#truly easier to talk about my dnd shows

[brionbroadway]

impossible to explain this show to someone who's not a reality tv girlie

[stickandthorn]

Something I always think about when debates about queer rep in cr come up that I don’t see talked about often is something I’ve come to refer to as “gay resources and resource allocation.” And no matter how I try to describe it when it comes up I can never really encompass what I mean, so here’s my one big old try at explaining it. I am truly not trying to discourse with people, I just want to explain my feelings on all this finally.

So, let’s start with, what the fuck do I mean? Basically, dnd live shows aren’t actually set up the best for queer rep in some ways, logistically speaking. They don’t have as much resources and those resources they have to allocate. And what the fuck do I mean by that? Well:

PCs are your main source of rep, but there are only so many PCs, 7 every 3/4ish years for cr in particular. And besides that, you have NPCs, which are numerous, but usually interactions with them are so surface level or unrelated to their sexuality or gender that it almost never comes up unless they use they/them or neopronouns, or are actively flirting in a visibly queer way/in a visibly queer relationship. So in short, there’s only so many people with so many sexualities to go around. And if someone isn't comfortable with something, like how Travis wasn’t comfortable doing romance in C1 (tho I guess you could argue that Grog was aromantic from that angle), they shouldn’t be forced to do that and that takes another piece off of the gay board. Resources and resource allocation, basically.

And then there’s the issue of, well, characters being run by singular person. Usually when someone chooses to make a queer character in a TV show/book/movie whatever, they have resources. They have the time to rewrite and rewrite, to get other queer people and sensitivity consultants to help (and yes I’m pretty sure cr does have a sensitivity consultant but it’s not completely relevant to my point), do test screenings, etc. They often don’t because they don’t care, but they have the opportunity.

But CR has none of that because they’re literally live. Even if the show isn’t broadcasted live, it is completely unedited (besides gags and goofs for the ad read) and they can’t reshoot something. It’s a continuous, completely improvised, fully live story. That can be very scary I’m sure, because you have to do your rep 100% right at all times or you’ll get trashed online. What if you’re portraying an identity that isn’t yours? You wanna do it right, but that’s very hard when it comes down to Just You and you actually care. Even if you aren’t doing something wrong you’ll get trashed online.

Also this isn’t me excusing mistakes they’ve made representing queer people, it’s not me giving them a free pass. But I’ve heard people tear the cast to shreds for stupid, inane, unnecessary things, in the most bizarre way possible. Like, look at all the shit Liam has gone through with two bisexual characters.  And the live format also means that opportunities to do rep are harder. If you write a book, you can engineer the perfect scenario for someone to come out. But when you do a live play show, things have to come up naturally, and that sometimes just doesn’t happen. Look at Caduceus. He was aroace, and in my opinion played very well and very consistently throughout the entire show. Hell, a lot of ace people identified him as being ace from the beginning. But the actual conformation, the “coming out”, was waaaay after he was introduced. It wasn’t that they were hiding it, it just didn’t come up in a way that made sense. And it’s even harder for NPCs. Now let’s look at romances themselves. With NPCs it’s easier, look at Kima and Allura or how in EXU it was confirmed that Gilmore has a husband. But PC romance not only takes a long time, but is complicated as fuck. The emotions you feel while playing dnd are real, even if they aren’t applicable to you the person. So developing a romance takes a lot of time and energy and can be very messy, especially when it’s getting torn apart on the internet. Not to mention if there isn’t anyone in the party you can romance (but want to), or how hard NPC romances are. Once again, less resources.

And this isn’t just in CR. In one of the home games I play a huge percentage of the players are queer in some way, including our DM. But we have all these same resource and resource allocation issues, though they aren’t really issues in our case because we aren’t setting out to do rep. PC romances are rare, and NPC romances even rarer, and although there are plenty of enbies in both party and NPCs, actual sexualities rarely come up because they just aren’t applicable. The only time thats come up a lot in my experience was in games designed for romance. 

And this isn’t even touching on how CR1 wasn’t set up for live-streaming and purposeful diversity, it was originally a home game, etc.

So now we look at what all this means. Well, I don’t have a big conclusion. I still think queer rep is hugely important and cr should continue to work to include it, like they’ve done in the past. I think actual fuck ups in rep should be discussed. But I think some parts of the fandom need to keep in mind all of this when discussing queer rep, because the debates can get really bad faith at times when this stuff isn’t considered.

[glassblossomsthunderstorm]

Letters to an old friend

Today is the third anniversary of the death of an old friend of mine. Over the years I kept asking myself if I have the right to grieve you like I do. I know we weren't besties. I often wonder if you even considered me a friend at all. According to our mutual friends you did. But it was always hard to tell with you. Your layers of sarcasm and tough love certainly didn't make that judgement easier for my insecure self. I know we weren't close. So I wonder if my grief is performative. If I mourn for grief's sake rather than yours. I hope I don't.

I hope you are well now. It still feels surreal.

The last time I saw you was in the crowd of a concert our choir gave. I was so excited to see you, even though I'm pretty sure you weren't there for me.

I was looking for you afterwards, but the crowd was thick and people were calling my name from all directions, so I figured you and I would get a chance to catch up another time.

I still can't truly understand that we won't.

Great, there are the tears.

I learned of your death on christmas eve; exactly a month after it happened from a mutual mate.

I was dressed as an angel trying to spread christmas cheer at my then-work. You probably would have laughed at me.

It was a very teary christmas.

I went to your grave between the holidays and New Years. I would have been at your funeral had I known.

I later learned from a bunch of mutuals friends that they thought I'd known. I didn't. I would have been there. I don't begrudge them, none of us were in the headspace to inform a random mate back then.

And so I at least got to tell you goodbye on my own, that wasn't too bad either.

I wonder if my grief is performative, and yet there is literally no way to stop the tears from falling whenever I return to your grave. It's why I'm scared of coming back there as often as I'd like.

I like reminiscing there with you. I wonder if you can hear me.

I think about the time we drunkenly danced a mock waltz in the deserted streets of our village in the middle of the night, falling over ourselves and laughing til our friends told us to shut up.

I think about you forcing me to try your godawful concoction of an Irish Pixie, and me reluctingly ending up liking it. Who the fuck puts whipped cream in a waldmeister shot?? Well. You did.

I remember me falling asleep on your shoulder in our friend's cabin in subzero temperatures surrounded by our mates while watching True Grit.

And I think of you shielding me from the others at a party while I was having a panic attack because my rapist had showed up. You made sure to keep curious and worried people away from me, comforting me together with two other friends who eventually ended up taking me home. I don't think I ever properly thanked you back then; the memories are so blurry with how panicked and shaken I was. It was the last time we talked. I never went back to our regular party cabin after that, deciding to cut ties with the many people who apparently didn't condemn the guy who raped me.

I thanked you at your grave two years later. I really hope you heard me there.

I regret not taking up your offer to join your dnd group; you were so stoked about it. I did end up loving dungeons and dragons, I wish I could share this with you now. I think I might make a character in your honour.

I don't think I have a single picture of us together. I know there's a voice message on my phone that an old friend sent me at a party I wasn't at and you ended up snatching his phone. I can't bring myself to listen to it again.

But writing this out made me remember far more fond memories than I originally did.

Thanks for reminiscing with me , T, whereever you are now, I'm raising my glass to you!

[fimflamfilosophy]

“Is DnD Still Popular?”

To some of you giant nerds, the question, “Is DnD still popular,” is probably one of the stranger things you’ll read today, but within a specific context it makes a lot of sense. Speaking of, the show “Stranger Things” presented a popular, physical look at what DnD beasties might feel like, even if it didn’t present an honest view of what DnD games really play like. Along with more online media referencing the game and sites like Roll20 making it easier to join a group, it makes sense. Is this a temporary boom or has the roleplaying community seen a lot of permanent additions to its nerdy hobby?

I wouldn’t have numbers to say, myself, but for what it’s worth, roleplaying is always a very personal experience. And for a few of us, the question isn’t, “Are people still playing DnD?” Of course they are - it’s all anyone plays! The question is, “Can you get anyone to play anything else?”

What Is DnD?

For some people, Dungeons & Dragons has become so intertwined with the concept of roleplaying that people think DnD and roleplaying are synonymous. If you roleplay, you play DnD. Originally, this had a kernel of truth. There are articles about the history of the system, and during its inception the game had a hard time taking off. Fundamentally it was asking people to play make-believe, but with a system of mathematical rules and designs. We know now that this type of thing is like catnip to massive dork-faced neckbeards, but at the time it wasn’t expected to have much appeal.

Eventually it did get off the ground, and it became the standard for the entire concept of a roleplaying game. And as with all “firsts to the market”, there have been many competitors and copycats, but it’s difficult to pry the audience away when you need everyone to use the same system. In economics they call this “network utility value” - that is, a fax machine is useless if only one person owns one. You can only send faxes to other people with fax machines, so if another company tries to invent their own offshoot of the fax machine, they’ll never get anyone to adopt it because everyone is already using the existing fax machine network. Everybody knows DnD, which means that if you go to a convention or look for games online, you know you’re going to find more players for that system than any other.

Why Does DnD Continue to Work?

In early editions of DnD, there were a lot more rules, and as a result more freedom to design your characters. When I first started roleplaying, it was during the 3rd edition of the system, where you could still allocate skill points to become better or worse at specific skills like lying, climbing, forgery, or crafting. This meant that with good planning, you could play a sub-optimal wizard and make up for it somewhat by investing a lot in your “persuasion” skills to rely on talk more than magic.

But being the system that everyone has to learn isn’t enough to stay on top forever. Other systems like GURPS have taken hold by now, and some types of popular nerd media have introduced their own completely unique systems designed to simulate their specific media universes. The owners of DnD had two choices: either make the game more open and try to eat the lunch of other companies, or make all of DnD easier to play in general to capture a broader audience.

So they released 4th edition! We don’t talk about 4th edition. And then they quickly released 5th edition (and a few mumbled apologies), which streamlined a lot of things about the game to the extent I’m not sure why they even let you control your character stats at all now. Skills became baked in with your level, and most of the game is about choosing abilities when you level up. It’s become very similar to playing an MMO, and I believe that’s the point.

One of the big things you always see in a complicated roleplaying system is players spending hours putting together a character. For your experienced player, this is a labor of love. You really care about the small details and want to make sure you get it right, or you’re a Win-At-All-Costs type who wants to make sure you’re rolling the biggest numbers. Either way you’re familiar and know what you’re doing, but it presents a hurdle to new players, and that hurdle has been largely done away with in 5th edition.

No matter how old you are, how experienced you are, how creative you are (or aren’t), or how much you know about any aspect of the game, you can play 5e DnD. I think you could play as young as seven years old and have minimal problems, because all you have to do is choose a job and virtually everything else is filled in for you, as if by a program, as if a video game. An experienced player can help a new one whip up a character within fifteen minutes, and that new guy will be rolling dice at the dragon about as well as everyone else.

DnD is the Worst System

But DnD’s accessibility is also its greatest downfall. Because everything is sort of programmed out, you find a lot of players eventually growing bored with the same-old, and they try to find ways to inject new life into the system. They invent new races, new classes, new abilities, and so on - they call this “homebrew”. yet many people are bad at creating balance and fairness for something they personally intend to play, and DnD recognizes this problem. It has a lot of supplemental books telling you all you need to know about other races and classes you might want to play, and in theory they are as fair and powerful as anything in the base system.

Yet no amount of homebrew or supplementary material will solve DnD’s core problem: it’s rigid. If you want to play, you need a battle mat, because every spell, every action, can travel or act within a certain number of squares and you always need to know exactly where you’re standing. Players are expected to be able to take a certain number of actions per turn based on their level, and do an expected amount of damage. Monster encounters are built loosely around the concept of “Challenge Rating”, which is meant to imply a group of four players will find a CR of 5 suitably challenging if they are all level five. Basically it plays like “X-Com”.

And as you lock people in these mechanical, video game-styled designs, you find people champing at the bit. Not everyone wants to choose their abilities at level up or have their skill proficiencies dictated by what level they are. Some people want to express truly outlandish concepts, or play something that isn’t specifically designed around the idea of walking room to room blasting monsters. You’ll see people in roleplaying communities often asking, “Does anyone have any good ideas to homebrew [this idea] and make it work?”

Fans of DnD argue the homebrew approach works. Yes, it’s complicated and frustrating to invent entirely new classes and races for a single game where you don’t know how long you’ll play or what level you’ll reach, but DnD’s strict rules and design philosophy is a perk to those people, not a drawback.

Yet a fact of note is that a quote from a game I run got into a popular “Out of Context DnD” blog. The quote was, “ Mecha-Jesus unleashes a barrage of flames from his palms, but the train-snake martially dodges out of the way!”

It received 337 notes, and I was a little surprised by that. The game is a post-apocalyptic Road Warrior setting where the team boss decided to kill God as revenge for one of the gang members dying. Also featured in that day’s session was a battle between two men operating bucket cranes in a duel to the death above a giant grain silo, among eight other equally implausible events based loosely on Dante’s Inferno. For me, Mecha-Jesus is not a 300 notes event - it’s literally every other Friday.

What Do You Want to Play?

In my view, DnD often poses the question, “Are you even roleplaying?” I mean really. A lot of players feel like they are because they do an accent and come up with a backstory, but if you set yourself next to another player who has the same character stats and you’re playing together in the same game, has the system really given you the tools to solve problems all that differently? And the answer is is broadly, no.

I understand the counter-argument. Every player is unique. But in their way each Paladin in “World of Warcraft” is unique too. They have different gear, different competencies of player, and may take different abilities, but fundamentally they’re expected to crash dungeons and use what they’re given to kill monsters. The only advantage DnD has is that the GM can allow his players to interact with scenery items or talk to things, and you’ll see debate on exactly how much leniency a GM should give his players to act outside DnD’s base mechanics.

That’s a mentality. Some people like the safety of the system. They like to know what all the monsters are, what the risks are, what the rewards are, and have it all neatly lined up where you can see it. They want to join an Adventuring Guild that will bureaucratically assign a dungeon for them to attack so they always have something to do and a sure reward for doing it. The GM went through the trouble of drawing that dungeon out, after all. DnD is extremely safe.

And then there’s the alternative. I actually learned to roleplay among theater nerds who were already big into the concept of improv and narrative. One of them used to joke, “If you think DnD is the best system for the game, you know it’s not character-driven,” because any time you’re fine with trying to build an actual human around a set of level-up choices, you’re probably not designing the strongest possible personality.

Going back to media making DnD more popular, the first televised introduction to DnD I can personally recall is an episode of “Dexter’s Lab” where they address exactly this conflict. In it, Dexter runs a game where he forces his friends to play by his rules, where he wins. When Dexter rolls poorly, he turns the dice over to a better number and declares his evil wizard “fried” the team of adventurers. Then his sister, Dee Dee, takes over, and with no knowledge of the game’s rules at all, embarks on an improvised session of pure roleplaying where the guys tell her what they do and she tells them what happens. The sheets are just guidelines for them, and if they say they can do something Dee Dee accepts it.

Dee Dee’s roleplaying is open. It’s a void, and for some people, when you look into the void it looks back. How do you control everyone when they can do anything? It requires a certain level of trust that some players have a difficult time not abusing, yet weirdly everyone I’ve ever known who would lie and cheat during a roleplaying game actually preferred DnD, and I think I know why.

Rules Can Be Broken, but the Suspension of Disbelief is Immutable

The grognards that break the rules in DnD do so because the rules are so strict that they ironically can be easily broken. If the system says people take a certain amount of damage when they fall, and you find a way to throw to them that elevation consistently, by gum they’ll damn well take that damage. It’s in the rules! A friend I know combats this by saying if his players exploit the rules, then the monsters will start exploiting them too, to discourage arms races of bullshit.

What I’m describing is often called “rules lawyering”. So named because it involves finding a rules passage, interpreting the rule so the wording sounds like it favors an exploit, and then leveraging that into a powerful ability players were not meant to have. Because DnD requires you to know absolutely everything about your relative locations and words like “Attack” can have important diverging meanings depending on context, it’s a system extremely vulnerable to lawyering.

