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prokopetz · 3 months

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Code Green

A game for 3–7 players, about being where you're not supposed to be.

Last night, you were suspended in a tube of brightly coloured goo in an underground research facility, operated by an organisation whose three-letter initialism's meaning is strictly need-to-know. This morning, someone noticed your tube was empty. Nobody has determined how that happened yet, and you're not inclined to stick around until they figure it out!

Or, in other words, it's been nearly a whole week since I got that massive revision to Space Gerbils out the door, and apparently my brain has decided that's enough of a break. This thing was written start to finish in under 12 hours, so let the circumstances of its authorship guide your expectations. Special thanks go once again to Caro Asercion, whose micro-RPG Dwindle introduced me to the design space I'm fucking around with here. Go buy their stuff.

Anyway:

What You'll Need

Code Green is a tabletop RPG for one game moderator (GM) and up to six players. Each player will need a copy of the Profile Grid, below, as well as three tokens of some sort: dice, coins, beads, etc. You'll also need at least five six-sided dice (for the whole group, not per player, though it's fine if each player has their own set). If you're using dice for tokens, it's recommended that the dice you plan to roll be visually distinguishable in case they land on someone's Profile Grid.

Rolling Dice

There are two ways you'll be asked to roll dice in this game: rolling d66, and rolling a dice pool.

To roll d66, roll a six-side die twice, reading the first roll as the "tens" place and the second roll as the "ones" place, yielding a number in the range from 11 to 66. For example, if you rolled a 3 and then a 5, your result is 35. You may also be asked to flip a d66 roll; to do this, take your result and swap the digits without re-rolling. In the preceding example, if you flipped your roll of 35, your new result would be 53.

To roll a dice pool, pick up the indicated number of six-side dice, roll them, and take the highest individual result. Duplicates have no special significance. For example, if you rolled a pool of three dice and got a 2, a 4, and a 4, your result would be 4. If you would ever roll a pool of zero or fewer dice, roll two dice and take the lowest instead.

Character Creation

Each player should create their own character. There are three things about your character which are always true:

You are newly born into the world. You may know things about the world (e.g., from your programming, having read them on a computer terminal, etc.), but you haven't experienced them.

You are implausibly good at remaining inconspicuous; unless you're deliberately drawing attention or doing something which requires a dice roll, humans will almost always fail to spot you.

You are not human. You can decide what that means.

To find out what else is true about your character, roll or choose three times from the Form table, and three times from the Function table, placing your results into the correspondingly labelled slots on the Profile Grid, below, in any order you please. Your three results from each table should be different; if you elected to roll and get the same entry multiple times, flip your result, and re-roll if it's still a duplicate.

Think about what your three Form traits and three Function traits imply about your character's physical makeup, but don't set anything in stone just yet – you'll see why not in a moment.

Finally, roll a six-sided die five times, and record the results in the order in which they're received. The resulting five-digit number is the only name your character has when play begins.

Table 1: Form (d66)

11–12. Blood 13–14. Bones 15–16. Brain 21–22. Claws 23–24. Ears 25–26. Eyes 31–32. Guts 33–34. Hands 35–36. Heart 41–42. Hair 43–44. Legs 45–46. Lungs 51–52. Nose 53–54. Skin 55–56. Tail 61–62. Teeth 63–64. Tongue 65–66. Wings

Table 2: Function (d66)

11–12. Accelerated 13–14. Autonomous 15–16. Auxiliary 21–22. Cryogenic 23–24. Cryptic 25–26. Elastic 31–32. Electric 33–34. Entropic 35–36. Invasive 41–42. Invulnerable 43–44. Kinetic 45–46. Magnetic 51–52. Phasing 53–54. Polymorphic 55–56. Projectile 61–62. Pyrogenic 63–64. Telescopic 65–66. Toxic

Playing the Game

Play proceeds in a series of scenes. In each scene, the GM will set the stage: a challenge to overcome, a peril to escape, a mystery to investigate, etc. Given the nature of your characters, most things will be mysteries to you!

Initial Token Placement

Once the stage has been set, place each of your three tokens on a different square on your Profile Grid. If you have no preference, you can roll d66 for each token and place it in the square whose marked numeric range contains the number you rolled, flipping or re-rolling your result if you get a square which already contains a token. The placement of these tokens represents your initial state when the scene opens. Depending on the nature of your character, this may be reflected by a shifting of internal focus, or by a physical transformation.

Participation

To participate in the scene, simply tell the GM what your character does; the GM will describe how the world responds, and ask what you do next. Whenever you wish – or are forced – to do something more than lurk and observe, you are obliged to make a test.

Making Tests

To make a test, first choose a pair of traits – one Form trait, and one Function trait – with which to face the challenge. For example, if your Form traits are Legs, Tail and Teeth, and your Function traits are Cryptic, Invulnerable and Phasing, you might test your Invulnerable Legs against the trouble at hand.

Next, count the number of tokens present in the rows extending from each of the chosen traits. The illustration below shows which squares would be consulted in the preceding example:

Next, roll a dice pool containing a number of dice equal to the number of tokens present on squares extending from the chosen traits. Do not count a token twice if it's on the square where the two traits intersect (e.g., the green square in the illustration above). In the event that no tokens fall on squares extending from appropriate traits, remember that you are allowed to roll a pool of zero dice by rolling two dice and taking the lowest rather than the highest.

Finally, compare your result to the following table:

1–3. Less than human. Whatever you'd intended to try still happens, but it cannot overcome human opposition (or adversity which would challenge a typical human), and any lasting effects are transitory and easily explained away. 4–5. Mostly human. Your effort can contend with human opposition (or circumstances which would challenge a competent human), and its lasting effects make it obvious that someone (or something) has been interfering with matters. 6. More than human. Your effort easily brushes aside any human opposition, and its lasting effects are impossible to rationalise as anything other than the intervention of inhuman forces.

Without Applicable Traits

In the event that you're forced to make a test and no possible pairing of your traits is applicable, you don't get to roll anything, not even with a pool of zero dice; simply resolve the outcome as though you'd rolled a result of 1–3. Other characters may attempt to preserve you from this fate by assisting you, in which case you roll one die per assisting friend; see below for more details.

Assistance

If you wish to assist another character in making a test, consult your own Profile Grid, considering only those squares which contain tokens. Only the specific pairs of traits represented by the squares on which your tokens fall are eligible for assistance; for example, if one of your tokens falls on the intersection of Cryptic and Teeth, you may assist with Cryptic Teeth, but not any other pair of traits involving Cryptic or Teeth unless those squares also have tokens on them.

If you're able to identify an eligible pair of traits that seems applicable to the test at hand, explain how you're using it to help, and hand the player making the test one extra die. Any number of characters may assist on a given test.

Providing assistance neither requires nor permits your character to adapt (see below) – it needs to be your own test for that!

Adapting

After resolving a test, your character adapts, shifting focus or form to reflect what they've learned. Take one token of your choice from your character sheet, and move it to a different square which doesn't already contain one. You can move any token you wish, but it must end up on a different square than the one it started on unless no valid destinations are available. Adapting is not optional, and must be carried out after every test.

Suffering Strain

If whatever you're making a test against is particularly strenuous or dangerous, you might suffer strain as a consequence. Strain will often be incurred on a result of 1–3, and rarely on a result of 4–5; only the most foolhardy efforts will incur strain even on a result of 6!

To incur strain, roll d66, and place a small X on the square on your Profile Grid whose indicated numeric range contains the number you rolled. If there's a token on that square, immediately move it to an empty square of your choice, unless fewer than three unmarked squares now remain; in that case, simply remove the token entirely.

For the remainder of the scene, tokens may not be moved to any marked square. In addition, if you suffer further strain, and the square indicated by your d66 roll is already marked, your character is incapacitated, and may not participate in tests at all until they recover.

All strain is cleared – and any discarded tokens restored – at the end of each scene. Incapacitated characters also recover at this time.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #code green #game design #violence mention #swearing

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clockwayswrites · 6 months

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Like Betta Fish Do Part 26

WC 1478, Masterpost CW: Canon typical violence, Aftermath of torture

“It’s Danny. They took Danny,” Babs murmured into the comms.

Dick’s heart skipped a beat.

“Basement or subfloor,” she continued, passing the information along to those of them who had been able to slip away in the chaos.

Dick burst out into the roof, still tugging up one of the hidden zippers on his uniform. He flung himself off the roof without hesitation. “I saw Danny twenty ago. They can’t have taken him far.”

“Twelve,” Cass chimed in.

Twelve was even better.

“Oh God, I just saw the timer,” Babs whispered. “We don’t have—”

“Hey, fish,” Jason’s voice came across the line.

Dick almost missed his grapple as he rushed lower to try and see any suspicious vehicles.

“Tim, city power—”

“Working on it,” Tim ground out, cutting Babs off in a way he normally wouldn’t.

“Forty-five seconds!”

“I can’t do it in that! I’m trying—”

A hitched breath. “I do. I'm sorry.”

Then screaming.

The lights flared and then cut out in one of the smaller office buildings crouched in Wayne Enterprises’ shadow.

Dick twisted and flew towards it. Another black shadow joined him in flight.

The comms were painfully quiet and then filled with a burst of chatter. Dick reached up and brushed his off as he landed on top of a cliché white van with a purposeful thump. Before the blue faced goon had even finished turning towards the noise he was unconscious.

Silently, efficiently, Cass and him worked through henchmen, dodging guns and tasers. That had to be how they took Danny. Dick remembered how the other froze up being shocked with his escrima sticks. Remembered how—

Now Danny had been electrocuted again.

Of all the ways for Danny to die…

Dick left Cass to finish off the room and stalked deeper into the basement. He didn’t try to be quiet. He wanted them to find him. He wanted them to try and stop him. They had killed Danny, the guy who had made Jason so happy, who stood up to Nightwing, who smiled and laughed and tried so hard to live!

Who made his little wing want to live.

Dick wanted them to try and stop him.

He slammed open another door. The room had barely any light from the squat narrow windows.

A chair was in the center of the room.

A body was in it.

Dick choked out a name. “Danny—”

And then Danny moved.

“Danny?!” The voice sounded small, choked off, but Danny knew it.

No, villains were involved, that meant it was the one with wings instead.

“Heeey Nightwing,” Danny said. He tried to raise his head to look at the other, but it just lolled back on his weak neck. He was left blinking up at the ceiling. All of him felt like jelly. “I have had… a shockingly bad night. Zero out of ten, would not recommend.”

Nightwing ran across the floor of the warehouse, footsteps loud in the flooded water. “Holy shit Danny, how are you alive?”

“Mmm been killed once by electricity before, ‘m immune now.”

“Yeah, no, Danfish” Nightwing said. His voice and hands both shook as he undid the ropes binding Danny’s wrists. “Pretty sure that’s not how that works.”

“Is too.”

“Is not.”

“Is with me,” Danny slurred. He tried, desperately, to stay sitting upright when the ropes around his chest were undone, but he was still in that jelly state and slumped forward into Nightwing who, thankfully, caught him. “Hey, think I’m gonna get a new set of Lichtenberg scars out of this?”

The arms around him tightened almost painfully before they relaxed. “Don’t know little fish. Guess we’ll have to see at the hospital.”

“No!” Danny tried to struggle against Nightwing as fear gripped him. “No hospitals.”

“Danny. You were just electrocuted— very publicly electrocuted, we have to get you checked out.”

Danny clung to Nightwing. “Nooo… they’ll know and they’ll want to cut me open and that can’t happen—”

“Danny, hey, it’s okay, we won’t let anyone do that to you,” Nightwing soothed. He held Danny’s face in between his hands, making Danny look at him. “We won’t let anyone else hurt you tonight. How about we call in a doctor we trust to the hospital. Is that okay?”

“They won’t tell?”

“Never. She’s always looked out for us, all of us. She’s patched us all up plenty, even Red Hood. Please? We’ll all worry otherwise and there will be more questions.”

Danny nodded, feebly, in the other’s grip. “Okay. Okay, I’ll go if she’s the one. Get the… the case, the ecto.”

He didn’t want anyone to worry about him. Fuck, had he scared them? He bet he had. He’d been a little scared himself. He didn’t want to be dead dead yet.

Things were just getting good.

