#uh who else was in mgs 1

[arrogantninjastudios]

That's Your Problem - My Journey with MGS 1 (and a bit of MGS 2)

Funny story about this video. I posted it at 2 am on Jan 2nd. At 6:30 pm that day, I got in to a car crash and completely wrecked my car. Some dick tried running a yellow at an intersection. R.I.P Ravvy, you deserved better :( So every time I rewatch this video, I'm immediately reminded of what came after lol

Anyway, this video is about MGS 1 and a bit of 2. I talk about my own experience with the game. It gets a bit weird. So very much on point for me.

[surveillance-0011]

ω-3 as cephalings/if they could do turf war:

DJ

Dapple Dualies, .52 Gal, at least one of the Rapid Blasters and uh probably the clash or Luna blaster as well.

Generally good with shooters and blasters. Flexible and decent at most else save for super heavy weapons, sloshers and chargers.

Tries to get to the middle of the map as quick as possible but will ink the base when no one else does… if they notice that’s the case, that is.

Screams “This way!” Repeatedly at people who spend the whole first minute inking the base.

Sometimes gets too caught up on getting kills.

Rlly likes the killer wail 5.1 and triple inkstrike specials. And tacticooler. Probably too much. The other two get worried for them when it comes to that.

They managed to nab two drinks once! Never again.

Mainly does turf war but participates in ranked/anarchy battles as well. Doesn’t like tower control but fine with the others. Rainmaker is probably their fave. They get pretty pissy abt losing in anarchy tho.

Not the nicest player. Probably squidbags people who annoy them and is generally scummy with their strats.

Knows they’re too sore of a loser to get into a more competitive play scene.

Likes to hurl self off stage at the end of battles esp if it’s clear they’ve won. Will try to drag one or both of the other two with em if possible. Has succeeded in this. Esp with the cellist.

Catalogue grinder and spends most their money in Hotlantis. And the Shell-out machine.

Besties for da resties with Murch.

Def parties in lobby. As they should.

Timpani

Slosher main. Mainly Sloshing Machine but also likes the Explosher.

Good at rollers too. Maybe the splatana stamper also??

Doesn’t rlly like using shooters or dualies. Or chargers. Or the normal ink brush. Or brellas.

Sucks at using Brellas and Stringers

Favorite specials r Booyah Bomb, Ink Storm and Crab Tank.

Generally focuses on helping to turf but tends to get #1 splatter or splat assister

Goes to Crab-N-Go a lot. Treats the others when he can.

Usually a good sport but can get frustrated if he’s on a losing streak or after particularly rough matches.

Participates in Anarchy battles but only if at least one of the other two tags along. Prefers Rainmaker and Clam Blitz to the other two modes.

Cellist

Not super interested and probably a little old to be doing this but would get roped in anyways by the other two.

Charger main, surprisingly. Their hands might be a little shaky and they’re no splatting machine but generally alright at holding the line and keeping opponents at bay. also uses Brellas and the aerospray mg.

Specifically they use the Splat Charger, Tenta Brella, Undercover Brella and the MG.

Ink vac lover! Also enjoys the reefslider.

Usually uses gear with respawn punisher or ninja squid.

Tries to ink with charger, usually the base but also just when they think their teammates aren’t doing a good job at it.

Avoids certain maps like the plague.

Doesn’t really look like he’s having fun. He’s not as pissed as he looks promised. Definitely anxious though.

Takes more breaks between rounds than the other two as they can tire him out and at times he’ll even get genuinely stressed or anxious bc of the intensity.

Also doesn’t even participate as much.

All of that being said he is very much capable of having fun and is usually satisfied or even happy with turf war as long as it isn’t totally disastrous.

Also a little bit too fond of using the Reefslider. He’s out for blood when he uses that thing. Especially if he’s already fired up.

Fine with tower control and splat zones. Dislikes Clam Blitz and Rainmaker.

[r4diantgutzzz]

RHYS and MUNJA art (ocs)

For context: they’re twin brothers, they’re based on Reshiram (Rhys) and Zekrom (Munja). They’re both angel / demon things that focus on ideals and truths or whateva

They do not get along lord help them.

Uh yeahi usually don’t post oc art on here.. at all.

Life updates

Also I’m into MGS neow :3..(well,, I’ve always been into it just very secretly bc I thought I needed to play the games to understand the lore better) and with that m currently playing thru the games. Uhmm what else.. I played Pokémon Violet after like.. a whole ass year of putting the game off and I had fun! The dlc is great, challenging even (I had struggles on amarys) and uh yeah!!1!

I also continued reading a man and his cat, which is a really cute manga which I wanna recommend to people more! It’s about a retired pianist who’s wife passed away and he adopts a cat who is lovingly named fukumaru, it’s sad but really cute and funny in parts, I’ve cried to it a few times because it is genuinely heartwarming

[hibiscxs]

I finally have time to watch the new legacies episode so here we go

I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I STILL HATE CLEO’S FROG THING I HATE FROGS IM SORRY

But other than that frog monstrosity this opening scene is super promising

"You're not Hannibal Lecter. You're the lamb. " ASDGFJ HOPE IS MY FAVE

And yes Aria plays the villain verrryyy well I'm so glad they gave us Malivore-possessed Landon

He didn't pull off that "hello Clarice" that well tho

I can't believe I'm getting excited over legacies again pls don't make me a clown again

Wait what am I forgetting when did hope go into Malivore a second time

Wait nvm I remember

Am I the only one who is so tired of literally only Hope caring that Landon is still in Malivore??? Or do they all really think he's dead??? Landon literally has no one except Hope and it's sad and I hate that it ALSO makes Hope look obsessed

Idg what the head dive is going to do but

Uh is the gray eyes thing the standard for vampiric head dives now bc I thought that was just a Necromancer thing

Ohhh Hope was in on it

So is being in Malivore’s subconscious the same as being in Malivore now???

This show’s going to end with Kaleb as the new headmaster lmao I just know it

ARE WE FINALLY GETTING KALEB’S BACKSTORY YES PLEASE

Okay ik the twins often siphon random parts of the school and it's probs a barrier or boundary spell or smth but won't that source ever run out???

Cleo's scene with her sisters is so heartwarming BUT IT’S NOT REAL IM SO SAD

Ohhh damn KALEB’S BACKSTORY

I've been missing how the TVD and TO vampires were actually dangerous so yeah this is great

Josie and Finch are like disgustingly cute

In a good way

They're finally bringing up the Merge

This scene with Kaleb and Ric when Kaleb’s going all vampy is so cheesy

IS THIS THE REAL LANDON PLEASE

The ironic part is that finding Cleo didn't work but it’s Landon saving the day. LANDON DESERVES BETTER FRIENDS

Y'know when I first started watching legacies I didn't care much for Landon but now he makes me feel

"How long have I been gone?” THIS POOR BOY YOU WERE ALL ALONE

Can they just not... Physically separate them from MaliLandon to break the psychic connection

"It's a chain spell so we can only draw magic from a person" THIS IS SO CONTRIVED. PLEASE AT LEAST BE SMOOTHER ABOUT IT WRITERS

Hope, just give MG your blood. Ik he's not actually dying and that this is just a symbolic choice but just do it

Literally no one else on this show has looked in pain when being siphoned except for when Lizzie purposefully desiccated MG, so where is this coming from??? Writers, can we please have some consistency

Oh, so BOTH hope and Landon are self sacrificial to the point of it being really sad and unhealthy huh

Landon's past abuse isn't talked about enough this boy has been through so much

Oh so is MG actually dying or is it like "if Hope goes, then Malivore will kill MG"?

Hope, you literally left Landon to get shot by the golden arrow when you saved the Saltzmans; do not be fucking manipulated (but yes obviously save MG)

I HATE THAT THEY COULDN’T TELL HER THIS SUCKS

Landon Kirby deserves the world

I actually forgot that Hope and MG were kinda not friends at this point. Now this weird side story with them makes sense even if the logic is just.... no

Hope must hate her name bc of all the puns lmfao

Alaric, pls stop giving your student alcohol. Kaleb isn't Damon

I loved TVD Alaric, but Legacies pls fire Matt Davis

Ohhh is this fear of Josie's stemming from Penelope leaving?

GET CLEO OUT OF THERE POOR BABY

Aria and Okoye have great on-screen chemistry

WHAT DID SHE INSPIRE WHAT WAS IT

Legacies is about friendship lmao

Final Thoughts:

I more or less liked this episode, although I think the season 1 and season 2 premieres were stronger. This one definitely beats out season 3′s premiere tho, which is a fairer comparison since both these episodes weren’t meant to be season premieres at all

I loved Landon in this episode. The boy makes me so sad. And Aria as Malivore is still EVERYTHING. But I am SO mad that Kaleb and Ric don’t immediately say that they won’t let Landon sacrifice himself??? Was Raf really the only person besides hope who actually cared about Landon???

I hope Cleo gets her own plot line this season now that her “surprise, I’m the villain” plot line is over. I’d hate to see her just be used as a plot device for “inspiration”

And while I just did praise Aria as Malivore and I do think Malivore is now a stronger villain that he was before, I do kind of think his reason for keeping Cleo prisoner is just. So goofy. When witches were kept for their powers by antagonists in TVD and TO, it was because it gave the antagonist an edge with like prophecies or magical skill. Malivore’s keeping Cleo around in hope she’ll give him a good idea LMFAO

The turning point for Finsie’s story in this episode was so cheesy and badly done. But in the end, I do like how they tied this back to Josie being scared Finch would get overwhelmed with the knowledge that Josie and Lizzie would have to do the Merge and leave her like Penelope did

Really really hated whatever point the writers were trying to get across with Hope this episode. They’re really going to continue to shame her for her reaction to Landon dying in her arms after they had sex for the first time. They have Hope come to this “realization” that she purposefully puts other peoples lives at risk for Landon when that was never the case. She saved MG even after he killed Landon (because she was never like that, even then she understood what was right, it was her who got Raf to see understand it too), she chose to kill herself for everyone (not just Landon) instead of letting someone else get hurt, she chose the Saltzmans over Landon (choosing to let him die) and only lucked out bc Dorian found a loophole with the compulsion. And I’ll say it again, 3x08 was not Hope trying to kill the twins to get Landon back. She was reckless, she was arrogant, she was stupid for thinking the monsters wouldn’t be a threat, but it was the dark magic that literally no one remembered too that was actually dangerous to the twins. And I hate that the crux of this story in 4x01 is Hope and MG back in that memory and Hope having to choose between letting MG die or being with Landon, and that the writers actually have her consider it. In the memory that they’re in, Hope saves MG! That’s what happened! No hesitation! It was Raf who wanted to hurt him, it was Kaleb who doubted she would do it (btw, there’s Plec’s insidious racism again). And let’s not forget that the “feud” between Hope and MG wasn’t even about Hope choosing between the two. It was started bc MG hid the ascendant and decided to let Landon rot in the prison world. It makes me so frustrated everyone except Hope has given up on saving Landon and that the writers don’t ever make that out to be a bad thing and instead make Hope look inconsiderate and selfish for not wanting to let Landon die!

Anyway

Pretty okay episode

I think I saw Clarke in the preview for the 4x02? Hopefully I get to watch it soon after it comes out. Just started a new job so

Conclusion: Landon Kirby deserves the world

[mister-supernova]

Missed Connection

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Pairing: Hope Mikaelson x Reader 

It’s almost been a month since your encounter with the stranger you believed to be from your dreams. Without any luck of seeing her again, you were beginning to think that maybe that’s all she was; just some mere figment of your imagination that you so desperately wanted to have all the answers you needed. 

As insufferably difficult this summer was for you, you still managed to get through it. You thought it was because school wasn’t in session and that you’d be back in your element in no time once classes begin again. 

That was what you had hoped for anyways, but alas even when the halls were filled with your peers and your routine was back in place, nothing seemed to change. The mysterious void in your chest didn’t ease like you wished it would.

You couldn’t help but wonder if your friends had been feeling the same way, too. Surely there’s no chance that you could be alone in this situation, right? 

“You can’t tell me that things haven’t felt a little weird since Landon destroyed Malivore. He doesn’t even know how it happened, Lizzie.” 

The blonde Saltzman nearly whips you in the face with her hair as she abruptly turns to face you in the crowded hallway. “Y/n, we live in a world where witches, werewolves, and vampires exist. Everything in our lives is bound to have a tiny amount of weirdness.”

She made a good point and you knew that, but you also knew that this feeling was different. It had to be. 

Lizzie frowns at the disappointed look on your face and rests a comforting hand on your shoulder, “Look, the most important thing is that Malivore is gone. No more bizarre monsters coming to kill us every week. Now try to stop overthinking things and let’s get through this school year in peace.”  

Before you knew it, your conversation ended just as quickly as it started and Lizzie was on her way back to class. You hang your head with a defeated sigh, desperately searching the hallway for someone who may be just as lost as you were. Instead, you see everyone going about their first day back like normal. 

Students who were away with their families are now smiling brightly as they reunite with friends. Other groups of friends laugh at a joke another says as they pass you by and you wonder if there was someone you should be doing that with.

The clarity that you sought out today only made you more confused than ever. At this point you wished that it was still summer vacation because seeing your classmates having a great first day back had you thinking that you really were alone with your feelings.  

Maybe you just needed a day to hang out with your friends after class today. They may not share your thoughts on how odd things have felt recently, but being around them definitely helps clear your head. 

“I’m sorry, Y/n. You know Landon and I would be down to watch a movie or something, but we’re going on our official first date today.” Josie tells you, disheartened. 

After the multitude of movie dates the two of them shared throughout the summer, you’re surprised that none of those had been labeled as dates, but you weren’t going to tell her that outloud. The two of them seem to be really happy to be spending so much time together and you weren’t going to get in the middle and be the third wheel no one wants, especially on a first date. 

“No worries, Jo. I’ll ask Lizzie and MG if they’re free.” She gives you a gentle squeeze on your arm with a sympathetic smile before you go off to find her sister. 

Things didn’t seem to be going to plan here either.

“If I hadn’t already agreed to this stupid- I mean,” she grits her teeth with a forced smile, “very cool study date with MG I’d totally hang out with you. God knows I’d rather do anything else.” You knew you weren’t supposed to hear that last part, but Lizzie was always awful at lowering her voice. 

If you weren’t already feeling distraught, this definitely was the cherry on top of your depressing cake of sadness. 

Instead of showing Lizzie that, you plastered the fakest smile you could and responded with, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just… hang out downtown and get myself a milkshake at the Grill or something.” 

Plan “get your friends to distract you from the abrasive thoughts penetrating your brain” had failed, but you weren’t going to let it stop you from at least getting out of the school for a couple of hours. With everyone so busy while classes are back in session, it made you wonder what in the world you did after school before this year. 

As much as you tried hyping up how fun it was going to be hanging out downtown by yourself, it only made you feel even more bummed out. Like everything else you’ve been doing since the night Malivore was destroyed, something felt off and nothing seemed to be your remedy.

Minutes turned to hours and you ended up drinking four full glasses of cookies and cream milkshakes at the Grill, literally falling into a sugar coma at your table outside. The sun was barely setting when you got here, but then it was fully dark out when you were woken up from your sugar rush nap. 

“Jesus, Y/n. I thought you were dead or something.” You lean your head upwards to see that it was Landon who woke you from your slumber. 

“One could not be so lucky, phoenix boy.” You groggily respond, stretching out your muscles and wiping any drool from your cheeks.

Looking at your surroundings, you notice that Josie isn’t around. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be on a date?” 

There’s a pained look on Landon’s face at your question, “Yeah, about that… she, uh, she said she wasn’t feeling too good and decided to go back to the school.” 

You raise an eyebrow at him, “What, did you take her to eat sushi or something?” 

That was meant to be a joke, but the look of realization on the curly-haired boy’s face told you all you needed to know. 

“You went to a sushi place.” 

Landon quickly slides into the seat across from yours, “It’s what I suggested. W-Was I not supposed to?”  

“Jo can’t digest any sort of raw food without wanting to convulse. I learned that the hard way when I first started going to the Salvatore school,” you shiver at the memory, “Never again.” 

The phoenix begins falling into a full state of panic, “Oh my God. I didn’t know that! Wh-What am I supposed to do? What if I completely ruined everything? What if she never wants to go on another date with me again? What if-” 

Your patience was thinning very quickly, “Landon, just relax. Take a breather for a second,” you inhale, watching him do the same, and breathe out at the same time, “Go back to the school, check up on her, have a convo about getting some better communication skills and I’m sure everything will be fine.” 

Landon nods, “Okay, okay yeah. That’s good. I’ll, uh, I’ll do that,” he continues to sit across from you until you look at him expectantly, “Do I do that now?”

“For your sake, Josie’s, and especially mine, yes. Now would be great, buddy.” 

“Right, okay. Thanks, Y/n!” He scrambles out of his seat and begins to shuffle away from the Grill. 

“Go get ‘em, Tiger!” You shout with as much enthusiasm you could muster before slumping back into your chair. 