But with a more open system based on narrative and characters, it becomes harder to lawyer something you shouldn’t. In an open system, you build what the game calls for without consulting a bunch of charts and level guides. If you’re super heroes, you build super heroes. Cyborgs are cyborgs, Orcs are orcs - it’s whatever, and if you try to do anything outside the believability of the game, the GM tells you no. He has more authority in a more narrative game because the GM leads the narrative.

I’m personally fond of the Hero System, which ascribes massive ranges to all forms of weapons (a gun or eye laser can reach you down a long hallway) so the only general questions that need to be asked are, “Are you close enough to punch a guy?” and “Are you bunched up close enough to all be hit by this grenade?” You don’t need battle mats and the games play a lot more intuitively. There are two books of rules in Hero and they can be specific, but most of the rules revolve around character design rather than how to play, and fiddly things like physics or bursting through walls are meant to be decided depending on the type of game, at the GM’s discretion. There are guidelines, but they’re only that.

So if someone tells you they can punch through a wall in your noir investigator game, you tell them no, because the rules are just guidelines and in this game you can’t just drive your fist through a concrete brick even if you can find figures in the book that say maybe you can, because the book also says maybe you can’t - you’re expected to play the narrative, not the game. You can punch through walls in the super hero game where that’s typical, but not in this one.

From DnD to Anything Else

Of course, the open systems also present an opportunity for players to be very different in skill sets and abilities. You could imagine DnD is like “Power Rangers”, where everyone’s a different color and has different weapons but they’re basically all pretty much on the same level. An open system will wind up more like “Avatar the Last Airbender”, where one player is going to be Toph and someone else is going to be playing Sokka. 

It’s important in DnD that everyone be the same, because a lot of the game is spent in a 20ft x 20ft room full of skeletons (or Putties) - Toph would single-handedly dominate every challenge. Whereas in a narrative-driven game the ability to crush everything with a rock doesn’t actually solve half your problems and whoever’s playing Sokka probably winds up more active than the person playing Toph.

At the end of it all, that’s why the question for me is whether you can take the players out of DnD and take DnD out of the players. Everyone plays DnD, but can you get people to play Sokka and have a good time if Toph is in the party? Personally I think it helps to start people on systems other than DnD, and then they can go into DnD if they like being in small rooms full of skeletons.

Of course, trying to start people on anything but DnD is usually defeated by the network utility! Everyone knows DnD! It’s THE system synonymous with the hobby! A few too many times I’ve seen people play a DnD game and say roleplaying just isn’t for them because it’s boring. All you do is wait for your turn and then roll dice at goblins.

But all I can say to that is, you never roleplayed, man. You joined a pen-and-paper video game. I agree, throwing dice at goblins sucks. I used to have a friend who would compulsively roll dice when he got bored waiting for turns in games like that, and when asked what he was rolling for, he’d joke, “I’m killing the dragon! I’m killing the dragon!” Him, enjoying the experience of DnD combat in between other people’s turns.

In many groups that’s all DnD is, silly accents and go-nowhere backstories aside. Acting is hard. But if you’re very lucky, and you know just the right people, it’s possible to land in a game that is pure story and character, and those things are a rare treasure and a real blast.

[ladyfogg]

May I? - 20/?

May I? - 20/?

Fic Summary: Ensign Faith Diaz struggles to hide her mental illness from her fellow shipmates aboard the Enterprise until an intrigued Data goes out of his way to try to understand her behavior. At his insistence, Faith tries to figure out what she’s truly passionate about and eventually seeks the professional help she needs. Fic Masterpost.

A/N: Hey guys! I’m back. Sorry for the delay. this chapter gave me a bit of trouble. Also, I’ve been playing a LOT of DND lately and it’s eating up all my muse. Anyway, I hope to have the next update sooner than this one. Enjoy.

Fic Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Data/Female OC

Warnings: tw: depression, tw: anxiety, fluff, friends to lovers, eventual smut

Screenshot by @geekygwen​

Faith didn't know what to think. Her emotions were running rampant, though part of her was still in complete shock at what she had witnessed. She had never seen that look in Data's eyes before. The strength of his punches was unfathomable. Honestly, she was surprised Fajo was still alive.

His normally serene face had been twisted into a frightening mask of rage. 

“What happened over there?” Riker asked as he led her to sickbay. 

She told him the events of the evening, in short, clipped tones that made it clear she didn't want to talk. Riker listened, stoic face remaining passive until she mentioned Data losing control.

Only then did his mouth twitch into a frown, eyebrows knitted together with worry. Yet, he didn't look surprised.

“Has this happened before?” Faith asked.

Riker nodded. “Once. Not too long ago. With a Borg who was attacking him. Data said he ‘felt' angry.”

“This wasn't anger, Will. This was rage.” 

She'd be lying if she said she hadn't been scared of him. In that moment, when he turned to look at her, his fists covered in Fajo’s blood, she didn't know what he was going to do.

Seemingly sensing her distress, Riker put his arm around her shoulders. “Listen, Faith. Data would never do anything to hurt you. You know that right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. It was just...it was scary to see him lose control that way.”

They arrived at sickbay in time to see Beverly and her staff rushing to stabilize Fajo. Once he saw the scope of the man's injuries, Riker seemed to give Faith a look of understanding.

He led her over to one of the empty beds, making sure she sat before he left her side.

“How is he, doc?” Riker asked Beverly.

“He's been severely beaten. There is massive internal bleeding and several broken bones,” Beverly listed as her assistant injected Fajo with a hypo. “His pulse is weak but steady for the most part. I think he's going to live.”

Faith sighed with relief. It wasn't for Fajo’s sake however, it was for Data's. If he had killed Fajo, she did not know how he would take it. She suspected he was already confused and overwhelmed as it was. 

He had always been adamant that he could not feel emotion. She felt he could on some level, in his own way. Now it seemed he was evolving, experiencing emotion from a human perspective.

And I shied away from him when he probably needed me, Faith thought, angry at herself. Way to go, Faith.

Riker and Beverly spoke in hushed tones but Faith was too lost in her own muddled thoughts to try to eavesdrop. She watched Dr. Crusher and her staff move quickly, doing everything they could to take care of Faith's captor. 

It took some time but eventually, Fajo was stable. Riker left to go report to the captain and it was then that Dr. Crusher came over to help Faith.

“Not exactly the romantic weekend we discussed, huh?” she teased with a soft smile, gently examining Faith's broken wrist.

“I mean, it was great right up until we crashed. I'll tell you all about it sometime.”

Beverly smiled. “You better.” She gave Faith a hypo for the pain before she went about closing the cut on her cheek and setting her wrist. 

For the most part, Faith was still and silent. She felt awful for how she reacted to Data and knew she had to talk to him. But she suspected the captain would have a lot of questions for him and there was no way of knowing how long he'd be tied up.

“You're good to go,” Beverly said as she wrapped a brace around Faith's wrist. “The break is healed but I want you to wear this for a few days to keep it straight. Only take it off to shower. Other than that, you need rest. Your body is exhausted and not just from the injuries.”

“No, not just from that.”

Beverly looked at Fajo before glancing back at Faith. “Did he hurt you in any other way?”

Faith shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Just this and a phaser blast to the hip a few days ago.”

Beverly ran the tricorder over Faith's old injury. “Minor internal bruising but that's about it. Again, I prescribe rest. At least a day or two before active duty.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Do you want something to help you sleep?”

“Yes.”

Faith knew she wouldn't be able to rest on her own. Beverly seemed surprised at her immediate acceptance of the help. 

“There are a few homeopathic remedies programmed into the replicators,” she said. “I'll send you my favorite. If that doesn't work, some see me and we'll administer something.”

“Thanks, Beverly.”

She smiled and patted Faith on the knee. “It's good to see you in one piece.”

“It's good to be back.”

As Faith was getting to her feet, the sickbay doors opened and Deanna appeared. Faith knew the counselor was looking for her. She had suspected she would be sought out once the Oz’ods were handled. She was sure her wild emotions had hit Deanna the moment she appeared on the transport pad.

“Hey, counselor,” Faith said with a wry smile. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Oh hush you.” Deanna gave her a big hug, which Faith returned. “We were so worried about you.”

“I'm okay. Honestly.”

Deanna glanced at the unconscious body of Fajo, then back to Faith. “Let's walk,” she suggested. 

Faith allowed herself to be led from sickbay, eager to get back to the familiar safety of her quarters.

“How bad was it?” Deanna asked once they were out of earshot of anyone.

Faith didn't answer at first, unable to verbalize her feelings. Deanna didn't push, only kept her arm around the young woman as they walked.

“It was the worst thing I have ever experienced,” Faith admitted. “We were separated at first and I had no idea what Fajo had planned or was trying to accomplish. He used me to get Data to do his bidding.”

“And Data did it.”

“Yes. Eventually, we were allowed to be together but we were obviously being watched. If it wasn't for the Oz’ods help, I don't know what we would have done. How did you find us?”

“Once we were able to establish communication with the Oz’od we had in custody, we realized what was happening. They were able to tell us about Fajo’s ship and where he liked to orbit. Once our repairs were done, we immediately began the search.”

“I'm glad you did.” Faith leaned on Deanna for support. “All I wanted to do was get us back home.”

Deanna squeezed her shoulder. “Well, you're here now and it looks like Fajo got what was coming to him.”

“Will Data be reprimanded for what he did?”

“I can't say. I do know I want to see him twice a week now instead of once.”

“He must be so confused.”

“You are as well.”

Faith sighed deeply. “I am. But I can't think about that right now. This isn't about me. I need to be there for him. I was so cold to him a few minutes ago.”

“You're entitled to your reaction,” Deanna said. “It is not an unusual response to detach yourself emotionally from an emotionally charged moment. Data will understand if you explain it to him.”

Faith fell silent. Her body felt like it weighed a ton and her steps became harder to control. She briefly wondered if Beverly had secretly slipped her something but more likely it was the lack of proper sleep and sudden drop of adrenaline.

Deanna showed her to her quarters, pulling her into another firm hug. “Stop by tomorrow afternoon and we'll talk more, okay?”

Nodding, Faith hugged her back. “I will.” And she meant it.

Once she was alone in her quarters, she realized that it was the last place she wanted to be. She had been alone too long over the last few days. She couldn't stand it anymore. After gathering a few personal items, she immediately left, heading for Data's quarters instead.

When she arrived, Barclay was just getting there as well.

“Faith! You're back!” he said. “It's...it's good to see you. I was just about to feed Spot.”

“Thanks, Reg,” she said. “I'll handle it. I think Data will be tied up for a while. He appreciates you taking care of Spot for him though.”

“It's no trouble, she's a very sweet cat,” Barclay said.

He took in her disheveled appearance, along with her wrist brace. “Are you alright?”

“No,” Faith admitted. “But I will be.”

“If-If you ever need to…” Barclay stopped himself. “I mean...I better than anyone understand anxiety.”

Faith smiled. “I'll keep that in mind. Bye, Reg.”

He gave her a small wave as she slipped into Data's quarters. Just seeing the familiar surroundings was enough to put her at ease. Spot came out from the closet, stretching and yawning. When she saw it was Faith, not Data or Barclay, she turned around and went right back to her sleeping space.

“Nice to see you too,” Faith chuckled.

She replicated Spot’s dinner, then sat on the bed to wait for Data.

It felt strange to be back. Over the last few days, she had lived in a near-constant state of heightened anxiety, and to finally be in a safe space was disorienting. Spot came out to eat and once she was done, she seemed curious about Faith and wandered over.

Faith was surprised when the cat headbutted her leg, rubbing herself along Faith as she asked for attention.

“It's just because I'm the only one here, isn't it?” Faith chuckled, reaching down to scratch the cat behind her ears. 

The cat jumped onto her lap and began loudly putting. Faith continued to stroke her soft fur, finding the action oddly soothing.

It was only twenty minutes later when the doors opened and Data stepped in. As soon as she saw him, Spot meowed and made a beeline for her owner. 

“Hello, Spot. It is good to see you as well,” Data said, picking the cat up. His eyes fell on Faith and he gave her a look of surprise. “Faith...you are here.”

“Would you rather be alone?” Faith asked, reaching for her bag. “I can go back to my quarters.”

“Please stay,” Data insisted. “I was under the impression you did not wish to be in my company.”

Faith winced. “I'm sorry I made you think that. I just needed some time to process what happened.”

“I understand.” Data put Spot back down before he joined Faith on the bed. 

They both remained silent as if neither one knew what to say to the other. Data was the first to speak.

“Faith, may I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Do you no longer wish to be a couple?”

She had anticipated his question, remembering how he had mentioned something similar during their first date.

“Oh, Data, babe.” Faith wrapped her arms around his arm, hugging it close. “Of course I still want to be with you.”

“That is a relief. I was concerned my outburst may have changed our relationship.”

“Well, I mean, it has,” Faith said. “But not in that way.”

“In what way are you referring?”

Faith wracked her brain trying to find a sufficient way to explain her muddled thoughts. “Seeing your partner in such a raw emotional state is bound to change things. You've seen me broken down more times than I can count. I guess, with all your talk of lack of emotions, even though I firmly believe you feel things your own way, your outburst completely blindsided me.”

“Me as well,” Data said. “It has not happened that way before. I was not anticipating it.”

“I know that now. I should have realized it then as well. I'm sorry for pulling away.”

Data studied her closely. “Faith, are you frightened of me?”

Faith took a deep breath. “In that moment, I was. But I'm not now.”

“I do not wish for you to ever be frightened of me,” Data said. “I cannot control these new emotional responses and if I hurt you in the process, I will be unable to forgive myself.”

Faith cupped his cheek, pulling him into a kiss. It was deep but chaste, meant to provide comfort when her words could not.

“I trust you, Data,” she said when their lips parted, her forehead coming to rest against his. “Whatever is happening to you, whatever emotions you develop, we'll figure them out together. I promise.”

“Thank you, Faith.”

They embraced and remained sitting for some time until Faith remembered they still wore the clothes Fajo forced them into.

“I should change,” she said, drawing away and plucking at the ruined dress.

“As should I,” Data agreed. “You may use my lavatory if you wish to wash.”

Faith gave him a coy smile. “Will you join me?”

“While my skin does occasionally become covered with dirt, it eventually cleans itself so I do not require…” He paused, realizing what she was offering. “I see. You are being solicitous.”

Faith giggled. “Yes, I am. In a sense. We don't have to engage in anything sexual. I just want to be close to you.”

She slowly stood, offering her hand to Data. He studied her with curious attention, his brow furrowed in the most adorable way.

“Yes, I will join you.” He accepted her hand.

Faith smiled and led him to the washroom. Once inside, she turned on the shower, making sure the temperature was to her preference before turning back to Data. He remained stock-still, clearly unsure of how to proceed. 

Taking the lead, Faith removed the shawl he had fashioned for her before turning her back on him. “Can you unzip my dress?”

Data's hands were gentle as they took hold of the delicate zipper, dragging it all the way down until the fabric around her loosened. She sighed when she felt his hands glide across her skin beneath the fabric, pushing it off her shoulders.

The flimsy fabric gave way easily, pooling down her curvy frame and falling to the floor. Faith stepped out of it and towards the shower, disposing of her brace along the way. With an inviting glance over her shoulder, she smiled at Data before stepping into the shower.

The cascading hot water immediately put her at ease. She heard the rustling of fabric and then Data was there with her. She turned to face him. 

It was strange seeing him in such a human setting. Faith never realized how much she truly saw him as an android. She needed to do better, to be better. She needed to see him as a person, no different from herself.

When she kissed him this time, he responded, one arm sliding around her waist while his free hand cupped her cheek. The heat from the shower and their bodies was intoxicating. It made her head spin.

How could I fear this man? This sweet, wonderful man? she thought to herself, moaning softly as his tongue hesitantly prodded her lips. 

She opened for him, allowing him to taste her as she molded to his slick wet body.

“Faith.” He breathed her name between kisses. “My body is becoming aroused.” 

She could feel the swell of him against her stomach and it sent a bolt of pleasure through her. “Mmm, mine too,” she hummed in response.

“You did mention not doing anything sexual. If we continue kissing this way that will not help the situation.”

Faith chuckled, pulling back slightly to peer up at him through her thick eyelashes. 

“Probably not. Do you wish to stop?”

“If you wish to continue, we can.”

