#this is a fun one to test out some of the more unhinged options for tags lmao

[appropriatelystupid]

🌪️ for the ask game please

🌪️ Sum up a WIP with a few fic tropes/Ao3 tags.

modern medieval times, there was only one privy chamber, the only thing weaker than the plot is this one dude’s ego

wip fic asks

[nardos-primetime]

Ngl my brain is trying to cook some crossover things already but I'll wait till you post some more lore (if you're comfy with that stuff to boot) Also obvs these boys are different from their source but does Donno still hold any interest for tech? Or do his hobbies end up elsewhere.

Murder talk TW

Donno only really gets to experiment with hobbies once he's with Big Mama. And he wouldn't be a Donnie if he didn't like technology!

Most of his technological expertise comes into his more casual job, which is working with the gamblers. He finds new ways to swindle yokai out of their money and is always excited to show Mama his new ideas. Along with this, he would absolutely steal someone's wallet and sell it back to them.

He's a little unhinged as well! After a few... hiccups, he becomes one of Mama's main choices when it comes to directly getting "the job done" so to say. (Other than Rage). He likes shooting people from afar, but his preferred alternative is experimenting and making torture devices to use on some of Mama's..... "problems".

He likes gaming too! In fact it started as a joke but I made his weapon a little mystic controller as a gift from Mama. He's a lot more open to mystic things and is the first one to get a gift like this from her, think of Donnie's ninpo but a lot more nerfed down, even the guns he makes from the controller have a strong size, usage and radius limit, to appease this, he experiments with real technology, such as his own hover shell when he's out an about, and packing a few actual guns to hold with his mystics to get past the whole "bullets don't go too far" problem.

Mystic weapons in this au are more like objects that can be in tune with their users emotions, Mama has been figuring out how to make more from ones she already has stolen and his controller is the first mostly stable one she's managed to make, Donno is picking up the slack on the testing and research, nowadays. After all, if his sad excuse of an original can't accept mystic things he should get ahead of the curve and learn about it first! (He also loves fucking with mystic shit and shoving it into other things if he can.)

He also likes fancy things in general, dramatic bitch. He does have a smoking issue that he picked up from older yokai (if you couldnt tell Mama runs with a bit of a bad crowd) but he is working on a healthier, mystic option. For himself (and yokai, if they have the cash.)

Overall none of this probably makes sense I'm just having fun but OHMIGOSH yes I'm totally fine w crossovers!!!! The characters do change a little overtime in the storyline but my favorite arc (and mostly the middle one) is the Big Mama arc because most of the problems truly get worse with her influence, can't wait to post more about it n would love to see what you come up with! :D

[vyuntspakhkite-l-darling]

Tired but can't sleep so I'm modern AUing my little guys. Keep reading for my insane (and probably unrealistic) rambles

Arsioly is born in a southern US state and has a southern accent and lots of misogyny and he plays a little too much Call of Duty and decides that the military would be fun even though he hates the country. He briefly struggles with what exactly to do because on one hand he's really curious as to what it'd be like to kill someone up close and personal but he also fucking loves planes and wants to do everything with planes he loves them a lot and so he decides to go with the air force so he can fly planes and jump out of them. Makes it through some of the training before getting discharged because he's a hothead and would either get into too many fights or do lots of insubordination. I mean I can just imagine this guy getting into an argument with his superior and getting super off topic and being like "by the way i hate america you all are shitty people for killing people and bad politics and i hate all you scumbags go kill yourself' and everyone's just like?? let's get this guy a drug test (he is not on drugs just unhinged). Once military is no longer an option he probably either becomes like a security guard personal security whatever and takes his job far too seriously. That or a chef or a linguist. Goes recreationally skydiving on the regular.

Visralion is a nurse. A correctional nurse specifically. He started out as whatever the regular one is (i don't know anything about nursing he just would definitely be one) and was like 'you know what actually? Jail. Literally me.' and followed that career path. I doubt he'd want any sort of serious relationship until he's in like his late 30s so he just fucks around and lives his best life.

I think Virava would like to have a simple life. She lives in Maine and tries desperately to make painting be her main job but she gets more money from doing furry commissions and selling tattoo designs.

Sibatol becomes a pole dancer and clutches onto that lifestyle until he finally decides he's too old for that. Bounces between jobs for a few years while going to the gym every to do his magical girl transformation but like reverse. He goes from a twink to a hunk, starts working in adult entertainment and rides that train for a while before he either loses interest or gets too old to even be considered a silver fox anymore, then he just becomes a house boyfriend for his working partner/partners.

Rasiel goes to jail. Every time.

Pio is Italian because he is, he's born into a family of very Catholic olive farmers and does that until he's old enough and is like 'um actually I would like to maybe not do this my whole life' and his family is like okay go to seminary then and he's like.... okay but what if I went to college i don't think i belong there actually haha not for any reason though. Not any reason just maybe not. So he goes to college and becomes a teacher and he really loves teaching about math and art.

[clowndotgay]

if you dont mind me asking, how do you do the card renders?

so i'm not 100% sure how to answer this because its kinda vague - i'm not sure if you're asking about the card (image editing) part or the rendering process! if you want to know about the process of getting the characters and areas into blender, i've written a few posts about that already - they're under the "toontown models" tag on my blog, so they shouldn't be too difficult to find. RAMBLING ABOUT IMAGE EDITING BELOW THE CUT EXCLAMATION MARK EMOJI! THIS ISN'T A TUTORIAL IT'S JUST ME TALKING!!!! (only slightly related, but i'm putting it above the cut so more people might see it - i wrote some mock pokemon cards for managers a bit ago but i don't want to make them full images, would anyone be interested in me just posting those as text?)

the actual image editing part i do in photoshop! it's kind of a bad program but my usual art program dies when i try to do what i do for cards because it kinda struggles with text. i've started doing the text in-render for the cards recently, though, because it's kind of a blast?

it's probably obvious to anyone who's looked at them hard before, but my mock cards use the Series 1 Cog cards as a base (the official Disney ones)

they've just got a sort of weirdly unhinged vibe to them, they're so far off of the cogs representation in-game and kinda gives a look at (imo) how the cogs were originally imagined, as I feel that some of the card art is closer to original concept art (or probably is concept art) than it is close to in-game character appearances. man, Cold Callers card doesn't even look like the same guy! he's lanky here!

and i mean, kinda obvious, but i can't get the same level of craziness these cards are on with renders, but i can try. so i do! it's fun!

i don't know if anyone has really noticed it, but for the last handful of cards i've been opting for colouring the border of the card dependent on the department of the cog. green for cashbot, pink for sellbot, etc. here's a test i did of it a couple weeks back when i was playing around with the idea in my head (the renders were randomly chosen):

(the boardbot colour is kinda subtle - but that's just how it is in-game, exe bd skelecogs are super close to exe lb skelecogs, but maybe that's just my eyes)

the actual "process" of putting the card together once i've done the render is kinda just plopping the render into the .psd and telling photoshop what department the cog is (for the border colour) & then i'm done. the file is super simple, it's just a series 1 card but i edited everything out other than the border, bunch of layers connected to the border that give it the department colours, layer of a kinda-crappy filter i slap on to try and give it the same "feel" the card scans have, layer for the text (optional now that i do it in-render), layer with the render.

there's some extra fun stuff i try and do with effects in the renders, but i'm kinda new to messing around with blender stuff like that, so i try and hold it to a minimum. as an example, the CFO render is kinda hue-shifted so i could get the colours closer to what i was basing the lighting of the render off of! to use a better example of silly effects i used for a card, i'm gonna talk about this high roller card:

dude this thing took forever because i wanted to do Everything in-render (would've taken way less time if i wasn't stubborn). it's a bunch of layers and gradients and shine. i'm kind of tipping my hand here, but there's straight up just a blindingly bright cube in their hands that's making the shine, and then i kinda just. told blender to add a lens flare. and it did. i had to simulate rain for that one misty render and that was a time. y'know. i actually have to finish up a commission where there's blinding light emitting from something and it's really really good and probably one of the best renders i have done and it is 99% thanks to the commissioner because the ask is So Good.

anyways that's kind of all i wanted to say. i hope this answered your question? maybe? was your question just "what do you make them in?" if so, it's blender and photoshop. sorry for making you read a text wall instead. at the risk of sounding too silly, i really like speaking about the things that i do, but i feel weird talking about them unprompted? so i took this as being prompted and talked.

[suspicious-whumping-egg]

heyo i am a stats freak and got the "how is this index actually calculated?" kind of autism and noticed numbeo in your latest couple of posts so just a heads up - their data is crowd-sourced and largely not accurate! it's great at giving you a vague idea as to cost of living but it falls pretty flat in terms of more granular info like groceries and house prices. also the cost of living calculator doesn't take the purchasing power of an average salary into account, as far as i know it just compares it to new york. if you ever want to study the relationships between quality of life and geographical location (for research or, yknow, moving out lol) then numbeo does offer a qol index which gives you a way better idea of how "good" a place is to live in, and can be used as a proxy to better estimate the actual cost and quality of living there. but it's still kind of a mess. for example, their "safety" measurement is basically irrelevant, since it's based of an arbitrary test that people online can fill out (and yes, people have flooded the dataset with negative reviews of cities inflating their crime rates. sometimes for fun sometimes for some Very Racist Reasons). the metric for healthcare is based on a form people can fill out (again, 100% anonymously, 100% online, 100% with no verification) and it combines the scores to form a "healthcare rating" - what goes into that "healthcare rating" is very subjective and largely not something a patient could even know. "friendliness and courtesy of the staff"? this doesn't even vary from hospital to hospital, this shit varies from department to department. there is no fucking way a statement like "the medical staff in all of Turin, Italy is very unfriendly" has any merit. a score for "equipment for modern diagnosis and treatment"??? compared to what? does the average patient filling out some online survey know anything about state of the art medical equipment so that they can compare it to what they've been treated with????? (the answer is no). ok, sorry, i'm just rambling now, but damn this actually is just yelp for cities and not much else. in a brief flash of self-awareness, i've decided not to go into detail on that horrible image by geo.universe on instagram (the one where nearly all of europe is a green LOWER cost of living than the us). it'd be another unhinged rant about how they don't have a source and how you can't possibly average out a cost of living for the entire usa, where housing prices range all the way from "five bucks and a warm smile for seven acres of land in some rural state" to "$1mil and a kidney for an almost-human-sized cage in NYC". ANYWAY jesus christ what i wanted to get to is that if you're ever considering comparing "costs" (financial and otherwise) when moving out please refer to better indices (like EIU's where-to-be-born index or CIW though they have plenty of flaws too) and remember to always compare costs (this time just financial) of living against the MEDIAN net income!!! averages are almost meaningless because of weird ghouls who make billions of dollars and act as the number-inflating Spiders Georg of money. i'm so sorry if you read all of this. take it as psychological whump or something. it's been a long day and i had a bird fly directly into my window today and it woke me up after i tried to take a nap. i hope the bird is fine because i sur

