#I was really entertained by his -3 to charisma checks

[jarkonian]

Hey y’all wanna see that time in BG3 when I accidentally triggered a cutscene with my necromancers skeleton minion

#I was really entertained by his -3 to charisma checks #anyways yeah I’m a necromancer it’s been perfect lol #bg3 with a controller is a chore but leagues easier on my goofy wrist #hopefully will be able to get back to game dev in the next couple weeks #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #necromancer #skeleton #shadowheart #wyll #that’s the actual trio tav who?? #yurgir

[cocoabubbelle]

My overall impression of this guy + the fandom’s reaction to him:

Oh cool, Twisted Wonderland made another character.

Hmmm, Judge Claude Frollo you say? This could either go really well or really bad.

Ok here’s his design; hehe they really nailed that weird bowl cut and dark eyeshadows. Nice hat m’dude.

Oh he’s from an entirely different college is this going to be an official thing and we’ll see more characters?

Student Council President. Checks out.

Does he have a name ye-! Oh wait here it is.

My brain: Rollo Flan??

*reads again* Ah, Rollo Flambé….?

*reads again to make sure bc third time’s the charm*

Rollo FLAMM.

Is it pronounced like FLAME or HAM??? Or DAME (the way the French pronounce it)?

Voice actor. Do I know this guy?

*sees the voice actor has worked on Haikyuu!! so immediately play his voice for my sister (who’s a fan of the show) to see if she can tell who it is.)

Also showed this character to my sister for her opinion:

“He looks like he’s 12.” 🤣🤣🤣🤣

He’s interested in Malleus Draconia I see. As a rival? As a recruit of part of the student council?

Ngl him sniffing the hanky looking like Esmeralda’s scarf is sus (of course maybe he’s chronically sick and has a thing against germs, but still. Sus.)

Hmm, Jack Howl, Rook Hunt, Trey Clover, and Malleus Draconia are still my favorites visually and personality-wise, but I’m interested in how Twisted Wonderland is going to portray this character and add depth to him to make him likeable 😌

*checks to see what the other members of the fandom think of this guy.*

*lots of hate-projection from the haters already bc of the character he’s twisted from.*

*despite how the other beloved characters are derived from villainous characters.*

*also apparently he’s not allowed to be tall.*

*to be fair, calling back to my sis’s comment, “he looks twelve” 🤣*

*portion of fandom who like him and still bully him affectionately.*

* remaining fandom peeps already writing Rollo x Reader content.*

haters: THE OTHER DISNEY VILLAINS WERE ENTERTAINING FROLLO IS BASED OF REAL LIFE RELIGIOUS AND PREJUDICED JERKS IN POWER

Other disney villains:

Evil Queen Grimhilde: a fully grown woman and narcissist who 1) was an abusive, neglectful stepmother, and 2) felt threatened by a girl who BARELY entered her teens and reacted by trying to murder her in gruesome ways. A jerk in power.

Maleficent: a sadistic being who enjoys looking down on those she deems inferior to her, (but heaven help you if you don’t treat her with the respect she’s entitled to), who *1) felt insulted for not being invited to a birthday party for a baby, so takes it out on the baby to get back at the parents, **2) takes advantage of the other heroes’ gifts and attempts to prolong everyone’s suffering out of a sick amusement from everyone’s misery but hers, and 3) is less concerned about her henchmen and pet crow’s vulnerable states and more offended by the audacity of the heroes finding loopholes and weaknesses in her magic so doesn’t cut her losses to back off and try helping her people and instead keeps trying to assert her dominance because she HAS to win. A jerk in literal power.

Lady Tremaine: An emotionally abusive woman who sees her children as a means of success and will not tolerate her stepdaughter having an ounce of happiness. A jerk in power.

Queen of Hearts: temperamental woman-child in power who 1) resorts to threats and violence when things don’t go her way, and 2) makes sure the system is ALWAYS in her favor and not for anyone who’s “wronged” her. A jerk in power.

Cruella de Vil: would have happily murdered newborn puppies had they had their spots. Uses her riches and influence to endorse Animal Cruelty. A jerk in power.

Gaston: Violent, Entitled, Narcissistic Misogynist/Sexist Womanizer who will turn on the charms long enough to try to get the woman he wants. Can’t take no for an answer. Is able to sway mob opinion because of his charisma and skill set and be one of the top dogs so to speak. A jerk in power.

Dr. Facilier: Conman extraordinaire who hates successful people and uses others to weasel out of debts he put himself in. Will aim for a willing stooge to aim for the top and seize control/influence from a person of perceivable authority. A jerk in literal power.

Ursula: Conwoman who makes sure that any deal she makes will always work out in her favor and will do anything to bring you down if it looks like you’re going to succeed. A jerk in literal power.

Scar: Jealous brother and uncle. Fratricide. Attempted Nepoticide. Wants to be in a position of power purely for the perceived personal benefits with no regards to his citizens’ well-being. Shifts blame from himself to others if things aren’t working out his way. Will only engage in a fight he’s started if there’s anything to put the other opponent at a disadvantage. A jerk in power.

Jafar: arrogant and jealous second-in-command who uses means to manipulate things to his favor. Classist jerk who will not follow up on his end of the bargain even if you fulfilled yours, or will use ambiguous words so that he does fulfill his bargain only at your expense. Will abuse his authority to objectify others. A jerk in power.

Hades: Bitter and Temperamental Boss man who rather make the most of an unsavory position thrown upon him, takes out his temper on others and makes elaborate schemes to overthrow his bosses, while making others do his dirty work for him as opposed to doing it himself. Makes deals for his own benefit. Sore Loser. A jerk in power.

Twisted Wonderland has been able to create characters TWISTED from their villainous inspirations and make them have reasons for their initial attitudes before overblotting, receive consequences for their actions that make them reflect on themselves, then actually go through character development that help them to become more heroic/tolerable. Not even all of them are shown to be remotely close to their original villain in motivation or personality. Again, I don’t think Rollo Flambé Flamm will be one of my top favorites anytime soon, and his predecessor is one of the most vile villains to exist in animated films, but I am willing to wait and see what Twisted Wonderland does with him and how he will contribute to the story.

Edit: Help why is this post so popular?

Also Spoilers below.

Rollo is indeed cray cray. But it is thanks to his cray cray that Malleus calls out to us by name.

See? He has a positive contribution to the plot 😆

Also, it looks like this version’s backstory will be mostly pulled from his original literary counterpart as well as his broadway counterpart.

So.

Looking forward to see how, if at all, Rollo overblots and/or gets redeemed following the other characters who overblotted and tried to kill everyone.

More Spoilers!

Rollo got his just deserts after the shenanigans he pulled, and with an appropriate callback to the words the Archbishop/deacon(?) threw in Frollo’s face in The Bells of Notre Dame song.

Mwahaha!

Something that piques my curiosity though. The other housewardens + Jamil were given opportunities to redeem themselves after the mess they caused.

Rollo looked like he was going to confess his sins (so to speak) when the other NBC students asked what happened.

Malleus doesn’t let him because he wants him to rot with his guilt a little longer.

Justice? Or is Tsunotarou still mad over not being invited and decides to be petty? 😆😆😆😆

* “felt insulted for not [actually] being invited to [the Festival for the City of Flowers], so [initially] takes it out on the [City of Flowers via angry lightning storm temper tantrum before he calms down so he can redirect his anger at the actual culprit, Rollo]”** “attempts to prolong [Rollo’s] suffering out of a sick amusement from [Rollo’s] misery”

Ah whatever Rollo kinda definitely in this case let’s be real had it coming.

Now we will see if he will forever stew in his guilt and self-loathing, or if the rumors over him transferring from/getting kicked out of Noble Bell College and attending Night Raven College are true and if he gets a redemption arc/becomes much worse.

Only time will tell since Twisted Wonderland so far has failed to disappoint regarding character arcs and story development!

#shenanigans #Disney #twisted Wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #the hunchback of notre dame #judge claude frollo #twst rollo #rollo flamm #disney villains #twst dorm leaders #calm down #and #keep cool #please and thank you #just my humble opinion #ok now you can go back to hating liking and/or romanticizing him have fun! #malleus x yuu

[blackjackkent]

Gortash battle report!

Starting state of play:

There are two mechanisms on the wall behind his combat starting point, labeled "Micromodron Force Curtain" and "Deranged Force Curtain" respectively. Examining them, we learn that the former gives him immunity to Thunder damage and resistance to physical damage, while the latter (which is malfunction, hence the "Deranged") is currently making him vulnerable to elemental damage. They seem to operate on a two turn cycle, so we have one turn every other turn where he's unprotected.

A large majority of Minsc's damage with Nyrulna is Thunder damage so this is a bit of a shame and it might be nice to have Hector punch the thing off the wall if possible (it's vulnerable to bludgeoning damage).

Examining Gortash gives the entertaining note that he is wearing boots which give him a +1 to Charisma checks and a coat which gives advantage on Intimidation and Insight, which is hilarious because the person he would be trying to charm/intimidate/read is ME, and I am not governed by the dice.

There's also three Black Gauntlets in here but let's be real, I'm not trapped in here with them, they're trapped in here with me. Gortash and his wall art are the main threat.

Other exciting decor in the room include several wall-mounted "grenade impellers" and "incineration casters" which throw conc grenades and spew fire at regular intervals, respectively.

Combat:

Another interesting wrinkle: Gortash is able to throw something called a "Reflectoguard" onto his companions, which for two turns causes them to reflect any projectile sent at them. This fight really is designed as a huge fuck you to Minsc and his Nyrulna throw build personally. :(

Gortash opens the fight with the scream "This city is MINE!" and then lines up a perfect shot with what appears to be Sunbeam OUT OF HIS CROSSBOW that managed to line up on the entire team and blind everyone. I would like to take a moment to give massive props to whoever programmed his AI to calculate his position to make that happen because I am sure that gave someone fits in development. (Honestly there are SO many little combat AI moments that make me think this; this must have been such an intense project.)

(Side note unrelated to anything - it's funny that I'm still getting XP for things even though everyone's max level. It doesn't do anything at this point right?)

It looks like my read from above was correct - Gortash spends turn 1 resistant to everything, turn 2 normal, turn 3 vulnerable to elemental, turn 4 normal, and then repeat. Some interesting potential strategy here.

As expected, all the adds pretty much went over like dominos so we could focus on the big man exclusively.

Shoutout to me for remembering to finally use consumables; had Karlach load up on the "Crawler Mucus" that has been sitting around in our inventory for a while, hit Gortash in the face, and both Paralyze and Poison him, removing his reactions, bonus actions, and movement and giving him attack roll disadvantage. HUGE.

His paralysis then gave Owlbear Jaheira three auto-crits in a row. >:) It then wore off but it was worth it to the tune of over a hundred damage just on Jaheira's turn, plus he skipped his turn, which I think probably gives us the fight.

SUCCESS!

Hell yeah. (Follow up drabble to follow before I go to bed. XD )

#bjk plays baldur's gate 3 #hector carlisle

[maidayevergreen]

The Sims 4 Disney Legacy Challenge

Sims 4 Disney Legacy This was inspired by the sims 3 version I found here, this the line to it, go check it out. There will be 11 gens.

Rules and Guidelines • No cheats, unless bb.moveobjects, or money cheat at the beginning • Aging must be set to normal • Mods are allowed unless it messes with the current generation • Do not bring back your sim from the dead, unless specified • Do not bake or eat cake unless it’s one of your sims birthday • Your sims do not need to look like its generations theme, though it’s up to you, traits are also up to yoi

The Generations Some of these will have packs involved, so I will try and give options that you can use so you can still play this challenge.

Gen 1 - Light Year Buzz lightyear is a space ranger who was stuck on his own with nothing, not knowing where is family was just by himself working on becoming the best Astronaut there has ever been.

• Complete the astronaut career • Level 10 in fitness, logic and rocket science • Start with nothing and no money • Marry a co-worker • Have two children, one being evil and younger one being the heir • Have a completed space ship • Have 4 good friends • Complete the body builder aspiration • Have a brother or sister that you don’t really know/ speak to

Gen 2 - Lion King You grew up surrounded by getting everything you ever wanted, but your older sibling was always jealous of you for some reason, and when you needed your father the most he was not around and you ran away from your problems until it is your time to return home.

• Father dies when sim is a child • Older sibling had something to do with the death (do what you want with that) • Runaway and move in with nature crazy uncle’s or aunt’s (Pumba and Timon, they can be married, do whatever you want) • Complete Fabulously wealthy aspiration • Complete the politician career - president • Max the fitness, singing and charisma skill • Have a childhood best friend • Return home when a young adult and get revenge at your sibling in anyway you want • Marry childhood friend • Have one child

Gen 3 - Soul You grew up surround by music, and you have loved learning instruments. But you didn't think you would be good enough be for going into the music industry, so you went into business until something gave you a passion to do something you want to do with your life.

• Get to level 5 in the business career than quit • After quitting the business career, adopt a daughter • The adopted daughter is the next heir • Live in the city • Have a near death experience • Complete the musical genius career • Complete the Entertainer (musician) career • Max three different instruments • Marry when an adult and have a child with them

Gen 4 - Lady and the Tramp You grew up and was a little spoil't and you had all of your parents attention, until you had gotten a surprise sibling, you got lost after having an argument with you parents and ran into a person that has offered you a place with them, how will this story go?

• Start to get ignored after new baby is born • Love your sibling but can’t help feel hurt by parents • Runaway after an argument and join a household with a sim that you just met • Start to fall in love with the other sim - eventually marry • Complete the Big happy family aspiration • Max the parenting, cooking and gourmet cooking skill • Have at least 4 children • Favourite 3 of them • Partner is in the criminal career until adulthood after being arrested • Don't have a job • Reconnect with parents after baby number 4 • Second youngest is heir

Gen 5 - Encanto Your family was very close knit, except why weren’t you included. All your life you where last choice, ignored by your mother, bullied by your older siblings with only the younger to rely on.

• Your family is ‘amazing’ and popular • Father dies when a toddler • If able try and make the family full of occults • Be distance and not close to family until a teen • House is destroyed when there a teen • Marry a co-worker in style-influencer career • Complete the Style-influencer career • Complete the friend of the world aspiration • Max writing, painting, photography and charisma skills • Reconnect with family after house is repaired and be best friends with one of the older siblings • Have one child

Gen 6 - Turning Red You was the perfect child, the one everyone wanted there child to be like, but you knew that you where different, but how?

• Have an A as a child • Complete as many toddler traits • Be best friends with mother until there a teen • When a teen become a were-wolf • Parents try to convince you to hide it until they can find a cure • You get angry at them for trying to cure you • Have 3 best friends • Max the violin, Entrepreneur and painting skill • Complete the freelance painter career • Marry one of best friends • Mother become distant and angry • You stay a were-wolf • Complete the Lone Wolf Aspiration • Only have two children

Gen 7 - Onward One of your parents died at a young age, and you don’t really remember them all that well, you had your other parent and older sibling growing up, but you wish to hug them once, but what if you can?

• One parent must die when toddler • Older sibling helped raise you and close to them • You bring back your father for a little bit to hug them as a teen • Have a step parent that is in the police force, don’t get on well until later on • Max the scientist career • Max the logic, wellness and video gaming • Only have one child • Have a nice garden that you leave behind for your child

Gen 8 - Strange World It’s a strange world out there and you want to find it all, but at the risk of your family, you don’t truly know.

• When a teen father disappears • Master the gardener career • Max the gardening, logic and handiness skill • Have only one child • Complete the freelance botanist aspiration • Partner must either be a scientist or astronaut career wise • Only have one child, preferably a boy • Travel to the alien world with family

Gen 9 - Lilo And Stitch When you where a child your watched your family go into the alien world and it made you want to meet and alien but is that what you really wanted when you get abducted?

• Have a alien baby • Be close to parents • Marry a alien • Complete the detective career • Max mischief, guitar and painting skill • Complete the chief of mischief aspiration • Drive away a neighbours on both sides whenever possible • Have 2 to 3 children • Alien child is heir

Gen 10 - Luca You always felt like an outcast in your family but also in the world. Your parents always let you be yourself but you always feel the need to hide yourself when your outside. You meet another alien and you both make the choice of running away.

• A blue alien with a human form • Must run away with new friend as a teen • Meet a human and become best friends • Never truly went to school due to fear until teen • Have a human that hates you and is your rival • They bully you due to them finding out they are an alien • You love water and live close to it • Complete the painter extortioner • Max the painting, photography and cooking skill • Have one child • Have a five star business • Marry a human

Gen 11 - Aladdin After your whole family perish to unknown causes they have to survive on there own, and start a family in there life.