Still dazed from the sugar rush nap and exhausted from that conversation, you lean forward with your elbows on the table and begin wiping the sleep from your eyes using the palms of your hands.

“This is gonna be one hell of a year.”  

“Long day, huh?” You recognize that it’s a girl’s voice you’re hearing, but not one that was familiar to you. 

Moving your hands away from blocking your view, you look up to see the person you convinced yourself was just a figment of your imagination. The long auburn colored hair, fair-skinned, blue eyed girl from your dreams was standing right before you. For a moment, you thought that maybe you really had lost it. 

“Sorry. I just, I saw you sitting here earlier and thought you might want company.”

You’re almost positive that you were staring at her with your mouth hanging open like an absolute idiot. Just say something, dumbass!

“Mind if I join you?” She asks, gesturing towards the now empty chair that Landon left behind. 

“Yes!” 

Idiot! 

“I mean no! No, I uh, I don’t mind.” You chuckle nervously, adjusting yourself in every way possible to hide the fact that you were internally freaking out.

The girl gives you a patient smile before taking the seat in front of you, “So, party of one tonight, huh? I mean, I saw you finish talking to someone right now, but it didn’t seem you two were here together.” 

“Yeah, no. Not together at all or with anyone really,” for some reason you had to make this very clear to her, “That was just a friend of mine who’s having some lady troubles, so I decided to be a good samaritan and give him some positive advice.”

“How chivalrous of you.” Right away you could tell that she was teasing and the nerves you had seconds ago simply began to vanish. 

“Why thank you,” you smile, feeling a wave of warmth when she returns one back, “But yeah, it’s just been me, myself, and I for the night… and day… and probably for the rest of the school year if I’m honest.”

Her smile fades and she tilts her head inquisitively, “What makes you say that?” 

Oh, where to begin. 

“I’ve been asking myself that for a while now actually. Everything should feel perfect given the fact that I have these amazing friends, I go to this incredible school, I’m 100% healthy and not dying of anything that I know of,” you shrug at yourself, “I should be happy with that, but I’m not. It feels so selfish of me to say and I wish I could fix it, but I can’t. How can everything be so close to perfect, but yet there’s still something wrong?” 

The girl stares at you with such empathy and sadness in her eyes that you could swear she was holding something back. 

You continue, “Things also haven’t felt normal lately. My definition of normal anyways. For some reason everything has felt completely off, like I’m missing something. You know when you forget that there’s somewhere you’re supposed to be? Like an event and you don’t realize you’ve forgotten about it until the day of and you say to yourself, ‘oh shit, I can’t believe I forgot about this really important thing’. That’s how I’ve felt ever since summer started,” you notice her tense up slightly, but you continue, “but I can’t remember what I’m forgetting.”

At this point, you were surprised this girl didn’t think you were crazy and start running for the hills. If this were any normal stranger, you wouldn’t feel comfortable enough to overshare the thoughts you’ve been keeping secret from your close friends. For some reason, she made you feel the complete opposite. Strangely enough--given the world you live in--you felt safe with her.

“Everyone at school is making me feel like I’m the only person who feels this way. Everyone else can go back to normal. Everyone else can move on and go on dates and study dates and hang out with their friends and go to class without feeling lost and overall just be… normal.” You finally let go of the breath you had been holding in for what feels like months.

Then you start to laugh at the ridiculousness that just spewed out of your mouth, “Jesus Christ. I’m so sorry. You probably thought you were going to have an innocent ‘nice weather we’re having’ type of conversation, but instead you got a stranger dumping their whole life crisis onto you.” 

“You really don’t have to apologize. Trust me, I understand how insanely messed up life can get and how relieving it is to just vent it all out,” she gives you a reassuring nod with a genuine look of understanding that you’ve been wanting to see for months, “Even if it’s to someone who can potentially be a serial killer.” 

The both of you burst out into a fit of laughs and you swear that you’ve never felt so connected to a person you just met. It was as if your souls had met in another life and were catching up for the first time in a while. Neither of you had a name to place with your faces, but that didn’t seem matter because you already felt like you’ve known this girl for years. 

“I’ve had quite a rough couple of months myself. Not sure if I’d binge drink four cookies and cream milkshakes to numb the pain though.” 

You shrug, “Well, it’s better than the latter option that I can’t even legally purchase because I’m underage. Plus, it helps that these are the best milkshakes in town--even if they are 4 dollars a glass.” 

Now you’re hoping that your old co-worker can cover your bill since you only brought ten dollars with you tonight. Before you could reach for your wallet just to be sure, another thought crossed your mind. 

“Wait. How did you know they were cookies and cream? I know it’s a lot of milk to force inside by body, but I normally leave no trace of evidence behind. Are you a witch or something?” That last part was obviously a joke otherwise she’d be at your school by now.

The girl opens her mouth to speak, but it takes her a moment to come up with an explanation, “It was my best friend’s favorite. Yeah, we used to go out for milkshakes all the time and I guess something about you reminds me of them.” 

You smile, flattered, “Well, might I say, your best friend has amazing taste,” she purses her lips into a tightened smile and lowers her gaze, almost as is the memories of this said ‘best friend’ pained her to think about, “I’m assuming things aren’t so great with them right now?”

She sighs at the thought, “We were close for a long time. I’m actually surprised that they stayed as long as they did. I probably gave them a million reasons to bail, but they were annoyingly persistent,” she chuckles, “I’ll admit, it took me a while to settle into our friendship, but the moment I did was something I would never regret. From that point on the only thing that could separate us was death.” 

Judging by her heavy use of past tense words, you could only think the worst happened, “Did they, you know, um…?” You didn’t want to ask the full question seeing that she was clearly still hurt by the absence of this person. 

She shakes her head, “No. No, it turned out death wasn’t the only factor that was able to keep us apart. We meant a lot to each other and later realized that there was more to us than just friendship. Eventually, things started becoming serious but me being the person I am, I pushed them away and left.”

“Have you tried reaching out to them again?” You thought that there was no way two people who felt those intense feelings could completely forget about each other.

“Once, but things changed. They took one look at me and acted as if I never existed.” Maybe it was the empath in you, but it broke your heart seeing a small pool of tears building up in her eyes. You wished that you could say something to make her feel better and tell her that everything will be okay, but how could you when you don’t know her?

She quickly wipes the tears before they could fall and takes in a deep breath that you instinctively mirrored to compose yourselves. 

“I guess it’s my turn to say sorry, huh? I feel like my baggage was a little heavier than yours there,” she sniffs, huffing out a light chuckle. 

“Well, if we’re giving out medals here, you’ve got the gold. That’s for sure,” you grin, hoping to lighten up the mood.

Her laugh--that you could tell was genuine--gave you the assurance you needed. 

“I feel like I should give you a hug. I mean, if you’re cool with that,” you suggest, ready to push yourself out of your seat, “Because I could kind of use one and I’m just assuming--” 

“That would be great, yeah,” the girl nods with a relieved smile. 

“Alright, great.”

The two of you stand, moving around the table to meet each other in the middle. Her head seemed to fit perfectly against your chest as her arms pressed behind your back. All of the weight that had been piling up on your shoulders began to fall at your feet and the tension from stress that built up inside your chest began fading away. How this could happen from an interaction with a complete stranger, you had absolutely no idea. 

“Is it weird if I say this doesn’t feel weird?” You ask with the side of your head leaned against hers. 

“Well, I think things are only weird when someone makes it weird.” 

You pause for a moment, “Do you think this feels weird?”

She laughs and you know for a fact that she could hear your heart skip a beat, “No. I don’t.”

You fight the goofy grin from appearing on your face, but fail miserably, “Okay, good.” 

Part of you was afraid of what’ll happen the moment you separate. You had no idea when would be the next time you see this girl or if there was going to be a next time. This was the first day in a while when you didn’t feel lost, instead you felt that this was exactly where you needed to be. You felt normal.

Before you could actually start making things weird, you begin to pull away from her embrace, “Well, tonight I learned that I can click with a stranger within a span of ten minutes give or take, so thank you for that.”

She smiles, “Thank you, too.”

“I think it’s safe to say that we’re at the point of learning each other’s names now.” 

“Yes, because why start with those when we could just tell our whole life stories and share an intimate hug first?”

“Exactly! Actually, you know what? I think we should get married in Vegas really quick and we’ll just figure out our names during the vows section of the wedding ceremony. Whatever we come up with in the moment will just be how we refer to each other for the rest of our lives,” you joke. 

“You’re absolutely right.” Wow, a girl who can keep up with your sarcasm without thinking you’re a complete--huge emphasis on complete--idiot? She is the girl of your dreams--literally and metaphorically. 

You stared down at her in wonder, hoping to God that you’re not dreaming and that this interaction has been real, “It’s, uh, it’s Y/n by the way. My name. Y/n L/n.” 

“Hope. Hope Marshall,” she reveals and a victorious smile appears on your lips when you finally have a name to match a face. 

Your smile quickly drops when the clock tower starts going off and you realize that it’s nearly midnight, “Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you tonight, Hope. I'm sorry to cut the rest of the evening short, but my school just got a new headmaster and unfortunately he’s a lot more strict on our curfew than our previous one. Don’t want to turn into a pumpkin, you know?” 

She chuckles, “No worries at all. It was nice meeting you, too, Y/n,” Hope smiles and you can tell that she didn’t want to leave. If you were being honest, you really didn’t want to either. 

Neither of you could find the energy to be the first person to walk away. To do that would be like trying to separate two annoyingly strong and stubborn magnets apart.

As much as you wanted to spend the whole night learning more about each other, you also didn’t want to be put in detention on the first day back at school. 

Unwillingly, you take the first step backwards without wanting to fully turn away from your newfound acquaintance, “Thanks again for the chat. I hope to see you again very soon, Marshall.”  

Hope rolls her eyes, but can’t contain a smile, “Only if you’re lucky.”

“I think I like my chances,” you wink playfully before turning your heel to make your way back to the school feeling the most energized you’ve felt in a long time.

~

apologies for the later update than usual with this series and I apologize in advance if it takes a while for part 6 to be posted. I’m in a bit of a writing funk right now and my mind is currently locked onto the Wilds soooo there may or may not be imagines for that fandom coming from me soon. anyways, happy late 2021 and here’s to hoping this year isn’t complete shit! much love y’all

taglist: @chicken-wang09​ @trikruismybitch​ @sodangtired​

[legaciezzz]

Hello Sister

Part 1

Hope & Cain

Genre: Chapter fic

Synopsis: It was always believed that Hope was Klaus’s only heir and the tribrid, but things change when Cain strolls into town and claims his title as a Mikaelson. But just how much of a Mikaelson is he?

A/N: Here it is Finally! the first chapter! I know it took forever but I really hope you guys are not disappointed with this series!

Cain came to Mystic Falls to look for Hope, but instead found himself in a cell guarded by some guy named MG according to the bearded man. Not that he was upset about it, he seemed to be in the right place, judging from the way they reacted earlier they knew Hope Mikaelson.

Cain leaned himself against the metal bars and watched MG, a smug grin on his face.

MG looked anxiously back at him for the sixth time now, it was obvious that the staring was making him uncomfortable. Then Cain's attention shifted as heard voices nearing.

"I don't understand. If he's not another monster then who is he?" he heard a girl say through the walls.

"I don't know, he won't say anything other than he's looking for you." the man he met earlier replied.

"Dr. Saltzman, thank god," MG said as the bearded man walked in with three girls: two brunettes and a blonde. "He's really starting to creep me out."

"Thanks, MG. We can take it from here." the bearded man, Dr. Saltzman, told him and with that he didn't waste any time getting out of there.

Cain straightened up. "So which one's Hope?" he asked, looking at the girls.

The brunette with the blue eyes stepped out from the middle, arms crossed.

He looked her up and down, a slight arch to his brow. "Hm. Thought you would be taller."

"Who the hell are you and what do you want?" Hope said, unamused.

That question made him smile, which combined with the look in his eye was a little eerie. "The name's Cain. Mikaelson."

"Mikaelson?" the other brunette echoed softly. "I thought you didn't have any other family."

"I don't." Hope responded.

"Actually," Cain began, dangling his arms through the bars. "You do. Hello, Sister."

. . .

"That's impossible. I can't have a brother." Hope said aloud, pacing around.

They were now in Alaric's office, discussing what was just discovered in private. Being Hope's sibling was such a bold claim, plus there was something about Cain that seemed off and they were wary of whether or not they should trust him.

"Are you sure none of your family has mentioned anything about this?" Alaric asked from his desk.

"Yes."

"Maybe Klaus got somebody else pregnant." Josie suggested.

"I highly doubt it."

"Hope, relax, okay? We  can just do the lineage spell and then we'll know if he's telling the truth or not." Alaric said.

"Do we really need another tribrid?" Lizzie pointed out, she had been rolling her eyes and checking her nails during the whole conversation. "One Hope is already enough."

"Thanks." Hope said, unconvincingly.

All of a sudden, MG came barging in which grabbed everyone's attention. "Uh, Dr. Saltzman, we got a situation out here."

They all rushed and followed him outside where a bunch of students crowded around a corpse of a now former student, head severed and a small pool of blood. Shocked gasps, murmurs and a little fainting crying fueled the tension in the atmosphere.

"Guess we can check off vampire." Josie said softly, it was no coincidence that as soon as Cain arrived at the school someone ended up dead.

Then they saw Kaleb appear, "Mystery Dude's not there."

"Thank you." Alaric said to the two boys before turning back to everyone else. "Alright, everyone head inside," and as the students started to do as told, he started to look around. "Where's Dorian?"

And on cue, Dorian emerged from the herd of teenagers frantically making their way inside. "Ric, what's going on?"

"We need to find Cain." Alaric told him before deciding to correct himself when he saw the confusion on Dorian's face. "Long story, just make sure everyone's situated inside."

Dorian then noticed the body. "Is that--"

"Yeah, do you mind taking care of that too?"

"So what do we do now?" Josie asked.

"We," gesturing to him and Hope, "are going to look for Cain before someone else gets hurt. You and your sister stay here."

Alaric and Hope quickly set out to look for Cain god knows what he was up to. Even though they just met him and barely knew anything about him, a dead body was hard not to see as a red flag.

"Where do you think he went?" Alaric asked, walking alongside Hope.

"How am I supposed to know?" Hope replied, a bit bitter. All the sudden she apparently has a brother and she's automatically supposed to know all about him.

A minute passed and they didn't seem to find any sign of Cain, until he popped up out of nowhere. "There you are," he said walking towards them with a smile, blood dripping from his lips.

Hope looked like she was about to attack him with a spell, but Alaric lowered her hand. "What the hell?!" she said.

There was a moment of confusion on his face before realizing that they were probably talking about the body. "Right, yeah. Uh, you left. I got bored... And hungry, I guess-- it wasn't that hard to get out." Cain rolled his eyes when neither of them responded. "It could've been worse. Trust me, one person won't be missed."

"We don't feed off of people here." Alaric said.

"My bad. It won't happen again."

"Why were you looking for us?" Hope said.

"Well you walked out in the middle of our conversation. That was pretty rude."

"Well why don't we get back inside and we can finish that conversation." Alaric said which caused Hope's head to snap towards him.

"Are you serious? He just killed someone and you want to let him back in the school?"

"You think just letting him go is a better idea? We need to know more about him."

"You know I can hear you, right?"

Hope huffed. "Fine."

The three made it back inside to Alaric's office. Alaric and Cain sat at opposite sides of his desk, while Hope leaned against it, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

"So, headmaster, huh?" Cain said, casually looking around the room, trying  open with  a little  small  talk.

"What are you doing here?" Hope asked, cutting  straight to the chase.

"What? Small family reunion is not a good enough answer for you?"

"Yeah, actually."

"Is it really that hard to believe you may have a brother?" he asked, that smug look appearing on his face again.

"Why don't you just cut the bullshit and tell us why you're actually here."

Cain opened his mouth but Alaric stood up to intervene. "You know, maybe tomorrow's a better day to discuss this." he said, looking at Hope. It was obvious her hostile tone wasn't helping get answers. "Hope, why don't you take him back down."

Hope sighed before reluctantly walking Cain out. With each step he took, it got quieter, aside from a few whispers. He glanced around at everyone's face. They all seemed to be scared or angry, either way he didn't care. If this was after one body, just wait until they saw what he really was capable of.

They reached the cell and once he stepped foot in there, he heard the door close, lock and hope speak some Latin-- which made his head turn.

"Boundary spell." she said.

He nodded. "Hm."

She turned to leave without saying anything.

"What? No goodnight?" He asked playfully.

Hope flashed him an obviously fake smile, "goodnight," then rolled her eyes before officially leaving.

Once the silence settled in, Cain walked around in circles. Eventually he got bored and decided to lie down on the bed, staring at the ceiling before falling asleep.

The next morning Cain woke up. He sat up, back resting against the wall, and waited patiently. By the way the sun shone through the little opening. It was probably around mid morning, but it wasn't like he was awake for long either.

Soon enough, Hope entered the room and with a wave of her hand brought down the barrier. "Get up," she said, the blatant indifference in her tone.