“I have him,” Danny heard Nightwing say as the other man scooped him up. He pressed his ear to the chest, relaxing at the rumble of the words. “I have him and he’s alive.”

Two Face was saying something. Laughing at him, applauding him. Jason couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear anything but Danny’s screaming.

The TV was nothing but static.

Jason was aware, distantly, of the bomb being pulled off the hostages. Of Bruce having to hold back Damian from leaping at Two Face. Of the mayor pulling Bruce back from doing the same. Of another window shattering as Red Robin came through and the Bats descended on the henchmen scattered throughout the room.

Jason could still hear Danny screaming.

Screaming and static.

He lunged.

He was on Two Face before anyone could stop him. The man’s head hit the ground with a sickening thunk. Jason didn’t care. He started punching. He felt the delicate bone under that shocked yellow eye give under his fist. He swung again and again. Two Face clawed at Jason, but he didn’t stop— not until Bruce pulled Jason off the rogue and into his arms.

Jason curled into the hold like he was fourteen and small again. He clung to Bruce with cracked and bleeding knuckles and sobbed. He needed to stop, to pull himself together, to…

“…need to find him. Bruce, I need to find him!”

“Maybe we should let the others,” Bruce murmured. He ran a hand through Jason’s hair.

“No, I need to—” Oh. Bruce thought Danny had to be dead. He could be. He might be. But there was a chance that he wasn’t. And Jason’t couldn’t— “I need to.”

Bruce was silent before he sighed, softly. “Alright, Jaylad, let’s—”

The chatter in their comms that Jason hadn’t even been listening to. Hadn’t been able to listen to, went silent.

“Repeat?” It was Cass who asked, her voice small and demanding.

Barbara reached over and passed him her phone, using it as a cover for what they heard next.

“I have Danny,” Dick said. “I have Danny and he’s alive.”

“Damian, stay with Barbara,” Bruce ordered, already running.

Bruce and Jason took off through the aftermath of the hostage situation, dodging the crowd and downed goons, police and reporters.

“Nightwing,” Bruce urged into the comms.

“He’s alive and conscious but very out of it,” Dick said and continued before there could be any more questions. “Agent A, we need the doctor at the hospital. Call her and then head there yourself. You need to bring a case from inside the Cave. It’s in with the old training equipment, behind the dummies. The case is metal with a green ghost drawn on top.”

The ectoshots. Dick had remembered the ectoshots.

“Right away,” Alfred’s cool tone came across the comms.

“Nightwing,” Bruce said again.

“Not now. Just… fuck, B, he’s alive,” Dick said. Jason could hear the near heartbreak in his brother’s voice. The growing sound of ambulance sirens couldn’t cover it. “Just get here. The Jasper building.”

Jason’s slick dress shoes skidded on the damp concrete as they made it out the back door of the building. The flashing lights were already visible. The fog drenched buildings seemed to glow with them. Danny was so close and they still had failed him.

A police officer stepped forward to stop them as they came around a corner. Bruce intercepted the bracing arm and pushed it back; it gave Jason enough room to rush past and towards the ambulance. Paramedics and police were crowded around it. Nightwing was standing guard.

Jason shoved past them all.

Danny.

He slid to his knees and clutched at Danny where the other was sat on the back of the ambulance.

“Danny.”

“Hey, dead boy. I guess… I guess you get to keep your nickname still. Not mine yet,” Danny rasped behind the oxygen mask.

Jason choked out a laugh against his will. He buried face against Danny’s neck and squeezed the other tighter. He didn’t manage to hold back his tears. “Yeah, guess I do, fish.”

---

AN: *jazz hands* See! It's going to be fiiiiiiiiiiine.

I no longer tag, you can subscribe to the masterpost instead!

#dp x dc #dead on main #like betta fish do

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ms-demeanor · 3 months

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Okay so, how exactly do Password Managers work?

Because I'm pretty sure that giving some random corporation all my passwords would just make it EASIER for my personal info to get leaked.

I mean it is genuinely complicated; I don't know if you saw my explanation about dominoes yesterday, but basically you're not giving the company your information. You are creating an account with a company and they are handing you a tool that is extremely securely encrypted to store your passwords in. The company never has access to your passwords, or to the key you use to unlock your account. What they have access to is the cryptographic hash of your key to prove that it is you trying to access the account, but they can't reverse engineer the key that you use.

It's the same sort of process that encrypted email services like ProtonMail use. It's zero-knowledge storage. All that the password manager company is storing (in the case of a good password manager like Bitwarden) is up to 1gb of encrypted data for free users. They don't have access to your information. They couldn't get into it if they wanted to. All that they know about you is whatever information you used to register for the service and broad information about creation of the account.

Part of the reason that I recommend Bitwarden is that it is both open source and pretty widely used and recommended.

Open source security products are often considered more secure than closed-source tools because they can be examined and tested at the source-code level by *anyone* to check for vulnerabilities and holes in the security. Functionally what this means is that you have very smart, very motivated, and very security-conscious people testing products like Bitwarden for flaws and reporting them immediately.

I'm not great at explaining cryptographic hashing so I'm in a position where basically all I can tell you is "Trust me it works, and if that's not enough you have to go do some reading about hashing because I can't explain it." This is the barrier that a LOT of people have to using a password manager, and it's frustrating because genuinely, it is not something that people who work in security worry about *at all.*

When we're working with security the concern about password managers is *never* that a zero-knowledge company is going to have a leak. The concern is that data might actually be stored in plaintext (something you don't have to worry about with bitwarden because if that was the case everyone on the forums would be screaming their heads off at all times, and they are not) or that a phishing campaign is going to trick a user into handing over their password to the password manager.

But yeah, when you start using a good password manager with zero-knowledge storage, you aren't handing your data to a company. What's happening is that the company is handing YOU a tiny safe. The tiny safe has a ten-thousand-digit combination lock that you set the code for, and the company has no way of figuring out that code. They're hoping that you will pay them for the safe. And if you forget your code, you're screwed - the company can't get you access because, again, they have no way of getting the code. They don't store it, they don't see it, they don't know it, they can't produce it if ordered to do so at trial, and they can't reset the code.

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boizandgurlzinthehouse · 10 months

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𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐁*𝐓𝐂𝐇 (𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐄𝐑𝐀)

; 𝐆𝐔𝐍-𝐖𝐎𝐎 𝐗 𝐅𝐄𝐌!𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈. 𝐍𝐎 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐖𝐒, 𝐁𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐒.

summary: killing kim myeong-gil would bring many people satisfaction. as hyeon-ju, gun-woo, woo-jin and the others begin to plan on how to do it, choi knows that there's someone in seoul who would take part in it with much pleasure.

wordcount: 3.348k (i got a little bit excited, the other chapters gonna be shorter don't worry)

tw: swearing, almost-fighting, so just plain bloodhounds-things (i update this section with every new part of the story)

author's note: i watched the k-drama in one day, it's wonderful. a little explaining for the "y/h/c", i wrote it with creme-blonde haired character so i'd recommend some extreme or light color. other than that, it's free for every hair color!!

in the burger shop, the pregnant silence after gun-woo's confession about the loan and his mother's café shop was broken by the arrived burgers, brought by woo-jin. hyeon-ju's face became hard again.

"as you heard, my grandpa is no longer a loan-shark. he provides zero-interest loans to people in need. but we occasionally come across punks who try to take advantage of his good heart. yang jae-myeong was one of them. he lied about his mother needing to get an operation. he borrowed ten million won and vanished. it took me half a year to track him down. i saw him begging in front of a train station. at first, I thought he had really become homeless, but i noticed how clean his teeth were as I was passing by. so i tailed him, I found out that he and his goons were pretending to be homeless and stealing IDs from actual homeless people. they use the IDs to create shell corporations and open bank accounts. then they con loan sharks and take out loans anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions of won. this tactic was so professional, we thought there could be someone behind yang jae-myeong. i heard that this person had connections to yang jae-myeong. do you know him?"

after the photo was shown, they talked about how to follow yang jam-myeong's gang, but before the trio stood up from the table, hyeon-ju nodded to the guys to stay sit. digging into her jacket's pocket, she took out a piece of paper that seemed to be like a photo.

"before you begin stalking the gang, i want you to find this girl. i didn't have the time to talk to her, since i was searching for yang jae-myeong, but now i want you two to talk to this girl. gun-woo, tell her about the loans your mom signed and what happened after. she's hard-headed and kind of keeping to herself."

"fine, but who's she?" woo-jin asked, as gun-woo looked at the picture. long y/h/c hair, the mask was on her face, but she had wide, clear speaking eyes. ones like woo-jin's, the ones you look in and can read from them without a loud word.

"she's y/n. i heard my grandpa talk about him on the phone, this was the only picture i could get about her. she doesn't have instagram, facebook or any of these apps, i took this from my grandpa's office. it's possible that she won't open up to you, but it's a must to talk to her."

"yeah, i get it. but why do you want us to find her?" gun-woo was also interested about this question. was she an enemy? young kids can also be stolen by criminals and raised by them, to be as loyal as a dog can to do anything for theirs.

"y/n is good, don't worry. as far as i know from what my grandpa said on the phone, she is someone whose parents were close to my grandpa. she followed her father's track and trained herself in the most brutalist martial arts, like the israelite krav maga, the russian systema or muay thai."

"aisssh, i wouldn't want to confront her in any way", woo-jin said. gun-woo thought about these fights; he only saw muay thai on tv, and that seemed really dangerous in itself. he knew that as soon as they begin to track the girl, he's gonna search up the other two martial arts on his phone.

"yeah, me neither" gun-woo added.

"will you two do? and asking for her phone number?" hyeon-ju asked, the guys nodded.

"yes, of course. but i'll bring a white flag just in case", woo-jin answered as they stood up from the table.

a few hours later, gun-woo and woo-jin were on the streets, wandering around buildings.

"fuck, how can we find someone in a town where nearly ten million people lives?" woo-jin asked. gun-woo looked at the picture.

“hyeon-ju said that she’s a pro in martial arts. maybe we should look in the gyms?”

woo-jin patted his chest, “look, a real genius here.”

going to every gym around the town, gun-woo and woo-jin began to lose hope.

“maybe she’s working today or just doesn't feel like coming down to train.” gun-woo began to think about what to tell hyeon-ju if they don’t find the girl. she sure will be pissed or angry, but this is a really difficult task.

“aish, gun-woo, don’t be like that! would you say something like this? people like us, people who train daily, their safe place is the gym. feeling sad? go to the gym! feeling happy? go to the gym! did your date went well? go to the gym! you just broke up with your girlfriend? go to the gym! look, for every problem, there’s a solution, and the solution is called–”

as woo-jin talked and talked, gun-woo thought he’s hallucinating. on the other side of the crosswalk, a girl tapped on her phone. same (y/h/c) hair, same (e/c) eyes, the same way she dipped her shoulder as she looked behind her, even the black sweater was the same. she wasn’t tall, the arms of her sweater weren't puffed from muscles. maybe she isn’t y/n, but they can try.

“woo-jin, look. do you think that is her? y/n?” he asked, cutting off his friend. woo-jin looked at the picture, than at the girl, than at the picture again, and the girl again.

“honestly, how could we know if we don’t ask her?” woo-jin smiled, just as he always does when he’s in some doubtful situation. they began to walk behind the girl. she wore earphones. woo-jin went to tap her shoulder, but when he touched her shoulder, the girl turned around, grabbing woo-jin’s wrist to keep him still so she could punch him in the face, gun-woo hurried to stand beside woo-jin. the girl took out the earphones with her free hand.

“what the fuck do you want from me?” she asked, looking up from under her eyebrows, looking from one second to another at each of them, like she waited for some attack. she really was a pro, gun-woo said to himself. gun-woo had to admit that she was quite pretty. not like pretty girls from clubs or his high school and university, or the nurses at the marine, but some pretty girl that his mother would like to date him. he bent deep down.

“we are sorry to disturb you, but we have a question. we don’t mean harm, we don’t intend to hurt you” he said fast, and the girl let go woo-jin after looking at the guy, and making sure he nodded. the girl turned, pointing to one of the restaurants.

“can we talk while i eat? i just came out from training, i’m starving.” woo-jin and gun-woo nodded, following the girl.

