#'it will take over an hour to install btw :)'

[nalyra-dreaming]

Something something about the sequence of "Marius de Romanus, Venitian contemporary of Tintoretto's", "The Groan" and "I serve a god" in the very same dialogue exchange + Real Rashid + Marius burning Eudoxia's acolyte Rashid + Eudoxia wanting to take TWMBK for herself + the way Children of the Millennia worshipped Akasha + Teskhamen being part of Akasha's original cult, the founder of the Talamasca and Marius' maker + the Talamasca finding Marius' painting + these paintings hanging in Dubai

I sound schizophreinc but I swear I'm not. I feel like I'm onto something that I can't fully grasp yet but something like the show merging the concept of Marius and the Talamasca together somehow??? I don't know I need to watch S2 right now😭😭😭

Alright *cracks knuckles* :)

So I am (not sure if you know but probably) firmly in the team "Marius is somewhere around and TWMBK are in the basement. And Lestat is probably there in his coma as well.".

For me (myself and I) all the hints point to that.

The painting, the comment re the prime minister, the groan, Fareed, Armand's little comment re serving a god. If the groan is Armand being annoyed or TWMBK will be something that will be interesting to see, but...

I really do not think you schizophrenic :)))

Marius has ties to the Talamasca (Raymond Galant), not only through his maker (though that is indeed a rather strong tie) but also through his contacts to it through the ages.

I absolutely believe that some of his painting will play a rather important role still in the show(s), especially since the set design emphasizes their meaning so much.

So yes. Marius' painting(s) in Dubai. I would bet anything that there are (at least a few) more in the basement. I would bet a lot that there is more than furniture in the basement, too. (In fact I think @cbrownjc might be right on the track in their fic installment, but that just as a note, this aligns to 99% with what I expect as well^^).

It's just the setup of it all. It carries meaning.

Like, Armand wouldn't hang that painting if some things haven't happened. And, as much as he loves/hates/wants Lestat... would he say Lestat is a god? Then again, him being sun-proof (and Louis not) puts us in such an interesting time frame in the books.... and that little easter-egg/hint with the "Book of Hours", too... because remember where that was mentioned?? Right, in Memnoch. By DAVID. David, who implies that they, aka the Talamasca, were tracking said Book of Hours... which had been lost in Berlin in the Second World War. (Btw, I will forever and for all time adore them if Louis just happens to lose some luggage with that darn book on his and Claudia's travels. Seriously. Please.)

Fareed and Seth... and Gregory. And Teskhamen. And Raymond. Hesketh. The Talamasca. Gregory's pharmaceutical empire and Fareed's research. (Which could easily produce special medicine for Daniel). Seth, Akasha's son. The paintings in the living room depicting "mother and daughter"... and "twins".

It's all connected.

And I mean.... knowing the last books... it's not really a far stretch that Marius is involved with the Talamasca. Leads them even, maybe :))))

The show is building up the lore in a quite incredible way, imho. I just hope they do not lose sight of all the threads, because this... if it unfolds over the next seasons as I suspect it will??? ... will be breathtaking.

#Anonymous #asks #ask nalyra #amc iwtv #iwtv #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire amc #iwtv amc #iwtv 2022 #interview with the vampire #the vampire chronicles #vc #vampire chronicles #marius de romanus #iwtv marius #talamasca #vc lore #iwtv lore

[v-iv-rusty]

I forgot how obnoxious every game launcher that isn't steam is

#misc.txt #'ok before you do anything you have to download our special launcher :) that throttles download speeds a ridiculous amount you cant fix it' #'it will take over an hour to install btw :)' #'ok now link it with your steam and verify it 5 times' #'ok now for this SPECIFiC game you have to link your account from this other company :) :) oh you don't have it? go make one :) :)' #'and then verify it 5 more times while praying until it finally decides to work for no apparent reason : ) ' #'ok now you just have to link the accounts in your browser! oh its not working. idk why lol it just is not :) :) sounds like a you problem' #'now just wait 10 hours for your 90gb game to install at 100kb/s :) :) :)' #fucking kill me #I didnt even want to buy it on that platform it was just 3x cheaper.....

[cal-kestis]

HOW TO: Make an iPhone Layout + Downloadable Template

Hi! I've gotten a few messages asking for a tutorial on my iPhone gifsets — but instead of only doing a tutorial (that would probably be triple the length this one already is), I decided to turn my layout into a template with all the bits and bobs! In the "tutorial" under the cut, I'll share everything you'll need, a free template download, and quickly go over how to use this template. :)

Disclaimer: This template uses Video Timeline and this tutorial assumes you have a basic to intermediate understanding of Photoshop.

PHASE 1: THE ASSETS

1.1 – Download fonts. These are the fonts used for all assets I've included in my template: – SF Pro or SF Pro Display (Regular, Medium, Bold): Either version works, they look nearly identical. You can download directly from https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ or easily find it via Google – Bebas Neue: Free on Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts, and dafont – Times New Roman (Bold): Should be a default font in Photoshop

Make sure to download and install any of the fonts you don't already have before opening my template. That way, once you open the template file, all the settings (font size, weight, spacing, color, opacity, etc.) are as intended.

1.2 – Download my template. Before you use my template, all I ask is that you don't claim or redistribute it as your own and that you give me proper credit in the caption of your post. Making these iPhone gifsets takes me a longgg time and turning this layout into a template took several hours too.

DOWNLOAD TEMPLATE VIA KO-FI ← This template is completely free to download (just enter $0), but if you feel inclined to tip me, I appreciate you! 💖

BTW this template also includes some of my frequently used icons!

NOTE: If, for some reason, you open the template and see the pop-up shown below, click "NO" — otherwise, the fonts will be all messed up:

And if you see this triangle with an exclamation point by a text layer, don't double-click it — it'll mess up the font as well:

PHASE 2: THE GIFS

I'm just going to briefly go over gif sizes and my recommendations. Also, keep in mind when grabbing your scenes, you'll want all of these gifs to be the same amount of frames.

2.1 – Background Gif: 540 x 540 px. I recommend this size so you have a good amount of visibility for the gif behind the iPhone wallpaper. I also recommend making this black and white (or in my case, black and white with a slight blue tint — idk I just like the way it looks) so the wallpaper coloring can stand out.

2.2 – Wallpaper Gif: 230 (w) x 500 (h) px. Keep in mind the very narrow dimensions of the wallpaper! And also keep in mind that you'll have a bunch of apps and widgets covering the image. I try to use wide shots (or layer my clips into looking like wide shots). Also, keep in mind your color scheme for your set and your character's aesthetic! I tend to focus on one or two colors for the wallpaper.

I usually position the wallpaper to the side with 20px bumpers, so there's lots of space to see the background:

2.3 – Large Photo Widget Gif: 201 (w) x 96 (h) px.

2.4 – Small Photo Widget Gif: 94 x 94 px.

PHASE 3: THE TEMPLATE – "IPHONE" FOLDER

In this section, I'll try to quickly walk you through how to use this template and some bits that may require extra instructions. I'll be going through each folder from top to bottom.

3.1 – Status Bar. Time, Service, and WiFi are pretty self-explanatory. In the Battery folder, you can use the shape tool to adjust the shape layers labeled "Fill (Adjustable Shape!)" to customize the battery level.

3.2 – Message Notification. Again, these are pretty self-explanatory. I've already masked the circle for the contact photo, so you can simply import any photo and use the transform tool to shrink it down. The circle is 24x24 px. If you don't want to use a photo, there's another folder called Default Initials.

If your message text can't fit the text box, the message should end with ellipses which is how iOS caps off long texts.

3.3 – Blurred Banner (IMPORTANT) This folder is easy to miss because there's only one placeholder layer in there. On iPhones, the area behind a banner notification and the dock get blurred (including the wallpaper and any apps).

What to do: Make a duplicate of the apps in Row 1 and/or widgets that intersect the message banner, convert them all into one smart object, apply a Gaussian Blur filter (Radius: 3.0 pixels) on the smart object, and move the smart object into this masked folder!

(There's another masked folder in the Wallpaper folder for the dock which I'll go over in that section.)

3.4 – Apps Turn off the yellow guide if you don't need it to keep things aligned and turn off layers you don't need by clicking the eye icon. Replace the "App" placeholder text with your app name, change the color or gradient of the square to compliment your color scheme, and add your custom app icon overlay!

If you can't find an app icon you need from the ones I provided, flaticon.com is a great resource. Also, if you can only find the filled version of an icon, check out this tutorial for how to make any text or shape into an outline.

Also, each app folder has 4 notification bubble options (1-4 digits). Again, you can toggle these on and off as you need!

3.5 – Big Widgets I like using these when my wallpaper has A LOT of negative space to fill. I included the Photos and Books widgets in my template, but there are lots of widgets available on iPhones. You can check some of the other ones I've done here, or if you have an iPhone, simply try adding some widgets to your phone!

There are also widgets bigger than these, but they would take up half of the phone screen which is why I don't use them for these edits.

3.6 – Small Widgets The only thing I'll say about these — because they're pretty straight forward — is there are a lot more weather themes than I included in my template. Also, if you set your character's phone to evening, the weather widget will show a dark background (sometimes with stars), so keep that in mind.

Speaking of, I've included Light Modes and Dark Modes for, I think, every applicable widget.

3.7 – Page Dots These barely perceptible dots indicate that your character has more pages of apps than shown in your gifset (so if an anon tries to come at you, you can just say "it's on the next page of apps" /j /lh)

3.8 – Dock Again, the dock has notification bubble options and I've included the default app designs, custom filled designs, and custom outlined designs for iMessage, Phone, Email, and Safari (there's also a FaceTime alternative if that's how your character rolls). These are usually the apps people keep in their Dock, but this is fully customizable too. So, if your character is, like, super obsessed with Candy Crush or something and needs it in thumb's reach — you can put it in the dock.

3.9 – Wallpaper This whole folder is masked already to a 230x500 px rounded rectangle.

Inside, you'll find another "Blurred Portion" folder for the area behind the message banner notification and the dock.

What to do: Duplicate your gif layer and place it in this folder, remove any sharpening filters, and apply a Gaussian Blur filter (Radius: 3.0 px). Be sure to add any coloring/adjustment layers ABOVE this folder and your original sharpened gif layer.

PHASE 4: EXPORT

We made it!

I hope this template makes it super easy for you to recreate this layout! If you decide to try it out, feel free to tag me with #usernik.

If you notice anything wonky about the template, kindly let me know so I can fix it! And if you have any questions about how to use this template, please don't hesitate to send me a message! I just ask that you try to be specific in your question so I'm able to answer you the best I can!

#gif tutorial #completeresources #userpickles #usersmia #userabs #usertreena #alielook #userkosmos #usershreyu #userzaynab #tuserabbie #useryoshi #usersalty #tuserlucie #usernanda #userelio #userhella #usercats #gfx* #resource*

[fluff-n-cookies]

Hey, love! I’m new to this, so sorry if I’m doing this wrong :) You can call me Moon btw. I love your writing and appreciate how it’s all platonic!!!! I was wondering if you could do Aizawa (and maybe Mic or whoever else you want) with an introverted teen he took in asking to braid his hair, and getting lost in thought and humming while listening to him complain about work or something. It’s fine if not <3333

Hi Moon! It's nice to meet you! I am so so so so sorry for replying so late. I was feeling burnt out and just really needed a break. I hope you understand. I was also hoping I could use this prompt for other characters so if you’ll give me permission I’d love to use your idea again for different characters. :)

Aizawa never liked coming home. He never liked the blinding white light bulbs that came with his crappy apartment and was too lazy to change, he didn’t like the smell of coffee and dirty dishes he felt were too overwhelming to do. He used to only have the energy to eat some soggy cereal and pass out on the couch before getting up to do hero work in the morning, or 2 am, or come home at 11 pm but that didn’t matter, it was just the same thing every day. 

But now, he had you. Being the sole survivor of a strange house fire at 1 am and having no memories whatsoever and having been considered shy and introverted. You were one with no guidance, no past and a future unknown and uncharted. And while you had been proven to have the intelligence of a child your age and then some, you had little to no knowledge of much else. You were a young girl in need of love and protection. (at least to him.)

So he took you in, begrudgingly, at first, but he soon felt a sense of comfort in your presence, a sense of happiness even. 

He even decided to pick up a parenting book or two, and found some mommy bloggers as well. I mean, what else is a man to do except try and be a good parent to a child he loves ever so dearly?

He learned he needed to make food for said child, instead of living off take out and what he can find at the convenience store next door. Children also need to live in a clean environment, so that is what he did, he tries to at least do the dishes and laundry regularly now. 

Guess he needs to listen too, because he often finds himself listening to your rants about school and homework, as well as the rants of your hobbies, about what you did today, how you felt today, so many things. And I guess, just a hunch, that his life was finally falling into rhythm. 

But it remained mostly the same.

Tonight was no different.

It goes;come home, take off shoes and coat, check if you’re awake, make some ramen (and some for you too if you are awake.) complain, go to bed. 

So here he is, tiptoeing to your room at the end of the hallway, careful not to wake you if you are asleep. Only to find that you are, in fact, awake. The warm light bulbs he installed in your room peaked through the crack in the door you had left for the cat to come at the ungodly hours of the night. You could also see the various trinkets and hobbies you had picked up over your 4 years of living together and made your room the heart of the whole apartment. Lively and bright. And there you were, hunched over your desk watching a video on your computer, fiddling with a piece of origami paper, attentively following the instructions from the video to try and make an origami frog. 