Hey friend thanks for letting me know! I’ll check out the other metrics you mentioned (although I’m not exactly sure what CIW is? Is it Canadian index of well being or smth else?) and yeah I hope the bird is ok <333 also how do you best find like, the average cost of living/purchasing power of places? Is there a decent scale or metric or do you really just have to do a fuckton of research for everything? Cause I’m definitely willing to put in serious work and research once I have it narrowed down to a few places and once emigrating becomes a serious possible option but rn it’s just very off in the distance planning and I’m just trying to think about what would even be the best options to consider

[duckyfruitbat]

Spongebob: Cosmic Shake

There I was in the store when I spotted a copy of this game on the discount shelf and with baited breath I said out loud "yeah sure why not."

The Cosmic Shake is the first Spongebob game by Purple Lamp studios since Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. The story being that Spongebob bought a bottle of bath soap mixed with mermaids wishing tears from a mermaid who is described as a "snails oil saleswoman." She didn't think it would do anything until Spongebob started using it to try and grant as many wishes as possible. All these wishes create massive rifts in the fabric of reality that starts sucking nearly all of Bikini Bottom into multiple different worlds. Thus Spngebob and a now balloon Patrick must enter each world to save their friends and restore the town.

The game is set up like a metroidvania, each level has a main quest and many collectibles and challenges. There are multiple characters with set fetch quests in each level, there are challenges that can only be accessed by abilities learned later on. It gives you reasons to go back to each level, in a couple you actually get an optional quest after completing the story portion.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward and fairly easy to get into. For the most part it is building off of Battle For Bikini Bottom with some tweaks. There's the gliding move, which is a box of Krusty Krab pizza, a ranged bubble attack that stuns enemies, and a targeted karate kick that also acts as a way to move between platforms. The bosses are pretty fun, even if they are a bit simple and easy, King Gary forces you to use some strategy as he's sugar rushing. The final boss is a mutated Squidward that I'm starting to suspect was made using the scrapped Squidbot from BFBB. The most difficult one was against Pom Pom, a prehistoric Pearl, she has massive attacks that spread out across the entire arena and enemies spawn all throughout, things get busy.

This game does have a performance issue, at least on the PS4. There were many times when I'm going through a level, with no pop in, frame rate issues or glitches, when suddenly it freezes for a couple of seconds. This always made me very concerned, I was worried my play station was about to pop. It never crashed during those moments, so that was a relief, but it did like to test me with those freezes.

Writing wise, It is more of a piece of modern SpongeBob media, or in layman's terms, it's pretty up and down in writing quality. There were a few lines that made me laugh out loud, in the Halloween level there is some gag writing on a tomb stone for the persons famous last words, being "watch this!" A moment at the end of the western level had Mr. Krabs trying to stay until he started facing consequences for his actions and he turned on a dime.

You may have noticed that there is a lot of parody in this game, each level is parodying the genre it's themed after. For example there is a level that is a movie set for a karate movie, and each level also has its own version of the characters. The Squidward in this level is just Michael Bay, it fit his character really well. Each level does this in some way where it uses the setting to work off of the characters. It doesn't always succeed but when it does it's a lot of fun.

One place I want to point at where the writing falls a bit short is with the Glove World level. Here Glovy the park mascot is going a bit crazy from the isolation of falling into an alternate dimension. He kid naps Patrick in an attempt to get a friend all the while losing it. The level is full of pictures of SpongeBob and Patrick with Glovy's face pasted over SpongeBob's. My issue is that Glovy doesn't feel very unhinged. He's a bit too calm for someone who's supposed to be going insane. There are more scenes of SpongeBob going batshit insane in the actual show.

There are plenty of other writing issues like the continued flanderization of the characters, but the game is also very dependent on references. Sure all the games have plenty of these references, but this is getting a bit much. Sure they do stick out quite a bit, but they're gone as fast as they arrive, so it is not a deal breaker by any means.

It's not as good as Battle for Bikini Bottom, but this game is still pretty easy to pick up and play with plenty of fun to be had. If you can overlook some of the writing issues, enjoyment can be found here.

[kyrodo]

Things are a lot better than back then. It's not entirely because who I'm interacting with is better, though that's a factor too. I am handling myself a lot better in the world of today. I have that experience that only comes through failure. I've gotten hurt, I've gotten struck down, I've made enemies and those enemies left me face down in the dirt after they had their fun.

But through it all, I gained wisdom. Everything about me feels so different from back then. First off I'm not stomping about acting like I'm some "king" because of an anime amv. Right? But I know how to handle myself better. I don't have anything to test my mettle and poke my buttons necessarily, at least the ones that would irritate me on the same level, but that in itself is a good thing. I can't take back all the embarrassing things I used to put out, I can't take back all the times I tried to approach and be polite expecting things would go well only to find some unexpected difficulties time and time again. And I can't avoid all the teasing and crap that has already been done to me.

But I am built different now. I am built in a way that is unlikely to ever experience or allow those things to happen again. I am built in a way that tries to be as soft and as soothing as possible to the people I love. I am built in a way that kept my feelings hidden until the very last moment. I am experienced enough with language and slang to avoid triggering the wrong radars. And I am more careful about what I give out and what I keep in. It would've been ideal if it had happened at an earlier point in my life of course, but it's better that I got here than never at all. As vain as it is, I feel the beauty of my avatar. I can vocalize so well as a cat. And I keep evolving. The purrs just recently. And besides that I actually am more emotionally and intellectually mature.

The love I get from Choskey is so pure, inexperienced but true. And he just can't go two minutes without telling me he loves me again. And I am so happy. The feels are incredibly warm and welcoming. I wish all this had happened earlier in my life so I could've spent those days being happy instead of miserable and desperate. Secure instead of constantly being unsettled by attempts to unhinge me and make me doubt myself. The entire foundation of my existence feels set in stone instead of rickety. I feel that my words carry so much more weight now that I'm not on a lone quest for something outside my relationship. Being alone is what lets people get away with pretending every story you ever tell is fake. Facing cyber bullying alone without my dragon is how people were able to turn me into whatever villain they wanted. I had options, and while such needs are unlikely to happen again, if it ever came down to it I would know what to do.

I am the living antibody to my entire ordeal from every angle.

I also understand my tendencies when it comes to music and feel good animated scenes. When you experience something you really like, a beat, a riff, a melody, some nice singing, a good intro, etc. You want to feel that music in what you do too. You want to embody that music and express what you experienced in some way. For me that was in the form of creative ranting. Feeling a character forming somewhere behind the constant swapping I was doing in my head. Through music I was finding a voice. Because my old one was dull. The name Brian is very dull and boring. And I didn't want to be just Brian. I wanted to be Kyrodo. I wanted to be better than I actually am. Better than human. In a sense it's the same reasons people become furries or anime geeks with sonas. People want to be more than they actually are. To make cracks in the ground, perform action feets they wouldn't dream of doing in real life, do magic, whatever. People want to be lost in their imagination. And the more miserable they are the more they want that escape. Even if it means falling in love even over something as simple as, because they started sharing memes with me.

To dress up for halloween essentially but have that be an entire way of life instead. Like how I am always in whuffy form at home when I'm with Red instead of being just human brian doing all the formal fronting I do at a restaurant or at work. But imagination needs to be capped within reasonable limits, and one should always be aware what they're doing no matter how immersed they want to be in that imagination. No matter how silly or extra you act online nothing really changes who you really are in real life or otherwise. Until you've spent a good deal of time with a sona it is not ingrained as part of your very being. It is just a temporary fad at best. But such headspaces do play a major role in how you behave, no matter how stifled it is in practice. It dictates how situations make you feel and what choices are choices that sona would make become a preference.

And as you slowly bring that imagination back down out of necessity like I did, you eventually adopt what parts of it actually define you and you discard everything else. Trauma changes the way you're shaped. The way you respond to things. The way you approach things. The things you are most cautious of. Because you recognized a pain or fear as being particularly unpleasant, as being something you wish to avoid, and you change to protect yourself against it. And as one where a surreal version of myself is always existing in some form in my head, that headspace completely changed too. Less edges, more serious, more meaningful, more ordered, and less chaotic. More calm and immune to a lot of the things that used to bother me. Instead of being a mish mash of different characters I am just one. Both the real and the sona side of me grew to be something far stronger and far more graceful than my old self.

Being rejected isn't fun but it happens and it's better to respect it than to persist or keep coming back like I did. Words like "that won't be possible" still stick in my mind and they still hurt. I felt so much and it took way too long for me to finally have those feelings dismantled, even though I was actively being attacked and harassed by the very person I liked. But I did it. I remember every little thing I did that might've made me unacceptable. And I try with all my might to make sure all of that remains buried. If I am ever to be called a predator again, it'll be because of a kink than for any other reason.

In the land of today, poly is possible. Love is possible. I can feel and feel and feel and be extremely happy, and feel all of that welcomed and returned a thousand fold. Things are a lot less complicated.

I still experience my share of people acting like there's a problem when there's not. But it is much easier to tell when Choskey is joking about something and when he's not. And there's never any malice behind it. It is a whole world away from whatever we'd call my previous excuse for romance. Though I still wonder how people like you can just behave like that, know that all of it is bad shit, and not do anything about it.