Faith looked him directly in the eye. “Data,” she said. “Do you want to stop?”

He processed her rephrased question, studying her closely. “Yes,” he said. “It has been a long day and you need your rest.”

Smiling with understanding, Faith gave him one last peck before withdrawing from his arms. “Okay, you're right. I am feeling a bit woozy.”

“Let us finish washing and then get you to bed.”

Faith took Data's hands and covered them with soap, gently scrubbing the dried blood off his knuckles. She knew he could do it himself but she didn't want to pull away this time. She wanted to show him that she wasn't scared anymore.

Data watched her closely and though he remained silent, she was sure the symbolism was not lost on him. He helped her clean herself next, hands ever so gentle as they spread the lather across her light brown skin. 

After they finished, Data stepped out and brought Faith a large fluffy towel. Together they dried off and dressed in fresh clothing.

Faith wore a pair of loose pants and a large shirt while Data had his uniform.

“Dr. Crusher says the replicator has some home remedies to help me sleep,” Faith commented once they left the bathroom. 

“I shall get you one,” Data insisted. 

Faith combed her fingers through her hair, leaving it loose to dry faster. Once she was comfortably seated in bed, Data brought her a steaming mug of tea.

“I believe it is what is known as ‘Sleepytime Tea’,” he explained. “I added honey to sweeten it as I know you do not like bitter tea.”

“You're the sweetest, thanks.” Faith took the mug and allowed it to warm her hands. “Are you going to jump back to work while I sleep?”

Surprisingly, Data shook his head. “I do not feel it is appropriate to work after such an ordeal,” he said. “I would much rather provide you comfort at this time.”

“Are you sure? I really don't mind. I like falling asleep to you working. It's soothing. I know laying here can be a bit boring for you.”

“I want to lay with you.”

Faith smiled at his words. “I'd love nothing more.”

She drank her tea and slipped under the covers while Data disposed of her mug. He joined her a moment later, immediately pulling her into his solid embrace.

Although Faith was exhausted, she couldn't bring herself to sleep. Even with being comfortable and safe in Data's arms, her brain would not rest. The tea had made her drowsy but she still fought it. The irrational part of her brain kept making her picture Fajo bursting through the door at any moment.

“Faith, can you not sleep?” Data asked after some time had passed. 

“I'm afraid to close my eyes,” she admitted.

“We are on the Enterprise. You do not need to be afraid.”

“Logically I know that.”

Data nodded with understanding. “But anxiety does not follow logic,” he finished.

“Exactly.”

“Computer,” Data said. “How many lifeforms are currently in these quarters?”

“Two lifeforms: human and feline, as well as one android.”

“Computer, are the locks enabled for these quarters?”

“Affirmative.”

Data offered Faith a smile. “Does that help?”

She smiled back and snuggled closer, allowing her eyes to finally close. “Yes, it does. Thanks, babe.”

Data kissed her forehead. “Rest now, mi alma.”

Faith opened her eyes again, staring at Data in awe. “Data…?”

“It is the term of endearment I have chosen for you,” he explained. “Do you not like it?”

“I...I love it,” she said, voice thick with emotion.

Data smiled softly and adjusted the blanket around her. “Then I will continue to use it.”

Faith smiled back almost sheepishly, heart skipping a beat as the memory of her native language sliding so effortlessly off Data's tongue.

As she drifted off to sleep, all she could think about was the meaning behind his words. He had often mentioned his thoughts on spirituality and the idea of whether or not an android could have a soul.

She was honored that he had decided he did and that she was it.

[coolcattime]

Letter from a Harpy

Authors Note: This story was written by me (@coolcattime​) and my friend @atlass-coat​. Both characters are used for a dnd campaign ran by Atlas and belong to us.

Moodboard also made by @atlass-coat​.

This story is about those characters and their friendship, it concerns the past of one of the characters and the tension that the people from that past can bring.

For more stuff about Medli (one of the characters in this story) check out her character dossier that I wrote: here.

Content Warning: Implied abuse, implied self-harm, implied school-related trauma.

Idric Ba’lor and Medli took their stay in a port town where their ilk ran through the streets. Although the outspoken adventurers and flamboyant merchants may be an annoyance to some, they made the duo feel at home. Well, as at home as a tiefling and water genasi can feel, especially when neither was interested in blending in.

The two have already been travelling together for quite a while, this town serving as just another in a short line of places they had travelled to. Upon arriving, docking Idric’s boat in the town’s port, they had started calling the local tavern their refuge.

This particular night had been spent telling tales and hearing the local fables, as well as more than a few drinks. The night had been another hectic one, ending with the two being the last of the guests to retire to their rooms.

Idric strolls out of his room just before the afternoon took hold. He walks up to the bar with a smirk while jostling his hair, and after a short conversation with the barmaid, he joins Medli at a table. She smiles at her friend, hearing the unique clack of his jackboots. She decides not to question the drink in his hand.

After half an hour of sitting in silence people watching, she chooses to talk rather than continue the quiet.

“Did you sleep okay?” She opens, cocking her head a little. She chooses to ignore her drink and the last scraps of food now her friend is up and about.

“Pretty well, I mean who doesn’t love a hay mattress, yourself?” He jokes, smiling before comfortably sipping his wine.

The conversation feels radiantly normal, a relaxingly regular set of pleasantries. It was a stark change from the high energy of the night before, but it still feels normal for the two.

“It wasn’t the worst place I’ve ever slept,” Medli giggles quietly. The comfort of the mattress didn’t really matter to her, so long as she got a full night’s rest and to talk with her friend. Actually getting to sleep soundly was usually far easier said than done but at least this night was safe.

“And it’s nice to be on dry land again, at least for a bit.” She finishes tentatively, realising how much time she’d let pass in her head. 

“I suppose the dorms in the cobbled hellscape that is Mistwalker can’t be great,” He amuses absentmindedly, rolling up his sleeves and tying them back to sit on his elbows. 

Medli shrank down an inch or two in her chair. 

“They could’ve been nice,” She speaks low with a frown, “they just need doors that lock.” She hadn’t even realised how common that was until she’d left the college.

Medli idly starts playing with her hair, mostly to distract herself but also because the quiet “whooshing” sound it makes, makes her smile. She isn’t really distracted but it stops her dwelling on the past so much, not that that was really fully possible.

“Sounds so damn safe, bet the nights were restful,” He laughs through his sentence but there’s a clear bite to it. Medli had truly suffered at that college, and though he understands that feeling, her lack of anger, or even blame towards those who caused it, never got easier to watch.

“Well,” She opens, unsure of the rest of the sentence. “At least I don’t have to go back any time soon.”

She ends her point with a smile or at least an attempt at one. The memories won’t go away on their own, but she can try to avoid them by switching into a less uncomfortable topic, “So… do you think we’ll get to do anything here?” 

“You never know what’ll come up – I’m sure something will be worth the trip,” He responds, more than happy to talk about literally anything. Idric also definitely wasn’t wrong, something always seems to come up, they would always manage to find a story worth telling.

The silence gave Idric a moment to collect himself, trying to decide how to broach the next topic and whether it needed to be done now. Before he could truly decide anything, he begins to speak.

“And you got this, the bartender says it’s from a college,” He tries to sound neutral but, he can’t help but sound invasive. He scrapes the letter across the table “So, what’s she want?”

She untied and unfolded the letter, paying little attention to its content, instead she watches her friend. His furrowed brow, scrunched-up nose, and crocked neck are pretty hard to miss.

Idric knew Clarissa was the sender but that wasn’t enough, he needed to know if his other guesses were right too.

Medli skimmed each line with bloodshot eyes, completely panicked. She spends the time she could’ve spent reading it to try and stop the blaring signs of being caught from showing on her face. This was not done well. 

“Why is there another one?” She witters under her breath, not even meaning to speak but being far too flustered to stop herself.

Idric’s face can’t decide between a scowl or a smirk, between anger or vindication.

“Exactly, oh exactly what I thought,” His theory had been proven correct, but now new theories about why this was kept from him start to swarm his mind. Meanwhile, Medli is frozen, doing her best not to scream or cry as her mind berated her.

He breaks the silence. 

“Walk with me,” Idric stands, trying to rub the tiredness out of his face. This is something best discussed privately.

He walks into his room under the stairs, Medli follows him, barely stopping herself crumpling the letter. As much as she wants to, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy it. She couldn’t destroy any of them.

After letting her into the room, Idric comes the door with a loud spin, unintentionally making Medli flinch.

Idric, in an attempt not to make another loud noise, confines himself to the bed, kicking his legs over onto the headboard and placing his hands on his knees.

“Right, so, Clarissa is doing what exactly?”

“She, erm, she…” Medli stumbles over her words, completely lost with what to say next. She doesn’t want him to be angry, even if she knows she chose to hide this from him. “She’s been sending me money.” Escapes her before going silent once more, digging her wrists into each other. 

“You’ve been getting gold in the mail!? From the Harpy Queen herself?” He can’t help but sound disgusted, the break in his voice only adding tension to the room. “And you didn’t think it relevant to your travelling companion? Your violin in crime? Am I just a set of strings to you?” Idric tries to laugh but the fire in his throat won’t let him form the sound. 

Medli feels her heart slamming against her ribs, it’s beat paralyses her, pinning her to the spot. “I…” She is barely able to speak, her voice shakes but her is body rigidly still. She tries desperately to get her words out, but nothing comes. She can’t help but think she’s within a drought, a very dangerous place for a water genasi to be. “I told her I didn’t want it, that we were— but the letters aren’t exactly nice…”

“Not exactly nice, how?” Idric over-straightens his back, interrupting her, remembering who drove this rift between them. He could sense there was something else, something she either didn’t want to tell him or just didn’t want to say.

She gnaws at her gum. For a brief moment, she considers lying her way out of this or just running back to her room, but Idric is her friend and whether he would figure out this situation or not, she can’t keep hiding things from the people she trusts.

More than a moment passes with neither sure of what to say before Medli composes herself enough to answer his questions.

“They all say that the gold is so I can get back to the college… when, I, um, I, come to my senses because you’re just going to…” Medli trails off into silence, choosing not to finish that sentence. The letters were filled with Clarissa’s usual language, the type that Medli learnt to expect would be bad but even that didn’t seem to make them hurt any less.

The question of if she deserves to hear them enters her mind with a wince before Idric responds.

“Wow, they really do not like me, do they? And gods, how low must they think of you, dear?” Idric starkly switches from guttural to a softer mumble between questions. 

He remembers feeling that kind of helplessness, anger isn’t the tool here. She needs her friend by her side, not at her throat.

“I mean, she doesn’t seem like she has a high opinion of you either,” Medli bites her lip again, trying to hold her nerve but unable to stop rereading each letter in her head.

“Apparently though, I can still corrupt your little mind with my evil devil powers, apparently,” He moves his hands in the spookiest fashion he can think of before jolting up onto his feet. His coat whips around with him, as he uses a simple bit of magic to create a gust of overdramatic wind, really selling the silliness of his words. 

He meets her eyes hoping for a laugh, or at least a smile, but only a tear-stared stare meets him. He exhales softly, trying to create a level of calm that they desperately needs. “You seem more scared than angry that I found out or embarrassed you’d been caught. That’s a hell of a plot twist, what’s this doing to you Meds?” He isn’t even sure if that made sense, but this room can’t lay silent any longer.

“Clarissa, she keeps,” Medli takes a breath of her own, attempting to push through a hive of anxiety. She needs to get her words out; she just doesn’t want to say any of it. It frustrates her. She knows exactly what she wants to say, she just can’t push through for long enough to pick the words.

“In all the letters, she said that you’re going to abandon me. I… I thought that if you found out you’d…” She doesn’t want to finish that sentence either. Everything feel like it’s in an ocean of anxiety, confusion, and a creeping certainly that Clarissa may have been right. She has always hated that thought, but she couldn’t let it silence here anymore, regardless of the outcome.

“No one’s ever stuck by me. Basically everyone at the college stayed away from me unless they were planning something that would make everything worse. I didn’t exactly make many friends before I met you.”

She finally looks up to face him, expecting anger or, at the very least, confusion. She finds neither. Idric instead produces a comforting smile, presenting a dimple she didn’t know he had. Idric had a look like this memorised from far too many evenings on the other side of it, that didn’t mean he actually knew how to help though.

“Before you met me yes, but my dear, this is after. A lot has changed and one of those things, potentially the best change, is that we are going to stick with each other,” He feels confident that would’ve resonated with him, so hopefully that’ll be enough. “I know everything’s all new but listening to the ramblings of a harpy can never be the solution.”

Clarissa’s words have done far too much damage, letting them do more is unacceptable. She will not cost Medli another friend, however clever the gaslight she holds. 

“But if I ignore them, then she’ll,” Medli shifts a little, still unable to let go of her fear, even if it felt ridiculous, she needed to give it a voice. “She’ll show up in person again.” Her whisper almost comes out as a scream, with each word laced with sheer dread.

Idric doesn’t miss a step in responding.

“Then we deal with that then, and we deal with it together,” He offers his drink with a sort of ‘half-toast’ before taking a drink. “Hence why we’re a team, I thought you knew what you were choosing when you got on my ship and not hers.”

He still can’t seem to shake her out her quivering shoulders and a winced smile. He is far from giving up, though.

“Though, if I may, I’ll remind you—” He takes a moment, stepping towards her silently, still offering a warm expression. “Clarissa’s reign is over. It’s just us now.”

She still doesn’t know how to respond. Neither of them had been here before, and she had no idea what to say. Offer gratitude and pretend it’s all fine? Start to cry? Keep ranting until he admits defeat? 

“What’s the worst thing she can do to us right now?” He tries to prompt her to speak, hoping to get her out of her own head.

“She…” Medli barely gets her first word out, too concentrated in watching her forefinger and thumb press and push at her wrist. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

“I suppose you’re right.” She sounds hopefully insincere.

“I mean, you’re hanging with a literal devil darlin’, what’s she gonna do, tell Asmodeus we are being mean to her?” Regardless of what she’s hiding, now is a time for hope. They can face the rest of her story when she’s ready.

Medli feels the load on her shoulders lift, even if not completely, and looks up finally meeting Idric’s eyes. “It’s just… I don’t understand how she knows where we are. Every time we stop, somehow another letter comes. It’s like she’s still watching me.” Her voice sounds far less shook up, and her breath begins to catch up with her, but she still can’t seem to escape her nerves, or the ever-growing number of questions of how Clarissa could be doing this.

“We can definitely deal with that,” Idric speaks with confidence, beaming with the thought of a new plan forming. “I know a diviner or two, I’m sure they’ll know something or learn it quick enough.”

“I do love a crowd but she’s not even paying to see us.” He laughs to himself. 

“Well, I mean technically…” Medli interjects, unsure if a joke this early is okay. Idric seems to think so though, and the two share a quick laugh. 

“If we can’t figure this out though, I am sure we can deal with Clarissa the best way we know how,” Idric tries to conclude the topic with reassurance. 

“I’m sure she won’t see us coming!” Medli remains smiling, doing so properly for the first time since this mess started. Though, that smile almost breaks as the weight of the paper in her hand hits her again. “I suppose I should get rid of this.” 

“Give it to me? I want to see what we’re up against anyway,” His tone refuses to force the decision, instead he sits back on the bed, cocking his head in anticipation. She hesitates for a moment, having not sure what might be in this one; but hands it over anyway.

He reads it slowly, each of his features filling back up with anger. The second the last line is read, he sets the letter alight, attempting to burn away his seethe with the ink. Surprisingly though, it seems to work, and he smirks once more.

“That was certainly a read,” He begins. “I— I’ll go find an old friend of mine, and with their help, we will be able to go over some word choices and disputable phrases, then I am sure she’ll apologise, and we can be on our way.” Idric’s intonation falls into a level of clarity and over-pronunciation that only comes with the desperate need to hide one’s anger.

Medli, on the other hand, only has one thought.

“Do you think they will be able to find her?” Her lips can barely keep up as the words fall from her mouth.

“I’ve never known them to fail before,” He smirks reassuringly.

“Well, that’s nice at least,” She pauses, finally seeing the end of this. “Do you want me to destroy the other letters too?”

“Let me take a look at those too - if that’s okay? It’s important to know one’s public perception after all,” He lets out a singular chewed-up breath posing as a laugh.