• Master the criminal career • Fall in love with a rich sim • Pretend to be rich when poor • Max the fitness, rock climbing and baking • Make friends with a plant sim or genie type inspired sim • Have one child • Get rid of the rich partners weird uncle • After the criminal career leave it and live happily ever after

If you decide to do this challenge please tag me @maidayevergreen , and put the #TS4disney_challenge

#TS4 #ts4_legacy #@maidayevergreen #TS4disney_challenge

[alstroemeriadissonance]

hellooo i rly enojoyed seeing your thoughts on vyn's personal ssr (sickly one) and i was wondering if youve read chp 3 of his personal story? if so, what are your thoughts on it :00

Vyn's Personal Story Chapter 3? Otherwise known as Vyn's Friendzone Boogaloo?

Vyn getting hit with multiple instances of "he's just my friend!" "you're my close friend!" is really hilarious but really who was even surprised at this point? Vyn's chosen method to break through Rosa's reservations towards him was going through the "Lets be close friends" routine. And he did this several times himself, too.

He sure dug his grave lol. But, to be fair, all things considered that was probably the only way he could get closer to her. Otherwise Rosa would just automatically filter out his overtures as wishful thinking on her part because he just appears to be too good for her.

Way to go for being too perfect, Dr. Sexy.

More serious, spoilery stuff under the cut!

This chapter the best to date imo (barring romance-wise, most probably) because it touches on Vyn's hottest topic: his being a red flag.

Let's admit it: he does check all the tick boxes of potentially doing a 180 in terms of allegiances. But him being one of the main LIs in an otome game makes that as likely as, say, Luke having a 3-year shelf life.

Improbable, but not impossible.

The first few parts of Chapter 3 were bits of exemplary writing: they did a good job of inserting that little bit of doubt of 'what if Vyn is really the bad guy?'

Now, that effect may be diminished for Global players because we have the privilege of knowing what happens in Tears of Themis for the next months or so, given that we're behind CN by a year...

But put yourself in CN player's shoes back when Ch 3 was first released, not knowing about what happens in the Anniversary, or that there would be Vyn cards where he and Rosa are a couple, etc...seeing how Vyn slots in quite perfectly in the perpetrator's profile. It's enough to plant that small seed of doubt of "what if?" and simply entertaining that possibility of Vyn being the perp can throw someone into a loop (for Vyn stans) or completely turn them off (for non Vyn stans).

Not to mention how Vyn effortlessly used PUA techniques on Rosa last Chapter 2 to make a point, as an example.

In any case, fact is Vyn has the capacity to be a bad guy...if he wants to. The clause "if he wants to" is very important--will talk about that in a bit.

We already know how morally grey/neutral Vyn can be by the end of Near and Far, if it serves his goals (goal in this case being prompt, unobstructed justice...just in his own terms).

I wouldn't even touch on False Tears, that hot potato of a card, since a lot of Vyn stans like to wave off his capacity for manipulation, totally neglecting his dictaphone monologue by the end of that card.

Anyway...

IMO, Wesley Dunn was actually correct when he said that he and Vyn are the same. Objectively the same.

Yes, I know that's a hot take, but bear with me.

Barring specifics, both have the same background (we already know just how special Vyn's is, but that doesn't negate the fact that they were both moving in privileged, oppressive circles during their youth), same skills, same level of charisma.

But one thing spells out the difference in how they turned out. This is where I come back to Vyn having the capacity to be a bad guy if he wants to.

See, the difference between him and Wesley are the choices they made; how they used their life experiences and skills. Wesley, we finally learn, used his skills primarily to take revenge at those he deemed wronged him, and he eventually went off the deep end and started harming innocent people to get his jollies. He didn't need to, really, and he didn't do harm directly--he just taught others how--but cause harm he did, lashing out as a way to distract himself from the cold, hard fact that he pushed the only person he loved to suicide.

Now, Vyn. He used his talents to dig himself out of the gilded, fancy hellhole he came from, made himself a totally new persona (and possibly naming himself after his favorite thing, natch), carved a new life with a fulfilling career and devoted following. This is all aside from the fact that he is also devoting much of his effort towards NXX and finding a cure for it.

His choices are never mutually exclusive to the fact that he possesses the very same qualities that enabled Wesley's depravities; we just know that Vyn chose not to go that path. Now, what he did in the ending of Near and Far may be toeing the the line a little bit, BUT let's give our favorite fucked up little man the benefit of the doubt and believe that he believes he did it for the good of everyone involved.

Whew. I sure said some words.

That said...might as well say my hot take about Dr. Sexy: Vyn can be a red flag. Vyn can be sus. But imo that's not a bad thing, really. Because I trust that whatever Vyn does, he truly believes its for the good of everyone involved, somehow. No matter how his choices appear.

I have that much faith in his writers (Hoyo writers), at least.

uggghg sorry for blathering so much. My brain-to-keeb diarrhea is such when it comes to Dr. Sexy. Thanks so much for this ask!!!!!!

#ask #ask response #tears of themis #vyn richter #mo yi

[placegrenette]

Think Globally, Tour Locally: Some Speculation on Ninety One’s Goals and Strategies

@queenofattolia, who is not an Eaglez but is a patient listener, asked me about Ninety One’s promotional strategies: specifically, what are they trying to accomplish, and for which audiences? And I decided to answer her publicly so that other Eaglez could tell me where I might be making mistakes.

So let’s go back to about a year ago, after the release of “Darn.” Ninety One were still under Juz Entertainment; the big Almaty concert with Orda, which had originally been scheduled to happen in August, was coming up in December; and the plan, or at least the publicly announced plan, was to go to the US. This was going to happen with the help of a guy I will be referring to here as Slightly Sketchy Promoter Dude. I had my doubts about SSPD from the beginning, not because I thought he had malicious intent (there was never any evidence of that) but because nothing in his CV said anything about understanding or having any connections in the US music industry, and everything in his CV suggested he was the kind of guy who would absolutely claim to others, and himself, that he could figure out the US music industry by sheer force of will, charisma, and intelligence. (You can see why a group whose best song features the refrain If you can do it, you can do it! Do it! might be susceptible to this kind of sale.) SSPD had a cousin who’d worked as a dancer in New York, and she was briefly going to serve as Ninety One’s new choreographer, but at no point during this buildup was any actual American label name-checked. I was worried that Ninety One was going to come to the US on the strength of some valiant but empty cheerleading and find themselves without a leg to stand on.

That was December. By March Ninety One had announced the split from Juz. (Also I think SSPD’s choreographer cousin had returned to the US.) But even after the Juz split they were apparently still talking about going to the US; I remember as late as April hearing rumors that the big trip was going to happen in May. It wasn’t until this interview came out in mid-May, in which ZaQ gave a noncommittal answer to the US question, that we knew for certain that the US venture wasn’t for certain.

@bbcblackjack has said several times (remember, Sara can read Kazakh and I can’t) that Ninety One’s still talking as if the US trip is on. And certainly in the Zamandas interview there was talk about establishing a global reputation, to the point that they’d be able to make $10 million off one song. (That was Ace talking, and he has taken the lead in my force-ranking of Member Most Likely to Prosperity-Gospel-Visualizing-ly Spout Big Ideas in the Hopes that If You Say Them Often Enough They Won’t Turn Out to Be Bullshit, y’all know what I’m talking about; Alem is second, ZaQ third, Bala a distant fourth.) But their actions since going independent haven’t pointed towards a US focus at all. Their priorities since departing Juz seem to have been 1) establishing themselves as an independent entity, 2) touring and getting to see Kazakhstani Eaglez for the first time since 2019, 3) recording an album, 4) maaaaaybe re-establishing themselves in an entertainment industry possibly shaken up by the possible fall from grace of Bolat Nazarbayev. Attach a lot of caveats to that last one. I’m really not sure of it. (I’m not even sure that Bolat has actually fallen; there’s still a ton of murk surrounding the current status of the various Nazarbayevs.)

Actually, let me expand on that last point a little bit: keep in mind that the group in general, and ZaQ and Yerbolat Bedelkhan in particular, have always said that they wanted to grow the Q-pop industry as a whole, and also that they believe the Kazakhstani state has an opportunity and a responsibility to encourage this whole. If--if--Bloody January resulted in some kind of shakeup, and if Bolat Nazarbayev really was getting kickbacks from basically every entertainment venue in Almaty and generally messing up the entire ecosystem under which musicians might get paid, and if the shakeup meant a dissolution of that kickback system without anything immediately obvious to replace it, then an optimistic Q-pop performer or four might well decide it was worth their while to stay put, tour locally, act nice to the current power structure (remember Kana Beisekeyev saying in the Zamandas interview that Ninety One was telling other artists to support Toqaev, the current president), and hope by doing so to build credit towards a healthier and better-appreciated-by-the-state music industry, even if it meant putting the group’s own American plans on hold.

I could be way off; it could be as simple as the group deciding that SSPD was Boss Yerbolat’s man and biding their time until they could get a US contact they trusted more, and check off some items on the to-do list in the meantime (in ZaQ’s case, getting married, and in Ace’s, going twelve rounds with Almaty’s commercial real-estate market). But meanwhile they haven’t even bothered to get an English translator yet for the songs since “Darn” and the new Space and tour videos. For all the possible US talk, all their efforts as an independent group so far have been strictly focused on the home market.

But... maybe that’s changing? Like I said, “Gap” as a lead single may point towards a desire to pivot back to a focus on markets outside Kazakhstan. And they may have found at least one useful US contact: the New York-based ATB Promotions, who’s handling Irina Kairatovna’s tour later this month. I am willing to bet actual money that if Ninety One performs in the US in the next year, barring some disaster befalling IK, it’ll be under ATB Promotions’ wing. (Which means I should start saving to get to Chicago, LA, New York, or Miami now. Discover Atlanta, ATB Promotions! Half the flights you’d want to book the guys on would connect in Atlanta anyway.) And we know the guys are studying English (the most charming part of those playlist Instagram Reels was Bala speaking English). If they are starting to feel secure enough in their home market to look abroad, I hope they get something more substantial than what SSPD had to offer. And also, because I am greedy and human, I hope they start paying someone who can go between Kazakh/Russian and English, and also start looking around and seeing what activity they can find in their foreign fanbases.

#ninety one #come find me eaglez

[ducktracy]

It’s funny you mention the audience thing, just yesterday I was watching (and rewatching) “What Makes Daffy Duck” and one of the most charming points was in the beginning, where Daffy says “oh, it’s YOU!” when he sees the audience and treats them like an old friend as he explains what’s happening, like a friendly host of a kid’s show.

It definitely didn’t need to be added to explain the plot–the sign saying “DUCK SEASON OPEN” and Daffy’s terrified expression as he jumps at bullet sounds says enough–but honestly, that just adds to the moment. It’s not there because he NEEDS to explain to the audience, it’s there because he WANTS to. He treats the audience like they’re an old friend. And at this point—the cartoon aired in 1948, Daffy debuted in 1937—we pretty much are! It feels natural and genuine, rather than forced or an attempt at being meta.

So while I never thought of it that way, it definitely is sad that that comfort towards Daffy turned to plain old scorn in the later years. A scene like the one in “What Makes Daffy Duck” could have never happened later down the line, could it? ):

YES YES YES!!! i will shout Daffy’s tendency to address the audience to the high heavens. i love the opening to What Makes Daffy Duck for that exact reason, and overall it’s a really great cartoon from Art Davis that establishes Daffy as egotistical, but not to a degree of unlikability

i’m very big on Norm McCabe’s Daffy for the exact same reason. in all 3 cartoons, he addresses the audience in some capacity—this scene from Daffy’s Southern Exposure is everything i love about the character. there’s not so much a sense of “i’m talking to you and you’re listening to me, and i’m better than you because i’m on a screen and you’re out there in the audience, and therefore what i have to say is more important” so much as a “hey, check this out!”

and i’ve said it before, but one of the reasons why i love The Great Piggy Bank Robbery as much as i do is because he’s constantly addressing the audience. there IS a little bit of that self importance there (disclaimer that i’m quoting this from memory so it may not be 100% accurate: “a trap door, no doubt! very in-ge-ni-ous! Duck Twacy is too smart for a trick like that. i shall ring the bell… from here!”), but it feels totally amicable and the charisma is largely derived from the fact that Daffy is just getting such a kick out of his role as Duck Twacy that NOT narrating to the audience to remind him that he’s Duck Twacy would seem criminal.

the later, more egotistical duck DOES occasionally address the audience (i do love his speech in Duck Amuck where he entertains the audience in his iniminiminimimiminimitable fashion), but i agree that something does seem lost there, feels more staged? i can’t speak on this because i haven’t seen them as much as the earlier stuff. but there does seem to be a very strong authenticity in the earlier Daffy that has yet to be properly reignited

#anonymous

[2-player-game]

Haikyuu x reader new years HC

Tendo

• "What if they think I'm a monster?" The redhead mumbled to himself, pacing back and forth.

• He was currently alone in his house, trying to work up the courage to ask you out at the Shiratorizawa new years party. All he had to do was head down to the dorm lobby and he'd be there, so he couldn't be late.

• He just didn't want to make a fool of himself if you were to reject him.

• His hands are very sweaty and he fidgets with the bandages around his fingers which he had forgotten to take off from yesterday's practice match.

• He runs a hand through his hair, god why was he so nervous? You were just some person, why did was he overthinking this so much?

• He's snapped out of his thoughts by a knock on the door. He opens his eyes wide, slowly walking over to open the door. He stops in his tracks.

• It was you.

• Why were you here?

• "Hey y/n! Why aren't you at the party?" He asked, tilting his head, he stepped outside so the two of you could talk in the hall.

• "I just hadn't seen you around the party and thought I'd check on you" you spoke, looking up at him. You would have assumed he would have loved the atmosphere. Maybe you didn't know your crush all too well..

• "Oh!! Yeah I was just about to leave. Let's go y/n!!" He said, grabbing a hold of your hand and dragging you back to the party.

• You giggled as he dragged you back to where you once were with such excitement. He was so fun and happy. You wanted to spend every year of your life with him.

Goshiki

• This precious boy is nervous

• He's shaking and he's so jumpy

• You two are at a new years party with Shiratorizawa, you two were hanging out as friends.

• Little did you know the wannabe ace had feelings for you, and at the moment Tendo was hyping him up so he could kiss you at the stroke of midnight.

• Grabbing yourself a drink and sitting down, you look down at your phone and smile as everyone has fun, you looked around, yet couldn't find Goshiki.

• A sigh escaped your lips, your hand running through your hair as you looked around.

• Looking down at the clock you glance at the time

• The clock read 11:56pm, four minutes until the new year. God, would some stranger try to kiss you? Ugh, sounds awful.

• You look up to see a very stiff Goshiki, a pink tint on his face as he slowly sits down next to you.

• A smile greets your face. "Hey Tomu, where have you been?" You asked

• He jumped from hearing your voice, "I uh, I was talking to Satori-san!" He explained, which wasn't wrong but he may not have given you every detail.

• You chuckled, looking over at him, "okay, just don't leave me for such a long time, I got so bored without you!" You said extending your arm over the couch.

• "Yeah, I won't do it again, I promise" he said, you noted how stiff and uncomfortable he looked.

• Roughly 3 minutes passed and you noticed it was 30 seconds until midnight, wow time really does fly by.

• You look at Goshiki, he's twiddling with his thumbs, and he keeps glancing at you.

• You hear people start to count down, mostly Tendo shouting just to keep things entertaining

• 10!

• 9!

• 8!

• 7!

• 6!

• 5!

• 4!

• 3!

• 2!

• You feel lips crash against yours, your eyes widen looking to see who had just kissed you. And.. it was Goshiki.

• You were speechless. You had never considered dating him, but, he was always so sweet to you, and he hadn't done anything wrong. Plus he was pretty cute. You smile into the kiss, playing with his hair. You could hear Tendo snickering from across the room.

Ushijima

• Today was the day

• It was the perfect opportunity to ask out the head of Shiratorizawas volleyball team

• That's right, Ushijima Wakatoshi, the man of your dreams

• Sure he wasn't normally your type, but there was something about him that made him special. There was something to him that made him seem special. He was so.. cool? You never knew how to describe him.

• The Shiratorizawa dormitory was hosting a new years party in the lobby, you put on one of your best outfits, you felt confident in your charisma to speak to your crush, which the male lacked.

• Glancing at the time, you read the clock.

• Shit

• 11:58 the clock read

• Oh shit, you spent so much time getting ready, you had completely lost track of time.

• You rushed outside of your dorm, you were so stupid!!

• As you rushed out to the party, you felt a sudden thud as you collided into a large mass.

• You fell to the ground, looking up you saw him, Ushijima. He stared down at you, an almost unapologetic look on his face.

• "Oh. Are you alright?" He asked, extending a hand, which you eagerly took, he hoisted you up back to your feet.

• "I.. yeah I'm fine, why aren't you downstairs with everyone else?" You asked, looking up at the tall man, you were confused as to why he could possibly be here.

• He was about to answer before you remembered your purpose, "nevermind, what time is it?" You asked.

• "It's 10 seconds until midnight, what is the significance of wanting to know the time so late at night?" He asked.

• "Okay listen Ushiwaka, I need to tell you something. I really really like you, and I'd like to start the new year with you" you spoke, looking up at him. You were embarrassed, but proud of yourself.