The smugness returned to Cain as he walked to the bars. "What? Is there a morning drill or something?"

"Tests," she corrected. "All the new students have to go through them. So if you want to stay you're going to have to pass all of them. If you really are who you say, that shouldn't be a problem." That was a lie. Technically he only had to pass one, but she couldn't let him know that. "Give me your hand."

Cain put hand through the bars, slightly confused, before Hope grabbed it, taking a knife out from behind her back and running the blade across his palm. "The hell?"

She watched the wound close almost immediately. "Well test number one is complete."

"And what test was that?"

"Healing factor."

"I thought yesterday would have hinted at my abilities."

"Can't be too sure." she said with a passive aggressive smile that only lasted for a second. Keeping the knife in her hand, she opened the cell. "Let's go."

They exited the chambers and made their way to the school yard, passing by Alaric whom she gave the bloody knife.

The tests went into noon and Cain passed everyone of them with flying colours, adding the flair of cockiness which Hope rolled her eyes at. The rest of the student body steered clear of the testing field, especially when he hurled a log across campus.

"Was that really necessary?" she asked, turning back to him.

"Are we done now?"

"Not yet." She noticed he had redirected his attention to the twins who were walking in the distance and smiled at them. "Hey. Eyes over here."

"You really don't like me, do you?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"You know. I actually always wanted a sibling. I don't know about a twin but anything's better than being alone. I just think  you're  having  trouble  accepting  that you're not that special anymore." He clearly took pleasure in telling her that last segment. He then turned to walk away.

She put a hand out. "Where do you think you are going?"

"I'm hungry."

Hope walked to a cooler that Alaric traded her for the knife, and took out a blood bag. "Here." she said, tossing him it.

Cain examined the rich red fluid before actually drinking. He decided to take a seat on the cooler as he took his lunch break.

He handed her the bag to offer it to her, which she turned her nose up at. "I'm good."

He looked at her with a slight squint to his eyes, wrapping his lips around the straw like tube once again.

A moment later Landon appeared with a brown paper bag in his hand. "Hey. This is for you." He said, giving her a peck on her temple as she accepted the bag with a smile.

"Who's this?" Cain asked, almost immediately making her return to her previous demeanor.

"He's no--"

"Boyfriend." Landon said, puffing his chest in a way that failed to be subtle or intimating.

Cain grinned. "And what are you? I mean you have to be special to get into this place, right?."

"Phoenix." the boy said proudly.

"Okay, lunch is over. Go jump in the lake." Hope cut in, she obviously didn't want Cain getting close to anyone she cared about, especially since his motives were unclear.

Cain scoffed. "Really?"

"Yes." she said, quickly dismissing him with her hand.

He playfully rolled his eyes as he directed himself towards the lake, stripping down to his underwear when neared closer to the water.

Hope sent Landon off to get towels while she ate her bagged lunch and waited. Once Cain was finishing swimming and drying off, Hope noticed something on his shoulder blade, glistening from the remnants of the water. A birthmark.

As he finished drying off, Landon came back around. "The spell is done."

"Spell?" Cain echoed, putting his shirt back on. "What spell?"

Hope sighed before following Landon inside, Cain walking with her. "Lineage spell."

Cain paused for a second. "So if all you needed was a lineage spell then why all the other trouble?"

"We agreed that it was better to keep an eye on you by making you do all the tests since clearly just keeping locked up didn't go that well."

"Hm, smart. Actually, No, it was kind of obvious. You know, I easily could have slipped away."

“So why didn’t you?”

“I wanted to get to know my sister.” he said with a smile that made her eyes roll. "Hey, Boyfriend, is she always like this?" he asked Landon.

Landon turned to Cain then glanced at Hope who gave him an intense look. He hesitated, but when he opened his mouth he stammered until Cain chuckled.

They went back to Alaric's office where he, Dorian and Emma were. Dorian seemed the most guarded, he had his eyes locked on Cain and his jaw clenched.

"So what is it?" Hope said, sitting down with Cain.

"Well it was a little hard with the amount of blood, but we managed. He's telling the truth, he's your brother." Alaric said.

"That's what the knife was for? If you needed my blood, all you had to do was ask."

"Well excuse us for not trusting you," Dorian spat.

"But now that we know you're telling the truth," Alaric said, giving Dorian a stern glance, "hopefully we can establish some."

"You're just going to let him stay here just like that?" Hope asked, completely shocked by his decision.

"There are conditions though."

"Of course there is." Cain said, handling a book from Alaric's desk until he took it back.

"You're not to leave school grounds without permission, you'll attend class as scheduled, you'll be under close watch-- especially by Hope who will be in charge of you and you'll stay in the cell until we're sure you're no longer a danger to the student body. And if any-- and I mean if any-- harm is to come to any students, I deal with you myself. Am I clear?"

"Crystal," he said with a cheeky smile. "Who's she?" he then pointed to Emma.

"This is Emma. She's the school counselor."

"Thanks, but I'm already well adjusted."

"I meet with all the students." Emma stated.

"Well then I'd like to consider myself a guest."

"Dr. Saltzman, can we talk for a minute?" Hope said.

. . .

Cain was now in the library, Dorian watching him like a hawk, while Hope talked to Alaric about what the hell he was thinking. Cain was contently browsing through a book, legs up on the table. His focus, however, drifted as his ears picked up a conversation MG and the twins were having as they huddled near the library doors.

"Do you think Dad is gonna let him stay?" Josie said. "I mean they must have decided something."

"Hope hasn't told you guys anything?" MG asked.

"No, and by the looks of it she isn't too happy about this." Lizzie commented.

"They can't actually let him stay, right? I mean he killed one of the students."

"Like no one here has killed anyone." Cain interjected with head still down in the book, causing the three to go quiet. He then set the book down and got up to walk over to them. "I mean this place is filled with werewolves and vampires, I think it's highly hypocritical of you to judge me as though I'm the only one that has taken a life."

Despite his smile, there was a certain intensity to his eyes that made MG swallow hard.

"Were you eavesdropping?" Lizzie said boldly.

"It's kind of hard to ignore when people are talking about you." Cain turned to her, there was something about her attitude that stood out to him. "I'm Cain, but you know that already."

"Lizzie." she said, unimpressed.

"And the shy one?" he asked, looking at Josie who seemed to be avoiding eye contact.

"Josie." she said meekly.

"And it's MG, right?"

MG nervously nodded.

Hope walked into the library, obviously looking displeased, and they all looked at her.

"And I'm guessing that's my cue." Cain said. "It was nice meeting you."

As he followed Hope back to Alaric's office yet again, she flashed him a look. It was clear that she didn't trust him, especially around her friends.

"So, do I finally get to talk now? Or are you two going to keep having side conversations?" Cain smugly asked as he rested against the back of a chair.

"Why are you here?" Alaric bluntly asked.

"Well I won't bore you with the details, but basically I was raised by a cult that I thought was family, then found out that was a lie along with my entire life and that I have a sister."

"And how exactly did you know where to find Hope?"

"I asked around. I had no idea our family was so popular."

"What do you want  with me?" Hope asked.

"I already  told you. Is wanting to know  your family seriously that much of a crime?" he said, laughing with confusion.

"Forgive us, we've haven't been getting a lot of friendly visitors lately."

Cain sighed and stood up, dropping the smug expression. "Look, I know I didn't make the best impression yesterday, but I've spent my whole life thinking I was alone and now I'm not. Wouldn't you feel the same way?" He stared at her earnestly, waiting for a response.

She looked into his eyes and the longer she did, it got harder to say no without seeming completely heartless. She glanced over to Alaric before sighing and softening her tone. "Fine."

"Great," he said,  smiling  wide as he pulled his sister for  a tight side hug. "I promise you we are going  to have  so much fun together." he whispered  into  her ear, sending chills down  her spine.

. . . 

The next day, it was time to tour the school  and mingle with  the factions. Hope was unenthused to say  the least and only gave a brief explanation to all the rooms they came  across while Cain took a deep interest  in everything. As they came to the end  of  the tour, they crossed  paths  with  Emma who was letting  a student  out of her office.

"Hope," she smiled, pleased  to see her face. "I see you're  giving  tours now."

"Actually, we're  just  finishing  it."

"And I'm glad we ran into you when we did," Cain  jumped  in, "because  I've been  thinking  about  what  I said to you  and  I've changed my mind. I'd love to talk to you."

"I'm delighted to hear that. I don't have anything right now,  if you'd like to come in." Cain nodded and walked  inside, Hope followed  him but was  stopped at the  door.

"I know Dr. Saltzman told you  to stay with  him, but you know the rules. Plus it seems  to  me like you could use a break from him...Don't worry, I can handle him." 

Hope relaxed her shoulders. "okay," she breathed out, forcing  a small smile. 

"And don't  forget, you and  I are scheduled for  Thursday." Emma  closed the door  behind her and  went  to seat herself  across  from  the newcomer. "So, Cain, what would  you  like  to  talk about?" 

"You said that you meet with  all the students.  Do you  keep  files on them?"

She immediately  tensed  at the question, so caught  off  guard. "Those are strictly  confidential."

He leaned forward  and  smiled, looking  intensely into  the depths of her eyes.  "Surely you  can make an exception  for  family."

Compelled, Emma  rose up and  walked out  to her filing  cabinet. 

"And while you're at it, get her friends' too. I should know  what  kind  of company  my sister keeps."

She put a small  pile of files on the table  in the seating  area and  Cain kicked his feet  up as he started to browse them. He took time reading  the files, almost  analyzing them  like  characters  in a book. After he was done, he tossed  the  last file back  onto the  pile.

"My sister  has some  interesting  friends, doesn't  she?" he said, sitting  back up straight. "Oh-- and  I guess  I should  probably give you something  to write about  me in return. But, you know, I think  I'm pretty  well adjusted so there's nothing really  to talk about. I mean I was a true prodigy, I was amazing  at everything  I was taught, I was worshipped. It  wasn't  like  I had  a bad childhood, it's  just  that it was all a lie…" He started to  drift off and  zone out when it came to that last part but then quickly  snapped  out of  it. "Anyway, do with that what you will. This was a nice chat. I know this  was  only our  first time sitting  down  with  each other but I've  learned  so much  from  you."

They rose up together. "No problem," she said, putting  on a smile  to hide the underlying  uneasiness.

Right before walking  to the door, Cain  smiled back and  placed  a hand  on her shoulder. "Oh and just to be sure, no one needs to know about  this. You know, confidentiality and all." he said, using his compulsion again.

He was let  out and  wandered  the  halls  until saw Hope  again in the student lounge with  Landon  and Rafael. 

"There you are, and I see you're  with Boyfriend  and  Friend." he said, walking  over to them.

She looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes.

"It's  Landon, actually." Landon said. 

"Good  to know," he said before  turning  his attention  to Hope, "So what else is on the agenda for today?"

"Meeting with  the  factions. And since you're here, Raf, I guess  we should  start  with  the  wolves."

"Sure."

The two said  their byes to Landon, Hope  giving him a kiss on the  cheek  before  leaving.

"So when he said  he was a phoenix  did mean it as in the bird or is that some code word I don't  know about?" 

"I'm not  talking about  my boyfriend with  you."

They spent the next few minutes in silence until they reached the gym where the pack were playing a small game of kickball.

"And here's the pack.” Rafael said, as the pack suddenly stopped the game and went to huddle around them. “Guys, this is Cain."

Jed, with his chest puffed out, took a step in. “Isn’t he the dude who killed Tristan Gorecki?”

“That was an accident.” Rafael said to which Cain in the background had his own reaction to the comment that made Hope shoot him a dirty look. ”And Dr. Saltzman said we have to give  him a chance to fit in.”

“How are we sure he’s not gonna hurt someone again?”

“Jed, do we really have to remind you of how  many fights you’ve been in?”

 Hope said, “he won’t hurt anyone. I’ll  make sure of it.”

Cain looked around at each of the werewolves. “So, who’s the alpha?”

“I am.” Jed and Rafael said in unison then looked at each other.

“I mean I did fight you to become Alpha.” Rafael said.

“Then you were a wolf for the summer and someone had to take over.” Jed rebutted.

“But I’m back now.”

The other tribrid huffed a faint laugh and smiled. “This is great. A pack who doesn’t even know who their Alpha is. If you guys are so unsure, I’m more than happy to step to the plate.”

Jed stepped up to him and growled. “You think this is funny? You come in here, kill one of us and--"

"Okay, that's enough," Hope said, stepping  in and pulling her brother away. "I think we found out how well you get along with the werewolves. Cain, let's  go."

Then while walking  in silence, led by Hope  of course, they ran  into MG, Kaleb and  a couple  of vampires who were standoffish to him. The new kid that single head managed to create  tension  between  them and  the rest of the factions.

But then MG, being  the  diplomat, decided to  be the first to engage Cain in conversation even though just  his presence made him nervous. They sat and  chatted-- which felt more like an interrogation  on Cain's end, talking about the ups and  downs of being a vampire.

 "You think we can trust him?" Kaleb  asked Hope  as  they  both  stood by and  watched the other two.

"Hell no." Hope said  bluntly. "But Dr. Saltzman  says until  we find  out  he has a M.O. besides  yesterday he hasn't  really  given us a reason  not to trust him."

"What if he really doesn't have a game and  just wants to be your brother?"

"Trust  me, I know  my family."

MG and  Cain  talking until  MG's discomfort finally  reached  its  peak.

"I do have another  question," Cain  began, leaning  forward  with  his eyes even more on MG than  they were. "Do you get any rippers here? I mean with how many  vampires  that are here, there has bound  at least  one  loose canon."

MG immediately  tensed  up but tried to hide under a nervous  smile.

"Have you met with  the witches, yet? You can probably catch them at the mill, they hang out  there all the time." he said, quickly changing  the subject.

And  with that cue Hope got up from  the wall. "MG's  right. The sooner  we're  done mingling  the sooner  I can get you back  downstairs  and  do some studying."

And  again  She dragged  her brother off to somewhere  else. The witches were at the mill as they socialized amongst  themselves, then all heads turned as soon as the two Mikaelsons stood  at one of  the entrances.

They walked in some more and  just as Hope assumed  there was going  to be tension  like the other two factions, the witches started to gather around them. Although  some witches kept their distance, the  others seemed  to want  to meet  the newcomer.

"So you're  Hope's brother?" Alyssa Chang said, being  the first  to speak.

"Lost and found." Cain replied.

"Well, let's just hope being  a buzzkill isn't hereditary.”

His lip twitched with amusement. "I can assure  you I'm lots of fun." he said, his eyes glancing  over at Lizzie.

"Does this mean you're also a tribrid?" another witch asked.

"Yep. I'm the whole  package."

The witches brought him over  to sit down as they continued  to ask him more things, fascinated  by  him as if he was an exotic animal  or something. And Cain  very much  seemed to be enjoying the attention. Hope looked a little confused as they pulled  him away. 

"They're  acting  like  they've  never  met a tribrid  before." she said  to herself. But on the plus side she knew  she didn't  have  to watch  him as closely anymore. 

After a while, Cain managed to slip away  from the witches  and  found his way to Lizzie  who was on the staircase.

"So you're a witch." he said, pleased.

"How'd  you  figure  that out?" she said, oozing with sarcasm.

"I was just wondering  why you were with  the others."

"I already  met a tribrid. Wasn't  impressed by the first one, not gonna be by the second  one."

"I think  I can  come  up with a few other  ways  to impress you."

She looked over at him. "Never gonna happen."

They sat in silence for a moment  until Cain glanced  over to his sister and  Josie.

"I can't  believe  you and  my sister are friends."

Lizzie looked at him confused.

"I mean  from  what  I've… heard  you two had quite the rivalry. But I can relate, my parents did spend  way more  time  with  her than  me too."

"My dad actually knows I exist. It's  different."

"Is it really?"

The blonde clenched  her jaw right before walking  off. "Your new brother is annoying."

"Tell me about it," Hope said.

That led to a  rant about  how  this whole situation and  Cain showing up out of nowhere felt like  an inconvenience to her. While Cain went back to the witches.

After, Hope  realized how much time had  passed and  decided it was time  for  Cain  to get back  to the cell.

"Alright, time to go."

Cain looked up at her from the couch. "Come on, I just  started  making  friends."

"And  I have  to study for  a class  tomorrow." That and she'd been around him enough for  the day.

Cain let out a little sigh before getting up. Although  he was a little  disappointed  it was time to  leave, he figured if he wanted to get in his sister's  good  graces going  against  her wasn't  the way to go.

They walked  together  in silence again  because the last  thing that Hope  would  want  to  do with  some sketchy stranger  is have  a friendly  conversation or share her whole life story.

"I like the witches," he said, "especially your  friend, Lizzie."

Hope couldn't  help  the snort. "Good luck  with that."

"You take after Mom, don't  you?" he said, catching  her way off guard. "Based  on the things  I've  heard  people  say about  her. I also  came across  a picture  this  one time. You look like  her too." This made her  pause for  a second. She knew  that they were  family but  somehow actually talking about their  family-- key alone  their parents-- seemed  to be the last thing she'd  expected. "Do I look like either of them to you?"