Medli rushes off to their old table, she returns holding her bag and awkwardly begins to dig through it. She pulls out a tied stack of letters and hands them to Idric. He throws them into his coat, trying his best to not let the thickness and potential number take too much of his attention.

“You didn’t need to keep this from me, you know? We’re a team as much as you want us to be,” He offers with a soft gesture.

“I didn’t mean too. I was just scared when the first one came and by the time that I stopped being scared of that one, there was already three more and then that felt a lot harder to explain,” She almost says every word at once and can’t help but look relieved when realising they were in the right order.

“You’re a bard Medli, you’ll pick all this up as we go. Explaining the bizarre and traumatic is part of the job.”

Medli laughs a little.

“Can’t I just play violin?”

“Absolutely not.”

[kingdommad300]

KH DnD: Between Dawn to Dusk Aithne’s Report

Warning!!!

For my current DnD players, until you find out more details in-game. Please do not read this. This is for those that following the campaign through this blog and for the player of Aithne.

Aithne gasps as she finds herself in The Dark Realm. She feels a dense pressure in the atmosphere, mainly on her heart. As if on instinct, she told the current cloak off and put her own, holey one back on, feeling the dense pressure disappear, making it easier to breathe. Vanitas remarks that she at least remembered one thing. Aithne asked him why they had come to the Realm of Darkness, only for Vanitas to tell her to wait and see.

After walking for a while and feeling the Heartless from the sidelines watch them, Vanitas shows Aithne a ruined town, half swallowed by the darkness while traces of burns on the buildings. As Aithne walks through the ruins, she felt the sense of familiarity despite not knowing what this place is. When she questioned Vanitas, he explained that this was her home once. From what Aithne had told him in the past, the ruined town was called Dawn and she had peacefully lived here with her father and brother. She was a gifted magic user when she was young and had developed a way to create ‘blue fire’. One day, a keybearer saw Aithne’s gifts as signs of darkness and had attacked the town. Heartless ended up attracted to the burning town and had taken the remains of the building into the dark realm, leaving Aithne to be the only survivor. 

She had started to survive on her own at the age of 8 and had come across Vanitas when she was 9. Since he had a keyblade, she tried to kill him off but failed miserably. Seeing her magic abilities as a useful tool, Vanitas decided to take her in as a student and taught her how to be a bounty hunter. Eventually, Aithne got ‘too cocky’ for her own good and decided to take up a job for the ‘Man in White’, which was the last time Vanitas saw her.

Vanitas gives Aithne the option on whether she should use her position to target Ventus and Kairi or decide to stick with him. Aithne questions why she should truly trust what he is saying. Vanitas goes on to explain a little more about the Corruption, explaining that because of Ventus and Kairi’s actions to try and bring Sora back, they ended up creating the Corruption, ending the lives of thousands and thousands over the last 3/4 of a decade. He goes on to explain that they seem to be trying to find a way to ‘cure’ the Corruption but nothing can cure it. You can become a monster or let the Corruption consume you to become someone else.

When Aithne mentions that both options seem back, Vanitas makes a comment that she just hasn’t seen both options yet. Aithne, who is holding her anger towards Ventus and Kairi in at this moment, asks if Ventus and Kairi were looking for him, since they seemed eager to look into the appearance of the Unverse. Vanitas explains, while taking his helmet off, that they needed him to prove their theories.

Aithne takes in the face, recognizing it before Vanitas puts his helmet back on. 

Vanitas asks the same question again and Aithne decides to stick with him. With her mind made up, Vanitas begins to lead them out of the ruins. While walking, Aithne asked why she needed to put her old cloak on and why the Heartless was not bothering them. Vanitas explains that the cloak that she is wearing not only protects her from the darkness but according to the Heartless, she is darkness while wearing the cloak. It allows them to get through the Dark Realm without being bothered. She asked how long Vanitas was looking for her, which he response ‘a year’, and asked if he cared about her. Vanitas mentions that she is just a tool to him but she doesn’t fully believe him.

The two of them reach a small camp, seeing a mix of those affected by darkness, nothingness and the corrupted. Aithne did notice a few people with shadow like marks on their arms, similar to what Jason has. While going through the camp, they watched a rapid Corrupted humanoid, snatch the head off one of the head of the darkness controlled human and acted like a beast in their cage. While Aithne was horrified, Vanitas explains that those affected by the Corruption can become Rippers, the creature they see in front of them. They carry on and come across a large tent with a sign saying ‘The Cavern’. A bounty hunter guild.

Vanitas finds he lost his membership card, when Axton, the Nobody Doorman, explains no card, no entry! Aithne interrupts, explaining that it was her fault he lost his card. Persuded, Axton decided to let them in, saying to Aithne “welcome back”.

Aithne enters the guild to see it to mainly be a seedy like bar. As Vanitas seats down and talks to the barman, Aithne looks at the huge bounty board. Not sure what everything meant, she goes to take a seat next to Vanitas. She received a drink from a Heartless Orc called Bruce and gave him a stale cupcake in return.

As Vanitas handed his jobs in, he asks Aithne if she remembered anything before explaining to her the board that she was previously looking at. He explains that the bounty board is a ‘Keybearer Deadpool Board’. Bounty Hunters who put their name on the Keyblade Wielder who will be the last one to live on the board. They can only pick one wielder and they win a huge amount of munny for it but the catch is that other bounty hunters will go to kill them, as they are still marks, giving a sense of competition. After explaining, he tells Aithne to look again.

Aithne goes back over to the board but stops when she had put a wager on a keybearer to stay alive. She saw that she put a wager on Jason.

Before she could question why Jason was on the Deadpool Board, another bounty hunter comes into the room.

A short red haired guy, early 20′s, a bag of keyblades on his bag similar to Vanitas, his right arm a pure red shadow like claw shows off his cocky smile and sits next to Vanitas while giving Bruce his keyblades. Aithne watches the two for a second before coming over just as the guy asks Vanitas ‘why he should tell him anything.’ After explaining that she wanted to learn more about the ‘good’ side of corruption, the guy grinned at her and introduce himself as ‘Devon’, one of the newer bounty hunters in this guild. He shakes Aithne hand with his claw and Aithne decides to hold on a little longer, seeing his claw flare up slightly when she squeezed harder while she introduced herself.

After the introduce and the power play with the handshake, Devon explains a little more detail about the Corruption. Firstly explains that the corrupted is the tainted light within a person that can get blinded by their actions and let the light consume them, similar to how people can let darkness consume them. Secondly, he explains that the corruption has multiple stages to it, each being a test to the person affected and that the weak heart tend to fail quite quickly. First comes a voice, a voice that will target a weakness of the person’s identity (e.g. mention their fears, confidence, regrets, guilt ect.) He explains that if the person goes out of their way to prove the voice wrong, the voice will then send the person in a dream and ask them to accept what they will give them. If you say ‘No’, you die or become a Ripper. Says ‘Yes’ and become someone completely different.

When Aithne asked Devon what he meant, Devon asks for a drink as payment. After a bit of banter between the two of them, involving a agreement to trade information for information and Aithne explaining how she met Vanitas, Devon continues.

He explains a little about his background, telling her that he used to be a Keyblader Weilder under the Foretellers and that he was never able to meet his masters expectations and his angry issues affected his ability to work with the other weilders. When he first got Corrupted two years ago, the voice kept telling him that they were better off without him, playing on his anger and his lack of confidence. When he was near the blink of turning into a Ripper, he decided to face the music by standing up to the Foretellers and left the group. After some soul searching, Devon had managed to keep his anger and corruption under control now that the main issues were gone. When the voice send him to the dream and asked if he wanted its’ assistance, he had said ‘yes’ and didn’t look back. He explains to Aithne that he had gained a magic abilities from the corruption and felt more confident than ever, making him feel like a new person.

He eventually goes to ask a question to Aithne, asking if she knew anything about the Man in White, making Aithne curious. Vanitas jumps in at this point, telling Devon that the Man in White is off-limits and he should focus on the bounty board before telling Aithne that they were going.

Devon mentions that Aithne still owns him a questions and Aithne promises that the the next time they meet, he can ask whatever he wants and she will answer. She watches Devon talk to Bruce before she leaves the guild with Vanitas.

As they leave The Cavern, Vanitas creates another portal, telling Aithne they need to head to the safe house now to discuss a plan. Aithne nods in agreement and the two go through the portal.

After a moment, Aithne finds herself in the wasteland type area with keyblades scattered everywhere, even watching Vanitas swap some of the keyblades in his procession with the ones in the ground. As they carried on, they come across another cave with the same sort of sign at the front before the two of them entered.

Aithne saw on one side of the cave seem to have her belongings from before she left. She went over and found a bounty hunter log, a spell book and few pieces of equipment. While she is looking around, Vanitas explains that they need a plan for you to take Ventus and Kairi down. They first mention that the party would look for Phoenix feathers for Aerith and Kairi but both agreed that there was no guarantee that she will find the same Phoenix as the party’s due to them being a few. Vanitas then explained that different parties seem to be gathering crystal like orbs and decides that if they look for the crystals, they can introduce Aithne back to the group. Vanitas even creates an Unverse Fox called ‘Blink’ to be Aithne’s companion during her journey so that Vanitas can travel with her through the fox and that she can just hand the crystals to the fox.

Aithne agrees, but senses a problem, shes naturally bad at lying, so she needed to come up with a plan where she wasn't lying.. Vanitas gets an idea, he asked Aithne to walk out with him.. After a little while walking, Aithne notices that Vanitas stays behind a little, she turns around and he summons 5 Floods Unverse after her and Blink. Vanitas explains that he needs to see if she is ready anyway.

The Flood start to attack and surround Aithne and Blink and in a panic Athine casts Fireball point blank, creating a huge fiery blast, consuming the Flood at herself.  

Everything goes Black… Aithne hears a voice “i thought you could be better”, her heart starts to lead to the place where sky and sea meet, finding some peace...Her heart gets caught though as she’s sucked back into the darkness, feeling cold and scared and alone. She gasps awake, noticing a figure over her with a keyblade pointed at her chest, a voice saying “the weak one’s awake”, Aithne notices with horror that her hair gone, her body burnt and a blue flame mark on her chest. Taking a moment to remember what is going on, Vanitas turns to Aithne and says “As your saviour, you will live for me. DO everything I tell you, got it?!”, Athine nods......suddenly remembering the feeling of dread from being with this twisted man.

[obeymematches]

Hi! I hope you don’t mind if I ask for a matchup. Just don’t push yourself, okay? You seem to have a lot to handle. I’ll try not to overload you with too much, but I apologize ahead of time if I write a whole book or get too personal. I just wanted to make sure I added a good chunk for a good comparison! I’ll try not to get too into it, though. Sorry again if I put too much!

Basics : I’m a 5’6, 19 y/o, chubby/curvy female who is a bit of an anti-social shut-in. I come across as very shy, quiet to the point of how I usually never say a word otherwise unless I’m asked a question, though can also be seen as ‘lazy’ and someone who is too addicted to technology. I’m also rarely affectionate, though not against being given affection as long as I’m asked. I’m not a touchy feely person.

Layer 1 (Flaws, problems, etc) : My behavior stems from social anxiety and from bullying experiences that have traumatized me growing up, as I had to deal with it up until maybe a year ago. Some of it was from my own family, and some from the school. I ended up with a fear of expressing myself to strangers, especially around boys. I found my way of coping was to dive into video games and anime, alongside art. Outside of this, I’m a mess. I usually suffer from many health problems (that I don’t feel comfortable sharing, but can mention it makes my efforts to find a way to get comfortable in my body with a new Workout routine very difficult) due to my body being extremely weak. It has been ever since conditions related to my birth, and my medications Needed to keep me around cause me to be big boned. I’m physically strong enough to fight for myself if I needed to, but when it comes to illness and the like, I’m the loser here. I also have a hard time keeping eye contact. I also tend to apologize a lot for everything. I can’t handle crowds, or I’ll likely pass out after a while. My body is hard to take care of despite my best efforts. However, I do have sensitive ears and tend to be jumpy when someone raises their voice. It’s not too difficult to scare me, which in the past is what usually managed to convince me to go along with things like the bullying. To this day I still can’t handle being yelled at, since I also tend to yell at myself later for messing up for whatever caused someone to yell at me. I’m extremely hard on myself. I also tend to take things to heart. My ‘laziness’ also is because I have my own fight with depression to deal with that adds a factor into this too. Consider it a double edged sword, but despite that I tend to destroy myself trying to put others first before me.

Layer 2 (Opening up) : if I do open up to someone, I’m more prone to have my ‘quirks’ show, such as bouncing in place when I’m excited. I occasionally ramble about my interests (and apologize after). I may not be the best at showing how I care, but I try to do the best I can with what little skills I have. But I do become a bit more social with a person the more I know them. However, it doesn’t change that one might have to message/approach me first, since at times it takes me ages to send a message for fear I’m bothering someone. I’ll be more willing to head out with someone if I’m closer to them, though I’m still insecure about my appearance.

Layer 3 (Pro’s?) : I’m not against trying new things, within reason. I’m not difficult to please. I would be fine sitting in a room watching critical role for the next 10 hours with someone just being quiet and consider that a bonding moment. I don’t mind over the top, but I don’t usually favor it due to my insecurities telling me that this wasn’t deserved. (Not that it isn’t appreciated, but it’s hard to fight ones inner demons, ya know what I mean?) From what my few friends say, however, they would trust me to be a leader to my friend group should the need arise, and I’m usually serious, mature, calm and collected. That doesn’t mean I don’t have my own sense of humor (usually dark humor, with the occasional laugh from a joke I didn’t expect to hear). Due to a bit of my background, I know a lot on self defense due to being in a former military family (All retired) who thought I should know how to fight due to how the world can be. This is also why I’m usually trusted to make decisions for my friend group, even if it’s in games where survival is key. I’m usually the last one standing, while being cautious enough. I also can be a hard worker when I can put my mind to it- reading a whole manga series in one day or finishing an anime? Finishing art? You name it. Though a double edged sword trait I know I have (Since it can be both a blessing and a curse) is my perfectionism. Everything has to be perfect. The decorations? Yes. Everything has to match? Yes. I have to make the most detailed building in Minecraft? On it. My fashion sense also plays a part in this too, as I try to make it work with my task too. (I can tend to overdo it and sometimes don’t give myself breaks when I’m in this mood though.) I’m usually good on saving money, and I try to see the best in people despite my experiences. I’m not easily persuaded by looks, as I usually don’t care for them much. I am a creative person as someone who strives to be good at art, but also as someone related to a medic, I also have been learning what to do when the need arises for someone to need a medic. I can be motherly at points, considering some of my other friends to be like my kids. I fret over them constantly. There are times where the tables end up turned. I love acquiring new knowledge that’s something I’m not used to. Oh, you’re a witch? Cool I’m a (religion I’m not sharing due to it being a touchy subject to most). Can you tell me all about it? I’m really curious.

Layer 4 (Hobbies and everything else?) : I do like swimming, drawing, creating characters for my own stories (as a dungeon master in dnd), reading (mostly manga), collecting gemstones and anime merch, playing video games, and cooking on occasion. I also love my pets (currently a rabbit and a puppy) and enjoy cuddling with them. Despite finding cats to be cute, I happen to be allergic to them (as in my skin will break out mostly- it’s not severe but annoying nonetheless). I also have a fear of bugs. Despite only losing myself maybe 3 times in my whole life, I do have a nasty temper if someone gets on my nerves too much. I usually end up punished for it, hence my bottling up of emotions. So otherwise, it’s hard to get me truly angry to the point of where I’m raising my voice unless someone crosses a line. I’m slowly learning to speak up for myself more.

Alright, that’s the end! Again, I’m so sorry if this is too much information! I have never done one of these before. ^w^’

------

Hi!!!!

I put a keep reading button because it’s a long text and sometimes it gets very personal, so yeah

Sorry for the wait, and I hope you like the result!