• You watched him kneel down to your height, placing a kiss on your lips, he pulled away slowly, but made sure it wasn't too long.

Asahi

• Homeboy is stressed

• Currently Noya is trying to hype him up outside of the gym, since that was where Kurasuno's volleyball team wanted to have a party, and though it wasn't actually going to be a real party at midnight since most had to spend time with their family, they would still have a fun time during daylight.

• He definitely dressed way too formal for this, it was supposed to be casual but he showed up in a fancy suit, his hair all fancy, trimming his beard.

• He was ready to ask you out physically, but no where close mentally.

• Meanwhile you were inside the gym speaking to Yachi and Kiyoko, chatting about your new years resolutions and what you had planned for family. You guys agreed to all spend some time after the party and go out and have some extra fun.

•  Soon, everyone had arrived, music was playing loudly around the gym, cheap colorful lights for decoration, Takeda and Ukai actually weren't there, they were getting drunk together somewhere in town.

• The time was roughly 4:30, a pretty good time for teenagers to enjoy themselves at a party. Asahi was standing in the corner, Sugawara was helping him this time.

• You glanced at the two, Asahi was looking more.. intriguing today, he looked nice, but nervous, was he planning on asking someone out?

• You pondered this though, glancing over at the two, Asahi had a bright blush on his face, and Suga seemed confident in what he was saying.

• Asahi was soon pushed out back into somewhere close to the center, Suga laughed as he watched the male walk timidly in your direction.

• You tilt your head in confusion, but before you had time to process what he could ever possibly be doing, he was already right in front of you.

• "Y/n, I need to speak with you in private.. is that alright with you?" He asked, you nodded, allowing him to take you to a more secluded area of the gym.

• "I..I really like you y/n! I'd like to spend my life with you! If.. that's okay of course." He spoke.

• You chuckled. Kissing this tip of his nose, "Asahi, you're really sweet, ya know that?" Accepting his confession.

• You swore his face was red for a whole week

Suga

• Oh boy he's cocky.

• Not cocky in a way that he was bragging, but he was definitely confident in his charismatic ability to woo you.

• At least that's what he said to Daichi

• Don't get him wrong, he wasn't scared like Asahi

• Confidently walking into the Kurasuno Gym where a party was being hosted for the team, he noticed you were off more to the side.

• As Suga entered, you were thinking about how you would ask him out.

• A face dusted in pink once you both msre eye contact, Asahi had dragged the grey haired male off to the corner as he spoke about his crush, giving him some advice he pushed the taller male towards his crush.

• He laughed as he watched Asahi stumble towards his crush, he went off to do his own job.

• Walking up to you, he extended a hand towards you, "care to dance?" He asked, as a very spunky song started to play.

• The two of you danced around, laughing together, people watch, and though no one joined in, no one seemed to laugh or make fun if you.

• After the song was coming to an end, the male leaned in close, mumbling a quiet, "can I kiss you?" You nodded, your lips colliding into a passionate yet caring kiss.

Kiyoko

• Oh my god

• Can I just say

• This woman is the definition of gorgeous

• Btw in this story you're a girl because I think the only man Kiyoko could get with is Tanaka and otherwise she loves women.

• I love her so much

• And so do you, she is the light of your life. She's so pretty, and kind. She inspires you to do things you'd never do.

• The two of you were leaving the Kurasuno party to go to the sauna for an hour, though Yachi had to cancel because her mother was finally home for the day, the two of you decided to enjoy yourselves and have some girl time alone together.

• Once arriving at the sauna, you two rented out a personal bath, undressing yourselves you two got into the warm water.

• A sigh of relief escaped Kiyokos lips, she was definitely stressed due to having to deal with a whole team of volleyball players.

• You noticed her legs were pulled up to her chest. "Your legs, they're covered in scars. I heard you used to do track and field but I didn't think they'd leave that big of a mark." You said.

• The females ears perked up as you spoke. "Oh, yeah. I fall quite often, I used to be so clumsy back then." She giggled, tucking some stray hair back from behind her ear.

• "Well, whether you like them or not I think they're beautiful. Scars make people unique." You said with a smile.

• Kiyoko smiled, looking over at you. "Thank you, y/n. Your way with words really amazes me." She said, turning to face you.

• Time passed, the two of you spoke, laughing and enjoying yourselves. Once you two were about to leave, Kiyoko stops you.

• "Before we depart, we should definitely hang out together a lot more. I like spending time with you alone."

Lev

• Oh boy

• This man

• this stupid lanky man, doesn't even realize he has a crush on you.

• Yaku literally had to spell it out for him and he still didn't understand

• "Wait.. I'm in love with y/n? That isn't possible, I mean sure I get really happy when I see them, and they're really fun to be around! But I don't like them like that."

• Yaku had to go through so much to get it through his thick skull, "that idiot, those two of you are so dumb neither would even notice." He mumbled.

• Now as Yaku mentioned earlier, the two of you are actual idiots, two dumbasses who keep eachother somewhat out of trouble.

• Kuroo was hosting a party at his house for the team, and being their manager you were invited as well.

• Knocking on the door, you were one of the last to show up to the party, as Kuroo opened the door, you walked inside and saw him.

• "Lev!!!!" You shouted excitedly, jumping into his arms, wrapping the Russian in a hug as if you didn't see him yesterday.

• "Y/n!!!" The male cheered, picking you up and whirling you around. He was happy to see you, barely even thinking about what Yaku had said about the two of you both having mutual feeling which neither of you even knew about.

• The Nekoma party was going well, Kuroo was chatting with most of the team, Kenma was sitting in Kuroos room avoiding people, Yaku kept to himself, sometimes glaring at lev when he was being an idiot.

• The sun had set long ago, and the team was preparing to count ten seconds to midnight.

• As the countdown began, you and Lev shouted and cheered the numbers in unison, but just as soon as everyone was about to shout "1" you felt a small palm grip the back of your head and push your lips into the silver haired males.

• Pulling away with a laugh, you noticed that Yaku had a grip on both of your heads, the shorter male had forced the two of you into a kiss, which unsurprisingly both of you enjoyed.

• "That was fun y/n! Let's do it again!" He cheered, a large smile on his face.

Aone

• Similar to Asahi, my homeboy is nervous

• He struggled to show it, but he does love you, he just doesn't know what to do about the growing sickness in his stomach when he sees you.

• Luckily he got some help from the internet, telling how to flirt with his crush.

• Though date tech wasn't hosting a party or anything, you had invited him over to your house to hang out for new years. Since your parents were out of town, you two had the night to yourselves.

• You heard a knock on your door, upon opening it you looked up to see the tall male which you had invited.

• "Oh! Hey Takanobu, come inside. You arrived later than I had expected, I didn't think you'd even show up!" You laughed, walking him up to your room so the two of you could relax.

• "I'm sorry, should I have.. shown up sooner?" He asked, and before he could let you answer he remembered he had brought you something. "I brought you flowers, is that okay? I heard most people enjoy them on occasions like this." He spoke in such a soft tone, needing reassurance for his actions. He was stiff, standing awkwardly at the door of your bedroom.

• You smiled, reassuring him that you were very thankful. You gestured him to sit on your bed with you, you hoped he'd make himself comfortable in your home.

• As he sat down, you smiled. The two of you spoke for hours, never once was it awkward for either of you. I guess that's why Aone loved you, you were so easy to talk to, and you could always hold a conversation with him.

• As time went on, neither of you seemed to realize just how late it was, you had spoken for so long that you lost track of time.

• In a small break of silence, the larger male spoke up.

• "Y/n, I've.. known you for quite some time and though I may be scary, and you might hate me, I wanted to say that I like you a lot. I'd like to see you as more than a friend." He spoke, a furiously red blush coating his cheeks as he sputtered out the words that came to his mind.

• You giggle, looking up at him you kiss him on the cheek, "I could never be afraid of you, Aone, you're one of the sweetest people I know. I like you too." You spoke with a smile, looking down you checked the time.

• "That kiss was right on time I guess. It's exactly midnight!"

#haikyuu #haikyuu!! #tendo #haikyu x reader #tendo satori #goshiki #goshiki Tsutomu #ushijima #tendo x reader #goshiki x reader #ushijima x reader #shiratorizawa #haikyuu kiyoko #kiyoko x reader #asahi x reader #asahi azumane #sugawara #koushi sugawara #sugawara x reader #lev haiba #lev haiba x reader #see ya fucks next year #aone #aone takanobu

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #178

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re building the beach’s demon king of the sixth heaven, Oda Nobunaga (Berserker)! This extra spicy Nobu is a Swords Bard to make her axe a little more literal while still grabbing the freaking spaceship we need to build, a Four Elements Monk to grab that giant flaming skeleton, and just a bit of Fighter for high-speed guitar skills that would make Hellshake Yano weep with jealousy.

Check out her build breakdown here, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: Team Tyrannical Shooting Star... again.

Race and Background

Nobu is still a Variant Human, giving her +1 Wisdom and Charisma. The Deception proficiency she gets is also super useful for your fool’s tactics, as is the Mobile feat, which gives you an extra 10′ of movement each move action, and you can escape from enemies you’ve attacked this turn without dealing with their attacks of opportunity.

She gets the Entertainer background this time though so she can rock out on the beach with proficiency in Acrobatics and Performance.

Ability Scores

Nobu’s Charisma is top notch, which isn’t surprising. She really knows how to make an entrance. After that is Dexterity, because playing a guitar is hard, but playing one with a chainsaw attached is even harder. The fact you still have both hands is tribute to your skills. Your Dexterity is next, your primary fuel for that fire is... you. A lesser servant would already be charcoal by now. Your Wisdom isn’t terrible, though that’s mostly for multiclassing. Your Strength’s a bit low, but your weapon’s damage comes from being a chainsaw more than you swinging it. Finally, dump Intelligence. You’re still Nobu, and you’re also a berserker this time around.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: We’re starting off as a fighter mostly for the weapon proficiencies, but the extra HP and concentration buff doesn’t hurt either. You get proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves, as well as two skills- Insight will help make you a lot smarter than you look, and Intimidation is just really easy when you have a giant flaming skeleton backup singer.

You also get a Fighting Style, so grab Superior Technique to throw out a Distracting Strike once per short rest. When you hit a target with a distracting strike, you’ll deal more damage, and the next non-you creature to target it gets advantage.

You also get a Second Wind you can use as a bonus action once per short rest for a bit of healing. This isn’t even the last healing thing you get- I don’t know why you’ve got Garden of Avalon attached to a skill, and honestly I don’t care. It’s awesome.

2. Monk 1: One thing fighter doesn’t have going for it is the ability to duke it out in a T-shirt. Monk fixes that handily with Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC based on your Dexterity and Wisdom. It’s... not a huge boost, but it’s something?

Even better, you get Martial Arts, so now you can use your dexterity instead of strength to attack with your monk weapons. A guitar/cd player/chainsaw isn’t a monk weapon yet, but at least your punches will land.

3. Monk 2: At second level, monks can use their Ki for all sorts of things on their bonus action- dash, disengage, dodge, or attack twice as a bonus action, by spending ki points! You get Monk Level ki points per short rest. You also get Unarmored Movement, making you even faster while not wearing any kind of armor.

Most importantly, you can turn your axe into a Dedicated Weapon over a long rest, turning any non-two handed or heavy weapon into a monk weapon. Battleaxes are versatile, not two-handed, so now you’ve got an axe-sized axe that you can really use. And it only took three levels!

4. Fighter 2: We’re popping back to fighter one last time for Action Surge, giving you a second action on a turn once per short rest. I don’t know what qualifies as a “sick guitar solo” in D&D, but I hope playing twice within the same six seconds counts.

5. Bard 1: Now that you’ve got your speed up, your music should be a bit more magical. First level  bards can use Bardic Inspiration as a bonus action, giving your allies a d6 to use on an attack, check, or save. You get Charisma Modifier inspiration dice to hand out per long rest. You also learn a couple Spells that will put your high Charisma to use.

Grab Vicious Mockery and Bane to throw people off their game, and Prestidigitation so you can do whatever you want to with minor magical effects. You also get Heroism and Cure Wounds for more party support, Faerie Fire for just a touch of flame right off the bat.

You also get one more skill proficiency, so grab History. You’re not an academic, but you are a historical figure.

6. Bard 2: Second level bards are Jacks of All Trades, adding half their proficiency to checks you’re not proficient with. You also get a Song of Rest, adding a d6 to healing done over short rests. We’re still a ways away from your giant flaming skeleton, but for now you can use Silent Image so it looks like you have one.

7. Bard 3: We debated a lot between making you a Swords bard or a Valor bard, but in the end the former won out so you can make your weapon your casting implement. Thanks to your new Dueling fighting style, you can play the axe one-handed just as well as you do with two hands, and you also get Blade Flourishes using your Inspiration. When you take the attack action, your movement increases by 10′, and you can spend an inspiration die to deal extra damage and get another effect. A Defensive Flourish adds the roll to your AC for a round, a Slashing Flourish deals the extra damage to nearby creatures as well, and the Mobile Flourish pushes the creature away, and you can use your reaction to follow them.

You get Expertise in Performance and Deception, doubling your proficiency bonus in those checks. You also learn the second level spell Heat Metal. Real fire? In a fire-themed character build? Wild!

8. Bard 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Dexterity for higher AC and better attacks. You can also use Minor Illusion for those times you want a fire skeleton, but you can’t waste a spell slot. If you want another second level spell, use Pyrotechnics to make, well, pyrotechnics. You can put out a small area of existing fire, and/or you can create Fireworks or Smoke from that area. The former forces a constitution save (DC 8 + Proficiency + charisma mod) on nearby creatures or they’re blinded for a round, and the latter creates a smoke cloud that creates a heavily obscured area for up to a minute.

9. Monk 3: Now that we’ve got a good lineup of music set to go, let’s finally get the skeleton. As a Four Elements monk, you’re a Disciple of the Elements, giving you two Elemental Disciplines. Elemental Attunement is mandatory, and it gives you several small effects, including the ability to create small fires as an action. More importantly, you can spend a ki point to turn your arms into Fangs of the Fire Snake, making your unarmed attacks deal fire damage for the turn, and your reach increases by 10′ for the turn. On top of that, you can spend even more ki points to deal more damage with each hit. They don’t specify the attacks are coming from a giant skeleton, but I’m pretty sure that’s an oversight.

You can also use your reaction to Deflect Missiles and reduce incoming damage from arrows. If you reduce it to zero, you can throw it back. Yeah, it’s okay. I’m still thinking about the fire skeleton though.

10. Monk 4: The ASIs are coming hard and heavy right now, so bump up your Dexterity for better armor and attacks. You also get to Slow Fall as a reaction, so jumping out a building isn’t quite as stupid an idea for you.

11. Monk 5: Fifth level monks get an Extra Attack for more punches each action. That means you’ve got two in a normal turn, three with martial arts, four with flurry of blows, and six with an Action surge. You also get to turn those punches into Stunning Strikes, forcing a constitution save on the target to avoid getting stunned for a round. That save’s based on your wisdom though, so don’t expect miracles.

12. Bard 5: Bouncing back to bard real quick makes your Bardic Inspiration stronger, turning all those dice into d8s. That buffs your flourish power, and your party support. As a bonus, you become a Font of Inspiration, so those dice recharge on short rests too!

Really this is just a banner level for you, since with third level spells you can also grab Major Image to create a really big skeleton that actually feels hot!

13. Bard 6: Sixth level bards get pretty much nothing, ‘cause your extra attack doesn’t stack. You also get a Countercharm, I guess. Spend your action to give advantage to allies dealing with Fear and Charm effects.

If you want to do that and still be useful, spend a minute to give your allies a Motivational Speech -er, concert- to give them temporary HP and advantage on wisdom saves. If they’re hit by an attack, they also get advantage on their next attack too. The spell ends for everyone after an hour, or for a creature after their temporary HP is destroyed.

14. Bard 7: Seventh level bards get fourth level spells, like Hallucinatory Terrain. I know nobuserker won’t get the ability to set fields on fire for a while, but futureproofing is a good habit to get into.

15. Monk 6: Hopping back over to monk real quick for some Ki-Empowered Strikes, making your fists magical for overcoming resistance. You also get one more Elemental Discipline, and Sweeping Cinder Strike gives you Burning Hands for the low low cost of 2 ki points per cast. You can also spend an extra ki point to upcharge it, but honestly that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

16. Bard 8: Another ASI! Use this one to power up your Charisma for stronger heals, stronger spells, and more inspiration. You can also cast Phantasmal Killer so Skelly can go kill people on his own.

17. Bard 9: Your Song of Rest grows to a d8 as well, for sicker riffs while you’re jamming. You can also Animate Objects, so now you can really put the “chain” back in your chainsaw and go scooting around.

18. Bard 10: Your Bardic Inspiration grows one last time to a d10, and you get Magical Secrets, two spells from any class. (You also get a cantrip, so.. True Strike, why not.)