“so, what did you want to ask?” the girl began eating. woo-jin looked at gun-woo, who watched her dainty fingers grabbing the utensils. he sighed and took out the photo, placing it down to the table so the girl could see, she stopped eating instantly. pulling up her eyebrows, she distanced from the table a little bit. before any of the guys could talk, the girl began to speak fast and stark. “are you from the police? the secret service or some fucking spy-bullshit? what the fuck do you want from me? it doesn’t matter, i shouldn't talk to any of you, i’m not gonna do this shit. how did you get this photo of me?” gun-woo wanted to talk, but the anger in her eyes made his mouth shut. “doesn't matter, i hope i'll never see you again.” she began to pick up her things. gun-woo thought about hyeon-ju, sir choi, her mother, and the ugliest guy that beat him up that night in the coffee shop.

“we just want to ask you about your name,” he spoke clear. “we’re just curious if you’re y/n or not. anyway, my name is gun-woo, and he’s woo-jin.”

“yeah, why? you probably know this because you have every information about me.” she replied, her chest rising and falling a little bit faster than usual.

“no, we don’t. we… so, well… we know a man who’s name is sir choi. and her granddaughter… her granddaughter told us to meet you.”

y/n looked around herself, like checking if someone else was there as a spy or some third wheeler, but when everybody was lazily chomping down on their dinner, being on their phone with some boring video or tweet, she slowly sat back down. sir choi’s name moved something in her, because she leaned closer to the guys.

“if that’s what about i think it is about, then this is some serious shit. really, maybe the most serious shit in seoul’s money and business history, so if you truly mean sir choi’s name, than i really recommend you two to turn around and walk away from all of this. understood?” gun-woo sighed.

“i think that i’m deeper in this than i wanted to”, he replied, the girl looked at him from under her lashes.

“what do you mean? is this about loans?” gun-woo nodded, the girl looked up to the ceiling, sighing, letting out a long whisper of swearings. “then we aren't talking about the price of my dinner, aren't we?”

“we don't talk about money, we talk about catching the men who are behind this.” woo-jin continued, y/n looked up at him, smiling sadly.

“i hope that you are alright in the head, so you can understand that this is nearly impossible.”

“it is not, believe us. we gonna find a man who’s in contact with them.” y/n sighed, looked to the side, looking at her phone.

“how can i trust you two? really, anyone can talk to me about this, anyone who took loans from the old man.” “we found this photo of you in sir choi’s office.”

“you two? how did you get into sir choi’s office? not even his closest people could get there.” gun-woo looked at woo-jin, sighing.

“well, not us, but his granddaughter. her name is hyeon-ju, we are her so-called bodyguards.”

“i don’t know anyone who’s name is hyeon-ju. so, summing up, not sir choi, but his granddaughter wants to talk to me? why?”

woo-jin looked at gun-woo. “can we talk a little bit?”

“sure.” y/n responded, turning back to her food. woo-jin gulped.

“should we tell her about the plan? yang jae-myeong? but what if hyeon-ju wants to tell her this?”

“i think she would understand it better if we told her. she doesn't know who we are, and sir choi’s name means something to her, but in this case, sir choi doesn't know about our mission.” woo-jin shrugged his shoulder, turning back to y/n.

“it’s about catching a man who’s in connection with the loan-sharks, and the one smile capital. since hyeon-ju told us to find you, we think that you’d be interested to catch these guys.”

“this is real, they have some repayments for me.” gun-woo somehow knew that this wasn't about money, but how could he ask when they knew each other for two hours?

“so, are you in it, or not?” woo-jin leaned forward, offering his hand for a handshake. y/n pointed up her forefinger.

“one talk. only one session with hyeon-ju, and then i decide whether i'm in or not.” she stated, woo-jin and gun-woo nodded, while they smiled lightly. looking at each other, they shared the ‘we made it’-look, making the girl scrunch her eyebrows. “okay then, where and when should we meet tomorrow? i guess this can't wait, if that’s so important that you found me.” y/n brushed her hair behind her ear, gun-woo didn’t miss the tattoos on her fingers, and the

“maybe… tomorrow at noon? here, in front of this restaurant.” gun-woo offered, the girl nodded.

“deal. see you guys tomorrow!” she said as she stood up, gun-woo stood up too. he didn't know why, he just felt that he needed to accompany the girl, no matter where she went home.

“wait, y/n!” the girl turned around, woo-jin looked at him like he had some shock or something. “where… where do you go home?”

‘to yongsan, and you?” she asked, gun-woo’s eyes lighted up.

“me too. would you mind if i… so, maybe we can go home together?” he asked, hoping that the girl wouldn't mind.

“yes, we can. goodbye, woo-jin!” she answered easily, bidding goodbye to the guy beside gun-woo. after she went out of the door, woo-jin began to lap gun-woo’s back.

“aye, gun-woo! did little y/n just trickle some love into your heart?” he asked grinning, gun-woo shook his head.

“no, it’s just… what if she gets into trouble at night? it’s dangerous.” gun-woo answered innocently, making woo-jin do a little ‘tsk’ in the corner of his mouth.

“by her grabbing on my wrist before he almost punched me to death, the one who needs protection is me!” woo-jin dramatized the situation, pointing at his wrist.

“she didn’t do anything, and she won’t again. she seems… peaceful.”

“yeah, well, stopped beating me because she found his prince.” woo-jin continued the teasing by adding some eyelash flutter that girls do when they find someone really handsome, making gun-woo roll his eyes. “okay, well, just go. and tell me everything when you get home. or… if you haul up at hers. or i hope that your house has thick walls and your mother doesn’t mind the constant whining noise!” he giggled, having fun. he could tease his friend forever, now that this girl was in the picture.

“woo-jin-ah! don’t do this!” gun-woo replied, making woo-jin laugh.

“okay, okay! have fun, and bring her too! don’t forget to ask for her phone number!”

“goodnight, woo-jin.”

stepping out into the chilly night air, y/n waited for him. they began to walk to the bus station. gun-wo thought about what he should ask from her. family? no, that's too personal, and they just met today. he wasn’t good with girl stuff, only had one girlfriend and she dumped him after two months, when he applied to the marine.

“so, since when do you box?” she asked, making gun-woo looking at her wondering.

“how… how did you know that i box?” y/n snapped with her tongue, looking at him. she had pretty eyes, and although her mask was on, she seemed like this was the easiest question in her entire life.

“when your friend grabbed my shoulder, his grip was firm, his palms are not too big, but they are strong. he lifted his other arm, just in case he needed to protect himself. i think i even saw your friend on the tv. you two are muscular, it can be seen from under jackets, but your legs’ aren't as muscular as your torso. in other martial arts, you need to train your legs too, to kick as strong as you can, but in boxing, you only use your arms. oh, and bodyguards are most of the time professional agents, but you two are young. or am i wrong?”

gun-woo didn’t know how to respond, he wanted to tell her how cool it was to deduce what they did, just from looking at them.

“no, you are right. and… hyeon-ju told us that you are a pro in many martial arts, so… since when do you train?”

“since my childhood. it’s not that difficult, many movements and styles are similar.”

“did you fight competitively? like, in championships?”

y/n shook her head.

“no. only in gyms, i don’t like championships. you can get burned out easily. but i guess, since you asked that, you do championships. what is it like?”

gun-woo smiled under his mask. y/n was really cute as she asked about him. otherwise, maybe he could never tell her these things. he wasn’t a man of words, and only a few times he knew what to say.

“you would like it, really much. before covid, the arenas were filled with people, and the energies, the mood was really high and good.”

y/n hummed as they got on the bus, sitting beside each other. gun-woo protested that he should sit on the outer seat, and as y/n didn’t sense any dangers from him, she accepted and sat down.

“i hope that this hyeon-ju girl is cool, because i had some cat fights with others in the last weeks. girl fight in the gyms, you know.”

“cat fights? with girls?”

“yeah, but it wasn't so serious, i wondered where all the girls were, who'd ripped each other apart. a year ago, those fights were brutallic, like some freaking mma-cage fight, and now… at there, we say about these lazy gym-championships that there were no claws, but only strokes.”

gun-woo snickered.

“and these gym fights, do they pay well? or… do you work somewhere?”

the girl looked at him, scanning him from bottom to top while leaning to the glass window, leaning on her elbow, tilting her head. “you don’t look like a drinker, so i don’t think we would meet at my workplace.”

“you're a bartender? woo-jin would like this! he likes to drink, sometimes, always saying how good he can bear alcohol.”

y/n laughed.

“yeah, he looks like the typical tough guy who grew up on the bad side of the river, but when the two of you constantly looked at each other, i knew that he’s just as rookie as you.”

“yeah, that’s right. we began to work recently at sir choi, we are his granddaughter’s, hyeonju’s bodyguards. but she said she don’t need bodyguards.”

“but if she doesn’t need you, then how did you stay?”

gun-woo sighed.

“i… i begged for her to stay. i have a debt to work off to sir choi.”

“oh, so you work down the loan sir choi gave you, and this is the way you are affected personally by these loans?”

gun-woo thought about that night. when in-beom beat him up, when the boss threatened him not to call the police because his mother would end up dead, when he felt like he can’t do anything. looking at y/n, he didn’t want this girl to get involved in this business. gulping, gun-woo nodded.

“yeah. my mother too.”

“you work for your mother and her protection? you take life danger upon yourself so that she doesn't get hurt?” y/n asked, pulling together her eyebrows.

“we could say so.”

y/n sighed, looking forward, leaning back on the seat. looking at her hands, picking at the tattoos she had on her fingers. after a few seconds, she bent closer to gun-woo. she had dauntlessness and bravery in her eyes, without a blink of her eyelashes. her lashes were longer than usual, giving her the attitude on the outside as on the inside. pressing the get-off button of the bus, she gathered her bag in her lap.

“i understand it now. in this case, count me in, too.”

gun-woo looked at her.

“why? you doesn’t even know what is this about, this is serious danger, y/n.”

y/n shrugged her shoulders as gun-woo let her out from her seat, as they stood, y/n gave her a piece of paper.

“because it’s personal for me, too. see you tomorrow, gun-woo.”

gun-woo bent deep down as the bus stopped.

“thanks, y/n, for talking to us, and not beating up woo-jin.”

y/n giggled, and bent slightly down too.

“thank you for giving me an opportunity.”

as she got off, gun-woo sat back, folding out the paper. it was her number, they didn’t even ask for her number and she gave it to him! on the paper, there was a little message too.

show this to hyeon-ju. you guys forget everything. make sure she notes my number. and don’t worry, we are going to figure this out, one way… or another. y/n.

𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐔𝐄𝐃.

author's note: i hope you liked the first chapter. sorry for my english, it's not my first language, and i just got back to writing after a looong break. leave a like or comment if you liked it!! by babes

ask for taglist in comment or here

#bloodhounds #gun woo x reader #woo jin x reader #netflix korea #kdrama #bloodhounds x reader #bloodhounds imagines #gun woo imagines #bloodhounds netflix #bloodhounds kdrama

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thankskenpenders · 6 months

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Sonic Superstars!

Superstars is out! And guess what? It's good! It's a worthy new entry in the series, and I mostly like it. Mostly. Except for the handful of parts I don't. As usual, allow me to share my thoughts.

(For the record, I got the PS5 version of Superstars. I can't speak for how it plays on older hardware like the Switch, or how the weird Steam version that seems to make you log in with Epic runs. But I encountered zero performance issues, personally.)

General thoughts

The thing is, aside from two notable flaws I'll discuss in greater detail below, I can sum up my feelings on most of Superstars quickly. You see, it's... a Sonic game. This will either be a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. It's not a bold new take on the series that'll blow you away, but they also didn't fuck it up. There's no catch this time! There's something refreshing about that straightforwardness, given how rare it is to get a regular-ass New Sonic Game from Sega. It's just a new classic-style game where you can play as Amy, set on a new island with all new zones, and Fang is in it! This might be damning with faint praise, but that's what it says on the tin, and they did a good job overall.

(It also has co-op. That's nice. I didn't play it in co-op.)