After that, the moment  she looked  into  his  eyes, a bunch  of images of Klaus  raced through  her mind. 

"You have his nose," she said softly before quickly turning  away and  going back to walking.

[prettywarriors]

Ok ill bite whats the worst mg series

alright, whats the worst magical girl series in your opinion?

Thanks you two for letting me do some yelling. The obvious guess would likely be one of the recent edgelord shows right? Magical Girl Site or something similar? But nay I say, for while MGS and Day Break Illusion and such and what not generally tell you what to expect right away. Don't like super violence and suffering? Watch something else is the clear message from the get go. One of the bait and switch series then like Madoka or maybe Yuki Yuna? For what faults they may or may not have, at least these series do something and are interesting, even if you're not huge on what goes down in the series. A parody then? They range from affectionate to banned in New Zealand but regardless of quality and their feelings for MGs, it's a parody. It's a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously (plus they're usually short so you can just forget about them forever).

So what makes a series terrible then, I am sure you are asking. IMO? Setting expectations for an interesting and enjoyable series, and then dashing them to hell.

Come with me below the cut, as I talk about Key Princess Story: Kagihime Eternal Alice Rondo!

Spoilers abound so if you care about those for a 15 year old series, click away.

Background: Kagihime was a 4 volume manga that ran from 2004-2006 that was picked up for a 13 episode anime adaptation near the end of its run. The manga is created by a pair (Kaishaku) who you may know for making Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto. Kannazuki no Miko, and Steel Angel Kurumi, and the anime had a script written by the same writer (Mamiko Ikeda) for Tenshi Ni Narumon who also did some script writing for Princess Tutu and Seven of Seven. The anime also had 6 character music videos which are fairly simple but a nice addition to the series for the main girls. Discotek has been publishing the anime in the states in recent years, and the manga was brought over by *squints at book spine* Dr Master Publications.

The Premise: Girls transform and enter weird outside of reality spaces to fight each other with giant keys to take each other’s stories to create a third Alice In Wonderland story.

Well, an off-brand Alice story written by Alternate L. Takion, rather than Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson, that while the series uses all the aesthetic hallmarks of the tradition Alice, the little we see of the in universe Alice story is clearly different. Which is fine, at the end of the day, it’s still about someone who loves the Alice stories and wishes there was more, and even makes his own fanfiction version. His? Oh yeah, while the girls do all the fighting, the main character is Aruto, a teen boy who loves Alice, and for reasons we don’t know till late game, can enter the liminal spaces that the ‘Alice Users’ fight in. He chases a girl who looks like the Alice he sees in his story, who is named Arisu, and gets roped into this fanfic battle royale. He is also the older brother of the very needy Kirihara, who also ends up being and Alice User. As does Kirihara’s bff Kisa. To round out the group of enemies-turned-friends-who-will-work-together-to-collect-the-Eternal-Alice-without-having-to-fight-eachother group is a young genius researcher Kirika who wants to know more about Aruto’s connection that allows him to enter the spaces where the girls fight.

Then there’s all the other girls, some of whom still have real importance to the story and some who have a few panels or 2 scenes total. But with a whole bunch of girls to design, the creators reached out to a whole lot of other people to have them create designs! Eventually the battle gets down to the last few girls, there’s a confrontation with the guy running the whole thing, and while the anime and manga vary quite a bit the whole time, in both version Aruto ends up with Kirihara. Oh and Arisu was created by Aruto’s super imagination powers.  

The Promise: Here on is subjective, particularly with what I personally saw as potential from this series. because I need you to understand how much I want to like this series. 

~Alice in Wonderland themed: I know some people aren’t alice fans and that’s fine you do you but as a big alice fan this is great. We have a few alice episodes and themed characters amongst series like CCS and MGRP, and even Alice themes in other series like Tweeny Witches and Alice 19th. But damn it I am down for Alice series.

~Giant Keyyyyyyyys: Yeah yeah Kingdom Hearts but these keys are much more staff like for a lot of the characters which ads and air of elegance rather than the KH ones that for me at least feel well designed for big ol props rather than actual weapons. We also get...

~Weapon variety: It counts as a key if it’s a thorn whip that can be shaped like a key right? How about a giant pocket knife? Crossbows can also be keys. Hush. And we have this variety because

~Guest Artists: For magical girl series where we have a variety of outfits designed by different people, we have Kagihime, Uta~Kata, and uhh I guess Magia Record? But that’s a mobile game with a hella number of characters and with how mobile game works I wouldn’t count it just because it’s less the intent of the series to have variety and more the nature of having lots of girls. (Precure doesn’t count because unless I missed a memo each season’s set is still by one designer). If a series isn’t about a team and therefore doesn’t need cohesion, bringing in other artists is a great way for variety and new looks. 

~The long term goal: Fighting with other people who love the same piece of media you do in hopes of creating new material that will be viewed as official? That’s just fandom nowadays. But it’s a legitimate interesting concept, and opens up so many doors for a message for the series, be it ‘what you create is no less valuable than the canon work’ or ‘it’s hard to let go when something you love doesn’t have more to it but you can still love it for what it is’ or ‘bond with the people who like the thing you like ya idiot instead of fighting about it’. The concept is interesting and there are so many narrative ways you can take this.

~Gays: Between the anime and manga, we have at least 5 wlw. Is it a magical girl series without some gays? (side note- the manga had a short thing where the MC wears a girl’s uniform and is pretty comfortable in it and while there is no way this was the intent, between that and the emphasis on the stories that live in girls and how the fight zones have no men, I’m just saying, Trans girl Aruto.)

~Greater Fairy Tale Premise: We meet a Little Match Girl based MG who is obsessed with Andersen rather than the Alice books, and touch on a Sleeping Beauty character in the manga. The manga at least implies that classic stories and fairy tale authors uh. Live on in a liminal space as immortals with world warping powers within that world and there could be opportunities for other girls in the real world to fight for Little Mermaid 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The Good: Everything has positive points, no matter how bad it is.

~Character Designs: Some of those looks slap. As do most of their weapons. 

~Backgrounds: I have a strong opinion on backgrounds in anime that can be easily boiled down to old watercolor backgrounds good, modern filtered photos as background bad, and as a 2006 series, this might not be Memole nice but they’re quite attractive. 

~Splash Pages: Easily my favorite thing after the designs, each chapter’s title page for the manga just has a character standing in a setting. Which is not everyone’s thing I’m sure but it’s a nice simplistic way to let the characters breathe imo. Even if at least some of the settings were deffo traced. But that’s how backgrounds work to some extent? If I ever get to the Met again, I am tracking down this exact photo, but here is a likely candidate for an example.

~Different Versions: I do not understand the need to make an adaptation that tries to be a 1:1. Kagihime had the same ideas and characters and did some of the same beats but very much had a different finale story and a lot of changes in the middle (like the Alice cops in the manga). Again, not something everyone probably wants I’m sure, but I very appreciate this, especially since the Anime kept good pace with the number of Manga chapters (reading the manga again while watching the anime at 3.8x speed just now was very interesting to see the different interpretations of events in a different medium.)

The ‘Fine’: Yeah.

~Anime Visuals: Look 2006 was still early enough into digipaint that I will give it a total pass on these. The colors are too bright but in a very bland way, the lineart is nothing interesting, and the faces are. Iffy. But it’s not total garbage to look at (probably helped by backgrounds and character designs...) it just came out in an era where not enough people knew how to stylize things to account for the weakness of the tools of the time. (It was 4 years earlier but I feel Kagihime is the polar opposite of Chobits with its painfully bland color palette while still being just. Flat. Sorry for the drive by Chii.) 

~Music?: There sure were songs. Obviously, they are nothing to me.

The Bad: CW for.... somehow all the big things to an extent. 

~Fanservice: Look, I am fine with fanservice, especially for a series that’s, ya know, not targeted at kids, big Mai Hime fan here even if I would recommend skipping the panty thief episode. And honestly the series generally isn’t fanservicey, at least by the modern standards of having the camera choosing under the skirt rather than an over the shoulder shot like I’ve seen plenty in other shows. Even the sexier outfits like the rose whip dominatrix aren’t bad BUT. When the girls fight. One takes her phallic key and drives it into another girls chest between the boobs while the loser cries in pain and then her book comes out and when the victor rips out pages, the loser’s clothes also rip. It is very SuperS Amazon Trio assault metaphor-y. There’s also a bit of fanservice with the sister becauseeeee....

~Incest: If you read the premise up there, first wow good job because I’m sure not re-reading that, you might have noticed I said MC ends up with his sister. As someone who is a big mythology fan and watches plenty of anime, I have a decent tolerance for your obligatory ‘oh we’re siblings but actually cousins so our feelings are okay’ or whatever the fuck Citrus has going on I don’t know that series and I don’t vibe BUT. I have limits and boy did this series go beyond that because multiple episodes are dedicated to the sister being in love with the brother? And the brother returns her feelings but knows that they are wrong so he put everything he likes in his sister into his version of Alice who, of course, physically manifests as Arisu who he creates accidentally with his uh. Magic imagination powers. But again in both versions MC still ends up with his sister. Hey, at least the manga eventually said the boy was adopted when the sister was like, 3, so if nothing else no blood relations? The anime did not ad this. -_-

~Under Utilized Characters: Arisu’s gradual revelation that she has no childhood memories because she isn’t a real person is so interesting and they don’t do nothing with it but also? That’s the kind of thing I personally would love to dig into and Kagihime, while touching on this world shattering revelation, easily loops back to So Anyway She Should Fight For The Man and to hell with developing a life or personality outside of what has been written for her. The rest of the main 5 were 2 note characters which. Could be worse? The most interesting character ends up being the child genius who accidentally murdered her childhood bestie (and/or lover? depending on version) and her coming to terms with that (the friend is alive but the version changes how and why she thinks she’s dead). Then the villain has the motivation of ‘i lost my creativity and now have become an immortal living outside of normal space and am getting girls to fight each other because that’s like a story so I’m still relevant right?’. But shoutout to the anime for then taking death of the author literally. The numerous other girls are canon fodder outside of like. The manga version of the dead gf and the little match girl.

~Battle Royale: This is not a thing I have an issue with generally. Again, but Mai Hime fan, I need to read MGRP 11, BUT by not developing the non-main girls there is no emotional connection which makes them just canon fodder and that’s boring as sin for a royale system. The initial main character fights revolve so much around the MC guy being there that they fall flat, and the 2 or 3 final battles in both versions still feel without any stakes. Also for a royale thing most of the characters don’t actually die, which cool! Neat! Except when they do? Some nobodies and a somebody are murdered (at least in the manga) and the tone never feels like it’s supposed to be upping the stakes, it’s just. Some people are dead now. And do you want to guess which of the main characters died?

~Gays: Oh boy the best friend of the brother-complex sister is in love with her and (in the manga) dies. She does apparently get better for the last chapter but the death itself is only felt by the rest of the cast for a page or two before we go back to feeling sad big brother wants to kiss his mentally generated sister clone rather than his actual sister u_u. Bury your gays is nothing new, but I wonder if it was also intended to be justified because Guess Who Is Creepy and a bit Perverted? Oh look the lesbian keeps the used swimsuit of her beloved and manipulates events to get an indirect kiss and when she sees the sister trying to strange Arisu for a moment she decides to do it for the sister? It’s not good. You want bad gay rep in a magical girl series, well here ya go. We also had a nobody in the first(second?) episode whose story pages reveal her having a kiss with a girl, and then we also have the prodigy again and- in the manga- her. Uh. childhood lover who she thought she killed but the girl has been wiping her mind over and over so prodigy remembers ‘killing’ the friend and not the she’s alive so she can keep? fucking with her? Toxic!

~Sexual Content: But wait you say, you already covered fanservice! Ah but that is sexual content for titilation. This is sexual content for dramatic backstory! The red riding hood character was sexually assaulted, another character was manipulated into sex first as a teen and then more often to ‘get into the publishing industry’, and the same writer forces some aggressive kisses on the MC. None of it is gratuitous which is nice, but also, was it necessary? Not making a new point for this but read riding hood’s dog was also murdered so unnecessary animal death gets tossed on in there. 

~Male Lead: You can have a male, non magical character as the main character surrounded by magical girls. This is not how to do it. If I can make a vicious and hopefully not understood reference, Aruto is basically Tate from the Mai Hime Manga. If you understood that, I am so sorry. If you didn’t, congrats! Don’t read the manga. Or do and send me asks about the iconic final page of the first volume (18+). Anyway, this dude is boring, everything revolves around him, BUT I’ll be generous and say at least this isn’t a harem series? It looks like it out of context but it’s just a triangle with a fun attached scientist and token lesbian.

~Premise: They didn’t make good use of it. The initial goals of ‘take other girls pages from their soul books because if we get enough we unlock a third alice book’ is good! And then we add the twist that that was never going to happen and either if we get all the pages we can grant a wish, or these fights are just happening for the amusement of and asshole. Either way, yeah okay I guess. But at no point do we ever achieve this forbidden wish granting book and the asshole just. Lives. Nothing happens to him. His peers don’t even dunk on him. The only real changes from the beginning and the end of the series are: the siblings are now chill with dating, and the scientist lady won’t turn into a child in magical spaces. Oh. Yeah.

~Why did we make this adult a child sometimes?: I think we know why. Stop trying to get those types of folks to watch your already meh series. I also could have sworn at points in the past looking up images for this series I’ve seen extra art for Yuuri the Thumbelina-y Alice User that seemed like it would fit alongside anything by POP. You know, the Moetan guy. If you don’t know, god I wish that were me. 

Wrap Up: I have definitely forgotten some points and am well within my rights to ad to this whenever I remember more points but uh. Yeah.  

Listen you want an alice themed battle royale with nice outfits? Rozen maiden is right there. Battle Royale magical girl series that’s good with fanservice? Mai Hime. Series with different outfits while being based on a classic story? Pretear.

Hope anyone who read all of this at least got what I was saying, even if they don’t agree with it. And thanks for reading because whoops. 

[snaamagica]

mala overthinks swimmura’s MGS

here is a link to the story if you haven’t seen it yet + there will be spoilers for arc 1 in relation to where magireco fits in with madomagi’s timeline in this post

okay so as absolutely wild swimmura’s MGS is, there’s actually some seriously fantastic and understated characterization going on here. like, holy shit. i have. so much to say. long post ahoy, jump under the cut to take a look

tl;dr talking points: 1. mitama’s hypnosis 2. oktavia’s behavior 3. homura’s reaction to oktavia 4. homura characterization wrt saving sayaka

1. mitama’s hypnosis

so, at first it’s very easy to assume that this is mitama fucking around with someone’s soul gem without permission a la swimkyoko (even if this was before she came out)

BUT hear me out: that’s not what happened at all. firstly, mitama actually did get permission, and she didnt actually skirt around it. secondly:

mitama didn’t mess with yachiyo’s soul gem at all

she used regular ass hypnotism

which, btw, has been scientifically proven to not work unless the person being hypnotized wants it to. you can’t make someone do something they wouldn’t be willing to do. this fact alone clears up the whole thing for me, and raises so many funny questions about yachiyo instead LMFAO like -- i don’t think yachiyo was fully cognizant of her surroundings, as proven by, y’know, what just happened. it was probably as if she was in a dream, from her perspective -- that kind of funky reality perception is what i think was going on

and i don’t know if the writers wrote this with that intention? buuut it makes everything both make more sense to me and less icky, so i’m rolling with it

besides which, there’s nothing saying mitama was GOING to mess with soul gems for it? her talking about “illusions” makes it sound like its magic-related, and maybe she did want to step up to that, but -- anyway i feel like that’s leading to definite overthinking so i’m gonna stop there since i still have so much to cover. the important takeaway is deep down, yachiyo definitely wanted to have fun in a fishing competition, apparently. LOL

2. oktavia’s behavior

it’s actually pretty cute that oktavia was delighted to be in the water -- in her element. she was very visibly having fun, if observers were able to figure out that just from seeing it

which, imo, reflects on how sayaka feels when she’s in HER element? very, very cute. even if the entire surrounding circumstance (sayaka almost witching out bc she was scared she was dying) is, uh, BAD

3. homura’s reaction to oktavia

friendly reminder that the magireco timeline replaces the one in madomagi where homura told them the truth about witches, sayaka having contracted was a part of their group and didnt believe her, culminating in sayaka witching in front of everyone and mami flipping her lid and at the end madoka asks homura to kill her so she doesnt turn into a witch

that didnt happen here

so homura has not ever seen oktavia previous to this

idk i just thought it was interesting to think about. the stark difference here, seeing oktavia in the sun and the water versus in the dark train terminal, underground

4. homura characterization wrt saving sayaka

this has multiple parts to it because like. god. GOD. THERE’S A LOT GOING ON HERE

4a. homura is actually in her element, too. she talks about needing to remember  yachiyo’s stance, which she would’ve seen for only a brief moment before chaos happened. mimicking something she saw another girl do once -- tapping into her very practiced learning skills -- this is another take on a battle with a witch, when you think about it. and she’s trying to save someone

4b. the situation is utterly fucking ridiculous but seriously comes down to saving someone. even if we know sayaka couldnt have actually died from it, she didnt know, and it still was painful and terrifying, and she definitely needed rescuing from it

4c. HOMURA SUCCESSFULLY SAVING SOMEONE OTHER THAN MADOKA, especially sayaka, who she never gets to save in madomagi, not even once, AND BEING ACKNOWLEDGED FOR IT. HOLY SHIT GUYS

4d. “i’ve never received a trophy this big before” more like she’s never won a trophy before, period. she’s never been able to do physical competitions like this before becoming a magical girl and she typically doesn’t get to anyway bc of their lifestyle. so not only is this acknowledgment but this is one of those “normal life” landmarks she never got to have before

4e. homura still being full of self-doubt and feeling undeserving of the acknowledgment and reward even once it was over. extremely realistic and also ow my heart

4f. “you’ll definitely figure out a way to save me” UGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DO I EVEN NEED TO SAY ANYTHING ELSE

4g. ending by circling around to swimmura’s doppel story is just fucking OWCH. and makes so much fucking sense. even after a single victory like that, it just reminds her of all the times she failed. especially recently, with kuro. especially after everything. and that doppel story really drives home how close coolmura was to becoming homulily all along, you know? she really was right there on the edge. and homulily talking the way she did just really drives home that akumura still has the mind of a witch... just. god, y’all, holy shit

4h. moemura refusing to go away. refusing to let herself be stifled and buried. UUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

[ajokeformur-ray]

I wouldn't mind if Arthur stalked me! Actualy I want him to! Am I crazy? Probably...but that's why I fit right into this fandom lol. Anyway, if requests are opened can I get one where you live in the same building as Arthur and he has a crush on you but is afraid to approach you 'cause he think you are definitely going to reject him, so he stalks you trying to build up a courage to talk to you?