It took about 10 seconds to recognize he was there, smiling, happily at your antics. You smiled a little, but that smile made it all worth it to do what he does, be a hero and a single parent both at the same time, a smile that could light up even the darkest of nights. You did a little run too, you ran a little run to get to him but still tried to be light on your feet so as not to bother the neighbors.

Always so considerate. He thought. 

It was a regular routine really, for him to get you from your room and make some ramen, but as you two sat on the couch, TV was buzzing with the latest new stories (who needs a dining room table? Just use the couch! Why waste the space? It is the perfect space for your plants so for your plants it will be!) Something different happened today. 

For in the smallest little voice, he heard you squeak out,

 “c-can I braid your hair.” a slight tremble in your voice 

Now that was a surprise,

“What do you mean?” 

“I’m sorry, I meant it as in can I do your hair, I’m sorry I shou-”

“Sure.” he replied nonchalantly.

“What?” 

“You can braid my hair. Go on, the hair ties are in the bathroom.”

“Oh.” there was a pause. “Okay.”

Here he was, out in the dead of night at 12 in the morning, a young girl braiding his black locks of hair while he complained about PresentMic’s antics while eating convenience store ramen. For once in his life he felt at peace, as the world slowed down he felt himself slowly understanding. Understanding that it may be over, the repetitive nights of the never ending loneliness. It’s over.

And it starts here, with you, with tonight where you braid his hair and listen to him rant about the outside world. But here it’s safe, in this crappy apartment with the cool light bulbs and the distant stench of dirty dishes and the coffee he had this morning. It's okay. Life is okay.

Maybe he wasn’t doomed to have the same routine every day over and over again.

#shouta aizawa #bnha aizawa #aizawa shouta #shota aizawa #aizawa #aizawa x reader #mha aizawa #aizawa x y/n #aizawa x you #platonic yandere aizawa x reader #platonic aizawa #mha #bnha #fluffy cookie things #bnha fluff #bnha x reader #bnha headcannons #bnha x child reader #platonic yandere #child reader #bnha dads #eraserhead

[ghost-bxrd]

Ignoring how the plot worked out to get to this point — I'm thinking of Owlsong Red Hood and Talon!Dick and the Nest. Jason would be SO BIG and warm and good to CUDDLE. That brickhouse that he's become? ABSOLUTELY 10/10 Pillow, that man has pecs, biceps and everything and he eats well, and he'd be so nice to snuggle with (I need him fr)

Just BIG owlet, warm warm to hug, Tim, Dick and everyone would find him so NICE AND WARM

Pls provide more nest hcs I'm losing it slowly ;-; smol Jay and Dick. Big Jay and Dick. All batfam ;-; all the nesting HCs ;-;

YES!

And you know what’s more? Dick would be so terrified of Jason leaving the nest without him noticing after the whole Ethiopia and pit fiasco (tough luck sneaking past a Talon btw) that he takes to literally sleeping on top of Jason. Just— flopping face first on his owlet and staying there. Sorry Jay, no leaving for the next eight hours minimum.

Tim would be squished somewhere in the middle or into their side. Bruce would try wrapping himself around all of them because he finally has all his kids back in a nest where they belong (and god is it weird for his brain to have accepted nests as normal).

Alfred would check up on them periodically (he’s not afraid he’s dreaming, no way..) and just— pet their heads comfortingly every now and again. Just to make sure they’re all okay.

Dick has several nests all over the manor (you can never have enough nests). But the most frequented ones are in Jason’s and in Bruce’s room. Bruce installed linen closets on every floor after it became apparent that the nesting thing wasn’t just a phase and now ordering new blankets and soft pillows has become a bit of a hobby.

Every nest is so, SO soft. And they all have at least one heated blanket. But Dick absolutely prefers cuddling others to get his body temp to stay at comfortable levels ✨

#owl song #talon dick grayson #Jason todd #Tim drake #Bruce Wayne

[foone]

So, regarding Cartrivision and how the Red Tapes were effectively play-once, this idea of "you buy/rent a tape but you can only play it for a short while" so was enticing an idea that it keeps coming back. There's obviously ways this can be implemented on streaming services, but it was tried at least twice in the optical disc era, but amusingly in two entirely different ways.

And it was backwards from how you might think. The older one seems like it should have come later!

So first was DIVX (the disc format: it's unrelated to the Codec of the same name)

This came out in 1998, just as DVD was starting to catch on. They got a bunch of movie studios to sign on to only release their films on DIVX, not DVD, and tried to backdoor the format into acceptance: it was heavily pushed by Circuit City, then a major retailer. All DIVX players were also DVD players, so they would try to convince you to buy a DIVX player so you could play both.

How it worked is pretty simple: it is basically a DVD that's been encrypted. To decrypt it, you need a license. The DIVX player can talk to the DIVX server and let you purchase a license to watch the film, and the license would be valid for 48 hours before deleting itself. So the idea was that you'd pick up a disc for very cheap, like a rental, but when you could hang onto it for later, and re-axtivate the license by just paying the license free (a couple dollars) again. And if you didn't like the movie? No need to take the film back to blockbuster, you can just toss it in the garbage! (you could also pay a higher fee to get an unlimited license to the film, effectively converting it into a DVD)

But this was 1998, remember: very few people have always-on internet. How's it talk to the DIVX server?

Simple. It's got a modem. You plug your DIVX player into the phone line, and it dials up DVD HQ and talks to them over that connection. It's a very 1990s solution.

Anyway it died. People interested in DVD universally hated the idea, especially the part where some studios were only going to release films as DIVX. People had had VHS tapes for a while now, and they were used to buying and owning their films. Going to a time-limited rental system seems like a big step back.

And of course, movie rental companies hated the idea too, as it basically would destroy them as a business (years before streaming destroyed them anyway). So they refused to entertain the idea. So it failed, and it took down Circuit City with it. The funniest part? Remember how it talks to a server? Well, guess what happened to that server when the format was discontinued!

Yep, all DIVX discs are unplayable now. They announced the discontinuation in 1999, and by 2001 the servers were turned off. All DIVX discs (even the ones upgraded to forever-playable) are just paperweights. (and btw: I've looked into the feasibility of hacking the encryption. They used 3DES, which is far from the best but is still pretty secure. Give me a million dollars and a year of computation time and I'll be able to watch one film.)

So, with DIVX dying such a quick and painful death that it took out the major retailer that invented it, surely no one else would even consider this idea again, right?

Welcome to FlexPlay. A 2003 format where you buy a DVD for cheap, and you can watch it for 24-48 hours. Even better than DIVX, because you don't need a special player and you don't even depend on talking to a server!

Wow. What weird technical tricks did they do to make this work? Is there a special program on the disc? Some kind of computer code? Special encryption? Can you only play it on a PC with some DRM software installed?

Nope! While DVDs have anti-copying DRM and DIVX added limited-playback DRM, FlexPlay goes completely the other route and has Analog Rights Management: the limited playback is enforced by CHEMISTRY.

Yep. See, the way optical discs work is by shining a layer through the clear plastic and bouncing it off a mirrored layer of aluminium in the center of the disc. (Well, for pre-pressed discs. MO and CD-R/RW discs work differently)

But FlexPlay discs add a layer of dye between the aluminum and the plastic. This dye is initially transparent to the red laser used by DVD players (did you know that's why blu-rays are called that? They use blue lasers instead of the red lasers used by DVD , and the infrared lasers used by CDs), so it can be read just fine.

But they made the dye react with oxygen. As soon as the airless bag the disc is stored in is opened, the dye starts darkening, eventually becoming unreadable. So once you have opened the disc, you better watch it soon, or it will be unreadable.

This format technically lived on until 2011 before being discontinued, but it doesn't seem like it was terribly popular at any point. Part of this was probably that it couldn't live up to the dream of selling a film on a disc you made for pennies, and making tons of profit. Making the discs was tricky, as you had to make them in special inert-atmosphere conditions to keep them from prematurely darkening.

Anyway the final joke of FlexPlay is that they haven't been made since 2011, and while they were sold in air-tight packages, nothing is PERFECTLY airtight. So all the ones for sale have had the bags leak over the last 12+ years, and are prematurely unreadable. Whoops.

Anyway now that physical media is dead, movie companies finally have their time-limited rental they've always wanted. Streaming makes this trivial.

And two final notes:

1. There's not really any lost-media risk with these two formats. All DIVX-only films were later released on DVD when the format ranked. And all FlexPlay films had already gotten DVD releases, so there was never any risk.

2. My buddy Technology Connections did a video in FlexPlay a while ago, if you want to learn more about it.

#Physical media #Obsolete media #Ya'll liked the Cartrivision post so I figured I should do some more of these #Youtube

[aquaquadrant]

from eden, part III

Word count: 7,972

Warnings: Nondescript death (in Minecraft), shipping (nothing explicit!)

Summary: When Tango agreed to join Double Life, he didn’t anticipate being soulbound to Jimmy- a player he hardly knows. And when their first meeting happens after he loses their first life, he figures the only way left to go is up. But he’s quickly proven wrong when feelings complicate the situation, and he finds that his greatest conflict might just be within himself.

A/N: I’m back with the next installment of my and @lunarcrown’s Hels to Pay AU! (more info and previous fics here) I really don’t know how these keep getting so long. I actually had to split this one up into two parts and it’s still almost 8k. This starts out following Double Life canon, but then diverges after session 1. Btw, I don’t use accurate Minecraft day/night cycles; I envision each session taking place over a normal 24 hour day, just so it’s easier to grasp the passage of time. Hope y’all enjoy, please reblog if you do! It means a lot <3 - Aqua

~*~

from eden, part III - babe, there’s something magic about you, something so tragic about you, don’t you agree?

~*~

Somewhere in Double Life, a player respawns in a tree.

He’s disoriented, an explosion still ringing in his ears as he blinks against the sudden sunlight. Leaves tickle his face- he jerks back instinctively, then his stomach lurches as he almost loses his balance, yelping in surprise. His mind is racing, rational thought struggling to surface against residual panic and adrenaline. Only a second ago, he’d been deep inside a cave fighting off a horde of mobs, and the next-

Clinging to a tree branch with one hand, he uses the other to pull up his communicator.

Tango was blown up by Creeper.

SolidarityGaming died.

The memory comes rushing back; fending off mobs, backing up beneath an overpass, the sudden appearance of a creeper in front of him as the air filled with the sound of hissing-

“No!” Tango wails, the drawn-out cry devolving into hysterical laughter as realization sinks in.

He’s just gotten himself- and his soulmate, because oh right, soulmates are a thing here- killed by a creeper. The first deaths of the newly generated world, in which the goal is to be the last pair standing. And it was a creeper, a stupid creeper of all things! Oh, what a horrible start.

Tango feels the flames of rage licking at him- the blaze rods around his head burning with fire- and forces himself to take a deep, calming breath before he sets the whole forest ablaze. He exhales slowly, closing his eyes for a moment.

“Well-”

“What happened, Tango?”

Tango’s ears prick at the sudden voice. Startled, he whips his head around- and nearly falls out of the tree in the process. He recognizes the voice, though he isn’t as familiar with its owner as he is with some of the other players in this world.

SolidarityGaming. Also known as Jimmy. Also known, now, as Tango’s soulmate.

And the guy Tango just got killed.

There’s something almost familiar about this. Their first real meeting, back on Third Life, involved Jimmy losing his life to Tango’s game of risk. They’d hardly spoken before that, and have hardly spoken since. And here they are now, reeling from the revelation that they’re soulbound and fresh off a death that Tango caused.

The Universe just loves messing with Tango, doesn’t it?

“Oh, hi! Hi!” Tango stammers out, disbelief still coursing through him.

“Um…” Jimmy sounds like he’s in shock, too. His voice isn’t far off. “Wait, where are you?”

Tango glances around. “Are you- are you here?”

“Yeah…”

Peering through the leaves, Tango’s gaze falls on a figure standing just across from the tree; a man with large golden wings. His wide brown eyes scan the little mountaintop forest, one hand raking through his dirty blond hair.

Tango carefully pulls himself up into a sturdier perch, poking his head out from the canopy. “How- what are the chances of that? I die, and now we’re linked, and now I- oh, cause you died too, I’m so sorry…” His shoulders creep up by his ears as guilt sweeps through him, his voice climbing a couple octaves. “I’m so sorry.”

Jimmy blinks up at him, looking stunned. And surprisingly, not angry. “How- take me through it,” he says, holding out a hand. “What’s- what’s happened there?”

“Uh, there was some caving…” Tango explains sheepishly, feeling his face heat up. “And then there might have been… about seven zombies and a spider, and a-”

Pain suddenly jabs Tango in the side; Jimmy’s just been rammed by a goat.

“You’re being butted!” Tango exclaims, scrambling down from the tree. 

“Yeah, lemme…” Jimmy is already backing away from the goat, eyebrows raised as one hand absently rubs his side. The goat, for its part, seems to have made its point and trots off into the forest. Shaking his head, Jimmy turns away from it.

Tango, standing in front of his soulmate for the first time, feels his stomach lurch with nerves. Jimmy’s a few inches taller, though his broad shoulders and well-built arms make him feel a lot bigger- as do the wings poking up behind him.

What an introduction.

Belatedly, Tango realizes they’ve both lost everything, and covers his face with his hands. “Oh no…” he groans. Oh, Jimmy must hate him already-

“So,” Jimmy continues, his voice still neutral even as he starts pacing around the clearing, “you just… you got blown up by caving?”

Tango nods vigorously, rushing to explain. “And then- and then I was focusing on the army approaching me from one direction, and uh… yeah. The ol’ ‘creeper from behind’ trick.”

“Oh… my gosh,” Jimmy breathes, his wings ruffling behind him as he paces.