[ddarker-dreams]

Prodigal Return. Yan Fugo x Reader

tw: emotional manipulation, implied isolation, unhealthy relationships and degrading language

word count: 2k

You wouldn’t call yourself a coward.

Not in the traditional sense of the word, you’ve proven yourself. When faced with a trying problem, you roll your sleeves up and set to work. Some issues will only grow worse when left unattended, spreading their roots so deeply into the ground and corrupting everything around it in the process. Killing off any forms of life in the blink of an eye, too late and entrenched to remove. This is how you’d describe your relationship with him.

You’ve put in the effort to earn your say, having poured hours into improving what you can. This is the conclusion you’ve come to, standing here in three inch heels at four in the morning, life falling apart by the seams. No matter what he might say, you know that you’ve done every reasonable possibility. Caving into more of Fugo’s absurd demands is where you draw a line in the sand, and what led to an explosive argument earlier this night. 

To be fair, venomous words were spat from both of you, though yours were justified. Fugo’s chilling indifference when speaking down to you is a memory that brings a fresh set of goosebumps, haunting you when you close your eyes. He spoke with an air of indifference, belittling your friends and you by extension. Concocting ridiculous lies about how they ogle over you, or only want to take advantage of you. 

“It’s for your own good,” he had told you. “You obviously can’t be expected to take care of yourself.”

What an asshole, is all you can think. The sheer audacity had been enough to still your tongue, words escaping you as your vision went red. It’s what led you to yell vulgarities at him, taking your phone and calling a friend to pick you up for the night. It wasn’t the first time Fugo planted seeds of doubt in your mind, cultivating it with every snide comment about your choices. Storming out gave you the perspective you desperately needed.

Anyone that didn’t earn his approval was spoken of in a condescending way. When Fugo disliked a person he’d put no effort into hiding it, even around the person in question. Almost no one reached his ideal way of thinking -- not even you at times -- so it’s a common occurrence. One that you would no longer stand for. Too many tear stained nights and crushed spirits piled up. 

The conviction born from pep talks with your friends begins to wane, now that you’re on your own. They cheered on your new decision. Dressing you up in a short evening dress, and giving you a night on the town, to celebrate “dumping that insensitive prick”. Your phone was plucked from your hands and turned off at their behest, they said checking it would go against what you earned. You agreed, knowing that Fugo would be texting and calling you all evening. 

After a full, exhausting night of club hopping, you’re standing in front of your shared apartment. What little alcohol you limited yourself to is kicking it, your body swaying even when you stand still. In the whirl of the earlier events, you forgot your wallet at home. When you lamented about forgetting it, they encouraged you to pick it up before taking you back. 

That leads you to now. You silently pray that he’s asleep, imposing threat not lost on you. There’s no telling what would happen if he sees you like this, wearing revealing clothing that hugs your curves. The thought alone makes you bite your lip, already picturing the slander that’d be flung your way. 

Throwing caution out the window, you finally work up the courage to unlock the door. It’s pitch black inside your apartment, adding to your unease. Your purse should be on the dining room table, all you need to do is sneak in and get it. It’s deadly quiet in the familiar territory, but not enough to make you lower your guard. Slipping off your heels to avoid making unnecessary noise, your pulse quickens as you saunter closer to your goal. 

After this you’ll never see him again. The thought bubbles up hope within your chest, plans for the future fresh and exciting. Newfound zest motivates you to improve yourself, now that the opportunity to reclaim what you’ve lost is within reach. For now, these thoughts will go on the back burner, your mission taking the utmost priority. 

It feels suspiciously empty, devoid of any signs of life other than you. Did Fugo decide to crash at his friend’s place? You can’t imagine him doing that, not after how much he complained about their untidiness. Not that it matters, as long as you can sneak in and out. Feeling around in the dark, adrenaline pumps through your veins when your hand comes into contact with the corner of the table. 

Letting out a silent sigh of relief, you start to walk forward. It’s been a long day. You’ve earned a nice day off after this stressful breakup, internally making plans of going out for breakfast. This is the key to opening up your future, that has been stolen from you. Feeling around for the leather purse, you frown at how long it’s taking. Surely, it’s somewhere around here...? 

That’s when a low, menacing growl makes you freeze in place, your heart dropping. Survival instincts kick in, hair standing up on the back of your neck. This is a noise you know, an unspoken threat. 

With a dreadful click, light illuminates the room in an instant. Your cover is forced away, leaving you painfully vulnerable and afraid, like a deer in headlights. Now’s not the time to complain, an immediate problem making itself known. You recognize the sight in front of you, hunched over and drool leaking from its mouth. Purple Haze is breathing heavily, staring you down with deeply hurt eyes. Out of reflex, you back up and into the table, horror setting in at the unfolding situation. 

“I was wondering what Purple Haze was upset about.” 

At the sound of Fugo’s voice, you whip your head around. He pulls back from the light switch on the wall, leaning against the door frame of your bedroom. You take note of the tell way his jaw clenches, posture rigid and arms set across his chest. Knowing Fugo’s intelligence, all it takes is one look at you to guess what you’ve been doing. 

He gives you a once over, sneering as you expect him to. An onslaught of demeaning words forms on his tongue, clearly betrayed by your unsightly actions. 

“Already whoring yourself out for others? It seems I was right about you.” 

Your cheeks flush, indignant at his snide tone and equally cruel words. The hazard Purple Haze holds is all but forgotten as you consider Fugo, eyes narrowing to match his own infuriated countenance. “I’ll have you know I did no such thing. I simply went out and had fun with my friends, that’s it.” 

“Not that it’s any of your business anymore, Fugo.” you add for extra measure, showcasing your intent on leaving him. He doesn’t acknowledge your last comment, instead unpacking your first comeback. 

He rolls his violet eyes, clicking his tongue. “Oh, I’m sure you enjoyed yourself. They must’ve been tripping over themselves to get in between your legs.” 

Memories of a similar conversation from earlier resurface. Fugo’s hellbent on the concept that everyone around you is a negative influence, stopping at nothing to force you to think the same. Remembering how they banded together to comfort you in your time of need throws gasoline onto the already roaring fire, tears stinging your eyes.

“Again with that...! I have no clue where you’ve gotten any of these stupid ideas from. They’ve been nothing but welcoming to you, Fugo,” you wipe at your eyes with the back of your hand, not caring how it smudges your mascara. “Whatever, I’m not here to deal with this. I’m leaving.” 

Pivoting on your heels, you return to your previous task. Your purse now in your possession, you intend on getting out of this situation before it grows worse than it already is. Purple Haze blocks your path of escape, the Stand alternating between looking at you and Fugo. Breath hitching at the new obstacles in front of you, options swirl within your mind. Purple Haze has never once been violent towards you, but would that change after your argument with Fugo? 

It’s a possibility you don’t want to test. You’ve seen the capabilities of the virus with your own eyes, how it eats at people from the inside. It’s a fittingly menacing ability for him, you suppose. 

Fugo doesn’t comment as you walk towards his Stand, instead glaring at the back of your head. Purple Haze regards you with wide, doe like eyes, adoration for you clear as day. In the moment the fact that he represents Fugo’s soul escapes you, the stark contrast between the two making it difficult to tell. 

It’s oddly painful to see him clearly upset, the Stand has always been fond of you, to the point where even Fugo finds it embarrassing. By the look of things it wouldn’t be in your best interest to test it any further. Unhinged is how you describe Purple Haze, ready to pummel anything that upsets it. You were too hung up on what actions to take to notice Fugo shutting the front door, effectively trapping you in here. The damning noise brings you out of your thoughts. 

This is the last thing you wanted, the worst possible outcome to be tortured with. 

Words aren’t a necessary evil to hold you in place, not anymore. A virus wielding creature is capable of doing that with far more effectiveness, guttural snarls leaving its lips whenever you so much as move a hair. All you can do is stay locked in place as Fugo peeks out the blinds, a heavy sigh leaving his lips at what he sees. He doesn’t bother hiding how upset he is from you, fists clenching until the skin of his knuckles go white. 

“Text him to leave.” 

You put together what he means, thinking back to your friend waiting for you outside. When Fugo senses your hesitation, he speaks up again to silence your unspoken doubts. “I’ll go out and tell him myself if you don’t.” 

Swallowing thickly, you unlock your phone and speedily send off a poor excuse to your friend. The air is thick with unspoken tension, your eyes closing and shoulders slumping in defeat. Navigating the minefield that is Fugo is an exhausting waltz, one that you’ve never pulled off. He doesn’t utter a single word, the sound of a car turning on and speeding off sealing your fate. 

Seemingly pleased with the fact you’re staying, Purple Haze’s expression returns to a familiarly enthusiastic one. The Stand practically clings to your side, and you’re too exhausted and defeated to shoo it off. Tonight returned you to a world of nightmares, darkness surrounding and consuming you. 

“I’ll start a bath,” Fugo calls over, beckoning you towards your shared bathroom. “We need to get you cleaned up.” 

Body aching and head pounding, there’s no resistance to offer. He knows he’s won, switching back into a disgustingly domestic behavior in the blink of an eye. Fugo never admits it, but he takes pleasure in doting over you; molding you into a perfect yet unrecognizable version of yourself. It’s been this way for far too long, a loop you can’t escape.

It’s easy to blame yourself for returning -- it’s what lead to this outcome -- yet you know better. Had you avoided to the best of your ability, it’d still end like this. Fugo’s connections within Passione are unlimited, fully capable of pulling the strings to bring you back to his side. 

There’s nothing for you to do, pits of despair opening to swallow you in your entirety. You bend to his cruel whims, following him to your personal circle of hell; one that he creates special for you.

[foriland]

Hi Fori!!! <3 <3

for the fic titles in your ask + questions about it, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11 and 14 (you don't have to do all of them, it got away from me while picking XD) for "Of Flesh and Blood"

love that fic!!!

Hey Gem!

XDDDD Of Flesh and Blood was mad! I saw the prompts and Writing Brains immediately went blurry eyed.