It plays exactly how it should. At no point did anything feel Wrong. The graphics might not have the absolute highest fidelity, but I think the character models look really nice, and the levels look appropriately good with vibrant color palettes. A couple zones like Sky Temple gave me Klonoa vibes, which I like. One zone is an absolutely incredible homage that I won't spoil. The story here is minimal (as expected), but there are a few good moments of telling the story through the gameplay, particularly one very cute sequence with Trip. I did find a couple stage gimmicks moderately annoying (Speed Jungle 2 and Press Factory 2, looking at you), but like... I could say the same thing about Mania, and also damn near every other Sonic game ever made. There's always That One Level. Superstars may not raise the series to new heights, but it generally executes well on the standard beats of the series. It's an easy recommendation for all fans of 2D Sonic.

Really, aside from the two big flaws (we'll get to them), this game's greatest crimes are simply not being quite as good as Mania, and also coming out the same week as the more creative and polished Super Mario Bros. Wonder. If we hadn't gotten Mania, I would easily be calling this my favorite 2D Sonic game since... what, the Advance trilogy 20 years ago? I like the Rush games, but if you asked me to replay one or the other, I might have a better time with Superstars. And, yes, it beats the hell out of Sonic 4. It's not even close. Anyone who says this game is exactly like Sonic 4 is just being a hater.

...I guess I would say that $60 is a bit steep for this, but you know it'll be on sale for a more appropriate $30-$40 in a few months. This isn't a Nintendo game we're talking about here.

Nice little tweaks

Superstars also features a number of welcome quality-of-life updates over Mania, bringing it more in line with the design ethos of modern platformers.

You have infinite lives! No more getting a game over on the final boss and having to redo the whole final zone - or, god forbid, the entire game

Time overs are gone! It'll warn you before you go over ten minutes, but I have no idea why because it doesn't kill you anymore

The game features a hub from which you can easily replay previous levels, rather than needing to beat the game or put in a cheat code to unlock the level select

This means you can easily go back and hunt for any special stage rings you missed. However, as a tradeoff, it seems like you can only get one Emerald per zone now, rather than being able to get Super Sonic by the end of the first or second zone

You can swap characters between levels! No more having to start a whole 'nother save file to play as Tails

And those characters even have optional little movement tutorial rooms available from the hub, which is great for new players who may not know about things like the Drop Dash

And, finally, checkpoints now feature arrows pointing in the direction you were supposed to be going, in case you forget upon respawning

Of course, while you might not be getting game overs, Superstars certainly compensated with some bosses that kicked my ass.

Bosses

Here's what I would consider notable flaw #1.

I have mixed feelings on the bosses in Superstars. I don't think many of them are poorly designed - in fact, a lot of them are good, and offer fun moments of spectacle. But for a 2D Sonic game, they're REALLY long and drawn out, and by the late game this was starting to get draining.

Bosses tend to be the type where you have to dodge their attack patterns for a while until you get the chance to hit them exactly once, MAYBE twice. A few bosses seem to have quicker options if you abuse your post-hit invulnerability or play as a character with a double jump, but many will either be completely invincible or run away to the background for long periods of time, making it impossible to damage them outside of the allotted windows. And even if it seems like you'll be able to get in a second hit, many bosses turn invincible and skip ahead to the next attack pattern as soon as they take the first hit. Again, most of these fights aren't BAD, but because of this behavior they sometimes take almost as long to beat as the entire levels preceding them. This didn't bother me much early in the game, but against the more challenging bosses towards the end that kept killing me several minutes into a long fight, it got tiring. The final boss of Story Mode probably took me like an hour.

While this certainly isn't an uncommon style of boss design, part of me suspects they did this for the sake of co-op players. For one, playing in co-op means that you don't necessarily have to start the entire fight over if one person dies, so I assume the length is less of an issue. But in particular, true classic-style Sonic bosses that you can just hit repeatedly with good timing would go down in a few seconds against a team of four players. Likewise, the swarm of clones from the "Avatar" Emerald power would probably obliterate every Genesis era boss with one button press. So I get why every boss needs all these invulnerability periods, but still. I at least wish they'd made some of those attack patterns shorter and given you more frequent opportunities to deal damage.

Emeralds and their powers

Speaking of the new Chaos Emerald powers: they're neat, I guess? They're fine. I didn't use them much. Actually, I kept forgetting I even had them - although the game will play a noise and show an icon in the corner of the screen to remind you any time you reach a spot where a specific power is useful. Avatar, the first power you get, is at least good for getting a couple free hits in on the trickier bosses. Yellow's ability to slow time is obviously good, but, again, I always forgot I even had it and made it through just fine without it. I was also pleased to realize that the swimming power is useful for the water levels and not just for climbing up waterfalls.

Oh, and the new grappling-based special stages kind of suck, but they're not the worst, and I'll at least give them credit for trying something new. (Motion Sickness Zone from Sonic 1 does return as a bonus minigame, but I only did it once lmao.)

Battle Mode

I haven't played Battle Mode. Couldn't tell you if it's good or not. It did, however, give us official designs for Metal Tails and Metal Amy after all these years, and also it let me make this:

...Okay, enough beating around the bush. Let's talk about the thing that REALLY drags down the experience.

The soundtrack...

(This lengthy section on the music will feature some light spoilers for things like zone names and themes.)

Now, don't get me wrong. There are some bangers in here that I've been listening to on loop. But this is one of the most inconsistent soundtracks I've ever heard, and I'm not sure I've ever played another game where the music has such a sharp dip in quality in the back half.

As anyone following this blog knows, prior to release I was a little obsessed with trying to gauge what the soundtrack would be like. "Jun Senoue" and "new Classic Sonic game" naturally evokes the memory of Sonic 4, but from the start we knew Tee Lopes was involved as well, and almost all of the music previewed before released leans more towards the sound of Sonic Mania than anything else. I was hopeful! I was excited! Jun deserved another chance at doing another classic Sonic OST, and Tee is one of my favorite game composers of all time between his Sonic material and other works like the TMNT: Shredder's Revenge OST. I frequently thought back to this Sonic 4 remix medley by Jun and Tee as a reminder that these two could really be the dream team, bringing out the best in each other's work.

Sure enough, the front half of the game is largely dominated by the Mania sound, whether it's a track by Tee himself or one by an in-house Sega artist that's compatible with his style. Pinball Carnival Act 1 by Rintaro Soma (an up-and-coming composer who wrote a bunch of the Cyber Space themes in Frontiers) takes obvious inspiration from Mania's Studiopolis Act 1, to the point that I was shocked when Sega posted the track and revealed it wasn't written by Tee. Act 2, however, forges more of its own sound by leaning into the act's spooky haunted carnival theme. And despite being the music lead, the only level theme that I know for sure was written by Senoue in the front half of the game (Bridge Island Act 1) was actually arranged by Tee Lopes to give it more of that Mania sound. Hell, the level clear jingle is literally just the one from Mania. A few level themes by other composers don't quite match that style, but they fit in well enough.

But there are early signs that this sound won't be consistent throughout the game. Our first warning of things to come is the boss music:

youtube

When early copies started floating around and the soundtrack leaked, many, many people hoped that this was merely a placeholder, like the literal Sonic 4 Episode II music used in the earliest previews of Speed Jungle, and that it'd get replaced with a day one patch. Oh, those poor, innocent fools...

Even if you don't mind the poor production with the returning Sonic 4 faux-Genesis sound, this is a very simplistic thirteen second snippet of music that then plays a second time in a higher key before it loops. This wouldn't be the end of the world if the bosses were as short as the ones in the Genesis games, of course, but they're not! This theme is used for a ton of lengthy fights throughout the game, including an EXTREMELY long and tedious autoscroller boss at the end of Golden Capital Act 2. Maybe I would've enjoyed the bosses in this game more if they were paired with some earworms that'd get me hyped up and sell how cool and exciting the fights are supposed to be, but grating songs like this just made the minutes spent fighting those bosses feel like an eternity.

Still, boss music (and menu music) aside, all of the level themes in the front half of the game ranged from decent to great, with the peak easily being the phenomenal Lagoon City Act 2 by Tee Lopes. And then... I got to the back half of the game. And the Mania style completely disappeared, replaced largely with the dreaded Sonic 4 sound. That isn't the style for EVERY song in the back half, but even the ones that try something different tend to be weaker than the material from the first six zones, with less engaging melodies and less intricate arrangement. Many sound straight up unfinished, leaning on extremely basic synth patches with no personality. And there isn't a single track from Tee in the back half. He just disappears from the project altogether.

What this means is that we go from this absolute banger by Tee Lopes in zone 6, which elevates what's otherwise a bog standard desert level to a thrilling adventure:

youtube

To... this, in zone 7:

youtube

It's EXTREMELY jarring!

The thing is, this is actually one of the better tracks in this style. I have to assume this is by Senoue, because you can totally hear a good Adventure or Heroes era Senoue track in there once you get past the crude synth replication of the Genesis era Sonic sound. Senoue is still a great composer, as you can hear clear as day with Bridge Island, but he's working with a restrictive sound palette that doesn't play to his strengths at all. If only he'd bust out that damn guitar, or at least pick some better synths.

(And no matter what people will tell you, no, this is not an accurate recreation of what the Genesis's YM2612 chip really sounded like, nor is it representative of what it CAN sound like at its best. Go back to the Streets of Rage 2 or Ristar soundtracks if you need a reminder.)

While I can at least see what the Press Factory tracks were aiming for, some other faux-FM synth tracks are just really bland. They don't have anything interesting going on, and they also don't seem particularly tailor made for the levels they accompany. They're just attempts to mimic what Sonic 1-3 sounded like on a very literal level. Take, for instance, the Golden Capital Act 1 theme, AKA "we've got Sky Sanctuary at home." While the better level themes in this game enhance the mood or even completely carry the vibes of a level, the weaker tracks can really suck all the air out of the room and make a level feel like more of a slog.

What kills me is that there are, in fact, a couple examples of how to do throwbacks to classic Sega FM synth music well on this very soundtrack! They're just not the Sonic 4 type tracks. I love the Frozen Base Act 2 theme, presumably composed by legendary Sega composer Hiroshi "HIRO" Kawaguchi, who's responsible for all-time classic arcade soundtracks like Fantasy Zone, Out Run, Hang-On, After Burner, and more, as well as the hacking and pinball themes from Frontiers. Maybe to an untrained ear this doesn't sound all that different, but it has a catchier tune, better instruments, and stronger production overall. I'm also a fan of the track for Sky Temple, which isn't perfect, but it blends a few Genesis-esque instruments like the Sonic 1+2 snare with other instruments for a richer sound. If the whole soundtrack sounded more like these examples, I'd definitely be complaining less.

I really just have to wonder... how did this happen? How did this end up being so inconsistent? Many fans on social media are jumping to the conclusion that Senoue is just extremely stubborn and refuses to ditch the style from Sonic 4. I can't deny this possibility, but some things just don't add up. The almost complete lack of "retro" style music in the promotional material. The fact that the style just suddenly shifts halfway through the game, then disappears for the final zone, as if that's not the note they want to end on. The complete lack of any tracks by Tee Lopes in the back half. The focus on the Mania-style tracks in the bonus "mini soundtrack." And most perplexing of all, the fact that three of the first tracks you hear in the game were Senoue compositions that were given extra attention with arrangements from Tee Lopes.

This is pure speculation on my part, but it almost seems like they straight up ran out of time.

Perhaps Jun wanted more of his tracks to get full arrangements from Tee, or for Tee to contribute more songs, but things were down to the wire and they chose to leave in some of the raw Sonic 4 style demos. The soundtrack being crunched out in a matter of months at the end of development would certainly explain why Speed Jungle had to be demoed without its music a mere four months ago. It'd also explain why a game that's only a few hours long needs NINETEEN composers listed in the credits. And also the fact that multiple zones just have completely different, unrelated music by different artists across their acts. Did they need multiple artists working on different acts simultaneously, completely independent from each other with no time to cross reference each others' work, due to extreme time constraints? I'd buy it.

Ah well. It's not the end of the world. I've heard worse Sonic music. But I'll always think of what could have been...

At least the final battle with Eggman at the end of Story Mode has a pretty kickass boss theme, which ALMOST makes up for how bad most of the preceding boss music is (and the fact that that very difficult fight doesn't have a checkpoint between phases and took me like an hour to beat lmao). It even seems like it might be written by longtime Phantasy Star Online composer and recurring Sonic contributor Hideaki Kobayashi. That's the guy who wrote NONAGRESSION!!!!!!!