“I am so sorry,” Tango murmurs anxiously. He scans Jimmy’s face for any indication of anger, but it’s still markedly absent. In fact, his expression is almost reminiscent of a smile- that same incredulous humor Tango was feeling, where all he can do is laugh at the situation.

“Right,” Jimmy says, stopping to face Tango. He sounds like his mind is going a mile a minute. “Let’s meet up in a bit- I need to go get my stuff before it- before it despawns.”

And just like that, they’re straight to business.

Jimmy’s surprisingly easy to talk to. They discuss how to proceed with getting geared up again- with only minimal scrambling and panic (which they even end up laughing about). Jimmy thinks he knows where he died, while Tango is, of course, clueless (should’ve been paying more attention, stupid). Jimmy doesn’t admonish Tango for killing them, brushing off his apologies and self-deprecating comments about it (“No, no, it’s gonna happen all the time today.”), gently redirecting whenever Tango’s frustration seeps through. And the only time Tango sees him truly upset is at the revelation that Tango’s lost his goat horn.

Which, all things considered, is a stupidly endearing reason to be upset.

By the time they split up to gather resources, most of Tango’s frustration has ebbed. He’s still mad at himself for being so reckless with their lives, and he isn’t looking forward to starting from scratch again, but he’s… cautiously optimistic.

Sure, they haven’t gotten off to the best start, and they don’t really know each other all that well. But nevertheless, it doesn’t feel like he and Jimmy will have any problem getting along.

And in a game like this, that makes all the difference.

~*~

“Should we…” Tango hesitates, looking down at Jimmy as he crouches by their furnace. “Should we- I mean, given that we’re linked… should we maybe make a little happy house together somewhere, and call it base?”

The light from the furnace’s flame flickers warmly across Jimmy’s face. “I think so,” he replies thoughtfully, tossing Tango an iron sword and a pickaxe.

~*~

“I’m not good with building at all, Tango,” Jimmy warns him, “so um-”

Tango pauses, crafting table in hand. “Oh, I was hoping you would say you were!” he exclaims, spinning around to look at Jimmy. “You’re not the builder?” For some reason, he’d just assumed Jimmy would know more about building than him.

“Wh- wait, you’re not the builder?” Jimmy repeats, a bemused grin spreading across his face as he realizes they both seem to have made the same assumption.

“I’m not a builder, no!” Tango laughs, smacking his forehead. “Oh, well. We live in a dirt hut.”

Jimmy’s laughing, too. “We might be in trouble, here…”

~*~

Tango pauses in the middle of the cave’s passage. “You don’t- you don’t have any piece- you don’t have anything, do you?” he murmurs, a sudden pang of guilt seizing him.

“No, no, I’m bare bones,” Jimmy says good-naturedly, stopping to glance back over his shoulder.

Despite the utter lack of accusation in Jimmy’s tone, Tango winces. “Here,” he tosses Jimmy his iron boots, “here, here, take some boots, at least. Because if you die, I die, so...”

Jimmy scoops them up, quickly pulling them on. “Thank you, thank you,” he murmurs gratefully.

“We’ll share whatever we’ve got,” Tango says, following Jimmy as he leads the way out of the cave. “It’s pitiful, but…”

Jimmy’s wings ruffle as if in silent agreement, scattering a trail of golden feathers behind him.

~*~

“My man said he couldn’t build!”

Jimmy’s sudden voice is filled with pure, undisguised admiration. Tango immediately feels himself flush at the compliment- plus the denotation of ‘my man’- and quickly laughs it off. “It’s a box, it’s a box, alright,” he says dismissively, dropping down from the wall- then sheepishly ducking his head when Jimmy yelps at the damage. “It’s not much…”

“This is good!” Jimmy says earnestly, patting him on the shoulder as he passes.

Tango huffs a laugh. At least Jimmy has a good sense of humor. “Thank you!” he says with mock pride.

“Crafting table for the step, look at this!” Jimmy excitedly hops up into the threshold of the house, his wings fluttering behind him.

Tango chuckles to himself as he follows Jimmy inside. “Oh, I know,” he drawls, putting on airs. “Super fancy, right? Look at this- multi block usage… I know, I know.” As if this silly little wood and cobblestone shack could even hold a candle to what the other people in this world are capable of building-

“It’s looking great, dude,” Jimmy says softly, his voice completely genuine as he stands back to look at the house. “It’s looking amazing.”

Tango rubs the back of his neck, his laugh suddenly a bit nervous as he realizes Jimmy is being sincere. “Feel free to uh… help out,” he says, pulling a face. “It’s a little bit uh, you know…” He trails off into some incoherent noises that more or less reflect his feelings about the current state of the build.

Jimmy just smiles and shakes his head. He hops back off the front step and pulls something from his inventory. “Look at my hand,” he says, watching Tango eagerly. “I got it.”

It takes Tango a second. “What’d you- oh! Look at you!” he exclaims; Jimmy’s returned from his travels with a bucket of water, which they need for farming. Tango breaks into a grin, putting his hands on his hips. “You go out on a mission, and you come back with goods. This is what I like to see, this is what I like in a partner. Well done.”

Jimmy looks rather pleased, ducking his head. “Thank you.”

Warmth blooms in Tango’s chest, reflecting the heat from his blaze rods. This day isn’t turning out half bad, after all.

~*~

“Tango?”

Tango’s ears prick at the sound of Jimmy’s voice, straining to make it out above all the clucking. “Yes?” he calls, starting to climb out of what he’s affectionately dubbed ‘the chicken hole.’

“Um…” Jimmy doesn’t sound too far off.

“How’s it goin’?” Tango prompts, climbing the ladder back up to the main floor of their house. He thinks he might see the top of Jimmy’s head through the door’s tiny window.

“Where are you?” Jimmy asks, his voice humming with anticipation.

“I’m in the house…?” Tango finally reaches the door and pulls it open. Then he gasps.

Jimmy is standing outside with four cows.

“Oh! You’re amazing!” Tango cries excitedly, jumping down from the front stoop as Jimmy starts laughing. “Oh, you are so- look at you! You have a beef army- look at this!”

“I have a family!” Jimmy beams, patting the nearest cow on the nose as it starts sniffing after the wheat in his other hand. “Welcome to the family!”

Together, they start the process of moving the cows inside- since they don’t have any kind of barn or paddock to put them in just yet. Tango eagerly informs Jimmy of his success with the chicken operation, which Jimmy is delighted by.

“We’re just raising animals now,” Tango laughs. That combined with the budding farm outside almost makes this feel like a normal survival world, like they’re just taking care of all the early game things rather than preparing for a death game.

“We’re good for something,” Jimmy jokes. “We’re good for something…”

“Ranchers,” Tango agrees. “Team rancher.”

He rather likes the sound of that.

~*~

By the end of the day, Tango can safely say he’s happy with their progress.

They’ve got a respectable wheat farm growing outside, right next to their mineshaft entrance. The cows have been moved to a little enclosure next to the ranch that Jimmy built, and the automatic chicken farm is chugging away collecting eggs.

They haven’t had any more mishaps, aside from Joel coming by to antagonize them and incidentally taking them down to two hearts. Jimmy was unsuccessful in his bid to get a goat horn from Grian, but Tango has promised they’ll work on that tomorrow. The chorus of horns going off every ten minutes is a potent motivator- Jimmy gets more and more distressed every time it happens because he can’t join in. Privately, Tango wonders if that’s an avian thing or just Jimmy’s dislike for being left out.

But it isn’t until the sun sets and they’re both standing inside the ranch, bidding each other good night, that Tango realizes there’s one very important thing they’ve neglected.

They have only one bed.

In all their travels during the day, neither of them happened to pick up enough wool to make a second bed, too preoccupied with cows and chickens and begging for resources to think about finding sheep. The single white bed pushed up against the wall suddenly looks blatantly, painfully small.

There’s an awkward pause as the realization settles over both of them.

Tango clears his throat. “Uh, I’ll just-”

“You should take it,” Jimmy says, at the same time.

They both stop talking, looking at each other expectantly, then letting out sheepish laughs.

“No, no,” Tango says, waving his hand, “go ahead and take the bed tonight, I’ll just- I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Uh, no, it’s okay,” Jimmy insists, “I’ll take the floor. You spent all day building this house, it’s the least I can do-”

“Nuh uh,” Tango cuts in firmly. “Look, I don’t really get cold, alright?” He gestures absently at the blaze rods floating around his head. “Just take the bed, okay, we’ll find some sheep tomorrow.”

Jimmy hesitates for a moment, clearly wanting to argue, but Tango’s expression must deter him. “Alright,” he relents finally. He glances away, rubbing the back of his neck. “Uh, thank you.”

“No problem,” Tango replies, relieved to have convinced him otherwise. He already cost Jimmy a life today; it’d feel wrong to rob him of a warm bed, too. Besides, Tango is more than used to going without one.

Jimmy flutters about the house, blowing out their torches as Tango gets settled in a corner. “Good night, then,” Jimmy offers, climbing into the bed.

“Night,” Tango says, folding his arms and tucking his chin to his chest.

The ranch lapses into silence- aside from the near constant mooing and clucking, of course. Tango figures he’ll learn to tune it out eventually- that is, assuming they stay here a while. This is a death game, he reminds himself. Even if things go well, they might not be here all that long.

In spite of the mild discomfort of Tango’s position, he feels himself nodding off fairly quickly, his blaze rods starting to dim. It’s been a long day of hard work, and he’ll need all the rest he can get for whatever tomorrow brings…

A creaking sound reaches Tango’s ears.

Tango’s fully awake in an instant, eyes flying open. His vision rapidly adjusts to the dark- a perk of being part nether mob- and he can just make out the shape of Jimmy, tossing and turning in bed. His wings are fanned out and tucked tightly against his body, like a massive blanket. Beneath the rustling sound, Tango can hear what sounds suspiciously like shivering.

“Jimmy?” he whispers.

The shuffling stops. Jimmy’s sheepish voice comes after a moment.

“... yes?”

“Are you cold?” Tango asks, sitting up.

Another pause. “... no?” Jimmy says, unconvincingly.

Tango frowns. The bed is against the wall that’s right next to the fence of their cow enclosure- and as a result, not fully sealed against the outside. Even the cows are huddled together in the corner, keeping each other warm with their shared body heat as wind blows through the holes in the outer walls.

Tango feels a cold prick in his own chest, the sensation taking him by surprise. Is he feeling Jimmy’s coldness through their soulbond?

“Uh, okay,” Tango says, knitting his brows together, “it’s just, you seem kinda cold.”

“I’m fine,” Jimmy says meekly. “Sorry to keep you up, I’ll be quiet-”

“No, no, it’s alright,” Tango reassures him. “I’m just wondering how we’re gonna stop you from turning into a popsicle overnight.”

Jimmy huffs a soft laugh. “Really, Tango, it’s- it’s alright. I’ll just suck it up.”

Tango chews on his lip, hesitating. “You know, I uh… I happen to function as a portable heater, myself,” he ventures, trying for a joking tone. “If you are in need of such a service, I mean…”

“Oh no, no, I don’t wanna impose,” Jimmy says quickly, sounding flustered.

Inexplicably, Tango feels himself blush. “Hey, it’s- it’s no problem,” he laughs, hoping to brush off the awkwardness of the situation. “I mean, it’d be more of an imposition if I woke up in the middle of the night taking damage from hypothermia, right? We’re soulbound, after all.”

“We are soulbound,” Jimmy murmurs, wavering.

“It’s not a big deal,” Tango insists. “Plus, neither of us will get any rest if you’re over there shivering all night. I can uh, I can sort of feel the chill, through our soulbond.”

“Oh.” Jimmy sounds taken aback. “Well, um, alright then-”

“Only if you want!” Tango adds hastily, not wanting Jimmy to feel pressured. “I just- you know, there’s no need for you to be freezing when I’m basically part furnace.”

That gets another chuckle out of Jimmy. “Yeah no, it’s alright, I…yes, that’d be nice, thank you.”

“Cool.” Tango rises to his feet and wanders over to the bed, fighting back a wave of awkwardness. “Um, hi. So- so how do we…?”

“Uh, here.” Jimmy shifts over to one side of the bed, tucking his wings close against his back. “Um… come on in? Oh- oh my gosh, sorry, that’s weird.”

Tango lets out a nervous laugh. “Right, here I come.” Then he immediately cringes.

What is wrong with him? They’re just two players, sharing a bed for warmth. And they’re soulmates, no less. They already share hearts, hunger, and actual lives- what’s a bed, compared to that? It’s fine, it’s nothing.

With that final thought of encouragement, Tango eases himself onto the bed. His knee bumps against Jimmy almost immediately, which leads to mutual whispered apologies and further readjusting, the bed creaking under their combined weight. As Tango moves to turn onto his side, he accidentally elbows Jimmy in the ribs- they both freeze and inhale sharply at the shared pain.

After what feels like an eternity, they finally get settled, laying back to back. The feathers of Jimmy’s wings tickle the back of Tango’s neck.

“Well, g’night,” he breathes.

“Night,” comes Jimmy’s soft reply.

They fall into silence.

Tango stares at the opposite wall. Where only minutes ago he’d been half asleep, now he’s wide awake- hyper aware of Jimmy breathing next to him, not daring to move. Jimmy seems to have stopped shivering, at least, which is good. That was the whole point, right?

The minutes pass like this, in silent stillness, until Tango’s exhaustion starts to win out over his nerves. His eyelids droop, blaze rods fizzling out and settling on the pillow. They tend to extinguish when he’s asleep, so he usually doesn’t have to worry about starting fires in the middle of the night- except for when he has nightmares.

But Tango has a feeling that won’t be a problem tonight. He just hopes Jimmy is able to get some rest, too, as he finally drifts off to sleep.