(Especially with the context of the story, warning for mild gore and cannibalism. I will try to leave warning when appropriate. Apparently if one removes the context, some of the supposedly gruesome sentences can look kinda innocent XD)

3. What's your favourite line of narration?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......... I like a plenty:

"As soon as he had regained somewhat of a steady pattern in his breathing, he weakly tugged back his hand and Dick released it, allowing him to wrap his arm around himself. It made him look so small and... scared. And young."

"Jason must have been really in pain for him to screw his eyes shut and shake his head with a whimper; Dick had once seen him shrug off a knife in his abdomen and grappling away, before inevitably crashing." (I always love the idea of these kids being horribly wounded on field and be like "Pfffftt.... I'm fine" and proceeds to nearly die the next second.)

(Cannibalism) "Dick eyed the only appendage left in the bowl. He could feel the nausea getting stronger the more he thought about it. But he was so close. He took the last finger with little thought, chewing quickly before swallowing it."

"It was selfish. It wasn’t."

(Cannibalism mention) "Dick nodded, wiping his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. “I’m alright.” I just willingly ate my own brother’s fingers, he didn’t even elude to."

"Taking care of his brother, no matter how old or capable Jason might be, was still his duty." (This was adorable.)

"No. He’s not alright. He might not even be safe, they still were in danger after all. And Dick just couldn’t bring himself to lie to his brother."

"The were cracks, snaps and a bloodcurling shriek."

I honestly like a lot of bits and pieces from Of Flesh and Blood. It is difficult to choose.

4. What's your favourite line of dialogue?

I just realised that this fic has little dialogue. I knew that it is very internal and thought focused but... huh.

"“Shh... Breathe, Jay, slow breaths. You’re hyperventilating.” Jason was trying to speak again between sliver gasps of air. “H-hu-h’r-“ Hurts. “Shh... I know, Jay. Don’t talk. Just breathe slowly.”"

5. What was the hardest part to write?

The ending. Simple.

Well, not the end end. I got stuck at the bit where they released Dick. I stare at it and be like.......... how do I go with this??? I legit was going to kill Dick. But once I got Dick to Jason and was able to play with the latter's panic and pain, it was smooth sailing.

In other words, I write pain like warm knife through butter. But once it gets to a bit where I require some sense and rationale....... :P

6. What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

The biggest thing is definitely the theme XD It is currently the only thing that I have posted that plays with cannibalism and/or gore. And I, admitedly, have always wanted to delve into those.... themes before. But I wasn't too sure how well recieved it would be. I mean, I like it. But people be different. I finally did since it was for DC Dark Week and dark and problematic is part of the theme. (And the reception the fic got is lovely. It is great knowing that I delivered that well. ^^)

Aside from that, this fic makes me realise how I love (warning for violence?) unhinging jaw. Like in Flesh and Blood, I pulled apart Jason's jaw. Ever since then I just...... I just really like the idea? I used it again after that in Reanimation. And I might again in the future xD

9. Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Believe it or not, there was! :D

So I mentioned earlier how I was going to kill Dick. I did, it just didn't end up being the final ending that I went with. I wrote it to push past writer's block and also to test out the option. Although it went better with Dick alive. I liked the other ending, so I kept it, but I am trying to find it now but I cannot. So........ I might have deleted it in the end :P

11. What do you like best about the fic?

XD Honestly, the pain and emotions mostly. A part of me almost wants to do a Jason alt pov of it. The torture! I love reading and writing those.

As mentioned before, the jaw snapping. I love that so much. And the sentence I used to describe that scene.

And also the idea. (Cannibalism) I love the thought of Dick having to eat Jason and Jason having his fingers eaten by Dick. Just THAT. The potential for mind messiness there is so good.

14. Is there anything you want readers to learn from reading this fic?

That I can write gore?

Jokes aside, nothing really I think. :P It was a stupid thing I wrote for fun with no moral as far as I am aware.

-

Thank you so much, Gem! This has been wonderful and fun. Much love. Thank you for your ask and for reading and have a lovely rest of your day! <3 <3 <3

[theindiegamereview]

Meet the creative team: “Spellstone”

Are you a collectible card game (CCG) fan? If so, read on, because this week we spoke to the makers of Spellstone, a free-to-play (F2P) casual story-based fantasy card game that features vibrant, colourful, hand-drawn art on hundreds of beautiful cards that you can acquire and use in battle, both against the computer and other players!

TIGR: PABLO and DUSTIN are artists who have worked on Spellstone's art, helping create some of the iconic characters Spellstone fans know and love. We asked them how they came to work on the game, as well as what intrigued them about this project.

DUSTIN: I was working as a contract artist when I was asked to create some sample cards for a potential CCG, which is something I'd always wanted to do. The samples I submitted eventually led to me getting a contract to create the initial art for Spellstone. After about four months, I was offered a full-time position. I had such a great experience working with the team that I jumped at the opportunity!

PABLO: Prior to starting work on Spellstone, I remember doing an art piece to test my skills. I greatly enjoyed that because I particularly liked this game's art style - which is actually similar to my own! There were still slight differences though, so I've had to adapt a little. Blending my own personal style into an existing one was challenging. But something that intrigued me about Spellstone was the variety of factions in the game. Each and every one opens up a big array of possibilities when it comes to creating a character. I felt my options were unlimited and I loved it!

TIGR: Spellstone features many different cards and characters. We wanted to know who conceptualises all this, and how much creative licence artists get when crafting a character. FERNANDO, currently the main artist for the game, gave us more insight.

FERNANDO:  That Spellstone has such an immense variety of characters means it's a complete and delightful dish for artists. It's hugely gratifying to find such visual diversity with which to play with. You're completely free to create, as long as you respect the game's universe and visual language.

As for the process, the concept of what a card must look like and how it must be functional in terms of gameplay comes from the guys in the game design department. Very creative people... sorcerers maybe? I don't know. Haha!

From a brief but concise description they give me, I can get a sense of what kind of character and action they want to see in a card. Once I have all the information I need to start sketching, my favourite hour finally begins: creative hour!

If the card description involves an existing type of character, like a goblin, part of the fun has to do with the way you depict that character, situation, action and specific emotion. There's also some freedom to create from scratch if needed - that's exciting and challenging! Sometimes the ideas come from a mix of characters, and that's when the laboratory inside my mind starts working: I press a button and something cool, spooky or funny comes out - whatever the game requires. Other times, new concepts require that I look for approximate references of what's needed, so that serves as the starting point. No matter what, it's always a very enjoyable process. Sometimes we have to make corrections, that's true. But as with everything in life, this is necessary for things to work properly. You may have to redraw stuff, but finally the card is done - it works, it delivers and it entertains!

  TIGR: In Spellstone, cards can be upgraded from a single to a dual to a quad, and we really like that this sometimes tells a "mini story" of of sorts through the artwork. Some are funny (we just love Honeycomb Lobber!), some cute (Bomb Spirit is soooo adorable when he’s angry!), some uplifting (Aurora Shaver ranks among our favourites), and some, um, a bit disturbing, to be honest (Cleaverstorm Hunter, anyone?!)! And some are just sad - we can't help but feel sorry for the poor li'l forest furries that presumably got devoured by Alphamech Stalker! We asked the team how they came up with ideas for all these tiny narratives, and MELINDA, one of the game designers, told us more.

MELINDA: When I was younger, there were a few creatures in video games that terrified me. One of those I remembered most was Medusa, an air jellyfish from Ecco: The Tides of Time. While traversing through a water pathway in the sky, Medusa would try to pick up Ecco the dolphin and fling him off the path. Tetraspout's concept came from that, and you can even see poor little dolphins getting swept up in its attack!

  TIGR: We asked the team if there were any cards they particularly liked creating, or found challenging to conceptualise. IVÁN, a colorist who worked briefly on the game, chipped in, as did TONY and RHADA, two of Spellstone's game designers.

DUSTIN: I loved working on the goblin cards! You could get silly with them. Frogs were a lot of fun too - the variety of colours made them interesting. For me, the water cards were challenging but I grew to love working on them.

PABLO: My favourite characters are Goblins! You can play around with them, making them look funny even when the card is telling a dark story, like a massacre. All of the cards were challenging to create!

IVÁN: I enjoyed working on Hedron The Critical Threat, Zyd The Unhinged, and some awesome Insect cards that have yet to be released (as of the time of this interview). I mostly liked them because of their cool concepts and Fernando's awesome sketches. Hedron in particular was a technical painting challenge, as it has textures, transparencies and glow!

TONY: As something of an artist myself (/sarcasm), the card I am most proud of has to be Dinged Waptor. Or really any of the cards I did for the April Fool's event, which is about the only time the art team lets me anywhere near card art. :) For April Fool's, I decided it would be funny to try my hand at drawing some cards I felt players would enjoy. So the first year I drew some original characters that consisted of a few stick figures, a chicken, and a bomb. The response was good, so the following year I continued the tradition, eventually going through and tracing some famous cards like Winged Raptor. My one rule while making these cards was that I could not erase what I did!

RHADA: We used to sell boxes that contained two new premium cards instead of one. We thought of making both cards in the box thematically linked. At the same time, while brainstorming concepts for dragons, I thought we could try to make cards that formed a bigger picture on the battlefield when placed consecutively, side by side. The initial idea was a serpent whose artwork overflowed into a second card, and after some iteration, we stumbled upon the idea of a dragon dance. The result was very cool!

TIGR: With the Spellstone story campaign recently concluded, we asked what was next in store for Spellstone fans. Would there be anymore new characters and amazing art to look forward to?

TONY: Absolutely! While the main story has come to a close, we still look forward to adding new characters, cards, and art to the game that lets our artists have fun and shows off the world of Spellstone.

TIGR: And finally, the most important question of all: would real-life Spellstone merchandise ever be made available for fans of the game? We really want a plushie of the adorable Bomb Spirit (complete with detachable bombs, perhaps?), as well as his angry counterpart, Firebomb Spirit! Also for Quetee Que and Adorabilis, please! And would there ever be any actual physical Spellstone cards produced for collectors?