You also learn the spell Find Greater Steed so you can ride in style in your own customizable rocket. I’d recommend a Griffon, but anything with a flying speed is good. You also get Haste to make that griffon more rocket-y, doubling a target creature’s speed, giving it an extra action, advantage on dex saves and checks, and it’s AC goes up by 2. You’ll have to let the engines cool afterwards though, it’ll have to take a turn off once the spell ends. Also, make sure you keep that thing low to the ground, unless you want to get pancaked by Ishtar.

Also, more Expertise. Perfect your atsumori with Acrobatics and your cool poses with Intimidation.

19. Monk 7: It took a while to get here, but you finally get Evasion! Now your dexterity saves are super good, with failures only dealing half damage and successes avoiding all damage! You also get a Stillness of Mind that lets you end charming and frightening effects on yourself. Madness enhancement is one hell of a drug.

20. Monk 8: Your capstone level is one last ASI, and if you made it this far you deserve a pat on the back. And also the Tough feat for 40 extra HP.

Pros:

With support from your fighting techniques and bard spells plus damage from your monk stuff, you’ve got a lot of variety, so you can fill out any niche your party doesn’t have covered.

Being a mobile monk means you’re fast as hell and hard to retaliate against, making you perfect at hit and run tactics. Use that action surge for a burst of activity, then run off before anyone knows what happened.

Despite being a berserker you have a lot of support options and can fit a lot of roles, from preventing status effects with countercharm & motivational speech to healing with cure wounds to weakening enemies with vicious mockery, bane, and distracting strikes.

Cons:

A less generous person might say this build is too Cluttered. You’ve got inspiration and martial arts fighting for your bonus action, and while you can do many things, there are more dedicated builds that do them better.

This is in part due to limited resources for your best abilities, mostly tied to short rests. With limited action surges, distracting strikes, flourishes, and fire snake fangs, you’ve got a short fuse, and it’ll take work to make sure you don’t burn out before the fighting’s over.

Your ability scores are similarly spread out in all directions, with your wisdom being the big loser. This means that if you can’t outrun someone you’ll be an easy target with an AC of only 15, and your monk abilities like Sweeping Cinder Strike and Stunning Strike aren’t nearly as useful as they should be.

#Fate Grand Order #FGO #DND #D&D 5e #Oda Nobunaga #Monk #Fighter #Bard

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Caesar and the MC should be Best Friends - Hear me out

This sounds really strange at first to hear. But the game did a terrible job of summarizing the story and showing the characters. The MC should be Best Friends with Caesar, check out why, below the cut.

Act One: The Premise (The MC will be referred to as Female because my character is female and I’m too lazy)

The MC has been trained to fight and use her abilities since she was a child. She’s been competing against others for the privilege of being the best as well. By the time she’s arrived at Cassell, she’s seen horrors that not even the Cassell Trio can boast of seeing.

Caesar in the meantime is planning his wedding. But Nono is AWOL. He’s getting no feedback from her and it leaves him just shooting in the dark for what ‘sounds cool’ For all of Caesar’s big talk, he realizes that he’s not really reaching Nono’s heart and he’s feeling a bit lost.

In the game: You save Nono in the game. 

Why you would grow closer to Caesar: This is not easily reconcilable with the novel’s opening scenes, so if we stretch and pretend you arrive before Nono goes on her Walkabout, that would make one HECK of an impression on Caesar. He would have seen immediately that you are a step far above Luminous. Being a self-described ‘maniac’ he would not have been shy about approaching you and telling you you’re 10x what Luminous is.

Caesar is mischaracterized in the game to a great extent. While his misogynstic leanings and need to be ‘tHe LeADer’ is played up probably for laughs, he’s not that over the top. Here’s how he’s portrayed in the Novel.

Anjou put the two of them (Caesar and Chu Zihang) together and actually wanted them to sincerely cooperate? The move was similar to keeping lions and tigers in a cage, with Lu Mingfei stuffed between them like an innocent red panda. But Caesar decided to do his best, because this time he is the team leader. The success or failure of the task related to his honor, and for honor, he can bear anything. Along the way, he repeatedly warned himself to be generous, to have a leadership style, to be a corporal... Take Chu Zihang as a corporal to "victory", Caesar's heart is much more comfortable. This time he is immersed in the pink mood of preparing for the wedding, and he is feeling very charitable, even to Chu Zihang this serial killer looks more appealing.

There’s no way Caesar would ignore you as the MC. You would be of utmost interest to him. Far more interesting than Chu Zihang and Luminous. He takes responsibility for you as part of the team, he owes you one for Nono, and wants to see you succeed, probably more than anyone else there.

Act 2: Your arrival in Japan

The game skips the whole opening sequence introducing you to Chisei and Sakura. In the novel, those fancy Kimonos were given to you by Anjou and yes they all come with umbrellas. The whole scene is supposed to be funny. Chisei is mistaken for a tour guide, Lu Mingfei compliments Chisei’s Chinese in his own broken Japanese and fantasizes about cute maid cafes, Chu Zihang freaks Chisei out with his golden eyes by accident. So I imagine the MC stumbling and falling trying to walk in Geta.

But things get serious when the police show up and you realize that you’ve entered the country illegally and are now about to get arrested. The MC might voice that this make sense “Because I don’t have a passport or any identity. There was no way I’d ever get into the country.”

After Chisei loses the police, you’re taken to your rooms to stay for the night.

I wrote a little piece about this ‘here’

Why the MC and Caesar would grow closer: At the end of this scene, Caesar is completely isolated, drinking in his room and texting a silent Nono. This scene would change with you as the MC there. This would turn into an opportunity for you to bond. Perhaps you would notice him texting, talking about his love of Nono. You could touch on your past with him for the first time, or not, depending. He’d probably say something enthusiastically fiery and confidence building. He wants you to trust him and trust in yourself. For all his flaws, Caesar is very LIKEABLE and easy to understand. You don’t get into positions of power like his without some level of Charisma.

Act 3: The Mission Details

In the Game: This whole scene goes missing. 

In the Novel: You take a whirlwind tour of Genji Heavy Industries. It’s an engineering marvel that is practically embedded in the central infrastructure of Tokyo (The building is seriously impossible and amazing but that’s for a nother post.). 

You sit down with Masamune for tea. Immediately, something jumps out at Caesar.

“Are you Japanese?” Caesar gave Masamune Tachibana an examining look..

"I'm only half Japanese and the other half Russian." Tachibana said.

Caesar frowned, which made him think of the soviet icebreaker Lenin involuntarily.

"I've been in Japan for many years, and a lot of people don't see that I'm half Russian, Mr. Gattuso.” Tachibana said, inquiringly.

"Accents, your accents have Slavic characteristics, and you'll distinguish between hard and soft consonants, which are typical Russian pronunciations." Caesar said, "You're not just Of Russian Descent, You've Lived In Russia." 

This is Lu Mingfei and Chu Zihang have no say in the matter since their two mother tongues are Chinese. But Caesar was aware when he heard the first words of Tachibana Masamune. He grew up as a different kind of man who could speak English, French and Spanish fluently in addition to Italian, and he could tell the language characteristics of every language spoken in Europe.

Even the wind demon villain Lang and yuan child in this seat are showing a surprised expression, it is clear that other owners do not know this matter.

Why this would bring you closer to Caesar: Not only would you pick up on the exact same thing, but he would speak with the same Russian accent as the MC. Languages are regional, Russia is a HUGE FREAKING COUNTRY. It would be no mistake that the Russian accent - Tachibana’s Russian accent - would match the MCs regional one.  Depending on how much your MC would have told Caesar, Caesar would have picked up a whole lot. Why you were awakened now, why you were sent on this mission... but that’s not even all!!

Later on, Chisei shows up after Tachibana leaves. He’s given you more information on the Lenin and why its sinking seems suspicious. But then he says this.

"Yes, the Lenin passed through the nameless port of northern Siberia, took a precious dragon embryo, and the port was destroyed in a fire. No one knows where the embryo is going to be shipped, the final destination may be Japan, or it may just pass by, but apparently it failed to reach its destination and the dragon embryo fell into the depths of the trench. Embryos have been hatching slowly over the years, but we haven't been aware of them. ”

Now depending on how much your MC might tell Caesar at this point he may or may not notice more parallels between the story of the Lenin and your story. You’re a hybrid, from Siberia who survived not just a fire but a bombs and getting shot. Heck imagine being the MC listening to this and realizing that this mission is intimately connected with you. In the game this happens way late, but in the novel it’s right at the start!

Why this would bring you closer to Caesar: At this point none of this would have been shared between any of the others. This is something only Caesar and you would know, shared knowlege that would likely mentally bond you two as allies.

The next scene is just more obvious bonding time. They all discuss likes and dislikes, their personal goals, dreams, loves, and ideals. The MC would still have Caesars favor but Caesar would fall more and more for Chisei’s charms. He’s bored and wants to see some ‘real gangster’ stuff. So Chisei obliges and takes Caesar to an operation between two rival gangs fighting over turf. 

This would be the first time you’ve seen Caesar actually get serious for once intimidating some gangsters in a comic store. But after that’s all over, he immediately gets interested in the comics. This is very important to note that Caesar is rarely serious about anything. And if he is it doesn’t last long. He tells a long story about wanting a PS2, staying up all night to play Star Ocean when the housekeeper smashed his console. So he purchased 200 consoles, gave the housekeeper an axe and every time he smashed a console he replaced it immediately and kept playing. Finally, they let him play video games 2hours a day after his riding lessons.

This is important. Caesar is pushy and insistent and confident because he HAS to be to be himself and defy his family.  This is is something even Chu Zihang can respect and he makes up with Caesar after, realizing that Caesar’s way towards him wasn’t personal, good or bad, he’s always acting out towards his family.

With you, Lu Mingfei and Chu Zihang closer than ever, it’s time to actually go on the Mission.  So lets recap: Caesar the Leader has pulled the team together, taken you off on entertainment, on adventures, and now just now, on the way to the mission. cooked for everyone while speedreading the the instruction manual for the Lenin.

Why would this bring the MC closer to Caesar? Uh, maybe because he seems pretty freakin’ competent? Almost effortlessly so? As Chu Zihang so succintly puts it:  “Sometimes I admire Caesar. Whenever and wherever there are goals, he’s rarely afraid and never discouraged. In a group of people he will always be the one who inspires fighting spirit. People can choose how they live, Caesar is the kind of man who asks himself to live like a hero." The MC who has never felt so helpless in her life, could have easily been inspired by Caesar. That maybe she CAN get back to the Lenin, figure out who killed her friends and give him exactly what he deserves.

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Lovebug (2/10)

Summary:  

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 3 4 5

Notes: I was torn between publishing the next chapter of lovebug or outlier tonight so I opted to just go for lovebug. I'll post the next chapter of outlier mid next week. As always, feedback is very much appreciated.

“We’re gonna delay the release of our next fix…” Levi repeated, just a little slower that time. He didn’t trust himself then to speak in anything faster or with a tone any louder.

It was too early in the morning for a meeting, just a little past eight in the morning. He was called into Erwin’s office right after arriving into company grounds and Erwin, a natural early bird, was talking louder than what could have been considered bearable for Levi.

At eight in the morning though, not a lot of things were bearable, especially if they involved a huge change of plans and a glaring reminder that he had a long work day ahead of him.

More importantly, Erwin’s voice was grating in a way that most bosses’ voices were grating when laced with a little more urgency than necessary. “Yes Levi, we’re delaying our fixes indefinitely, not just for Love Alarm but all of our other apps as well.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “Really? You know we’ve been announcing this big fix for months.”

“I’ve contacted the marketing team. We are pushing the fixes back a week. You think that will be enough for you to finish everything you need?”

Levi shook his head. “There’s no need to push back the release. I can work on this bug now and I can have the other developers and the support team work on getting the regression testing done and getting the release out.”

Erwin shook his head. “I do not want to give Mr. Jaeger the impression that we aren’t prioritizing his complaints. Levi, you have to understand. He’s an important client.”

“I understand that. And I will be on top of things. I’m testing this issue myself.” Most days, Levi left the testing option to the support team. Given the nature of the bug though and the severe urgency of getting it fixed, it had been an easy decision for Levi to take it upon himself.

Erwin hummed in approval. “Yes and I’m happy to hear that you're going to be investigating this bug. I would rather that we didn’t release anything while investigating this.”

“May I ask why? This bug doesn’t involve any of our other functionalities. I can test this myself.”

Erwin hummed. “Zeke Jaeger is an unpredictable man. I don’t think he would appreciate us improving our product while such a glaring bug still exists. He is a very vocal and he might give us some bad press.”

“Oh?” Levi heard the derision in his own tone then, a smooth yet venomous sound. Zeke Jaeger had been outwardly friendly yet for some reason Levi couldn’t explain just yet. He wasn’t at all drawn by the charisma that accompanied it. In fact, the blonde had just been annoying and the conversation only cemented Levi’s first impression of Zeke Jaeger as bad, maybe even terrible.

What the hell does Hange see in him? He added to himself then. How that had entered his own contemplations then, he didn’t know. He quickly brushed it away and mustered the most seemingly uninvested face he could make then.

Erwin had that special talent of seeming uninvested either. As he settled on the sofa in front of Levi, he mixed the coffee just a little too loudly. He had an aura about him that very much meant business. “Have you done some prior investigation?”

“I did,” Levi said. As he soon found out, that aura was contagious.

“Anything new?”

“I’m entertaining the idea that what if…. The application is working fine?”

“Can you explain why his partner had two hearts while he had none?”

Levi cleared his throat. “Assuming the application is working perfectly, we can draw two conclusions. One, someone in love with Hange Zoe had their application on and Two, Hange Zoe isn’t in love with Zeke Jaeger.” That last conclusion couldn’t have easily been true, but still such words left such a sweet aftertaste in Levi’s mouth that he had to make some considerable effort not to smile.

Erwin raised his eyebrows inquisitively. “Any leads on whose application could have been on?”

It had taken some strength, some self confidence and some self discipline on Levi’s side to pull his phone out then. “My love alarm was on yesterday, I forgot to turn it off after the demo…” He navigated to the ‘history’ tab and opened his history to the exact time to late afternoon yesterday.

One person nearby is in love with you. Levi read silently to himself. In that split second, he was contemplating display issues and front end bugs that maybe just maybe accidentally chalked Hange’s heart as ‘love.’ It was highly unlikely though so even before that idea had ripened into something worth an explanation and a support ticket, Levi brushed it aside.

“So your application was on the whole time.” Erwin murmured, looking intently at the phone in front of him.

Levi nodded. “But it’s a good step in the right direction. That means there’s a bug to investigate after all. I just have to isolate it to either Hange Zoe’s application build or mine,” he explained.

“That seems promising and do you need any help organizing a meeting with her.”

“She’s coming today for a little testing.”

“Just like my best engineer to think a few steps ahead.” Erwin asked, a smile curling up his lips. “And you think you can get it done within a week?”

“If all goes well… Even less than a week.”

***

It had turned out that that small meeting had worked well to organize Levi’s thoughts. He had a quick action plan from there and with an action plan, a new burst of motivation, or at least enough of it to carry him from Erwin’s room to his own small office space in a little less than five minutes.

A week to investigate. Levi thought to himself as he leaned back on his office chair. He looked back up at the ceiling for a good few seconds before writing his deadline down on the white board next to him.

He didn’t need that whiteboard, their workflow trackers and excel sheets worked well to always keep Levi in the right state of mind. Yet there was something organic about white boards, something natural about being able to write the numbers with his own hand, freely changing his fonts with just the slight of the hand, impulsively changing formats at just a quick motion.

So he kept it there next to him, a large annoying waste of space to most people. But Levi had taken great pains to make it look organized in his room, measuring each frame to the millimeter. It was a large clean slate right next to his desk in his very small office. And more importantly, it was something that was very much his to play around with like he wanted to.

Under the deadline, he put the new release date of their fix.

We’re delaying the release of the next fix by a week.

Such wise words from someone who didn’t know how the investigation process actually worked. But with an employee and boss relationship, emphasis on Levi being the employee, he had to make it work. That’s how it had always been in the office. Erwin wasn’t a developer. He was a manager. And Levi was being paid by him.

Levi though never liked the idea of delaying fix releases. Once the date was announced, he liked to make sure all of the quality assurance testing and the regression testing was done two weeks ahead. And with that habit becoming custom for the Love Alarm project, he was sure they would have managed to make the release next week. Staring at the workflow interface, he noted the bar was more than half full already, most bugs were tagged as fix. All test builds were submitted and passed and they could have easily moved on to the final regression testing before release.

And regression testing never actually failed. The Love Alarm app after all was a very functionally simple application.

With the weight of a wasted timely release and the powerlessness of corporate politics bare on his back, Levi let out a long sigh.

He opened up his slack channel and typed out a few words.

We’re delaying the next fix release.

But it wouldn’t just be the Love Alarm which would be affected, all the other applications would be affected as well. His notifications exploded within five seconds, all feedback from each time. Levi started to wonder, maybe he should have put everything in one message.

