. At this point, I don’t have any plans for sequels to my stories—I try to structure them in a way where I’ll already be writing everything I am interested in covering anyway.

I do have a (loose) plan for the long fic I want to work on after Half Orange, though! I think I first mentioned the idea in a text post when the baby Chrobin unit released for heroes, but I’d love to do something with Chrom and Robin having been childhood friends and eventually getting pushed into an arranged marriage to broker peace between their countries. I’ve actually been mulling on more of the particulars for that idea this past month, but I learned my lesson with the fake dating fic and I don’t want to actually start on anything new until Half Orange is done haha. 

So…yeah! That’s an overview of how much planning I do / when it typically happens! I’m not sure if my work comes across as being more or less planned out than it actually is, or if this is about what you expected. Regardless, thank you so much for wanting to hear more about my process! <3 I love talking about this sort of thing 

[bikwin5]

"ELLY'S ADVENTURE" notes and retrospective

It's been almost a month since I released "ELLY'S ADVENTURE," my first finished game in quite a while. I kind of dropped it without any context so I want to talk about it a bit. This is going to be a long post.

If you haven't played it then GO DO THAT CLICK ON THIS NOW!!!!! Just now I uploaded a recent 1.2 version that fixes a couple more bugs. I highly recommend you read this after at least beating the main game.

THE ORIGINAL

The first thing I want to reveal about Elly's is that the characters and setting did not begin with this project. How scandalous!!! They were actually conceived for a different project that I started thinking of as early as the end of 2015. This was also a game maker project, but it was much larger in scope than what Elly's Adventure became. It was going to be a "METROID MANIA" type game that many indie devs love to make.

The characters themselves didn't change that much in terms of roles. Elly was still the protagonist with Natalie as a supporting role, and I even had the idea of a hard mode where you play as Natalie back then. The plot was that there was like a magical item that got stolen and Elly and Natalie accidentally end up in a situation where they get recruited by the military and sent to take it back from a factory being used as a front for a base of very evil operations. The tone was still kind of funny but a little more serious than Elly's Adventure.

These are the earliest digital drawings of Elly and Natalie from 2015 and they look like FUCKING DOGSHIT!!!!!! SOmehow worse than I remember. I'm glad I learned to draw a bit better if nothing else.

Chandra was also a part of this project but she was not the main villain, rather she would have been the main henchman you fight multiple times throughout the course of the game, getting new attacks each time. She was to work under a character who I called MINERVA, THE CYBER-QUEEN who was to be the main antagonist. Chandra was more of a funny character who displayed moments of incompetence while the Cyber-Queen was more serious. I never really settled on a finalized design for the queen and I didn't even really like her that much in retrospect so Chandra ended up being the main antagonist of Elly's Adventure due to its more lighthearted nature. The enemies were also always meant to be weird round robots with green eyes, and I reused some designs for Elly's Adventure.

Old sprite sheets of Elly and the enemies. Was never really satisfied with Elly's animations.

Yulie was also part of the original project but she was to not make any physical appearances. Rather she was to give hints and bits of lore from pieces of her writing you would find around the factory, from a time when she worked there and slowly discovered that something sinister was going on. Surprisingly Yulie was never actually intended to be Elly's mom from the start until I started thinking of her being a support character in Elly's Adventure and I was like wait why should she be helping these kids... well her and elly both have blonde hair so she's her mom now LOL

This project never had a proper name, I think I also considered calling it Elly's Adventure but I didn't want to exclude Natalie from it so I was thinking of names like "Sky Diamonds" but it doesn't take place in the sky so that's stupid. I got as far as laying out the whole game and getting basic controls and some of the opening area down but that was about it. Truthfully I was never really satisfied with how it controlled or the art direction I was going with and making a metroid type game that lasted several hours felt so daunting I didn't really want to work on it anymore after a point.

Here are some old gifs of what it looked like. The main gameplay idea was that Elly was going to have a propulsion as a double jump that could be upgraded, sort of like the booster 2.0 from Cave Story. That idea ended up working its way into Adventure as a powerup. There was to be other mechanics like shot upgrades and secondary items that would do fun things but I never got around to that.

THE INSPIRATIONS

Now that I've spent long enough talking about Elly origins I can get to the actual game that, if you are reading this, most likely played. While it uses the same characters and setting as the last project, Elly's Adventure has a much smaller scope and style of gameplay. I am not a huge fan of the word "inspiration" something about it pisses me off. But with everything there was stuff that Elly's was inspired by.