TONY: I would personally love to see real-life merchandise, but we currently do not have the means to take on such an endeavour. Maybe one day we can strike a partnership with a team that can make this happen!

We thank the Spellstone team for their time and all the wonderful art assets that accompany this interview! Check out the game here on Kongregate, on Steam, or on mobile - three different ways you can enjoy this fun, cheeky and adorable CCG!

P.S. We just had to include our favourite card: Darkwater Adonis - don’t be fooled by his charms!

[inrainprose]

Isn't sad how all those children preferred to live in a dark cave, caged, all being used as test subject for Orochimaru's bizarre experiments, living like animals, than in their natal villages with their "companions"?

F***ING WEBSITE FROM HELL I F***ING DELETED THAT F***ING META BECAUSE I CLICKED BACKSPACE ONE TIME TO MANY F**K THIS okay here we go again because I thought hard about this and I’m not gonna let it go.

SO. I think Orochimaru is a far more interesting character when written as a cult leader for outcasts than with just the children-snatching psychopath view, because we don’t get the impression that he coerces people into following him. There’s no doubt he did some abducting but that’s not the core of his recruitment strategy.

It was a strong theme at the beginning of the story with Zabuza and Haku – how far would you go for the first person to ever show you kindness and give you safety, even if it was for selfish reasons, even if they’re terrible people? I seem to recall Naruto thinking something along the lines of “I was lucky it was Iruka for me, had it been someone else…” and relating to Haku’s loyalty to Zabuza despite knowing he was just a mean to an end. It makes for great AUs too – what if Naruto had latched onto someone less recommendable than nice Iruka? It's too bad that line of thinking was dropped because it also served as a harsh criticism of their world, the fact that it produces so many bitter, abandoned orphans that have no choice but to turn to brutal mercenaries and unhinged scientists. The shinobi world created many of its own enemies, within and outside the villages.

I don’t think the kids “prefer” to live that way, but they would still be starving in the streets or abused by their village without Orochimaru, so it’s normal to do whatever he wants in return, right? Including kill or fight each other to death or subject themselves to whatever he wants to test on them… Of course it’s textbook recipe for abuse, the “you owe me” card. He takes full advantage of this, that they have nowhere else to go, that they will owe him. He also makes it even harder for them to go back, what with the body modifications and making it to every village’s shit list with the killing and stuff he has them do.

(more under the cut cause that got a bit out of hand)

He basically runs a cult – he’s shown to be charismatic, having a great power of attraction and persuasion, and he doesn’t treat them that badly, I mean in a way we often see bad guys do, being belittling and acing them off for fun just to show he’s eeeeevil. He does give them what they want, safety, shelter, power, companionship, purpose. I can imagine him playing the benevolent card for a while before introducing his newest refugee to the downside of getting under his wing. He preys on the vulnerable and they come willingly.

It’s most likely their only option, including once they’re in and realize they’re really not into this after all. It’s not like any of them was ever offered a way out – what would they do if they left, who would help them? The shinobi world doesn’t seem big on rehabilitation, for all Naruto’s “villain-turning-good” powers. Most of them pay their “redemption” and their return to the light by death anyway. Would be too hard to actually question their morality and choices and see what they would become if they went back to the world…

Ironically enough the only one who sort of gets that is Orochimaru lmao but it doesn’t count because there was no redemption nor questioning of any kind they just decided he got to stay and not be held accountable for any of his actions. And I don’t know why any of us is surprised by this actually or why we expected better we should be used to this by now. Ah. Moving on.

As the kids grow up, they would either develop a stronger sense of morality/self-worth and wouldn’t be able to go along with this shit anymore, no matter how grateful they are to him, or they would stay blindly loyal. Or they would just be dead, dying, or imprisoned and unable to escape heh. I guess some would also take a deeper turn because since this world sucks so much and abandoned them why wouldn’t they wreak havoc in it on his orders? He must play on this too because he IS outside and against the system and it would attract those who seek revenge against it, even if he serves his own interests above the "Strike back at the System" cause. It served him well when he was in Konoha after all and isn’t that his biggest grievance in the end? That he played within its constraint and was still cast out, because he crossed a line he didn’t even know was there? We don’t get a feeling that he’s inherently against the whole child-soldiers/kill for hire/waging pointless wars thing, on the contrary it suits him quite well, but the problem was the hypocrisy, that they condone those things but still try to take the moral high ground.

I’m sorry but I can only imagine Orochimaru being like “assassination ok torture for information ok civilian casualties ok sacrifice anything for the village including your health life and those of your friends ok train to death and do whatever it takes to get stronger ok experiment on people… no?” I’m not trying to justify his actions but just, how is anyone surprised by how some of them turned out? I think we saw people like this among his followers, you know who were trained to kill from a young age, but when they got a taste for it and went outside the mission frame, the villages were like "huh huh no no” and they went ???? excuse me how was I supposed to cope with being made into an assassin as seven apart from convincing myself that this was all fine and fun actually? And of course the classic “I lived in a cage/I was driven from my home at 5/I was enslaved, and this guy comes around and offers a way out was I just supposed to say no?”.

(This apply to Sasuke too by the way, because had this boy been given some freaking support as a child he wouldn’t have made it his lifelong goal to kill his brother while disregarding absolutely everything else in his life and Orochimaru played him like a damn flute and someone should just have… seen this coming. Or just NOT have the entire Uchiha clan pointlessly wiped off but that’s another point entirely)

The lines of who is good and who is bad in Naruto are very foggy. Murder is not a criterion, child abuse either, so what? At some point we have to acknowledge that the characters who are "good" in Naruto are simply the ones we're told are on the good guys' side. I mean it’s a valid morality system – being good means serving your village. Whatever you do to that end is okay. It’s exactly Danzo’s mentality and it's easy to see where it comes from, it is how their world is built. It’s also how they manage to say with a straight face that Itachi was a good guy actually, and you can build a story on that, you can put it into question.

But the story doesn’t commit to this. It still tries to tell us that being mean and killing people is bad, when half of those characters are paid assassins for freak’s sake, when the good guys have an entire clan build on arbitrary slavery, when they massacred one of their own clan. Once again it started right with Zabuza, when they make the characters (and us) realize that the only thing opposing them is that they have different employers. Zabuza isn’t bad because he’s a mean guy who kills people, he’s bad because he gets in the way of their mission. Of course he conveniently works for an asshole while they work for the guy trying to lift his community from its shithole, but that’s not why they help him. They help him because he pays them to so.

Anyway, going back to the topic at hand and concluding this long-ass rant, it’s hard to infer whether Orochimaru sees them solely as pawns and expendables bodies or if he has any form of attachment to them or some to them. I found his writing to be very inconsistent and not compelling at all because it never dwells into these topics, and the narration can’t make up its mind about him. But I don't like to cast him as just a one-dimensional evil psychopath because that's… bad, y’know, and I don’t think the number of people willing to follow him should be dismissed. In many ways Orochimaru and his people him are a direct product of their world

That got out of hand really fast but. Well. You’re right. It’s sad.

[velmalav]

bubbles {roger taylor}

warnings: lightly implied nudity, swearing.

synopsis: roger and reader share a bubble bath after a party. 

word count: 2k+

***

  It had been another long, seemingly unbearable shift at work. As soon as the rickety back door of the factory shut and the cool air encircled me, I sighed in relief. Saturday evening shifts were the absolute worst, but at least I always had somewhere to be afterwards. This particular night, my close friend Freddie had invited me to one of his unhinged, bombastic parties.

  I’d initially met Fred right before he’d become lead singer of Smile. We were always running into each other at the bus stop, sharing gas station snacks and chatting about our future plans. He was so ambitious and had this otherworldly vibe to him, and I guess he felt the same about me, because ever since, he’d treated me like family.

  The bus ride over gave me to time to slide my ponytail out of my hair and cover my hideous factory outfit with a black leather jacket and some heels. The black work pants would just have to do for tonight, but after the shift I’d had, it was the least of my worries.

  Fred’s house was a couple of blocks from the stop I got off at, but I could hear the music as soon as I stepped onto the street. A steady rainfall had picked up during the ride over, so by the time I reached his front door, I was soaked head to toe – save for the small portion of my head covered by a magazine that I’d found on the bus.

  I walked straight in, as I usually do, and immediately spotted Brian, Roger, and John sitting around one of Fred’s many fireplaces, drinks in hand. It was already nearly one in the morning, so I expected them – if not most people in the place – to be piss drunk.

  Taking a glass of wine from a random table, I slid into the spot beside Brian. He raised his eyebrows at me, “Do you even know who’s that is?”

  Shaking my head with a smile, I downed it. A server came by with a sparse tray, presumably to start clean up, but I intercepted another full glass no one had bothered to grab. Downing that one just as fast as the first, I was met with three skeptical stares.

  “Someone must’ve had a night,” Roger commented, crossing an ankle over his knee.

  “The usual bullshit. Wish I could’ve gotten here before it got…” meeting his eyes, I grimaced. “sad.”

  “Fred passed out ages ago, so you’re definitely right on that one,” Brian replied.

  “What are you guys doing sitting around so late? And sober at that.”

  Roger glanced over his shoulder to a red head standing at the bottom of the staircase. “Definitely not sober, love. But had my eyes on somethin’.”

  “Good luck with that, Rog,” I quipped, chuckling as I reached for another discarded wine glass that wasn’t completely empty. Again, Brian judged me for it.

  With my blessing, Roger got up and shimmied his way over the staircase. I continued my search for scraps while chatting lightly with Brian and John, but there was really nothing new happening, and the party died down even quicker than it had before.

  By the time the last few guests cleared out, and John and Brian had bid their farewells, I was tipsy and stumbling around Fred’s messy foyer. For some reason, I found myself reorganizing his shoe closet while wearing one of his robes – sheer and floral, just how I liked them.

  He had a lot of wild options – none suitable for the outdoors, but they were fun to look at. I swear I splashed a few drops of wine into some of his boots, and had stained his one pair of white clogs. Brian would definitely comment on that sooner rather than later.

  But even cleaning got boring, believe it or not. My drunk self was finding it harder and harder to see straight, but I was determined to make the rest of this night a dream… even if it was nearly four in the morning. So I ran myself a bath.