Tbh I was thinking and I had several ideas while reading it, for example I can see you with Levi and maybe Belphie. I decided to go with Levi. Your sense of humour is a good match with Belphie but he can be so sassy and can have such an attitude that I think Levi works better, as you said you tend to take things to heart. I know you said it’s hard to actually upset you but I think Levi occassionally calling you a normie is so much less stressing than Belphie and I think you really deserve someone who doesn’t give you a hard time. (No offense to Belphie hes cool and as a friends thats alright but yeah)

So I think Levi is good with someone who’s not too affectionate, like he can get so flustered, it’s easier for him with someone like you!

He also has a quite severe social anxiety so he really gets you when you say you’d rather stay at home than go to a convention or party.

My hyphothesis is that he has online classes because of that. Like I don’t think he was bullied, he really just can’t stand being around people that much

He is also accepted in his family, like everybody is chill with him being an otaku. (I guess sometimes he gets teased but it’s mostly just him talking down on himself) So the point is that at home he can be himself! I think he would reassure you that liking what you like is totally fine.

At first he will 100% call you a normie until you prove yourself otherwise but that shouldn’t really be an issue - especially if you open up to him about it. I think he is the best candidate to understand your feelings. Not just “oh that sucks babe, iloveyou” but like really get you, you know what I mean. Even if he is not always great at expressing himself, you’d just know he means well.

I think he would also accept you the way you are. Of course your well-being is going to concern him sometimes but he knows you can take care of yourelf. Although if you need help he will do whatever you need. He can be pretty determined when it comes to something/someone he loves

I think he would be very surprised by the fact that you are physically strong in a good way! Like wow babe you can really do that...🥺

He would definitely see a part of himself in you and he would make sure to remind you that you don’t have to apologize for everything you do. Even if he does so himself, that doesn’t mean that you have to be insecure like him! 😠

He’s not really the one to shout at you since you can probably accept him, and he can accept you even if at first he thinks you a boring normie

I think after you two actually spend time together and open up and really get to know the other he will see that you are soo hard on yourself because of your past and he will definitely try his best to cheer you up and have you loosen a bit.

Or if you’re not into that then he can just listen. If you don’t want to talk he can play multiplayer games with you or watch anime, etc, anything to make you feel better!!!!

I think he is also more likely to get into DnD than Belphie, thats also a reason why I decided that Levi is better. I’m personally not into it so I don’t know for sure but if you have an anime/Japan related game/story then you don’t have to say no more, he’s in a 100%!!!

After that he will probably try like...less otaku-friendly DnD games/stories! Just be patient with him. He will learn all the rules and read all the books to a T but actually speaking in front of a group of people he doesn’t know won’t be so easy!!!! 🥺  

After that he will probably convince his brothers to play too and now you have DnD night with the bros, yay! (i let you imagine how the details go!!)

I think he would approach you first with his anime-related topics and I think you could probably answer him! And that would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

He can also ramble about the things he likes and he would make sure that after a while you don’t apologize for talking about things you like! He probably likes something similar too, so he could suggest some things!

He said he prefers someone who he can be in the same room with and not really interact that much actually? so like you watching critical role while he watches anime is a good way to spend time!! stay at home dates are dates too!

Hmmmm i think he would definitely like to play a survival multiplayer with you, so be prepared!!!!!!

Hm I think he would take your fashion related suggestions for him, even if he himself isn’t a perfectionist. But I mean if you look at his room he is pretty organized and not too messy, so that’s a bonus I think.

I think he is a good match because you can balance out his reckless money spending tendencies! Not sure if it’s possible to change that completely about him, but at least one of you is responsible with money, so thats a good enough!

Hm I think he could talk a lot about being a demon with you, so thats really nice that you’re interested in his culture! I don’t think he has ever considered that as anything special, but now is the time!

It’s good that you can’t have a kitty because he has a fish and that wouldn’t really be a good combination now, would it?

I think he relly appreciated a responsible and caring partner like you, because he really needs all the extra care he can get to boost his confidence! He is usually rather child-like, so that is also probably a bonus!

Conclusion; definitely he is the one to initiate first interaction, but it’s probably just looking at the other for a while until he gains enough confidence to actually talk to you. This is a very accepting relationship with lots of caring and confidence boosting involved on both sides! Theres also this deeper understanding due to insecurities and social anxiety. I think after a couple years in the relationship both of you change in a good way as you are very mindful of the other’s insecurities. Definitely not a lot of arguing going on, he is a very loyal and caring partner once you earn his trust, so zero lines crossed! Dates are mostly at home, but thats cool! You are the more responsible one while he can be kind of reckless with his impulses, but that just leads to a good balance and he knows he should respect your advice regarding impule buyig stuff for example.

[boojersey]

VIC DO ALL THE ASKS BC I LOVE U AND WANT U TO HAVE FUN

*SWEATS* AYE AYE CAPN

cw for like some common lgbt+ topics such as dysphoria violence discrimination etc just. tread carefully if u get triggered easily by bad lgbt experiences

What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? -im a gay trans man and my pronouns are he/him but they/them is also acceptable!

How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?-oh wow i originally thought i was a lesbian because i didnt even know what transgender was i just thought wishing i was a man meant i was butch and then i met my friend donnie in eighth grade who told me he was trans and it was kinda a huge slap in the face but with a sack of gay bricks? and i found out i dont like women through actually having sex with cis women and finally realizing it. really wasnt for me so now im just a gay man as opposed to queer as an umbrella term but i periodically refer to myself as such

Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?-oh yea i literally was misgendered today i just kinda brush it off but it can be hard sometimes especially when people know im trans and do it

Who was the first person you told, how did they react?-i first told donnie about my gender, it was a thing where i went to bed the night i met him and was like  .. wait holy fuck and then the next day i was like BRO HOLY FUCK but sexuality? i dont really know???? it was so long ago it was honestly probably my group of friends on kik that i had in 2013 (u were included in that mister!!!!)

Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?-im not actually fully out but the first time someone who was an adult knew about my trans-ness was what really set in for me the fact that i could come out one day; my friends mom referred to me as seance (and like. obviously she respected my gender she has a trans kid) but it was just super jarring bc no adult had known yet abt my identity in any way and as a result i was rlly glad it was nighttime in that car bc i cried almost immediately; the first time i came out on my Own was to my cousin and he laughed in my face so that was pretty damn awful and its kinda funny cuz the bastard is bi so u would think hed have been accepting but n0pe!

If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?-im out to my friends now ! and the reception was generally positive bc i think i do an ok job at picking ppl to be around in terms of morals so there was little bad reception

What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?-i hate when ppl ask if im gay as in for men or gay as in for women because im trans, i am a man so when i say im gay i feel like that should be easy enough to put 2 and 2 together but when they ask that i feel as if they still view me as a woman

Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.-emo of the gods themselves it is absolute scene and emo vomit and i love it; its seriously hard for me to wear dresses and skirts without dysphoria and just general discomfort but i own a couple anyway bc theyre cute i just. never wear them

Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?-my main thing at the moment is gerard/frank/grant morrison bc i love poly fics very dearly and gerard/bert because bert mccracken deserved better than gerawrds internalized homophobia lol

What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?-makeup to me is an androgynous thing so i wear eyeshadow a lot and lipstick sometimes, eyeshadow is easier on my eyes than eyeliner bc im allergic to a lot of makeup thats on the heavier side so if i put on eyeliner my eyes will water and burn throughout the day but with eyeshadow im mostly ok; other opinion is that makeup on Anyone can be sexy as hell if they do it for fun and wear literally what they truly want and not just what they think is accepted or what they Should wear

Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?-oh yeah my dysphoria is pretty debilitating if im gonna be honest; i used to have very little problems with it because my hold on reality was loose at best (before i was medicated to clarify) but now that i am almost completely Here my dysphoria is pretty bad and even just like. the knowledge that i have breasts is pretty awful; a few weeks ago i put on an outfit that i have to wear a victorias secret bra to fit properly in and just one look in the mirror had me sobbing and i had to change my clothes before i could leave the house and i havent worn a bra since because just the thought of showing off my chest makes this stark fuckin dread shoot through my veins but i also have dysphoria in regards to my voice that i discussed at my last trans therapy group meeting actually ; my voice has a tendency to bounce around my octave range so sometimes ill be like. excited then hear what i sound like. and ruin it for myself immediately u kno? im not even gonna talk about my dicksphoria bc thats just. awful. 

What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?-ohhhhhhhh my god u know what? ive heard..so much .. that im gonna instead take this opportunity to mention my mother genuinely thinks dnd is satanic

What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?-the fact that were so strong. we are so fucking strong we deal with violence and opposition constantly and at staggering rates yet we stay strong and we continue loving through all of it, whether its in dark corners in secret or loudly in the streets we continue loving and do so with all of our beings because we know its our own truth and well gladly go to hell if it means we got to love on earth (not that everyone believes in hell or the idea that us gays go to hell but my point stands)

What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?-we have this audacity to create divide (to the fault of mostly cis white gay men thank u very much) when what we need to do is love each other because we are different but at the end of the day we all need to remain in tandem and as a family or we will never get to where we need to in terms of acceptance and that means being uplifting and protecting our trans sisters of color, our disabled lgbt members, our autistic lgbt members, our anything past cis white gay man because we all need recognition, we all need love, and to exclude any letters of lgbt is to tear ourselves down and set ourselves on fire

Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?-no :((( no one would drive me in the past and i dont think ill have a way to get there this year either

Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?-brian molko! my bisexual, androgynistically-inclined father who birthed me at the tender age of 16 when i found placebo

Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?-ya theres been a few and i dont rlly like to talk abt my relationships with anyone unless theyre online relationships so im just gonna leave it at that

What is your favourite lgbt+ book?-pantomime by laura lam! its one of if not my favorite book to this day

Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?-y a every damn day bitch ! example is when i was deadnamed by my psychiatrist while she knows full well what my name is the other day; another is the countless times i get called a lesbian ???? and when strict lesbians ask me out i get a very bad taste in my mouth (i understand full well that sexuality is fluid, these are lesbians that spit the ‘penis is gross blegh’ rhetoric)

Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?-uh im just gonna say preacher bc its my favorite show altogether n cass is bi/pan/something similar

Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?-@ble3dmagic is my boyfriend in crime (not rlly thats a joke) and @musicalsense​ is my sunburnt Brother

Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?-queer! i also use f*ggot a lot when talking about myself and my friends that are ok with it

Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?-i went to a drag show and it was so amazing and one of the first times i felt accepted in my own community that i cried

How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?-well i identify as a man with no leaning towards womanhood or nonbinaryhood in any way, its just . man . but in terms of Expression i am quite androgynous bc i can rlly appreciate femininity (NOT the same as womanhood) and being a man to me means just that ive always wanted to grow up with that “gender role” like i always wish i was raised as a stereotypical parent would raise a son and ive always been more interested in stereotypically masculine things and people since i can even remember and i feel like puberty was just this unpreventable spiral into something i didnt want. i didnt want it at all . this is tmi but when i got my first period i cried my eyes out bc the idea of being called a Woman repulsed me so much and since i didnt even know that being trans was a concept i was just this scared puppy full of confusion and fear aimed at myself because all the stuff i heard i was supposed to be proud of the change but i wasnt i was so ashamed of it and the idea of being called a woman made me sick to my stomach and i just wish i could go back in time and hold myself and tell me itll be alright 

Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?-absoLutely not i hate kids (and by that i mean i hate being around them and the culture that surrounds having children; i do not treat kids like shit and i do not act like hating children is a personality trait; i get migraines and usually the second a child starts screaming or crying i am on the floor of my brain writhing in dire pain and i have absolutely no desire to support another human life when frankly i cant even support myself; its also just not a lifestyle i want to live)

What identity advice would you give your younger self?-god so fucking much. so fucking much. so many things i wish i could say to myself

What do you think of gender roles in relationships?-i think if someone wants to adhere to them then hell yea go ahead just dont expect others to do it or try to tell other people its a Norm or something; theyre for the most part christian in nature so i dont have any desire to follow them myself, i want a relationship (if any) thats more of a coexistence if that makes sense, like. roommates plus dick

Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?-i always used to anxiously chew on the idea that my chest dysphoria is just me holding disdain for the shape and size of my breasts but let me tell you. the second i put on my binder for the first time i immediately started crying because i was so overwhelmed by the fact that i was looking at something one step closer to myself and i know full well i am never going to have that doubt again. this week has been exponentially cathartic and therapeutic for me

What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?-i want the cisheteros to know that nothing they learn about us is new. everything about us has been around for so so long but has been silenced and erased to the point where a lot of us dont even know many things about our rich and beautiful history

Why are proud to be lgbt+?-honestly? its hard for me to not just straight up say im not proud of my identity. its taken me years to stamp down the plain grieving toward my identity and wishing i could have the easier path but frankly? the fact that i am choosing this path of hardship and hell on earth just to be who i truly am i think speaks volumes of my pride in my identity at this point; further back in my archive by a few years my posts are littered with sentiments of bitterness wherein i stated that i hate being trans and not just cis but i like to think ive finished hating myself for my identity. i like to think im proud now. to ask me why is to ask too much of me, all i know now is that i am proud and thats enough for me right now.

[gaelfox]

Do you have any tips on being a DM? Particularly when it comes to being one for middle schoolers.

As a budding DM myself...I find I don’t have any way to answer this question without feeling like I’m just floundering around myself. But Babbus always has tips that he shares with me after sessions: 1) RAILROADING. It’s nice for the players to feel like they have agency and choice. You are allowed to at any time to utilize something to steer them back on the path of the campaign, and they don’t know what this thing is - so if your players are straying away too long from the main storyline, find something to bring them back that ties into what they are doing now so it doesn’t feel forced. Also, you may find that going off these rails is actually more fun than the campaign you planned - and you may just end up going for it. DnD isn’t set in stone - and what you and your players are able to create organically may be better than anything written in a book. 

2) AGENCY. Everyone feels like their character wants to belong in the story. If you feel like someone is hanging back from making important decisions, or their character hasn’t really had a chance to shine, find a way to bring them back into the action. That could be something like having an NPC addressing them directly like “Well, x? What do you think about this decision?” or throwing something into the main storyline that has to do with their backstory. Maybe, on stumbling upon a caravan that has been destroyed by the Big Bad, one of the characters finds the robes of someone in their hometown? Make things personable. I find that the best stories don’t have player characters easily replaced - character deaths are super impactful.

3) BALANCE. Since you’re playing with kids, some of the super crazy amazeballs puzzles you’ve run through with your adult friends maaayyyy be over the heads of your kiddos, which can make puzzles super frustrating. Know your audience. Sometimes with kids, all they want to do is just run around, hit stuff and move on to the next thing they want to hit. And that’s ok - build that into your story. 

4) THEATRICS. Ok. So, I’m not going to lie - this is just as important with adult campaigns as it would be with kids, cause I eat this shit up too. The more theatrical you are with your presentations (giving characters voices, doing faces, even standing up and playing things out), the more real the world seems, and fun. You recognize the voice of Baldrin Forgeknife the barbarian dwarf by his gravely baritone and his unique way of speaking by saying “ye” after every sentence, which when he appears as the sudden bad guy later in the dungeon you feel a sense of dread hearing “Ah, haha, ye’ve all truly come a long wey away from home, ye?” even before he shows his ugly bearded face. And little things like that can make a huge difference, and make things remarkably easier for you to discern who is who when talking. 

5) IMPROV TROUPE IT UP. Sometimes your player is going to do something in no way shape or form you prepared for. So it’s important to train yourself to think fast on your feet - and what better way to do that with a little bit of ad-libbing, improv and more theatrics? Don’t let your players know you have absolutely no idea how this is going to work out in your story - they can smell weakness. I generally have a rule of thumb: if there is one way to solve a certain puzzle and a character solves it by exploiting something I didn’t think of that makes sense to me, I let them solve it. After all, there’s more than one road to Rome, no? And if its something that would obviously fail - let them fail. Let them learn.

6) I’VE PLANNED THIS OUT ALL ALONG. TAKE CREDIT FOR EVERYTHING. If something happens you totally didn’t prepare for and epicness ensues and you think on your feet to see the situation through and the players are shocked and all like “WERE YOU PLANNING THIS THE WHOLE TIME?!?” be like “yeh hehe i totally was” Aside from making it look like you’re a total badass, it also makes it appear that you completely slaved and scrutinized over every single little possibility of the campaign road, which your players are like “you DO caaaaaaare uwu”. Don’t ever reveal your secret. It makes your players 1000% more invested when they think that these kinds of things are also waiting for them down the road. 