So he edited his old message.

We’re pushing it back a week.

Under that, he put a new date and time as a reminder to all other employees. There were many why’s, many protests and his application continued to shake with notifications.

He checked the time on his phone. Hange had agreed to meet at nine and she should be texting soon. With little to no brains pace to create a summary of his meeting with Erwin in less than ten minutes, Levi typed out two words.

Erwin’s orders. Without waiting for anymore protests, he closed his laptop, packed up his things and ready to move to the small conference room he had reserved for him and Hange.

It was a few floors below. A small room among others but Levi was familiar enough with the layout of their offices to know it was very much soundproof.

Any unwelcome alarms, unwelcome notifications and unwelcome conversations would stay in that room. Even before Levi had dropped off his things in the conference room, Hange had already texted.

Her car was by the gate already.

Meet in the lobby. Levi texted back as he quickened his pace, quickly turning back towards the elevator, laptop bag still in hand.

He could have been too slow. Or Hange could have just been too fast but by the time he had arrived in the lobby, she was already on one of the seats next to the reception, playing around with her phone.

She was wearing a light sweater, her brown hair was pulled up messily into a half ponytail. Levi though had to note that it still looked very much like it fell into place. For a second, he had given her a good onceover, admiring everything at once.

Only a split second later, he was cruelly reminded that he had made her wait, long enough for her to have to sit down in one of the lobby sofas. “How long were you waiting?” It wouldn’t have been the first greeting Levi would have liked to give then. His heart was racing though and soon he realized, maybe he had taken up the unnecessary challenge of jogging down those five flights of stairs while keeping his laptop safely in tow.

Hange looked up from her phone seeming surprised. “Are you busy? Was this a bad time to visit?” Hange asked. “We could reschedule... “

More and more, the first greeting then was seeming less and less ideal. “No, no. This is great. I don’t know what just came over me. Thank you for taking the time to test this bug with me.”

Hange shook her head. “No, no, I asked my partner to invest in this application for a reason. I see great potential and I’d be happy to tweak some of those bugs with you.” Her lips widened into a smile. “So what’s the game plan?”

Levi gestured towards the elevators. “We do some simple testing. I just need to isolate the cause of this bug.”

“Oh? How does application testing work?”

“We use the application,” Levi answered matter-of-factly. Was there any other way to test it? It didn’t seem like something he should be asking the very important partner of a very important person though so Levi kept that last question to himself, instead keeping his face then as something both subtle and questioning.

“That’s cool,” Hange said. “So how’s your job?”

“It’s fine,” Levi answered. “The investigation will keep me busy.” He stared at the numbers on the elevator, getting lower and lower and Levi could have sworn it couldn’t go any slower. He could have found some consolation if anybody else had joined them in the elevator then, to at least abate that awkward need to carry some conversation between them.

Any other employees though had chosen for themselves to wait in front of other elevators. Levi was almost considering doing the same thing.

After all, Hange was talkative. She was asking questions. When they entered the elevator together, the very slow elevator, there would be more than enough time to send two to three questions back and forth. And Levi was quick to realize, he was an incredibly boring person.

“So do you have any hobbies?”

“Programming.” What about you? Levi had readied himself to ask in that long split second of silence that followed.

Hange though was quick to respond even before he could take control of the conversation. “Well aside from your actual job.”

“I like to clean,” Levi answered. He started to wonder how dorky that hobby sounded like. He needed to rephrase. “I meant--- organize things…” He added a second later. “Like Marie Kondo.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard about her,” Hange said. She had at least allowed for a split second silence then, long enough for Levi to take the reins of the conversation.

Hange though was a high profile person, her partner was one of the richest men in the country and Levi’s mind was racing with hypotheticals. Was it okay to ask her about her hobbies? Her interests? Or was that supposed to be an exclusively professional meeting?

Soon, with all the questions nagging at him at once, he unearthed a question at the back of his mind that he had been meaning to ask since he had met Hange down at the lobby.

So how’s your husband?

Where’s your husband? Do you hang out with him often? Do you usually do stuff alone? A question that couldn’t so easily be answered by a single google search on an incognito window, only that night, he had tried searching keywords just to be sure.

Hange Zoe Zeke Jaeger Relationship

And soon after searching that just once. He had made sure to clear his browser history just in case he didn’t do it in some incognito window. After all, night mode and incognito mode had almost the same interface.

He soon found out though after jumbling around keywords over a search engine that Google wasn’t omnipotent as it turned out. The only one who could have satisfied his curiosity at that moment was the brunette next to him then.

He couldn’t bring himself to ask it just then though. So he went for another question, a very vanilla one but it seemed like a safe bet. “What about you?”

“What about me? What do you mean about me?”

Levi was starting to doubt the flow of the conversation of a while ago. Did he remember it correctly?

The elevator dinged like it was announcing some coming of a messiah. That had been more than enough to break the awkwardness of that exchange and Levi quickly slammed the open elevator door, just a little more loudly than usual. He gestured for Hange to go ahead.

“Hobbies,” Levi said as he met her outside the elevator.

“I like research,” Hange answered.

“Is that your full time job?” Levi asked. He didn’t need to ask. He had read more than enough articles of Zeke Jaeger’s partner to have seen ‘neuropsychologist’ used as an epithet enough to be convinced that that was her full time job. The last thing he wanted to do though was actually accidentally imply in a conversation that he had googled a few keywords for answers before clearing his browser history.

Hange nodded. “Yes it is.”

“Well… Hobbies aside from your actual job?” Levi asked. He kept his own word usage and his own phrasing similar to what Hange had used with him. If Hange asked it that way, that should have been a socially acceptable way to ask.

“I like plants,” Hange said firmly. She wasn’t looking at him. Although Levi had wanted to see the face she was making then, he started to realize that craning his neck to get a good view of her face might just look a little too weird.

So he settled for her side profile. From his view he could see eyes were everywhere at once from the hallways to the doorways just a little further away from the area that opened up as soon as they exited the elevator. “Where are we going?”

“Over here,” Levi said, he was quick to pull her towards the other side though, before she found out that he had taken a good few steps already in the wrong direction. “The conference room is over here…”

“We have a meeting?” Hange asked, her voice suddenly very tense.

“No, it’s nothing like that. I just thought it would be better that I reserved a room, so we could do some testing where we wouldn’t bother anyone.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good. I thought I was supposed to be preparing something.”

In those few minutes, he had made her wait, made her navigate some awkward conversation and made her panic. Then and there as he led her to the room, he was guessing what kind of dashing review she’d be giving Zeke about their first meet up.

More importantly, was he giving a great second impression? It was nine in the morning, too early for him to be confident that he was a fully functioning human being. Or so, that was what he repeated to himself then. He could make up for it after lunch.

Hange settled on one of the chairs nearest to the door. “Do we sit together?” She asked. The meeting room was designed for a maximum of ten people and for a good few seconds, he wondered if he should have gotten something much smaller.

Even before he had figured it out for himself, he was looking between sitting right next to her or towards the other side of the room. They weren’t married. Could he sit beside someone who was married?

But if he sat too far, he might not be able to hear her. He went for a very safe in between. He dropped his laptop bag on the seat next to her with some flourish, as if to say, he was married to his job and he was happy with that arrangement before sitting on the seat right next to his bag.

There was a bag between them, they were a safe distance away and Levi pulled his laptop out and booted it up. “I’m suspecting that the issue with your application might be the build. Can you redownload it for me?” He asked. The laptop had been a reminder at least that they were there for business. And business meant that they had a topic of conversation and he had practiced that script enough times to know, he probably didn’t sound like an idiot.

“Are we testing now?” Hange pulled her phone from her bag.

“Yes we are. Just download the app from the app store. I need to confirm that this isn't just your build in particular being faulty,” Levi brought out his own phone, deleted the application from the folder before redownloading it into his phone.

The ‘downloading’ message next to the love alarm application served some form of inspiration for conversation topics at least. “So, how does your husband like the app?” Levi asked. That line was straight from the basic customer service manual and he was very much sure that was acceptable territory for a professional conversation topic.

“Ahh Zeke? He loves the application. He told me himself, he sees potential in it too.”

Did he tell you over dinner? Over car rides? Somehow, Levi was picturing them over a happy dinner in their European style dining room in their very expensive penthouse apartment down town. He knew how it looked. He had seen it in one of the lifestyle articles he had googled just the night before. “That’s good,” Levi said, he felt that comment catch at his throat. He cleared his throat. “The bug... How does he feel about it?”

Hange’s face fell at that. Subtly at least, but with Levi had been staring at her for the past few seconds, it was very much noticeable as a split second movement. “Yeah, about that…”

“Did he say anything about it?”

“We did research on the application last night… And we were theorizing… so the heart could have been from him… and from someone else right? Someone else had their application open then. And he was saying it was you.” Hange’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “But I remember you said, it could be a bug right? And I’m sure you turned off your phone before we tested it…”

“And we’re testing again,” Levi said as he opened the newly downloaded application on his phone. “Log into your account.” He ordered, looking pointedly at Hange’s phone.

The biometrics were already in his account, all he needed was to log his fingerprints again. Levi took a glance at Hange’s phone laid out on the table.

She had gone through the log in process quickly. He turned the love alarm on and rested his chin on his hands and waited. Hange only needed a few seconds. Soon she had turned it on.

And within a second, her phone buzzed then his phone buzzed. It did wonders to shake the whole table then, enough for Levi to have to grit his teeth as the table shook sending a bolt of shivers up to his chin.

He could have sworn he felt blood rush to his face then. He quickly turned off the alarm. “It might be a problem with our phones. I”ll bring down some test devices and we can try this again. He avoided Hange’s gaze only brushing his hands on her shoulders long enough to make his point known. “Just wait here.”

Hange mumbled something with a seemingly obedient tone. Levi didn’t bother to guess. He quickly made his way out of the room, up the stairs--- he was in no mood to run into anyone in the elevator.

It had taken him roughly ten minutes to go back up to the office and come back down with a bag full of gadgets. He dropped the bag on the meeting table, maybe a little too loud and a little too roughly. “These are the most common gadgets used for testing the love alarm. They’ve all been factory reset so just set any one of them up and we try the application again.”

Hange seemed frozen with surprise, at the least she had managed a nod.

Setting up the device was a simple process and Hange didn’t ask too much about it. She had at least kept quiet through the whole ordeal and although it was second nature for Levi to set up a device, he made sure to keep his head down, his eyes intent, feigning deep concentration.

Or maybe he needed to concentrate. His hands were shaking just a little bit, his heart was racing.

He was sure he only needed to try it one different device, one commonly used model for both of their phones to rule out any problems with build or model. It was a decisive move.

And the climax of such a process came once again when Hange had motioned to click the love alarm again before looking up at him. Before they even met eyes, Levi clicked the on button on his end.

It was at the moment when the alarms rang in unison again did Hange avert her gaze. Levi bit his lip as he stared back at his phone.

One person nearby is in love with you.

He glanced up, at Hange’s phone. Although he couldn’t make out the words on it, the characteristic heart near the center was enough. She was getting the same heart.

He grabbed the phone from her. “It might be related to the model,” Levi said, Years of experience working with applications and phones were telling him, it wasn’t related. One working phone was more than enough proof. Looking at the watch at the end of the meeting room, he saw it was far from lunch time, he had at least ten devices in the bag. “Let’s try it on other phones… Just to be sure.”

***

“Levi, what if…”

“What if…” Levi nodding his head at Hange slowly, a subtle gesture for her to continue speaking.

For lunch, they had settled for one of the diner just along the wide shopping streets only a few minutes walk from the building.

An eventful few minutes walk. Levi had turned on his love alarm, put an earbud to one ear and listened to the alarm ring on repeat as he followed Hange through the streets. There were a few other notifications that popped up and left as he listened. But the ringing coming from that one heart which he had already surmised long ago, was from Hange’s heart had settled into even the cadence of his steps. It became an ubiquitous part of the short walk to the shopping street.

When they had settled in the diner though, Hange was quick to drop her phone in front of him and show him the history of her application. On her phone, there was one heart that remained steadfast through the whole ten minute walk as well.

At that moment, Hange pointed at it, then glanced quickly at Levi’s own phone. “What if��� You are attracted to me. And I’m attracted to you? Because this love alarm, it doesn’t just check love right? It checks attractiveness. So if a passer by thinks you’re attractive, your alarm rings,” Hange said.

Levi leaned back on the diner behind him, picking at his fries with a fork. He couldn’t bring himself to eat one, just the results of their testing that morning had him losing his appetite. Consequently, he had ordered the burger meal at the front of the menu, something he was in no mood to eat.

“So maybe…” Hange said.

“Hange, we just met. During all the tests. I have never made anyone’s love alarm ring. Besides, I don’t think I’d be the type of guy to get attracted to someone at first glance. I don’t believe in love at first sight.” And someone who’s married at that. If Levi had something in his mouth then as that thought ran through his mind, he was sure he would have choked. He was more grateful than ever that he hadn’t started eating.

“But, we saw it already… The application was giving the same reading and when we were walking too… It never stopped ringing…” Hange explained. Still she looked like she was still finding the right words.

Levi understood her clearly though. “Hange, are you in love with me?”

Hange turned a bright red. “What? No, I'm married. Also, we just met and I don’t believe in love at first sight either”

“So do you believe there’s a bug?”

Hange nodded. “Maybe? Or maybe the data you put into the application was flawed. Maybe there are things that need to be improved.”

“That is a good point. So what do you suggest then Hange?”

“I’ll help you research. I pitched this application to Zeke because I wanted to try rolling something out similar to hospitals, psychiatric units. And if he invests maybe we could improve the application, work to make it more accurate?”

“That’s the plan. But he said so himself, he’s not going to invest in the application until the bug is fixed.”

“But what if it is working as expected… What if it’s just a matter of fixing the data?” Hange looked out the window, seeming deep in thought. Levi wondered if that last question had been for him or for herself.

“I can do further testing on this. Just to make sure,” Levi said. “The problem is… How are you gonna convince Zeke to invest in this?”

Hange sighed. “I guess it's going to be a question of timing. I'll catch him when he's in a good mood and--”

“Hange, are you willing to admit to your husband that you might just be attracted to some stranger?”

That shouldn't have been such a difficult thing. He had heard before of married couples who window shopped so Levi amended that question in his mind.

Are you willing to admit to your seemingly unhinged husband that you might just be attracted to some stranger?

***

Sometimes, the only way to find the bug is to break the application.

Levi and Hange got caught in the lunch time rush. But Hange wasn’t a typical worker, Levi wasn’t a typical eight to five employee either.

So Levi saw opportunity for a little test. “Open your love alarm,” he whispered. He put one earbud to his ear, motioning for Hange to do the same. He turned on the application once again, letting the shill ring grace his ears one again.

It was annoying at first, but over time, he had started to see it as an old friend. He was far from the denial stage already and he was already threading the lines of acceptance.

He was a developer. He had fucked up the coding and a bug had appeared. And that issue, it was a bug for sure, a bug he needed to investigate.

And any opportunity for data and evidence, was an opportunity he couldn’t waste.

“We walk through the lunch crowd,” Levi said. “Usually when I walk through, I get two to three rings. Sometimes more. There have been issues before that getting too many at once, sometimes the application would conceal all the hearts and the only way to get it to work again is to reset the application.”

“So what do we do?” Hange asked.

“Turn on your application and we walk through the crowds,” Levi repeated matter-of-factly.

The crowds around him though were disconcerting and he could understand how Hange would have needed some guidance then.

What did she know about testing? When Levi asked himself that question, he started to pick out another question too. What did he know about testing?

He was an engineer and he had been working with applications for years. He had experienced a lot about testing. But he had never experienced testing with a customer married to one of the biggest opportunities of a company and being accused of being in love with her by his own brain child.

He was treading unfamiliar grounds.

The ringing of the alarm was always unsettling at first. By the fifth ring, it always found a rhythm. Or maybe it was his own brain that found rhythm in it.

And he walked to that rhythm, he pushed past the crowds to that rhythm and every two to three rings, he would take a glance to see Hange beside him, her face had settled to some rhythm too. Sometimes, she would look back at him, other times she would look behind her, as if she suspected someone had set her alarm off.

But he had become part of her rhythm too. From his peripherals, he could see she snuck glances at him. Very quick glances that Levi had been perceptible, invested enough to notice.

They could have been walking for five minutes, or maybe even ten. Soon, Levi realized, the love alarm had embedded itself into the background noise, an annoying ring amid faint voices, conversations, public announcements.

It had only seemed loud once again when the street had opened up to an open space at the center.

In front of them was an empty park, and it usually was empty when the lunch crowds had made their way back to their offices. Levi had worked there long enough to know.

The chaos of the alarm had subsided into one noise. He turned to Hange to see that she was looking up at the sky then, one hand over her forehead, shading the view from the bright afternoon sun.