~*~

Morning comes soon enough, rousing Tango from a deep, dreamless sleep.

The animals are already clamoring to be fed and there’s light behind Tango’s closed eyelids, but he isn’t quite ready to get up yet. He’s pleasantly warm and well-rested, and surprisingly comfortable. For a moment he simply lays where he is, letting awareness slowly trickle back to him, soothed by the steady rise and fall of his pillow-

Wait. His pillow is breathing?

Tango cracks an eye open, and then he stops breathing.

Somehow, at some point during the night, he’d ended up curled against Jimmy, resting his head on the other’s chest. Jimmy’s wings have come up to cradle them, one arm awkwardly pinned under Tango’s shoulders while the other one is splayed above his head, across the pillow- and his hand is curled loosely around one of Tango’s blaze rods. He looks to still be sleeping deeply, his expression smooth and peaceful, eyelashes casting shadows across his cheeks.

Oh, they are way too close.

A million different thoughts and emotions rush through Tango, culminating in a feeling like an alarm going off in his skull. This is- how did this happen?! Oh, how embarrassing- when Jimmy agreed to share the bed he probably hadn’t anticipated cuddling. Tango can’t think of a time he’s ever been this close to another player, much less someone he doesn’t know very well. Soulmate or no, it’s not- he shouldn’t- 

His distress must be reflected in his blaze rods’ temperature, because Jimmy’s hand suddenly twitches. He lets out a soft groan, eyelids fluttering- he’s waking up.

Panic seizes Tango. He quickly closes his eyes, taking a slow, deep breath through the nose as he wills his blaze rods to dim, so as not to give him away. He manages to keep his breathing steady, despite how madly his heart is pounding, and desperately hopes none of his current anxiety is visible in his expression.

Tango feels the moment Jimmy finally stirs. He starts to roll onto his side and then freezes- his chin must be right above Tango’s head, because he actually hears Jimmy gulp. A shiver runs through his wings before they slowly lift away from the bed. Jimmy shifts in place, carefully slipping his arm out from under Tango at a snail’s pace.

Tango, for his part, pretends to be dead to the world. He does not want to confront the awkwardness of this situation if he can help it.

After a couple painstaking minutes, Jimmy manages to free himself. The bed creaks as he moves to get up- which makes him freeze, breath catching- before he finally gets a leg up and over the side. Tango feels the moment his weight leaves the bed, and then soft footsteps wander around the ranch. The cows start mooing with renewed insistence.

“Shh,” Jimmy whispers, his voice coming from over by the cow pen. The mooing stops as the air fills with the sound of munching. With the cows satiated for the moment, Jimmy’s footsteps move over towards the wall of chests. The slow creak of a chest opening and closing echoes through the room, before Jimmy’s footsteps disappear down the ladder to the chicken farm.

Relief sweeps through Tango. Well, he pulled it off. And if they don’t have to confront what happened, then it’s like it never happened at all.

He waits until Jimmy comes back upstairs and has been rummaging around for a few minutes to finally turn over in bed, sluggishly stretching his arms out. He makes a big show of yawning as he sits up, rubbing his eyes before looking around.

“Mornin’,” he greets Jimmy with a perfectly casual smile. “Sleep alright?”

Jimmy’s face reddens. “Yup,” he says stiffly, turning back to the chest he was sorting through. 

Tango hums his assent, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. There’s an uncomfortable tension in the room, but that’s to be expected. Once they get going and start the day, he’s sure things will go back to normal. 

A familiar sound rings out in the distance, making Tango groan. “And already, the horns- with the mocking- continues, as always,” he sighs, tossing the covers off.

Jimmy pauses for a moment, his shoulders hitching up, before he makes a noncommittal noise and goes back to his business.

Tango blinks. “So uh- whaddaya say we make that the quest for today, then?” he prompts lightly, sliding out of bed and onto his feet. “Acquire some horns?”

“Um- actually,” Jimmy says, without turning around, “I was thinking- I figured we could use some more iron, you know? So I was gonna do some caving.”

“Oh.” Tango feels his smile drop off his face- and quickly summons it again. “Uh- right, yeah, no worries. Just uh, hey- watch out for creepers,” he jokes, crossing the small distance to Jimmy’s side.

“Alri- agh!” Jimmy yelps when he turns to find Tango right beside him, feathers flying through the air as his wings flare out in surprise. He quickly tries to cover up his reaction with a laugh that sounds incredibly forced, sidestepping around Tango towards the door. “Right, right, yeah- I’ll be careful. Um, back in a little while, then.”

The door closes behind him with a jarring sense of finality, leaving Tango in abrupt silence.

Exhaling slowly, Tango pries open a chest to find himself some breakfast. This is fine. Jimmy’s probably just a little embarrassed about what happened last night, and needs some space. As long as Tango doesn’t bring it up, it’s sure to pass, and they can get back to business.

After all, he reminds himself, they’ve got a death game to win.

~*~

In Jimmy’s absence, Tango decides to make himself useful.

The ranch is in dire need of an upgrade. He starts construction on a second floor- a wonky watch tower hardly deserving of the name- and extends the wall past the cow’s pen a little more, to help with the draft. Dipping below ground for a bit, he gathers up enough cobblestone to build a perimeter around the ranch, carrying it right towards the edge of the cliff overlooking the ravine. And finally, he ventures out into the forest and searches until he finds a sheep.

(The second bed goes against the opposite wall from the first one.)

All the while, he stays on top of their wheat farm, making small but frequent harvests. He breeds enough cows to start harvesting beef and leather- which he uses to fashion himself a leather chestplate and a pair of boots to go with his iron leggings. Deciding to run with the ‘poor’ look, he stashes a secret barrel underneath their wall of chests to keep the majority of their resources in, leaving the chests quite barren for anyone who happens to come by to snoop.

And once he’s at a loss for anything more to do, he takes an axe out to the neighboring birch forest and collects some logs- without straying too far from the ranch, of course. He’s got a feeling the cows are going to be a target- most of the lifers spend the first day slaughtering any animals they come across- and with Jimmy in the mine, it’s up to Tango to protect their livelihood.

He’s about to put a sign up on their main gate when a new voice reaches his ears, a low muttering not far away.

“Although there is no-”

“Hello?” Tango calls, whirling around.

“... hello?” comes Ren’s hesitant voice.

“Hello, good sir!” Tango says brightly, scanning the surrounding fields.

There’s a big exhale. “Scared the living heck outta me…” Ren’s head finally pops up over the hillside, breaking into a wide, fanged grin. “Tango! Hey man! What’s happenin’ baby, what’s happenin’?”

“How are you?” Tango greets him, waving a hand. “Welcome to Team Rancher!” 

“Oh, hi!” In just a few strides of his long digitigrade legs, Ren’s come to stand beside Tango- towering over him, as usual. His ears perk up as he takes in the ranch. “Ooh…”

“I’m just- I’m just putting up the sign right now,” Tango says, scrawling ‘Team Rancher’ on the birch sign.

Ren hums, glancing back towards the forest. “Have you explored all these caves around here?”

“No, I haven’t.” Tango snorts. “I mean, just- does it look like I have explored caves? Just look at me.” He does a little spin to show off his mostly leather armor.

Ren laughs, ducking his head. “No, no, yeah…”

“That’s actually where Jimmy is right now,” Tango says, smoothing over his chestplate. Hopefully Jimmy will have found enough iron to get properly geared up-

“Oh, oh, alright, I see.” Ren tilts his head to the side. “Uh- you didn’t go with him?”

“... no?” Tango raises an eyebrow, forcing a laugh. “What, it takes two players to mine for some iron now? What’s- what do you mean?”

Ren holds his hands up. “I’m just sayin’, caves are dangerous, man. Though, I guess you’d know that better than anyone.”

Even though his tone was light and teasing, Tango bristles. “Oh, yeah? Well- well where’s your partner, huh?” he demands, putting his hands on his hips.

Ren gives him an odd look. “Bigb is back at Box, perfectly safe, thank you,” he replies. “You alright, man?”

“I’m fine,” Tango says shortly. “Why don’t you just run back to your soulmate, then? If everything’s so wonderful.”

“Um…” Ren blinks. “Okay, I’m gonna level with you, my dude. I came here to see if I could get ahold of some cows but clearly, there’s somethin’ else going on here that’s a bit more urgent.”

Tango squints at him suspiciously. “Wh- what?”

Ren gives him a knowing look, peering over the brim of his shades. “You havin’ soulmate troubles, dude?”

Tango isn’t proud of the squeaking noise he makes. “What? No!” he insists quickly. “No, no, not at all!”

“Really?” Ren asks, dubious. “Cause it really seems like you are.”

Tango exhales slowly, closing his eyes for a moment. “It’s- it’s nothing, alright? I’m sorry I snapped,” he says, his voice calmer. “Look, if you wanna trade for some cows, I think we can arrange something.”

Ren hesitates. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I…” A sudden thought hits Tango. “Actually, do you have any goats?”

That redirects Ren’s attention. “Uh, there’s some goats hangin’ out near Box, yeah?” he says, looking taken aback.

“Oh! Oh, good!” Tango exclaims, clapping his hands together. “Okay, uh, how about- how about two cows for two goats?”

“Yeah? You mean it?” Ren asks excitedly, his tail swishing side-to-side. “That’d be amazing, dude.”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s do it.” Tango waves for Ren to follow him as he turns back towards the ranch. “Right this way, sir.”

If this doesn’t cheer Jimmy up, Tango doesn’t know what will.

~*~

Once Tango brings the goats back to the ranch and gets them settled in a new enclosure, the rest of the day is fairly uneventful.

Martyn wanders by at some point, lamenting his and Pearl’s rejection by their soulmates, Cleo and Scott. He asks where Jimmy is- probably looking to antagonize him- so Tango just shrugs and says, “Out.” That earns him a look with far too much sympathy in it for his taste, so he tells Martyn to take a hike.

Scar rides in on a beautiful dapple grey horse, inquiring about leather. He claims some kind of debt that Jimmy owes him, which Tango conveniently can’t confirm nor deny. Ultimately, Tango gives the leather to Scar just to make him leave, because he knows by now that Scar and chaos go hand-in-hand, and it’s not like they can’t spare it.

Then Pearl, inexplicably red despite having yet to lose a life, comes across the ranch to see if Tango knows where a dog is. He doesn’t, but she spots his goats and offers to tell him how to get horns in exchange for food of the cooked beef variety- of which he now has plenty. He agrees, and she informs him he needs to make the goats ram stone.

Tango files that information away for later and bids Pearl farewell. The horns still go off frequently, tempting him to try and get one of his own, but he restrains himself. It’ll be better to do it when Jimmy’s back.

It’s nearly dark when Tango finally hears footsteps coming up the mineshaft. He drops what he’s doing and rushes outside, jumping around the corner of the house.

“Heya, partner!”

Jimmy lets out a high-pitched shriek, sending up a spray of feathers. “Oh my gosh!” He clutches his heart, face flushed. “You- you scared me.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Tango chuckles. He bounces on his toes. “So, how was the mining? Did you get all the good stuff and things?”

“Uh, well…” A bit shyly, Jimmy pulls his inventory up. “Only… a stack and fifteen iron ore.”

“Woah!” Tango gasps. “Oh, that’s amazing! Look at you!”

“Thank you, thank you,” Jimmy says, bowing his head. Then he takes a look around, his eyes widening. “Oh wow, look at you, you’ve been busy!” He cranes his head up at the ranch. “You even added a tower!”

“It’s not pretty,” Tango admits, “but hey, it’s something.”

“And does this wall go ‘round the whole perimeter?” Jimmy asks, raising his eyebrows.

Tango nods eagerly. “Uh huh, uh huh- and that’s not even the best part.” He grabs Jimmy by the wrist, tugging him around to the front of the ranch. “C’mere, c’mere!”

Jimmy laughs as Tango pulls him along, then they come to a stop in front of the goat pen. He blinks at it in confusion before a goat happens to spring into the air, high above the wall. His mouth falls open. “Oh… my gosh.”

“Mmhmmm!” Tango hums, quite pleased by the reaction.

Jimmy gives him a shocked look. “No-”

“Oh, yes,” Tango grins.

“You got goats!” Jimmy exclaims, clapping a hand to his forehead.

“I got goats!” Tango agrees proudly. “We’ve got goat technology!”

Jimmy rushes over to the front gate of the pen, wings flapping excitedly. “Oh my gosh, look at them! There’s a whole family!”

“Pearl came by earlier and explained the process to me,” Tango says, walking up next to Jimmy. “We’ve gotta get them to charge at us and then jump out of the way, so they hit that stone wall back there. And then- and then we’ve got horns.”

Jimmy pauses, giving him a sidelong look. “You- wait, you haven’t got one yet?” he asks, knitting his brows together.

“No, no, I waited for you!” Tango assures him. He sweeps out an arm. “Would you like to do the honors, sir?”

Jimmy stares at him for a moment, an unreadable expression flashing across his face as his cheeks turn red. “Um… actually, I- I’m kind of beat, you know?” he says, his tone far more stilted than it just was. He takes a step back from Tango, glancing away. “I was thinking about just… turning in for the night.”

The abrupt change in demeanor throws Tango for a moment.

Guess they haven’t moved past the bed incident.

“Oh.” He shakes himself, forcing his tone to stay upbeat. “Oh, yeah, sure! Sure thing. You’ve been mining all day, I bet you’re exhausted…”

He follows Jimmy into the ranch- though he keeps his distance. Jimmy pauses, his gaze falling on the second bed almost immediately.

“Ah, you got another bed,” he says, his voice a bit wooden.