TW; swearing, smoking, stalking, reader is aware of Arthur’s tactics + finds it amusing, err… think that’s it? I tried hard to not romanticise stalking in this, I’m not too sure if I managed it or not.

This one isn’t quite what you were after because it ran away with me like it usually does, but I hope you enjoy it anyway!

Word count: 1, 141.

As you came out of your flat on the eighth floor, you noticed the flash of a familiar well loved yellow hoodie disappear into a room down the hall, the door slamming shut in Arthur’s haste to not get caught by your expectant eyes. You grinned to yourself. It was kind of cute, in a weird way, how desperately he tried every morning, without fail, to catch you coming out of your apartment just so that he could talk to you. Every morning did he wait for you, and every morning did he chicken out of whatever he was truly after. It was slightly weird, but you found it endearing, too. Arthur just kept trying and it was admirable. The world hadn’t beaten him into the ground just yet, like it did to so many others.

The scent of cigarettes hung heavily in the air, making the already dirty corridor air seem even hazier than it already was. All around you could you feel the presence of Arthur Fleck, your sweet but eccentric neighbour. His closeness comforted you as you walked down the corridor towards the eight flights of stairs. You weren’t going to risk the lift; it wasn’t worth being late for work again. You couldn’t afford to get fired, and so it was with a silent apology to your body and a quiet thanks to the thoughts that had made you put actual effort in eating breakfast this morning that you took to the stairs, feeling claustrophobic and dirty all the while. The city was dirty, polluted, from the inside out, and it showed greatly.

You suspected that Arthur would take the stairs this morning, too, and when a door slammed shut above you, you grinned and sped up a little. You had always had a secret thrill run through you whenever your eyes met Arthur’s own, and you knew that he had a crush on you. So socially undeveloped was he that he found it hard to talk to people, so you could forgive him for his stalking. It was creepy, sure, but people talked when they lived in apartment complexes and so you had come to know why Arthur was socially shunned, berated by all for simply being himself. Your heart had bled for him, and though you often extended an olive branch his way, he never seemed to take it. Or, more accurately, he didn’t know how to take it. It didn’t matter. You would help him when the opportunity presented itself.

Instead of approaching you like a socially adept person would, Arthur followed you to and from work most days, and would always chicken out first thing in the morning when he wanted to speak to you. You made way more allowances for his stalking and creepy ways than you would for anybody else; truth be told, his interest in you was mutual, and you were just waiting for that small voice in the back of your head to tell you that now was the time to give him what he was chasing so desperately; a chance to talk to you.

Footsteps behind you, slow and measured. You turned your head just enough to see a flash of yellow and you grinned to yourself. Perfect. As you reached the next flight of stairs did you spin around, meeting Arthur full on. He stepped back, startled, and you bit back a smirk. It served him right.

“Are you following me?”

“O-oh, I, uh… y-yeah.” Arthur stammered, his face already an interesting shade of red, and you smiled.

“I thought so. Why?” This should be good. You already knew why, but you wanted to see what he would say. You wanted to know if the things people said about him were true; that he was a freak. You didn’t think he was - you had always hated that word and everything it stood for, having been on the receiving end of it as an insult for years back when you had been at school - but people weren’t forgiving of those who stood out in a society that wanted copies of a copy, watered down into submission over the generations.

“I, err… I-I’m sorry, I- I didn’t mean anything - “

“Yes, you did. You do.” You smiled and carried on walking, not looking back to see if he was following you. You knew he would. He would always follow you. You wondered if he thought he was being protective. “Why do you wait for me every morning?”

“I want to talk to you.” His voice was soft, his tone patient and gentle. You saw once again that he was misguided in how he was often trying to talk to you, but he was so sweet and childlike that you found yourself not minding it all that much.

“What could the mysterious Arthur Fleck want with me?”

“You seem nice and I - “ A soft choking noise left his throat and he winced, clasped a hand to his throat. You had heard his laughing fits from where you lived down the hall, and you often found yourself wanting to help him. You could never figure out how to approach him with it though, and so you kept to yourself, all the while wishing you were braver, kinder, better and more deserving of the man whose affections for you weren’t as unrequited as he obviously feared. The two of you stopped walking on the middle of the last flight of stairs.

“Just breathe.” You spoke loud enough for him to hear you, and made sure to hold his eyes with your own. You didn’t touch him, but you stayed within arm’s reach in case you had to help him suddenly. You were definitely late for work now. You would have to catch the next train, if it wasn’t running late. Your paycheck wouldn’t be quite so generous this month and you could only hope that nothing unexpectedly popped up by way of finances; things would be tight as it was.

“T-thank you. That’s really kind of you.”

You nodded, deliberately not eyeing how thin he was, even through his baggy clothes. You had been raised better than that, though you did extend another olive branch to see if you couldn’t feed him up a bit without his knowing. “Sure. So, do you wanna come ‘round for dinner tonight? I’ll cook.”

Arthur nodded, looking down at the floor. You carried on walking once more, entering the foyer, and as you reached the big double doors that led you out onto the dirty streets of Gotham, you said, “Great! Pick me up from work at the usual time. Bye, Arthur!”

And you were gone.

When Arthur went to work that morning, he had a slight spring in his step and a smile on his face. Things were looking up.

The Arthur Fleck/Joker Defense Squad @writings-of-a-gen-z @x-avantgarde-x @mapreza1 @insomniabird @mavalenovaninagavi @itwasrealenough @morrisonmercurymalek  @rand0ms-fand0ms @rafaelina-casillas @aclownthing @rebs-doom @vivft @help-i-am-obssessed @autumnaffection @taintednihilist @vladtoly @mg-woolf99 @misstgrey92 @that-s-life @dopey-girl-blogs @seeking-dreamland @sweetheart-syndrome @heartxfdesire @xmusichealsthesoulx @0callmejude0 @the-one-that-likes-riddles @hannibalsslut @folliaght @freeeshavacadoo @bingewatchingmylifegoby @unlovedbyeveryoneandeverything @okamiredfoxx @sp0okysp0oky @the-pandorabox @mardema @jibanyyan @honeyflvredcoughdrop @emissarydecksetter @jokerfleckk @epidendroideae @chuuntas @stillmabel @pumpkinpeyes@onehystericalqueenposts @the-jokers-wolf @nalsswa @justahyena @arianatheangelworld @soullessblondbitch @gothamslittlejester @twentyonestarrynights @sirianfromsixties @kissmeclownman @joker-is-my-hero @lazyloosah @lovesickkloxx @ladylovelyluna @live-love-loki

[evas-idiot-box]

hey Eva, first of all your blog is cool and interesting and nice. So i got me a new phone 2 weeks ago, insralled GF, flashforward to this evening - i dont have any resources, i run out of cores, all my eshelons are 50ish level and i cant beat 4-6. I guess i mught have stupid :( Gimme any advices please or i dunno. Sorry for bothering you, dont know who else to ask/

So! First of all, sorry for my late reply!

Now, on the topic of resources. Try to have logistics running as often as possible. I assume you've only got the starting 4 echelons, so try to have at least one squad constantly out for missions, though two is better. Before you head to bed or any time you're not gonna be playing for a while, send all four echelons on missions. Try to prioritize ammo and rations the most, cause that's what you'll use the most.

For other resources, try to complete as many daily, weekly, and career missions as you can. Additionally, look at the achievements in the Index tab. You can get plenty of things like gems and tokens for free. With tokens you can roll gacha for dorm furniture, which increases dorm comfort, and in turn gives you more batteries daily. Use the batteries to upgrade facilities.

With facilities, some of the most important ones to max as soon as possible are the Data Room and the Forward Basecamp. The better your Data Room, the more exp you earn, which you can then turn into combat reports and fast-track your dolls to high levels. The FOB is great because you basically get free stuff. A small(ish) amount of resources gets currencies that can be used on the black market shop. Sometimes you also get things like cores, tokens, and even 4 or 5 star gear!

But the black market is good because you can get resources like combat reports, cores, and batteries in huge supply quickly. To make the best of the expeditions, use the advantaged dolls as often as possible. They give far better bonuses than just high level dolls. (Though high level helps a bit.) Also, pets determine where your expedition is most likely to explore and therefore what resource they are most likely to collect. Dogs like the snow, cats like the city, birds like the forest, and "others" bring you to the wasteland.

On that note, upgrading the pet rescue centre is helpful to the FOB. More pets means you're more likely to have the advantaged pets of the week. Also, pets in a dorm give a bonus 1000 comfort points up to three pets per dorm, meaning more batteries. Which means you can buy more pets and upgrades. Lots of growth in GFL is exponential.

Now, back to some of the other resources I was talking about. Gems. The gacha currency that lets you buy the other gacha currency. Some of the most important investments for your early game gems are echelons and dorms. More echelons means you can have more teams on logistics runs. More dorms means more batteries. Extra repair slots are also nice, so that can be a secondary goal for your gems. The monthly gem card is a good deal if you're willing to spend some money. 5 bucks (Canadian) gets you 30 gems a day for 30 days, 900 total. Sometimes there's also a rate up on the cards, getting 60 daily for a week.

Next, let's talk about things that burn resources. One of the things I did at the start was not at all understand crafting. More resources aren't immediately better. There's plenty of guides on maximizing your resource value per roll, providing you know what you want to roll for. For your four daily crafts of dolls (this gets you a free token, same for equipment!) either go bare minimum, or 130, 130, 130, 30. This can get you a decent chance at 3, 4, and 5 star dolls for low prices, and if you get duplicates of dolls you've trained, you can retire them for 1, 3, and 5 cores respectively. (However, many 5 star pistols are among the few dolls that are truly worth raising duplicates of.)

At the same time however, higher rarity dolls are expensive to raise, especially early on. If you don't have a duplicate of a doll when dummy linking, you will use cores. 2 stars will need: 1, 1, 2, and 3. 3 stars will need: 3, 3, 6, and 9. 4 stars will need: 9, 9, 18, and 27. 5 stars will need: 15, 15, 30, and 45 cores for maxed dummy links. See how this can burn cores? Especially when you're more likely to have duplicates of less rare dolls?

Try to focus on some of the better 2 and 3 star dolls! You'll find that plenty of dolls are better (or worse) than their stars suggest.

Of 2 stars, M1911, M1895, PPK, M3, MP 40, FN-49, BM-49 (VM-49), G3, Galil, SIG-510, LWMMG, MP-446, and cutecat IDW have all done me well.

From the 3 star pool: M9, G17, Ingram, Skorpion, STEN, M14, (quite possibly one of the best girls in the game, even pre-MOD3 she can beat many 5 star rifles and ARs!) SV-98, FNC, M2 HB, and GSh-18 are choices I've found quite helpful.

Raising many of these dolls is also good because later you can unlock their "MOD" upgrades, 1 through 3. This gives them extra abilities, better stats, unique equipment, new art, and some side stories! Though this is more endgame content.

Another thing. Even though I listed a few MGs in there, for now, try to avoid MGs, and also shotguns. They use lots of ammo and rations respectively. They're more for endgame or weird stuff.

As for getting through lots of the early story. Use the AR Team members. Do not sleep on them. Eventually they will become purposely overpowered for story reasons because of MOD3. They are some of your best dolls for just melting enemies, and M4 is special in that her buff tiles effect ARs instead of SMGs.

For most earlier content, teams made of ARs and SMGs are best. Steady damage and SMGs have good evasion to stay in the fight longer. You can maybe mix a pistol or rifle in there for buffs, or if you need to kill other snipers. Rifle dolls, unlike other units, target the enemies furthest away (within range) first, and work forward. This makes them good for preventing your tanks from getting shredded by snipers with accuracy that out classes your evasion.

Also, having "dummy" echelons can help with clearing maps cheaply. If you are cleaning enemies off a map, you can probably get away with having an echelon for combat, and others that only need to capture nodes. So since they are not going into combat, you can use a single pistol doll for very minimal resource loss if they have to retreat.

As for 4-6 you can likely beat it by having a strong echelon rush to Intruder as soon as possible, with another echelon defending your command post. An ARSMG team should work quite well against her, with the SMGs dodging her attacks and the ARs chipping at her health. As a general tip, flash grenade skills do not affect bosses, but other grenades do, and this can make smoke grenades a good choice as they lower enemy ROF and movement speed. The ROF debuff can keep pressure off your dolls for a little bit. If you need to, have a third echelon behind the one you spawn in the north if they get too beat up getting to Intruder. Then have the fresh squad attack her instead.

Uh. I think that's all. A lot of rambling from me. Probably didn't make it as clear as it should be. But hey, I'm trying, and honestly I'm still sorta noob-ish myself. Check out people like @scarletlotus182 @commander-frostii @give-fnc-chocolate @rpk-16 and @shikikanshenanigans too, 'cause they're better than me at this lol.

P.S. If I have any glaring errors, please tell me, guys.

[eldritchsurveys]

864.

@soulflysurveys

1 Which would you rather learn more about: Christianity or Rastafari? >> I thought Lane had disappeared because he is just not showing up in the #surveys tag for me anymore. Had to go to his actual blog like a god damn barbarian. Fucking really starting to hate this website. Anyway, I know far more about Christianity than I do about Rastafari at this point in time, so I guess the latter for the sake of variety. 

2 When was the last time you cried listening to a song? What song was it & what made you cry? >> Uh.... hmm. I went through my Last.fm scrobble (who invented that fucking word) log to try and jog my memory, and the last possible candidate is on the fifteenth of June, because I have Fundamentally Loathsome by Marilyn Manson scrobbled on that day. And that song is pretty reliable about putting me in my feels, so it’s possible I might have shed a tear then. But I don’t remember.

3 If you have a YouTube account, what do you use it for? >> I just use it for keeping track of my subs and playlists and viewing history. I don’t post on it.

4 How often do you watch interviews with musicians/celebrities? >> Rarely. For example, I’ve watched interviews with Darren Aronofsky because I’m interested in his process (watched a bunch of them after I saw mother! lmao).

5 How often do you read biographies/search up more information about musicians celebrities? >> Not as often as I did in my early twenties. Read a lot of musician bios then.

6 Do you enjoy visiting book stores? What section are you typically drawn to? >> I don’t visit bookstores much anymore (for the obvious pandemic reasons, of course, but also even before that). I read ebooks the most, after all. Also, bookstores are just kind of overwhelming. Too much to look at, too many things to pull at my attention.

7 Is there something about Xanga users that used to frustrate you that no longer does? >> I don’t even remember by now. I haven’t experienced much frustration with tumblr survey takers. tumblr users on a whole, though... well, that’s a whole nother kettle of dicks and I’m not getting into that here.

8 Here’s a typical question, which do you feel is worse: using marijuana or using alcohol? Why? >> I hate this question. Especially because for me it’s very subjective -- sure, alcohol has a caustic and long-term effect on the body, even with moderate usage. It sucks, as a moderate drinker who was a former frequent drinker myself. And marijuana’s dangers are both contextual (depending on method of consumption) and person-dependent; you’re definitely not going to get cirrhosis of the liver or whatever from popping edibles. But personally, if I were to consume more than a couple mg of THC right now, I’d probably go fucking todash. Which is a situation that is dangerous for me, mentally (and possibly physically, like when I threw myself down that flight of stairs that time -- I was fine, fortunately, but like...). Meanwhile, I can drink this beer and not go through that at all. So, you might want to be more specific when you ask me a question like this.