Like I said, I’m still very much learning. But my players say that they are having fun and I am doing a good job, so I’ll keep sticking to these rules myself and hopefully you can find them helpful as well!

[gayasinstupidpodcast]

What’s up gamers!!! Our fourth episode plowed through the chaos of thanksgiving holidays and is Here w/ some Facts and Opinions about creating shit and being LGBT and how being LGBT influences creating shit. HEADS UP we recorded this while I had a cold so my voice is probably a little off, but ik Isaac put SO much work into the editing so it would be ready on time and we have recorded statements from some amazing artists (transcriptions under the cut below!) & this is honestly one of my favorite episodes we’ve done so far, so give her a listen if you’re gay or enjoy fun things!

BIG thank you once again to everyone who participated in this month’s episode!! Your contributions are so valued and so beautiful!!

You can find us on the Itunes Podcast App/Webpage at Gay As In Stupid Podcast! You can also find our episodes uploaded to Youtube and Soundcloud!

You can also follow us on twitter at gayasinstupid!

Further Reading on LGBT Artists

Montage of a Queering Deferred: Memory, Ownership, and Archival Silencing in the Rhetorical Biography of Langston Hughes

The Political Provocations of Keith Haring 

Pop art politics: Activism of Keith Haring 

E M Forster’s Gay Fiction

Alok Vaid-Menon Tells Us What It’s Like To Be Femme In Public

Shea Diamond Speaks Her Truth

Aaron’s 2018 November Recs!

Alok Alok Vaid-Menon is one of my favorite poet/activist/performance artists out there! Their writing and stage presence is gorgeous and witty in a way that’s SO clever and still feels like you’re in a room trading jokes you don’t need to explain with your closest trans friends. The way they balance their art creates a real, deeply touching experience that feels very essential to our world.

Miles (2016) Miles is set in 1999 and is a coming of age story about a gay teenager trying to get a volleyball scholarship for college in Chicago. It’s not revolutionary and it’s not over the top dramatic, but it’s funny and honest and it makes me feel nice. Definitely the movie to watch when you’ve just been through something emotionally taxing and need a light crying session and some mediocre pastries.

Isaac’s 2018 November Recs!

The Adventure Zone I know half of you already kin the Mcelroys while the other half either don’t know or don’t care, but the Adventure Zone is one of my most favorite things in the world. It’s a DND podcast (yes, all episodes are transcribed, and they have a graphic novel for the first arc of Balance with a second one on the way!) by three brothers plus their dad, and not only does it have the most amazing story and is ungodly funny, but TONS of gays (Griffin went ape with those Lesbian NPCS)! And just because they can! Same with trans characters. It’s a story where they just exist, and that’s really important to me because in a lot of media LGBT have to almost prove why they deserve to take up space. And it’s not just something that goes on in their first campaign, Amnesty also has those sweet sweet gay! I could talk about this podcast for hours, so if you needed that final push to give it a listen, THIS IS IT!

Stardew Valley You get to farm and be gay. And if THAT hasn’t sold you on this charming video game, then maybe the super cute graphics, beautiful soundtrack and a handful of interesting characters will! TBH I spend so much time playing this game it’s concerning. It’s just such a fun way to relax, and I just really REALLY like video games were I can chose to be gay. Like. God Tier. YOU CAN HAVE CROPS AND CHICKENS AND BE GAY C’MON YALL!!

The Amazing Quotes And Artists Featured!

Meg | instagram | esty

“My identity as a bisexual woman influences my art in many ways. As a woman, i create art about the issues that effect me, such as abortion and gender equality, in order to resonate with the people that matter most to me. As a bisexual individual, my subjects often appear from a gaze that falls outside of the stereotypical eye. My figure drawings and portraits all come from a place of admiration, and don’t fall into the stereotype of the male gaze or womanly care- they are the space inbetween, equally sexualized and normalized. I feel lucky to be a bi gal in the art world because it is a place that is my own to create in. There are so many queer artists that i look up to such as Mapplethorpe and Warhol, and many female artists i can cite as influence (Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, and Louise Bourgeois to name a few). My identity gives me a whole new world of content to draw from and allows my work to resonate with a wider audience, and I really think that any artists goal is to reach and touch as many people as possible.“  

Cameron | twitter | instagram 

“I don’t think that it influences the form really, but it definitely influences the subject matter! (Much as I hate to admit it, my identity influences the majority of choices I make in life.) I write a lot of poems about lgbtq related things and religion, as well as other stuff too. I was raised catholic, so realizing that I was “different” at more than one point in my teen years was scary AF. Being a member of the lgbtq+ community and also trying to still feel like I belong, or wanting to, in a religious community is hard, the two things are usually at a crossroads in my life so writing about them makes it easier for me to get through. My hope is that someday someone reads what I wrote and finds some peace in their own life/experience.” 

Vince | art instagram

“Well, being transgender I feel like I’m constantly aware of the lack of representation of my community, and I feel like it might be because of that I tend to experiment with showing all sorts of different type of people in my work. Because there’s so much diversity in the world, why not showcase that?”

Fox | art instagram  

“Oof…I’m gay so my characters always be gay. Gotta Fill the void in media w my own bullshit so I don’t have to rely on straight showrunners who will inevitably discard the character since they themselves seem to have no personal attachment and treat lgbt characters as disposable extras. Bc if I don’t at least attempt to create representation in the field I’m going into then I can’t rlly complain about the lack of it right? If I don’t try and change it I can’t complain about the lack of change so being an lgbt artist is lowkey Big Pressure to be revolutionary in your work but sometime…..I just wanna draw funkey animeal and that’s aight too”

Jen | twitter | instagram

“As a female bisexual poet, I worry often that my poetry and art will be too niche to be appreciated. I’ve spent years editing my poetry down to its barest bones in hopes that someone will relate to it. Changing pronouns back and forth because I worry that if I do talk about a woman, the poem will be stripped of its context and suddenly be about my queerness when in reality it never was. When I write about love and people I have dated and have crushed on, I want the poem to exist outside of the gender of who I love. I fear my authorial death will result in a complete misinterpretation of what I mean. When I write, it truly does not matter to me if I am writing about a woman or a man. If I feel what I write and I can make someone else feel it too does it matter that I also love women? I write what matters to me overall, regardless of gender, I try to make my poetry as true as possible. Sometimes, when I catch myself over editing I try to take myself back to the moment, to the person, what I loved about him or her. “

Lain | art instagram

“My LGBT Identity has significantly impacted almost all of my art, especially my work over the last two years. Ever since I have allowed myself to accept that I am trans and began my transition (6 months on T!), the impact that my Roman Catholic upbringing has had on my bisexual trans identity has bled into my artwork. Because of the way I was raised, accepting and allowing myself to be authentic has been an upward struggle. And what better way to process and document struggle than art?  

Much of my recent work has had a focus on the trans body, particularly the “sanctity” of self-actualization and the god-like power that comes with accepting and creating yourself in the unique and exceptional way that LGBT people must in order to live authentically. Two of my pieces on this topic were actually recently exhibited at UWM in the Trans-lucent exhibition, and will remain there until December 15th (I think). I got sick and tired of never seeing trans representation, so now I am creating that space that I crave in my own work.”

Kobe | instagram | soundcloud

“My art from is very influenced by my LGBT identity. It is very influenced by my LGBT black Identity. I think that whenever an artist makes their art (in my case writing music, singing, dancing) they should incorporate as much of themselves as possible. I think my LGBT identity definitely adds a sense of representation as well. I want people like me to listen to my music to know they aren’t alone. So it influences my work a lot. “

Nat | art instagram

“I think the fact that I am part of the LGBT+ community influences my art directly. Even though I don’t draw as often as I wish, I believe both my drawings and college projects (I am a 3d art/animation student), and my creativity in general is inspired by my personal experiences as a gay woman and common things experienced by the community. I try as often as I can to bring representation of some kind in the things I do, mainly personal projects. I also feel that it influences me on my motivation to keep creating; whenever I listen to, see drawings, watch movies or see whatever form of artistic expression from LGBT+ artists it gives me the energy to keep going, to keep creating.”

[cielleduciel]

I have some sensitive questions, and you totally don’t need to answer if they’re too much, but here they are. Did you ever struggle w internal homophobia? If so, how did you manage to overcome it?? And my last question: any tips for softly breaking it to Albanian parents? I know people are individuals but its still the same culture so..

• Same anon as before!! I am an 18-year-old girl that was born and raised in the US. Thank you so much, and take as much time as you need to answer.

• I would also like to add that I’ve struggled with this for a pretty long time now (since I was around 12), so it’s not like I realized my preferences just recently. For years I’ve been telling myself that it’s just a phase or I’m just starved of affection (so I’m looking for it in the wrong place) or that I just haven’t met the right guy yet. I feel disgusted with myself, and it’s very tiring and emotionally consuming. Add in my Albanian relatives on top of it, and I’m just done with it all.

thanks for your patience anon, this last week’s been a bit hectic for me

first off i’m flattered by that first question, bc i was the most self-hating repressed closet gay i knew. i started off as that kid that was like “i don’t have a problem with gay people i just don’t think they should get married and i hate it when they ‘act’ gay”. i went through three boyfriends and two different sexual orientations before i finally accepted i was a lesbian, which took me until april of last year. so if that’s hard to imagine then i know i’m doing good for myself, and maybe it can give you some reassurance too

tbh i don’t think any of us can ever actually avoid or stop struggling with internalized homophobia, given that we’re all inundated with those messages every day in big or small ways. i think at best i just learned how to stop listening to it so much. it took me a really long time though and honestly at your age you’re already way ahead of me than i was, the questions you’re asking yourself now are ones i couldn’t bear to face even in my early 20s

my personal struggle has been very much connected to my family and growing up as a 1½-gen albanian immigrant. if your family and upbringing are anything like mine, then you might understand, and they’re probably just as closely related to your struggle as well. don’t take what i say here as gospel since this is all from personal experience and i’m not even 100% where i want to be yet. but i know how lonely it is for us out there, so i’ll try to be as real with you as i can without getting too personal (idk if this readmore will work on mobile so my apologies and just scroll down really fast @ anyone not reading this)

first thing: don’t be in a rush to tell your parents, even if you’re an adult, and especially if you’re still dependent on them. i assume you’re asking for tips because you already know or have reason to suspect that they won’t take it well. and if you’re still struggling to accept yourself, your parents’ & relatives’ opinions are the last thing you need to be worrying about right now (i know easier said than done we’re albanian i Understand but like. trust me)

second: i really think learning how to stop listening to that internalized homophobia is just a slow process of learning to normalize your feelings in opposition to it. truly the most important thing i did for myself was surround myself with other bi/lesbian women as a way to counter everything else in my life that was telling me to hate myself. the key here is that i did that for years. the logic goes like this: if my world was already and will always be filled with heteronormativity and homophobia, then to fight it, i needed a space i could come back to that’s filled with what i needed to see and could make it feel as normal as i logically knew it was

i didn’t have the freedom to reach out to others IRL so i sought out bi/lesbian women online and immersed myself in those communities. i filled my online spaces with people like me who could show me every day that what i was feeling was genuine, normal, healthy, whole, positive, and worth embracing. when i really began to internalize that, self-confidence and assurance just kind of naturally followed, which made it easier to shout down and ignore the Internalized Homophobia Gremlin in my brain

another thing too, and this’ll sound silly. idk if you’re into video games but they were also a big part of my normalization process. i love role-playing games and for years i used them as a private, risk-free, judgment-free way to “experiment” with women and allow my feelings to “run free” after repressing/ignoring them for so long. i personally know other LGBT people who discovered themselves in similar ways (through DnD, for example). something to consider if that’s your thing. but media of all kinds can be powerful normalizing tools too, if you can find decent ones to your liking 

i had to be really patient and gentle with myself though, and you’ll have to be too bc there really is no quick fix, we’re up against years of internalizing this crap since we were born, basically. do whatever you need to fight against it though, bc there is literally, objectively, nothing wrong with you. you deserve to be happy just as you are, you deserve love and to be able to find it with another woman, and remember you’re never alone in this even if it feels like you are. i think that’s the most powerful reminder

back around to your last question, worry about coming out to your parents when you’re on more solid ground, bc it doesn’t sound like you are rn. everyone’s parents are different but as a general rule i’ve found that when trying to broach a difficult subject, you really need to have your back up against a point that you refuse to budge on, and plant yourself there. you can negotiate or make arguments around it but you need that one point that you’re absolutely sure of where you’ll always hold your ground

in coming out to them, that point needs to be your identity and everything attached to it, so your confidence and sense of self need to be as solid and unmoving as a fucking mountain so that they can’t dig into you and undermine your conviction. esp bc tbh it’s entirely likely that you’ll have to have that conversation several times. so that’s why i stress working on yourself first. for your own sake, don’t jump the gun on this

also, it’ll be much easier on you if you’re not always stuck under the same roof, or at least not totally dependent on them. and i know that’s tough and complicated because a lot of us never truly “move out”, per se, and it’s normal for us to stay with our parents/family for a very long time. but if you can find a way, arrange something with friends, etc., i find it really helps with your general confidence to know you have somewhere else you can go unconditionally, without restrictions. and i don’t mean “rush to move out as soon as you can”, bc like i said, i know that’s hard on us for many reasons and it may hurt you more than you think it will. but if it’s a point you can get to eventually, it does help

after all this, if/when you eventually do decide to come out, i recommend you tell only one of your parents at first. whichever one you’re closer with or find easier to talk to (i’d say ideally whoever’s the least homophobic but like. lmao). do it privately and when you’re both in a good mood. i find altogether this makes the atmosphere less confrontational and more personal, a show like you’re “confiding” in them moreso than making an announcement. depending on how it goes i think you can adjust your strategy from there 

even still, i can’t say with any confidence that it will go over well, but it’s as gentle a way to break it to them as i know. if on the very off chance you have another relative who you know is sympathetic and won’t go telling the entire rest of the family immediately, i’d say try reaching out to them first, as it’ll give you “practice” talking about it and they may be able to advise you about your own parents better than i can, as well as support you directly. but even this i would only do after you’re more confident in yourself and your identity

in the end, keep in mind that you don’t have to come out either. it’s not like a requirement for loving yourself. many of us stay closeted to our families for a very long time simply bc it’s safer, easier, and smarter wrt our situations. again, i know that’s complicated because of how tight-knit our families are traditionally, and how much we may want to remain close to them for cultural reasons. at some point it may make it difficult to hide (my mom started suspecting i liked girls before i even knew i liked girls. it was scary). but like, i’m 27 and i’m still not out to most of my family (my dad doesn’t even know). it doesn’t stop me from being a proud albanian lesbian, or from having and maintaining a happy & healthy relationship with my girlfriend. it doesn’t have to stop you either

and…. i think that’s really all i can say. sorry for taking so long and also for talking so much. i hope i could help even a little, or if not, at least offer some reassurance. it’s a good sign that you’re reaching out and trying to get a handle on your feelings, so keep at it, and remember you’re not alone out there. there are so many of us in the world living our lives and trying to build a future and support each other. i really think you’ll be fine

[strigital]

The Elder Scrolls VI wish list:

In-depth character customization with tons of options: everything from colors of both inner and outer iris to height and voice.

Player character origins. I want a choice between having completely blank origins, so that I can create my own backstory, or choose between a couple of existing ones, which will affect the gameplay in the long run. Like if I choose to be an Outlaw at some point a team of bandits instead of attacking me will give me a quest, or if I decide that I want to be a Noble, then aristocratic NPCs will recognize me as one of their own and as such I’ll have easier time gaining their trust.

A well working physics engine, so that we can have realistic flowing hair, clothes that move in the wind, horse’s mane and tail that swish realistically when it gallops, etc.

At least some environmental objects being destructible: rocks falling to pieces after getting hit by a stray fireball, enemies getting thrown at certain walls, that crumble and crush said enemies, bridges that can be brought down to cut off the path, locked doors that can be destroyed with a few swings of a maul. Just let me annihilate piles of crates and barrels like other games do, damnit!