The postgame

Speaking of beating Eggman! It turns out Superstars has a good deal of postgame content, as merely beating the last zone with all the Chaos Emeralds doesn't take you to the true final boss. In order to do that, you'll need to do something else.

Before we hit the big spoiler warning, I'm going to give any future players who are still reading a warning. If you value your sanity... don't force yourself to do all the postgame stuff. Don't make the mistakes I did. It's not worth it, and it may very well knock your personal score for the game down a couple points.

----------------------------------------------------------------

SPOILERS FOR THE STORY, UNLOCKABLES, AND THE POSTGAME BELOW THIS POINT

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

----------------------------------------------------------------

The bonus scenario

Sonic Superstars has a big surprise in store for anyone who beats the main story. For the first time since... what, Silver? In 2006? We finally have a brand new playable character in a new Sonic platformer! (I wouldn't count the player avatar in Forces as a full-fledged New Character.) Yes, after the credits roll, you unlock Trip as the super-secret fifth playable character. I was really excited to see this. Trip is cute, even if her masked appearance from early in the game is perhaps a more unique design than a Sonic-ified lizard girl who can only vaguely look like a real sungazer lizard. She IS the first new Sonic character Ohshima has designed since the '90s, though, so she gets points for that - and she gets even more points for literally turning into a dragon when she goes Super. We love a girl who can turn into a dragon, don't we folks? And her playstyle is fun, too, with a double jump and the ability to roll along walls and ceilings.

But Trip isn't just playable. Like Knuckles before her, she gets an entire alternate story mode of her own, which somewhat remixes the level layouts, generally makes things more challenging, and swaps out Eggman for Egg Robo. I was so excited to see this! It really felt like the game had so much more in store for me than I'd anticipated.

...Then I spent probably around three hours attempting to beat the new final battle with Fang at the end of Trip's Story. And it made me regret doing Trip's Story at all.

Once you learn the patterns, a lot of them are actually piss easy. But the difficulty comes down to a few misguided factors:

The fight is LOOOONG. On a successful attempt the whole thing will probably take the average player about, like... seven or eight minutes? Maybe longer? This is where I really started to get pissed at the game for making me wait through these stupid attack patterns before I could attempt to hit the boss once.

The fight is divided between two phases, one with Fang in a vehicle and another with him in a giant robot, with no checkpoint between them. Dying to one of Fang's bullshit attacks on the second phase means having to redo the ~5 minute first phase all over again. And, worst of all...

Fang has multiple projectile attacks that are guaranteed instant kills, even if you have rings.

Also there's a stupid desperation headbutt attack that can really easily catch you off guard and kill you, but I only got that far in the fight once.

It's the instant kills that got me. If those fucking immobilizing net attacks just made you drop your rings, or you could at least wiggle out of them by mashing buttons (EDIT: apparently you CAN do this but you literally have to button mash so rapidly that it's a crapshoot whether or not you'll physically be able to do it), it would have been totally doable! Kinda fun, even! Slow, but pretty cool in terms of spectacle. But nope! Three hours! Three hours on this! This is, without a doubt, the hardest boss I have ever faced in any Sonic game, period, and one of the hardest bosses I've ever seen in ANY game. All because of one attack pattern where making a tiny mistake means starting over.

The glitches didn't help, either. Something about the way the circular boss arena was set up in both stories' final battles seems to make the floor intangible sometimes for non-player objects. Occasionally my dropped rings, enemies I was supposed to knock towards Fang, or one of Fang's insta-kill projectiles would just fall through the floor randomly. This definitely wasn't my main problem, but it helped drive home the idea that this fight just wasn't worth my time.

After three hours of attempts, I gave up. I just went and looked up the ending of Trip's story, as well as the contents of the Final Story, on YouTube. Turns out I made the right call, because boy, that true final boss looks like dogshit. It's just a very dull fight against a big generic cartoon dragon. Apparently this is the thing Eggman was looking for. It appears and is defeated with little fanfare. I think I liked it better when I assumed the scary dragon being foreshadowed was just Super Trip.

...Also, hey, what's up with The End being very conspicuously visible in the background of the last zone?? I know it's just a cheeky cameo, but, like... isn't it supposed to be sealed away in Cyber Space right now? Should I be taking this literally? Does this have lore implications? This is one hell of a way to remind people that the timeline's been reunified, I guess

Closing thoughts

I really hate to part ways with Superstars on a sour note like this, because like I said up top, I mostly enjoyed my time with it! It's really just a small handful of particularly frustrating bosses and the inconsistent soundtrack that drag it down. Other than that, it's solid as a rock. Maybe wait for sales if you're not dying to play it, but it's definitely worth playing for any Sonic fan. Just... skip the true ending. I would have stepped away MUCH happier with this game if I'd done that.

I wanna try to end this on a more positive note but I'm tired, so, uhhhh... look, you can unlock a Metal Nights skin for your Battle Mode bot!!

Anyway back to jamming to about half the soundtrack on loop while pretending the other half doesn't exist, and looking forward to the continued Fang Renaissance with his upcoming IDW miniseries

#tkp post #other media

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barbwritesstuff · 4 months

Note

I remember reading how much choice script (or steam??) Took off the profits u made from blood moon. It was an astronomical amount tbh. With that in mind, would you recommend choice script or itch.io for new writers?

It very much depends on what you, as a writer and game developer, are hoping to achieve. There are downsides to writing with choicescript, but there are also benefits. Ditto with Steam and itch.io. I think it's important to weigh up all the options and make your own choice based on your goals.

Breaking it down.

Choicescript is (in my opinion) the easiest coding language out when it comes to making interactive fiction. You really don't need any coding skills to be able to make a game with choicescript, which was why I used it to write Blood Moon. I had zero coding experience back in 2020 and would not have been able to make a game with Twine or Ren'py at the time.

However, choicescript is not an open source language, which means, if you want to make money off your game, you have to publish it with Choice of Games or one of their imprints (Heart's Choice or Hosted Games).

They will take 75% of royalties, which is steep, but they also have a pretty dedicated audience which you probably won't reach if you don't publish through them.

And I think those numbers are significant. My independent games, despite being pay-what-you-want, usually only get a few hundred downloads. My choicescript game has over ten thousand. 25% of $70,000 is better than 95% of $200.

Steam vs itch.io is a very similar situation.

Steam has an upload fee of $100 and takes 30% of revenue from games, but Steam also gets more than 10x the traffic than itch.io. So, while itch.io only charges a small amount in processing fees, you're probably going to get more sales from Steam.

All that said, I am bad at marketing. I also struggle with spelling, so need extra help editing and proofreading, and am still very much a novice when it comes to coding. I also do not have the money to pay for much out of pocket. I get a lot of value from working with publishers like Choice of Games because I get that extra help and support. That might not be true for you.

I've seen some independent game developers create really dedicated audiences, craft amazing games, and market themselves really well. They regularly get thousands of downloads on their games. For them, publishing with an open source language like Twine, and doing so on a more independent friendly platform like itch.io, is 100% worth it.

Doing so also gives you more creative freedom, as choicescript is very limited it what it can do.

Ultimately, it's a choice, and the right choice is going to change depending on the individual, their needs, and their goals. I'm happy to talk about this more and answer questions, because I think writers should help each other, and the best way we can do that is openly sharing information.

Hope that all makes sense. Sorry it was so long. 💙

#interactive fiction #writing #choicescript

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scribbling-dragon · 1 year

Text

with only feathers as your guide

summary:

With a dungeon as vast and as dark as Decked Out, there’s bound to be plenty of rumours circulating on what might lurk within the shadows, simply waiting for an opportunity to reveal itself and prey on the Hermits that dare to venture within.

The newest rumour, and probably the most interesting one Tango’s heard recently, is that there is someone else in the depths of Decked Out, waiting and watching for a moment to reveal themself. The Hermits that have spotted this mysterious figure haven't seen them for very long, either getting distracted by a ravager appearing around the corner, or just because the mysterious person slips away before they can get a better look.

(ao3 link)

(3,100 words)

this was inspired by the Guide Jimmy fanart i saw from @hybbart recently! it was really cool and i was struck with this idea :]

Obviously, those rumours are just that- rumours. Something that has no basis in reality or even fact. Letting creepy-crawlies lurk in the corners of his dungeon would defeat the whole point of it- the only monsters you’ll ever find lurking in Decked Out are meant to be there.

The Hermits that have managed to catch sight of this figure describe a blue light, almost calling them forward, pulling them further into the depths of the Frozen Crypt, through pathways that they didn't even know existed (pathways Tango is pretty sure didn't exist before their mysterious figure led them down the path). And these paths, each time and without fail, would be marked by a trail of feathers.

So, the Guide joins the ranks of rumoured ghosts that haunt the Crypt and Tango moves on with his life.

Some of the redstone in the Crypt got messed up- Tango’s still not sure how it actually happened. Only that things stopped working as they should and the clank spiked on one of their test runs and he almost got impaled. Several times. Which means he gets the irreplaceable pleasure of kneeling on the ice-cold ground (which is made of ice, hence the ice-coldness) and wrangling the redstone wires back into some kind of order.

His shoulder aches, face cold from where it’s pressed into the ground so he can peer into the floor without inhaling a faceful of redstone- he’s done it once, not at all something he recommends. The sneezing and general sightlessness was a solid zero out of ten.

He hisses out a breath, watching it cloud in front of his face before fading a moment later. It really is far too cold in here, even with the thick fur lining of his cloak he finds himself huddling a little further in on himself and wishing that his flames were a little warmer.

The heart thumps in the background, the noise bouncing around his head, rattling between his ears like an overexcited ping-pong ball. It’s easy to put to the back of his mind most of the time, working past the dull thumping that pulses in time to his own heart, but today, in this particular moment, it grates on his nerves easily.

There’s a small skittering sound to his left, not unlike a pebble clattering to the floor, and his ears swivel towards it automatically. It takes his brain a moment to catch up, thoughts still tangled in redstone wires and circuits. It then takes him several more moments to physically untangle himself from the redstone, pulling his arm back carefully in case he further disturbs the wiring and upsets the already delicate system further.

He turns, finding that there was, indeed, a pebble on the floor.

It sits just a few feet away from him, shining a little in the dim lighting. It’s polished, which wouldn't be unusual if he was somewhere near water- somewhere that would have been able to wear stone down into such a small, smooth pebble. But he’s underground, halfway into the Frozen Crypt and nowhere near any large bodies of water. All the water here is frozen solid (Frozen Crypt, duh) meaning there’s no way for any pebble to have gotten in unless he placed it there, which he didn't, or if someone else brought it in.

He’s on the alert immediately, glancing upwards as he slides backwards, away from where he was just sat and preparing for an anvil to come crashing down. He snatches his hands back as he stares upwards, waiting for the slight clunking noise of an anvil as it’s let loose, or even a frustrated grumble as Doc has to reposition how he’s peering down to try and get a better angle on him.

But there’s no structure above him, nothing that might have been built to ensure he was squashed. The ceiling of the Crypt remains unchanged and as frosty as ever. None of the stalactites look as though they're intending on impaling him within the next few moments, either.

Something whistles behind him, the note carrying hauntingly through the still air. It’s clear and sharp, cutting through the dull monotony of the heartbeat. He turns towards the sound, a grin beginning to pull at his lips as he listens carefully. There’s nothing for several long moments, the silence settling thick and heavy over him, only interrupted by the thumping of the heart. But the noise is easy enough to disregard now, pushing it aside in favour of something far more interesting.

He stands, dusting his hands off, stepping towards the pebble. He nudges at it with his foot, watching as it slides a little further across the ice, coming to a slow stop. He picks it up, cupping it carefully in his hand as he steps in the direction that he’s pretty sure the sound came from.

A lesser person might be scared by the sudden appearance of someone that won't show themselves. But Decked Out is Tango’s domain and it fills him with a confidence he doesn't normally feel.

He pauses at the first spot of colour against the blue and grey of the ice and rock around him.

The yellow of the feather sits innocently in the middle of his path, as though it has just been dropped by accident- a feather that had simply slipped from the wings of an avian as they passed through.