9 Have you ever had any bad experiences while under the influence? >> Yeah, I’d imagine that’s pretty clear from my above answer.

10 The last time you went out to eat, who were you with & where did you go? Did you enjoy yourself/the meal? >> Whew. I’m guessing that was... February? We went to Long Road for the cocktails-and-chocolates event, although that wasn’t exactly going out to eat, per se. I don’t remember the last restaurant we went to for actual food.

11 How would you feel if you had to deal with the police? Would you feel nervous, upset, angry? >> I would feel anxious and restless as fuck, at best. Regardless of the context of the situation, even. I’m a neurodivergent Black American with glaringly clear post-traumatic issues, what else would you expect from me.

12 Have you ever had to deal with the principals at school? For what? >> Well, yeah. Stuff.

13 Have you ever done anything pretty daring/against the law with a police officer around? >> I don’t think so. I mean, in NYC cops are all over the place, so maybe accidentally.

14 Is singing something that you enjoy doing? Do you feel you are a horrible, alright or very good singer? >> It is something I enjoy doing, yes. I am a passable singer, I sing well enough for my own purposes and that’s all that matters.

15 What is something you’ve never done in front of/around your best friend? >> ---

16 Are you looking forward to Halloween?  >> I haven’t thought about it.

17 What is the best spirit day your school has? If you’re graduated, what kinds of spirit days did your school have? >> ---

18 Is there anything other Xanga users still might not know about you? Would you like to share it? >> I don’t know, man. How am I supposed to keep track of that? Also, what people know about me depends less on what I’m sharing and more on what they’re reading and how they’re interpreting it. I can take a million revelatory surveys but if no one reads them, then they still don’t know any more about me than the average person...

19 What was the last song that you listened to on repeat? >> Probably You Ain’t Coming Back by Zeal & Ardor. I listen to songs on repeat so infrequently that that’s probably going to be my answer for a while.

20 Who would you rather meet: Marilyn Manson or Skrillex? If you don’t know who either of them are, would you be interested in making dubstep or any kind of music along those lines? >> I don’t want to meet either one of them. I love Manson’s music, though. Not so interested in Skrillex’s.

21 Do you like to make playlists? What kinds of playlists do you usually make? >> I don’t make playlists (save for the “car” playlist, which is my liked songs with all the metal and hard rock and other stuff that Sparrow wouldn’t like removed. so, like, 250 songs, compared to ~1400 total liked songs...... lol). I just shuffle my liked songs on Spotify.

22 Is there anything that you’re terrified of due to past negative experiences? What is it? >> Of course. I’m not going to list all my triggers here, lmao.

23 When was the last time you had a dream related to something that had happened that day? Can you explain it? >> I don’t remember. 

24 How often do you have hot flashes? Are you able to deal with it or does it frustrate you? >> I don’t really have hot flashes, per se. I get hot without environmental triggers sometimes, but that’s usually like... psychosomatic or something. Like, I get really hot and jazzed up when I perceive I’m about to be or currently am in conflict or some other kind of social danger.

[wheremytwinwatches]

[Where My Twin Watches]: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Episode 3

Last time, on PMMM- Uh, never mind then, we’re starting without a recap. Person in a (hospital?) bed, looking out a window? Yup, looks like a hospital hallway, Sayaka’s outside the door, seems nervous. Visiting someone?

She’s giving the guy a CD- oh, this must be from Ep 1’s music store. Which would make this guy *checks Ep 1 notes* Kamijo? I can’t tell from the lighting, but I think he has bluish hair. So is a relative of Sayaka, younger brother? Ooh, looks like a classical CD, nice taste. Kamijo thanks her for finding a rare CD. It’s even a soloist that he knows, nice touch! He offers an earbud so Sayaka can listen as well- are you blushing, Sayaka? Reconsidering my assumption of family connection. Confirmation that they are in a hospital so they can’t play over a speaker, he leans over and yeah this is definitely a crush on Sayaka’s part, blush and shimmery eyes and everything. Aw, this is sweet, listening to some nice calm music- memory? Little boy playing violin on a stage and dressed-up Sayaka in the audience. Oh, so if this is Kamijo playing then she saw him back then and they became friends later? Seriously digging this music. Wait, is Kamijo… crying? Oh. Oh no. Oh god damn it. Kamijo’s crying, his left hand is twitching and he has a bandage on his arm… Is he in the hospital from an accident or something, and his left arm got messed up? Can he not play anymore? That’s… that’s pretty heavy. Um, yeah. Sorry, that intro was a bit of a kick, the peppy song’s not really doing it for me right now. I mean, I’m way out of practice with my own playing, as as a trumpet player I use my right hand a lot more than my left, but… damn. Ahem. Let’s get back to the review, shall we? Mami! Corkscrew Hair is doing what she do, and obliterating another witch with ‘Tiro Finale’. And there is just something hilarious at seeing this blonde middle-schooler standing on top of a lamppost, easily balancing a massive gun twice her size with one hand. Sayaka and Madoka come out of cover to compliment her, Mami tries to remind them that fighitng witches is dangerous but come on Mami, you’re doing awesome right now. Think of how effective the team will be when the girls get their powers! Hey, that’s right Madoka, I didn’t see a Grief Seed this time. Ah, Kyubey explains it was just a familiar, and that’s going to be confusing seeing as I’ve been calling Kyubey a Familiar this whole time. Should I go back to using Rabbit-Thing, or is there another phrase that works better? Anyways, seems that Witches have familiars that don’t carry Grief Seeds. And the girls have only been fighting ‘duds’ lately, so no more powerups. Still, like Mami says, better to take out the minions so they don’t cause trouble. And wow yeah, if familiars can grow into full witches then you definitely want to take them out. Well, that’s one more eldritch creature dealt with, onwards! Mami’s asking if the girls have figured out their wishes, both say that they still aren’t sure. Oh yeah, why not ask what Mami wished for, maybe she has some insight. Wait, why did she stop? Oh come on, PMMM! A car crash?! First you smack me down with that depressing hospital scene, and now you’re telling me that Mami had to use her wish to not die?! Jebus. Well, at least Kyubey showed up in time to help, but dang that’s a missed opportunity. Still, Mami doesn’t regret it (understandable, as the alternative was dying, but Madoka and Sayaka have a chance to actually consider their wishes. Best that they take advantage of that. Wait. Wait wait wait. Car crash, end of last episode Mami saying she doesn’t have anyone to talk to, she lives on her own- oh what the hell. Mami’s an orphan? No. NO. Not cool, PMMM. Ok, we need flowers and chocolates and hugs for Mami stat. Get on it, commenters! After that depressing as hell realization, Sayaka- ooh, clarification on the wish, good for you Sayaka! More rules please. “If you make a wish, does it have to be for yourself?” Strictly hypothetical, of course. Yeah, you aren’t fooling Kyubey (or us), Sayaka. You want to help out Kamijo? Aw, that’s sweet. Kyubey confirms that the wish does not have to be for the contractee, and that there’s actually precedent for it. I’m trying to keep track of these Wish Rules, get an idea of what our characters will wish for; Wish Rules 1) The contract comes with one Wish 2) The Wish can grant “even the most impossible of miracles” 3) The Wish does not have to be used for/on the Contractee Anything I’ve missed so far? Huh, Mami is actually counseling against using the Wish on someone else. Although I’m not sure this caution about making doubly sure you know what you’re wishing for applies, it’s pretty clear that Kamijo wants to play music again. Oh. Um, yeah. Ok, that’s a good point. “Do you actually wish to grant his dream so that he will be grateful to you?” A bit harsh, but probably best that Mami’s brought it up. Right now the Wish has so many potentials, but once it’s used it’s gone for good. So then, how can we structure this Wish so we can help Kamijo and not have it be about Sayaka’s crush? Because yeah, I’m picturing a scenario where Sayaka’s trying to convince Kamijo that she healed him with the help of a magical talking Rabbit-Thing who’s totally right here, he’s just invisible to you. Commenters, when you’re done with Mami-hugs get on that too! But just as we settle on not rushing into the Wish, Kyubey pipes up about it being better for him if they decide sooner. Hey, I don’t know how you grant these Wishes, Rabbit-Thing, but I’m with Mami: they’ll decide on their own time, don’t pressure them. Back at Madoka’s home, she’s thinking over the Wish while Kyubey sits there, he seems to have relented on rushing their decision. Good for you, Kyubey. Hmm, he also can’t suggest wishes because it’s against the rules? 4) Kyubey cannot suggest a Wish Huh, but Madoka asks if just wishing to become a Magical Girl would work. And rather for power for its own sake, Madoka… or maybe it is for its own sake? Aw, Madoka’s doing the “I’m not smart or talented” thing that young Protagonists do. Wait, you’re comparing yourself to Mami? Madoka, don’t do that, Mami’s a full-fledged MG and you’re still a Muggle, of course you’re going to seem ‘lesser’ compared to that. Give it time! But this is an interesting view, the Protagonist simply wanting to be like someone she admires. Wait, “you’d be much more powerful than Mami”? We’re talking about the ‘kill witches with a single shot’ girl here, right, not some other Mami? But it depends on what kind of wish she makes? And he can’t tell how large of a Soul Gem Madoka would summon? Protagonist powers, ho! Yeah, “never met another girl with such enormous potential as you”. If this means that Madoka will be measurably stronger than Mami, then this is going to be amazing. Wait, interruption of ‘Super Special Protagonist Talk’ by Father, seems Mother is… drunk out of her mind. Wow, didn’t think she was a drinker, and based on Madoka’s reaction this is way too common. Character flaw, nice job on fleshing out Madoka’s family, PMMM! Now this is a lovely family; put the drunk Mother to bed, then the Father and Daughter enjoy a late-night hot chocolate. Futher characterization of the Mother as they discuss how she likes to try her best, and that emerges as a fearsome work drive. “While she may not be living a dream, they way she is living is ideal to her.” More philosophy! And good philosophy for an early Protagonist who’s uncertain about where her life will go with these magical discoveries.

Hey Mami, what’s up? Going hunting on your own tonight? Or just visiting a fountai- HOLY CRAP HOMURA. Where the hell did you come from? Oh, are you really trying the “you’re involving innocents in our dispute” gambit? You’re the one who threatened Madoka’s family, you do not get to try and claim moral high ground. And as Mami said, they’re MG potentials, they can see the danger. Ok, now you’re ticking me off, Homura. “You’re trying to lead them so that they want to be magical girls”? Lead nothing, it’s the smart move! They get powers, they get a Wish, and whatever danger a Witch poses is much better handled by three than one. And since you refuse to team up… Aha, Madoka was namedropped. So you can sense her Protagonist Potential like Kyubey? Oh, and Mami can sense it as well. Dang, the sound and lighting in this ‘conversation’ is top notch, as civil as it sounds you’re really getting the sense of two powerful magic users facing eachother down. ...wow, that was a blow, Mami. Calling out Homura for being afraid someone stronger than her will show up, saying that’s how a bullied child thinks. Yeah, Homura did not like that. Yeah, Mami is fed up with Homura’s attitude. “You don’t want to fight? Then make sure we don’t meet again.” Definitely getting more direct in the conversation, but given this girl threatened Madoka, tried to kill Kyubey, and has refused all offers of charity and partnership, there’s really nothing more that Mami can do. Yup, Homura’s pissed. She knows she’s weaker, doesn’t want to share, and only stands to fall further behind if things keep up. I’m worried she’s going to try something drastic. (See theory of her summoning Giant Winged Thing) The next day! Sayaka’s visiting the hospital again, or not? Ok, she went to try and visit Kamijo, but has just met up with Madoka and Kyubey in the waiting room, seems he was preoccupied. Well this is a hospital Sayaka, I’d think he has surgeries or whatnot to do occasionally. Why did you stop, Madoka? Oh crap that’s a Grief Seed. That’s a Grief Seed, at a hospital, and it’s about to hatch. This is the worst place one could show up- Wait. This really is the worst place one could show up. A hospital full of sick or injured people, including Sayaka’s friend/crush? Discovered just as it’s about to hatch by the two non-MGs? And it looks like it’s stuck in the pillar… Oh Homura you bitch. Is this really how low you will go, planting witches to try and scare off or remove the competition? That’s it, you are officially on my List. Ok, they need to get Mami here now, if not sooner. But… they don’t have Mami’s number? Ok, then can they use Kyubey to telepath her? No, seems they can’t do that. So Madoka will have to go find her (hopefully she’s at her apartment) while Sayaka stays behind. Sayaka that is a terrible idea, you aren’t prepared to face a labyrinth. Ah there we go! That’s better, have Kyubey stay with Sayaka so when Madoka and Mami get within telepath range they can stay in touch, if Sayaka ends up in the labyrinth. And if worst comes to worst, then Sayaka can ask a Wish and get her powers, better than being stuck in there on her own as a Muggle. Still, I hope that Mami gets here soon. Madoka’s off to find Mami, and ok guess the Seed is hatching now, Sayaka and Kyubey have vanished. And we’re in trippy Witch Land again! Huh, this one seems much more hospital themed than the last one. So the Labyrinth designs change based on the location? Cool! Sayaka and Kyubey are going into the labyrinth, and Kyubey’s suggesting what I did, that if she decided on a Wish then he could make her a Magical Girl. Well, unless there’s some time required for the contract to form, as long as they aren’t at immediate risk I’d motion for patience here, Mami should be here soon to take over. Oh hey, they’re at the Seed already. It hasn’t hatched? Oh, so the labyrinth forms first, then the Seed hatches. So they’ve got more time then. Sayaka’s showing patience as well, seems the earlier conversation on thinking over a Wish sunk in. Later, Mami and Madoka have shown up to the site, and they’ve opened up the gate and can contact Kyubey now. They’re ok for now, Sayaka even claims boredom. But since large amounts of magic could disturb the egg, Mami and Madoka are going to go on foot to catch up. Stealth over speed, got it. Back in Hospital Land (huh, I’m seeing a lot of cookies and cakes now, what’s with that?), Mami is guiding Madoka along, while admonishing Sayaka for taking such a risk. But she does admit it was a clear-headed call. Good to see that Sayaka is getting some tactical sense, always nice to see characters develop traits. Now they ca Homura. We don’t have time to deal with you, Dark Magical Girl. And you do not get to claim this “prey”, not when I know what you did! And like hell are we going to let you be alone with Kyubey and non-MG Sayaka. Yes, thank you Mami! Don’t waste any time, just detain her and move on. There’s a witch to go kill. “This witch is not like the others!” Gee, I wonder how you know that? Seriously, just shut up Homura, Mami has to go and clean up your mess. Ok, with the others keeping an eye on the Seed and Homura tied up, things should be calm enough for a conversation. Madoka’s taking the chance to discuss the Wish with Mami- oh, you’ve thought of one? But you’re worried that it might be naive, so you’ll run it by the MG. Good, that’s a safe call. Aw, Madoka’s giving her “I’m no used to anyone and have to bother others for help” deal. Madoka, you are stronger than you know, you’re the Protagonist. But it’s sweet that her concern is over not being able to help others- Ah, I think I know how to describe it now. It’s not “Power for its own sake”, it’s “Power for others' sakes.” Yes, good for you Madoka! That is the kind of unambiguous heroine we can all support. Madoka’s describing how she saw Mami fighting for others, and that she knew that was what she wanted. And given the possibility that she could do the same thing- Um. Mami does not look happy. So all Madoka wants is to become a Magical Girl, to have the power to help others. That is her Dream. Which kind of makes the Wish superfluous. And Mami just let go of her hand. Uh oh. Mami, please don’t dampen this, Precious Protagonist is Precious. Well, Mami is correct, having the powers is a burden, she’ll be at risk of injury and will have complications regarding a ‘normal’ life. But Madoka doesn’t mind, she thinks that highly of Mami! Mami. Mami no. You are absolutely worth looking up to. You fight to protect others. You’ve endured such hardship and still try to use your powers for good. You have saved lives. But I get it. You’re scared, you have no one to really talk to. You’ve been alone from the time of the crash to now. (Feels) Madoka: “But you’re not alone any more, Mami.” (Feeeeeels) Aw no, please don’t cry Mami, this is… this is… oh wow. Ok, I know that they’re on a mission, that Sayaka and Kyubey are waiting for them, that a hospital is at risk, but… this is adorable. This is sweet. Mami and Madoka talking right now… That’s it, I give in. I apologize to whom it may offend, but I ship it. Mami, who’s shown incredible power but has been alone all this time? Madoka, the uncertain Protagonist who will one day come into her own? I really like this, the two of them working together. (Don’t worry Sayaka, you’ve got your crush. Although I can see her poking fun at these two on future missions. Hee!) Ok, after the adorableness they’re setting back on track, but Madoka does still have a Wish, even if she ‘just’ wants to be a MG. Hah! That’s one way to make her think about it, give her until the witch is defeated or they’ll use it for a cake. To celebrate their becoming a magical girl duo! (Yeah, I ship this! No stopping this boat!) Whoops! I guess the witch finally got tired of waiting, the Seed is going to hatch! Time for subtlety is over, bring it on Creeps! Ok, now Mami’s just showing off, with all those dancing moves and twirling of rifles. Awesome, they caught up with Sayaka and Kyubey. Here comes the witch! … what. No seriously, what? That’s the witch? That’s a doll. Aaand Mami just knocked its chair out from under it. Oh, I get it. Newly-hatched witch, going to be weaker before it feeds. Looks like they got there just in time! Batter up! And the doll goes flying! Barely dodges a few shots before slumping to the ground, and Mami just executes it. Time for the finishing move? “Tiro Finale!” And the witch is Wait no, something just came out. A Clown Worm? Oh, so the witch has a second form. Ok, just wait what what just happened Um. The ribbons that were holding Homura just vanished. So… Mami released the spell, decided to let Homura fight the second stage with her? Why are you not WHAT

WHAT THE HELL Mami is being held from the top of the screen, she’s twitching, her uniform just dispelled and she just fell down. Mami fell down and the worm is… the worm is eating I can hear it eating Madoka. Madoka and Sayaka don’t look just get out run run now Yes, thank you Kyubey! Make the contract now, you have to do it! Stop watching and make the damn contract oh hell the worm is looking up, it sees them. Homura. Homura just… do something, don’t It just ate Homura. I don’t know, what the hell. Wait, it missed? It keeps on missing, or she’s just barely dodging. And now the worm is exploding? Whatever Homura’s doing the worm is getting hit, and I think the worm is finally down. But now she’s walking towards the girls. There was a clink. The witch’s Grief Seed just fell and shattered a teacup. Mami. “Burn this sight into your minds. This is what it means to be a magical girl.” The labyrinth is collapsing, the four are back at the hospital. Homura, you NO Put that Seed down, Homura! Mami died for it, you do not get to swoop in and and No fuck that you do not get to have that Seed just because you’re a Magical Girl. You don’t Homura’s gone. Kyubey is sitting there. Sayaka and Madoka are crying. I… Uh, the credits are here, and the song changed? I… I think this is the same music from the Dream. Staticky Madoka is walking along past other staticky forms That’s Mami. That’s Mami’s silhouette. The episode end still has the flute music and an picture of Madoka in her uniform and Kyubey. “Mami… was truly a kind-hearted person. To make us really understand what kind of resolve we’d need in order to fight...she...Miracles and Magic are real.” ...I’m going to take some time to process this. I will try to be more coherent later.