First off only the most keen of observers may have realized that Elly's Adventure very much emulates the look and feel of titles played on a certain handheld system. It is the GAME BOY and it's one of the greatest things ever made. It has TI-84 ass graphics and sold a hundred million. I think the Game Boy might be the most rudimentary electronic game device to ever be so popular and I love it for that.

What's really ironic is that I actually did not have a Game Boy growing up YES that's right my first system was the Game Boy Advance. I know it's backwards compatible but I didn't know that as a kid and the only way I knew about games was either seeing them directly in the store or the sears catalog. And I loved Yoshi so much that I wanted a GBA specifically for the Super Mario Advance games with Yoshi in them. I enjoyed my Yoshi's Island port very much. So any original Game Boy title I've played I was either a teen or older since that was when I discovered the magic of emulation.

Anyway this is getting too anecdotal so I should start talking about the specific games that actually did inspire Elly's: Mole Mania and Link's Awakening.

MOLE MANIA is a puzzle game released by Nintendo in 1996. No one bought it because the Game Boy was dying and Pokemon had yet to breathe life into it again. People like to call it "Miyamoto's forgotten masterpiece" and then not say anything else about it. But it is legitimately a very good puzzle game that manages to do so much with so little and it's surprisingly difficult too. Each level is a series of one screen puzzles where the mole has to get the big ball into the goal, like this:

I got this from a youtude video so it has the cool Super Game Boy border. Anyway Muddy Mole can go underground to get to places and push and pull the ball around and all sorts of stuff. It's all designed in a very competent and concise way and I love everything about it except for the bonus stages and final boss. It feels unique among Nintendo games because it feels like they almost never do pure puzzle games that aren't some sort of falling block variant.

Of course Elly's is not a puzzle game so you might be wondering why I'm even bringing this one up. I felt compelled enough by the concise puzzle design that I wanted to make a Game Boy styled thing myself, something that I was considering for a while. I thought the idea of moving from screen to screen and clearing everything out would be fun. So I ended up digging up the handful of characters I had hardly thought about in years and set out to make a game with them.

Funny enough, even back in the day I was considering making a Game Boy styled game with Elly as a sidescroller. The idea was that it would have been a primer before jumping into a big game. It would have been something really short, like only 20 minutes, and the only characters would have been Elly and the Queen. But I didn't really get into it, not even writing down any ideas. So I suppose I was itching to do something with the GB style all along.

LINK'S AWAKENING is a much less obscure Game Boy game, and is probably the most well cherished GB title ever that isn't Pokemon. I went and played it shortly after Mole Mania because I wanted ideas for Elly, which was to be a small funny game of action. It wasn't purely for research, I just realized it was one of the few Zelda titles I hadn't played yet and I figured now would be a good time.

Of course it's a very good game. It uses the Game Boy's capabilities to its fullest and the color version enhances it even more. The overworld is made to feel bigger than it really is and the dungeons are honestly a lot more elegant that what Link to the Past had to offer. But mainly the thing I took away from this was level design stuff that could translate to Elly's well. I think STAGE 10 with the waterfalls was a good example of stuff I took away from this. A lot of the background graphics were also inspired by Zelda, such as the cliffs and castle walls.

did you know between DX and the remake its impossible to find any good screenshots of the original GB link's awakening... anyway just imagine this screenshot in monochrome and that's pretty much everything the desert stages were referenced from.

The Kirby series ended up being another source of inspiration, despite not taking many gameplay influences but rather style influences. Kirby is a funny little guy with awesome power and Elly could be considered similar, maybe even a ripoff if you think about it. I took a lot of ideas from the GB games in particular but moreso the spinoffs than anything. I think Kirby's Block Ball is a neat little title that's probably the best you can get with Game Boy breakout. Stuff like the structure of the game and the concept of an Extra Game were also taken from Kirby.

There are a couple of other minor GB titles that served as inspiration. Painter Momopie is a Japan-exclusive game about a little witch that has to paint floors. It's not an amazing game but it's cute and small. Elly's sprite, which was the first thing I drew for the game, was in fact based off of Momopie, and that's how I set the graphical style in motion.

There's also a game called Out of Gas which has these full screen cutscenes with fucked up looking people in it, which I tweeted about once.

I don't remember how I found out about it. This pic stands out to me a lot because there is not a single other game on the Game Boy that looks like this. This was dated May 10th and the notepad file where I started writing ideas for Elly's Adventure was also May 10th. So it's very much possible that this somehow ended up pushing me to make the entire game LOL

Moving on to Elly's Adventure

As implied by the last section Elly's Adventure started development around May of last year. This was probably my fastest turnaround from concept to development ever for a game idea. Somehow I still have the first things I wrote in the notepad file here unchanged:

There is a LOT more to the file than this but also I want to show that my process of making big projects is stupid as shit. Just take a big notepad file and start putting things in it until it gets so big I have to make a separate one. It's not the best but it works for a one person team.

