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#its kinda niche but not at the same time
nobrainsnobrawns · 2 years
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when character A and B cant stand eachother but when B meets A's pet it immediately falls in love with B >>>>
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araneapeixes · 2 months
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Not gonna be able to get back to this for the next week or so but I wanted to share so wips :))
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cannibal-nightmares · 3 months
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"I wish I could live like there was nothing to hide Will you stay or will you turn away from me like them When you start to understand how cynical I am?"
[ x ]
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caruliaa · 2 years
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actually anyone from twitter if your gonna stay REBLOG POSTS !!!!!!! *especially* art/edits/fanfic !!
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schmorge-quostanza · 10 months
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kinda been feeling betrayed by the English language bc the words photo and photography are not emphasized the same ... how will I change from one to the other mid-word when it is like that
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mydemonsdrivealimo · 11 months
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please send me some asks of anything art or writing wise you wanna see from the priate au!! im trying to muscle through the last of the second chapter before the end of the month :)
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saintlesbian · 1 year
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tempted to stream art tomorrow night but the only art i draw these days is GH fanart so idk how appealing that would be to my regular Gamer audience
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onceuponatown · 11 months
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Goodbye Tumblr. You ruined it!
Hello followers!
We are sad to say that we are discontinuing Once Upon a Town.
We started this blog in August 2013 with the aim to find, research and show historical photos in high resolution formats. The main idea was to present history as documented through photography - from the very earliest to circa mid-1950s. The large format quality we favored for our blog was chosen for its immersive properties. We wanted the past to come alive and to show you all just how much has been lost with ever increasing development, historical erasure and plain carelessness, but also to show just how quirky and eccentric many of our immediate ancestors were. Where possible we have included explanations for the images and in the process we learned a great deal about very niche corners of our recent history - and just how little we generally know about people and life from just over 100 years ago. It has been an enriching journey and we hope people who have followed this blog feel a little closer to the Victorians and Edwardians and homesteaders and flappers and dogs and cats and places captured on camera so many years ago. Much now is gone and only exists in these old photos.
In order to post this high resolution photography, we have since 2013 used a customized theme that allows large format to show on our website main page, which we recommend is accessed through a browser on a computer for a more immersive viewing experience. But thanks to Tumblr’s discontinuation of the legacy editor, this is no longer possible. The new editor they have forced down everyone’s throats (over the complaints of many) arbitrarily crops new posts and ruins the overall look of the website page. In short, it messes up the entire concept of what we have come to regard as a visual archive of the late 19th century and early 20th century. And while it still looks the same in the Tumblr feed, it’s the website most people outside Tumblr access and link to. This is our front page.
Regrettably it seems to be a trend among social sites to force unpopular changes on the people who create the content. They have become big and arrogant and care little for what users want. They keep “fixing” what isn’t broken by breaking them more. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Deviant Art and now Tumblr have all gone through these self-destructive processes over the heads of their users and all have become worse platforms for it. 
However, even though we will no longer post new material here - at least for as long as Tumblr maintains the discontinuation of the legacy editor - we will leave the site up for people to peruse at their leisure. Our old posts are, as of yet, not affected by Tumblr’s changes and we simply can’t get ourselves to delete ten years of collecting and research. We recommend you make good use of our archive and hashtags. There’s a bit of most of everything in the deep depths of this vast collection which counts thousands of images by now. And you might just stumble on something really weird that you didn’t know about. 
At the time of writing this, Once Upon a Town has a total of 44,394 followers. We find that kinda impressive for a blog that doesn’t contain porn or manga. So here’s to all of you! We thank you for your interest and feedback over the years.
-OUAT
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matrixbearer2024 · 3 months
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HELLO ITS ME 🥭Anon!!! I JUST HAD THE MOST BAZINGA IDEA EVER DJSHAJHDHJAF
So.... Hear me out..
Cuz like what if like ever since reader beat Vox at that videogame he started training practicing idk to prepare to beat reader again until reader goes to erm reverse heaven
So then reader brings it up and Vox gets pissy (as usual) but then she recommends multiplayer, like those games that have a storyline and bosses, so they try it out and it ends up being one of their pass-times
Then when they finally beat the final boss after like a billion attempts, reader gets a lil too hyped and like kisses vox all over the screen which of course causes him to blue screen like a love-sick-idiot-in-denial (official term for Vox being a river in Egypt) while reader is just bouncing off the walls unaware of what they did
(could be before or after they start dating though I think it'd be a lot cuter when they're still friends)
(P.S: remember to drink water and rest properly!) -🥭anon
Video Gaming, Competitive Raging
Vox x CollegeStudent!Reader
A/N: Heeeey! You're back 🥭 Anon! Nice to see you! Also yes, I love this idea lmao- it's not something I wouldn't put past Reader cuz they're just like that HAHAHAHAHA- the story itself is a little deviated from the prompt but the idea is the same XD- maybe after this I'll stop bullying these two and actually write a confession scene because damn they just runnin around in CIRCLES LMFAOOO. Send me ideas for how you want to confess to the Picturebox y'all cuz I'm kinda pulling blanks XD. Yes I'm saying Reader's gonna confess first, Vox would end up bluescreening in his attempt to even take initiative. I might write a few more interludes before the confession but yeah- I WANT THEM TO SMOOCH- SIKEEE NAH IT WON'T BE THAT EASY HAHAHAHAHAHA- But do pls send me ideas I am in a funk whdksjdjsksj-
A/N: Btw I'd imagine they're playing a game kinda like cuphead? Cuz that game was the fucking BANE of my existence when I played it. I didn't want to accept I was struggling and continued to play on the hardest difficulty right off the bat cuz I was so sure I could handle it HAHAHAHAHA.
No one at the hotel could've honestly expected whatever was going on to happen.
You and Vox were practically screaming at the TV screen in sheer rage while replaying a level in a game you'd both been stuck on for hours.
Charlie didn't know if this was slightly her fault or not for even suggesting game night.
Hell, nobody knew you'd invited the technology overlord until he showed up at the door and you simply pulled him inside as usual.
He was roped into most of the games you guys played-
Well, except for the trivia ones because you quickly pointed out he had the internet quite literally an extension of his mind.
So any niche fact or trivia that was asked- he could just search it up which was straight up cheating.
But everyone had severely underestimated just how competitive you and Vox could become as a duo.
From constantly teaming in the board games to immediately getting invested in the co-op video game that they switched to.
Charlie and Vaggie had leisurely enjoyed the game-
Angel and Husker didn't really play much and instead made jabs at each other's skill-
Alastor and Lucifer couldn't even get started with their confusion on the controls-
And you and Vox decided to play the game on the hardest difficulty because it didn't seem that bad in Charlie and Vaggie's playthrough.
Oh, it was that bad.
But the both of you refused to admit it and switch it back to the easier mode.
Vox and his huge ego, you and your pride as a gamer.
"You actually practiced ever since I beat you that one time??"
"Didn't I mention that I would? I'm getting that rematch eventually dollface."
"PFFT- Bro I didn't think you were serious!"
"Why you little-!"
Though, this was totally and entirely different from the PvP game you and Vox had played prior.
This game actually had a storyline and plot.
That neither of you gave enough of a rat's ass to pay attention to.
The hardest difficulty was pretty much just a consistent boss rush, and as if you weren't both always on low HP-
Someone was always dying every level.
"REZ ME! REZ ME YOU BASTARD!!"
"STOP FUCKING DYING AND I WON'T HAVE TO REZ YOU BITCH!!"
Admittedly, it was extremely entertaining to watch you both go up and down with your moods whenever anything happened.
Alastor couldn't for the life of him understand most of your gamer gibberish and slang though-
The rest of the gang had just taken seats on the couch behind you both and made silly bets on who would go wayside from frustration first.
Either from the level's sheer difficulty or the puzzles themselves that were a bit too convoluted for their own good.
"No- NO! Move that cube to the right!!"
"I- HUH?! THERE'S NO PATH ON THE RIGHT!"
"VOX YOUR OTHER RIGHT-"
"JUST SAY MY LEFT FOR FUCK'S SAKE-"
Everyone else was already starting to guess some mishaps that would happen from you two raging.
Like who would break a controller first-
Vox did, but there were thankfully a couple spares anyway and he'd just replace the broken one soon.
And who would get mad enough to break the TV.
Which in a hilarious twist of events- was actually you.
In one of your expletive filled episodes you threw your controller at the screen hard enough that it broke the screen and your controller.
Everyone kind of thought you and Vox would be done with the game after that.
But nope-
Come tomorrow there was a new VoxTech TV shipped to the hotel to replace the one you broke.
At first, it seemed like it was because Vox was simply being courteous-
Well Charlie thought that.
Everyone just guessed he wanted something in the hotel he could use to spy on everyone-
Still, the actual reason was somehow entirely disconnected from that.
"Egh. He sent over a new one."
Of course Alastor would notice the device and hate it's existence immediately.
"Aww! How nice of him!"
Charlie- bless her heart- she really only sees the best in people-
"Not really, I'd bet it's just so he can spy on us."
Hahaha- now that's a more realistic view from Vaggie.
"Wouldn't put it against him, especially after what he had pentious do before."
Angel still never forgot that, he sometimes even made jabs at Vox for it until now.
"Oh! It's here! Yo help me set this up!"
"Well, somebody's excited."
Husker just came over to check what the commotion was, he didn't realize what he was getting into though.
"No DUH. I've been wanting to finish that game with Vox!"
"Wait- what game? The one where you got so angry you broke the TV?!"
"Uhhh, yeah? What else?"
Your reply had everyone just dumbfounded.
Why would you subject yourself back to such clear torture-
Actually Alastor just found you going back to playing that game entertaining, especially after it was clear that it had sadistic levels of difficulty.
After that, the others would often catch you and the TV overlord continue your playthrough as a pastime-
Either online or when you were both physically there in the hotel lobby.
And every session was possibly just as explosive as the last.
Curses were hurled around, screaming, throwing things-
Angel couldn't help but realize just how similar you were to your flatscreen companion in this regard.
That or you both had spent enough time with each other that the habits and mannerisms of one bled into the other.
Vox definitely became more docile- and you...
Actually no one could tell if you were already that wild or not.
"FUUUUUCK!!! THIS STUPID BOSS JUST WON'T DIE!"
"I CANNOT WITH THESE ATTACK PATTERNS?! DID MASOCHISTS FUCKING DESIGN THIS SHIT?!"
The both of you didn't mellow out at all after any of your shared gaming sessions.
In fact, everyone mostly steered clear of you afterwards because of how snappy and irritable you were.
The only one who could put up with your grumpy sarcasm was Angel or Lucifer.
Alastor would often just come in to bother you more while you played-
Which would soon turn into both you and Vox absolutely screeching at him for throwing you both off when you were so close to winning.
Neither of you were close to the goal at all-
Which the radio demon could tell, and he found your fits absolutely hilarious.
Though eventually, after pouring so many painful hours into the game-
Both you and Vox predictably got better at it.
But that didn't stop either of you from getting stuck at the final boss level.
And that absolutely made both of you raging so much worse.
"I'M GOING TO COMMIT MASS FUCKING GENOCIDE IF WE DIE TO THIS BASTARD ONE MORE TIME I SWEAR TO GOD-"
"AND I'D GLADLY JOIN YOU DOLL! HOW THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE EVEN THINK OF MAKING THIS LEVEL?!"
You died again, but the retry button was once again slammed because both of you were stubborn.