[internetremix]

Discord Murder Party related question, And sorry if this already got asked. The plot inside of the games, was that planned from the very beginning or was it just a "hey wouldnt it be cool if this happened" Type thing? Also do you preapre what will happen in advance of the game or is it pure improv?

This has been answered on stream before but never here on the tumbles, so here we go.The TL;DR version is I came up with it after the first episode due to the Narrator becoming a character and my love of Groundhog Day Loops and meta shit. I was nervous about it but liked it enough to mention it to Alex in call one day. He was the main one who knew about it (I believe I also told Scott? I can’t remember) and he ended up triggering the whole thing spectacularly in episode 3. After that I filled all my cast in and we started working on characters and such.Plot scenes get some basic direction in advance, we map out what beats we want in a scene and the general episode placement, and if anyone comes up with a cool line we write it down. This is just to ensure we maintain pacing and the plot doesn’t get too muddy. We try to plan as little as possible and just let scenes flow naturally, however.Longer version of me explaining dumb creative processes and things under the cut:

A long time ago I had an idea for a D&D campaign I had that would essentially get super meta and the final boss would be the DM themselves. I’d probably center it around like, the nature of characters and stories or something. I got a bit antsy about the execution, since as soon as you start having players break the game things get messy. In theory it’s a cool idea, but the problem is once it starts becoming a fight against the narrator there’s no way to really maintain the illusion about this being a game. In the end my players could fight the DM as much as they wanted but I’d have to either confine the DM to the world’s rules, which felt untrue to the meta idea, or else there would just have to be an understanding that my players were allowed to break the rules and I’d essentially have to let them “behind the curtain”. That becomes progressively more collaborative storytelling than a game, which is awesome, but you need the right players for it. I didn’t really have the right players at the time and I found the whole idea a bit nervewrecking since to be honest I meticulously plan my stories... which isn’t a great quality for a DM but at any rate. The point is I shelved the idea.

In the very first game of DMP , the Reality Island episode somehow morphed into the Narrator being part of the scenario. I’ve always been a huge sucker for groundhog day loops and I was thinking of how Alex had kept Dr. McGillicutty as his character for both scenario and went “oh, that would be cool, they could all be the same people stuck in these loops but only Dr. McGillicutty remembers and doesn’t change.”I combined this in my head with the D&D meta thing but still felt cripplingly nervous about suggesting it, since I had no idea how I’d execute it and I was really scared people would think my idea was dumb and cheesy and wouldn’t work. But the second episode of DMP went well and everyone’s acting was stellar so I went “oh right. I’m playing this with a bunch of theater dorks, they’d probably be willing to run with me on this.” I got more and more into it so I ended up off-handedly mentioning it to Alex in call, to which he promptly went “Why didn’t you say so earlier? I could have been playing McGillicutty last episode!” So the idea was floating kind of loosely out there but I was still kind of waffling on when I’d kick it off.

And then episode three happened and we dropped some hints here and there and then the end of Reality Island 2 happened and Alex just hecking went for it. He had his whole “Sorry if you didn’t want me to kick the plot off so soon” but I am endlessly grateful he did because my anxiety probably would have killed the pacing. So yeah, after that I explained the idea to everyone else and had everyone create characters and the rest is history.

Episodes 1 through 5 really had no planning at all. For the mid-season finale I was kind of panicking because I really wanted some kind of plot hook at the end and I wasn’t sure what to do, but Split had Charlie kind of be self-aware. So at the very last second as I was rambling about the “good” ending I messaged Split out of the blue telling him he was coming back to life and to do so now.

Which I guess launches into how our presentation works from here on out. Every episode does take a bit of planning- I do my best to fill in all players on the placement of plot scenes so those who aren’t awakened know to step back. So I’d say “start of scenario 1 has a plot scene” and “end of scenario 2 has plot.” I do try to keep these things loose and let things flow naturally here. I usually have triggers in the game that I set up- I.E. If Grace’s uncle is attacked or dies, Grace’s host scene triggers. If Grace is killed, her Host scene triggers. If both characters make it to the end it will be the end o ft he game. If the scene is triggered before the end of the game then I have to have MG figure out a way to bring the other player characters back and wrap things up. Other times we just rely on character interaction and see where the scene goes. For instance, in scenario 2 of the most recent game we knew Vincent was going to push MG until she snapped and triggered the Tommy end scene. The actual scene was left Split and I feeling out the characters and moment, however. Usually me and the people involved in the plot scenes have some basic beats we know we want. For instance, Split and I mapped Vincent’s awakening as thus: The Murder God sets up the war scenario to mess with Vincent’s PTSD and it slowly breaks him down. Vincent is indeed broken but in this he starts to remember things. MG tries to push this back, finally forcefully insisting “Your name is Jack.” Vincent awakens, and the Murder God responds by just laying out his backstory while Vincent slowly spirals downward.  The only thing Split didn’t know was that I was going to kill Vincent’s kid in front of him, although he caught on as soon as Jojo showed up with the name Marshall hahaha.I do occasionally provide direction in the moment and some things require DM communication: For instance, Split had to warn me Vinny was going to slap MG in episode 11 so I knew to react to it properly, since it’s sound based.So uh, yeah, there’s the long drawn out explanation. We do plan things and I have an overarcing plot set up, but we try to keep things as loose as possible to help everything feel natural.

[foreverbeingthunderbuddy]

Prove Myself [Part 3]

Pairing: Peter Parker x female!Reader

Warnings: Cuss words (a lot of them sorry)

Summary: Having powers and being able to do things that others can’t do is something you don’t want to deal with on your own. You want to help. You want to be an Avenger. A dream you had for years, finally coming true? Too bad, nothing goes as planned. Being new in NY is hard enough, more so as you develop a crush on one of your new classmates, Peter Parker. The plan? Make the Avengers aware of you and then have them come to you. Easier said than done.

A/N: Whoop whoop here’s Part 3!! Thank you so much to everyone who read the other parts and who liked or reblogged or messaged me!! I appreciate all of it so much <3 (Gif by @saltybatman , thank you for letting me use your gif!!)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

So. Spider-man has called his people to deal with you. That means trouble. Big trouble.

Looks like things don’t go as planned again.

---

Run or stay. Run or stay? RUN OR STAY?!

What should you do? The Avengers are literally coming for you. You can see them. Flying towards you.

Iron Man in the middle, being accompanied by War Machine, Falcon, Scarlet Witch (kind of hovering?) and Thor (being pulled by his hammer?).

There is no Captain America or Winter Soldier, no Hulk, no Black Widow and no Hawkeye. They either stayed away because they can’t fly and they will join you later or they were busy. That doesn’t really feel like a relief, though. Tony Stark alone would have you running for the hills.

What to do? What to do? Wait for them and talk to them? Maybe try to convince them you’re not evil and actually want to be part of the team? Risk that they don’t buy it, see you as a threat and lock you away in their facility?

You did attack their home. You paralyzed their arc reactor. Stark Industries kind of relies on that tech. Not much you can work with here. That whole mission was a mistake. Stupid stupid stupid.

“I’m sorry” Spider-man says behind you. Oh, so at least he knows he was being sneaky by calling Death in an iron suit and his deadly (awesome) friends to take over. How nice.

Within a second you decide to make a quick getaway. This is definitely not good and knowing your luck, you will most likely end up behind a glass pane in some laboratory.

You turn around and start to run. You get two metres between you and Spider-man before you feel your feet glued together and stuck to the ground. Very ungraceful you fall on your knees. Shit shit shit. As fast as possible you get back up and try to escape from your spider web-ankle-cuffs. Obviously, that doesn’t work.

“Let me go!” You demand, panic filling your voice. You look at Spider-man, your eyes full of fear, trying to reach his empathic side. “Please!”

As an answer he simply crosses his arms and looks at his feet. No help from Spidey. Of course he’s loyal to Stark.

With a wildly beating heart you watch as Stark and his posse land on the roof about three metres away from you. If you thought seeing Iron Man, live and in colour, land before you with the Stark Tower in the background yesterday was impressive, than this is simply off the charts. It looks like a well-practiced choreography, like a group of superstars coolly taking the stage. And Spider-man.

You don’t dare to say anything, you’re too busy with staring at everyone. How absolutely mortifying would it be if you passed out at this exact moment?

“Great to see you again” Stark sarcastically says as if you weren’t glued to the ground and wouldn’t be bolting as soon as you had the chance.

And again. The scarf and the beanie were a great choice! The idea of your own superhero mask becomes more and more appealing to you. You wouldn’t risk losing the beanie or scarf while running around the city and having your identity revealed. If you go out – as originally planned – you will need a better outfit for saving people and doing good stuff.

“Hm-hm” You agree carefully, not sounding very excited. Facing the Avengers makes you shy and very, very nervous and you don’t really trust your voice right now.

Before Stark can say anything else, out of nowhere another person appears next to Thor, making you jump. He is in a silver, metallic looking suit with red parts on his chest and stomach and he wears a strange silver helmet. This must be Ant-Man.

You have only seen one picture of him which was taken by an anonymous person that was there during that big airport fight. They took a lot of blurry pictures, one of them being a shot of Ant-Man who, for some reason, was bigger than the airport building. The pictures are the only proof for the public that the Avengers had something to do with the demolition of the airport terrain. The lucky person who took them sold everything to a magazine; it being the biggest story of the month.

Another anonymous source later told the same magazine the name of the giant. Ant-Man, ironically.

“Hi, sorry, I can’t fly. Sam was so gracious to carpool with me” Ant-Man jokes and puts his hands on his hips while throwing a glance at the other Avengers. The way he stands makes you think he is sulky. Looks like they had an argument about who would have to bring the littlest Avenger to this inquisition. Apparently, the fact that there even was a discussion hurt the ant’s feelings.

If this hadn’t been such a serious situation, you would have laughed at that.

Their leader starts to speak again.

“I know our first encounter was far from pleasant, but I and the team were hoping we could resolve-” Iron Man says and thinks for a second, “this thing.”

Interesting choice of words. Resolve this thing. You suspect you won’t feel too fond of the way they plan to resolve this thing.

“Who are you?” Thor asks, clearly not devoted to the script. Iron Man and War Machine throw glances at him whose nature remain hidden under the metal of their suits.

So, Thor is the spirited one of the group. Good to know. You try to contain your excitement about the fact that these really are the Avengers and you really are finding out internal trivia about your idols that the public doesn’t know.

Who is the temperamental and who is the restrained one? Who starts fights the most and who ends them? Who is the mom-friend and who is the one that gets in trouble the most often? Who is the funny one and who is the work one?

Bruce Banner and Tony Stark are the intelligent ones, you know that already. It’s safe to say Spider-man is the kid of the group, being new and the youngest. Thor obviously is the most vivacious of them. What about the others?

Being wildly caught up in your own thoughts, it takes you a couple of seconds to realize that you are supposed to give an answer, seeing as Thor asked you a question. You clear your throat. Unfortunately, you have no idea what to say. No way in hell will you let the Magnet-Man incident happen again.

“I uh … I … I am” You mutter, thinking hard. Welp. Magnet something. Magnet-Person. Magnet-Girl?

“I am … MG” You finally say, or more accurately ask. Pretty sure self-confidence works differently.

“MG?” Falcon – no, Sam (according to Ant-Man) – inquires incredulously. You hear Ant-Man snort.

“Like the car brand?” Sam asks. Oh, of course. Of course, there’s a car brand with the same name. Wonderful.

A muffled giggle comes from Spider-man. Thor looks very confused while the Scarlet Witch wears a frown on her face.

“No!” You are quick to contradict. “Like Magnet-Girl.”

“Magnet-Girl” Iron Man repeats contemplatively.

You nod. “Yes.”

“Before you guys showed up, she said magnetism was her thing” Spider-man reports, his face towards Stark. He is still trying to distort his voice, making it sound deeper than it naturally is. Thank god, he didn’t mention your Magnet-Man faux pas. That would have been the end of you.

“Okay, Magnet-Girl, so magnetism is your thing? Believe me when I say I noticed” Stark says with a tone that edges on humorous. “You can imagine I wasn’t too thrilled about the fact that you invaded my property and manipulated my arc reactor. I also wasn’t too happy about having my suit paralyzed and then having you run away from me. That was rude, so I expect an explanation. And an apology.”

Nope. Not going to happen. You definitely won’t explain your “masterplan” to the Avengers and bear that humiliation. But you can make an apology. You probably should. Just not make it too easy for him. They are holding you here against your will, after all.

“I won’t apologize to an iron mask” You say pretending not to be scared shitless.

You see Thor smile and Sam raise his eyebrows while Spider-man, Ant-Man and the Scarlet Witch wait for Stark’s reaction. War Machine just stares at you like a guard dog.

Stark hesitates for a second before shifting.

“Okay. Fine. Let’s do this face to face, then.”

He takes a step forward. At the same time his suit opens in the front and retreats to his back, revealing Tony fucking Stark himself. In a black suit. He steps out of his Iron Man armor and casually adjusts the suit shirt on his wrists.

He didn’t have to go that hard, he could have just uncovered his face. But as far as you know him – from watching interviews and public appearances on the internet – the man loves a dramatic entrance.

Immediately, you feel star struck. You hadn’t seen his face yet; he always wore the iron suit when dealing with you. But now that you are face to face with him and see his face up close in person and not just through a screen, you feel overwhelmed. This feels like meeting a celebrity.

You absolutely admire the man and worship the ground he walks on. All confidence you had five seconds ago is gone. Took a train and is now on its way to Bolivia.

You can see the wave of alertness going through the other Avengers that followed Stark’s self-exposure. They still don’t know what you are capable of and wether you have bad intentions or not. As far as they are concerned you do have bad intentions and seeing the head of their group put off his armor slash protective clothing seems to cause a certain tension.

As if you would ever hurt Tony Stark.

“So, kid. I’m waiting” Stark says calmly. He tilts his head and spreads his arms as if he’s saying Hit me with that remorseful apology, darling. He really doesn’t want to make this easy, does he. You take a subtle breath.

“I’m sorry I attacked your Tower, Mr. Stark” You mumble, “I can’t really tell you wh-“

“What? What did you say? Would you speak up, please, I can’t understand your mumbling, kid.”

You are too intimidated by everything to get annoyed by that remark.

“I’m sorry I attacked your Tower. I didn’t have any bad intentions, I can promise you that. I just … I’m a big fan, actually.”

They did not expect that, you can tell. Ant-Man makes a noise that sounds like the verbal equivalent of “?” and looks at his fellow team members for an explanation.

With your last comment Stark drops his arms and raises his eyebrows in a very A little surprised but not bewildered way. So do Sam and the Scarlet Witch. She stares at you so intently, that you have a feeling she’s trying to read your mind. Spider-Man doesn’t show any emotions through the mask, but his spider eyes widened. War Machine throws a glance at Stark before returning to stare at you motionlessly.