He jerks his head up, quick enough to catch sight of a blue flame, quickly disappearing again as his companion disappears around a corner. He breaks into a run, sliding easily around the corners, accustomed to the slide of the ice beneath his feet- leaning into it on occasion to help him go a bit faster.

He pushes off the iron of the trapdoor, ignoring the way the metal sends a chill shooting through him as the pads of his feet come into contact with it, leaping across the small river and landing softly on the other side. The snow there cushions his landing, settling easily after he kicks it up to continue his pursuit.

He can hear the rattling of a chain, the slight sounds of breaths hitching as he follows his guide, noting each feather in his pathway as he follows along. There are no sounds of something crashing into walls on the tighter turns, which is something he’s noticed the other Hermits doing when they're volunteer for a test run; something about the slipperiness of the ice beneath their feet and not enough grip sending them crashing back and forth, flailing as they struggle to regain their balance while fleeing whatever monster’s chasing them.

He slows, just a little, as he realises he’s in a path he doesn't recognise. He stops completely a moment later, ears still pricked for any sound of movement. He shouldn't be somewhere he doesn't recognise- he made the entirety of the Crypt, every pathway is as familiar to him as his own hands. It would be embarrassing for a dungeon master to get lost inside of his own dungeon.

He walks this path with a little more caution, unsure of when, exactly, he passed into a corridor that was not of his own making. The stone of the walls are smooth, carved in the same design as the rest of the Frozen Crypt- whoever made this was intimately familiar with the way he carved the rest of the stone.

Two feathers mark his path forwards when the corridor forks, both of them leading into incomprehensible darkness. He pauses, on the threshold, squinting for any sign of his guide.

A blue flame flickers, and he plunges forward.

The darkness swallows him whole, impossible to see in, even with his night vision. He has to feel along the wall to make sure he doesn't run into it and smash his face open by accident- his face would probably recover, but his pride wouldn't.

His hand brushes over a notch in the rock, and he pauses for a moment, feeling around the small indent in the wall, curious to what it might be for. His fingers close over something rough on the otherwise smooth notch and something clicks above him.

He freezes, prepared for some elaborate trap to spring up around him and for the pranker to reveal themselves with a grin and a laugh.

The darkness parts instead, the bright light of the stables blinding him momentarily. He has to stop and blink the spots from his vision before he steps forward into the light fully.

The ravagers snort at him from within their cages, watching him with their beady little eyes. Tango pulls a face back at them, sticking his tongue out. The ravagers don't react, not that Tango expected them to, and he closes his mouth. Instead, he looks around the stables, curious as to why his guide might have chosen to lead him here rather than deeper into the Crypt.

There’s straw strewn over the floor, padding the cages of the ravagers (though they seem to enjoy tossing it out of their cages and everywhere else rather than actually lay on it), but it’s still easy to spot the feathers, piled in front of one of the ravager cages.

Said ravager is right against the bars, mouth slightly open and posturing in a rather aggressive way. Tango crouches down, keeping close to the floor as he slips closer, towards the golden feathers.

The mysterious guide, one of the favourite topics amongst the Hermits in the last few weeks, has never led one of their charges astray. Sure, they've been led deeper into the Crypt before, but their passage has been safe and largely uneventful. The most trouble Tango had with their mysterious guide was when they disappeared and every single door locked- the clank had spiked dangerously high, too, and it had been a scramble to fix everything and pull Zed out before too much damage could be done.

He’s close enough to the feathers now that his breath causes the pile to flutter slightly, shifting in the spot they're sat in. He hardly dares to breathe, aware of the ravager a mere foot from him, the way their horns and tusks could jab through the bars and catch him, if he let his guard down too far.

He glances up, careful not to meet the ravagers gaze head-on. He likes his insides being insides and he’s rather they stay that way.

His eyes catch on the bars as he raises his eyes, lingering on the scratches around the bases of several bars. He shuffles a little bit closer, hoping and praying that the ravager doesn't decide that it’s bored and attack him anyway.

He runs a finger along one of the bars, pressing down on it carefully, feeling how it bends beneath even that tiny bit of pressure. He rocks back onto his heels, letting out a breath that’s halfway between a sigh and a laugh.

The bars are weakened, on the verge of giving out completely. One ravager being loose would be more than enough for him to shut the entire dungeon for the day just to herd the ravager back to its cage and then fix said cage. An entire day that could be spent troubleshooting and fixing the problems that arise.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, not needing to speak any louder- the guide will hear him all the same. There’s a low scraping sound above him, like claws against metal, and the creak of a chain. Tango snorts at the lack of response, shuffling backwards until he’s outside of the ravager’s reach.

The emergency button, the button that he’d felt quite stupid for installing in the first place (and also worried because Grian likes to visit the stables sometimes, and leaving a button out in the open is just asking for trouble when he likes to hang around nearby), is his saving grace. He pushes it, watching as the metal reinforcements slide down over the doors with a shing. At least now if the ravager decides to enact its jailbreak, it’ll be contained in a small space and easily dealt with.

“You know you don't have to be all spooky and ominous right now, right?” He asks, listening to the way his voice echoes around him. “It’s cute and all, and I love that you're really getting into the role, but you are also allowed to talk.”

“But then it would hardly be any fun, would it?”

Tango turns towards the voice, quick enough this time that he manages to glimpse more than the flickering of a solitary flame. Instead, he gets to see the sweeping of dark material and the flash of yellow feathers as Jimmy sinks a little further into the shadows lingering around the roof.

“What if I wanna see you?” He frowns, spinning in a circle, trying to track Jimmy’s path from the small glimpses he gets and the soft sound of his talons scraping against the metal supports.

“Then I might be able to help you with that,” something thumps to the ground behind him, arms wrapping around him securely before he’s being lifted off his feet. He laughs as Jimmy spins him in a small circle, the slightest rumble of a purr escaping him before he wriggles loose, turning to grab Jimmy before he can disappear again.

“Hi,” he grins up at Jimmy, tugging him a little closer. “You're the talk of the server, you know.”

“Am I?” Jimmy grins down at him as well, looking incredibly cosy in his cloak, the ruff of fur poofed-up around his neck. He looks far warmer than Tango feels right now- he can practically feel the warmth of Jimmy seeping through the sleeves of his coat, his mind demanding that he draw this source of warmth closer and not release him until he’s warm again. “What a surprise.”

“You don't sound very surprised.”

“Why would I be?” One of Jimmy’s wings shifts behind Tango as he speaks, “Isn't the whole point of me to inspire intrigue, get them guessing about who it is that’s lurking around the corner and guiding them to safety.”

“You're not meant to be guiding them to safety,” Tango frowns, but can't quite keep the grin out of his voice as he looks up at Jimmy. “You're meant to be leading them into danger on occasion, showing them that they can trust you be maybe shouldn't.”

“I'm getting to it,” Jimmy promises. “But I think they're more scared about the ghost haunting the Crypt right now. Leading them to their deaths will only spook them more.”

“They think you're Grian with spray-painted wings.”

“Ouch,” Jimmy’s lantern clinks a little, swinging forward from where it’s hanging on his belt. The flame within it has been extinguished, Tango notes, the pinprick of fire no longer on the edge of his consciousness. “I would have hoped they could at least see I'm taller than five-foot nothing.”

“Be glad Grian wasn't here to hear that.”

“I’d say it to his face.”

“Sure you would, dear.” Tango laughs at the face Jimmy pulls, tugging him a little closer. Jimmy radiates warmth like a furnace, and no matter what books he reads he can't seem to find an answer to why he’s so warm all the time.

“Aw, are you cold?” Jimmy’s arms circle around his back, pulling them flush against each other.

“A little,” he admits. “But I can think of one remedy to that.” He grins up at Jimmy, pressing himself even closer than before. He’s forced to stand on the tips of his toes to get even close to Jimmy’s face, tail swishing behind him to keep him balanced.

“Oh, really?” Jimmy’s grin matches his own. “What remedy might that be?”

Tango has always been good at leading by example than trying to explain his thought process, and it’s easy to pull Jimmy down to meet him halfway, arms hooked behind his neck and lips ghosting over Jimmy’s own before he kisses him properly.

It makes something hot ignite in his chest, warming the previously frozen parts of him. He feels Jimmy smile against his lips, breaking the kiss with a breathy laugh.

“What’s so funny?” He asks, annoyed as he pulls back, noses brushing from how close they are.

“Marigold’s cage just broke open.”

Jimmy laughs as Tango bolts, scrambling up the support beam and peering down at the canary, watching as he pats the ravager - Marigold, apparently, when did Jimmy have the time to name them - on the head. The ravager seems content to let him do so.

“You can clear that up.” He says, still perched on the beam above Jimmy’s head. Jimmy makes it look far more comfortable than it actually is. “Seeing as you've named them.”

“Aw,” Jimmy croons, a smile spreading across his face. “Are you jealous?”

“No.” He crosses his arms, watching as Jimmy nudges Marigold back into its cage. The ravager goes with only a small protest in the form of nudging at Jimmy gently. That gentle nudge is enough to almost send him sprawling, but Marigold seemed to have meant it with good intent.

The bars are fixed a moment later, Jimmy producing a new set from the depths of his coat.

“And you couldn't have done that yourself?”

“But then how would I get my thanks?” Jimmy smiles up at him, far sweeter and more endearing than Tango wants him to be right now- he scowls, but it’s all for show. Really, Jimmy making friends with his ravagers is probably the most in-character thing for him to do. Even if he refuses to go near the warden.

Tango doesn't have a good enough argument against Jimmy’s argument, slipping down from his perch and back towards Jimmy. He gives him a small peck, leaning back.

“I'm going to tell everyone that you're Grian with spray-painted wings.”

#juno.writes #tango tek #jimmy solidarity #solidaritek #trafficshipping #hermitcraft #team rancher #rancher duo #solidaritygaming #solidarity gaming #hermitfic

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biillyhargroves · 2 years

Text

i see so many teacher aus where billy teaches littles and that’s all well and good but listen to me. hear me out. that man would teach high school seniors exclusively. he teaches, like…ap english literature or some shit. he has a skull on his desk that he uses to dramatically reenact hamlet. every single student falls in love with him during the poetry unit, when he earnestly recites emily dickenson. he has a no bullshit policy, has been known to shout “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!” when his students purposefully and annoyingly over-analyze the text for brownie points. he stands outside his classroom during passing periods and defends the scrawny little freshmen nervously flitting about, always reminding his upperclassmen that they know better than to pick on the newbies. he has a this classroom has gone x days without quoting shakespeare sign that is always set to zero because of billy and billy alone. he plays his music while his students do quiet work, turning it up louder whenever one of them complains about it being “dinosaur music.” he treats his 17 and 18 year-olds like kindergartners, has a candy bucket and passes out stickers and has a secret stash of scented markers that he’ll let them use if they behave themselves. he has a classroom library that he stocks from garage sales, a bunch of ratty paperbacks, and he always makes sure to get multiple copies of popular books so that his students can keep the ones that resonate. he is everyone’s favorite teacher. he coaches the basketball and swim teams and his athletes use his classroom as a hideout, a hang out. he’s got an open door policy, let’s the quiet kids pass their lunch period with him so long as they don’t disturb him while he’s grading. he is the teacher that ever visiting alumni has to say hi to. he always gets hand cramps around college admissions season because of the amount of recommendation letters he writes for his kids. he’s the teacher that makes an impact, the one that all of his students remember five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line. he has a display in his classroom of college graduation photos former students have sent him, every one tacked next to the heartfelt thank you card the student sent along. that is teacher!billy. thank u for ur time.

#billy hargrove #i’ll die on this hill #billy hargrove headcanon #he also insists that his students call him billy and not mr. hargrove #writes it in big letters on the board on the first day of class so that they know #they’re on a first name basis #(steve on the other hand teaches exclusively freshman)#(more to come)

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airas-story · 4 months

Text

Zero Stars

“How would you rate your pain?” Stephen asked quietly, trying to focus past the ill feeling in his chest. Tony was leaned against a wall while bleeding from several slashes in his side, his eyes screwed up in pain. Damn wraiths.

“Zero stars,” Tony told him, sending him what was probably meant to be a cheeky grin. It was rather ruined by the grimace of pain that won the battle of facial expressions. “Would not recommend.”