  Fred’s bubble bath options were pathetic to say the least, but I made sure to use a fair amount (if you call a whole bottle a fair amount). My toes swirled around the water to test the temperature before fully submerging a leg in, and soon my whole body. The bubbles began to tower over me, so much so that I had to swish them away periodically. But for the first time that night, I finally felt like I was having fun. My eyes drifted shut, head lolling back against the tub.

  “You planning on flooding the whole bloody bathroom?” a voice spoke.

  Eyes flying open, I quickly found Roger standing at the door with his arms crossed. His eyes seemed to be burning a hole through my face, looking at me in a way I’d only seen him look at his nightly hookups. It didn’t even hit me that I was naked until I remembered where I was, and saw that water was steadily running down the sides of the bath.

  Shrieking a little, I flew up to grab the faucet, but my feet slipped and I fell right back into the bubbles. Roger chuckled as he walked over, turning off the water himself.

  “Still piss drunk I see,” he smirked, before chuckling again at my red face. It was the only thing visible at this point, as every step closer he took, the further I sunk down into the bubbles.

  “Hardly,” I mumbled, bubbles popping at my mouth movement. Peering up at him, I smiled. “You know what? I very much am actually. But I’m having a great time.”

  Roger rolled his eyes with another belly laugh. His face settled again; however, as he ran his fingers along the water. “Still warm,” he muttered. His eyes were now playful as they met my sheepish ones. “Can I join?”

  Even in the state I was in, it was still strange for him to ask me that. He’d never shown any interest in me; it was always small talk and light-hearted jokes with him. But tonight, he must’ve been feeling rather desperate, or still maybe even a little drunk.

  I hesitated. “Um, if you want,” my voice just barely a whisper as I played with the bubbles around my mouth.

  The next time I looked up, Roger had already discarded his shirt and was in the process of unbuttoning his pants. I couldn’t help but watch, heart jumping up and down inside of my chest. He must’ve felt me staring, because he took a quick glance over his shoulder to raise his eyebrows at me.

  “You like what you see?” he joked, tossing one of his socks at me.

  I squealed and volleyed it away. “You’ve got some nerve considering I’m sharing my bath with you, Rog.”

  Right as he went to pull down his underwear, I sat up and rested my elbows against the side of the tub, slicking my hair back. “Excuse me, boy, but I hope you don’t plan on coming in here without your swim trunks.”

  Roger fully turned around now, eyeing me suspiciously.

  I bat my eyelashes sarcastically. “I’m sure Fred’s got some in his closet.”

  At this point, he knew it was a joke, but made a point to press it along further. “Well in my defense, I didn’t know Fred’s bathrooms followed community pool rules.”

  “I mean, this tub is pretty big,” I explained with a shrug, earning another laugh from Roger.

  Before I could even react, he was beside me, the tips of his blonde hair darkening from the water. Without meeting his eyes, I went back to staring out from the edge of the tub, head falling to lay on my arms. I didn’t feel so tipsy anymore – thank God.

  “So what happened with the red head from earlier?” I wondered out loud.

  I could feel Roger’s eyes on me. “Wasn’t nearly as fun as I’d imagined.”

  I finally took the liberty of facing him, my back now against the tub. “I’m sure this is much more fun then.”

  He smiled at that, moving closer so that he was directly in front of me. This tub suddenly felt so small. I tucked my legs under me in hopes that I could separate myself a bit.

  “You are one of Fred’s more interesting friends, I must say,” Roger said.

  I cocked my head, eyebrows raising. “Thanks?”

  “Not many would invite me into their bubble baths, for one.”

  He slid close, close enough for our knees to touch.

  “I’m pretty sure you invited yourself.”

  Closer again. Now only a thin layer of bubbles separated us. I was sure Roger could feel my heart considering how forceful and rapidly it was beating. His eyes were hooded, signaling that he was still a bit hazy from the alcohol.

  Maybe he could feel my unease, or maybe he couldn’t, but Roger had always known how to lighten the mood. Picking up a handful of bubbles, he blew them straight into my face. I huffed them back off me, coughing as I had inhaled a bit before we both began to laugh.

  “How much did you even use? A whole gallon?” Roger asked.

  Without so much as a response, I grabbed my own handful and returned the favor until his entire face was covered in bubbles.

   “I should’ve seen that coming, I suppose,” he chuckled.

  I found myself sliding closer to him, so when he wiped the soap from his face, our noses were almost touching. His smile immediately faltered. I reached up and stacked some of the bubbles on top of his head, small giggles falling from my lips as the excess toppled down onto his shoulders and down the back of his neck.

  We stayed like that for a while, both trying to bury the other in the seemingly endless bubbles. It got pretty competitive, chock full of trash talk.

  Once our childlike games had finished, I leaned to the side to wet my hair again, unknowingly revealing my chest as the bubbles floated away from my body. When I glanced back over, Roger was obviously staring. Before I could cover myself back up, he snaked his arms around my waist, tugging me into him. His hands glided down to my lower back and back up to the center, fingers digging in just slightly. It was soothing.

  “Can I ask you something?” I breathed, resting both hands on his shoulders.

  “Mmm,” Roger hummed. As he awaited my question, one of his hands reached up to brush away some soap residue from my forehead.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Having a bath, love,” he chuckled, the hand that was previously on my forehead now trailing to rest along my jaw. “Still got a lot of soap on you.”

  His touch was hypnotizing, enough to pull my eyelids closed. “Mind getting it off then?”

  “Already on it,” Roger whispered.

  When I reopened my eyes, his hands weren’t moving anymore, and he was gazing over at me. I could feel my face heating up and broke eye contact, looking to where our chests met. Almost on cue, he began to pour little handfuls of warm water down the sides of my face. I could see the soap pooling around us, white residue beginning to stick to our bodies.

  “Not sure we’re being proactive here-“ I started, but was quickly cut off by Roger’s hand cupping my cheek, the other gripping my side, causing me to yelp.

  “Something else about you, what sets you apart from Fred’s other friends…” he murmured so quietly. “You’re so gorgeous. Funny, too.”

  In any other scenario, the words wouldn’t have penetrated and would’ve been met with complete spite. But tonight, wine drunk in a bubble bath in the early hours of the morning, I let them melt me.

  “Really boosting my ego, Taylor,” I purred.

  Roger bit his lip to hold back the smile from my comment. “Even in that dreadful uniform, when your hair is pulled back and you can see sweat forming at your hairline. You’ve always caught my eye.”

  Now this, this didn’t feel like a regular compliment. His words were sincere, as if he wanted me to know that despite what I’ve I already known him to be, he meant them.

  “Well,” I mustered out, voice trembling. I glanced down at my hand as it trailed up into his hair before latching itself onto a handful. Meeting his stare, I leaned into him. “I’d be lying if I said I never… thought of you.”

  Roger’s eyes lit up. With that confirmation, I leaned up and slowly connected our lips. The kiss was sweet and sultry. He bent closer to me so he could completely envelope me in his touch. I don’t think we could’ve gotten any closer in that moment.

  When we pulled apart, both of us were panting. Roger ran a hand gently up and down my throat, fingers light as they slid along. I finally let go of his hair, earning disappointed hum from him.

  We stayed in the tub until the water got cold, the bubbles dissolved, and the curtains surrounding the windows began to change from their regular blue to a light orange, signaling the morning light.

  And at nearly seven in the morning, both huddled into the corner of the tub, arms wrapped around each other, with soft smiles on both of our faces, I couldn’t deny the butterflies in my stomach.

***

masterlist 

[thetrashbang]

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Needs A God

No multiplayer game gets to live in a void for long. No matter how hard you may try to bleed yourself of troublesome concepts like context, or backstory, the reality is that people like to speculate. People like to tell stories. Doesn’t matter how goofy or outlandish; the creeping tendrils of narrative eventually wrap around the foundations of even the purest, most context-free experiences. Why are we bombing these crates? Why are we stealing that flag? Why are we fighting? Why are we here?

Somebody will come up with an answer. It’s the human thing to do.

But for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it feels like that answer has yet to come. One hundred players parachute onto a deserted island, where the average density of firearms per square meter exceeds even the most deranged fanatical NRA wet dream, and a slowly constricting hemisphere of crackling blue energy forces them to mercilessly gun each other down until only one is left standing. It’s an absurd, nightmarish premise; a theoretical scenario seemingly engineered to turn people into rabid beasts, fighting tooth and nail merely for the privilege of living a few minutes longer. Who would orchestrate such a competition, and for what purpose? Is it an experiment? A ritual? A blood sport? Is some Silicon Valley bazillionaire sitting in a darkened room somewhere, surrounded by monitors, cranking his sad rubbery hog to every rifle crack and arterial splatter? Nobody seems to know, or care.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t either; PUBG is fun enough without framing. And yet, tonight’s winds bring an uneasy chill, carrying whispers of restlessness, indignance and fury. You feel it, don’t you? There’s a philosophical schism in how we approach Pubguh—the very concept of ‘battle royale’, even—and the hairline fractures are beginning to show. Players whine and gnash their teeth at the red zone, esports organisers desperately attempt to harness the format for views, and the proverbial chicken dinner seems to attain a more and more mythical, trophy-like status by the day; a reference to back-alley gambling now ironically viewed as a badge of ultimate prowess. This isn’t a healthy relationship. This isn’t a healthy attitude.

What Plunkbat needs, friends, is a god.

Well, okay, not necessarily a god god. Divine power is optional. I’m not asking Brendan Greene to start wearing a white toga and chiselling his patch notes into stone tablets, as much as it would set an entertaining precedent. The job requirements are flexible: I’m simply asking for someone vengeful and capricious, with unfathomable intentions, inscrutable thoughts, and—at least within the bounds of the playable space—immense, unassailable power. Like any god, you need not supply scientific proof of their presence; you merely have to attribute sufficient existing phenomena to them, and change people’s collective perception of the world. Ooh, got’em.