Thor is the only one who looks amused by this whole thing. He smirks to himself and twists the Hammer in his hand. You earthlings must seem quite strange to him sometimes.

“Well, Tony, looks like you found yourself another admirer. She seems less of a threat and more like an ally to me, if I’m being honest with you, friend” Thor says in a mocking tone.

The God of Thunder may have just risen up on the list of your top favourite people. Have you ever mentioned how much you love blonde guys with an obsession for hand tools?

The rest of the group doesn’t look that convinced, unfortunately.

“Tony, you don’t actually buy that, do you?” Sam asks with a frown on his face.

“We must not lose our prudence just because she is a kid. This could be part of her plan, Tony” War Machine says; this being the first time he opened his mouth since they landed on this roof.

“Tony, we don’t know her. She may not look like she’s lying but it could be one of her powers. Like Loki. Don’t trust her on this. She attacked our home, don’t forget that” The Scarlet Witch says. Her words create an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach. She obviously dislikes you. Seeing her open disapproval of you doesn’t go well with you.

Also, comparing you to the God of Mischief is quite an insult, if you’re completely honest.

“I promise- I promise I’m not lying. I don’t mean you any harm. I would never try to hurt you or anyone else. I’m on the good side- I’m on your side!” You say, slowly getting desperate.

This conversation is going into the wrong direction. This is exactly what you feared would happen when you decided to escape. Which regrettably got prevented by Spiderboy. Speaking of – the boy apparently decided to contribute to this nerve-racking discussion.

“Why did you paralyze our living room area, then? What kind of fan would do that? In what way does that have to do with admiration for the Avengers in any way?” Spider-man asks, sounding very bewildered. And quite … hostile.

Ouch.

It hurts more coming from him. He is your hero, your crush, the person you look up to and the person you aspire to be. He and Stark – they are your idols. When you planned this, you didn’t expect them to dislike you. You expected them to be impressed by you and to ask you to join their team. You should have never attacked the Stark Tower. You should have just started to be like Spider-man and waited until they became aware of you. It would have taken more time, but then you WOULDN’T BE IN THIS FUCKIN TERRIBLE SITUATION!

Stark throws a puzzled glance at Spidey, seemingly surprised by the youngest Avenger’s little outburst.

“I … I can’t tell you that. But I promise I didn’t do it to harm you. It was something … I really can’t tell you that” You say helplessly.

“I believe her” Ant-Man announces, catching you completely off guard, “Guys, she is a kid. Can’t be older than sixteen or seventeen. She doesn’t look like a threat and she doesn’t sound like a threat. You’re taking this way too seriously, Stark.”

“Am I? So, you think she’s not a threat? You think the person that is able to shut off an arc reactor and mute an entire floor of one of the highest secured buildings in this country is not a threat? You think those actions are motivated by good intentions? How exactly is that the work of an ally? Can you explain that to me, Lang?” Stark inquires.

Double Ouch.

Both Stark and Spider-man dislike you. You sense your heart sink a little at that realization. Years of dreaming – crushed in a single night. You suddenly feel sad. All of this makes you incredibly sad.

“No, I can’t, but I’m just saying. She seems harmless. You heard her. She sounded sincere to me and I-“ Ant-Man aka Lang begins, but gets interrupted by Stark.

“With all due respect, Lang, you haven’t been an Avenger for that long. I’ve been doing this for almost a decade now, so naturally I have some experience with dealing with stuff like this. And I say, we can’t trust her as of right now. What she does and what she says contradicts itself and she can’t give us a good reason why she did it in the first place.”

Oh no. Oh no no no.

Stark takes a look at your still tied feet. “Well done, Spiderboy. It was the right choice to call us; this concerns all of us. You can tell me how she ended up on this roof when we’re back in the basis.”

You ended up on this roof, because Spider-man has woken you up. Why has he done that, you start to wonder. There was no need in putting your attention on him, in the middle of the night. And how Stark put it, it was also not part of their plan. He probably was only supposed to keep watch.

Interesting. You look at Spiderboy, but he avoids your glance and nods at Stark, before staring at the spider web on your feet. You feel Stark’s eyes on you.

“Magnet-Girl, I don’t intend to let you run away from me, again, so I’m gonna keep this short” He says portentously. You fearfully reciprocate his gaze. He looks very serious, not a single emotion can be seen on his face. Oh-oh. A bad suspicion crawls up into your mind.

“Let me introduce you to the Scarlet Witch over here. Or how we call her, Wanda.” He points at the woman next to him who doesn’t break her gaze from you. “Your thing is magnetism. Her thing is neuro-electric interfacing, telekinesis and mental manipulation. Incredibly powerful. And, in this particular situation, very helpful. See, we don’t know what you can do yet, we know you can command some type of magnetic waves, but we don’t know the extent of it. Who guarantees us that you don’t lie to us about your powers? Who guarantees us that you don’t suddenly use some type of magnetic shock wave or that you use your abilities to mess with the blood circulation in our bodies?”

“I do. I guarantee I won’t ever do that. I promise!” You say quickly, eager to wipe away his distrust as fast as possible. He wrinkles his nose for a second before an almost sympathetic look crosses his face.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not enough, coming from you.” He throws glances at his team members, which apparently means something because they all shift and take a step towards you. Your heart starts beating faster as you see the determined expressions on their faces.

And then Stark says the one thing you have feared the most, ever since you fled from the Stark Tower the day before.

“Wanda will use her abilities to paralyze any type of magnetism that you try to send in our direction, so that we can operate freely without your interruptions. For your and our safety we will stun you, so maybe you should take on a sitting position, unless you want to fall and smash your head on the ground. Sorry kid, we are taking you to our base.”

---

Tag list:  @brightcolorsoffendme @sonal-ily @courtneychicken @lionheo04 @just-call-me-trash-can @yourwonderbelle @willowtighe @theeaniilsson @laurie-ofmoonlightandstardust @wowpeterparker @tienna-laufeyson16 @spaceandstars @n-ghtwind @dulcetminds @the-black-panthers @prancingdestiel

[itsbenedict]

No Driver’s License: Session 35

No Driver’s License is a Madoka Magica game I’m running for five players, using a homebrew of Yaruki Zero’s Magical Burst system. It follows five magical girls as they deal with an upheaval in the world’s magic system caused by some strange new three-eyed Incubators. They have to figure out what’s going on, who to trust, and how to put a stop to the cycle of despair.

I post session logs and omakes weekly sporadically, both as a reference for the players and for anyone who wants to follow along with the party’s misadventures.

[adventure log- read from the beginning]

[session 34]

Last time, the girls started in on dealing with the second witch barrier of the day. Or, the... I mean, they’re on the moon, so timezones don’t really apply, do they? Anyway, the barrier was a big desert with a really hot sun and a bunch of huge statues, and they had to steal items from inside the statues to get powered up to fight the sun. 

(art by zero, arranged by me, of a bunch of characters from his old megucaquest, who were in this continuity killed by honoka so she could steal their weapons.)

This time... sun-fighting ensues! On the moon! Because at this point, fuck astronomy, I guess.

So, between sessions, it is assumed that the party goes around and does a bunch of repetitive dungeon-crawling, which would ordinarily be very tense and difficult. Except, whoops, they have a ridiculous magical arsenal and also a head-start on powerups. So... by the time the last statue falls, they’ve got an 80x damage multiplier and damage reduction (except Cho, who showed a little late and only has a 40x multiplier.)

Turns out all that power, though, is just an illusion of the witch barrier- with some good Real rolls, they’re able to notice that the massive force multipliers they’re working with are some fake bullshit that only applies in this barrier. LAME.

Anyway, they do it fast enough that the Honoka shrivels don’t make much headway. And now that they’re like, a thousand feet tall or whateever, the Honokas don’t pose much of a threat.

Whoops, hey, remember you guys recruited the Devil? Yeah, she’s here now. And, she’s not happy about what’s happening. She chews out the party for being foolhardy, which they... make a few excuses for.

She’s not happy that they took the time to go check on Orino, who is in the Devil’s eyes irrelevant to Madoka existing. Yukari attempts to apologize and placate the Devil, more or less successfully, though everyone is unsettled to varying degrees at the Devil’s total ambivalence towards people suffering if they’re not Madoka.

Anyway, she points out her care package- a rocket she stole from NASA. She figured, fuck, my new henchpeople are fighting some dangerous things up on the moon with very little preparation, so I should bring all their allies up there too. So, she froze time, kidnapped them, put them on a rocket, and shot them up to the moon with minimal explanation.

The landing doesn’t go excellently, but in a “broken space shuttle” way and not in a “giant fireball that kills all the passengers” way. 

The first person out of the space shuttle when the time-freeze wears off is Rikimaru Reiko, who was listed as an ally, and therefore, as far as the Devil was concerned, was fair game for being kidnapped to the moon to fight a witch without notice.

Tama-chan, Nishi (in MG form), Sakura’s army of Peeps, the Grounding Gorillas, and Hekima are also aboard... but they’re all very very small, as is the Devil, because they haven’t been grinding powerups like the core party. Plus, apart from Reiko, who is not negatively affected by being on fire in any way, they can’t be out in the sun without taking damage.

Now- I have a problem, which is that there are too many NPCs here and I can’t juggle that many. I also have another problem- a ton of Honoka familiars attacking. One problem is solved with another, as the reinforcements break from the main fight to take on the waves of incoming shrivels.

So- there’s the sun. Time to kill it.

i mean, it’s entirely appropriate for the witch of someone whose driving pathology was a need to prove she was stronger and better than everyone else, so

Yukari opens the fight by Shooting Gun. This does 160 damage, taking it down to 4840. You... see why they needed the damage multipliers first.

Anyway- rather than pass the turn to the next teammate... the sun takes a turn. And, in turn, pops off a Ranged Attack on Yukari. It misses, thanks to those amulets that mess with your aim, and when it does, a new counter shows up and increments to 1.

And then it’s Sakura’s turn! She candy-shapeshifts into a horrifying eight-legged gelatinous blob monster to try and taffy the witch.

Anyway, much like with Yukari’s ranged attack, Kagutsuchi copies Sakura’s taffy ability. It pops off a hit on her- which is a crit- and applies congealed lava “taffy” to Sakura, Yukari, Emiko, and Cho.

Makoto camouflages herself rather than attacking, to avoid a counterattack. Seina and Ibara unload ranged attacks into it, and take ranged attacks in turn. (Well, Ibara uses a water-based Gloo Gun to try and restrain it, which does damage where it normally wouldn’t because it’s made of fire.)

Fine, Then I’ll Avert Them For Thou, Fuckwit is paying dividends! In terms of actual defense, this time, and not sacrificing it for a damage bonus!

That is... the worst roll anyone has ever had in the entire campaign. Without penalties, it’s normally impossible to roll a one. Kagutsuchi’s Fuckup Count goes up to 4.

Not too much is happening with the NPCs fighting the witch familiars down below- except, uh, one notable thing:

Where do you think Nishi-chan got all those summoned monsters for her fake murder attempts? She plays Pokémon with witch familiars!

Emiko is full-size like the rest of the party, and punches the sun, baby. And she uses her holo-gauntlet thing- which means I finally get to use its secondary effect, which it’s had this whole time but has never been relevant:

Oh, and the Devil is here. ♪ Homu was mad, she knew she’d been had, so she shot at the sun with a gun / shot at the sun with a gun ♪... but, uh, she has not received any powerups. So her attack does... 3 damage. Against a boss with thousands of hit points. And who automatically retaliates with attacks that are much deadlier when you don’t have 80x damage reduction.

Not smart, most powerful being in the universe! Thankfully, she has the presence of mind to turn into an incorporeal force of pure existence and get the hell out of there before she can fry.

Anyway, back to the top of the order- Yukari goes again! And... Yukari’s usual thing is to use Prophecy to generate extra actions, and then use those to shoot lots of undodgable bullets. Which she does, for some heavy damage, but...

WHOOPS

Yukari is now contending with several spears of fire ready to skewer her, which is fun. Kind of all it can do, since it has no moves of its own it can use. (...Or does it?)

Makoto summons some whales, Cho summons some butterflies, Sakura does some healing (by pulling out her teeth and using them as armor, super fun, not at all mega gross), and Seina... oh, boy.

Seina made an item called a Leech Seed, earlier. What it does is deal 1 damage to an enemy every time they take a turn, and restore that much health to the user.

Seina has an 80x damage multiplier right now.

So, Seina is completely fucking invincible now, since every time the boss takes a turn she gets healed for like eight times her max HP, and the boss takes a turn every time a teammate takes a turn. Great! That’s great. This is fine.

...But wait! The boss gets to counterattack!

Great. Faaaantastic. Super useful. Oh, and what’s that? I said items don’t count as powers it can copy, and that doesn’t work either? COOL. 

(Really, this is all my fault. I let the players do things.)

Ibara attacks, normally, and the boss counterattacks, and... remember the worst roll anyone has had in the entire campaign, like twenty minutes ago?

zero, jesus christ, i managed to roll a zero...

There’s a little more whacking away with normal melee and ranged attacks, and it ends up pretty low on health. Tama-chan breaks Ibara free of the lava-taffy, and...

After a little more hammering, and some bullets from Yukari, this thing is real low on health. And... wouldn’t know know it, it’s Finishing-Move-chan’s turn.

And now... everyone gets a few last words with Honoka Midarezaki. Ibara:

Seina:

Sakura:

Makoto:

Yukari:

With that... everyone’s on the moon again! And as usual, when a witch is defeated, a Soul Seed drops. And... it takes a moment for it to register, but this is the point at which the interest of the party and the interests of Eguchi Emiko are no longer aligned.

It all comes down to this- it’s time for a contest of Fury to see who can dive for the seed first!

Ibara gets a crit! Nice. So that’s all taken care o-

Emiko gets a bigger crit! Not so nice! Not so taken care of!

AND CLIFFHANGER! Next time on No Driver’s License, the team has to deal with Emiko, being on the moon, and the fallout of this whole clusterfuck generally. Tune in next wee... next whenever I do a recap, to find out how it goes!

[sharethisgemwithme]

“Letters to Lars” instant reaction

One more episode for this bomb, then I'll be all set for the next month. I've seen something on Tumblr about Pearl and a cell phone, so I guess that's coming up here?

My predictions: OK, the screencap for this episode has Smiley, Jamie, Peridot, Barb, and Amethyst in matching sweaters. That's a big ol "wha?" So I guess this is really just gonna be slice-of-life vignettes from around Beach City. And I'm always a fan of more gem-human interactions, so I don't mind if the stakes stay a little bit low in this episode, since I fully expect Serious Shit to go down in the two-parter next month.

Time to watch the episode! I'm watching via the CN App, and will start the clock with "We!" As always, first time I'm watching straight through with no pauses or rewinds.

0:00 - I wonder how Peridot is doing living in the house 0:22 - We're in space. 0:29 - How do you even know what day of the week it is, in space, anyway? 1:09 - Shut up, Ronaldo 1:18 - How, uh... how do you not know that. Did the conspiracy theorist really not hear about the invasion? 1:54 - "I'm the one who should be in space!" I'm pretty sure everyone called it that he'd have that reaction. 2:09 - Bill Dewey. He's definitely going to take that job sooner or later. 2:40 - Everyone working together. Gems and humans. 3:09 - So basically just like the Mayor Dewey Mobile 3:22 - She's so proud of her cell phone. Is she gonna use it to call MG? 3:43 - Oh boy, that's the telescope that will be used to find the barn. 4:00 - Thanks for repeating everything we just said, Nanefua. 4:23 - Is it time for another Beach-a-palooza yet? 4:38 - Dewey what the fuck. Get out. 4:57 - Oh wow, those CDs. 5:16 - That's a motley crew of comedians. 5:44 - Pearl, let someone else suggest something. 6:13 - He was the mime at the previous thing, right? 6:30 - Pearl still sassing Jamie. 7:06 - WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT FOREVER. Sugar mentioned they used to play tennis way back. 7:28 - I'd say a doubles match, but instead I'll just say shut up Dewey. 7:56 - Peedee... I remember when you were going to be an interesting character who showed up more often. 8:29 - $6 for tater tots? That's ridiculous! 9:04 - Even his haircut is pathetic... 9:40 - We all called it. 9:50 - WE ALL CALLED IT. A DOZEN DOZEN DONUTS FOR EVERYONE. 10:20 - The Lars donut. An ube roll? 10:30 - OK, it's just pink. 10:45 - Has he been sticking his head out the entire freaking time? 11:04 - ahahhaah "Who is Peridot!?"

Instant reaction: Yep, that was a cute little series of weird stories about life going on. I'm glad we got the inevitable "Bill Dewey works at the Big Donut" out of the way... wait... no wonder he named all the donuts after himself. He's wearing a t-shirt with his own initials on it! Alright, I've gotta get ready for Easter dinner, so no long-winded commentary on this one. I can now stop blacklisting all the tags, and start hyping up for May 7.