You might also notice I intended the game to be about 30 minutes long, which did not happen as now it's more than twice that length. This is something called "scope creep" and it happens with every video game ever made by an ambitious indie dev. Honestly not sure how I intended "20-25 stages" to only take 30 minutes. Regardless scoping as small as I did I expected this project to take maybe a year and it ended up only taking a year and five months!!!!! I probably could have done it sooner if other projects and real life things like moving didn't get in the way.

Regardless it was relatively smooth to get Elly's Adventure off the ground. Since earlier last year I was already playing around with making a prototype of a different top down game that was puzzle based (don't count on me picking it up again) it wasn't too hard to do something similar on a smaller screen size, with already existing characters. I had some ideas that I scrapped early on like a score counter and a timer and decided to make Elly's a simple action game where you are simply focused on destroying everything you see.

This video is the earliest footage of Elly's after only a couple of weeks. The music was added by me, it wasn't in the game yet.

There's only one other bit of gameplay that's different than usual and that's the bonus stages, those were added fairly late in devlopment. I had the idea because I realized that a handful of Yulie locations was a pretty slow way of gaining 1ups by itself. I kind of forget they're in the game until I play it myself.

Truthfully I made Elly's as small as I did because I really did want to have a whole game out there that felt complete and polished. My Kirby games of the past might be funny but they're derivative works and VERY unpolished. With Elly's I wanted to give myself as much time as possible to refine a smaller game and I think based on reception it turned out alright.

THE DEVELOPMENT

Elly's Adventure was made in Game Maker Studio 2, a platform that I used because I had prior experience. Is it the best platform for making games? Honestly not sure. It's ok but it's obviously built off of an old codebase, much to its detriment. But I think Game Maker is very good at making 2D games that you can compartmentalize into a series of rooms, and Elly's was perfect for that. So I ended up doing that instead of learning GB studio or something because I didn't want to deal with actual GB limitations.

The development timeline of Elly's Adventure I ended up splitting into three phases. The first phase was to send the game to a couple of friends in secret and see what they think, purely as a proof of concept. The only feedback I was looking for was confirmation it was a good idea for a game. This was about three months in development and it had stages 1-10 without the stage 10 boss or the bonus stages, something I hadn't even conceived of yet. I got enough feedback that I knew I wanted to continue with the project.

The second phase was the longest, spanning like nine more months. This was the bulk of creating the game's content, as well as stuff like me moving that got in the way. I was more open about the game at the end of this phase and I sent it to a number of friends who are listed as "Generous Playtesters" in the credits. Special thanks to them, again, for doing this. I had more people than I expected willing to give me feedback for free. It took them a while, I think because I ended up sending it out the same time that fucking Zelda came out.

The "demo" I sent out was in fact the full game in a less polished state. All 20 stages, the intro and ending, and even a less refined options menu was all in. I did this because I really wanted the whole game to be polished as much as possible, especially since the last big game I put out (PEKSCTG2) was a hellscape tested only by me. Most reception was actually pretty positive and I think the thing I ended up changing the most apart from bug fixes were the bosses. I think all of them had a bit of rework to adjust their difficulty. This build actually did not include the Extra Game you get from finishing the main story, so all those stages actually are an untested hellscape. Have fun!

The third phase went from May to now, taking longer than I expected. Pikmin 4 coming out in that time didn't help either. When making the extra game it turns out making 20 harder versions of the existing stages takes a while!!! It was that + refining pretty much everything else and getting it ready for release. Speaking of level design here is a little snippet of the MS Paint type stuff I did for that:

Later I would put the actual sprites in instead of these shitty placeholders. Note that some rooms are not the same as they are in the finished game, I made some changes on the fly. That's kind of a fun thing of working by yourself, you don't have to like tell a separate design person to do something if you want changes.

Sometimes I see sentiment that making a project is easiest at the start and really hard in the middle but for me it's the opposite, at least with game dev. Getting something off the ground beyond just an idea is hard but making the content is honestly pretty smooth sailing. Then you have the end where the last bit of the game is most of the work. It's a bit painful having to comb through such a big project multiple times to make sure everything is there and running. Despite this project taking way longer than expected I'm still glad to finally get something done and out there.

THE GWAPHICS

If there is something between 2015 and now I have done a lot it's drawing. I'm not exactly an accomplished artist but I think a lot of my stuff has improved in past years. Or at least that's what they say. Taste is subjective after all.