Player character being a physical presence recognized by the game world, such as grass swaying when I walk through it, my feet leaving footprints on snow and sand that look different depending on whether I’m barefoot or not, seeing all the little rocks being kicked about as I run on gravel, and piles of dead leaves doing the same when I run through them, dust and small debris falling from old wooden structures as I step on them, etc. Basically, feeling like my body isn’t just a ghost running through the lands without leaving a trace.

Ability to combine spells with each other or the environment for various effects, like they did it in Divinity Original Sin 2. I want to be able to throw a lightning bolt into a puddle and electrocute all the enemies stood in the water, or throw a fireball at a barrel of oil and cause a platform to collapse under the force of an explosion and kill the archers that were on said platform (again about the destructible objects), or cast an ice spell on water, so that the enemies slip, fall and get stunned. If such a mechanic is not full of potential for some ridiculous and hilarious situations, then I don’t know what is.

Unique companions with backstories and personalities, likes and dislikes, goals and agendas. They can also be romanced by ANY player character, no matter their sex/race/other traits and the romance progression is close to a real life relationship, with ups and downs, jokes and arguments, sexy times and break ups.

Let me have a squad of my own. Two or maybe even three companions at once. They also have their own relationships and opinions about each other. They chat, they argue, they flirt, they rant about being forced to travel with that jerk, they get overprotective towards the player if they’re romanced and hear the other one catcalling the player, they share their opinions, give the player advice on the current situation, they each have their own comments about places and other NPCs and they may or may not see eye to eye on those opinions. Let there be drama in true “party of DnD adventurers” fashion!

Also Dogmeat-like animal companion, who can travel alongside other companions and do stuff like sniff out enemies, find goodies, do tricks, duplicate items, grab items from containers with master locks on them... You know, the usual Dogmeat stuff.

Mounts other than horses. I want to see Redguards riding their camels, Khajiiti caravans with senches, Nords putting bears under the saddle. If horses are still the only rideable animal, then I want variety and customization: lots of breeds to choose from, individual armor, saddlebags and cosmetic items, ability to name a horse and have it come to the player at a single whistle. Also, Shadowmere. TES 6 won’t be the same without that demonic horse.

At least one friendly dragon. Because I need more of Paarthurnax.

More active Divines. Daedric quests are fun, no arguing there, but I’d also like to go on a holy quest bestowed upon me by, say, Akatosh himself, not some old prophecy. Also Divine relics to counterbalance Daedric artifacts.

More stuff to kill your time with. Games at taverns, visiting brothels, betting on horse racing or participating yourself, watching street performers and so on. I want to take part in the same entertainment the inhabitants of Tamriel do, damnit!

More alive, realistic world. If there’s a war I want to see hanged deserters on a tree, if it’s autumn I want to see people throwing harvest festival parties in their towns and cities, if it’s a plague outbreak I want to see corpses, sick people and hear church bells... Again, the Witcher 3 did it, now I want all of this grungy, dirty, realistic shit in the next TES game!

Tons of dialogue choices based on the player character’s skills, traits, race, sex, affiliation with factions, etc. I want NPCs to react to the character in a dynamic way, so that each new playthrough with a new character is fresh and inexperienced before. Let them Nords throw sexist comments at my Dunmer lady, let the Khajiits deny information to any other character that is not a Khajiit, let my bulky Nord fellow get discounts at the bar and my Imperial guy in fancy clothes get into the royal palace way easier that an Argonian in a hood would. I want to feel, see and hear that NPCs know and react to my character in a realistic way, so there are more challenges, interesting moments, secret dialogues and hidden quests only available for a certain character that made certain choices. Let the next game be the true definition of RPG!

Khajiits and Argonians having animal-like legs that they had back in TES III Morrowind. Please.

Longer and more complicated guild quests, so that even joining the guild requires time and skill, let alone progressing through ranks. And don’t make me a leader of each and every faction! Make me a second in command or a high ranking official with new perks and armor as a reward. Don’t make me the most overpowered mortal in Tamriel again, because it’s getting old fashioned.

Some sort of an ability tree, which allows you to tinker and make bombs, traps, contraptions and other awesome goodies that’ll make any combat a wild party.

Good third person animations. C’mon, Bethany Esda, I know you can do it.

Voiced protagonist. If not fully, then on the Divinity Original Sin 2′s level, where the player character does not speak in dialogues, but has voiced comments when interacting with certain objects or entering a location, etc. Or just add an option in the Settings menu to turn on or off player character’s voice.

Ability to hide that ugly ass helmet with a single click of a button, without being forced to choose between showing my awesome hairdo to the world and +5 to Armor Rating.

Ability to equip multiple weapons at once and also being able to see them on my character, i. e. a bow on my back, and axe on my right hip, a dagger on my left hip and a staff alongside the bow. Also they jiggle according to physics.

Big cities. No, I mean, like, really, truly BIG cities. I mean some Novigrad from the Witcher 3 type of big cities. I want to get lost in them. I want to find all the secrets, hidden in dark alleys and on the rooftops. I want countless quests within the city itself. Just let me enjoy some fantasy medieval city life, okay?

Animated activities. When I click to skin a dead deer I want to see my character sit down and do some work with a knife. When I go to a spot where fish is abundant I want to see a fishing rod being thrown into the water. That sorta thing.

Detailed crafting system. I. e. you could choose to make a handle of a sword and its blade from different materials and have different effects on them that combine once you put the sword together. Or whilst making armor you could pick between different textures, materials, colors and such.  Basically, what they did in Dragon Age Inquisition. That was a fun system to play around with.

Also more subcategories for crafting, like if you are a high level smith you could craft some horseshoes for your mount that’ll increase its galloping speed, or if you’re a skilled alchemist you could make a throwable potion which will harm the enemies in a certain way (like a jar of bees or something). And, of course, accompanying animations are welcome. I’d die to see my character put some horseshoes on their steed.

A loveable villain, who could be “persuaded” to abandon his goals, join your squad and become your new LI. Basically, Miraak 2.0, but with a happily ever after ending.

Dwemer prosthetics. Sotha Sil thinks he’s so hip with his metallic arm, doesn’t he? Well I too want to have a metallic arm, damnit!

Ability to furnish your house however you like. When you buy a house there could be a choice between a fully furnished version and an unfurnished version of your house. After that you could either re-arrange the furniture in your abode or buy new furniture that suits your tastes. Then you could enter furnishing mode and have a blast decorating your dream house to your heart’s content. Basically, what we saw in Fallout 4′s Homeplate and Fizztop Grille.

Outposts, keeps or anything like that. They could be like small bases that you take control of once you slaughter its previous owners, where you and your squad of companions could rest, talk, repair broken armor and weapons or buy new ones, stock up on potions and bandages, that sort of thing. There also could be a special object that will allow you to instantly switch between the companions and/or choose a different mount from a collection of those that you own. Also there could be a badass custom flag of yours marking that place as your own.

i’ll proly add some more later, but rn i’m out of ideas xD

[lordmattuk]

How do you stop being depressed?

Dear God, I wish I knew the answer to that one. I do know that given enough time each bout of depression passes. Sometimes fast; sometimes slow. It is what you do while you wait that makes the difference.

I do not have a story from my life to give you as an answer but here is everything I know about living with depression (in no particular order except item zero):

0. Depression is a liar

Depression tries to say things like, “this is never going to get better, I’m the only one, no one will understand, people will think I am weak…” Thoughts like these are lies depression tells you to keep you down.

Depression is a liar. Do not listen to it.

1. Talking helps

Being honest with friends and family you can trust makes the journey easier. You still have to go through it but know there are people that will listen makes it seem less difficult.

I thought I was the only one that felt the way I did. So I hid it. All through my teenage years, I kept my depression secret. It turned out though that my sister, my dad, and my uncle all faced similar demons.

2. Get rid of stressful people and drama queens

Boy or girl, drama queens just sap the strength you should use to face depression. While it might feel like doing the right thing to help everyone - you cannot save the drowning if you cannot swim yourself. 

A few years ago (on Facebook) started using memes like the one below. The strange thing was the very needy people I was always ploughing all my mental energy into helping just went and found someone else to ask for help. They didn’t want my help, they were addicted to the attention I was giving out. Like vampires sucking my energy away.

For when you are once more stuck between two friends who have (once more) fallen out over something

When they can’t get a hit of sympathy from me, they just go somewhere else and try again.

The result is, I feel healthier and less stressed. Depression is now a little easier to bet without that drag factor.

3. Deal with crap that is bothering you

Nothing powers up your depression like crap you need to deal with but are pretending is not there. Be it a relationship that has to end, a commitment you should withdraw from, a painful memory you need to grieve over, or whatever. Find a safe way to unpack that baggage and leave it behind you.

4. Sleep more

I cannot stress this enough - depression is worse when you are tired. Get a good nights rest. Take naps if you have to. Get good sleep.

5. Give yourself permission to take the day off

Some days I just say screw it to social media, party invites, and housework. I just sit around in my PJs and catch up on Netflix. Not because I am lazy (I am that too but this is not why) but because sometimes I just need to decompress and do something that makes me happy.

A day off for me means not looking at the news (Brexit worries me no end). I disconnect and just live in the moment (which means I watch Netflix or dip into my DVD collection). Sometimes I go out for food or a beer with a good friend.

There have been days where I get up with a low spoon count and no motivation. I take care of whatever will cause pain if not done now and then I chill and so serious amounts of nothing much. You’ll be surprised just how much can be rescheduled.

Of course, if you have a nine to five job, you cannot pull a sick day too often. For that, you will have to get your doctor to sign off on a few days to a week of recovery. Which means telling your doctor what is going on (also a great way to get support).

6. Talk to your doctor

Getting support from your doctor lightens the load. I never would have learned about mindful meditation had I not tried this.

7. People who say “why don’t you just cheer up”.

These people suck. There is not much you can do other than find better friends. They don’t understand and if re-educating them sounds like too much work, find friends that do understand. People who just don’t get it should be carefully managed and kept at a distance.

8. Advice on social media is far from perfect

Remember what I said about talking t your doctor? Doctors are experts. Tumblr users are… Who knows? We’re weirdos on the web. Sometimes we can help but do please double check with an actual expert.

9. Find someone else who is going through the same thing

Being able to explain what you are going through with someone who truly gets it - because they’ve been there - is wonderful. Just knowing you are not alone makes it easier. It beats the lies depression tells you by showing you the truth. That alone makes it all seem much less terrible.

On top of that, you can feel listened to and heard - boy does that help.

Furthermore, you can both share insights on ways to cope. Truly the best part of the deal.

10. It does get better.

Over time, depressions tricks just seem less effective. The cloud is just the same but I seem to be hurt a little less by it each year. The other benefit of getting older is that you can level up in kicking depression to the curb. 

Depression still mounts some nasty attacks sometimes but it has never beaten me for good.

11. Get a cat or dog

This might be me but right now I have a soft warm cat (Molly) laying on me and I feel just a little bit better because of it. 

12. Socialising can help

I’m an introvert but I found that my DnD and Pathfinder games lift my spirits. I’m pretty sure it is the socialisation and not the dragon-slaying that helps. 

That said slaying dragons with a group of people you see every week is most satisfying. Try that too. Seriously, tabletop RPGs are the best.

13. Did I mention how helpful sleep is?

Sometimes a power nap can hot reset on strong or overwhelming feelings. It can just be the case that allowing yourself a short cry and then a nap, lets you get back to your day. That works for me.

14. Music

I have playlists that I use that can help a lot. 

Some are full of songs that recognise negative feelings, pain, and suffering. I find them cathartic. 

Others remind me of times I have had a lot of joy. A surprising number of those are themes from favourite shows.

I’ve no idea if this will work for you but try it out if you get a chance and see if it works for you. Sometimes a good playlist can kick depression right in its stupid face.

15. Rewatch favourite shows

I read somewhere that when we watch shows we are familiar with we enjoy them differently. The stress and release of finding out what will happen are replaced with something similar to the feeling of seeing a treasured friend. Maybe it is just me, but I have some shows I have seen certain seasons of many times.

Some shows (Red Dwarf, Bleach, iZombie, Star Trek DS9, etc.) have episodes that I can quote line for line.

16. Look after your health

Take care of yourself. Show your own self some love and care. I’m not really sure why this helps but it does. Pain, sickness, and generally being run down make coping with depression harder. I guess that I do have a clue about that after all.

Some people find yoga helps. When my body was younger, I liked running. I can’t run now do to an arthritic bad spine and I miss it.

17. Nice food

Talking of showing yourself some love. Treat yourself to something nice once ins a while. For me, that is pizza, bacon and eggs, or chocolate ice cream. Man, that is the way to say “I love you” to me.

I would not be surprised if Bacon might one day turn out to have magic properties from which we will develop a cure for depression. Even if it does not - bacon is still awesome. 

Except for pizza. For some reason, they always put really dry tasteless bacon on pizza where I live.

18. If it gets too much tell someone

When depression is loudest, never try to ride it out without telling someone. Tumblr does not count.

19. Never drink depressed

Booze is not the answer. For that reason, when depression is very bad I drink nothing stronger than a tea or coffee. Trust me on this one.

20. It is okay to sometimes be not okay

Give yourself permission to feel low. Don’t hide it but don’t let yourself get dragged down by it either.

21. It is not okay to stay not okay

If the depression spell lasts without relenting, seek help. That’s bad and you deserve the best support there is available to you. It can often be the last thing you feel like doing but after a week or two of feeling low and staying home, something more serious may be wrong and you must get help. You deserve to be happy sometimes too.

22. Enjoy the little victories

Take time to really bask in the glow of the smaller wins. I find that gives me the strength to go and get the next win.

23. Your job is NOT to make other people happy

On no account is it ever okay for anyone to make you feel that their happiness is your responsibility. File people like that with the drama queens - in the past.

Trying to conform to the expectations of others is the leading cause of making depression worse than it needs to be. A close second is trying to please everyone. I have no data at all to back that up with but I am pretty sure it is true.

24. Surround yourself with people that know the real you and still like you

Everyone else can stick it where the sun never shines. Seriously, people that know and like the real you are worth their weight in gold. Everyone else... Not so much.

25. It is okay not have the answers

I am 100% sure there is more stuff I know and cannot think of and 100% sure that there is a lot I don’t know and probably should. I’m still learning too.

[nancythebisexualslutwheeler]

Byler prompt: Will and Mike like to hold hands underneath the table while playing DnD. It began as a platonic comfort but now they're starting to realize that it might be a bit more than that...

I am straight up the most extra person I know. Also background stoncy cause I couldn’t not.

They used to do it all the time. It was like a part of the game to them. Every night when the gang would gather to play Dungeons and Dragons, everyone would take their assigned seats, and Mike would take Will’s hand in his.

He’d expected it to be sweaty or awkward, but it just wasn’t. It was nice. He loved it, and it was part of his routine.

He knew better than to try it after the upside down. Will was extremely sensitive to people babying him or worrying about him too much, Mike included. Mrs. Byers worried enough for all of them, but Mike didn’t blame her. He’d seen the way his sister moped around sometimes, or how she woke up in the middle of the night screaming Barb’s name. He knows it’s happened to Will and he just wants to help.

But Will won’t let him. He’d learned his lesson the first time after Will had come back. They’d been playing in the basement and at first it was awkward, but they got back into the swing of things right away, especially when Nancy dropped off their pizza and two liter of coke. So Mike had reached over for Will’s hand, fingertips still greasy and Will had pulled away so hard that he shook his chair and the old card table chair had fallen to the ground.

Everyone was around Will in an instant, except Mike, who stayed in his own seat, cheeks red and chest tight with the hurt of rejection. When Will got up, with the help of Dustin and Lucas, the look he shot Mike was murderous.

“I’m going home,” he stated, eyes locked on Mike.

“Why? Do you need a band aid?” Asks El.

“No, but my elbows kinda messed up,” he lies.

“Come on man, no! Please stay,” Dustin says.

“I’m leaving,” Will snaps harshly, and the other five kids look at each other, he never acts like this.

“Well you don’t have to be a jerk!” Max says, going back to her seat and sitting down.

“Whatever. Bye.”

“How are you gonna get home?” Mike demands, “You told your mom you were spending the night!”

“Jonathan will take me.” Will says fiercely, crossing his arms over his chest.

“He’s upstairs with Nancy! It’s their date night!” And Mike knows this because she made it very clear they were not to be bothered.