Tango shrugs as he carefully steps past him. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant, “I said I would.”

“Right. Good.” Jimmy hesitates, fidgeting with his hands for a moment, before he seems to make a decision. “Um, Tango-”

“There’s food in the barrel under the chest,” Tango says as quickly as he can while still remaining casual, pretending not to have heard Jimmy. “If you’re hungry.”

He has a sneaking suspicion that Jimmy was going to tell him about the bed thing- which, unbeknownst to him, Tango is already fully aware of. So really, there’s no point in discussing it. The longer they pretend it didn’t happen, the faster they can just move on.

“Oh.” Jimmy sounds taken aback, glancing over at the chests. “Alright, great. That’s- that’s pretty clever.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Tango says, turning towards his bed. Normally, the compliment would’ve made him quite pleased, but right now he just feels empty. “Well, g’night.”

“Night,” Jimmy echoes.

~*~

Tango doesn’t sleep much that night.

Jimmy’s the first to rise in the morning- which is starting to look like a habit of his- while Tango remains stubbornly lying in bed for a while longer. He has one arm flung across his face to block out the sunlight, listening to Jimmy’s quiet footsteps as he shuffles around the ranch, taking care of the animals.

Eventually his guilt wins out over his stubbornness- it’s not fair for Jimmy to do all the work around the ranch. But just as Tango sits up, his communicator goes off, an identical beep ringing out from Jimmy’s comm.

<Grian> hey everyone, group meeting at spawn? 

<Renthedog> Feels kinda sus…

<Grian> no tricks 

<Grian> time out ok?

<impulseSV> Everything alright?

<Grian> yeah yeah don’t worry

<Grian> just need to talk about some things 

Huh. That’s interesting.

Tango clears his throat, looking over at where Jimmy is smelting up the iron from yesterday’s haul. “You seein’ this?” he asks.

Jimmy doesn’t completely startle this time, though he still jumps a bit under Tango’s gaze. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “weird…”

“What do you think, should we- should we go?” Tango asks, shifting to sit at the edge of his bed. “Could be a trap.”

Jimmy shrugs a shoulder. “Well, he said time out, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” Tango sighs, rising to his feet. “So uh, shall we get going?”

Jimmy nods, strapping a freshly made shield to his arm. “Yeah, let’s go.”

~*~

It’s an uneasy walk to spawn.

Tango is already on edge from the possibility of an attack, and Jimmy’s cold shoulder doesn’t help. His senses are on high alert as they make their way through the mountaintop forest, coming to a stop at the peak. 

They aren’t the first players here- Grian and Scar, of course, are waiting expectantly, speaking to each other in low tones. Impulse and Bdubs are also present; they’re holding hands and laughing about something, Impulse’s forked tail curled loosely around Bdubs’ waist. Impulse catches Tango’s eye and lifts a hand in greeting, which Tango returns with a nod.

They settle in to wait. Tango leans against the nearest tree, folding his arms across his chest, as Jimmy stands awkwardly beside him. Being at spawn is bringing back memories of their death- something Tango might’ve looked back on with fond humor if Jimmy didn’t seem so uncomfortable.

The rest of the players trickle in over the next few minutes. Scott and Cleo don’t seem particularly enthused to be here- nor are they pleased by the way Pearl slinks after them, a dog at her side. She keeps her distance, but her gaze keeps drifting towards them, clear yearning in her eyes.

Etho and Joel splash down in the middle of the clearing, leaping from the treetops to land the silly little water bucket trick they’re so fond of. Bdubs immediately brightens at their arrival and strikes up conversation with Etho, which Impulse contributes to good-naturedly as Joel eyes them suspiciously.

Ren and Bigb are the last to arrive, their base being the furthest from spawn, with Martyn having tagged along with them at some point. He seems content to remain on Ren’s other side, though he casts a not-so-subtle glance in Cleo’s direction.

“Alright, we all here?” Grian starts, scanning the little circle they’ve formed. “Okay. I guess we’ll get started. Uh, thank you all for coming on such short notice-”

“What’s this about, Grian?” Joel asks bluntly.

Grian gives him a look. “Right, we’ll get into it straight away,” he huffs. “So, I’ve noticed over the last several days that uh, bloodthirstiness seems to be at an all-time low. Now, I know it sometimes takes a while for these things to get started, but the general consensus I’m getting is that… most of us are pretty happy where we are.”

Martyn makes an outraged noise. “Well, that’s easy for you to say!” he exclaims, throwing his hands up. “You got paired with Scar, and I’m over here soulmate-less!”

“Who’s fault is that, Martyn?” Cleo calls pointedly.

“Alright, alright, settle down,” Grian chides them. “My point is that this season doesn’t feel like the other ones. The only deaths we’ve had have been from mobs- and we didn’t even have any at all yesterday. Theft and sabotage are way down, and I have yet to see a single trap being constructed.”

Bdubs makes an incredulous noise. “Wh- hey, is this- is this just a lecture about us not killin’ each other fast enough?” he demands, crossing his arms. “Cause uh- I mean, you better be careful what you wish for! I can- I’ll go nuts, if you want,” he threatens, his expression darkening.

The effect is somewhat diluted by Impulse chuckling and putting an arm around Bdubs’ shoulders. “Oh, he will,” he says, voice full of affection, “gotta watch out for this one.”

“It’s not a lecture,” Grian insists, exasperated. “I was just thinking that maybe we should change things up.”

“Wh- so you mean like a restart?” Pearl asks, not quite able to mask the hopeful note in her voice. Tango can see why that would be particularly appealing to her, as someone who had a falling out with her soulmate. It’d be a second chance, a chance to start again and not mess up this time.

Tango can relate.

“I would welcome that, actually,” Etho says, his motivation obvious as one of the only other yellow names.

But Grian shakes his head. “No, more like a rebranding,” he explains. “I propose that we end the death game. No more trying to kill each other.”

The group is silent for a moment.

Tango isn’t even sure what he’s feeling. “So… what would we be doing here, exactly?” he asks, frowning.

“Whatever we want,” Grian says with a grin. “For starters, I’d take down the world border. We could build wherever we want, make farms, go to the End. And most importantly, all our lives would go back to being infinite. No one gets eliminated.” His expression softens. “We just… live. Like it’s any other world.”

Scar subtly nudges Grian in the ribs, and Grian sighs.

“I’ll also unlock the enchanting table recipe,” he says, rolling his eyes. “So we don’t have to go to the Ancient City anymore.”

The clearing fills with chatter as pairs murmur to each other. Tango’s mind is spinning- he’s always loved a good death game, and was quite looking forward to this. But with the current state of things between him and Jimmy, he’s not sure it’d be worth it.

Jimmy leans forward, half-raising a hand. “Would our damage still be linked?” he asks, brows pinched together with concern.

Tango manages not to flinch. Of course Jimmy would want to know that, being stuck with the guy who got blown up by a creeper on day one.

Grian nods. “Yeah, it comes with the soulbond. I can give us back infinite lives, but we’ll all still be linked with our partners.”

“I dunno,” Etho drawls, his mismatched eyes utterly unreadable. “All the deception and murdering is pretty fun… and I’ve already got a survival world back home.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Grian says, holding up his hands, “if we did all agree to end the death game, no one would have to stay. We’d all be free to leave whenever we wanted, and travel back and forth between worlds. The bond only exists when you’re here.” He shrugs. “So leave if you want, I’ll ring you up when the next game comes. But don’t you think it’d be nice for us all to share a world without trying to kill each other for once?”

Cleo snorts. “Who are you,” she demands, folding her arms, “and what’ve you done with Grian?”

“Domestic life has changed you, Grian,” Scott drawls, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

Grian’s wings flare out in what might be embarrassment. “Wh- oh come on, I know I’m not the only one who feels this way!” he protests, his voice a bit higher than it just was. “Scar, back me up, here.”

Scar’s eyes light up. “Yes! Yes, I think it’d be a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other better,” he says, clapping his hands together. “You know, us Hermitcraft people don’t really know the rest of you that well outside of trying to kill each other.”

“That’s a good point, actually,” Ren chimes in tentatively, scratching the back of his head as he exchanges a look with Bigb.

Bdubs clears his throat. “Uh, I, for one, would love to spend more time on this world, with my beloved,” he says, glancing up at Impulse with a broad smile. “I’m buildin’ a swimmin’ pool, and we’re gonna host a lovely party at our beautiful house!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m all for staying!” Impulse agrees readily, gazing back down at Bdubs with a similar fondness. “I think it’d be nice.”

Etho makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Oh come on, don’t ask the newlyweds,” he complains, his voice dancing across that line between teasing and actual annoyance. “Of course they’ll wanna stay.”

“You don’t, Etho?” Joel asks, sounding affronted.

“Look, we don’t have to decide right away,” Grian cuts in swiftly. He spreads his hands. “Take a couple days, talk it over with your partners, and then we’ll take a vote, alright?”

Mumbles of agreement filter through the group as they slowly start to disperse, going their separate ways. Tango catches Jimmy’s eye, only for the other to quickly turn away.

Well. This is gonna be a fun conversation.

~*~

Somewhere in Double Life, two soulmates walk in silence.

Tango can tell Jimmy’s thinking a lot about what just happened- his wings ruffle unconsciously every minute and he’s picking at his fingernails. He’s probably trying to think of a nice way to tell Tango he doesn’t want to stay and be soulmates with him, because he’s a nice guy.

Tango supposes it wouldn’t be so bad to just go back to Hermitcraft. Focus on his builds for a bit. Another season will come along soon enough, once the rest of these lovestruck fools get tired of playing house. It’s not like he’s lost anything more than a couple day’s time.

So why does the idea of leaving sit so wrong with him?

When they make it back to the ranch, Jimmy stops in front of the door. “Um, Tango-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tango says, managing a tired smile. “I suppose we should discuss-”

“Can we talk about this later?” Jimmy asks, his voice pleading. “I just- I need some time to uh, think about some things.”

Tango’s voice dies in his throat.

This is torture. Why can’t they just get it over with? Clearly, Jimmy doesn’t want to be around him anymore. Whatever day one warm fuzzies he might’ve harbored have obviously faded. They should just rip off the band-aid now, instead of prolonging the inevitable-

His communicator beeps.

<impulseSV whispered to you> Hey, can you come chat for a minute?

Tango puts his communicator away, exhaling slowly. “Yeah, no, no problem,” he tells Jimmy. “Take all the time you need. I’ll just uh, I’ll give you some space.”

He leaves without another word, and Jimmy doesn’t call after him.

~*~

#hermitcraft #double life smp #traffic smp #life series smp #team rancher #hermitshipping #trafficshipping #hels to pay au #HTP fic #my writing #hot DAMN apparently i've got a lot of feelings about these two #hopefully the next part will come sooner than usual #but finals week is around the corner so no promises

[bomberqueen17]

progress etc

god it's less than a week to christmas. ok cool. yeah. great. all right.

i am. what have i been doing??? i don't know. I've sewn several things-- most notably a pair of leggings-- and the house renovations have progressed to the point that we're getting final measurements for counters tomorrow. I'll put pictures behind the cut. We painted the ceiling ourselves, as paint isn't included in the remodel.

I don't remember what I last posted pictures of. IDK there's a floor now, I didn't take pictures of that yet.

ok i was wrong i do have one photo of the floor but it's in-progress, max is in the background wedging it in between the cabinets.

[image description: an awkward angle looking down standing in the side door entryway, with the blue-washed gray side of a new cabinet facing me, some of the plywood subfloor exposed coated in glue, mottled gray fake stone tiles laid out and the hunched form of a man in a gray sweatshirt kneeling on the floor in the background with his head hidden behind the cabinet. Listen I wasn't trying to be creepy.]

it's fake stone vinyl tiles. i know, not normally my aesthetic, and it's probably the thing that'll look most dated in a little bit, but there was no point trying to do anything wooden or wood-look because the rest of the house has original hardwood from 1950 and anything new wouldn't match. (the hardwood badly needs refinishing, let's not contemplate that right at this juncture...)

Max is from Elmira, btw, and only moved to Buffalo a year ago-- just in time for the blizzard to absolutely destroy his first apartment here and wreck most of his stuff. It was a bit of a harsh welcome to the city. He's soft-spoken and extremely polite and doesn't really know how to talk to me, not the way Jim the installer (fiftysomething and very experienced) does. He did gently laugh at me when I left yesterday and then immediately had to come back to get my keys, which I had locked inside the house (but of course as he was still there the other door was still unlocked). "I grew up in the kind of place where you don't bother locking doors," I said, and he was like "lol same".

(I know Elmira because Middle-Little went to college there. It's a sort of dire little place in the Southern Tier-ish region of NY, a couple hours away. The region is fairly economically devastated, alternating crushing rural poverty with Tourism Dollars; Elmira itself boasts a college, a prison, and precious little else.)

Anyway-- painting the ceiling over the weekend, I discovered that the real life hack for painting a ceiling is for at least one member of your party to be six feet three inches.

[image description: my dude, a tall thin white man in an uncharacteristic ball cap he's only wearing to avoid paint splatter (it is embroidered with the HTML tags <head> on the front and </head> on the back, and was a gift to him in like 2002) is standing on the cardboard-and-sheet-draped floor of the kitchen using a paint roller on the ceiling, which he can reach easily; in front of him the cabinets are all draped in old sheets as well and there's a random light bulb sticking out because the installer wired that in for us to use as a work light since the electricians haven't installed the ceiling lights yet which was why it was an ideal time for us to paint said ceiling.]

Anyway it's going great. The counters won't go in until January sometime, but early January. The electricians plan to come the day after Christmas and I won't be there until the afternoon so I'm going to check in with Jim today about what they'll need.