However I didn't do very much pixel art for a while. Especially not anything with a palette as limited as the Game Boy. So making all the graphics for Elly's was something of an exercise in trying to figure out how this pixle art shit works all over again.

Almost everything in Elly's is drawn by me. A few images are actual things shrunken and convered to 4 colors but otherwise it's all me. And as it turns out drawing all the assets for you own game takes a long freakin time even when they're this simple!!!! While no one sprite took very long apart from bigger ones like bosses it all adds up to a lot of hours.

Not all of those hours are on Elly's but still. I think doing the tilesets took up a lot of time, in particular the playroom area because I was insistent on including a bunch of funny easter eggs and references. I can't explain all of them here because it would take much too long, but let it be known that this thing before the third boss is called "The Fumpship" and has like 3 layers of inside joke to it.

As for the character designs they were simple enough that transcribing them into Game Boy sprite form was actually pretty simple. Elly and Natalie in particular I had to remove the symbols on their clothes since it wouldn't translate in sprites.

You already saw this at the start of the post. These are character sketches I did around the start of development. Note that Natalie's outfit color is different, later I made it lighter to make her more distinguishable from Elly in-game. There are very few "concept art" things for Elly's, most of it I started with doing the sprites.

As for the enemy sprites since the ones I already had (see sprite sheet 10 pages above) already worked pretty well in this setting so I used that as a base for other enemies. The "Big Boy" enemies in particular took a while to figure out their sprites but I do like how they turned out. My favourite enemies are the exploding dolls, so much that I even used them as the game's icon.

THE COADS

This section is very technical and vague so you can skip it if you want. I'm something of a programmer... I think. I don't talk about it that much. A lot of what I know is not exactly suited for game dev BUT I did have a lot of residual Game Maker Language knowledge from my past projects. And there was a lot to learn too, since this was my first time using GMS2 in particular.

Truthfully since Elly's is kind of simple there wasn't THAT much that was that difficult programming-wise... I think the hardest shit for me is doing collisions and stuff. Collisions for Elly weren't too bad but for certain enemies like the grinders it was a pain in the ASS!!!!! That's why getting any game off the ground is hard for me, trying to make the groundwork for everything is daunting because I'll worry if it's good enough to accomodate the rest of development.

I think a lot of the challenge was not from getting things to work but rather having everything neat and organized. When you're making a game there is a lot of stuff to keep track of and even sometimes with the way I organized things I get lost in the game maker asset browser. I also made sure to comment things a lot... If you ever decompile the game i'm sorry if my comments are weird and embarassing.

The reason why I'm even bringing this aspect up is because in my past projects, particularly Pik's Epic Kirby Sprite Comics 2 I didn't know SHIT about programming nicely or efficiently and a lot of it was brute force via if statements. I did not want that!!! So with Elly's I made it so that adding new things like powerups and enemies was as easy as possible and I think that ended up making the project bearable.

This was also my first time making certain things like an options menu which was kind of strange and daunting as Game Maker does not have anything build in for menus. You just kind of have to do it from scratch. I was really insistent on having remappable controls in particular because I feel like that's essential for PC games these days. Also I enjoyed making the map system a lot, which was something I only added late in development. It uses a very hacky method of finding hard-coded arrays for each stage and drawing boxes for them but it works.

THE BOSSES

I think bosses in video games are a very novel thing on how inefficient they are for such a capital-driven industry. You have these things that take up a lot of effort and development time and are usually a small part of gameplay but they get made anyway because they look cool and also maybe you can use them as marketing or something. Maybe "boss fights" can be viewed as a disruption of power making its way into the hands of the workers? Ok I'm just talking out of my ass here.

There are not a lot of bosses in Elly's and they don't last very long but I wanted to discuss them anyway because there are some fun things to say about them. The first thing is that I wasn't even sure if Elly's was going to have more than one boss at first. Then I came up with the idea for the first boss (Death Orb) and started getting ideas from there. Fun fact, the Death Orb is named and modeled after the enemy (obstacle?) from Warframe:

I honestly thought it was really obvious but no one, not even my Warframe-playing friends seemed to notice. Anyway I just wanted a very simple boss that doesn't move with one attack. For a long time it didn't have the beeping sounds that telegraph its moves and therefore was very difficult to avoid the second phase without getting hit at least once! It was a bit bulb shit once I realized so I did that.