Neither of you were willing to give up so easily, especially when the game's end was in sight.
So near but yet so far-
But that wouldn't stop you guys from trying.
Everyone else in the hotel was just waiting and watching to see what would happen next.
After all, it became so interesting to watch what you two would do next.
Eventually, Vox took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves while you somehow ended up with his hat on your head.
Common sense and sanity was starting to become a little less common when the game was taking up so much energy and focus.
It took another hour of frustrated screaming and cursing before you both eventually managed to beat the final boss.
And to say you two were over the moon was an understatement.
"WE BEAT IT! WE BEAT IT!!!"
"WE FINALLY FUCKING WON!"
You threw your arms around Vox as you both jumped up in place and shouted in excitement.
Your enthusiasm was so contagious it unintentionally spilled over to your overlord buddy.
The grins on your faces were so wide as you both just celebrated and cheered for a hot minute.
Vox completely lost himself when you finally let go and just ran around the lobby screaming.
Of course that winning high was searing through his circuits, it was well fucking deserved after all the painstaking effort he put in!
"FUCK YOU (Boss Name)! AHAHAHA! THIS IS BETTER THAN SEX!!"
Everyone, aside from you, gave him an odd look when he flipped off the TV screen and said that.
It was still displaying the victory menu even-
It was so unprompted and out of left field which made little to no sense even with context-
Not that anyone expected you or Vox to have any marbles left in your heads after that intense gaming session.
So imagine everyone's collective surprise when you suddenly tackled the taller TV overlord and peppered kisses all over his screen from joy.
You were just so pleased with yourself for finally beating the game that you didn't realize what you had done.
Especially when you quickly got up and started running around the room again too.
All that sudden affection from you spiked Vox's emotions almost immediately-
So it was expected that his screen very swiftly overheated and glitched.
And in no sooner than a few seconds, the man also bluescreened.
But you were too busy bouncing off the walls to even realize!
Everyone else just shared a laugh at how stupid the whole situation was.
But knowing how your relationship was with the TV overlord-
This kind of chaos wouldn't ever be a rare occurrence again with you two around.
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ckret2 · 7 months
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Chapter 24 of human Bill Cipher being the Mystery Shack's extremely inconvenient prisoner, featuring: the Pines figuring out a way to chase off Bill's ex-girlfriend... who happens to be a giant eyeball with bat wings.
It kinda goes like this.
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(A head's up before we get going: this chapter is a bit more mature than prior ones, so I feel like a warning's in order. There's no sex, and nothing here is erotic or sexy (unless you, too, happen to be attracted to eye-bats), BUT there IS some academic speculation on the logistics of alien sex, and some very filthy-sounding dialogue describing acts that, to humans, aren't sexual at all. Plus some dirty humor and toilet humor. And nothing here is what I'd call billford quite yet, considering Ford still very much hates Bill's guts—but like, he's definitely a little too obsessed with the anatomy of triangles for it to be normal. If any of this is too spicy for you, skip this chapter and come back next one. We'll be starting a new "episode" then.)
####
It was past midnight. In his search for the eye-bat repellant recipe, Ford had flipped through every notebook he'd used during his initial interviews of the residents of Gravity Falls, flipped through them a second time, torn apart half his bookshelves looking for any reporter's notebooks he might have accidentally sorted in with his larger binders, and now he was exhausted, frustrated—and, worst of all, bored out of his mind.
Which made it hard to avoid thinking about more interesting topics.
And for the last hour he'd been unwillingly plagued with the question of how an eyeball and a triangle had a "casual physical thing." 
If that didn't mean sex—and you never knew with aliens—then it was still something close enough to fill the same social/recreational niche. It certainly meant sex on the eye-bat's side, Ford had fully documented the reproductive cycle of eye-bats, that was sorted out—but triangles?
It had to be something that would work in the second dimension. Ford had visited a two-dimensional universe populated by geometric shapes, he knew roughly how their bodies functioned: a shape's perimeter was its external surface—its "skin"—and its internal organs were inside that perimeter. So if Bill was still configured the way he had been in his home dimension, any external reproductive anatomy would have to be somewhere on his perimeter, right? Maybe at one of his corners? Or camouflaged where the seams of his brick pattern reached his edges?
But then if Bill were a normal two-dimensional person, he'd have his eye on the edge of his body, not right in the center of his "internal organs." So he'd been rearranged to some extent. Who knew how the rest of his body worked now? His top hat contained flesh and a skeletal structure; maybe it was a removable reproductive organ that could be passed to a partner, like some cephalopods' detachable tentacles—
Ford flinched as he realized Bill was staring at him.
To aid in his anatomical speculation, Ford had drawn a diagram of Bill in his journal and labeled various points on the triangle that might be concealing reproductive anatomy. He quickly scratched out the drawing's staring eye and slammed his journal shut. 
He'd happily gone thirty years assuming that Bill had no sex life—Bill was an energy being who presented himself as a floating featureless triangle, his hobbies involved cheating at chess and discussing multidimensional transportation, he probably wasn't designed for "physical things," and if he was designed for it then surely he wasn't interested. Ford was not pleased to have his assumptions disputed.
Because the thing was—Ford knew more than any living human about the mating rituals of unicorns, werewolf/mermaid couples, stomach-faced ducks, and tentacled warrior piglets. (Did he ever know about tentacled warrior piglets.) He had the only photos of a gnome mating ball, which he didn't need, because that horrible sight would be forever seared into his long-term memory. He knew the names of twenty obscene acts in siren sign language, and knew how to use his extra fingers to make them extra obscene. This wasn't unfamiliar territory to him. He was curious about how strange, supernatural creatures functioned; and those functions included how the reproductive drive influenced their behaviors; and a living triangle that had escaped from the second dimension was certainly a strange supernatural creature.
But, unfortunately, it was also Bill Cipher. And Ford did not want to think about what Bill did in bed. ... Assuming he used a bed. Really, at this point the only thing Ford knew was that Bill's only admitted partner was capable of flight. Maybe he just hovered while he—
Ford slammed his journal shut again to stop himself from scribbling down more theories, then stuffed the journal in a desk drawer for good measure. Did normal people think like this? He had no idea. He didn't even know who he could ask.
Enough of this. Back to searching for that eye-bat repellant recipe, and this time he wasn't stopping until he found it.
####
Like a vast eye in an upside-down triangle, the circular center of the portal lit up so bright blue it was almost white. The four energy vents glowed in sympathy. A rainbow constellation lit up in twirling patterns around the central light.
Bill watched with bated breath, a second-dimensional shadow waiting for his door to the third dimension to open. The cavern walls shook; the ground quaked and rumbled ominously; Bill didn't care. The portal was stable, the lab was somebody else's problem, and Bill had a party to get to.
The steel beams supporting the cavern rolled like a wave, and Bill's stomach roiled with them. They weren't supposed to be able to move like that. But he knew what he was doing, the portal was stable, he was not here to destroy this world, he'd come here to save it, whether it wanted to be saved or not—
The whole world undulated. Bedrock and steel were not built to undulate. Bill bobbed on the energy wave like a toy boat on a choppy sea; but the steel shattered, rock crumbled, shrapnel and rubble sprayed out. There was a peal of deafening thunder as the world below him cracked apart.
####
Bill woke with a gasp.
Oh. Right. Dreams.
Dream diary. With a groan, he sat up, checked to make sure no humans were coming by in the next few minutes, and pulled his stolen journal out of its hiding place.
The guide on lucid dreaming had recommended writing down his dreams in full, vivid, rich detail—any people or scenes or events, anything he could detect with his five (?) senses, as much as he could recall.
He drew a portal—gray inverted triangle with a center circle, four circles around the triangle, all five circles filled in yellow green—and then a yellow green line trailing out of the portal's side that grew progressively wigglier like a seismogram. He labeled his doodle, "this." He'd remember the rest.
After a moment of thought, he wrote, "Don't remember if I was a human or a shape. My organs were doing things a shape's shouldn't." (He wrote "human" as 人; there was no translation for the word in the language Bill wrote in. The two angled strokes stood out in Bill's rows of Morse-like dots and dashes.) "Being around so many humans who are CONVINCED I'm trying to destroy their world must be getting to me. Sixer pitched another hissy-fit about the portal yesterday. Enduring all that negative talk can't be healthy for me. I know I'm just helping their boring little planet, but maybe their accusations are getting lodged in this stupid brain's subconscious."
Maybe he should meditate a bit—go think positive thoughts, drown out the mortal voices that insisted they knew his plans better than he did. He'd had enough dreaming for one night, anyway.
Beneath the note to himself, Bill added in English: "Everything would have been fine if you'd just let me finish, Fordsy." If the humans ever did find this journal, Bill was determined to get the last word in.
Then he stowed away the stolen journal and shuffled downstairs.
He wondered how much was left of Ford's portal.
####
Old man bladder. Stan dragged himself out of bed. The other guest room bed was empty. Stan hoped Ford was sleeping in his study—he'd mentioned once he kept a cot down there. Better than pulling another all nighter studying alien sorcery or whatever.
He skipped his glasses, groped his way to the downstairs bathroom, and, yawning, lined up with the toilet.
The toilet said, "Pretty forward of you, Stanley."
Stan screamed.
He stumbled backwards out of the bathroom and hit the wall. Bill flipped on the light and leaned out to grin at him. "Careful! You're due for a broken hip any day now."
"BILL! What are DOING!"
"Trying not to get urinated on."
"Jsh—shut up!" It had dawned on Stan that if he could hear Bill without his hearing aids, then half the house probably could too. He hoped no one had overheard that. "Why are you sitting on the toilet in the dark!"
"It's a free country, Stanley Pines."
Stan raised a fist. "GET OUT!"
Bill bolted from the bathroom like a scared rabbit, then caught himself, rolled his eyes, and raised his hands over his head in mock surrender. "You could have asked nicely!"
Pointing at Bill as he retreated, Stan added, "And stop being so darn creepy! Lurking in the dark and sneaking around silently all the time, like a... some kind of—burglar ninja assassin!"
Bill turned to shout back, "What, do you expect me to make a peace cry every time I walk around? Make sure I can't sneak up and stab you in the back?"
Stan had caught about half of that. "YEAH, smart guy! It might help!"
Bill flung his hands out in defeat as he rounded the corner.
Stan finished his business, went back to bed, and glared angrily at the ceiling another ten minutes.
####
It had taken half the night, but at last Ford had disassembled the filing cabinet and found a few notebooks that had gotten stuck behind the bottom drawer, including the one with Old Lady Sprott's eye-bat repellant recipe. Ford copied it down, left a list of ingredients on the gift shop cash register for Soos, and finally dragged himself into the house to sleep.
And paused in the entryway.
Bill was sitting in the kitchen, staring out the window; Ford had seen him like this before. Usually, he could make himself walk by.
But he couldn't tonight. Maybe it was yesterday's conversation still weighing on his mind, the loose ends they hadn't tied up tangling around his throat. "What are you doing up?"
Bill's voice was inappropriately calm: "Dying."
Ford's guard went up. "Do you... Literally or metaphorically?"
"Literally," Bill said. "Hey—how many decades do you think this body's got? Probably not even a century, right?"
Ford's guard went down. Just moping. But it was an interesting question, one he'd put some thought into himself—what age had Bill's body been made at? How had his body been made that age? How long would the body last? Ford had wondered whether studying Bill's freshly-made-but-already-adult body might reveal anything medically useful about how aging affected the human body; but the odds of convincing Bill to participate in any medical studies—much less finding someone to conduct the study who believed their story—were nonexistent.