Meanwhile, I remembered that I hadn't set myself the goal of crafting anything for Christmas except I bought a bunch of scarf blanks from Dharma Trading to dye as gift wraps and gift components and my basement is all torn apart and I don't dare make that kind of mess in my mother-out-law's basement so I need to work out how to get that done so I'm really kind of slogging through that, a bit.

OH i just went to look at what the last pictures I posted of the kitchen were and the answer is LIKE NONE so omg sorry here's before we painted the ceiling, where you can see what it's gonna look like!

[image description: This is View A, from the side door toward the front of the house. Along the left of the photo is a line of cabinets, a set on the ground and then another mounted up on the wall; in the middle of that will be the sink, and then farther down a dishwasher (!!!) and beyond that the stove, all along that north wall of the house. The middle of the photo is the big bay window we had installed, and there are cabinets along the front of it: the countertop will extend out from those, and will form a seating area. To the right of the window, the front door is now visible, that little wall having been removed and now being a wide-open space into the entryway. The right of the photo is the interior wall of the kitchen, now transformed into a built-in pantry space with a fridge hole in the middle, where the extra flooring tiles are currently stacked.]

[image description: this is View B, from the front door into the kitchen. The foreground is the big open space where the wall was removed; the bay window is just out of frame to the right, and the far wall shows the empty space (now containing buckets of floor glue and a roll of cardboard) where the stove will be, and above it will be an extractor hood (no more Everything Smells Like Salmon!!), and the empty space (now filled with a rolling garbage can the contractors are using) for the dishwasher, and then the little window right above the sink-- this is a detail we've kept from the old kitchen, that's where the sink was and that's where the window, but the window seems bigger because the cabinets aren't packed so tightly around it now-- and you can see the side door there, and then the left of the photo shows the edge of the pantry unit where the fridge will go.]

It's a much more open space, both of us can be in there, someone doing dishes while you cook is no longer the world-ending inconvenience it historically has been, and also now you can talk to someone in the living room while you're in the kitchen without needing to holler.

Yeah the gray cabinets are-- well they're pale wood washed with dilute blue, is what they are, and all the hard fixtures are in neutral shades like that, grays and gray-blues, and the countertops will be white with tiny sparkles, and the idea is that the big wall to the west and the little bits of wall around the windows will be painted some bold color we'll match with like throw rugs and hot mats and other changeable fixtures, so the kitchen can get "redecorated" with a new coat of paint and not clash with the hard fixtures. This job cost five figures, we're not re-redoing it during our lifetimes.

#about the author #home remodel #etcetera

[fyeahnix]

so the last few weeks I've been horribly obsessed with a little game called Project Zomboid. I initially bought it during the Steam Winter Sale as a game to chill to on my Steam Deck. I thought "ok zombie apocalypse survival RPG, I'll try it out, sure" and I was also wondering how tf a game was still in beta for 10 years

LITTLE DID I FUCKING KNOW....

this game is so ridiculously detailed it's unreal. you have to manage your hunger, sleep, thirst, mood/happiness, stress, prep for the water and power shutting off, prep for rising zombie populations, prep for winter, etc. OH yeah SEASONS. the game is very realistic seasons that mimic real life. there's so much to talk about just in the mechanics alone that I don't know where to start.

anyway, I started playing this on the deck, and eventually moved to PC because I saw how much more controls and shit you can do with a mouse and keyboard. and I like it so much better.

so the game straight up tells you that at some point, you will die, and there's nothing you can do about it. and that's fine. I died SO MANY FUCKING TIMES when I first played. I played on Apocalypse mode initially (which was very stupid as it's the hardest preset difficulty lol), and then moved to Survivor when I found that out. but the more YT videos I watched on this game, the more people really encourage you to play Sandbox mode and figure out what your preferred playstyle is.

so that's what I did when I moved to PC. I found out I do no like zombie infection so I turned it off. zombie infection happens 100% of the time when you're bitten by a zombie and there's literally no way to stop it, you get sick and die a slow death over the course of like 3-4 in-game days. if you get scratched or lacerated there's a percentage chance of that happening too. I just didn't like making progress and then having it stripped away because I got unlucky.

I finally made a character that survived more than a month in-game, made the firehouse in Rosewood a base, had a lot of shit set up for water, farming, electricity, etc, and then I fucking DIED trying to clear out a grocery store. now when you die, you can choose to respawn another character in the same world, but all your skills are reset. I chose this option instead of starting over completely because I had a good thing going and I enjoyed that setup. what I didn't like was the skill grind. I managed to get most of my skills back up to where they were before death in the span of a few hours because I had all that set up at my base. anyway, I said "this grind isn't fun" and installed a mod to craft a skill journey where you can manually record your character's experience progress and if they die, you can read the journal and get those skills back.

that came in clutch because last night, my second character died trying to clear zombies out at the kentucky state prison in Rosewood. that kinda upset me, but I just reset in rosewood, went to my base to gear up with backup gear, and trekked it on foot to the prison to reclaim my lost shit:

that red circle is my second character's dead body I had to drag outside and loot because there were too many corpses inside. (btw if you stay around corpses for too long your character will get sick). in the bottom right corner you can see my truck that got abandoned. thankfully I got in an out pretty quickly and got my truck back.

now you're prob saying "wtf that takes the fun out of the game" to which I reply "to you" lol. the survival and combat aspects of this game are fun as is the exploration, but the skill grinding takes forever for some skills and I didn't wanna redo that again. the downside of this is that I STILL have to go retrieve my shit and if it's too far away from my base, then I might be SOL. these two deaths were lucky because they were within walking distance of my base. also I still have to reread skill books for bonuses and that takes DAYS in-game to accomplish because I took the slow reader trait....

anyway here's some of my base. it's a fucking mess I am currently trying to clean up:

the patch of grass to the right of the water barrels is where I farm food. but I have a ton of food in the freezers so I'm holding off on farming again until I get close to low on fresh food. I have canned food as a backup.

bottom two pics is my messy ass storage and workshop area. I got a shit ton of guns and ammo from the prison that I hauled back in my pickup truck and I need to organize everything. the problem is that I need a skill book to learn how to make metal crates and neither the bookstore nor the school library has it so I have to venture out. second problem is that I may have to go to Muldraugh or March Ridge to check those bookstores and I'm DREADING it. the prison furthered humbled me and I don't wanna die again lol esp not that far away from my base. but I gotta do it. all for metal storage crates. you're prob wondering "why metal? just make the wooden ones and you're golden." and you would be correct but fuck it, 80 storage space compared to 40 and 60 for the level 1 and 2 wooden crates is just so much more appealing and I have a ton of shit that needs to be stored.

anyway that's my adventures in PZ so far. there's more to talk about like how I tried to go to the lone shack out in the woods one day to find an antique oven, almost got stranded, and had to make the trek back because the road there was covered in trees and not good for car travel. speaking of, the map is absolutely fucking gigantic. don't play this game without the map on another screen. it makes planning and traversal so much better

but yeah. it's about to be winter in a few in-game days, which means I'm gonna be struggling to forage for food, fish, and grow crops from December-February. I have food and water saved up and I think I can make it but maaaan it's gonna be a time.

thanks for coming to my tedtalk lol

#Project Zomboid

[copias-girl]

Pamper Your Papa Part III (Papa IV x Reader)

•••

A/N: After not very much contemplation from me and a lot of enthusiasm from my ghestie @sucharide I decided to go for it and write a third instalment for this because I’m still hung up on the idea doing *actual* facials with Copia! So get ready for some spicy flirting and fluff! More smut will be in chapter 4! 🖤 Btw sorry I was so late uploading this, I got busy with school!

(Also when I picture Copia with no makeup why do I still picture him with the black around his eyes?? lmaoo)

Read Part I HERE Part II HERE and Part IV HERE

•♥︎♥︎♥︎•

“Satanas, calm down, Papa, I’m talking about actual facials this time.” You giggled, walking into the man’s papal suite with him in tow.

“Satanas, calm down, Papa, I’m talking about actual facials this time.” You giggled, walking into the man’s papal suite with him in tow.

“But amoreeeee, my cum on your face is an actual facial.” He pouted, gazing at you quite convincingly with those big mismatched puppy dog eyes.

“We just fucked in the confessional, how are you still horny?” You teased him, rounding on him once the door clicked closed behind you. You smoothed your fingers over his chest and shoulders as his gloved hands skimmed up up up your thighs and waist, going back down again and grabbing two big handfuls of your ass, eliciting a yelp from you as he pulled your hips flush to his.

“I suppose it is, how do you say, the effect you have on me, dolcezza.” Copia growled, causing you to let out a little whine and bite your lip. Oh, how this man could tease you, how he could wind you up so tightly until you were nothing but a dripping mess, squirming and begging for him.

You both could work each other up into a hot, feverish frenzy, often making love for hours and hours on end until the two of you were so sticky and tired and fucked out; hair messy, eyes bleary, minds dizzy and foggy and full of bliss from one too many orgasms.

You almost gave into him just then, almost forgot all about your real spa night in turn for another evening of delicious lust with your Papa. And he realized it. He could see it in your eyes, the way he had gotten you all worked up. But that’s when he smirked and released you from his sinful hold.

“Alas, I do need to take care of my complexion.” He stated simply, gently brushing his gloved fingertips against his cheek.

“You’re such an asshole sometimes, old man.” You playfully swatted at him, rolling your eyes.

“Ehh?? Don’t wound Papa’s heart, cara mia.” Copia pouted, kissing your cheek and melting your heart. “Besides, now you know how it feels. You were a very naughty girl today, flustering Papa in front of everyone like that. Making my cock so hard. It’s a wonder I even had enough restraint to wait and drag you into the confessional, tesoro.” He purred, hand rubbing little circles on your lower back. “I should have just fucked you right there on the altar, in front of everyone and under the watchful gaze of our Dark Lord. That way, they all could have seen what a good little slut you are for me. For your Papa.” He said quite matter-of-factly, but his voice was dripping with lust as he articulated each word in that sinful Italian accent of his.

“Oh yeah? Maybe next time you should, old man.” You squared up with him, so close that the tips of your noses were brushing together.

“Hm. Perhaps I will.” The man chuckled with a little smirk, eyes flicking down to your kissable lips before meeting your gaze once again. Fuck, Copia just couldn’t help it; when you acted like that towards him, it really got him going.

“Well, I won’t keep our spa night waiting any longer, dolcezza.” He spun away from you, sheer black cape whirling dramatically as he made his way to the ensuite. “Do with me what you will.” He out stretched his arms in a flourish, taking a seat at the vanity.

You skipped over to him, taking out all the spa stuff you had been waiting to use with him. You were so excited, laying out all the items on the shiny black marble. Mud masques, sheet masques, jelly under-eye pads, gel lip masques, facial serums, and last but not least, your rose quartz face roller, which was a personal favourite of Copia’s.

He grinned endearingly, seeing you so enthusiastic. You seemed like a little girl whose father just agreed to letting her do his makeup. Satanas, he loved you so fucking much. You were just so cute.

“Alright!” You clasped your hands together. “First we have to take your paint off.” You smiled, grabbing the makeup remover and cotton pads, coming to straddle his lap where he sat at the vanity. He let out a little huff as you hopped right onto his lap, his hands settling on your waist as he looked up at you.

You took his black cornette hat off, placing it atop your own head, making Copia chuckle at how it was a little big for you.

“Ok, here we go.” You said, soaking a cotton pad in makeup remover and then beginning to gently smooth it over your Papa’s face. He looked so elegant like this, with his pretty face tilted up towards you.

He gazed up at you, awestruck by your beauty, smiling a bit at the concentrated look on your face as you removed his paint little by little.

You changed the cotton pad every so often, getting a fresh one soaked and ready to go, rubbing it over his cheeks, lips, nose. He closed his eyes when you removed the paint there, looking absolutely angelic. Your Papa always looked so pretty and angelic with his eyes closed.

“All done.” You told him, punctuating your sentence by giving him a quick kiss on the lips.

Copia’s mismatched eyes fluttered open and he looked into the mirror, checking out your handiwork. “Ahh, very good, amore mio. You do such a good job for your Papa.” He smiled sweetly, kissing your cheek.

Your heart fluttered at his praise, rubbing your nose against his before hopping off his lap and running into the bedroom. You set his cornette on his dresser and grabbed some loungewear for the both of you.

Walking back into the bathroom, you threw Copia’s at him and started to strip your clothes off. He couldn’t help but stare at you, eyes roaming up and down your form as you took all your clothes off, and he swallowed hard.

You noticed his eyes on you and you playfully stuck your tongue out at him, shaking him from his daze.

He smiled sheepishly when you caught him staring, scrambling to get up and start changing as well. He took off layer after layer, putting on his VVLGARI t-shirt, sweatpants, and hoodie, as well as slipping on his more casual gloves, the ones he always wore with this outfit.

All you slipped on was one of Papa’s pyjama shirts, black silk with ‘IV’ embroidered in gold thread just above the breast pocket. It matched your black and gold lace panties, and was long enough to just cover your ass, so you didn’t bother putting any bottoms on.

“I hope some of this stuff is anti-aging, dolcezza.. I’m so old.” Copia groaned as he sat at the vanity, looking into the mirror and resting his chin in his hand.

“What are you talking about, Papa?” You frowned, coming to stand behind him and looking at his reflection.

“I.. I have so many wrinkles, tesoro…” He sighed with a sad laugh. “I think I really do need this spa night.”

“Papa, we’ve talked about this. You know I love the way you look. You know how you make me feel.” You pouted, wrapping your arms around his shoulders from behind, looking into each other’s eyes through the mirror as you rested your chin on his shoulder.