“Well then tell your sister to quit macking on my brother so he can bring me the hell home!” And with that he stomps up the stairs.

The rest of the kids just stare at each other,

“What the hell was that?” Dustin asks.

“He needs a time out,” El says, taking a drink of her soda.

“He needs his ass kicked!” Says Max.

“He’s still messed up from the upside down,” Mike defends, even though he feels sick to his stomach.

“But that’s not like him,” Lucas argues.

“I know. But what can we do?”

The rest of them take their seats, but no one really feels like playing anymore. It’s only a short while later that Lucas says he’s going home. Dustin, El and Max quickly follow them, and soon Mike is left alone, with the extra food and trash, game pieces scattered.

He sighs, chest still tight, and gathers the paper cups, plates and used napkins to bring them upstairs. Their parents still aren’t home and Nancy is still on the couch in a bathrobe, presumably waiting for Jonathan to get back. (Or Steve to get off work) he’s not really sure what’s going on with that whole situation.

“Everyone rushed out early,” she says, turning to look at him.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I told Will to leave you guys alone.”

She shrugs,

“It’s fine. Mom called and said they’re going to stay in the city anyway, and Jonathan can pick up Steve from work on his way back so no big deal. Plus we were actually studying at that point anyway.”

Mike makes a gagging noise and Nancy flips him off. He laughs and she turns around so she’s kneeling on the couch, braced against the back on it, facing him,

“So what happened? Will seemed pretty pissed.”

Mike’s face drops,

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Hold the phone, what was that? What just happened? Did Will do something to you?”

“No! No of course not.”

“Well then why are you looking like that?!”

“God Nancy, you’re so nosy. Nothing.” Mike turns away to walk to his room. He doesn’t wanna talk about it. He just wants to cry.

“I’m nosy?! We were having a conversation! God you’re such a baby!”

“And you’re a bitch!” He turns and runs upstairs.

He’ll have to apologize tomorrow. It usually takes much more for him to call her a bitch. Usually around the same time she calls him an annoying asshole, or slams the door in his face for no reason. She didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t even prying like she usually does.

He’s just. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why he’s so upset. It’s not like Will is. Eleven or something. Or Max. But Will is Will. He’s his best friend. And funny. And cute. And sweet. Will who had baked him a cake for his birthday and made Jonathan drive him over at seven am before school to give it to him. The last two years.

Will who had almost died. Will who didn’t want to hold his hand anymore, because he’d almost died. Mike didn’t know what to do. He didn’t think he was showing his feelings. But who could fault him if he wanted to hug Will all the time or see him smile, or watch him dance to his favorite song even though he truly couldn’t dance. Or hold Will’s hand, or even kiss him, maybe. (The jury was still out on that one. Kissing seemed gross. Even though everyone loved it, especially his mom and Dad. Ew! And Nancy and Jonathan (also maybe Steve?)). But the point was, he wanted to hold Will’s hand. And be around him. But Will didn’t want that. He was apparently creeped out by Mike and no longer wanted his weird, queer self around, especially not touching him.

The thought makes tears rush to his eyes and he buries his face is his pillow. This is too much. First Will almost died and this. He probably didn’t even want to be Mike’s friend anymore. And if he didn’t want to be his friend anymore then what was he going to do? And the whole rest of the group would find out and think Mike was a freak. Oh god. He sobs harder.

There’s a knock on his door a few minutes later,

“Go away!” He croaks.

Instead he hears the hinges of his door opening and he curses himself for not locking it. He hastily scrubs at his face with his sleeve and turns,

“Seriously Nancy! I’m not in the mood!”

She doesn’t say anything but he feels the pressure on the edge of the bed and she sits down and he breaks into tears again.

“Oh Mikey,” he hears her set something on his nightstand and then she wraps her arms around him, “What’s wrong honey?”

It takes him a few minutes to choke out, “Will doesn’t want to hold my hand!”

He watches a chunk of spit hit her in the chest, and she doesn’t flinch or move to wipe it off, just pulls back slightly to stare down at him,

“What do you mean?” She asks softly.

And Mike spills the whole story, as she brushes his hair away from his face and rubs his back, fingers tracing in different patterns.

“Well the first thing I want to tell you is you’re not a freak. You’re allowed to like anyone you want to like. Maybe Will was just scared because he likes you too.”

“You really think so?” He asks.

“He could. Or maybe he just didn’t want you to pity him because of the upside down. Or maybe he doesn’t like boys and he decided he doesn’t want to hold your hand. I think that’s unlikely, but it’s true. You have to remember he’s also my obligated to hold your hand.”

“I know, I know. Don’t go all psych major on me.”

“Wannabe psych major and shut up! I’m sure it’s one of the first two, but still.”

He sighs,

“You think he really likes me?”

She smiles,

“There’s only one way to find out .”

“But what if he doesn’t? That’s embarrassing.”

“You have to take a chance! You can end up in a great relationship, with someone you really like.”

Mike snorts, reaching for the pint of ice cream she had set on the nightstand. It’s rocky road, his favorite. He takes an enormous spoonful and hands it to her. She takes a more respectful size one and sucks on the spoon,

“Easy for you to say.”

“What?” She asks.

“Don’t you have two boyfriends?”

She splutters and blushes,

“Shut up. Fine. Ask Jonathan about how he asked Steve out then. He should be on his way back.”

“Ask him about Will?!”

“Not about Will goofball, just ask without mentioning him. Now give me some of that,” she makes grabby hands towards the pint and he hands it back.

That’s how Jonathan and Steve find them, forty five minutes later, an empty pint of ice cream between them. Steve intimidated him in general, so he timidly asks if he can speak to Jonathan alone, to which Nancy hops up and grabs Steve’s hand, tugging him to the door, before he can even say anything.

Jonathan is easier, and he’s honest. He tells Mike about being scared because his dad was always calling him a faggot and a queer. And that he is bisexual, which means boys and girls, which is a lot and Mike didn’t even know you could do that. And he tells Mike that he’s so happy now and that Steve and Nancy are great, and he has to stop him a few times because he’s getting gross and that is his sister but he is clearly so in love and he can hold their hands and even kiss them any time he wants. Mike thanks him eagerly, and Jonathan gives him a hug, and promises that if things don’t go as intended, they will kick the guy’s ass. He appreciates the sentiment.

He doesn’t sleep very well, but he knows he can’t do anything until morning. He feels a new found confidence when he wakes up, and ducks out of the house, careful to not wake his sister or her guests, makes sure to leave a note, and rides his bike to the Byers.

It’s still pretty early and he realizes that he hasn’t eaten breakfast, mostly because Joyce opens the door, hair frizzy and pancake batter on her cheek. Hopper and Eleven are there of course, and Will looks up from the table, shocked to see him.

“Well good morning Mike, honey, let me get you a plate.”

“Thank you so much Mrs.Byers, but I was hoping I could take to Will for a second.”

She looks between them,

“Um, of course.”

So Will slowly stands up and leads Mike to his bedroom. Mike feels weird now. Will’s just staring at him and his fingers itch to pull him in for a hug.

“I like boys.” Mike blurts out.

Will stares.

“Like like boys.”

Will just stares at him, unmoving.

“I like you.”

Will’s jaw drops a bit.

“I understand if you don’t like me but, I just wanted you to know. I wanna hold your hand because I like you. Not because I pity you or feel bad, but just because I want to. And I hope that’s okay. And I hope you like me too. But if you don’t-“

Will shakes his head and Mike cuts himself off, stomach churning.

“Of course I like you, you idiot! I just thought you felt bad or thought you had to be my friend and hold my hand because of the upside down or something. I didn’t know you actually wanted to.”

“Of course I want to!” Mike says eagerly.

Will smiles, “Really?”

“Really.”

Mike crosses the room and throws his arms around Will. Will hugs back tightly, before pulling back,

“I didn’t think this was how this was going to go.”

Mike chuckles,

“Me either.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me too.” Mike kisses Will’s cheek softly, and cheeks flaming, Will grabs Mike’s hand and leads him back out to the kitchen table.

Joyce is standing at the stove, Hopper is buttering his pancake and El is shoving an Eggo in her mouth. There’s no dramatic moment, no big reveal. Joyce turns around, spatula in hand and catches sight of their hands,

“Sweetie your plate is,” she pauses but for only a half a second, “right there. Feel free to move my plate so you can sit by Will.”

Hopper watches, before picking up the syrup and dumping it on his pancake,

“I hope your parents know where you are son, it’s my one day off and I don’t wanna have to make any phone calls.”

“Yes sir,” Mike nods, dunking his knife in the butter.

“Pass the syrup,” Eleven demands, a smile on her face.

Will reaches across his body with his free hand to grab it, before passing it to her. Shoves a bite of his own food in his mouth. Grins.

Mike stops by the store on his way home to get a thank you card. He addresses it to Steve, Nancy and Jonathan and pushes it under Nancy’s door because it’s still not open, but Jonathan’s car is still in their driveway and their parents still aren’t home.

It says: thank you to Jonathan, for all the advice, even though you’re sappy and your face gets all gooey when you talk about them. Steve thank you for being so wonderful to Jonathan that he literally cannot shut up about you. My sister too. Nancy, thank you for the advice and cuddles and the ice cream. PS: you’re not a bitch PPS: only sometimes

[grammaticalmustaches]

KETTLE KATCHERZ FEEL FREE TO READ

under a read more due to length oops

suddenly overcome with love for my players. its a constant emotion but im feeling it so big right now. 

theyre just so invested in the world! and their characters! and theyre so kind!?! truly i think dnd brings out the best in people.

i gave them some kenku that are having trouble integrating with a community because of the language barrier and now my players are out of game diving into esl education to make a communication book to help them get basic ideas across.

it is an ongoing joke that they adopt every npc i give them and its not much of a joke bc no lie i think there are just as many npcs who travel with the party as there are actual pcs. actually i just counted there are exactly as many party npcs as there are pcs. three of those npcs are kind of just one npc who at one point shared a consciousness but are now separate(-ish) beings and one of those npcs is just a small horde of dust bunnies that occasionally either makes or cleans up messes so you could argue the numbers dont actually line up but it is still an absurd number of npcs to have adopted. i have to plan reasons npcs cant or dont want to go on adventures as one of the first character points i make otherwise their party would be triple its size. i am constantly forgetting how many npcs they have with them at all times but they Dont forget and make points to include them in conversations and decision making.

i just think dnd brings out the best in people!!!

also i lowkey hate making maps but maps are important for understanding the world so iv been doing research and shit and trying to get better at it but! my players literally help with that? not just in making it fun and rewarding but like literally help with the task of it? 

as in we just came from a city that one of my players spent a few years at so he drew a map of the city and wrote me out a Huge world building document about the city and its culture and like, climate and neighborhoods and what was important to his character while living there and everything! and another player gave me a six page document that included maps about the territory their character grew up in like, almost at the very beginning of our campaign! i havn’t even had a chance to use any of that information yet because they come from a very far away place! they dont care they Had Fun making me this big old document! and now we’re visiting a player’s childhood home and They’ve offered to make the map for the area! that would be three whole maps all player made!!! 

theyre just so invested and make things so easy on me!!! it is so easy to dm a group that is constantly focused on Working With the world and moving their characters forward!

and its a super homebrewed campaign partially bc i honestly think thats not only more fun but how dnd is Meant to be played, with some creativity and making shit up on the spot, but also my players are so good!!! about shit being homebrew!!! when something comes up we dont know the rules for or which rules dont exist for we work together to decide what happens!!! if someone knows a rule i dont they let me know and i can ask them what they think happens given the rules that do apply and we make decisions together on how it works with a focus on what makes the most compelling story! 

its just so truly OUR game!!! my beloved comrades!!!

Also like, its been off and on and we’ve taken breaks but we’ve been playing since March 2019? and people have added and left and like i said we’ve had to take breaks but in the end this is not a campaign i can imagine not being in anymore. i cannot imagine this campaign ending just because, like, there’s just so many of them who are so invested!!! and Im so invested! to be honest this campaign is one of the most fun and rewarding things in my life and one of my favorite things about it is how confident i am that it is going to be a constant in my life for a long time. like im really able to just Revel in this campaign and sink hours of work into weird bullshit and plan out arcs and enemies and friends and plot hooks and aesthetic bullshit i dont expect our party to meet for Quite a while because i just! i have no fear that this is going to end!

One of my players got a symbol from our campaign tattooed onto their flesh body? art that i made for dungeons and dragons? it will be on their human body for the rest of their life? and another got a tattoo that (partially) represents what this campaign means to them? another has told me they would love to get a campaign related tattoo with me someday? there is a tattoo in game that binds (most of) the pcs to each other and there has been talk about us getting that tattoo together?

i cannot think about this for too long or i go insane. i made some shapes on canva and spent the whole time wishing i had ms paint because ms paint is my level of art and these are designs that are being added to bodies because we have collectively installed so much emotion and meaning into them. 

i am losin gmy mind.

and like, iv already sunk lowkey a kind of unreasonable amount of time (esp for someone who just went back to school and has homework!) into making my kenku soundboard and mixtape but its been such a passion project already and the whole time iv been working on it iv had Zero fear of the reception because i Know and Trust that my players will think my first attempt at using garageband is sick as hell even if its kind of not because they are just crazy supportive and love our world like i cant even really call it my world its truly Our world and! we all love and contribute to it!!!???!!!

I just love my party so much!!!

i just!!! truly think!!! dnd brings out the best in people!!!

at the end of every session we do a rose/bud/thorn (thing we liked/thing we’re looking forward to/thing that could be improved or issue wed like to bring up) to check in with how the session went!!! we discuss things we didnt like and how wed change them!!! 

they challenge me Constantly not just in pushing my capabilities as a growing dm but they also speak up and challenge my decisions when they disagree! 

i jsut cannot get over how truly we are Working Together in all aspects to make this campaign what it is. 

i have a tendency to move dnd at a crawling pace where every hour of every day is meticulously role played. and they told me they didnt like that and now we work together to make things move faster! and it doesnt always work and we still dont move that fast but weve brainstormed several options and tried a few new things to make it easier for me to go faster!

PROBLEM SOLVING INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF GAME

dnd! brings out! the best in people!

and also also also theres like, Multiple players who really hate using technology and sometimes esp video chatting. and most sessions currently people’s thorns have been tech issues/being on video. but wer still all (mostly) show up every session! we still submit to the mortifying ordeal of being seen/heard on discord!

some of my players have an accented character voice and i love them So So So Much for this and it makes me feel confident and comfortable enough to try my best at (when i remember to) doing character voices for npcs but we are not critical role and we are certainly not voice actors so none of our voices are very good or consistent! and my players with accents get self conscious about this pretty often but like!!! they are TRYING!!! they are GIVING IT THEIR ALL!!!

what more could anyone possibly ask of them?

multiple players have come to me concerned and looking for advice/help because they dont think theyre very good at role play/staying in character. we’ve got people who so dedicated theyre stepping Way outside their comfort zone and then turning around and apologizing for how far a walk it was??? they are giving it Their All and their biggest concern is how to give MORE?

i had a moment last session where i realized that our current arc is literally exactly the kind of arc i Dreamed of dming when i was first starting out. like, not to toot my own horn but its legitimately open world and they have a mystery that they need to get to know a small community and find out what everyone knows and put all the pieces together to figure out what happened. i used to scroll through dm forums Endlessly looking for Any advice on how to plan a good mystery and i didnt think id ever be at the point where i could actually pull a mystery Or an open world arc off. but like, here i am. its going pretty great so far.

also this current arc is one of the First i ever thought up for this campaign. obviously it’s changed and evolved a lot since original concept but like. just a Bit emotional over, ya know. finally getting here and having it be even better than i imagined. how far we’ve all come, in and out of game. the fact that my players had so much fun talking to my prize npc kenku whom i have been developing for literal years now and adore beyond reason that they are learning about esl studies to help them integrate into the coven they are trying to join.

DND! BRINGS OUT! THE BEST IN PEOPLE!

COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING. WORKING TOGETHER TO CRAFT MEANING. LOVING AND SUPPORTING EACH OTHERS CREATIVE DECISIONS. MAKING DICK JOKES.

THIS IS WHAT DND IS ALL ABOUT BABY.