Ford said, "At a loose guess, I'd put you around... fifty, maybe? A very spry fifty." Bill's hair was a shockingly vivid gold, not a hint of gray, and when he was in a good mood Bill bounced about with an enviable lack of joint pain; but Ford had seen faint, delicate creases around his mouth and eyes that spoke to age. And the look in his eyes... Ford hated the phrase "old soul"—he'd been called that by some of his school teachers, and it only made him feel the distance between himself and his age peers all the more strongly—but with Bill, it was uncannily fitting. His eyes aged his whole face.
"You think this thing looks fifty? Wow." Bill took a deep drink from a cider can. "Shooting Star's best guess was half that. Thanks for shoving me twenty-five years closer to the grave."
Half that? When Ford had been a child, he'd had a harder time guessing adults' ages, and he supposed Mabel might be the same; but it was difficult to mistake a 50-year-old for a 25-year-old. Maybe there was something else going on. He'd have to ask her later. "With exercise, a healthy diet, and a little luck, you could still live another fifty." Ford nodded at the two empty cider cans already sitting on the table. "With your current drinking habits, I'll give you five."
Bill cackled—loudly enough to make Ford tense up, afraid someone would catch them talking. "Cheers!" Bill finished off the can and slammed it down with the others. "Ugh. Finite lifespans. Awful."
"Welcome to being human," Ford said dryly.
"'Welcome to death row,'" Bill said. "Ha! What'm I doing, worrying about decades. Let's be real, I don't even need to worry about the next five years. If I haven't found a way out of this body before then..."
Bill left the thought unfinished. An uneasy weight formed low in Ford's stomach.
"Ah, whatever. Like you'd let me live that long. Right, Sixer?" Bill pushed himself up unsteadily, keeping his balance first with a hand on the back of the chair, and then on Ford's (suddenly very tense) shoulder as he passed him. "I'm going back to sleep before that last can kicks in."
The way Bill was walking, Ford wasn't sure he'd make it up the stairs. "Why don't you sleep on the folding bed in the living room?"
"No window," Bill said. "I've g—" (He stumbled on the stairs.) "I've gotta see the stars."
Of course he did. When Bill said it that way, it was so obvious Ford didn't know why he hadn't realized that himself. Where else could Bill sleep but as close to the sky as possible?
Ford listened as Bill stumbled his way upstairs, creaked across the floorboards, and collapsed onto his makeshift bed.
Ford had thirty years left. Exactly thirty years. Don't have a heart attack, you're not ninety-two yet! Ninety-two was a good, old age. Older than his father had been. But thirty years felt too soon. And yet it felt fitting, somehow, for his life to be divided so neatly in thirds.
If Bill lived another fifty years in this body, and Ford lived thirty, who would stand guard over him? Would he and Stan have to pass that burden on to their gniece and gnephew? Or to Soos and Melody?
Why was he wondering—what made him think they wouldn't find a way to kill Bill before then? What made him think he wouldn't kill Bill before the end of this very summer?
What made him so sure Bill hadn't been lying about when Ford would die? Thirty years felt too soon; but ninety-two felt flatteringly optimistic.
Ford sighed, and picked up the cider cans to recycle.
He wondered whether Bill—hiding from his ex, fretting about death, sleeping on his enemies' floor—regretted how he'd spent his life.
####
Bill's second entry in his dream diary started, "Wet dream about Iris."
He filled most of a page with an extremely graphic summary before he sighed in frustration, stowed the journal away, and stared at the ceiling as dawn crept in. Well. Terrific. He was pretty intimately familiar with how humans coupled, but he didn't have much practice with the solo act. Plus the humans would give him heck if they caught him at it. He'd just have to suffer.
So here he was, all riled up and nowhere to go.
Who else could he make miserable?
####
Stan was startled awake by a heavy pounding on his door.
"Heeey Fisherman!" Somehow, Bill's voice was even more grating at dawn. He rattled the door several more times. "Just passing by! Wanted to let you know! Here I am! Right here!"
Did that demon ever sleep? And, follow up question, could Stan knock him out for a few hours?
Ford—who must have come up after Stan went back to bed—groaned and muttered something.
Ford wasn't nearly as loud as Bill. Stan reluctantly sat up and put a hearing aid in. "What?"
"What the devil is he up to now."
"No idea," Stan lied. "Go yell at him about it, he listens to you."
Ford sighed, but got up and left the room.
A minute later, Stan heard Bill exclaim, "I can't win with you people!"
He smirked.
####
The kitchen reeked that morning. When Stan came in for breakfast, the window was open, a fan in the entryway futilely directed fresh air into the kitchen and a fan on the kitchen table directed the noxious fumes outside, there were bags of groceries on the counter—he noticed hot sauce, peppers, cheap perfume, and an entire bag of raw onions—and Ford was standing at the stove, stirring a pot of vile-smelling brown liquid. The moment he saw Stan, Ford put him to work stirring the pot so Ford could start dicing onions.
While they worked, Ford explained the situation with the eye-bat harassing the tourists and the solution he'd hit on to drive it away. Soos had collected the necessary ingredients this morning, but couldn't help cook because he was busy finding a way to block the bottomless pit—
####
Outside, Soos scooted a trampoline up to the pit, carefully lined it up with the edge—the trampoline and the pit had nearly the same diameter—and shoved it in. It plummeted into the dark. After a short wait, Soos chucked a baseball down the pit. It disappeared, then bounced back up.
Soos pumped his fist triumphantly. "Aced it."
####
—so, Ford was working on the repellant, and in the interest of public safety and the greater good he was drafting Stan into helping too.
Which Stan supposed he couldn't argue with, but considering the smell he would've preferred dicing the onions. "Is all this really necessary for one eye-bat? I usually just swat 'em off with a tennis racket."
"This eye-bat happens to be large enough to carry off a first-grader," Ford said. "And Bill claims it's his ex-girlfriend, so I don't want to risk them meeting."
"Huh." Weird thing to date, but then Stan didn't know what he did expect a triangle demon to date. "Somehow I figured he was tangled up in this."
Ford laughed ruefully.
After a moment of chopping and stirring, Ford said, "Speaking of Bill—he claims that you ordered him to announce his presence? And that you tried to pee on him."
"I did not and he's a dirty liar! He made the whole thing up!" Stan didn't expect Ford to believe him. Stan also didn't expect Ford to believe Bill. Ford knew they were both liars. What Stan expected was for Ford to side with the person he liked best.
"Uh huh." Ford didn't question Stan further. Ha. Pines solidarity.
Even though he'd already won, Stan went on: "All I did was mention how quiet he is! I can never tell where he's lurking. Sometimes I almost forget he's here." In Stan's mind, Bill had been rapidly demoted  from "active existential threat" to "annoying houseguest who blends in with the shadows." Watching him help Mabel cut pretty pictures from fashion magazines with plastic safety scissors drained away most of his intimidation factor.
Ford gave Stan a funny look. "Really? I can't forget he's here for a second. Sometimes I swear I can tell where he's been in the house—like a cold spot left by a ghost."
Stan tried to figure out how to ask whether that was a reaction to decades on the run feeling like hunted prey—which Stan knew how to cope with—or a lingering magical side effect of Ford and Bill's alien possession deal—which Stan did not. Then Ford added, "It's probably because I hear him bumping into the furniture all the time."
"Oh. Yeah. That's probably it. You've got better hearing than me." Case closed. Stan turned back to the stove—
A deafening buzz made them both start. Stan splashed boiling brown stink across the stovetop. "What—!"
Standing in the doorway with a kazoo, Bill said, "How's that, Stanley? Do you like that better?!"
"YOU!" Stan flung the stirring spoon to the floor.
Bill bolted from the room with Stan in hot pursuit. "Whoa! Mercy! Truce! You can have the kazoo! It's not even mine, I'm just holding it for a fr— Ow ow OW ow—"
Stan hauled Bill in by the back of the neck and didn't let go until he was in the middle of the kitchen. He pointed at the spoon, then pointed at the pot. "Pick it up. Get stirring." He grabbed another knife and joined Ford chopping onions. Whew, what a relief.
Bill gave Stan a perplexed look, but picked up the spoon, gave the pot an experimental sniff, and got stirring. He didn't even wince at the smell. "Is this the gnome wizz? What is this, punishment for not letting you use me as a urinal?"
"Whatsamatter, I thought you were the one who thinks pee belongs in the kitchen."
"You're both too old for toilet humor," Ford snapped. "Bill, this problem is your fault, the least you can do is help prepare the spray, and you're not getting a knife, so you're on pot stirring duty. Deal with it."
Bill rolled his eyes dramatically. (At the moment, they were both uncovered; but one was already half squinted shut against the morning light.) "Fine, but only because I like hanging out with you."
Ford scoffed.
"And I don't see how this is my fault just because we happened to date. It's not like I invited her over," Bill went on. "If anything, you should be grateful she's my ex, or else I wouldn't be helping you chase her away—"
"Hey, that's what I wanna know about this," Stan said. He gestured toward the window; the ex in question was currently circling above the gift shop entrance, like a vulture waiting for something to die. "Exactly how do you 'date' an eye-bat? Just—how does that work?"
"Well, it depends on the eye-bat, doesn't it," Bill said, a touch patronizing. "They don't all have the same tastes, you know. But she happens to like art films and water parks. Easy date."
"I'm not talking about that! You're telling us you slept with an eyeball with bat wings—right? That's what we're talking about, right?" From the corner of his eye, Stan saw Ford giving him a sharp look, but he didn't tell Stan to stop. Yeah, the nerd was curious, too.
"Yes, Stanley." Bill's condescension was almost more overpowering than the kitchen's stench. "That's what we're talking about. I 'slept' with an eyeball with bat wings." He exaggerated the finger quotes around the euphemism. "Any more prying you want to do into my personal life, or...?"
"You look at that freak out there and think it's appealing?"
Bill stopped stirring and squinted out the window. Flatly, he said, "Yep. She's still drop dead gorgeous. Thanks for asking." 
"How do you even know that's a she! How can you tell a girl eye from a boy eye?"
Ford said, "Technically, Stanley, all eye-bats are female." He held up an onion and used his knife tip to gesture at it like it was a model eyeball, "They're parthenogenetic parasites that reproduce by attacking other species' faces and depositing egg-bearing spores on their eyeballs, which swim to the tear ducts to begin incubating. Over the next few weeks, the infected eyeball grows wings and develops its own nervous system while the host slowly goes blind in one eye, until the new eye-bat is mature enough to emerge from the host's socket and seek out her mother's colony—"
Bill let out a strangled scream. "Enough!"
Stan and Ford stared at him.
"Would you stop talking about eye-bat sex?! I'm already riled up! I don't need help making it worse!"
He slammed the stirring spoon down and started pacing. "I'm losing my mind. Do you know what it's like to be randy for something you don't have the right body for?!" He gave them a pleading, slightly crazed look. "I need to feel her pupil contracting against mine. I'd lick her hot, salty tears off her sclera. I'd bite deep enough to taste her retina. I want to look like I've got pinkeye from all the bat spores coating my face. I'd give my right eye just to have one of her wings fingering my eyelid again—but if I cave and go that far I know I'd lose my head and give her the left one too, and then I've screwed up, because STUPID HUMANS BODIES can't regrow their STUPID EYEBALLS—"
He kicked the wall so hard he lost his balance and stumbled back into the stove. "Ow. I'm going insane. I can't take it. I need to kill somebody. I need to set something on fire."