The light from the sun had done wonders to make her cheeks look a bright pink and for a second or so, Levi just stared, long enough for Hange to have noticed. Or maybe it was her plan to look to him eventually.

“Did it stop?” Levi asked as soon as he became aware of those hazel eyes on him. He averted his gaze and looked around the empty park. Nobody should be ringing his alarm. Nobody should be ringing her alarm. But them.

It should have been a win-win situation. If that had worked to break the application, Levi could have clocked that as the bug and investigated that instead. If it worked as expected, if the two applications continued to ring, then maybe it was working.

His alarm was still ringing. He did a thorough 360 of the park. No one was near enough to even meet the ten meter radius. Just to be sure though he turned to Hange. “Anyone around our ten meter radius?”

The park was empty save for one old man on a bench a good distance away, definitely more than ten meters. He hoped it had sounded like a redundant question.

Hange shook her head. “Nobody. But the application is still ringing.”

“Did it stop at all? During the walk?”

Once again, Hange shook her head.

Levi took a deep breath and dropped his shoulders back. “Erwin gave me a week to figure this out. I’ll do some of my own personal investigation after this.”

“Hey, I’ll do what I can too. I really want you to get those funds.” Hange took her hands in his and Levi had half the mind to pull away. If her hands weren’t so soft and maybe a little too warm even for a cool spring day.

Levi had been almost disappointed when Hange dropped his hand and turned back to her phone. Just ‘almost’ though. They just met, he couldn’t be too invested in hands.

So he thought back once again to backend work to the numbers that made up the love alarm. And he thought of Hange’s little suggestion. “You said something about flawed data right?”

***

“My plan is I’m gonna see if I can convince Zeke to take up that love alarm,” Hange said.

“No need to hurry. I have a week to get it working,” Levi muttered. He wasn’t looking at Hange then. His laptop was propped on his lap and he was looking through open support tickets.

They had a support team and being a developer, answering customer queries wasn’t his job. At that rate though, he was looking for anything to keep him busy. Zeke would be coming to pick up Hange and the last thing he wanted to be was free enough to stare at them.

“I have some books on love, I could send them over,” Hange suggested

Levi looked up from his laptop. The support ticket on ‘how to download the app’ was not very interesting after all and he found reason once again to stare at Hange’s bright hazel eyes. “Why would I need books about love?”

“You seem… inexperienced with love?” Hange started. She seemed unsure with that answer.

“Inexperienced with love?” Levi narrowed his eyes at her.

“Allergic to love,” Hange repeated. “so I thought it might help if you read on them.”

“Why would you care if I read them?”

“If we’re gonna work together to improve the accuracy of your alarm, I think you should learn. I’ll do my part too. I’ll learn a bit of coding.”

Levi shrugged. “Send them over then. I’ll look through them if I have time. First things first, I need to get a little more testing done.”

“They might be useful for testing. Or maybe they’ll be able to help you pick out which sensations in particular point to love.”

“I loaded the data. I would know,” Levi said.

Hange raised one eyebrow at him in playful suspicion. It had done some magic in helping Levi recall that all he remembered were the numbers and some hints about sweating, palpitations and some quickening paces. But machines had a tendency of learning more about the users over time.

“Maybe I’ll read one or two before bed," he added a second later.

“Great. Then I’ll do my homework too. I’ll see what I can get from Zeke. Hopefully I can convince him to invest, even with the bug.”

“You have my number---” Just update me. Before Levi could let those words out, he had fallen back into that support ticket about that one person not knowing how to download the application.

It was still a boring and stupid support ticket. But when Zeke had padded into the lobby like he owned the place with a butler in tow, Levi decided that the idiot of a ticket was still a better view than Zeke at that moment.

“Thank you for picking me up,” Hange said in an almost melodic tone, a tone that made Levi’s ears bleed.

“My meeting ended early and I don’t think we had a good dinner since last week. What did you have for lunch?”

“Burgers and fries.”

“Burgers and fries? Hange, I gave you more than enough money for a good meal." Zeke sounded mortified.

Levi froze. He had suggested the diner for its strategic location. He found himself running his right hand slowly over his wallet in his front pocket. He was sure he had the money for anything more expensive.

“It was good.”

“Well, I’ll make sure we get something better tonight. There’s a new restaurant, just outside town, they sell the pink fatty tuna and Kobe beef imported straight from Japan, same day shipping apparently so it’s definitely the freshest we can get here. What do you think?”

“That sounds great,” Hange said.

She had said it in such a tone, a tone she had never used with Levi before. Like she was tasting the food as she spoke of it. Of course she wouldn’t use it on you. You just met her. Levi thought to himself. As he willed himself to get back to his senses, he realized the ticket was still untouched. Although he had been staring at it since a while ago, he hadn’t made any progress at all.

He looked up at Hange then at Zeke. “Apologies for only taking her to a diner. Next time, I’ll make sure to take her somewhere a little…” Rich, expensive, snazzy, exclusive, snobby?  Too many adjectives were running through his head then but Levi settled for something seemingly more professional, or as professional as he could go. “More your tastes.”

“That would be very much appreciated,” Zeke said. He took one of Levi’s hands in his, too suddenly and too forcefully that Levi had to smack his laptop to keep it balanced on his lap. “Thank you again for taking very good care of my Hange here.” He had slipped a hundred dollar bill in between Levi’s hands and maybe he had expected Levi to smile and say ‘thank you.’

And most days, Levi was polite enough to have mustered one but his ears were still ringing, not from hearing the love alarm non stop that day but from those last words Zeke had said.

My Hange.

Hange waved, motioning with her hands to ‘text soon,’ then she turned her back on him.

Levi couldn't’ even get a good view of Hange as she walked away. Soon enough, Zeke had wrapped one arm around her shoulders. From Levi's angle, he couldn’t tell whether Hange had pushed closer to him or Zeke was the one who pulled her closer.

For a second longer, he pondered it. Of course Zeke would pull her closer, that’s his Hange. Of course Hange would move closer to him, she’s his.

Levi looked back at the support ticket, he had opened again.

How to download application. Please help.

He closed his eyes and leaned back on the sofa. He closed all his open tabs before laying his eyes again on the empty draft.

Within seconds, he had closed that tab as well. There were larger issues then than a customer not being able to download an application.

***

Hange had sent books about love in a drive folder and she had emailed it to him. When Levi opened it, he was quick to figure out, they were all self help books

Scott Peck? He could have sworn he had heard that name somewhere and when he opened it, he found the book was hundreds of pages long. He didn’t have the attention span for that.

Maybe I’ll read one or two before bed. He had promised Hange that evening. But he didn’t actually have to read it right?

So instead, Levi googled the summary.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.

Levi was quick to close it after that. If that concept of love was real, that would defeat the whole purpose of the love alarm. The last thing he had wanted to do so late at night was invalidate his own brain child.

“Book one for the night. Done,” Levi whispered to himself as he opened the next book on file.

Before you love others, you must learn to love yourself.

“Cliche,” Levi said. But soon after reading it, he turned back to the application on his phone. He turned it on to see an empty blue screen void of hearts. There wouldn’t be hearts, he was alone in his apartment.

He thought back to Hange’s mention of flawed data. He thought back to the alarm that wouldn’t stop ringing. They had been testing it that whole day, there was nothing wrong with the application and the developer in Levi knew there weren't any glaring bugs.

But the testing would continue. He hadn’t completely tested all the scenarios after all. The alarm ringed with Hange but would it have alarmed with anybody else? His five years worth of experience testing the application told him 'no.'

Or maybe he just hadn’t been actively looking for the right people.

Even at night, the gears in his mind managed to turn and soon, he had a plan albeit a vague one. But the first few steps were clear at least. Levi navigated to his play store and typed a few words on the screen. A few minutes later, he was downloading an application with a familiar flame icon on the screen.

He took a deep breath. "This is part of the testing process," he muttered to himself. He was gonna be spending the whole night swiping.

#levihan #levihan fanfiction

[darkmist111]

Phantom Thieves Play Dungeons and Dragons

The Wander and the Worker

Akira had faced many trials, both legally and spiritually. He had also been a master of organization, stuffing as much activity as he could into a single year.

Yet this challenge nearly brought him to his knees.

“So you only add 2 to armor class?”

“No that's only for medium armor your un-armored right now.”

“Shit I should've picked a race with more dexterity.”

It was like herding cat's, without Morgana’s help.

“You guys ready? It's almost 5.” Akira said know that this group could double a session’s play time.

“Hold on I’m trying to memorize our modifiers.” Ann said squinting as she had forgot her glasses at home.

“Don't worry just remember your crap at everything not dexterity and charisma.” Ryuji said nonchalantly.

The plan was to get all the players to level 2 before they got to the main campaign, so Akira did this little mini session with 2 characters first so the players could slip into their roles.

“Alright are we ready to play?”

Ryuji had finally gotten Ann to stop fusing over her papers.

“As we’ll ever be I guess *sigh* I really hope I don't die at level 1 again.” Ann groaned.

“Hell yeah let's kick some ass!”

“Alright close your eyes and listen.” Akira took a deep breath and his voice changed.

“This is the world of Exceeden”

Akira peaked and caught the grins on his two friends faces.

“Unlike our world with disconnected planets, the world of Exceeden is but one layer stacked in-between other realms, but different from the other realms Exceeden did not occur naturally but was created by 20 core gods. The gods were once one shared in their love of their creation, however what they didn't know was it would grant them more power than even their unparalleled minds could imagine.

Jealousy, anger, spite, and rage broke them apart each believing their creation should go the way they decided and the 20 became 5. 6 of Law, 6 of Chaos, 2 of Good, 2 of Evil, and 4 to keep the balance.

While the realm has no supreme rule the cycles of mortals carry on. Empires rise and fall, stories are told and forgotten, until finally the sands of time cycle towards something or someone that can shatter the heavens despite their humble beginnings.

The year is 997 A.I.(After Invasion) and our story takes place on the continent of Almoria. While not the largest continent it houses a wide array of People and Cultures in no small part due to the many differences environments.

In the far north in the icy tundras Orc and Goliath tribes war against the Tiefling Solos Empire and their Minotaur allies even further north in the Shadow Lands.

Below that are the eternal plans of Sparks where wild magic hum and fae slip into our world. Bands of Centaur and Satyr dance across the fields, unknowingly starting war with the Leonin Clans.

On the east of the Great Sezali Desert a new and ambitious clan of HobGoblins are gathering their forces of Goblin and Bugbear.

This makes the Elven Allied Council to the west nervous and the desert has become a sort of cold war, but also a hive of activity for trade and merchants.

On the West Coast the Aarakocra war against the Triton and the East Coast, the legendary Tortle Cleric Genbu brokers peace between the Locathah and the Grung.

In the Mountains Kobold, Lizardmen and Dragonborn War against a unfathomable threat as the Chromatic dragons and Metal Dragons have united to control the Arcane Canyons.

With the fall of Tyrant Human King Rexanik, many flee to the peaceful mountains city of Eternix. The city, nicknamed the city of small folk, was almost completely Gnomes, Halfling, Dwarfs, as well as the Black Wing Monastery, suddenly has possibly the highest human density in the continent.

Humans have also tried their luck in the chaotic Forest of Nayan only to be never heard from again.

In the south peace is almost a certainty as the brotherhood between the Loxodon and Gith remains just a strong as a century ago. Their city Omniox hold the Verdan trading Guild the only constant in these turbulent times

Not all is so clear though, hidden in the desert are rumors of cults who use arcane, scientific, and religious methods to create inhuman monsters that stalk the night.

However it is that Desert where we start our story in the town of Ixyana. Ixyana is a port town to the sea of sand, willing to offer weary travelers any pleasure they require... for the right price. Ixyana has always been self governed but with escalating tensions between the Elven and HobGoblin armies, the town is being pressured to pick a loyalty. But today neither a Goblin nor Elf is the new stranger in town.”

“Ryuji please introduce your character.”

“I’m just a guy who looks like an average traveler, I’m wearing normal cloths and using a spear like a walking stick, the only unusual thing about me is that have blue skin and white “Hair”. I’m a Fighter but only because you get in fights when you wander as much as I do, but it's clear I’m not formally trained.”

The wanderer enters the town carrying a satchel over his back midday. He makes his way towards a inn looking to rest for the night. He hears a commotion and see several HobGoblin warriors speaking angrily toward each other, before rushing off. The young man enters into a alley to avoid crossing their path, as he steps out he sees another beautiful HobGoblin women in revealing clothes dart out from behind a stack of boxes. Before his eyes she begins to shift form before becoming a striking dark haired Elven women and quickly entering the Inn.

“Well That's a Flag if I’ve ever seen one.”

The man is overcome with curiosity and follows her. He enter the inn and sees the first floor is a diner/bar.

At this time of day not many people are drinking and lunch is already over so the inn is uncrowded.

The blue man sees the former HobGoblin women now Elven sit in the corner of the bar skillfully blending in for those not looking.

As he walks up to her she glances before biting her lip.

“Sorry I’m not working right now.”

You realize from her statement and her outfit that this women is one of the courtesans of the towns most powerful group in place of a formal government, The Desert Respite, worshipers of Bast one of the 20 original Gods and practitioners of the arts of pleasure both of a sexual nature and of entertainment.

“I still can believe your playing a Prostitute.” Ryuji says teasing.

“For your information I’m a high class escort. And let's see if you’ll be laughing in a few minutes.”

“Sorry it's not that I... I just... saw you change.”

The woman tenses her eyes narrowing and grits her teeth.

“So what?”

“Are... Are you a Spirit.”

The women slowly turns her head, seeing the nervous young man though in her eyes he's more of a boy shift his weight nervously.

“Perception check!”

“Roll for it.”

“...!!!! Natural 20!”

“Heh, yeah he's a pretty easy mark.”

“Hey!”

She smirks before tipping her drink back and gesturing to the seat across from her.

“From out of town.”

“Out from... everywhere.”

She changes her posture, trained but attractive.

“The desert must've been quite the ordeal, I didn't notice a Caravan enter town. Is your group somewhere else?”

“No, I’ve been traveling alone.”

“Alone?”

“Yes I am quite skilled at traveling, born and raised doing it in fact.”

“Incredible, you must be strong.”

The women bit her lip while the blue skinned man sweat feeling nervous from the shapeshifters forward flirtations.

“You know I have a certain need for a strong man.”

“Role Wisdom Ryuji.”

“What! She hasn't even cast anything.”

“Your mouth was dropped.” Ann teased. “Let's hope your character isn't a simp.”

“No way!”

Ryuji rolled.

“Shit! 6, 7 total.”

“Simp”

“Shut up!”

“What did- What do you need. I’m always looking to help out.”

“You see a girl can only stay in one town for so long before she needs a change of pace. I’m thinking you’ve been to plenty of places, why don't you and I go on adventure.”

The spearman let out a yelp as he felt her leg delicately trace his own.

“And I’ll be sure your thoroughly compensated.”

“Roll Perception against Ann’s Persuasion.”

“Yes!”

“Shit”

Ann rolled and grinned which caused Ryuji to hang his head.

“21 total Persuasion!”

“Goddamnit, 14 total.”

“Yeah she has you wrapped around her finger.”

“*Gulp* There’s no need for that ma’am, I'd be happy to guide you wherever you desire.”

The man saw her smile turn victorious and her leg rubbed a little higher.

“Don’t worry it's no trouble, when we stop for the night I can give you a nice and long compensating.”

_______________________________________

The pair quickly gather their things the shapeshifter, changing again into a stunning Yuan-Ti. They walked through the town. Some men stared at the shabby looking Traveler and the beautiful courtesan, leering at her exposed cleavage, open thighs, and toned belly, others smirked and gave respecting nods. He glared and the former while that latter made him feel like a scumbag.

She insisted they walk on foot so not to draw attention. The man frowned but didn't say anything.

As they walked they chatted.

“My names Zap by the way.”

“Nais of the Desert Respite.”

“So Nais, are you wondering what I am?”

“Probably not as much as your wondering what I am.”

“Well I don't know, I’ve never seen someone change what they look like except my dad.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah, he’s a Genie.”

“...”

“...”

“...You're not joking?”

“Nope. A Lightning Genie to be specific.”

“Insight Check... 11?”

“He seems to be pretty honest.”

“So you can grant wishes?”

“He could, not me. I’m only half genie, my other half is Human from my mom. Dad said my type of people are called Genasi.”

“Where’s you dad now?”

“He’s only allowed to stay in the material plane for 20 years at a time. He left on my 10th birthday, I’m 22, so he’ll be back in 8 years. Though he’ll probably see my mom before me.”

“... You know that is a really weird story right?”

“I actually didn't know until later in life. For a long time it was just the 3 of us, then the 2, now me.”

“I see.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You can change into other things, is it magic?”

Nias looked away not wanting to meet Zap’s eyes.

“It's not magic it's just something I’m able to do, as well as my mother and her mother before her. She said that we might be descended from Doppelgängers.”

“That's amazing.” Zap said with awe.

“Perception Check!” Ann yelled out.