Stephen didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh, scream, or smack Tony upside the head. None of them felt like particularly appropriate reactions to the situation, though. “Zero to ten, Tony. How bad is it?”

Tony winced, gaze darting to look at anything but Stephen. “Four.”

And since Tony had a very flawed view of what constituted pain, Stephen could easily add several levels to that.

Stephen bit his lip, turning his eyes back to the claw marks in Tony’s side. Tony hadn’t been in his suit when he’d been attacked, and while he’d managed to handle himself fairly well, all told, the wraiths had still gotten a good few hits in.

Tony was lucky he wasn’t dead.

He could tell that Tony was trying to clear the pain from his face. “Stephen, sweetheart—“ It was always a bad sign when Tony pulled out ‘sweetheart’, ”—I’m going to be fine. I promise. You’ll badger Christine on her day off, I’ll be a terrible patient, you’ll hover and do that annoying ‘backseat doctor’ thing you do, Christine will give you the murder eye, and despite all that, she’ll patch me up just fine and I’ll be complaining about red-eyed shadow creatures—“

“Wraiths,” Stephen supplied.

“—And driving you insane within days.”

“You never could,” Stephen said quietly.

Tony’s lip tilted up in a pained smile. “Yeah, I know. But that doesn’t stop me from giving it my best shot. You know, before you, I was pretty sure I could irritate anyone into leaving me alone.”

“I’m too persistent for that,” Stephen acknowledged. Some of his tension was battling to release itself, soothed by Tony’s assurances.

Most of it was held stringently in place by the fact that Tony had been attacked because of his connection to Stephen. That Stephen had been the one to endanger Tony, that Tony was hurt because of him.

“Stephen.” Tony took his hand. “Stop. I’m going to be fine. Those little black gremlins—“

“Wraiths.”

”—would have attacked someone, they didn’t need outside motivation for that. Maybe they chose me because of you, but the violence was already there. Better me than someone else.” Tony met his gaze. “And maybe you’d have chosen yourself instead, but that just proves me right. Better us than some civilians.”

Stephen wondered what it said about him that, yes, he’d choose for Tony to get attacked over someone innocent when he claimed to love Tony.

But then, Tony felt the same.

Yes, they’d both choose to take the pain themselves, but when that wasn’t an option, they’d hand that pain to each other before they’d ever risk anyone else.

Maybe it was messed up. Maybe it was who they were. Maybe it was simply how it had to be.

“But seriously,” Tony said, interrupting Stephen’s thoughts. “Zero stars. So get me to Christine already so I can get over this.”

#ironstrange #tony stark #stephen strange #fic #injury

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its-elioo · 6 months

Text

Incorrect quotes (RnM fanfic related)

Rainbow: When I get murdered, can you make sure I become an unsolved case?

Sideswipe: What?

Rainbow: I want to be on Buzzfeed Unsolved.

Sideswipe: Can we go back to the part where you said “when I get murdered”?

Sunset: I want to be a caterpillar.

Optimus: Explain?

Sunset: Eat a lot, sleep for a while, wake up beautiful.

Optimus: You are aware that they have a lifespan of two to five weeks, correct?

Sunset: That’s another highlight.

Optimus: Sunset, no—

Bumblebee: I’m not mad, I just want to know why you need a fake ID.

Fluttershy: *mumbles*

Bumblebee: What was that?

Fluttershy: …You need to be over 18 at Petco to hold the puppies.

Optimus: You are very mature for your age, Sunset.

Sunset: Thanks, it’s the trauma.

Rainbow: Sibling relationships are weird.

Rainbow: Like, I’d give Sideswipe my life on a dangerous mission without a second thought but there’s no way in hell that I’d give him a single fry from my McDonald’s meal.

Rarity: *hurts herself*

Rarity: SH-oot!

*Knock Out and Sideswipe look at each other in confusion*

Sideswipe: What was that?

Rarity: I don’t swear.

Knock Out: Why not?

Rarity: It’s not ladylike. No well-mannered woman does it.

Rainbow: *walks by in the background and stubs her toe*

Rainbow: FUCK!

Rarity: …most of us anyway.

Twilight: Excuse me, who’s in charge here?

Ratchet: Well, usually whoever yells the loudest.

Rarity: We can’t kill him!

Knock Out: Not with that attitude, we can’t.

Fixit, gesturing to Twilight: Sir, that’s my emotional support human.

Pinkie: You call it a near death experience-

Rainbow: We call it a vibe check from God!

Ratchet: *optic twitches*

Sunset: When I asked if my day could get any worse it was rhetorical question. NOT A CHALLENGE!

Sunset: I stopped a murder today.

Optimus: Good job, Sunset. I’m proud of you. How did you do it?

Sunset, staring seriously and ominously at Optimus: Self-Control.

Bulkhead: What are your superpowers again?

Applejack: Super-strength, agility and stamina, yo mamma jokes-

Bulkhead: Yo mamma jokes?

Applejack: Well Bulk, I’m an orphan so they can’t say anything back.

Bulkhead: Kid—

Ratchet: How would you rate your pain?

Twilight: Zero stars, would not recommend.

Rainbow: Hey, Ratch.

Ratchet: *sighs* Yes?

Rainbow: If you say the words “control alt delete” do you just, like, straight up die?

Ratchet:

Ratchet: Every day I convince myself humans are intelligent life forms and every day I am proven wrong.

Sunset: I’m willing to do a lot of things.

Sunset: But admitting to Optimus that I’m cold after he told me to bring a jacket is not one of them.

Everyone else: Knock Out, no!

Knock Out: Knock Out, yes!

Rarity: Knock Out, no.

Knock Out: Knock Out, no.

Fluttershy: *staring blankly at a wall*

Bumblebee: Fluttershy? What’s wrong?

Fluttershy: Did you know that rap stands for ‘rhyme and poetry’?

Bumblebee:

Bumblebee: *sits down and joins Fluttershy in staring at the wall*

Arcee: You’re okay, right? You’re not hurt?

Twilight: No, no, no, I’m fine! Totally fine, no, no, I’m fine.

Arcee: Really? Because you’re repeating your words you look pale and you look like you’re about to topple over.

Twilight: Yeah, you might wanna catch me.

Twilight: [holds up a cauliflower in front of Ratchet] What is this?

Ratchet: … a cauliflower?

Twilight: [turns to Pinkie and Smokescreen] Okay, now tell him what you think it is.

Both: Ghost broccoli!

Rainbow: I’m ten times funnier than you.

Sideswipe: Ten times zero is still zero.

Rainbow: Well, jokes on you, I can’t do math.

Arcee: You’re up early this morning.

Twilight: …

Arcee: You never went to sleep, did you?

Rainbow: You’re an attention-seeker.

Sideswipe: What?! I’m the total opposite of an attention-seeker. I’m the best there ever is, I do not- hey, don’t look away when I’m talking here!

Knock Out: Do you think I don’t like you? I do. I would kill for you!

Knock Out: Please ask me to kill for you.

Rarity: …First of all, calm down.

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syncopein3d · 3 months

Text

Some Further Clarification on Starter Astartes

All right, I've been hearing some constructive criticism in response to this post. Yes, I did suggest in that post that new Chaos Astartes keepers should start with Thousand Sons or Emperor's Children, because they are comfortable in smaller groups and are colorful and eye-catching. I didn't mean that a criticism of those of you who have adopted Astartes you found abandoned or renegade. Obviously you're doing the best you can. My advice was meant only for people who are actually going out in search of specific Astartes that easily fit into their lifestyle. Some others have said that TS are not recommended in general because of their unusual social needs, but I have a different opinion, and hear me out on this. Yes, Thousand Sons do need to be kept with Rubrics, but if you've found one sorcerer, the odds are you've also found at least six to ten Rubricae, and while they take up space, Rubricae have zero need for nutrition or socialization beyond their sorcerer. Helping to clean and maintain the Rubricae is a perfect way to bond with your first sorcerers, an easy "in." Over time, your Thousand Sons sorcerers will require a lot of artifacts and jewels that would be expensive if you were acquiring them yourself, but you shouldn't be attempting that anyway; hunting for these items through the Hell of the Warp and all of its daemon worlds is one of the most important forms of enrichment for sorcerers. Similarly, you do not need to be involved in your sorcerers' relationships with tutelaries or daemons of Tzeentch; they will manage that on their own and should be allowed to do so. If they bond with you early on, they will always come back. Thousand Sons are very sensitive and easily attached to humans and others, which also makes it easy to add other breeds of Chaos Astartes later. This brings us to Emperor's Children. Two or three of these smaller, more colorful Astartes are an ornament to any household, they're energetic and amusing, and they are easily bonded by bringing them little gifts and art supplies. Finding enrichment for them is easy as well, as long as you keep introducing new artistic methods and media for them to absorb and critique. Always remember that Emperor's Children are perfectionists, and criticism of their own and others' work is an endless source of enrichment for them. This is why I gave no warning about their tendency toward unhealthy dependencies. As long as you provide them with healthy enrichment sources, you can generally keep them away from drugs and sensational excess. Slaanesh is a god of excessive sensation, but you can provide that excessive sensation through other outlets that have more long-term potential. Another benefit to this is that these sensitive fellows also easily become obsessive about one particular interest and can maintain that interest for thousands of years, so if you get them into painting or sculpture early on, they may well be happy with that for longer than a human is likely to naturally live. That's another problem, but dealing with the very long Astartes life expectancy compared to other creatures is a topic for another day.

#space marine husbandry

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artzychic27 · 2 months

Note

Here's an idea for the Arkham AU

Could we have some notes about Miss Bustier as their teacher? I assume she works at the Asylum.

Caline Bustier is one of the top psychiatrists at L’asile d’Arkham, specializing in children and teenagers. She soon meets fifteen villainous teenagers

While she may seem unassuming, she knows how to dodge a bullet, knife, and acid hurled at her. That’s why she got hired

Mlle. Bustier: Hello, I’m Caline Bustier, and I’m your psychiatrist. *Dodge’s Adrien’s sledgehammer, Rose’s vine, Juleka’s knife, and throws one of Myléne’s fear gas grenades out of the window before it can explode* Now, let’s all go around and share our names, pronouns, and why we’re here.

She has access to very detailed files on each of the young villains, listing things such as their past home lives, psychological history, any emotional trauma, etc. to get a feel on why they’re all the way they are

For some like Marinette, Adrien, and Kim, it’s pretty obvious- chemicals warped their minds or society was just being a little bitch

She’d like to pick Nino’s brain a bit more to find out what went wrong when his mothers created him

After reading up on Sabrina, Nathaniel, Myléne, Kim, and Ivan’s files, she’s wondering if there’s any way to press charges against their respective abusers

She really wants to have a few words with Audrey Bourgeois. She just wants to talk, that’s it.

Alya has high levels of intelligence, but uses it in a destructive and rather disturbing manner when she’s bored

Also, Max clearly has some sort of superiority complex that went undiagnosed for years, leading to his robot uprising at school

When she’s not giving therapy, she’s making sure her kids patients are treated like humans by the guards. That means making sure they aren’t all doped up, getting Kim out of the basement, making sure Alya has access to twelve-sided rubix cubes, letting Juleka and Rose spend time together, helping Ivan with his ptsd, and helping Nathaniel with his anger problems

So, she doesn’t care for this Lionel Bolton character (Brownie points for whoever can guess this reference)

Bruce Wayne himself felt Bolton was right for the job, but it seems he doesn’t know what’s going on behind closed doors

When going to check the security footage, Mlle. Bustier became suspicious when she saw that any footage of Bolton was gone

So, she goes to the villains one by one to get their sides of the story

Adrien: … I got nothin’ to say.

Mlle. Bustier: But, surely, you must have something-

Adrien: Ya got a hearing problem or somethin’?! NO! Nada! Ixnay! Zero! Zilch! Bupkis! Nothing! Okay?!

—

Kim: I told you for the tenth time! He didn’t do anything! You think I can’t take care of myself?!

Mlle. Bustier: … Then, would you care to explain how you got that scratch on your arm, Kim? It doesn’t look much like an accident.

Kim: … Happened before I got arrested. Just some kids from school, alright?

—

Marinette: I ain’t. Saying. Nothing.