“You like dating an old man, dolcezza?” He chuckled.

“I love dating an old man, Papa.” You whispered into his ear with a smirk, sending a shiver down his spine. Placing a hand on his jaw, you turned his face towards you and captured him in a soft yet deep kiss, one that had his eyes fluttering closed as a quiet moan escaped him.

“You’re sure you wouldn’t want me to dye my hair?” He asked half-jokingly as he self-consciously ran his gloved fingers through his grey locks.

“Mm, don’t you dare.” You murmured against his lips, placing a kiss on the corner of his mouth. Copia sighed as you quelled all his fears, settled any anxieties he had. You always had such a knack for doing that, for making him feel so good about himself. He just couldn’t help having those thoughts sometimes, especially when you were so young and beautiful, always glowing with an ethereal luminance, always leaving him breathless, always leaving him craving more more more of you. Copia often found himself wondering what a pretty little thing like you saw in someone like him.

You grabbed a fluffy spa headband, the one with the cat ears on it, and slipped it onto your sweet Papa to keep his hair out of his face, and put one with bunny ears onto yourself. Gathering up all your things, you took Copia by the hand and led him to the bed, sitting criss cross applesauce in front of each other.

Ripping open one of the packages, you began slathering the lavender-coloured mud all over your Papa’s face as he sat there all pretty, gazing at you with those gorgeous mismatched eyes. But once both of your faces were done, you had a hard time not laughing as you looked at each other, faces purple and stiff and unable to move.

“Stop making me laugh!” You giggled, desperately trying not to crack your masque.

“I’m not doing anything, amore! Well, I can’t do anything, I can’t move my goddamn face.” Copia responded, huffing in amusement, only causing you to swat at him and laugh more.

After not looking at each other for a minute and finally calming down, you and Copia slowly glanced at each other, staring at one another for exactly one second before he snorted out a laugh, causing you both to lose it again.

After the 25 minutes was up, you both ran to the bathroom to wash the masque off before returning to bed for the rest of the stuff.

From there, you applied the jelly pads under his eyes, the gel lip masque, and finally the sheet masque on top of everything. Copia sighed as he reclined back, resting his head in your lap as you began to use the facial roller on him, going over his cheeks, forehead, up the bridge of his nose. You smiled at his little groans of relaxation, soothingly scratching your fingers against his scalp with your free hand.

You admired your darling Papa like this, enjoying the gentle moment with your love. He looked so precious, his closed eyes fluttering open every so often to gaze up at you. And you couldn’t help but smile, because there was so much love in those mismatched puppy dog eyes when he looked at you. Copia never failed to make your heart skip a beat.

After time was up and you removed everything from both of your faces as well as the headbands, Copia sat up and you told him to hold still while you fanned his face with a handheld fan. You didn’t have to rinse any of these products off, just allowing them to soak into the skin. To finish everything off, you smoothed a vitamin enriched serum onto his face, also applying some on yourself.

“All done.” You smiled, leaning in to give him a big smooch.

“Oh, grazie così tanto, bellina! This was just wonderful. You make me feel so special.” Copia grinned, kissing you back happily. “How do I look? Younger? More, eh.. more handsome?” He asked, patting his gloved hands against his cheeks, turning his face side to side so you could get a good look at him.

“You look so gorgeous, Papa. Gorgeous as usual.” You bit your lip, that lascivious look in your eyes not escaping your man.

“Eh, davvero? You really think so, amore?” He asked again, gasping when you playfully pounced on him, tackling him down onto the bed and straddling his hips.

“I always think so.” You whispered before peppering his face in lots of little kisses, making your way down to nip at his neck. You placed hot, open-mouthed kisses on his jaw, his cheek, and finally his lips. You kissed his lips so many times, unable to get enough of the man. You had it so fucking bad for him. You needed him to know much you loved him, how crazy you were for him. Copia returned your kisses with matched desperation, wrapping his arms around you, pulling you into him more more more, needing you to be impossibly closer. He opened his mouth when you licked across his lips, his tongue teasing you deliciously, swallowing all of your moans. His gloved hands slipped from your waist to your hips and you fisted the soft fabric of his shirt, licking into his mouth with growing fervour, your Papa groaning in pleasant surprise when you began to grind on him.

You broke the kiss, a saliva string still connecting your lips which Copia eagerly licked up. You stared at each other, lips parted, panting, trying to catch your respective breaths. He was hungry for you, you could see it in those gorgeous mismatched eyes, the way his pupils were blown wide, the way his cheeks were flushed red hot.

You leaned in again until the tips of your noses were brushing together, fingers gently smoothing the pretty whiteish wisps of hair near your sweet Papa’s temples. You then leaned in further until your lips gently brushed together, just staying like that for a few moments.

Unable to take it anymore, Copia cupped your face in his hands, bringing you in for a passionate lip lock that grew sloppier with each passing second.

To be continued 😈

Tagging: @sucharide @my-mummy-dust @the-hole-in-terzos-shoe @rightintheghoulies @copiaswifey @youhaveahomeinmyheart

#my writing #papa iv x reader #copia x reader #popia x reader #papa iv #cardinal copia x reader smut #copia x reader smut #popia x reader smut #popia #popia copia #papa emeritus iv x reader smut #papa emeritus 4 #papa emeritus iv #papa 4 #cardinal copia #cardinal copia x reader #copia

[pezberrywhoreee]

tslocg kink and fetish headcanons!!

again, credentials are that i practice safe and informed bdsm and kink myself, so im not pulling shit out my ass when i write these :))

- self proclaimed mommy dom, but she goes through waves of being more submissive. it's very situational and dynamic dependent. i feel that she submits easier. it's easier for her get into headspace but she love taking care of little girls occasionally. i feel that she was domming more when she was single but she likes subbing in committed relationships.

- doesn't feel the need to use honourifics but gets low-key excited when people dynamically call her "mommy" or "pet".

- light degradation, i can't see a world where someone who is so quick with mocking and insults doesn't use it to their advantage sexually. submissively, i can see her liking to fight back when degraded but she'll eventually give in and beg you to call her your slut.

- oral fixation. loves toying with mouths, loves her mouth played with (i literally have to include this because reneé rapp)

- huge into spit play, so much so that it gets it's own bullet point. i image she loves being covered in salvia, so it's also a wet and messy type of thing but specifically with spit. she loves looking up and having her mouth open!!! what more is there to say?

- praise, this feels canon. she loves being encouraged and told how to do things well and that she is doing those things how she should.

- torso fetish, will worship a torso for hours. obsessed with the look of them, loves running her tongue along them (oral fixation), loves seeing marks on them. her phone background is actually a picture of alicia's torso, she told me herself <33

- that's a leather dyke if i've ever seen one. comes across as a service dom (and she often is) but she cannot resist the heavy sadist within her. she definitely tortures little girls with pleasure. i also feel that she would be a great brat tamer with certain girls.

- I feel that she doesn't really focus on her own honourifics but she does enjoy "sir", "daddy" and occasionally "mommy" if she's deep in headspace. otherwise she isn't too serious about her own titles.

- huge oral fixation, she loves playing with mouths and has dedicated countless scenes to focus on this fixation. she is more than happy to go hours without genital stimulation for either her or her sub.

- auralism (this is basically heavy sexual desire and arousal from sounds). i know it sounds like a given because sex and bdsm are very sensory based but i feel like she is able to get off just from sounds; including moaning, wet sounds, the sound of impact.

- heavy degradation and humiliation. i feel like her teasing nature and her way of flirting being canonically negging translates into power dynamic and kink. she prefers verbal over physical but she'll do anything for a sub.

- mocking, see above.

- exhibitionism, she loves the energy of being in public and also because it allows her to incorporate so many other kinks.

- temp play, specially cold. she is a connoisseur of a pervertable and ice is always her numer one choice. but she well also lightly freeze toys and use them on girls.

- shibari god. its an art form for her and it allows her to be culturally in touch as well as sexually in touch with herself. she actually got in trouble with essex dorm administration for installing hardware in her ceiling. favourite tie: any thigh bind and intricate chest harness.

- aggressive switch. pro dom by day, slut by night. she can go between the two embarrassingly quickly from very slight triggers.

- abdomen fetish. this is canon...i literally don't have to explain it further it's so obvious. actually i think that she loves ab riding and she prefers it over dick and strap (this woman is definitely sapphic btw) sometimes.

- heavy breeding and cum play kinks. i feel that she loves the idea of being full of someone's essence and really being consumed by it. also huge into forced cum eating. but yeah, also the physical sensation of her breath being taken away and being overwhelmed by the fullness.

- group sex, she has a lot of love to give. see also "pro dom by day" she knows how to conduct a room full of subs that are ready to do anything for her.

- somno. I feel that she enjoys this submissively more because again it's that overpowered feeling that she thrives from. i also feel that she finds this form of consent to be very special and it creates a whole different dynamic in her relationships.

- pits, it's an extension of the torso. i think she really likes man stink!!! i cannot tell you why but she does.

- degradation, see also "slut by night". she carries herself with so much self respect and care (for the most part) so she gets off on that being opposed.

- sodomy but specifically she loves getting into cis boy butts.

- token vanilla

- token vanilla pt ll

#tslocg #slocg #reneé rapp #the sex lives of college girls #kink headcanons #leighton murray #alicia tslocg #whitney chase #bela malhotra #kimberly finkle #renee rapp #alyah chanelle scott #pauline chalamet #amrit kaur #mindy kaling #number one alicia (tslocg) stan #pezberrywhoreee kink #pezberrywhoreee #pezberrywhoreee speaks

[youredreamingofroo]

once again coming back to apologize for my inactivity, I've not only been depressed but also burnt out of tumblr 🫠 I haven't been motivated to check tumblr and haven't really cared (as much as I love it here) to just reblog and wtv. Today was a really hot day (for me) and if the rest of the week or month looks like this, then definitely do not expect anything from me (especially as we ease into spring and eventually enter summer), hot weather is my mortal enemy and it's like im fighting demons nonstop whenever summer/late spring rolls around so... yea.

on top of that I just haven't used my laptop in a couple of days LMAO after the play on Saturday, I was absolutely knocked out for all of Sunday and the last two days I've been playing red dead redemption 2, which I've really been enjoying 🙃🙃 which means eventually when I get back to tumblr will probably be rbing rdr2 stuff lmao

cut is just me rambling about the next two games I'm planning on playing after rdr2

also I currently have a line of games (and by line, I mean 2 games LMAO) I'm seriously looking forward to playing on my Xbox/Laptop-

First game is skyrim, I LOVEDDDD playing it on my switch, but I haven't played it properly for sooo long, but I recently saw that skyrim is free on gamepass and will definitely be installing it on my laptop 🥹 Granted, my character in skyrim is veryyyy op and it'll be upsetting to have to restart but whatevs! I just have to do what I always do and power thru battles that are intended for higher levels- and also grind pickpocketing cuz I can NOT live without that skill LMAO

Second game is a well-loved game of mine, ARK, I've played well over 500 hours on my phone and well over 250 hours on my switch (which ofc I enjoyed infinitely more, but nothing beats the nostalgia of mobile ARK LMAO), and when I TELL you I was elated to see it for free on gamepass, I mean it cuz I was SOO giddy, of course I know rdr2 will take bloody forever to finish (at the rate I'm going) but I'm just so excited to play it, especially since I think all the expansions are free as well, which means I can play genesis without paying for it (since I bought the other expansions on my switch- aberration FTW btw)

#anyways! my little life update i suppose #i feel bad letting this tumblr die down #but life is life and such means that i cannot exist on tumblr 25/8 like i used to #on a diff note. i wont be posting anything about rdr2 cuz im just too lazy #and its on my xbox so trying to get screenshots from point a (xbox) to point b (laptop) will def be too tedious for me #i have to say that i am NOTT a controller savant. ive always been better at playing on keyboard and mouse #so trying to play a game like rdr2 on a controller with barely any grasp of aiming on controller... #yea its just SUCH a fun time for me 😞😞 usually i never have aim assist on but with rdr2... i have to have it on to even figure out where- #-someone is cuz i can barely bloody see with how slow the aimed sensitivity is #“you can change i-” I DID. ITS ON THE HIGHEST SETTING AND ITS STILL TOO SLOW FOR ME 😭 #im not even bad at aiming or finding ppl or wtv. i had a 2 or 3 K/D ratio on cod mobile (i was a mobile gamer for so long 😭)- #so again its just that im not well versed in using a controller cuz i normally do nott have the problems i do on keyboard and mouse- #-that i do on controller #yapping

[richiekirschs]

how ab domestic life with steve? no more chaos, and no more crazy shit. him and reader move out of hawkins and settle down, get married and have a kid or 2. just a thought that's been plaguing me for a couple days <3 love your work btw! don't forget to drink water and stay healthy babes ❤

domestic life with steve (under the cut)

warnings: labor, afab reader

- the first thing y’all did once you could afford it was move out of hawkins

- ptsd from the events surrounding the upset down plagued the two of you and you both agreed that a change of scenery would be good

- you didn’t go far— only about an hour away, into indianapolis

- a cute little apartment that didn’t cost much

- the kids helped you guys move in

- nobody was ready to leave

- you and steve didn’t have the heart to make them all leave after they all fell asleep on the floor watching a movie

- everyone cried when you guys drove them home the next morning

- even nancy and jonathan

“you guys can call whenever,” steve had assured them, “and you’re always welcome to visit. now everyone come here, one last group hug.”