“Zap doesn't lie. He's a open book.”

“19!”

“Zap really does think your amazing.”

“Geez he doesn't have to try so hard I already said I’d fuck him.”

“Excuse me! But Zap is a gentleman he doesn't only think about sex.”

“Unlike his player.”

#persona 5 #phantom thieves #joker persona 5 #persona 5 ryuji #ryuji sakamoto #ann takamaki #p5 yusuke #yusuke kitawaga #makoto niijima #haru okumaru #p5 akechi #morgana #dungeons and dungeons #changlings #genasi

[agentnico]

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) Review

Why specifically 1984? Why not 83 or 85? What is so significant about 1984? 83 had Ronald Reagan propose development of tech that would intercept enemy missiles, and the project was called “Star Wars”. In 85 there was an earthquake in Mexico that killed 9,000 and Coca Cola made a new Coke! Impressive stuff! What happened in 1984? *another quick Google check* Aids break out. Oh. Oh no.

Plot: Diana Prince lives quietly among mortals in the vibrant, sleek 1980s - an era of excess driven by the pursuit of having it all. Though she's come into her full powers, she maintains a low profile by curating ancient artefacts, and only performing heroic acts incognito. But soon, Diana will have to muster all of her strength, wisdom and courage as she finds herself squaring off against Maxwell Lord and the Cheetah, a villainess who possesses superhuman strength and agility.

After many delays due to COVID once again doing a COVID and messing things up, Warner Bros. finally released Wonder Woman 1984, due to concerns of audiences losing interest in the project. I remember enjoying the first Wonder Woman years ago, and though it didn’t reinvent the superhero genre, as an origin story is was watchable and there were a couple cool action set pieces, such as the notable trench sequence where Diana fights through No Man’s Land and literally all that’s missing is her screeching “GIRL POWER!” everytime she deflected a gun bullet! Anyway, nothing ground-breaking but a decent piece of entertainment. Now we have sequel set in the 80s that plans to go bigger, bolder, grander.....well, you know, the usual sequel stuff. And they have the Mandalorian himself along for the ride, because even Warner Bros. knows that this is the way.

Having watched the film I must say, it is disappointing. Though in reality is it really disappointing? Personally I had hardly any expectations anyway, so it’s not as if my hopes and dreams have been crunched and shattered and thrown into a pit of despair! Wow, that came off as if I am super in denial, which I am not, I promise, okay?? In all seriousness though, the movie is a mess. With a runtime of two and a half hours, the film is filled with pacing issues so much so that I can say I was bored 50% of the time. A lot of it doesn’t make sense, the editing is atrocious and also this baby is filled to the brim with plot holes! So. Many. Plot Holes. For example, right from the start, one of the opening scenes involves Wonder Woman stopping a robbery at a mall. The robbery in itself is botched up. "I'm not going back!" screams one of the criminals, so hey, I'm going to hold this kid over the railing and almost drop her so that I can go to jail for murder. Genius writing there. Anyway, so Diana swoops in, saves the kid obviously, then proceeds to destroy the cameras in the mall as if that will also magically erase the footage that has already been recorded as well as all the witnesses that have seen her show off her bongo-bongo power mojo. So she’s trying to hide her identity and existence a secret, and apparently has been doing so for years, yet all her heroic moments happen in the middle of the public’s eye, so there is no way that she could have stayed confidential all this time. Then again, Superman can put on a pair of cheap glasses and all of a sudden he’s this random fella named Clark Kent, so what do I know? My guess is that the human population in the DC world are stupid and aren’t capable of adding 2 plus 2! Right, onto the next plot hole. So throughout most of the film, it feels like the movie is set in autumn or something along those lines. One of the characters gives food to a homeless person and tells them to stay warm, and also many people passing by are wearing coats and furs. Suddenly at one point there is a firework display and Diana winks to the camera and says “oh look, it’s the Fourth of July!” I’m sorry, last time I checked that date is set in the summer. Why would I know this? Well maybe cause it happens to also be my birthday! Next! So Diana can fly in this movie. How? Or why? I don’t know! Because “GIRL POWER!” I guess? I don’t know, this new superpower comes out of nowhere, yet its not referred to at all in Justice League, which is set many years later. So yeah, sounds like director Patty Jenkins couldn’t give a single flying dollop of poop about continuity. Speaking of random decisions, Wonder Woman’s new golden armor serves absolutely no purpose at the end of the film. She decides to randomly use it one point for no particular reason, and in fact it slowed her down more than anything, after which it was all forgotten about. Look, I can go on forever, this movie is filled with disorganised and erratic plot decisions and it makes zero to no sense!

Visually this film is disappointing too. Taking into account that this is a big budget film from one of the biggest film studios, the special effects in this film are atrocious. The green screen is so obvious and the CGI sets are clearly fake. Diana spends a lot of the film doing jumps and then floating in a very peculiar way in the sky, and it looks laughably bad. Even the 80′s setting doesn’t feel quite right. Yes, the costumes are somewhat okay, but the atmosphere is off and it seems the director’s opinion of the 80s is that everyone needs to act like a caricature.

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman is okay. Look, Gadot seems like a very lovely and earnest person in real life, and her face is indeed very likeable, but I still haven’t seen her give a good performance. It’s the typical pretty Hollywood face, and you can tell she’s trying her hardest, but I can never properly buy her as this female superhero pop culture icon. Chris Pine returns even though he died in the first one. Look, the way he’s brought back is a bit strange, however I did actually like seeing Pine in the movie, as he was one of the best parts of the first film, and he brings that same charm and charisma in this one, now with the added factor of being the fish out of water. And to be honest, his presence actually does provide the movie with some needed emotional heft, as it explores the ideas of having to get over someone you’ve lost and learning to accept it and move on. In terms of villains, there are two in this movie. Kristin Wiig as Cheetah feels very shoehorned in and is mainly there to have Diana fight someone at the end of the film. Kristen Wiig does her part, however the character is written really badly, and her development into becoming a villain comes off as rushed and cheap. On the other hand Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord is actually not bad. He’s not the typical superpowered baddie, he’s actually a normal human being, and even though, again, there are some inconsistencies with his character, Pascal brings enough swagger and panache to the role. And I’m sure he actually enjoyed playing a role where you can actually see his face.

As a whole, Wonder Woman 1984 is a mess. There are some good moments, but generally this is a very disjointed movie that doesn’t make sense and is extremely chaotic. Also, the entire thing is really boring. I’d say if you want more of an organised and wholesome movie, check out Disney Pixar’s new animation Soul! Or The Mandalorian with Pedro Pascal, as indeed... this is the way.

Overall score: 3/10

#Wonder Woman #wonder woman 1984 #warner bros #diana prince #gal gadot #patty jenkins #dc comics #dceu #wonder woman 1984 review #hbo max #chris pine #pedro pascal #kristen wiig #robin wright #connie nielsen #superhero #action #adventure #movie #2020 #film #2020 in film #2020 films #film reviews #movie reviews #fantasy #dc cinematic universe #80's #wonder woman 2

[press-x-tojason]

Giant Bomb is dead, and I care way less than I thought I would. Probably because 83% of the people who I ever cared about had already left or died, or were already relegated to reduced content roles. 

Honestly, though, the writing’s been on the wall for a bit. They haven’t had anything worthy of paying for premium in several years, and, even though they’ve had well over a year to figure out a plan for the COVID era, they maybe made it a month with their plans to have a series of streams daily. I actually managed to forget I followed them on Twitch at all, for about 4 months, because they only streamed the podcasts and the occasional former Harmonix employee (who was literally paid to make content with their games while employed at Giant Bomb, which was funny because he blocked me on Twitter for making a post, addressing no one, back in 2014, which was asking about the legitimacy of the leaked list of “games “””””journalists”””””” who had taken money from publishers for positive reviews, a list which included him and multiple then-coworkers. I didn’t follow him, he didn’t follow me. He was manually searching the keywords, because he was, and is, a prick.) solo Rock Band stream in the last 8 months or so. Even when Jeff would manage to do one of his 20 streams from home a year, it would be on his own channel. There was just no content. And they’re surprised their “pay for our unique premium content!” model failed. They always “feigned” anger at Dan for “making” them do the Mario Party Parties, and literally never promoted his and Drew’s Metal Gear series after the first game... but I bet that, when only those, UPF, and the ad-free versions of the podcasts were premium features, those two series were keeping them afloat. Well, that and the remaining goodwill they miraculously managed to hold onto for a few years after Ryan died.  Shit, I follow several people who are GB staff-adjacent, and... I can’t think of the last time they mentioned anything that happened on-site. Even the people who’ve been directly supporting them for over 10 years were out. 

But yeah, the site is super dead. They pretended in the announcements like they’re going to make a go of it still, but... you’ve got like 4 content people left, and the only one people give a shit about is Jeff. You just saw 3/4 of the side of the site that was still trying these past several months jump ship in a 3 month span. One of those was, by nearly any definition, a founding member. Of which you had already lost one, and are losing another from the main side. Jeff’s been way less active until the last week or two, probably because he heard they were leaving and was like “oops, should probably check on the ship that’s been sinking for years!” Then you have Jason “The Human Mumble” Oestricher, the charisma vacuum, whose legitimate public-facing reaction to first hearing that all but one of his GB predecessors were going to be gone. was, and I quote, “Hoo Boy.” Ben and Jan are the definition of “fine”. They would have been great, as they are today, as secondary members 8-10 years ago. But carry the site, they cannot. They’re down to, what, 5 named members now? It hasn’t been that dire since the beginning of 2009, before they hired Drew, when they hadn’t even started the P4 endurance run. You know, that surprise massive, internet-changing thing that essentially popularized the Let’s Play concept, loosening its definition and making it something that could be as personality-driven as game-driven, made simply to give them something to put on the website, beyond the rare review and, slightly later, quick look. This kinda illustrates the problem with modern Giant Bomb. When they were figuring shit out, flying by the seats of their pants, they came up with great shit, and they gave enough of a shit to make it happen. 0.000% chance they do a 10 hour Thanksgiving Kinect stream if the Kinect was new today. 0.000% chance the core members would have done an endurance run in the last 10 years if CT and Shenmue (which I haven’t watched) weren’t driven by the younger members. And you could see it in the fact that they never made a real, true mobile app. The number one thing that would have made them indispensable this past decade, an app to integrate premium features, the podcast, their video player, etc. all in one place in a mobile-friendly package, that could sync with the website... and they never even raised the idea publicly. I wonder how much of the innovation was the group think-tank of the first 5 years. Beyond Dan’s couple major contributions, I don’t think they added a single new type of content after 2012, which... still means the last 6.5 years lacked any semblance of innovation. I guess that’s a big part of why I fell off tremendously quickly after late 2014. There was just nothing new, and believe me, I was looking. I wanted reasons to stay watching. I supported them with my dollar. I believed in those brave early days. And I went back yesterday to watch the DP endurance run from VJ again. I still miss that rapport. And really, that hurt, too. Vinny moving back east, less than a year after Ryan passed... short term, it was fine. You had more people than ever to cover the gaps. But the spark was gone. The chemistry made the site. When I think of Giant Bomb, I still think of Jeff, Vinny, and Ryan, first and foremost. Those early podcasts, the NintenDownloads, the crazy tangents that everyone could seamlessly follow up on(well, except Brad, because he essentially slept through most of the podcasts, unless he was talking about the thing he did that week), the weird high-concept GOTY stuff... it wasn’t perfect, but you were entertained. You laughed. You were engaged. It never felt like you were watching them working, even though you could see the work they put in. It felt like, when they released something, you were experiencing a group of legitimate friends doing what they wanted to do anyways.(And boy have I seen enough groups do everything they can to NOT be enjoying doing that, and break up as a result due to hating the jobs that they chose to do). 

Part of me would love to make it as simple as “Ryan died, and so did the original spirit”, and... to a degree, it’s true. If you go back to any retrospective they’ve done about the founding of the site, or the podcast they recorded after Ryan passed, you can’t help but recognize that Giant Bomb never happens if these core members don’t all quit their jobs, led by Ryan,  because they respect their boss/manager, Jeff, and know he’s doing the right things(for them, for the reader/viewer, etc.) ahead of what GameSpot management wants him to do. Jeff could have been left in the wilderness, trying find a spot elsewhere, with the rumor going around between executives that Jeff wasn’t going to help them promote anything, essentially killing their revenue. He would have been done in terms of getting employed by a major site. But Ryan first, and soon after, Vinny and Brad, gave up their jobs to make this fledgling little project go. As much as the ERs brought me in and gave the impression that Jeff and Vinny were the long-standing duo, no, it was Ryan who was Jeff’s partner in crime. And, 8 years later, I can comfortably say... Giant Bomb never recovered from losing him. 

But it was so much more. Everything that set them apart slowly went away,  in time. I don’t think they’ve posted reviews for games in consecutive MONTHS since 2017; 2018 at the latest. They have done one Endurance Run in 9 years. They have not had a meaningful live event in 6 years. Unprofessional Fridays were more formulaic and lesser in volume and frequency after the major players started moving east. The lack of coordination between coasts killed the camaraderie, to the point that I think one of the last 5 true gameplay crossovers was their series of 2016-2017 PUBG shitfests. I remember when Vinny starting GBEast was supposed to be the start of a new era of content, and... it was, but not in a positive way, like it sounded. When half of each side seemed to constantly have no interest in making anything, nothing got made. But I guess that’s what happens when your second in command in one of your headquarters is just a former marketing grunt with an attitude problem, and the guy with the biggest ego on the team is the one who refuses to move to join either side, and just pushes out the most self-important drivel as a header to what were literally just copy-pasted articles from other sites every week while sitting at his desk, dreaming of the days Gawker would pay him to plagiarize political drivel instead, because that’s what really gets the soulless clicks. One of your founding members becomes depressed due to losing his two closest work friends, one for real, one to a 3000 mile separation, within a year, while the other one who is left virtually stopped playing anything but DOTA 2 for 2 years. Suddenly your most prominent personalities are the 2 new guys(one the aforementioned charisma vacuum, the other a walking mark) and your previously-mostly-off-camera producer who is best known to the wider Internet for... blinking. So, yeah, lifeless. And NOW, all you’ve got is old melancholy dad, charisma vacuum dad, and the two ADHD kids whose defining trait is that they choose to exclusively refer to their partners as “my partner” in voices that make it sound like they are embarrassed to have partners, while also talking more about what their partners are doing than what they do.  It’s confounding.

But yeah, TL:DR: RIP zombie Giant Bomb. Glad you’re finally getting taken behind the shed. It took 3 years too long, minimum.

[aaronmaurer]

TV I Liked in 2020

Every year I reflect on the pop culture I enjoyed and put it in some sort of order.

Was there ever a year more unpredictably tailor-made for peak TV than 2020? Lockdowns/quarantines/stay-at-home orders meant a lot more time at home and the occasion to check out new and old favorites. (I recognize that if you’re lucky enough to have kids or roommates or a S.O., your amount of actual downtime may have been wildly different). While the pandemic resulted in production delays and truncated seasons for many shows, the continued streaming-era trends of limited series and 8-13 episode seasons mean that a lot of great and satisfying storytelling still made its way to the screen. As always, I in no way lay any claims to “best-ness” or completeness – this is just a list of the shows that brought me the most joy and escapism in a tough year and therefore might be worth putting on your radar.

10 Favorites

10. The Right Stuff: Season 1 (Disney+)

As a space program enthusiast, even I had to wonder, does the world really need another retelling of NASA’s early days? Especially since Tom Wolfe’s book has already been adapted as the riveting and iconoclastic Philip Kaufman film of the same name? While some may disagree, I find that this Disney+ series does justify its existence by focusing more on the relationships of the astronauts and their personal lives than the technical science (which may be partially attributable to budget limitations?). The series is kind of like Mad Men but with NASA instead of advertising (and real people, of course), so if that sounds intriguing, I encourage you to give it a whirl.

9. Fargo: Season 4 (FX)

As a big fan of Noah Hawley’s Coen Brothers pastiche/crime anthology series, I was somewhat let down by this latest season. Drawing its influence primarily from the likes of gangster drama Miller’s Crossing – one of the Coens’ least comedic/idiosyncratic efforts – this season is more straightforward than its predecessors and includes a lot of characters and plot-threads that never quite cohere. That said, it is still amongst the year’s most ambitious television with another stacked cast, and the (more-or-less) standalone episode “East/West” is enough to make the season worthwhile.

8. The Last Dance (ESPN)

Ostensibly a 10-episode documentary about the 1990s Chicago Bulls’ sixth and final NBA Championship run, The Last Dance actually broadens that scope to survey the entire history of Michael Jordan and coach Phil Jackson’s careers with the team. Cleverly structured with twin narratives that chart that final season as well as an earlier timeframe, each episode also shifts the spotlight to a different person, which provides focus and variety throughout the series. And frankly, it’s also just an incredible ride to relive the Jordan era and bask in his immeasurable talent and charisma – while also getting a snapshot of his outsized ego and vices (though he had sign-off on everything, so it’s not exactly a warts-and-all telling).