See, battle royale games represent an important shift to me. I’m a competitive person by nature. It’s etched into my mind, irreversibly chiseled by years of test scores and parental praise and all the other ego-stroking bullshit that you were subjected to if you were a certain kind of ‘gifted’ child. “You’re the best. You should be the best. You should be winning. Why aren’t you winning, what the heck is wrong with you?” So it bleeds over, into hobbies, work, and of course, online shooters, in which I regularly demonstrate that I have an innate… whatever the opposite of aptitude is. I react slowly, I zone out, I bean myself on the head with my own grenades, and if you exert the slightest bit of pressure, I’ll empty half the magazine into a wall and drop my weapon through a gap in the floorboards. I’m not good, and yet some unreachable, fundamental part of my conscious will never be satisfied with that knowledge.

You would think, then, that Pubby-G would only serve to exacerbate this mindset. And yet, in a world of delicately tuned esports that are built from the ground up to be pure, unfiltered tests of skill, it feels like the only game to grant a genuine absolution of responsibility; a kind of freeing fatalism. There’s a sense in a lot of classic multiplayer experiences—like, say, Counter-Strike—that every outcome is more or less deterministic; a product of a series of controlled variables and actions. With every failure comes the overwhelming impression that it could have been averted, given enough competence, foresight, and concentrated guarana. By contrast, a porridgey cocktail of chaos flows through the veins of battle royales, surrounding you with factors that are not only impossible to influence, but—in many cases—impossible to know at all. You are swept up by the gusts of a hundred butterflies’ wings, tossed to and fro by the whims of the random number generator, bombarded with unavoidable risks and squeezed into unmanageable situations. It’s easier to go with the flow, accept that at any given moment you may have your head unceremoniously taken off—by somebody lying flat on a distant hill, or hiding behind one of the game’s ten thousand trees, or concealed in a shrub on the far side of the Moon—and concentrate on all the minute actions you can make to ever-so-slightly nudge the odds in your favour.

But it’s not always clear that this is the reality of Puhburger. With its vast scale and often languid pacing, encounters can feel like isolated incidents, detached from the cascading series of events that led up to them, despite being anything but. Anyone can parse the map for circles of safety and non-safety, and understand that their arbitrary placement gives certain players an advantage; it’s less apparent that the figure in that upstairs window might have had their sights trained on the area, or seen you first, shot first, picked up a better weapon, obtained a better vantage point, or some other action, because of a dizzying permutation of astral alignments that neither of you could even begin to grasp. So we get futile attempts to establish a level playing field, find meaning in accomplishment, divine fair elements from unfair, and generally make things needlessly stressful for everybody involved. Except the infuriatingly smug yours truly, of course.

How do you make that clear, though? How do you concisely impress upon people that their fate is almost entirely out of their hands, in such a way that they adopt an attitude of acceptance? Blaming the roll of the dice doesn’t come to mind as swiftly when you never see them rattling around, nor the way their innumerable ripples propagate across the map. Furthermore, as current events have taught us all too well, it’s a lot easier to ascribe fault to individuals than to an invisible, fundamentally hostile system. So what do you do?

You give the system a name. And, if you can, a face.

Allow me to momentarily slam us into reverse. When Valve released Left 4 Dead way back in 2008 (oh god, it’s going to be ten years old this year?) they made quite a song and dance about the game’s AI Director; an invisible, unknowable entity that would dynamically dole out items and zombies in a manner consistent with the tenets of dramatic tension, ensuring players were subjected to a “fast-paced, but not overwhelming, Hollywood horror movie”. While the opacity of the AI Director’s machinations always made me a tad sceptical of its mechanical effectiveness, giving people a name to pin the blame for all their earthly woes on was a masterstroke. Notorious video game jokesman Yahtzee Croshaw—the one with the hat and that trendy 00s cynicism, remember?—reported that he once witnessed someone praying to the AI Director, and I bet you all the pipe bombs in the world that players’ personification of it didn’t stop there. Short of making a catastrophic error, I never saw anyone get chewed out for not pulling their weight, and when tones got heated—as they inevitably do, when you’re throwing yourself against the frigid slopes of the higher difficulties—they were directed in the vague direction of the director: for its expectations, for its lack of pity, for being unfair. Awareness of our lurking orchestrator changed our perception of the experience, even though we couldn’t entirely prove it wasn’t just somebody sitting in a black box, disinterestedly flipping a coin over and over.

So, why not do the same for a game that does? Put a face on the system that holds a fundamental grip on who lives and who dies. You don’t need to change a thing under the hood; you need only introduce the vague implication that the evolving state of the battlefield is a consequence of a thinking, feeling, mysterious overseer. A bloodthirsty oligarch watching from their lavish observation zeppelin, a dystopian TV network broadcasting a deadly future sport, an amoral team of government agents sealed away in a bunker control room, an inexplicably sapient Shiba playing with a selection of levers, or indeed, a literal deity. People will take the faintest contextual cues and run amok with them, ascribing everything they can to the will of the one who set this conflict in motion: item drops, circle position, all the way down to the subtle spread of their bullets as they sail through the air. Yeah, maybe it’ll start off as a running joke; an ironic indulgence, the “thanks Obama” of Puddlebounds. But that’s the thing about ironic behaviour: get enough people doing it at once, and you’ll cultivate sincere participants without even realising it. We will learn to absolve ourselves of responsibility, and engage in the unhinged pandemonium of battle royale with the mentality that befits it.

There’s just one problem: you need to be able to keep a secret.

I’m still working on that part.

[idkhow-you-found-me-writing]

Snack Time

Just Ted “Theodore” Logan and Marko Thelostboy having fun bonding time, 1k words long ff under the cut or you can read it on ao3 at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28923459

 Nowadays, there was a rumor involving vampires and naturally sparkling in the sun as if their skin was covered in glitter. Sprought out of nowhere, instantly becoming as popular as it was baffling.

 It was also, of course, completely unfounded in reality.

 Well, maybe not completely. There was this one vampire who fitted that description better than any other. Their exposed skin shone in thousands of colors, creating a resplendent mosaic of abstract shapes and forms. It wasn’t only their flesh either, his whole outfit was decorated in this glow.

 “My newest of companions, were you bathing in glitter or something?” Ted asked, dudes head tilting in genuine curiosity. Dude was in no way an expert on ancient vampire customs. Or anything ancient if to go by dudes history grades, when Ted was still attending school. However, now with this creature of the night as a friend, one of these things could change. It was too late to get any score in a test, most fortunately. Dude didn’t miss those days at all.

 Marko laughed loudly, just on the verge of sounding a bit maniac. It didn’t serve much as clarification for Ted so dude decided to wait for one more moment. After the laughter eventually died down, they looked at the person in front of them intensely. They both stared at each other for a few seconds. Marko’s sharp eyes were calculating, whereas Ted’s were clouded by confusion. Then, he dropped the act and finally gave his reply.

 “Ted, do I look like I bathe in anything?”

 That. That was a totally reasonable question to ask, dude supposed. As a vampire, they suffered the most inconvenient fate of not being able to see their own reflection. They truly could have no idea what they even looked like. This, and the fact that Marko absolutely did not look like a person who bathes in anything at all. Maybe, sometimes an abrupt rain caught him by surprise and cleaned the freashes layer of dirt, Ted wondered briefly. It was a long time ago when any kind of rain visited this place.

 “I did spill it all over myself, tho.” Marko chuckled lightly. He did that a lot, Ted couldn’t help but notice. In fact, dude was totally in awe of his ability to find something funny. Ted dudeself carried a rather positive attitude, however it was nowhere near their level.

 Next thing Marko did was much less predictable.

 He raised his hand, and then, without giving it any thought, he licked it like some would spoon after making a whipped cream for dessert. Mindlessness of this action made it clear that it shouldn’t be seen as anything to be astounded about.

 And yet, Ted found dudeself in a state of total astonishment. Dude was able to feel all dudes pillar belfies suddenly crumbling down. Just like dude stated before, Ted was aware that dude definitely had a lot to learn about peculiar customs of vampires. However, dude was more than sure that they were supposed to be more like fruit bats than catboys. One could learn so much in just one day.

 “What? You don’t eat glitter?” Ted had a hard time figuring out if their tone was sarcastic or not. Just as dude had a hard time figuring out if the information that Marko wasn’t a catboy afterall made dude feel disappointed or not. Perhaps a little bit of all options presented were true. “You should try it.” Not even a brief snicker followed that sentence. Ah, so he was serious then. This surprised Ted more than the actual advice.

 “Dude, you’re totally right.” Dude was the cook of this household and that meant being open to every culinary experience. Or at very least, that was what Ted always told Bill when he invariably found dude eating peanuts with their shells. Again. Missy tried to gently guide dude to stop doing that, but Bill knew that the most cherished partner of his was simply a lost cause here. He hoped it worked like hens eating stones for health related reasons. He really did. “Just let me grab peanut shells. We could use glitter as the most excellent seasoning.”

 “You’re so funny.” Marko said, not necessary as a compliment but more of a statement that needed to be said. Then, he laughed as the confirmation. Ted was the most appreciative of this gesture. “And a fucking genius,” -Marko continued with a huge grin on his face- “let’s do it.”

 This time, Ted returned the smile. It totally was a genius idea and it felt the most stellar to find a person with similarly odd food preferences. It wasn’t an easy job at all. Even dudes Bill prefered to eat peanuts inside, instead of schells. Although it was tough to accept as the final truth, Ted eventually managed to do just that. Bill leaving all these shells for dude undoubtedly helped.

 So they both went to the kitchen. Putting said shells with glitter from Marko’s jacket to the only clean bowl into the whole apartament felt weirdly magical. Well, colorful dust collected from blood sucking monster certainly sounded much more wizardly. After everything was thoroughly mixed together, it came the time for tasting this most unusual appetizer.

 Ted glanced at his fellow cook. Marko glanced right back. The question of who should be the one to try it first just appeared on their minds. Something previously so unimportant that it didn’t deserve a single thought from either of them, now had a change to become a huge dilemma. Thankfully, Marko decided to speak up before that managed to occur.

 “The honor’s yours.” He giggled in a somewhat unhinged way because how could he not. Maybe a question about laughing gas wouldn’t be too out of place. “It was your suggestion, wasn’t it?”