- dustin came out to visit you guys at least once a week

- the entire group made a deal to have a movie night once a month at your apartment

- the first thing you and steve did together once you two were settled in was get a dog

- a little dalmatian you guys named perdy

- your mattress was on the floor for a solid two months

- one day you came home from grocery shopping and there was a foundation underneath

- steve built and installed it in the two hours you were gone

- he proposes on your two year anniversary

“i know we’re young, but i think we’ve seen enough that proves life is short. y/n, will you marry me?”

- you say yes (obviously)

- see here for wedding hcs

- about a year after y’all get married, you end up having a baby girl

- you both agree to name her barbara

- everyone rushes to the hospital when they hear you’re in labor

- they fawn over your baby when the doctors say it’s okay

- baby barbara is raised around two loving parents, a hyperactive dog, and six kids (they’re grown by now but they’ll always be your kids) that would take down god himself for her

#stranger things #stranger things 4 #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington x you #steve harrington #i want this man so bad

[asbealthgn]

people seemed to like the last one (thank you btw!) so here is the first lil snippet of one of my longer fics on ao3:

--

As Steve peels out of his driveway, he runs through the catalog in his head of places he can crash.

If it wasn’t two in the morning, he would already be on his way to Robin’s by now. She’s been having just as many issues with insomnia as Steve has, so there’s a decent likelihood she’s still awake, but he knows her parents wouldn’t take all that kindly to him showing up in the middle of the night.

He could go to Dustin’s, but the kid has gotten annoyingly responsible about going to bed on time on school nights, and he gets pissy if he doesn’t get his eight hours. And anyways, what would Steve say to Mrs. Henderson?

In the old days, he maybe could have gone to Hopper’s, since the chief could usually be relied on to be up at all hours. These days though, he’s settled in with the freshly returned Byers family, and Steve doesn’t really feel like disturbing Joyce and the kids.

If it was just about finding a place to sleep tonight, Steve could park up at the quarry and pass out in his car there. It’s not like he hasn’t done it before. Hell, he could even go let himself into Family Video and crash on the couch in the back.

But it’s not just about sleeping. Steve doesn’t want to be alone right now.

Really, he’s left with one option. He’s driven past the sign for Forest Hills and is pulling up in front of the new Munson trailer before he even realizes that he’s made the conscious decision to do so. Steve cuts the engine.

It makes sense to come here. Eddie’s uncle Wayne works nights, so the only person he’ll be bothering is Eddie. And Steve knows Eddie to be a light sleeper from that night over the summer when they all camped out in the Wheelers’ backyard, so he feels reasonably confident that Eddie will wake up if he knocks. If he’s even asleep. Steve has seen the dark circles under Eddie’s eyes and has wondered if he’s been having the same sleepless nights.

Steve pushes open his car door and gets out. The door falls shut behind him before he can catch it and he jumps at the noise, heart leaping into his throat. Just a car door, he tells himself. Nothing to be afraid of.

He hops up the steps to the trailer two at a time and knocks on the door. Pounds on the door. Is really hurting his hand on this door until it finally swings open. Eddie is there, hair fluffed out in a halo around his head, rubbing sleep out of his eye. He’s not wearing a shirt, something Steve takes note of even in his addled state.

“The hell are you doing, Harrington?” Eddie slurs, voice lower and more gravelly than usual from sleep. Then he seems to notice the look on Steve’s face and drops his hand. “What happened?”

Steve leans his shoulder against the doorframe. “Can I come in?”

Eddie steps aside to let him through, shutting the door again once Steve has entered. He looks Steve up and down, maybe making note of the pajamas and disheveled hair and downturned expression.

“Is it about your parents?” Eddie asks.

“Kind of,” Steve says. His parents came home a few days ago, and it’s had Steve on edge. Eddie came into Family Video the other day and caught part of Steve recounting to Robin the latest installment of Steve’s dad telling him how he’s a disappointment, how he’s a burnout, how he’s a disgrace. Nothing new, really.

Eddie opens his arms and Steve steps into them. It’s something he loves about Eddie; he’ll be waiting with arms outstretched before he even knows what the problem is. Steve lets himself sink into Eddie, head on his shoulder, feeling momentarily safer in the circle of the other man’s arms.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Eddie asks against Steve’s ear.

“I had a nightmare,” Steve says. It sounds stupid when he says it out loud. He has nightmares almost every night. But this was a particularly bad one. The finer points are slipping away, but Steve remembers a swirling cocktail of every awful thing he’s faced in the past three years with all the details swapped around; Dustin getting lifted into the air with his bones snapping, Will melting into a puddle of flesh and blood, Robin walking into Steve’s pool and never walking out.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie murmurs, hand running over Steve’s hair. “I get them too.”

Steve closes his eyes, feeling calmer with the soft skin of Eddie’s neck against his cheek. “I can normally handle them better,” he says.

On the nights when his parents are away, Steve will go downstairs and turn the TV on at top volume to distract himself. He’ll drink or smoke to calm himself down. He’ll turn on every light in the house. He can’t do any of that when his parents are home.

“I woke them up,” Steve says.

“Your parents?” Eddie asks.

Steve nods. “I didn’t mean to,” he says, “I can get loud sometimes, when the nightmares are bad. It’s not usually a big deal when it’s just me.”

Eddie hums against his ear. Steve takes it as encouragement to go on. “My dad came in, got pretty mad at me.”

“Mad?”

“For disturbing them. Thinks I’m too old to be having nightmares, especially the scream-yourself-awake kind.”

“God, Steve,” Eddie murmurs. He rubs his hand over Steve’s back and Steve feels just a little more okay.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, “Couldn’t stay, though.”

“You can stay here,” Eddie offers, like it’s nothing. It’s everything to Steve.

“Is that alright?” he asks.

“‘Course it is,” Eddie says, “Come on.”

Steve lets himself be led into Eddie’s room. Eddie pulls back the blankets on his bed and climbs in, scooting all the way to the far side. Steve crawls in after him. He hesitates a second before sliding closer to Eddie and putting his head on his chest. Eddie’s arms go around Steve immediately.

“You’re safe here,” Eddie tells him softly.

And as Steve’s eyelids get heavy, he thinks he may just believe him.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie #steve x eddie #stranger things #the rest is on ao3 if you want to read it owo

[murumokirby360]

My High Purity Copper Wire Replacement Audio for my QKZ AK6 Pro IEM review (w/ my paper dolls) - 2nd Half (Final) [Recorded: Dec 8th, 2023]

DeviantART Version: [CLICK ME!]

Hello, December. Here's my 2nd half (and final) of my 'High Purity Copper Wire Replacement Audio' for my QKZ AK6 Pro IEM Earphones, or as I call it my 'audio wire replacement' (, feat. my paper dolls).

• If you haven't seen my '1st half', then please → [CLICK ME!].

BTW: And once again, If you haven't seen my review of QKZ AK6 Pro (from 2022), then I'll provide some links down below. ↓ 😉

My QKZ AK6 Pro IEM Earphones:

• Revealing parcel [Oct 1st, 2022]

• Part 1 (1st half) [Oct 8th, 2022]

• Part 2 (2nd half) [Oct 8th, 2022]

• Part 3 (Final) [Oct 26th, 2022]

So, without further ado, let's get started:

20th & 21st Image(s): ↑

• Here's a preview of installing my two AK6 Pro earpieces to my new 'audio wire replacement'. 🎶🎧🙂 My paper dolls are excited to wear it. Don't you worry, you two. I hope your ears we're fit. Hehe 😅 Nonetheless, here's my 2nd recorded video. 🎦📲

🎦 My Recorded video No. 2 ↑ 📲

• Here's me connecting two audio pieces into one, and it fits perfectly! 🎧🎶😊 Once again, my apologies for the awful background, despite my current smartphone (the Honor 8C) doesn't have noise cancelling / anti-background sound feature. 🚫🎶🏙️📲

22nd to 24th Image(s): ↑

• [22nd & 23rd Image] Finally, the installation is complete! Care to wear it, you two? 🎧😊 "Yes, please" said my paper dolls. [24th Image] Mmmmm... 🤔 A-Okay, but uhh... I think, would it better if you two wear my headphones over earphones, Okay? 😊 My paper dolls completely agree.

25th & 26th Image(s): ↑

• Now, let's go to the actual wear, featuring "ME!". 😊 You can see these photos of mine, they fit well on both of my ears just like before 👂🙂👍. Sound-wise, the sound quality is the same as I expected 🙂🎶👌, but say cannot be said for the quality of ear hooks. You see, upon wearing these or taking off after hours of listening, the material for the ear hooks feels quite flimsy than the original one. 🪢 👂🎧🤔 My OG audio wire's ear hooks used to have a solid bend without worrying about. On top of that, the wiring itself feels quite light, making it easy to snap after a long use (, as I predict 🤔). Not to mention, the slippery and glossy appearance of the wiring. Though, I'm not sure if this replacement could last as long as the original one. But, we'll see in the endurance durability pace for my new audio wire. On the plus side, it is as comfy as before without hurting my ears; not even once.

• As of today (Dec 15th, 2023), I have no issues whatsoever, so far. I've tested it on my Honor 8C phone to see the function of the controls (play/pause, and the volume buttons), and it worked well. And with the volume controls on my IEM earphones, I don't have to reach my phone just to adjust the volume for hearing purposes. 🎧📲😊👍

Overall & Asking Price:

• Despite material differences between the OG and the replacement one, I'd say if your OG audio wire was busted after the lifespan was dead, a replacement for your current IEM earbuds is a better choice. 🎶🎧😊👍 Not only the audio wire replacements deliver the same quality sound as the original, but they also it'll save your budget, as well, if you have existing functional IEM detachable earpieces. Because some people like me, don't want to spend another spare of regular earphones with no detachable feature, right? Well, okay I guess that is debatable (BUT). 🤔Nonetheless, I think every IEM budget owners should buy this if they so desire. 😊

• As for the price, I order it from Shopee PH for only ₱ 145 [CLICK ME!] 🏷️. 🇵🇭🛒🌐 There's also an additional ₱10 for the pouch, but I rather not spending it. Considering, that I have tons of pouches to used. 🙂 There's also available on Lazada PH [CLICK ME!] 🇵🇭🛒🌐, as well albeit a different price than Shopee 🏷️, plus there's a Type C variant and different style choices.

Well, that's the end of my topic, and see you in 2024! 🥂🥳🎇

Tagged: @lordromulus90, @bryan360, @carmenramcat, @leapant, @rafacaz4lisam2k4, @alexander1301, @paektu

#My Video #MyVideo #My Photos #My Photo #Video #Photos #Photo #Chowder #Panini #Chowder Panini #Paper Dolls #Audio Wire #Audio Wire Replacement #QKZ #QKZ AK6 Pro #IEM Earphones #In-Ear Monitor Earphones #In Ear Monitor Earphones #Earphones #Earphone #Earbuds #Earbud #Photography

[steampunkforever]

John Wick Chapter 4 is only worth the watch if you’ve seen the other films in the franchise. John Wick is tired and so is Keanu, and frankly so are we. It’s a good thing that this is the last one, but if we’re being honest they should’ve merged the plotlines of John Wick 2 and 3 in order to make this feel like less of a slog.

That said, for all the instances where John Wick 4 stumbles (like an extended martial arts fight scene where every altercation serves to remind you that this was in fact written by stuntmen and their crew wants to show off) I’m too charmed by the one thing this movie gets right even when it gets a scene wrong: campiness.

*Writes “John Wick 4=camp?” Into notebook margin and is instantly subpoenaed to testify in front of Congress*

I’m not entirely joking here. There’s a blind assassin (played by Donnie Yen) named Caine. The movie makes him play cards and also engage in mid-range pistol duels hinging on accuracy. There’s an attack dog that has a vendetta against one goon in particular (this is a goon movie btw). There’s a flavor of ninja goon I can only describe as “tacticool samurai.” John Wick’s suit is bulletproof and allows him to take an improbably amount of bullets with just a flinch and a growl. There’s a bad cover of Paint It Black, done in French. It’s campy!

The villains here are where the camp truly shines. The third (and frankly also the second) chapters of the Wick saga we’re trying too hard to be cool, introducing villains and concepts that shot for “over the top” but fell into the realm of silly. Part of the reason that each Wick sequel required a higher percentage of NYC to strive to collect the price on his head. The threats needed to be memorable, and these weren’t that.

John Wick Chapter 4 fixes this. The principle rival (not counting various beard-and-tattoo-identifiable goons led by said rival) in this film is Caine, the blind guy they force to play cards (mean!) and who uses motion sensing doorbells to locate his enemies (memorable, clever, wacky!) obviously is both memorable and a bit silly, but there’s also a beefy German mob boss Wick has to axe-fight in the midst of a Berlin warehouse rave, and Bill Skarsgard doing a bad french accent and brooding over an artistic but geographically inaccurate not-to-scale diorama of Paris. At one point he breaks his cell phone in a fit of rage and makes a goon bring him a rotary phone replacement. 

Not to say that the film is goofy in its entirety. The Berlin warehouse scene is visually ambitious, and for as overdone as “John Wick killing people during a party” seems to be getting, it was still engaging and enjoyable. The best part of the movie for me was an extended top-down Hotline-Miami-Style shootout scene utilizing Genesis Arms Gen-12 shotguns and “dragonsbreath” pyrotechnic ammo that ranked as not only the best shootout of the film but one of the best sequences in the entire franchise.

John Wick 4 is not a masterpiece. It’s not even the particularly the best outcome in what we’d hoped for as the final installment in John Wick’s story. It’s a 3-hour mixed bag that you’ll only appreciate if you’ve seen the preceding three films, but no matter if you’ve watched it from the beginning or if this is your intro to the saga, you’ll be glad that it’s over when the credits roll.

#john wick chapter 4 #john wick #filmposting #film #goonposting