Stan and Ford were petrified. Stan's jaw had dropped.
Bill was panting from the exertion of his outburst, arms trembling, face flushed. His shoulders slumped. The picture of a broken man, he said, "I'd do anything to rim her optic nerve again."
Ford let out a strangled noise.
Bill took several deep breaths. He rubbed his forehead. "Sorry! Wow. That was... I think the fumes are getting to me." He shook his head. "The fumes and the hormones. Human hormones. You know, your species has very insistent..." He gestured vaguely toward the doorway. "I'm—think I should lay down."
Stan and Ford nodded. Bill trudged from the room. A few seconds later, Stan heard springs creak as Bill flopped his full weight on the living room sofa.
Stan and Ford exchanged a look. Stan said, "I shouldn't have asked about..."
"You shouldn't have asked."
"You should have skipped the science lesson."
"I should have."
They lapsed into silence. After a moment, Ford stood up to take over stirring the pot.
Stan resumed chopping onions. "Say, d'you think he staged all that to get out of stirring?"
Ford didn't reply.
"Sixer?" Stan glanced up.
Ford had turned away from the stove, and was staring at nothing with a faraway, troubled look. It was the look he got when he'd just latched on to some mystery that would haunt him until he solved it.
"Ford—?"
Ford slapped down the spoon and stomped into the living room. "But you hate losing your eyeball! So how did you two— I mean—! The spores—?"
"Incompatible biology." Bill's voice sounded muffled. "It's why we never got serious. She wants kids and my tear ducts can't incubate wings."
"Ah! Of course. That makes perfect sense." Ford returned to the stove with a look of triumph.
Stan didn't know how Ford had recovered from that fast enough to ask follow-up questions. Weird nerd. Stan shook his head but said nothing.
####
In Ford's journal, he scratched out most of his speculation about the anatomy of Bill's species, scribbled over the diagram, and added, "I severely underestimated how much his eye is involved."
####
At one point, during Weirdmageddon, when Bill had been torturing Ford for information, Ford had spat in his eye. Bill had licked it off. He'd seemed eerily undisturbed.
Ford would probably wonder how Bill had interpreted that act for the rest of his life.
####
Outside, dressed in a homemade hazmat suit consisting of painter's coveralls and a scuba mask, Soos faced off against the eye-bat, a spray bottle strapped to each hip like a cowboy's revolvers. Dipper and Mabel stood behind him, armed with a rake and a golf club, wearing a bicycle helmet and a football helmet with tree branches taped on. The eye-bat stared them down warily.
Leaning on his elbows over the kitchen table so he could stare out the window, Bill said, "Bet you a hundred bucks she steals Questiony's hat."
Stan snorted. "I'm not taking that bet. You don't have any money."
Bill grunted and turned back to the window, just in time to see the eye-bat dive for Soos's face. Soos whipped out one of the spray bottles, dropped it, ducked down to retrieve it just as she swooped past where his head used to be, and lifted it in time to spray the eye-bat when she circled back to attack him again. She reeled off screeching, eye watering, pupil contracting. Bill winced in sympathy. Poor gal. And she didn't even have an eyelid for protection. But, hey—better for her to suffer than for Bill to risk getting caught in this body. He'd take someone else's pain over his own embarrassment any day.
"It seems to be working the same as it does on any other eye-bat," Ford said. "Good. Once she's gone, Soos and the kids can spray the rest on the roof. That should drive her off while keeping the worst of the scent away from the tourists."
Streaming tears, the eye-bat dove at the kids. They yelled in alarm. Dipper threw his rake at her and missed. Bill flipped up his eyepatch to squint at the battle with both eyes.
"What, do you see something?" Stan asked.
"Just appreciating her sphericality." Bill sighed wistfully. "That spray's gotta be excruciatingly painful—but, I've never seen her that wet before. Sure, we've fooled around with a little hot sauce a few times, but even then—"
"I'm sorry I asked."
Outside, Soos shouted, "Hey! My hat! Give that back!"
Bill wordlessly held a hand out toward Stan.
Stan smacked it away. "Nyeh."
As the eye-bat retreated toward the forest, Ford sighed in relief. "She's gone. It worked."
"You sound surprised," Bill said.
"Frankly, I can't believe that you gave us accurate information on how to get rid of her."
"What! You wound me! Why would I lie about that?"
"To trick us into doing something that strengthens her? To arrange an opportunity to meet her?" Ford suggested. "After all, as one of your Henchmaniacs, she could have helped you escape."
Bill's blood ran cold.
She could have helped him escape. SHE COULD HAVE HELPED HIM ESCAPE! He'd been so worried about not looking stupid or losing his eyes, when all this time—! He could have signaled Iris from the window, and—and the bottomless pit was right there, she could have carried a message to the gang—at the very least, she could probably open doors for him—and instead he just—when he could have—
He watched in despair as Iris's pretty little optic nerve vanished behind the trees.
No, Bill decided—no, getting her help was a terrible plan. If it was a good plan, he would have done it; so it was terrible. He had a better plan. What was his better plan?
"Come on, you think I need her? I've got all the pals I need right here—whether you're ready to admit it or not." He elbowed Ford. Bill had decided he'd wheedle Ford back over to his side, and he would. His survival depended on it. Now more than ever. "I've got a way out, don't worry about that—it's only a matter of time—and she's not part of the plan."
Ford scoffed. "Really. Last night you were moaning about being on death row."
"Wh—Hey! That was..." Not fair. He scrambled to revise his story.
"You're lying about something," Ford said. "If it wasn't how to get rid of her, then it was why you wanted to get rid of her. For all we know, maybe she wants you dead as much as we do."
"Yeah," Stan said, "the 'girlfriend' story sounds crazy enough to be true, but you seem like the kind of guy who has a string of exes who'd love to kill you." (He did, as it happened, but it wasn't his fault he kept falling for petty jealous psychos who hated seeing him thrive.)
Ford said, "If she hadn't been a danger to the tourists, perhaps I should have invited her in to talk."
Unbelievable. Even when Bill did exactly what he was supposed to, he was still the bad guy. "Fine, she was a notorious black widow and you saved my life, happy? Do you like that story better? I made it up just for you." He jabbed a finger in Ford's shoulder. "You know what your problem is? You're too paranoid. You can't trust anything anybody says. You'll only hurt yourself like that—"
Ford shoved Bill's hand away and stepped out of poking range. "I spent years unlearning the paranoia you gave me. And when I finished, do you know what I figured out, Bill? All along, there was only one person I shouldn't have trusted: you."
It stung, but only in a distant, impersonal way; like a hard slap on a numb cheek. Bill turned to give Ford a sour look. "At the lengths you take it to, I could tell you the sky is blue and you'd have to check."
Ford's gaze automatically flickered toward the window.
"Ha!" Bill angrily shoved the table against the wall as he stood up. "Thanks for taking care of my pest problem, boys." He stormed upstairs, flipping his hood up as he went. Ingrates.
####
The view out the attic window was more interesting than usual, mainly because there were three humans traipsing around on the roof spraying eye-bat repellant. From time to time Mabel came by to make funny faces at Bill through the glass; he did his best to one-up them. Once, Soos nearly fell off the roof and died; Bill hadn't laughed that hard since he was murdered.
Their return indoors was heralded by Mabel shouting, "Dibs on the shower!" and Dipper replying, "I take shorter showers, let me go first!" They pounded up the stairs. Mabel tried to take them two at a time, tripped near the top, and by the time she recovered Dipper was already in the bathroom. She groaned. "Augh! Not fair! I don't want to smell like onions and gnome pee!"
"Neither do I! I need it more, I haven't showered in two weeks!"
Bill wondered why Dipper got to go so long between showers without getting dumped in a cold tub in his sleep. (He knew why.)
Bill whistled to catch Mabel's attention. "Consolation prize." He waved a cheap perfume bottle toward Mabel. "We had leftovers after mixing the repellant. It smells like strawberry candy."
"You're my hero." Mabel took the bottle and sprayed it all over herself, in her hair, and under her sweater. "You need a shower too, you know."
"Sure, but until Dolores fumigates the kitchen I'll just blend into the background stink. I can put it off til tomorrow without anyone complaining."
"You're grossss." Mabel emphasized the hiss by poking Bill's arm. "Once I'm clean, I'm not talking to you until you've showered too."
"I'll be devastated."
"Those are my terms!" She kicked aside Bill's cushion-bed so she could sit under the window without stinking the cushions up, and settled back to wait for the bathroom. After a (very short) companionable silence, Mabel said, "It's too bad we had to chase off your ex. I can see why you like her."
Bill gave her a surprised look. "Can you?"
"Iris was so graceful!" Mabel said. "And murderous, but mostly graceful. Like an evil swan."
Bill laughed. "Yeah! Yeah, she is. Floats like a dream. If you think she's graceful in the air, you oughta see her in the pool. She's the only person I know who can make a cannonball look elegant."
Mabel gave him a sly grin.
"What?"
"Look at you. Yooou still like heeer." Mabel propped her elbows on the edge of the window seat and balanced her chin in her hands. "How did you meet Iris?"
For the last couple of days, almost everyone in the house had talked about Bill's ex like she was some kind of malevolent creature, rather than a person. He was used to outsiders talking about his friends that way—heck, most of his friends were malevolent creatures—but it grated all the same. (He missed home.) Just hearing Mabel call Iris by her name was a breath of fresh air. No one else had even asked if she had a name.
"I met her at a party," Bill said. "I'd just gotten a piano and was showing off, and she came by to ask about Earth music. She wasn't in my crew then—but the party was open invite, and everyone in that corner of the Nightmare Realm knew that if you wanted info on Earth, you came to Bill Cipher. So, we talked about waltzes and tarantellas, I played a little Beethoven, we hit things off..."
They talked until the bathroom was free and Mabel went to shower. Sweet kid. Hopeless romantic, though.
When Bill got out of this place, he was gonna find the first boy who would break her heart and kill him before they could meet. It was the least he could do for her.
####
The third entry in Bill's dream diary: "Shooting Star's cartoon is getting to me. I dreamed about the wolf and the cat arguing over who had to host someone's birthday party. The wolf refused to let guests into his enormous mansion, but the cat's house was burning down. They asked me how to resolve this. I told them the cat should execute the wolf as punishment for his inhospitality, take over his mansion, and wear his skin as the party host. The animals were so in awe of my wisdom that I was deified as god of the jungle."
That was not what he'd dreamed. The animals were so horrified at his suggestion that they'd tied him to a stake and forced him to watch as they threw the cat into the flames of her own house. He couldn't remember whether he'd dreamed that he was a triangle or a human.
He preferred his version. Once he'd regained control over his dreams, he could replay this one and make it end properly.
He'd get the hang of this in no time.
####
(You're legally required to tell me if you had a reaction to this one. Even if it's horror. Especially if it's horror.)
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catboybiologist · 2 months
Text
Y'all ready for a certified neurodivergent moment?
I had to sit through a thing I absolutely did not need any info from, and typed up a massive outline of the soulsborne pokemon game I just talked about. Massively cringe, yes, but hey it's not just living in my head anymore.
I've had this idea brewing in my head for a while now, pretty much ever since PLA came out (and I found it kinda disappointing tbh). Even though Hoenn has lots of love, it still feels like the most "grand" region in terms of the scale and themes of its lore, so I liked the idea of using it for a legends game that focused on the initial clash of Kyogre and Groudon. I had so many ideas brew in my head, and I guess now I sloppily typed them out.