 That was right so Ted had no reason left to prolong the moment. Dude put the shining shell into dudes mouth. The tension in the room only grew.

 “Dude, I’m never eating unseasoned peanuts from now on.”

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

10 ways you can show off your favorite tweets in the real world

Every once in a while a tweet so damn good comes along that it makes me think that maybe, just maybe, all the bad the internet has given us has been worth it.

It's rare for a tweet to spark so much joy that the "like" and "retweet" buttons don't do it justice. But whenever it happens I feel compelled to take some sort of action.

I've always been a fan of screenshotting extra special tweets to ensure I remember them long after they pass through my timeline, but these days there are far more charming, thoughtful, and highly amusing ways to immortalize a favorite tweet.

Image: screengrab via moonpie / Twitter

Maybe you've had a tweet go viral or get some celebrity love? Perhaps you've tweeted something that became a hilarious inside joke with your friends? Or you're considering taking the plunge and wiping your Twitter clean, but you're holding back because of one or two really great tweets that you're not ready to let go of just yet? Then making Twitter-inspired merch might be for you.

SEE ALSO: Crush Twitter proves that sometimes subtweets can be good

Immortalizing tweets — whether they're your own, a friend's, a celebrity's, or even... a brand's — is a perfect way to make lasting memories. Not to mention, personalized Twitter merch can be a next-level gift.

So next time you find a tweet worth memorializing, here are 10 incredibly fun, borderline unhinged ways to make it last forever.

1. Frame a tweet

For the perfect balance of simple and extra as hell, print a tweet out and put it in a legit frame. It might not sound like a particularly grand gesture, but my cousin gave me a framed collage of some of my favorite tweets for Christmas, and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it's one of the best gifts I've ever received.

Framed Tweets is a professional tweet-framing service that does all the work for you — though frames and posters cost between $49 to $199, which is a bit pricey if you ask me. If you want to go cheaper, buy an old frame and print out your own tweet. If you really want to get fancy, you can even use photo paper.

Image: framedtweets.com

2. Wear a tweet

Retweets might not equal endorsements, but tweet shirts certainly do. What better way to show the world you love a tweet than by wearing it?

You can get tweets printed on all manner of apparel — shirts, sweatshirts, hats, tote bags, and more — on websites like Tee Tweets, Etsy, and Redbubble. For even more options, use a printing service like Custom Ink.

Image: tee Tweets

3. Make tweet stickers

If you're looking for an easy way to display a tweet on the many surfaces in your life, why not consider making stickers? They're fun, temporary, and easily sharable. Redbubble offers a selection of standout celebrity tweet stickers, though you can always make your own.

Image: redbubble

4. Put it on a pillow

If you're in the mood to have some ~tweet dreams~ why not order a custom-made Twitter pillow? Etsy has a selection of classic and more artistic options, Redbubble offers quite the choice of throw pillows and covers, and Framed Tweets also has all your customization needs covered.

Image: redbubble

5. Enjoy a piping hot cup of tweet

To wake yourself up before you spend the day scrolling through Twitter, we suggest drinking coffee out of a Twitter-themed mug. TweetMugz.com is available for all your celeb, political, brand, and custom tweet mug needs.

Image: tweetmugz

6. Order a delicious tweet cake

People put photos on cakes, so why not tweets? I'm sure bakeries have received their fair share of odd requests over the years, so you should feel no shame in sending a photo of a tweet for them to put atop your cake.

Image: Mashable composite: Comstock / Getty Images and Twitter

7. Carve a tweet into wood

If you're in the market for a slightly classier social media-inspired gift, turn your attention to these Twitter wood carvings.

Laser Tweets etches your tweet onto a beautifully smooth and thin piece of wood for $25. For  and even makes a set of custom wooden coasters for $55.00. It's like, we really don't need them but also we kind of absolutely do?

Image: lasertweets.com

8. New phone case who dis?

Want the world to see a tweet of your choosing but not quite ready for a tweet shirt? Start smaller with a tweet phone case. Redbubble has a small selection of pre-made cases featuring popular tweets for a variety of different phones, and you can also create custom ones online.

Image: redbubble

9. Try temporary tweet tattoos

Ever love a tweet so much you briefly consider getting a tattoo of it before deciding it's probably not the best idea? Same. But TwitterTats gives us the best of both worlds.

TwitterTats lets you create temporary tattoos of your favorite tweets that come off of your skin in about three days. Now you can seem adventurous without having to embrace the huge commitment of a real tattoo. Pre-made celebrity packs are available for $9.99 each, or you can create a custom temporary tattoos for $25.00.

10. Get a real Twitter tattoo

If you're a Twitter-loving daredevil you always technically have the option of getting a real tattoo of a tweet. But before you head over to your nearest tattoo artist, remember that not all tweets stand the test of time. And this is one tweet you won't be able to delete. So think before you ink.

#HappyTweetMerchMakingToAll

WATCH: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is giving Twitter classes to fellow Democrats

[jessicakehoe]

Self-Isolation Diary: A Day in the Life of John Fluevog

We’re now in Month 3 of self-isolation with an uncertain road ahead but for some much-needed inspiration, FASHION is reaching out to some of our favourite Canadians to get a peek into how they’re living their lives in lockdown (remember: #StayHomeSaveLives). Each week, keep an eye out for new self-isolation diaries from actors, designers, influencers and artists who are riding this uncertain time out with us.

John Fluevog, designer

My wife and I returned from Melbourne (where we had been visiting the new—and first—Fluevog store in Australia) on March 20th to find that all our stores were closing. No cash flow, no income and not knowing what the future looked like. On top of that, most of the retail staff who are really part of our family were having to be laid off. It was a lot of shock and disbelief and then panic. I felt upside down and shaken. My life of slowly building up a brand was looking like it was being torn from me in an instant. The future was changing day to day and it did not look promising. It was as if someone had pressed a huge pause button in the sky and the whole world had stopped.

The biggest thing that I did and that helped was to focus on being thankful for each day. I could not plan for the future but I could change what I was thinking about today.

Each day, I focused on what I could do that day. With all the stores and factories closed, I felt a little unhinged. I began to look around and see all the unfinished projects. I did not buy anything but used all the bits and pieces I had around me. My wife painted the bedrooms with paint we had. The colours were just what we had and seemed perfect and still do. I put up wood trim and found I had the perfect amount and sizes to do the job! It seemed that I had all the right screws and pieces. It was a time for me to see that I was being provided for.

Image courtesy John Fluevog

I went to my workshop and started to dig out old clog bits and parts that I had stored and never finished. I started to piece them together to try and make something out of what I had. I would like to sell the ones I made as one-offs from my studio that JF made himself. I still have more to go on that project but I will get there.

I walked up the hill everyday behind our house. It’s a forty-minute long, hard walk. I routined myself to meditate, read and wrote down a to-do list for myself each day in my quiet time that I kept in my pocket. Again, I focused on only what I could do each day and worked hard at not looking at the future. I found myself busier than normal as every day I ticked things off my list. I read books out loud in front of a fire in my living room that were posted on Fluevog.com. That was fun and gave me a purpose everyday.

My team that was left working in the company were stellar. Everyone was pulling together and building each other up as from time to time, each one of us would lose it a bit. Lots of our video conferencing was filled with laughter and encouragement.

We had an opportunity to support and make a special shoe in honour of BC’s chief medical officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. Our marketing team went full steam ahead and when the shoe got released on our website, the traffic was so intense that it crashed the site! In a time of greatly reduced sales, we suddenly had this opportunity, along with Dr. Henry (she was the real star power) to give a large wad of cash to food banks across British Columbia. It was such a blessing and great encouragement to all the Fluevog staff to be part of helping the cause during this time. Needless to say, we were and are very thankful for all the customers that bought the shoes and helped the cause.

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Get your wifi connections ready! The DR. HENRY shoe pre-sale will begin at 4pm PT (Vancouver time) today over at Fluevog.com! 100% of profits from this shoe will support FoodBanks BC. Visit our website for more info about this very special shoe. 😉

A post shared by John Fluevog Shoes (@fluevog) on Apr 23, 2020 at 12:17pm PDT

Then we had International Fluevog Day on May 15th to think about. For those unfamiliar with Fluevog Day, it’s a day of random acts of kindness, special deals and celebrations in store and happens to coincide with my birthday. It’s the single biggest retail day for our company. Our marketing team was going into overdrive as this year, it was going to have to be all online. For the first time ever, and in our landmark 50th year in business no less, no stores were going to be open on Fluevog Day.

Normally, I call every single store on May 15th and randomly give away shoes to unsuspecting customers. This year, that was not going to happen. Thankfully, Fluevog Day also includes virtual surprises — every 50th web order is free on Fluevog Day — so this year it was decided that I would personally call the winners… or at least as many as I could. That turned out to be an unsuspecting blessing for me as each person I connected with was overwhelmed to be a winner and blown away that John Fluevog himself was on the phone. It was not a hard job to have people gush over me, I will admit! To everyone’s surprise, International Fluevog Day in this crazy year turned out to the best May 15th ever.

View this post on Instagram

Our iconic DERBY SWIRL will drop in this Limited Edition colo(u)rway as just one of our many #FluevogDay specials this May 15th! Show us some ❤️ below if you're planning to spend Fluevog Day with us!!

A post shared by John Fluevog Shoes (@fluevog) on May 13, 2020 at 2:48am PDT

At the time of this writing, we are gearing up to re-open our stores where it is safe and possible. Once again, we have no idea what this will look like and are taking things step by step. I have been finding that living from day to day is in many ways a better way to live than always looking at the future.

One of my oft-used slogans in the company has been “Let’s be thankful.” This Covid-19 time has really been a time for me to put this saying to the test. What I realized however, is that the alternative of being worried was just not an option I wanted to have in my life. I am thankful that I am more than than my shoe designs and brand. I am thankful that I can say I’m thankful.

I am thankful that during this time, I can persevere and be even more creative than ever.

The post Self-Isolation Diary: A Day in the Life of John Fluevog appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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