7. The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)

This miniseries adaptation of the Walter Tevis coming-of-age novel about a chess prodigy and her various addictions is compulsively watchable and avoids the bloat of many other streaming series (both in running time and number of episodes). The 1960s production design is stunning and the performances, including Anya Taylor-Joy in the lead role, are convincing and compelling.

6. The Great: Season 1 (hulu)

Much like his screenplay for The Favourite, Tony McNamara’s series about Catherine the Great rewrites history with a thoroughly modern and irreverent sensibility (see also: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette). Elle Fanning brings a winning charm and strength to the title role and Nicholas Hoult is riotously entertaining as her absurdly clueless and ribald husband, Emperor Peter III. Its 10-episodes occasionally tilt into repetitiveness, but when the ride is this fun, why complain? Huzzah!

  5. Dispatches From Elsewhere (AMC)

A limited (but possibly anthology-to-be?) series from creator/writer/director/actor Jason Segal, Dispatches From Elsewhere is a beautiful and creative affirmation of life and celebration of humanity. The first 9 episodes form a fulfilling and complete arc, while the tenth branches into fourth wall-breaking meta territory, which may be a bridge too far for some (but is certainly ambitious if nothing else). Either way, it’s a movingly realized portrait of honesty, vulnerability and empathy, and I highly recommend visiting whenever it inevitably makes its way to Netflix, or elsewhere…

4. What We Do in the Shadows: Season 2 (FX)

The second season of WWDITS is more self-assured and expansive than the first, extending a premise I loved from its antecedent film – but was skeptical could be sustained – to new and reinvigorated (after)life. Each episode packs plenty of laughs, but for my money, there is no better encapsulation of the series’ potential and Matt Berry’s comic genius than “On The Run,” which guest-stars Mark Hamill and features Laszlo’s alter ego Jackie Daytona, regular human bartender.

3. Ted Lasso: Season 1 (AppleTV+)

Much more than your average fish-out-of-water comedy, Jason Sudeikis’ Ted Lasso is a brilliant tribute to humaneness, decency, emotional intelligence and good coaching – not just on the field. The fact that its backdrop is English Premier League Soccer is just gravy (even if that’s not necessarily represented 100% proficiently). A true surprise and gem of the year.

2. Mrs. America (hulu)

This FX miniseries explores the women’s liberation movement and fight for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and its opposition by conservative women including Phyllis Schlafly. One of the most ingenious aspects of the series is centering each episode on a different character, which rotates the point of view and helps things from getting same-y. With a slate of directors including Ryan Bowden and Anna Fleck (Half-Nelson, Sugar, Captain Marvel) and an A-List cast including Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne, Uzo Aduba, Sarah Paulson, Margo Martindale, Tracey Ulman and Elizabeth Banks, its quality is right up there with anything on the big screen. And its message remains (sadly) relevant as ever in our current era.

1. The Good Place: Season 4 (NBC)

It was tempting to omit The Good Place this year or shunt it to a side category since only the final 4 episodes aired in 2020, but that would have been disingenuous. This show is one of my all-time favorites and it ended perfectly. The series finale is a representative mix of absurdist humor and tear-jerking emotion, built on themes of morality, self-improvement, community and humanity. (And this last run of eps also includes a pretty fantastic Timothy Olyphant/Justified quasi-crossover.) Now that the entire series is available to stream on Netflix (or purchase in a nice Blu-ray set), it’s a perfect time to revisit the Good Place, or check it out for the first time if you’ve never had the pleasure.

5 of the Best Things I Caught Up With

Anne With An E (Netflix/CBC)

Another example of classic literature I had no prior knowledge of (see also Little Women and Emma), this Netflix/CBC adaptation of Anne of Green Gables was strongly recommended by several friends so I finally gave it a shot. While this is apparently slightly more grown-up than the source material, it’s not overly grimdark or self-serious but rather humane and heartfelt, expanding the story’s scope to include Black and First Nations peoples in early 1800s Canada, among other identities and themes. It has sadly been canceled, but the three seasons that exist are heart-warming and life-affirming storytelling. Fingers crossed that someday we’ll be gifted with a follow-up movie or two to tie up some of the dangling threads.

Better Call Saul (AMC)

I liked Breaking Bad, but I didn’t have much interest in an extended “Breaking Bad Universe,” as much as I appreciate star Bob Odenkirk’s multitalents. Multiple recommendations and lockdown finally provided me the opportunity to catch up on this prequel series and I’m glad I did. Just as expertly plotted and acted as its predecessor, the series follows Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman on his own journey to disrepute but really makes it hard not to root for his redemption (even as you know that’s not where this story ends).

Joe Pera Talks With You (Adult Swim)

It’s hard to really describe the deadpan and oddly soothing humor of comedian Joe Pera whose persona, in the series at least, combines something like the earnestness of Mr. Rogers with the calm enthusiasm of Bob Ross. Sharing his knowledge on the likes of how to get the best bite out of your breakfast combo, growing a bean arch and this amazing song “Baba O’Reilly” by the Who – have you heard it?!? – Pera provides arch comfort that remains solidly on the side of sincerity. The surprise special he released during lockdown, “Relaxing Old Footage with Joe Pera,” was a true gift in the middle of a strange and isolated year.

The Mandalorian (Disney+)

One of the few recent Star Wars properties that lives up to its potential, the adventures of Mando and Grogu is a real thrill-ride of a series with outstanding production values (you definitely want to check out the behind-the-scenes documentary series if you haven’t). I personally prefer the first season, appreciating its Western-influenced vibes and somewhat-more-siloed story. The back half of the second season veers a little too much into fan service and video game-y plotting IMHO but still has several excellent episodes on offer, especially the Timothy Olyphant-infused energy of premiere “The Marshall” and stunning cinematography of “The Jedi.” And, you know, Grogu.

The Tick (Amazon Prime)

I’ve been a fan of the Tick since the character’s Fox cartoon and indie comic book days and also loved the short-lived Patrick Warburton series from 2001. I was skeptical about this Amazon Prime reboot, especially upon seeing the pilot episode’s off-putting costumes. Finally gaining access to Prime this year, I decided to catch up and it gets quite good!, especially in Season 2. First, the costumes are upgraded; second, Peter Serafinowicz’s initially shaky characterization improves; and third, it begins to come into its own identity. The only real issue is yet another premature cancellation for the property, meaning Season 2’s tease of interdimensional alien Thrakkorzog will never be fulfilled. 😢

Bonus! 5 More Honorable Mentions:

City So Real (National Geographic)

The Good Lord Bird (Showtime)

How To with John Wilson: Season 1 (HBO)

Kidding: Season 2 (Showtime)

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy Vs The Reverend (Netflix)

#tv #television

[honeyjaez]

A solo stan who is thinking about checking other groups out?

There is nothing wrong with being a solo stan (as in only liking 1 group) as long as you are kind and courteous to other groups.

Also this post might not be for you.

But if you are a solo stan (usually starting with BTS) or just in need of finding new groups and thinking about spreading your wings here are some suggestions. 🙂

When I first got into kpop way back in the 2010 years I had no clue what I had stumbled on and I only liked 2 groups max for the longest time because I didnt know about any other groups. Since then I’ve come to love so many groups that I wish I knew about sooner.

Now mind you. I am primarily a boy group stan so there are not a lot of girl groups on her so please forgive me. -*edit I’ve decided to do a part 2 of just girl groups so stay tuned

This is also under the impression you already know BTS and their brother group TXT.

also if your fav is not on this list I dearly apologize. I picked groups that might be a good intro to like multiple groups.

Groups down below ˅˅˅˅

SEVENTEEN:

-13 Member group under Pledis Entertainment.

- Debuted May 26, 2015

-Popular in Korea and slowly gaining popularity internationally.

-AMAZING dancers.

-Like the synchronization is unreal for 13 people.

- Divided into 3 sub-units; Performance Unit, Hip-Hop Unit, and Vocal Unit

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Don’t Wanna Cry. Hit, Clap

iKON:

-Currently a 6 Member group under YG Entertainment

-Debuted September 15th, 2015

-Addicting Chorus’s and bad ass rapping

-Their Leader B.I recently left the group early this year, but fans are hopeful for a reunion. But that doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate OT7 right now.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Bling Bling, Love Scenario, B-Day

ONEUS:

-6 Member group under RBW Entertainment

-Debuted January 9th, 2019.

-They are a crazy good for a rookie group and have a lot of bangers.

-Their choreography is no joke

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Valkyrie (Debut song), Twilight, Lit

(Seriously they have no bad songs)

NCT 127:

(NCT is actually a massive group divided up into sub-units)

-10 Member group under SM Entertainment.

-Debuted July 10th, 2016

-Crazy Powerful dance moves.

-Look mean, but are actually sweethearts.

-Gaining popularity in the west.

-Some songs to introduce you to them:Cherry Bomb, Touch, Highway to Heaven

NCT Dream:

-Currently a 6 member group under SM Entertainment

-Debuted August 24th, 2016

-Cute Charm and Powerful stage presence. 

-NCT Dream is as this moment not a fixed unit and based on idols age.

-When they get old enough the members “graduate” and join other NCT sub-units

-Mark of NCT 127 was once the leader but he reached the age limit and “Graduated” and thus no longer apart of the group.

-Many fans detest this concept and wish SM to make them a fixed unit but that doens’t mean you can’t love OT6 or OT7 at the moment.

-Some songs to introduce you to them:  Boom, We Go Up, Go

Stray Kids:

-8  member group under JYP Entertainment

-Debuted March 25th, 2018

-Gained a lot of popularity through their survival show of the same name

-Strong and Meaningful songs that deal a lot with self struggle and depression. 

-All songs are produced by members Bang Chan, Changbin and Han who make up the sub-unit 3racha.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Hellavator Levanter, Voices, My Pace, Double Knot, God’s Menu, Back Door (I mean this list can go on and on)

GOT7:

-7 Member group under JYP Entertainment

-Debuted January 16th, 2014

-Another amazing dancing group

-Strong Charisma on stage.

-Variety Kings

-Goofballs

-Some songs to introduce you to them:Hard Carry, Eclipse, You Are 

VAV:

-7 Member group under A Team Entertainment

-Debuted October 31st, 2015.

-Severely underrated 

-Has lost some members and gains some as well.

-They work super hard year round with hardly and rest.

-Please stan VAV.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: She’s Mine, Poison, Spotlight. 

ASTRO:

-6 Member group under Fantagio Entertainment

-Debuted February 23rd, 2016.

-Cute, Charming group.

-The boys are actual angels.

-The group is a breath of fresh air.

-Super Talented.

-Addicting songs that just make you smile

-Can have the same concept as literally any other group but still make it their own.

-Vocals are beyond this world.

-Also just overall very pretty.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: All Night, Blue Flame, Baby, Always You. 

The Boyz:

-11 Member group under Cre.Ker Entertainment

-Debuted December 6th, 2017

-A really fun and charming group.

-Their song’s are very addicting

-Dance like songs

-Sweet sweet boys who deserve love.

-Member Hwall left in October of 2019 due to health reasons 

-Some songs to introduce you to them: D.D.D, No Air, Giddy Up 

Day6:

-5 Member group under JYP Entertainment

-Debuted September 7th, 2015

-An actual band so they don’t dance on stage

-but crazy talented

-Their songs are known to make people feel happier.

-I don’t think it is possible to have a bad Day6 song.

-Jae’s twitter is quite possible my favorite place on this earth.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: I smile. Time of our lives. Colors, I need Somebody. Dance Dance. Literally any of them.

PENTAGON:

-Currently a 9 Member group under Cube Entertainment.

-Debuted October 10th, 2016.

-Also Underrated.

-Such amazing discography.

-UNIQUE VOICES 

-Strong vocals and major crackheads

-Went through their survival show “Pentagon Maker” and debuted as 10 members.

-Former Member E’Dawn was basically kicked out of Cube and Pentagon after revealing he was dating label mate HyunA. Fans are still hopeful for an OT10 reunion.

-But we can support OT9 now.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Sha La La, Shine, Like This, Cosmo (Japanese song).

SF9:

-9 Member group under FNC Entertainment

-Debuted October 5th, 2016

-FNC’s first dance boy group.

-SEVERELY UNDERRATED.

-If you want any songs to put on your workout playlist, or just get you hyped then their are your boys.

-AMAZING Dancers.

-They are almost all actors as well. If you watch K-Drama’s you might recognize Chani (their maknae) from widely popular Sky Castle and Rowoon from new K-Drama “Extraordinary You”

-Stan SF9. Stream RPM

-Some songs to introduce you to them: O Sole Mio, RPM, Now or Never, Easy Love

Monsta X

-A SEVEN Member group under Starship Entertainment

-Literally the definition of hard-working.

-Powerful Choreography, crazy stage presence, intense charisma...must I go on.

-Literally deserve the world.

-Were formed through the survival program No Mercy and have not stopped since.

-Their songs are so addicting and on top of that are actual sweethearts.

-Only want to make people smile and feel loved through their music.

-Would possibly die for their fans.

-Okay I’m talking too much.

-Gaining popularity in the Western regions.

-In October of 2019, member Wonho (the orange hair in the gif) left the group due to rumors and lies being spread about him. He didn’t want to hurt Monsta X’s reputation so he left the group but fans have strongly opposed this, fighting for starship to help clear his name and have him return. The protest continues on even after almost a month.

(Trust me, if you knew this group and Wonho, you would understand why fans are opposing this.)

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Follow, Shoot Out, Beautiful, Dramarama, All In, Alligator.

NU’EST:

-5 Member group under Pledis Entertainment

-Debuted March 15th, 2012

-Very unique style and concept with their albums.  Sticks to their own specific style.

-Addicting chorus.

-Honey Sweet vocals. 

-Had a sub-united called NU’EST W while Minhyun was promoting as a member of Wanna One. (The W stood for ‘Waiting’ which should tell you the type of guys they are).

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Bet Bet, Love Me, Face (Debut  Song), Help Me (Nu’est W song).

BTOB:

-7 Member group under Cube Entertainment

-Debuted March 21st, 2012.

-Ballads anyone?

-Are primarily a vocal focus group

-But understandably because BTOB has one of the strongest vocals in Kpop.

-But can also dance.

-Honest to good crack heads

-Variety Kings #2

-Currently 3 members are serving their military service but you can still support them in their quiet time.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: I’ll be your man, Only one for me, Beautiful Pain, Missing You.

ATEEZ:

-8 Member group under KQ Entertainment

-Debuted October 24th, 2018.

-ROOKIE KINGS.

-In their one year so far since debut they have shown the world that they are not a group to underestimate. 

-Strong Dancers, powerful choreography. 

-Their stage presence is no joke.

-Songs are super addicting and go hard so if you need a workout playlist Ateez is your group.

THE DUALITY OF EACH MEMBER. 

-San is Satan in disguise.

-Prepared for debut for a really REALLY long time. 

-Already signed up with a US record label.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Wonderland, Pirate King, Treasure, Say My name, Wave. literally any of them.

EXO:

-9 Member group under SM Entertainment

-Debuted April 8th, 2012.

-If you know BTS, you probably know about them.

-But EXO are worth all the hype.

-Korea’s chosen representative (Whether you agree with it or not, it’s true) 

-Deadly Stage Presence and Charisma

-Their songs are always iconic.

-Leader Suho just might be god I haven’t figured it out yet.

-As of November 2019, 3 of their members are not promoting with the group. Lay is off promoting solo stuff and stuff in china and america (because SM doesn’t want EXOLS happy) and the other 2 members, Xiumin and D.O are currently serving in the military.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Monster, Love Shot, Lotto, Tempo.

Golden Child

-10 Member group under Woollim Entertainment.

-Debuted August 28th, 2017.

-Underrated group x 10.

-Dancing is on point.

-Stage presence on point

-Hardworking

-cute songs

-They are just charming boys who smile more than the sun i swear.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Wannabe, DamDaDi, Genie, Let Me

A.C.E:

-5 Member group under Beat Interactive

-Debuted May 23rd, 2017

-I literally don’t understand why they are so underrated.

-They have created their own unique style in kpop with a rock vibe that is hardly used in the community. 

-POWERFUL dancers.

-Rude as fuck but thats besides the point.

-Another great group if you need workout songs.

-Some songs to introduce you to them: Undercover, Savage, Callin, Take Me Higher.

Other groups that I did not talk about but I think should be mentioned:

-AB6IX

-CIX

-VICTON

-VIXX

-Great Guys 

-Infinite

-JBJ95

-Kim Donghan(solo)

N.Flying!

-Noir!!!!!

-Spectrum

#this took so long to type out #but i hope you all found this hopeful #seventeen #ikon #oneus #nct127 #nct dream #stray kids #got7 #vav #astro #the boyz #pentagon #sf9 #day6 #monsta x #bbtob #ateez #ex #golden child #a.c.e #nuest #kpop #new kpop fans