Obviously this isn't actual game design. This is just me being cringey and detailing my dream pokemon game. At 26 years old. Anyways.
Pokemon Legends: Jirachi
In the times when Hoenn was young, the earth and seas shook. Titans roam the land- powerful individual pokemon that shape their environment to their liking. Humans and pokemon work together to keep them under control, but the earth and sea themselves shake, and Titans only grow more numerous. One day, a human wishes on a shooting star to become a hero and save their land, and something from up there answered.
In this game, Jirachi would be a kind of invisible "questmaster", giving an in-game reason for path markers, quest markers, and points of interest marked in stardust and sparkles. Once the main plot is completed, Jirachi would be able to join your party.
Core combat
The gameplay would be souls-like or Monster Hunter like, but with direct parallels to mainline pokemon mechanics. The six stats would be the same, and the four moves your pokemon can learn would be equivalent to the attack interface of a soulslike game- four trigger buttons. You would take direct control of one "primary" pokemon at a time, and use it as a souls-like character.
HP, Def, and SpDef would be largely the same, with the added benefit that less damage taken means more resistance to trips and staggers.
Atk and SpAtk are also pretty clear cut, scales your damage output per move.
Speed would be analogous to stamina or endurance. Dodging would work as in soulsborne games, and consume stamina. Most pokemon walking, running, attack speed, and dodging speed would be largely equivalent, but high speed pokemon would be able to sustain rapidfire attacking, frequent dodging, and continuous sprinting for longer.
Accuracy would be reworked into lock-on or charge up time- eg, a low accuracy move requires you to stay in one place for a longer amount of time before releasing, to charge up or lock on (imagine how swag ass this would look with focus blast).
PP would correspond to cooldown time. Each move would be infinite use, but have a cool-down after its used. So a move with high accuracy, but low PP, could be used instantly, but not spammed. High PP, weaker moves would then see an increased niche as a "default" light attack that can be spammed.
Attacks could also be ranged, up close, AoE, and have other features that would need to be tweaked and balanced in implementation. They wouldn't one to one map onto their in game counterparts, but this would at least provide a vague guide for how these moves work that builds on players assumed existing knowledge of pokemon games.
Special attributes, like never-miss moves and priority moves, would have features that play into this- eg, priority moves could be spammed with no cooldown, and never-miss moves would be immune to inhibiting effects.
Stat changes could be temporary effects applied to yourself when using the move, like a buffing spell in soulsborne games.
Nonvolatile status effects (paralysis, burn, sleep, etc) would work similar to monster hunter- invisibly accumulating triggers that occur as a side effect to to moves, or in the case of moves that directly trigger status like Spore or Thunder Wave, they would not do direct damage, but instead add massive amounts to the accumulated status trigger.
Field effects (weather, terrain, and special effects like wind, gravity, etc) could be set by regular pokemon moves in small areas, but would also be frequently encountered in the overworld.
Examples: the vibes of potential starter pokemon.
This is all just for the purpose of giving examples of how I envision some of this stuff working. Assume each pokemon would have regional variants that scaled their stats appropriately. This is just to show how different playstyles from the mainline games would translate to this format.
Lucario: example mixed offensive pokemon
Moves like aura sphere could be used with no lock on time, and little to no cooldown, forming the basis of a normal, light, ranged attack.
Moves like Close Combat would have no lock on, but give a temporary debuff and have a long cooldown time before they could be initiated again, making for a quick to use but infrequent heavy attack.
Swords dance and/or nasty plot could be used to provide a temporary buff for a period of time.
Focus blast would take a long time to charge and lock on, making you a sitting duck.
Reuniclus: example tanky pokemon
Light Screen and Barrier could lay down static areas on the ground. When an ally pokemon is located within them, they provide their corresponding defensive buffs. Cooldown for reusing them starts when these floor areas disappear.
Recover could be used to heal, but would have a long cooldown.
Liepard: example technical pokemon
Yawn would inflict direct sleep "buildup", but over time as opposed to instantly.
Fake out would instantly proc a stagger from the enemy, but could only be used in a certain time range upon being sent out.
Moves like taunt and torment function as usual.
The trainer and overworld traversal
Even though the player has direct control over pokemon, the MC is still a trainer, and pokemon are still capture in balls.
The trainer would be on the sidelines, with idle animations ordering the pokemon to do stuff.
Only one "controllable" pokemon could be outside of a pokeball at a time, or all of them could be stowed in pokeballs to directly control the trainer. The trainer can interact with NPCs, gather items, etc.
The trainer would also order "helper" pokemon. One or two "helpers" could be added independent of the party that would follow the trainer around constantly. Each pokemon has a list of field "helper" abilities they're capable of doing, independent of what moves they know. By targeting something that a helper pokemon can interact with in the world, the trainer would order that pokemon to zip out and interact with it. Think Republic commando. This takes the role of HMs and other field moves. For areas that require things like Surf of dive, the helper pokemon would exert a field of influence that essentially allowed the primary pokemon to act normally- eg, a surf helper would cause an area of surging upwards surface chop that lets the primary pokemon walk on water, or a dive helper would create small air bubbles centered around wherever the primary pokemon breathes from.
The trainer can also provide small support in the form of items, but this would be limited to encourage sensible use of stat boosting moves.
Pokemon would still be captured in pokeballs, but after they are fainted by the primary pokemon. Fainted pokemon could either be captured in a pokeball, or "relieved" of unique held items and resources before releasing them.
Pokemon would not gain experience by defeating opponents. Instead, each one would have material requirements to both level up and "customize" them. Like upgrading a weapon in Monster Hunter, every pokemon would have unique material requirements to level up, change nature, upgrade IVs, allocate EVs, or learn and relearn certain moves. This incentivizes a postgame loop, but could be curved to make the main game give you adequate materials to avoid excessive grinding.
The gameplay and story structure
The gameplay loop is basically monster hunter.
There would be a large number of normal-sized pokemon out in the world, that could be easily defeated and either captured and looted. But, frequently, a "Titan" would appear- a large, boss variant of a particular pokemon. Some pokemon can only be captured from their defeated titan forms, even if they appear in their regular forms.
These titan forms would appear semi-randomly, and requests to "quiet" them by defeating them would take the form of quests posted in the hub regions. These quests would then essentially be a monster hunter hunt- going out and fighting a particular titan.
Titan forms could be unique, or vaguely modeled after existing megas.
The world is divided into 8 main regions, and at least one "bonus" region. There would be 4 ocean regions, and 4 land regions. Each region would be seperate, but open to explore within that region (damn you can really see how much I've played MH:W)
Each region would have a drop table of pokemon that could potentially appear as titans.
Each region would also have one, single titan pokemon that gives the region its character. These 9 titans would be new, unique regional variants.
Each region, and by extension, each boss titan, would be directly associated with a different regional effect. So essentially, the boss titan and the field effect of a region would be reflective of its character.
The plot, like monster hunter, would be a gameplay loop of increasingly powerful titans within a region, building to the boss titans of each region. Once the 8 primary titans are defeated, it triggers the endgame main plotline.
The world
As mentioned previously, the bulk of the gameplay loop and storyline would be defeating increasingly more powerful "titan" pokemon, until you encounter a particular individual pokemon that is actively shaping that region and has ultimately caused the other titans along the way to be empowered.
Each region would have a dominant type, several field effects that come and go within certain parts of the area, and a unique boss titan. Each boss titan is about equivalent difficulty, and the player is encouraged to spread their efforts around to proceed through the "tiers" of titans evenly across the world before making it to the boss.
Hubs: Slateport, Lilycove.
Self explanatory, these would be the hub towns. Like in PLA, no other cities would be founded yet. Mt. Pyre would be integrated as part of Lilycove, and important characters and exposition could happen there. It would be an active cathedral. Kyogre and Groudon wouldn't be "known", but vague, amorphous titans of earth, sea, and sky would be referenced.
Land Regions
Meteor Cliffs and the Tranquil Plain
A gentle, grassy plain south of Mt. Chimney gives way to its southern slope. The slope, pockmarked with craters, has not been extensively explored, but is thought to hold deep caverns.
Regional effect: Pyschic Terrain
Regional Titan boss: Metagross (Steel/Pyschic)
Main game route equivalents: Meteor Falls, Rustboro City, Petalburg Woods, Petalburg City, Oldale Town, Littleroot town, 101, 102, 103, 104, 116, 115
Towering Forest
A deep, lush forest, sometimes so dense that you can't see the sky, fed by the crystal clear river cutting through it. The tangle of the canopy shudders under the weight of unseen pokemon above.
Regional effect: Grassy Terrain
Regional Titan boss: Tropius (Grass/Steel)
Main game route equivalents: Fortree city, Safari Zone, 119, 120, 121, 123
Jagged Stones
Deep, rugged canyons hide a basin-like desert, where a raging sandstorm elicits mirage-like visions.
Regional effect: sandstorm
Regional Titan boss: Tyranitar (Rock/Dragon)
Main game route equivalents: Verdanturf town, 117, 111, 112, all desert subregions
Volcanic Slopes
The peaks, caverns, and North slope of Mt. Chimney know no peace from the continuous onslaught of lava.
Regional effect: harsh sunlight
Regional Titan boss: Camerupt (Fire/Ground)
Main game route equivalents: Mt. Chimney, Jagged Pass, Fiery Path, Lavaridge, Fallarbor, 113, 114
Oceanic regions
Thunder Bay
An unrelenting, static haze hovers over the inlets of of Thunder Bay, impeding exploration of its deep subterranean caverns.
Regional effect: electric terrain
Regional Titan boss: Manectric (Electric/Dark)
Main game route equivalents: Mauville, New Mauville (replaced by a cave entrance), Cycling Road, 118, 110, 134, 133
Shifting Floes
A chill falls over the NorthEast seas of Hoenn, a climatic anomaly. Scattered islands and shifting ice platforms are continually coated with a snowstorm.
Regional effect: snowstorm
Regional Titan boss: Froslass (ice/ghost)
Main game region equivalents: Mossdeep, Shoal cave, 124, 125, parts of 126 and 127
Misted islands
A mysterious area of the ocean in which islands seem to shift locations as they phase in and out of sight.
Primary Area effect: Misty Terrain
Regional Titan Boss: Altaria (Dragon/fairy)
Main game route equivalents: Dewford Town, Granite Cave, Southern Island, Mirage Island (location changed), 105, 106, 107, 108, 109
Deep Blue
The open expanse of the ocean, and the islands within it, hold secrets beyond comprehension in their depths and constant storms. It is said that there is as much below as there is above.
Primary Area effect: rain/underwater (same effects as rain)
Regional Titan Boss: Wailord (water)
Main game route equivalents: Sootopolis city, Cave of Origin, Sky Pillar, Ever Grande City, Pacifidlog, Seafloor cavern, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, parts of 126 and 127
Special Area: the Delta Stream
Ripping across Hoenn's skies is an air current known as the Delta Stream, which powerful pokemon use as a causeway between regions and across the world.
Only accessible in the postgame, and with a "helper" pokemon that can fly. This entire region is above the clouds, and the only points that poke up are the peak of Mt. Chimney, Sky Pillar, and an updraft over Mt. Pyre.
Primary area effect: tailwind
Regional Titan Boss: Salamence (Flying/Dragon)
The Endgame Plot: after the titans are quieted
Once every boss has been defeated, the endgame storyline starts. Despite every titan being quieted, the land still quakes, and the seas still swell. The elders of Mt. Pyre urge you to investigate these at their source: the inner lava chamber of Mt. Chimney (subregion of Volcanic Slopes), and the depths of the seafloor (subregion of Deep Blue).