The second boss is a fish and funny enough, the only surviving boss idea from the original project. The major bosses were planned to be massive weapons named "______ Guardian" and the fish is loosely based off of an underwater boss idea I had back then. Of course the current day Water Guardian fight is not anything like that, and instead likes to flop around. Fun fact, the boss was a lighter grey color for most of development until I decided to make it dark so the weak point was more visible. I also changed the second phase movement late in development so it would flop less, making the grenade powerup feel more useful against it. The way it acts in Extra Game is a lot closer to how it originally was.

The third boss is a hat and is largely based off of "WIZ" from Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. Wiz is just a clone of Paint Roller from Kirby's Adventure but I thought the design was neat enough I even based the intro animation off of it. I also really wanted to tie into the toy theme and the doll enemies so I figured why not a funny magician doll? This boss used to always spawn in the middle after a cycle but then people would spawncamp it so I made it appear in multiple spots instead.

^^^WIZ

The Pillar Knight boss is honestly not that hard for how late it is in the game but I made it to just be a surprise at the end of a boss rush. I don't have that much to say about it really, I based the name and greatshield off of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. The big stomp it does in the second phase used to summon a single bouncy and nothing else but that was kind of pathetic so I changed it to falling rubble instead.

The "Antlion" final boss was actually a boss idea I had early on, possibly for the second or third worlds. It's kind of similar to the "head and hands" type bosses you see in so many Nintendo games. It was moreso going to be based off of the "Giant Enemy Spider" from Jerma's car game video. Then I figured that having the biggest boss for last would be a good idea. Funny enough this was the boss I received the least feedback on, most people seemed to like it. It was also a bit of a pain to test because I had to ensure that all 5 powerups would be viable, but I'm pretty satisfied with the end result. The second phase where Chandra shows up in a pod is very much based off of Eggman fights from Sonic, I'm sure you can tell. Something about seeing a little round flying thing is very satisfying.

THE SOUNDS

The sounds and music in Elly's are not mine. It's why I released it for free on itch instead of bothing to publish it on Steam or anything. Why am I even writing about this? I think that there is some fun to be had from digging through existing sound or music libraries and picking the best ones.

The style of Elly's is very upbeat happy scrimblo type game as you can tell, so I went out of my way to pick songs that fit that. The first levels having Mole Mania's first world music is pretty emblematic of what I wanted. I wanted to pick songs that were not necessarily obscure but not too well known so I made an effort specifically to avoid Mario, Zelda, Pokemon. Then I broke the rule because I liked the Link's Awakening nightmare battle enough and that's not exactly a super recognizable iconic song. I think the style of the music is not always consistent, as you can tell with the Belmont's Revenge music in later levels, but I tried to keep to songs that I felt fit the game well enough.

The sounds were taken from various Kirby games mostly because those are the easiest to rip, as those games have individual sound tests. With everything being kind of Kirby inspired I also thought it was the best decision. I think if maybe I were to ever do a Steam release I would hire some bastard to do a GB soundtrack and play around with making sounds myself but I DIDNT FEEL LIKE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE LAST PART

There is so much more I could say about the old project and the finer details of development but I think this post is already long enough.

Elly's is not something that I think is ever going to go viral. It did get more attention than I expected for the first few days but it's petered out by now. Elly's is not meant to be anything groundbreaking or revolutionary. It's not going to turn heads all over the world. It's not going to make me the new Tony Box and that's OK. I wanted Elly's to evoke the sort of feeling of finding a weird cartridge in a Gamestop bargain bin of the past or maybe a thrift store of the present. The feeling of digging through an archive of every Game Boy ROM ever and finding something refreshingly decent after playing 10 crunchy janky sidescrollers in a row.

QUICK LAST MINUTE EDIT: Apparently Elly's Adventure was featured on a Hungarian news site??? Not what I expected but I'm still honored to be mentioned by a publication.

I don't really know what's next for game dev from me. I am not interested in breaking into the industry, I just do this for fun. I've considered doing more things with Elly, which may or may not be in the same style. I've also considered ideas with other characters, and even using things that aren't Game Maker. Maybe in another 8 years there will be something. Keep an eye out!

Overall I am satisfied with Elly's Adventure. I mostly enjoyed making it. I don't know if I would call it my magnum opus. It doesn't have the same sort of unfiltered eccentricity of my Kirby things and it's hardly character or story driven enough to leave much of a lasting discussion. To be honest I liked making a game with no dialogue because in the cases where I do have a more character driven game idea I think about the funny dialogue more than I do the actual game. Regardless I think we can all agree that Elly's Adventure is, and always will be, a small funny game of action.

if you bothered to scroll to the end of this post here is a FUN GAME TIP: on stage 1 from the starting position go one screen right and investigate the rightmost flower on that screen. this can be helpful for those wishing to see the 1CC screen.