Mlle. Bustier: Marinette if you’re afraid of M. Bolton-

Marinette: What’s there to be scared of?! I’m the Harlequin of Hate! The Clown Princess of Crime! I scare people! Not the other way around! Got it?! He’s just some lousy do-good cop you chuckles hired! Nothing else! OKAY?!

—

Mlle. Bustier: Myléne, you’ve been sitting there quietly for ten minutes. Surely, you must have something to say, dear.

Myléne: … No.

Mlle. Bustier: And yet, yours’ was the loudest voice of protest. You must have some misgivings about his methods.

Myléne: I-I was mistaken.

When they aren’t talking, she decides to pull a page out of Batman’s book and do a gambit

Mlle. Bustier: Well, then, based on your testimonies, I suppose I’ll send M. Wayne a letter of recommendation on M. Bolton’s behalf, proposing an extension of M. Bolton’s contract for an additional eighteen months.

Alya: NO! You can’t! You don’t know what he’s doing to us!

Lila: *Slaps a hand over Alya’s mouth* Shut up! Just shut up! Don’t listen to her, she’s delusional! We’re fine!

Adrien: No, it’s all true! If we don’t speak up now, we’ll never get another chance! He threatens us, takes away our privileges even when we’re good!

Max: He says scum like us must be kept in line!That’s why he chains us down in our cells at night and electrifies the door!

Lila: He threatened to send me away to get a lobotomy!

Nathaniel: HE’S AN ANIMAL!

Ivan: A monster!

Juleka: Keep him away from us!

So, yeah. No one messes with her kids patients

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous #dc comics #mlb au #dc villains #Arkham asylum #caline bustier #ask me stuff #answered ask

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art-blogge · 5 months

Text

Unscheduled Update

"You'll be traveling by Warp Train," had been Vergilius' entire explanation before kicking everyone off of the bus. No one seemed bothered by this, but Dante couldn't help but hesitate. They'd spoken to the team's W Corp identities- They had a reason to be concerned. Didn't monsters roam those trains?

They grew even more concerned when Faust stopped them before boarding.

"Faust needs you to wear something, Dante," she stated. When Dante leaned down, she flipped open the panel on the back of their head and plugged something in.

"Consider this mercy, Dante. The last thing Faust needs is you overloading your memory card and brain."

<"Huh? Huh??"> Wasn't this a ten second trip?! If Dante was concerned before, now they were downright terrified.

Don Quixote eventually dragged Dante onto the train, being the only one actually able to catch Dante when they attempted to flee the situation. She was unfortunately Very Fast, and Dante was Not. They continued trying to escape as Faust handed some paperwork to a nearby W Corp employee before boarding the train. Everyone involved completely ignored Heathcliff's repeated attempts to playfully shove Meursault onto the tracks.

Yi Sang lightly patted Dante's shoulder and said something to them, but Dante processed none percent of it in favor of dreading the trip. They could only manage to weakly tick <"Okay…"> in response to whatever Yi Sang had said.

"I shant wait for our due arrival!" Don cheerfully announced, dragging Dante into the waiting train. There was nothing Dante could do to stop her- They had the Captivity debuff and couldn't take action until they were released. Around them, the other Sinners picked seats and sat down with far less concern. It was only a ten second trip, why would seating partners matter?

"Faust has something important to say," Faust plainly stated, turning around in her seat to see the other Sinners, "Faust hopes you are prepared for what is to come."

Well, now Dante felt even Worse™. Whatever was coming was bad enough that it warranted Faust warning not only them, but the other Sinners too. They couldn't help but shudder in their seat.

"Why is my seat glowing?" Sinclair quietly asked.

"What the hell is this glowy shit?" Heathcliff loudly asked.

As general unrest rose among the Sinners, Dante glanced towards their own glowing seat, which soon enough died down. They didn't get to comment on it themselves though- The train began to move.

"Ten seconds!! Count!!" Don exclaimed, and Dante opted to humor her by counting down. When they reached zero, they looked around. The train was still moving. Had they miscounted? How embarrassing for a clock to miscount. Dante opted to try again, pushing the idea of things going wrong out of their mechanical head.

"Thirty seconds now," Meursault stated, preventing Dante from making a third attempt, "We have not arrived."

"We aren't going to for quite a while," Faust stated, standing up from her seat and smoothing out her coat. "It's ten seconds in our world. WARP Corporation uses an alternate dimension. Faust recommends getting up and meeting other passengers. It is going to be quite a while. Faust knows this, of course."

Faust then ignored all other questions and left the train car, leaving the other Sinners scrambling to figure out what was going on. Dante opted to tune the Sinners out in favor of gripping their own head in panic. Dante should have paid more attention to the W Corp identities whenever they spoke to them! Why else would Meursault's W Corp identity speak about personally collecting body pieces?

"M-Manager Esquire, wh-while I am impressed with thy feat of strength, please do release me..!!"

Dante hadn't even realized that they'd started clinging to Don like their life had depended on Don suffocating and immediately released her. Oops.

<"Whatever you do, Don…">

Dante didn't get to finish speaking again, fully due to Don running out in excitement to meet other passengers (and probably start a fight). This needed to stop happening. What kind of Manager doesn't even get to finish their own sentences? At this rate, they wouldn't even be able to finish their own thou--

----

--ghts. One moment everything had been fine, the next there was a large splattering of blood on the wall in front of them. Dante blared in alarm and jumped out their seat, wildly looking around. They hadn't SEEN anything happen, so where had that come from?!

"Faust predicted this as well. Welcome back, Dante."

Dante whipped around (a little too fast) to spot Faust leaning against the opposite wall. She'd been injured in the.. What, past ten minutes? That Dante hadn't been looking, and her hair was a mess.

"Do not attempt rewinding here. That may interfere with W Corp's technology." Before Dante could even consider responding, Faust added "Faust feels it necessary to inform you that it has been a full year."

A brief pause for Dante to numbly nod. A… A whole year? Just like that?

"Faust's device is working as intended. Full prevention of memory card overload. Faust originally wanted you in first-class so that you could sleep though all of this, but your head is incompatible with the pods."

Dante could feel the clock hands starting to spin with their own mounting confusion. There was a time and place to panic and this was not it. This was not it. This was absolut--

----

--ely not it.

<"Wait.">

They were staring at a bloodied ceiling now, the only sounds being the train moving and the dripping of blood. Dante didn't want to look away from the ceiling. If the CEILING was covered in blood, how was the rest of the train car?

"W.B.," Ryoshu hissed from nearby, and Dante couldn't help but jump again. Again with the being startled by someone speaking to them! This was already getting old.

"I have created true art, Dante. P.W.I." (Please Witness It.)

Okay, they were about to see gore.

<"Thanks for the warning,"> they ticked, before turning their head to the side to peep the horror.

It was far more gore than Dante had been prepared to see. A mess of moist entrails and limbs were carefully pinned to the wall and nearby seats, matching a Ryoshu that was primarily a walking mass of fresh meat. The worst part? Everything pinned to the walls and seats were still very much moving. Hands were trying to free themselves and each other from oppressive nails. Organs pulsed rhythmically, glistening in the flickering florescent light. Ryoshu simply grinned. Dante felt their stomach swirling and quickly looked back at the ceiling.

<"Very nice, Ryoshu,"> was all they could manage before needing to repress the urge to vomit- Not that they could. Could the next year come any faster?

----

Apparently, yes. The ceiling was suddenly clean again, and the nausea had subsided like it had never been there to begin with.

<"What this time…?">

Sitting up and looking around, Ryoshu's makeshift art exhibit had vanished and been cleaned up- and so had any other blood and viscera in the train car. A welcome relief, but that managed to only concern Dante more. People had definitely been here and Dante hadn't been aware of it… Had anything happened to them during that time?

Dante very carefully inspected themselves and their clothes. Beyond the dried bloodstains on their uniform, nothing seemed off. Good. That's how they liked it. The little bit of dried blood was tolerable and could be dealt with later. Dante then thought about leaving the train car. They hadn't seen outside of this car yet, but this seemed like the safest place to be. Combined with them repeatedly fainting, it was probably for the best that they stayed put.

They could get used to this. It couldn't be much longer-

----

-Pain pain pain pain pain PAIN!

Dante failed to hold back a blaring scream of agony. This was worse than anything they'd felt before. Even reviving all twelve Sinners from complete annihilation didn't hurt this badly! Fearful, Dante attempted to sit up and look at themselves.

Guts and gore were familiar to Dante, but not… Not their own.

They'd been torn to shreds. Only some of their torso and left arm were still intact. The various organs Dante couldn't name were still moving, even with some of them scattered about the floor. Their own heart started beating faster and faster, speeding up with their own mounting horror.

<"HEEELLLP!!"> Dante screamed, alarms blaring so loudly that it hurt.

They couldn't see it, but they heard a door open. Okay, good, help had arrived…

----

Their vision was suddenly assaulted by all sorts of colors. Something was in front of them, unmoving. The pain had not ceased, either. It had actually gotten Worse in the interim and Dante couldn't help but make a pained whine.

Everything shifted. More colors and oddly enough, chunks of meat. Another shift, and they realized they were being carried. What kind of Abnormality had them?? Where were the Sinners? Smeared on the walls of other train cars, probably. Either way, things were not getting better. It's not getting better! It was now worse!

Dante shuddered, and things painfully shifted yet again. They hurt so badly that they couldn't even process the voices they were hearing. They were dead. They were so, so dead….

--------

"-Nine, ten!" Don cheerfully counted, and the train came to a stop.

"That wasn't so bad," Sinclair muttered, worming his way out of Rodion's arms. Don turned to Dante to tell them the ride hadn't been so scary, but Dante had either fallen asleep or fainted within those ten seconds.

"Faust figured this was a good time for a system update," Faust stated, calmly reaching around to pull her device out of Dante's head. "My fault."

Several Sinners complained about this, not that Faust really cared. She knew the device had done its purpose, amd she had no intention of explaining its real purpose. Instead, she gave a single order.

"Meursault, could you carry them?"

Without comment, Meursault went and picked up their Manager. No response of any sort. They really were out cold. Meursault took a few moments to consider the best way to carry Dante, extra consideration being given towards their head and neck. In the end, Meursault opted to just carry them in his arms, their head against his upper arm.

"Could you take any longer?" Heathcliff teased, not expecting an answer.

"This is the safest way to carry them in their current state," Meursault began, watching Heathcliff carefully to gauge if he should keep speaking. No negative response, so he proceeded to explain his thought process. It was too late to stop him now.

--------

Dante woke with a start, half-prepared to scream. A sharp inhale and... This was a different ceiling.

Still deep in Panic with negative sanity, Dante flung their arms around whoever it was sitting next to them. A Sinner was alive! Human!!

"Good morning Manager Esquire!!" shouted Don Quixote from her place on Meursault's lap. She thought absolutely nothing of the situation and moved to hug her beloved Manager Esquire. Meursault himself didn't move, currently being held captive by his Manager. He also stayed quiet to let Don Quixote keep yelling.

"It truly hath been a ten second journey! We were tasked with observing thy reaction to thee upping of dates?"

She seemed unsure about that last part, so Meursault took over explaining.

"Faust stated you were given a data update during our trip and that you needed to be watched in case of negative effects. You do not seem well."

Dante stared at them, still shaking. What? What?

<"What? That can't be what that was….">

They ignored Meursault repeating what he'd said. It'd been far too real to just pass off as a side effect from some update. Anyway, Faust had never given them an "update" before!

<"Faust said it was to stop my head from getting fried…. And that if I'd b-been in first class, it wouldn't have worked right…">

The slight stutter in their ticking betrayed how scared they still were.

"Correct."

Faust had leaned into the room, her face neutral as always. Dante whipped their head around to look at her so fast it hurt their neck.

"Your current head did not play well with the Warp Train. You are unharmed and the Sinners are unharmed."

Dante didn't respond to that. They knew what they saw. They knew what Faust had said thirty seconds into the trip. But did Faust?

Perhaps not. They'd have to ask the W Corp identities more questions later. More detailed questions. Perhaps they could try asking that poor W-Corp employee Abnormality the next time they saw it. It couldn't hurt to try.

"I do believe we shalt use this Warp Train again!" Don Quixote announced cheerfully, and Dante couldn't help but immediately blare that they refused. Absolutely not! Never again!

#writing tag #dante lcb #limbus company

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