As you can probably guess, this is the introduction to Kyogre and Groudon.
The first fight with each of them uses your own pokemon, and gives you a "false" win- after you "faint" them in a suspiciously easy battle, they each revive into their primal forms, and head to the mountain island that would become Sootopolis. Hear, they battle on a kaiju-like scale. The MC watches the destruction from Mt. Pyre.
For the second time in the game's story, the MC makes a wish: this is beyond me. I wish a savior would come. Jirachi directly unveils itself for the first time to answer the call, touches the MC, and speeds off into the distance. A cutscene follows Jirachi to Sky Pillar (only a raw, uncarved spike of rock at this point), where Rayquaza is seen coiled around the top. Jirachi leads Rayquaza into the upper atmosphere, where it undergoes a primal/mega evolution. It pivots, shooting down towards earth, building speed.
The player takes control of M-Rayquaza as it slams down to earth, staggering Kyogre and Groudon away from each other, and engages in a special fight where they have to defeat both of them.
After this, Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza may each be found at Seafloor cavern, Mt. Chimney, and sky pillar respectively, and may be defeated and captured. But its highly implied that they only go along with this willingly, and will freely resume their duties as the lords of the land once the MC passes on.
After the plot is completed, steps and murals start being carved into Sky Pillar, allowing access to the Delta Stream.
The post game would allow for infinitely generating Titans, rematches with previously captured Boss Titans as "enrichment" for them, and general gameplay loop grinding for items to train pokemon.
Yay, okay, no ones gonna read this far but uh. Yeah. That's the general idea I had. Hope it made at least some sense LOL
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fairypaw · 5 months
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Poly plastic critters be upon ye' 🏳️‍🌈👭👭💥
me babbling about them under the cut as always
i recently got these lps together and theyre my darling starshines. i kinda wanna make them into long running ocs make lore for them and all that,, so here are some info and hcs and lore for the girls <33
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Dorothea Flores || (cocker spaniel)
• she/her (afab)
• nicknames: dory, dorothy
• met Tommy first during early highschool, they were acquaintances and were on friendly terms through classes/projects but nothing came of it due to Dory's issues and Tom moving shortly. Rekindled again much later when she was on the job to find a heavily concussed Tommy
• Met Nia in pre med, Nia was the one who really helped her sort out all her issues and how they came to date was Dory on the bathroom floor post breakdown and went "lol that was embarrassing. wanna grab coffee later its a date"
• your local recovered mean girl grew up an angry child under her parents roof, its okay she figured it out,, eventually,,, in therapy
• currently an EMT, though shes undergoing training to become a paramedic.
• loves cooking!! she sings when she cooks and her girls will butt in off key fondly
Niamh Buckley || (deer)
• they/them (transfem amab)
• nicknames: nia
• homeschooled for most of their life, conservative parents who kept them in a short leash. ran away when they were 18 and lived with Tommy and her brother before going to collage where they met Dory.
• currently in med school to be a pediatric psychologist, but teaches elementary ballet part time
• kids love them like they're some sort of children whisperer, they hope to foster kids one day, something something breaking generational trauma
• loves gardening, grows their own veggies and herbs, hoping to grow a flower garden once they're a homeowner and not a heavily in debt student
Hamamoto Tomeiko || (cat)
• she/her
• nicknames: tommy, tom, miko
• was raised only by her older half brother growing up, her parents were unfit to raise a child and her freshly 18 brother adopted her, started calling him dad down the line.
• had a crush on Dorothy since high school, but it was pretty one sided since they were only in the same school for 2 years, because her dad's job made them move around a lot
• can pick up conversational languages pretty quickly because of this, also knows two different sign languages
• Met Nia because her dad came home with a homeless runaway kid and he took them in immediately knowing exactly what it felt like, they bonded while living together and decided to be roomates again in collage. feelings ensue
• wikipedia lite, will tell you about the article they read about whatever niche topic whenever they get an excuse to (theyr a little acoustic)
• studying in aerospace engineering, girl never let go of her hyperfixation of rockers since she was 7 and it shows
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them . btw.
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megumimania · 9 months
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AOT LONDON BOY HCS PT 2
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featuring: reiner, onyankopon, armin
a/n: this is part two of these hcs, part one is here! thanks for tuning in its kinda rushed my bad 😪, likes and reblogs are greatly appreciated!
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ARMIN
-armin would be from islington or finchley maybe even south, but I don’t see him living in like bougie areas such as kensington or chelsea or like richmond
- him and eren went to the same primary and secondary together
-armin was literally his get out of jail free card because of his stellar reputation in academics
-he always gets free stuff from the corner shop or the chicken and chip shop
-doesn’t own a car, he either bikes or takes the tube because he cares about the environment and doesn’t want to add onto the extra pollution in london
-his dress sense is very casual like a t shirt, a pair of loose fitted trousers and some trainers but when he cant be bothered he’ll wear a tech fleece
-he has a very good sense of direction, like he knows the fastest routes for anything, like when eren and connie dragged him to carni (if you went this year im saur jealous 😩 but anyways) and it was time to get home armin found a quicker route that got them back pretty fast
-knows all the best secret spots in london for anything! which makes hanging out with him more fun because you experience a new part of london when you’re together
-he isnt a fan of eren’s scamming ways but when eren asks for help he always answers as long as he’s not a part of it
-london men i feel like are terrible with their feelings but armin is the exception, he would be very open with you about his feelings and such
-reads so much, you’ll catch him at hyde park or greenwich park reading till the sun sets
-he smokes cigarettes but he’s trying to cut it out for you
-his playlist would be very diverse since he’s been brought up in a multicultural area, like it would go from bashment, to rnb, drill to pop
-unlike his unserious counterparts *cough cough* eren and connie, he’s very loyal!
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ONYANKOPON
-my ghanaian king, shoutout to my ghanaians!!
-he speaks twi so well that people forget he was brought up in the uk
-he would be from peckham or lewisham for suree, he’s deffo been dragged around by his mum round rye lane market on a saturday morning carrying that trolley with him
-he goes to a pentecostal church, he’s always leading youth service and helping out at church events.
-the aunties love him for this because he’s the perfect son that they don’t have and they just love him in general
-ony can cook and im being for real, so you guys never eat out unless ony wants to show you to a new niche restaurant somewhere
-he has snap but doesn’t have a bitmoji because he thinks it’s immature 😕 but eventually he caves and makes one because you ask him too
-hes always promoting his boys stuff whether that be music,
-he deffo went to an all boys secondary and then he went to a mixed sixth form after, he gives me those vibes
-he used to go to the library to link girls after school 😭 he had a big playboy phase but hes calmed down
-he used to be one of those people at stratford westfield trying to sell you magazines before you enter
-hes not stingy with his money, hes always spoiling the people he loves
-he has a bunch of caps and grills that he likes to rotate out weekly, he has great style
-he works in corporate london so its rare that you dont see him outside of a suit and tie but he always makes time for you
-ony is always holding your bag for dear life when you go to bait areas like oxford street or westfields or like the tourist spots because people be getting their shit stolen loool
-he loves late night tesco trips anything that he can do at night i.e late night walks, drives etc
-bossman is always giving him discounts on stuff because ony is loyal customer.
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REINER
-look at that man and tell me he wouldnt be from essex tell me!! like thats pure dagenham material right there
-if you search up a typical person from essex, he would come up
-he probably owns those skintight chinos with those ugly polos with the church shoes
-he tries to downplay his accent a bit since sometimes its hard to understand him but when hes upset his accent comes through in full force
-always at spoons or at the club till early hours
-reiner gives me bricklayer vibes so thats what im gonna roll with
-when he comes home from work in summer hes like hot and sweaty but it makes his biceps glow so its kinda sexy idk
-has a bunch of tattoos, most of them are birthdays of family members and a picture of his grandma who passed away
-has a british bulldog called belle, the dog is fucking scary but reiner thinks the world of her and thinks she can do no wrong
-listens to mainly dnb, garage, techno
-downs pints at the pub like it’s nothing, he has a high alcohol tolerance
-proper geezer that’s all i have to say tbh!
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bangtangalicious · 2 years
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bts smut recs | needy!jungkook
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there is something about when our lovely jeon jungkook is portrayed to be a hormone crazy, super needy, greedy, whiny character that is so fucking hot. tmw readers. i know you’ll love these. the hyper-horniness and blatant hunger for sex is so sexy. these are all jungkook x reader 18+ SMUT recs based on this theme. more to be added as i find them!!! 
🔺 = yandere/taboo themes *ALL ARE SMUT
MILF (series) by @koosbabygrl | 🔺 ive read this so many times. like. SO MANY TIMES. this is PEAK needy!koo energy. its so fucking hot i cant even put it into words. theres this mommy kink moment and i CANT get over it holy shittttttttt. also the sequels are GREAT, in part 2 when he has her riding his cock while she does her makeup oh my fucking godDDDDDDD. amazing.
this specific needy!koo drabble by @voidswan | 🔺 i know its not a full fic but its literally so hot i cry. bunny!koo just wants to fuck so bad poor thing I DONT KNOW WHY IM JUST OBSESSED OK the stuttering gets me every fucking time. screams. 
clean up by @lonelyhobi & @scribblemetae | he’s drunk and he feels so guilty abt it but he cant help himself!! god its FEVERISHLY good. he’s all whiny and crying and he needs u so bad and the way its described is so fucking hot. the dirty talk is inSANE. dry humping. fuck. amazing amazing.
thunderstorms are scary by @lonelyhobi & @scribblemetae | same couple, but this innocent needy kook is just scared and comes to sleep w noona and then ends up groping you and poor kookie just cat stop bc you feel so good. he ruts into ur ass and whines and ugh. brilliantttttt. honestly recommend this whole masterlist of step-bro fics from them its amazing. theres also a fun loss-of-innocent taehyung one :))))
training wheels by @fithehunnybee | theres a twinge of like sneaky manipulation in this one which i love. y/n kinda a bitch but she drives poor lil koo up the mf WALL. we have some cumming in pants action which i know you all LOVE hehehehe. also i love that it builds the tension so well with koo getting so desperate and y/n teasing..poor lil bunny
the dark prince (series) by @jkeuphoriadreamland | 🔺 LISTEN. first of all, read all their works bc, chefs kiss, but focusing on the needy koo in this, he DEVELOPS mmkay, he starts off all innocent but once he has a taste oh boy does he know what he wants (its you, btw *wink). poor boy cant see at first but he cant fucking help himself your touch drives him insane. how can you resist? the slow burn. the build up. the teasing. IMMACULATE. 
thank you, baby (series) by @scribblemetae | 🔺 im gonna clickbait you ALL into reading this. its twisted in the best way. a few personal highlights for me are when y/n is wearing the VR goggles and jungkook is like yeah imma just slide my cock in real quick lmfaooo its really hot though. the sort of unraveling of the reader adds to the desperation and neediness of both of their sexual actions. its fanfuckingtastic. each part has a good dose of things we all crave: begging, whining goodness
born sinner (series) by @1kook | OUR GOOD LIL CATHOLIC BOY IS UP TO NO GOOD and its got so much of his POV and the GUILT is so well portrayed and makes the whole thing seem more taboo/intense and its just fantastic mmm. 
forbidden by @googikoo | 🔺 again, i read this more times than i can admit. its not so much loss of innocence and more like straight up NEEDY but essentially sneaky devious lil koo is dating your daughter but, obvi, he wants you ;) 
teeth by @sweetbunnykook | ITS LIGHT SMUT BUT ITS JUST REALLY HOT LIKE I CANT EXPLAIN IT JUST READ IT ITS HOT
and not to be entirely self-serving but in case you want more..i too have dabbled in this genre ;)
touch me wherever
tickle me there 
touch yourself here 
wanna touch you 
soaked n’ slippery
ALWAYS LOOKING FOR MORE!! if you know of any other fics that fit this niche please feel free to lmk!! im always looking for new reads :) this one is for my TMW readers. i know what you like hehehehe ;)
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themotherofblood · 11 months
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Hi! I literally devoured your Vampire Series, it's awesome!
I was thinking since it's summer why don't our vampires go to the sea? Something like Daemon and Rhaenyra want to see the baby girl in a swimsuit and they're specially prepared for that. But the girl is shy because vampires look just divine and she has quite a few scars and marks left on her. And in the end they calm her down.
um! yes! 100x yes! This one is a blurb I AM INCAPABLE OF WRITING THEM. ENJOY THIS 1K+ baby mind you :) So have fun spending a day at Summerhall.
Vampire!Daemon x reader x Vampire!Rhaenyra
masterlist | series masterlist | Vampire AU
warnings: compulsion, oral (F), mentions of blood. a very teeny tiny allusion to self harm (if you squint)
a/n: also Netflix exists in Modern!Westeros :) also reader is kinda toxic but hey this is a dark series so eh. Also other than Marvel, lemme know what odd niche thing you think exists in Modern!Westeros (Teslas? Harry Styles? Cupcake Remixs? EUPHORIA?!) Also, Summerhall is built on one of the StepStones island and reader lived in Storm’s End
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Rhaenyra had been worried, you weren’t yourself the past few days. Having merely shown them a glimpse of the sunshine you were for a week, you became quiet again. Obediently offering up a wrist or lifting your skirt for Daemon when asked, pulling up your hair and dropping to your knees on Rhaenyra’s command. Then returning to shield yourself within the pink walls of your rooms. Binging some medical surgery show and smiling along at its romance.
They had your things shipped from your old apartments up at Storm Street, even your little cactus on your coffee table was returned to you safely. Daemon bought you a much larger one, thinking it would have made you happy. You admired the gesture, but it was big and just a little bit ugly. You spent a few hours scrolling through your laptop and phone that was also returned to you, you wouldn’t run, they knew you wouldn’t. Your mind so tightly in their grasp, you no longer looked at the main gates around the island.
Today you laid curled in the theatre room, a melting bowl of strawberry ice cream on your lap as you hummed along to another concert documentry, you missed going out— the fun behind getting ready with friends, the drunk unrelenting laughter and feeling damn sexy by choosing to dress slutty once every month. Now all you saw was scars, yellows, blues and purples. They would have taken longer to heal if Mrs Stone hadn’t brought you a steaming cup of tea with two drops of either Daemon or Rhaenyra’s blood.
You would never see them on the days you healed, away from the island for their business, and you were happier for it. Finding the scarring rather displeasing to look at and relief that you could frolic around this giant property in your PJ’s and messed hair. Sometimes when you truly felt lonely, you would put on your headphones, blaring against your ears as you danced down the hallway. All of whom in witness were the many paintings of Old Valyrian nobility and Targaryen royalty. The first day you did it, merely mumbling along the lyrics but by the end of the month you were sure Mrs Stone could hear you screaming the songs from the kitchen.
The same over and over again for four days at a time, you grew a little worried over your mother—her silence was agonizing to this day. She didn’t have much to say, you wanted to tell her, you were lonely and even alone you might have been addicted to the gentle heaviness in your heart every time you woke up in bed alone after an exhaustive night of being fed on. Yet everytime you heard their car doors thud close, you’d run down the grand stairs to greet them barefooted and in a pretty dress. Throwing yourself at whoever walked through the doors first.
Today in particular, you stood in your giant closet, finally feeling comfortable to partake in all that it was stocked with. While you were happy that your older clothes found a home within the white trim dressers. The gowns, the little girl in you screaming as you put one on, you couldn’t lace it through though, all poofy and tulle. Underneath you had on a lingerie set, throughly pretending to be one of those catalogue models.
You took to the east wing hallways again, waving at the portrait of Baelon Targaryen. Waving around your skirts to a up tempo song and the cool stone underneath your feet. You came to stop at a glass enclosing, Rhaenyra’s coronation gown and her crown laying on a velvet red pillow. Your reflection covering the silhouette of the dress, you imagined yourself in it. You were sure the seams of the dress were made of gold threads.
You were pulled out of your thoughts at the sound of the main gates opening Daemon’s car waiting behind it.
Fuck. They were home early.
You hiked the skirt of your gown and ran down the hall to your bedroom, struggling hard to be rid of your dress and gazillion straps on your lingerie and changing into a more modest sundress to cover your bandaging. You knew you wouldn’t make it down the stairs in time so you sat down on the arm chair by the fireplace with a book. Trying hard to calm your thudding heart. Just as you expected a knock rang down your door before it opened just a little.
Rhaenyra poured in, dressed in a long red dress. Her arms wide as she came to engulf you, snuggling her chin on top of your head.
“I thought you would return the day after?” You asked, smiling up at her.
“Hmm, the Bravosi deal cracked a lot easier than we had hoped and Daemon found a fine meal last night. So we thought we’d return to our darling sooner.” She explained, lifting you up to sit in your spot and pull you down on her lap. “Unless, you didn’t want us to.”
You shook you head, resting it against her temple before reaching lower with your lips to kiss her. “Where’s Daemon?” you looked back to the open door.
“At the docks getting the yacht out.” she said, tucking your hair behind your ear and rubbing her nose against your neck.
“The yacht?” you were sure they even had nuclear weapons under this palace and Daemon could have been Iron Man because why not? You just wonder why.
“Well the weather is just too perfect to waste it so,” she looked towards the window “and I thought you loved swimming, what better way to spend today?”
Rhaenyra could hear Daemon grumbling down at the beach, scolding yet another house keeper for some odd detail they might have missed. She shook her head “I’m going to go check on Daemon before he rips the head of another worker. Get changed.” She pecked your lips before leaving to find Daemon.
You padded back into the closet, this time putting away the gown you were messing around in neatly. Probably costs an eyeball, you dig around for while to find your older swimsuit, a cute green one piece with paisleys on them, perfectly worn in. Then it hit you when you looked around your closet for a moment. Greens right… you loved that one and now it was probably burned along with other green clothing that you were now noticing missing.
You groan when you can’t find it, instead find a sea of newer one and two pieces. You nearly bang your head twice against the drawer before pulling out a white one. Just as you change the dread fills you, they’ve never seen you like this. Not so bruised, usually all that’s left by the time they lay with you again are small puncture scars that they yet again poke through new. Finding no reason to find a new favourite spot to drink from.
You grimace at the odd colouring of your scars clashing with the white, damn it, stretch marks would have been one thing. It was bearable to you but these scars were ugly. You hastily peeled a patch bandage and sticking them on your inner thighs, the left backside of your shoulder (not and easy accomplishment) and neck. Then you prayed to the gods of makeup gurus and tried to hide the yellowing with concealer. It didn’t work very well but it was better than before, instead of pulling on a cover up you pulled an cardigan with longer shorts. Groaning in your hands before leaving to find them.
You stood at the gates, you couldn’t leave them. Tapping your foot, wondering if they forgot about your little predicament. “I’m stuck here!” you chided out loud, knowing they could hear your from the beaches lower.
Daemon was quick to the gates, you hugged your torso, hoping none of the scars where viable as he gave you a once over. He was sizing you, eyes squinted as he leaned on one hip. He approached you, letting his palm curl around you cheek as he kissed you, commanding—almost a threat.
“You can go through gates,” you mind went blank as his eyes dilated.
“I can go through the gates.”
Your eyes cleared and you looked to gates, Home..? No, no. You stay here now.
Daemon was still watching closely, taking note of the way your heart jumped for a moment. He wanted to trust you, not that you could run far from the bridge across to the mainland forest. He thought maybe you were pliant enough that he wouldn’t have to. Yet your heartbeat jumped once more.
“You will not run.” His eyes dilated once more, clutching your jaw harder.
“I won’t run.”
You shook your head once more and the butterflies faded entirely. “Head down the steps on the left. Nyra is waiting for you on the dock.”
You nodded before skipping down the gates, not a second glance was offered to the mainland bridge. You ran down the long dock to Rhaenyra waiting in the boat your thudding ballet flats warning her much before. She helped you onto the boat, before swiftly twirling you into her arms. Her fingers feeling under the fabric of your cardigan and smiling at the feeling of your bathing suit.
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The sun had its glare set upon the open warm sea, the cool winds however making the weather bearable to your skin. In the one hour you had been on the boat, you had been hen mother scolded by Rhaenyra twice. First because you forgot to bring a pair of sunglasses. Second, you only had a bowl of strawberry ice cream for breakfast. You had sheepishly smiled at her as Daemon smirked at his wife. He didn’t mind you being spoilt, anything to keep you here willingly—he didn’t enjoy compelling you. The consequences of compulsion would rain down far worse on you than them.
There were already a few signs, odd blurring of your memories of your older life. You had entirely forgotten which middle school you went to until the reminded you uncomfortably in a conversation. Luckily the many photos albums and stashes of Polaroids you had at your apartment were more than enough grout to fill the gaps in your memory. Then there was spurts of blank, one moment you could be speaking or whimpering in their arms to just blank—robotic like the colour drains from your eyes.
“I wonder what other spoilt things you are up to in the day,” Rhaenyra huffed as she pulled your other leg onto her lap to rub sunscreen on. She knew, both her and Daemon very much knew about the dance parties with their ancestors in attendance. From all the cameras around the house that they checked upon every night away from you.
“Does talking to Aenys Targaryen count?” you giggled, making Daemon’s eyebrows perk up. “He seemed like a good listener, very pretty.”
“Very weak.” Daemon coughed. “What else?”
“Uh… watched a documentary on whales actually. Fascinating.” you mused before looking out to the sea “I’d like to see one some day.”
“Now, why don’t we go for a dip huh?” Rhaenyra pawed at your pink cardigan, the gentle pull gave her glimpse of the white bandage. “Are you still bleeding?” Her eyes scrunched.
“Did you not take the tea?” Daemon questioned, immediately wondering if Mrs Stone would soon be lunch.
“No— I did.” You shook your head, completely forgetful of the anxiety bubbling within you an hour ago. Rhaenyra tilted her head, confused at the rise in your thudding heart. Daemon too pushing down his sunglasses to look at your with a frown upon your face. Your mouth opened and then closed.
“Well?” he questioned with his palm out.
“You’ve never seen me on healing days, it— it’s not pretty,” you stuttered “so I thought I’d cover up.”
Both Rhaenyra and Daemon visually relaxed, both contemplating worse than what was bothering you.
Rhaenyra said nothing, just hooked her fingers around the buttons of your cardigan before pulling it off, Daemon watched Nyra and you, but mostly listening to the music that was your heart. He hadn’t heard something so reactive, accustomed to the rapid increase in his feed’s heart, the crescendo of fear and the sloshing of blood as he controlled its flow from the carotid artery.
You winced a little as Rhaenyra peeled apart the bandage on your shoulder, peppering little kisses on the bruise “not ugly.” She figured if they had stained such delicate skin, they could kiss it better too. She nodded her head to Daemon, demanding he follow along.
Daemon shook his head Nyra, his sweet wife perfectly cunstruck by a human, so was he—maybe, big maybe. He kneeled infront of you, shimming your shorts up to peel away at the bandaging on your inner thigh. His cock twitched at the sight of the healing bruises and the distinctive puncture marks of his fangs.
His pink tongue poked out as he suckled on the spot—keep it fucking marked he thought. You hissed out loud at that, making Rhaenyra kick Daemon in the thigh as a warning glare. He sneered at her before obliging and peppering kisses up your thigh. You wiggled on the spot as his kisses trailed upwards.
“Needy slut.” He muttered under his breath, he could smell your pooling cunt already as Rhaenyra peeled through the bandage on your chest.
Daemon hooked his fingers around your cotton shorts and pulled them down. His nose rubbing up at your clothed mound, Nyra knew exactly what he wanted to do as she shuffled backwards, letting your upper body rest against her chest. She pulled your white bathing suit to one side, letting Daemon groan and flatten his tongue against your warm folds.
He used his thumb to gently push at the hidden pearl, using his tongue to pry open your folds. He was about to open his palm and lay a smack on your mound, he couldn’t help but crave the sound of your yelps and cries. Rhaenyra was faster though, knowing her husband far too well as she reached over to catch his wrist.
“If you’re going to be a dick, we can switch. You like my tongue better anyways, don’t you sweetie.” she teased her husband, this was a fight you refused to get in between as you looked between the pair.
“You didn’t think I was a dick last night with my tongue in your cunt, riñītsos.” He countered, it was never more apparent that they indeed were a married couple.
You couldn’t help stop the cackle that tore through you next, you pursed your lips to stop another from pouring through but instead choked on a yelp as Rhaenyra slapped your cunt. You bit your tongue from smiling as you gave her your sweetest eyes as an apology.
“Don’t be a brat,” she scolded, still giving Daemon a warning glare to be be nice to you “and you keep licking.”
You curled to your side with a moan as the tip of Daemon’d tongue pushed against your hood before suckling it in mouth.
“Daddy.” You mewled, your hands reaching down to grab hold of his silver hair. The ardent feel of his tongue pushing you masterfully to a longing completion.
“Is he making you feel good, honey?” Rhaenyra pulled your chin up to meet your eyes, you nodded breathlessly. “What do you say?”
“Thank you, daddy.” your toes curled around his shoulder as his tongue rapidly flicked against your reddened bud.
Daemon has a voracious need to feel you gushing onto his tongue as he poked into your clenching hole, Rhaenyra reached down to play with you clit but he slapped her hand away— his turn, he knew you liked his tongue the most. He replaced her fingers with his, rolling the bundle of nerves between his fingers. He spat onto your pussy, admiring your scrunched up face as he rubbed tight circles onto your bud.
“Now, whose tongue is your favourite again?” He asked “gotta answer if you want to come today, pet.”
The vehement predicament he had just pushed you into was cruel, just too cruel for your poor heart as you eyes welled up, your bottom lip pouted out. Looking conflicted between Rhaenyra and Daemon as they bottom looked at your expecting an answer. You mouth opened and then closed as your deeply gulped, he couldn’t hold his serious face together for longer. The sweet battle in your mind, he knew your answer would come along with a major punishment at the hands of the other.
He shook his head once more chuckling, making Rhaenyra giggle and press a kiss to your temple.
“Go on, come on daddy’s face.” Rhaenyra whispered in your ear as she let your hair.
You on command, shrieked, relaxing and letting the dam break through as your thighs shuddered along with your body. You hands tightly clutching onto Rhaenyra
“There we go, what a good pet.” Daemon coaxed you through your high as he kept his rubbing going until your orgasm turned to over-sensitized whimpers. Rhaenyra let go of your bathing suit, still stroking your arms as you recovered.
“Thank you.” you huffed once more at Daemon who returned to nursing in his scotch.
“Now go swim.” Rhaenyra patted your thigh as she pushed you up, gesturing at the very calm open waters. You looked to her once, still dazed before looking at the Sunset Sea. You smiled as you climbed down the ladder to the lower deck. Stopping for a moment to drop you cardigan in the floor, before running to the water.
Tucking your legs in a canonball as you squealed before splashing into the water.
Daemon then turned to his wife “you’re getting bossy these days Nyra, don’t make me spank it away.” He warned her as she pulled of her red kaftan to reveal her maroon bathing suit. He laid a quick swat on her milky pale ass as she followed behind you, sitting on the lower deck with her painted feet dipped in the water as she watched you swim.
“She still likes my tongue better Daemon.”
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ahhh you guys, this was so much fun to write hehe. I had this scene of Daemyra bickering like a married couple for a long time and I’m so glad I could use it for this AU.
Also, reader was totally screaming The Weeknd songs and Taylor Swift songs to all the Targaryen portraits.
And yes. There will be a chapter where Rhaenyra dresses reader in 120AC attire for roleplay :)
Ps. I’m trying to piece through a Vampire lore like pros cons and might do a backstory of their turning :)
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taglist (thank youuuu!! ♥️♥️)
@fan-goddess @funnybunnyxxx @avalyaaa @evattude @you-youuuu
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rottenshotgungames · 3 months
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Alright, let’s start with discourse, shall we?
Gatekeeping Combat
Three days ago, the Gorgon Bones blog made this post about fighters in TTRPGs (particularly the OSR): https://gorgonbones.blogspot.com/2024/02/choosing-fighter-means-choosing-violence.html?m=1
I recommend reading the post, it’s fun (and the comments are hilarious). But, for those who don’t have the time or attention span (trust me, I’m lacking in spoons right now too), this is a relatively short joke that suggests protecting the Fighter class’ niche by making it the only class able to participate in combat. This, on its face, seems like an inherently silly idea—because it is—but people have been interacting with it as a serious suggestion. This comedic concept has spawned a legitimately interesting design discussion. So, let’s engage with it as a thought experiment. How would one make this function in a fun and reasonable way? The simple answer is that you have to start with conflict.
Conflict in RPGs, particularly in Dragon Game derivatives (such as the OSR), is often violent in nature. This presents the first hurdle: How do we centralize combat to 1 class when it’s a major source of conflict, conflict that people inherently want to engage in? As I see it, there are two approaches:
Decentralize Combat.
Redefine “Engaging in Combat.”
Decentralizing combat is kinda just what it says on the tin; make combat a less important source of conflict and means of resolving it. The two biggest examples of this—to me—are Investigative Horror Games and Stealth Games, both of which rely on central conceits that CAN involve violence but don’t necessarily rely upon it. A non-OSR example would be John Harper’s Blades in The Dark, in which combat is resolved the exact same way as every other conflict: through a series of dice rolls that result in ticking and unticking a clock (with possible complications).
Redefining what it means to “engage” requires a bit more definition than the prior approach. “Redefining” can be subcategorized into two somewhat disparate techniques: Redefining goals and redefining interactions.
In any TTRPG combat, the party tends to have a list of goals that exist in a hierarchy of priority. For example, in a traditional D&D or Lancer combat the hierarchy of party goals might look like this:
The Contest (express martial superiority, wipe out the opposition, or otherwise win the combat)
The End State (survive the combat and prevent as much harm to yourself or other party members as possible)
The Barrier (achieve the exploration or narrative goal that’s being hindered or prevented by the combat)
“Redefining” these goals is more accurately described as a re-ordering of their hierarchy based upon whether you are or aren’t the Fighter, usually through gameplay incentives. An incredible example exists in the form of Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk 2020, in which the Solo role (through virtue of acting first and being generally able to specialize heavily into combat) can almost singlehandedly decide the outcome of any fight in which they are present. If there is one Solo on the field, their side is probably going to receive a swift victory; your job, as the non-Solo, is simply to not die and accomplish what you actually came here to do. If there are two Solos on opposing sides of the combat, their goals change to winning their private fight; your job, as the non-Solo, is to survive the surrounding combat until the Solo is free again (or to run if they lose). In almost every combat, the Solo will prioritize the Contest while the rest of the party will prioritize either the End State or the Barrier, something aided by Cyberpunk’s lethality and its nature as a heist game.
“Redefining combat interaction” is . . . actually found everywhere. This is your basic class differentiation taken to a greater extreme than you may find in most tactical RPGs. For example, let’s look at the Combat relevant difference between the Thief/Rogue/Mercenary and the Fighter in a majority of games that use such classes:
The Fighter - Deals a lot of damage with consistently accurate attacks (sometimes also makes multiple attacks on their turn). Has high health.
The Thief - Deals a lot of damage with one really powerful attack made from stealth, sneaky (sometimes good at dodging). Has low health.
The differentiation is there, but it’s not really significant (for the purposes of this thought experiment). Both classes focus on damage output, but one makes multiple attacks and one makes a strong attack that requires setup. Let’s try to take this difference and expand it (with a little help from our dear friend Tolkien), particularly by focusing on what makes the Thief unique in comparison to the Fighter:
The Fighter - Deals a lot of damage with consistently accurate attacks (sometimes also makes multiple attacks on their turn). Has high health.
The Thief - Subverts direct combat through the use of trickery and cunning, plays support for the Fighter (sometimes good at dodging). Has low health.
“Subversion,” in this context, simply means fighting dirty. The Thief shouldn’t be engaging in a head-on fight, they’re a Thief. Their interaction with hostile entities should always be tinged by deceit, their goal should always be to throw their enemy off balance, to create openings for others and themselves to use. If your Thief isn’t constantly throwing pocket sand and disarming opponents and knocking chandeliers on top of them and pulling cloaks over their eyes and poisoning them and . . . are they really living out the Thief fantasy? By strengthening the Thief’s core identity, leaning fully into the trickster aspect, we have redefined how both classes interact with Combat in such a way that has made direct, head-on-head violence the apparent specialty of the Fighter.
Conclusion
As much as the original Gorgon Bones blog post is a joke, Jenx does point out a real issue that’s plagued class-based games for a while: a weak niche makes a weak class. Not necessarily mechanically weak (although that can also happen, looking at you CP2020 Cop), but weak in the sense of fundamental design. Strong niches, even if every class has the ability to participate in combat, are born of purposefully and carefully built interactions with the conflicts presented by a game’s rules and environment. If combat is too great of a focus, everyone is going to want to be able to play the guy who’s good at combat; if winning combat is the sole goal of any given encounter, everyone’s going to play the guy that’s good at winning combats; if every class gets good tools for dealing damage . . . well, I don’t really have to spell that one out, do I?
If you’re designing a tactical, class based game: don’t make the Fighter the only class able to engage in combats. It’s lazy, it’s silly, and it won’t be fun for very long. You may notice that, while the two games mentioned here have classes that EXCEL at direct combat, neither of them fully limit it. Instead, the proper lesson of this thought experiment is a far more common one in our field: keep in mind the incentives you’re building into both your game and your classes, and be aware of how all these moving parts interact with and affect each other. After all, the Solo wouldn’t be nearly as good if Cyberpunk wasn’t so lethal, and the Cutter would be far more ubiquitous if Blades in The Dark had a dedicated combat chapter.
Self Promo
Hey! Thanks for reading. Sorry to leave ya with Baby’s First Game Design Lesson, but I hope ya enjoyed the journey there. If you’d like to see my recent attempt at a class based fantasy game, you can click here to check out Hollow Halls. Otherwise, I hope y’all have a great night and a great day!
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