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readyplayerhobi · 4 years

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Flower | 01

; Hoseok x Reader

; Genre: Fluff, future angst, future smut

; Word Count: 2.8k

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh...incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: This is going to be a drabble series. It’s not planned out, it has no planning. It will be written as and when I get the inspiration for it. The Flower app is inspired by the Bumble app in which women make the first move on it. This is just purely something to try and get me back into enjoying writing again so...please show it and me some love because I already love this Hoseok? I haven’t proof read lol

Flower Masterpost

“Okay...okay. Let’s do this...you can do this. It’s easy. Just...download the app and go. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? Well you could get murdered. That would suck. But it would resolve a lot of issues I guess. On the other hand...I could meet the love of my life. I mean...is that likely?” The soft sounds of your muttering are probably barely heard over the soft playing music through the speakers connected to your television, YouTube playing mindlessly to itself on the screen.

Your focus though, is solely on the phone in your hand. Soyeon, your best friend, had been bugging you to join some online dating sites for a while and it had only gotten worse when your other friend Chungha told her that she fully agreed with her. Part of you felt cornered by them both but another part of you understood them.

They were just looking out for you. You were naturally quiet and shy, introverted and preferring to remain inside or on the sides if you were dragged to a party. An inability to engage in small talk meant that that you struggled to make conversation with people as well. That all resulted in a small circle of friends who understood you well but that was it, everyone else was merely acquaintances who would hang out with you simply because they were friends with your friends.

As such, it meant that you struggled with dating. And by that, you mean that you hadn’t been in a relationship for a long time. Nor could you do flings like some of your friends did, the very thought filled you with anxiety.

This was why they had suggested trying online dating, because you’d lamented to them about how lonely you’d started to feel. You were still relatively young, and you knew that relationships weren’t the be all and end all. But when you haven’t dated since college, it starts to feel like no one is interested in you at all. And that was a hard feeling to take in.

You wanted to be like your friends. To have someone to talk to about things without feeling embarrassed, someone who would enjoy being in your company and actively seek you out, someone to be intimate with. Someone to fall in love with. It sounded cheesy and stupid but both Soyeon and Chungha had taken your concerns to heart.

They’d asked if you wanted to be set up on blind dates but the very idea of that made you lose your breath with anxiety, the fear of failure or judgement from someone who has never met you before overwhelming. So Soyeon had suggested online dating and now here you were, curled up on your couch on a Saturday night, a glass of water on the side because you don’t like alcohol and the app store open to dating apps.

“Tinder...isn’t that just for hookups?” You murmur, frowning as you look at some of the reviews. There were probably people who had managed to get lasting relationships on Tinder, but the idea of having random people actively deciding whether or not you were worth trying simply from a photo or something was horrible. Not that you had any idea how it actually worked, but still…

A few other apps look to be the more traditional online dating route and you consider whether to download one of them. But then you see an app that attracts your attention, a small soft pink and orange logo with the outline of a white flower in it. The title is simply ‘Flower’ and you take click on it to read the description.

‘Find the perfect partner and watch love or friendship bloom like a flower!

The Flower app asks you to set up a profile by asking you a series of questions to determine your interests and personality. We then set you up with a series of people we consider to be a good match and give you the opportunity to initiate a conversation!

Here at Flower, we want to make sure that dating is fun and most importantly, equal. As such, we allow women to be the one to initiate contact with their matches. This means that if you’re looking for a same sex relationship, then you can both reach out. The same goes if you don’t identify as female or male. If you’re looking for a heterosexual relationship, then you can reach out to your match and he can decide whether he wants to respond.

We don’t tolerate any form of hate speech or intolerance and will respond with quick action against this. At Flower, we promote inclusivity, diversity and tolerance. We want the world to grow and bloom with love, one relationship at a time!’

The reviews for the app seemed to back up their description and you felt curious. An impulse takes over and you download it, tongue sticking out as you wait before loading it up once it’s done. The interface is clean and take a moment to chew your lip before clicking the sign up button.

Everything seems to be rudimentary at first, asking for your age and location, name and occupation. But then it starts to ask some other questions. Your favourite film genres, a list of favourite films, your favourite books, where you’d like to go on vacation, favourite music and songs and so much more. Some of it felt bizarre, like would you rather eat chicken or beef? Would you rather drive an Audi or a Ford?

You presumed it all had a reason though, and after what felt like five minutes of answering questions, you finally had a profile. Flicking through the gallery on your phone, you found a picture that you felt was flattering while still showing your personality. It’s from a few months ago and was taken with a Polaroid camera, giving it that distinctive filter that always seemed to be flattering everyone.

You were giving a small smile, eyes looking to the left of the camera while your chin was in your hand. Nose wrinkled slightly, a soft and fluffy white cream sweater covers you while a cherry blossom scarf is wrapped elegantly round your neck. And on top of all that...a bright yellow Pikachu hat sits on top of your head.

It had been your birthday and the girls had managed to coax you out for dinner before presenting you with a bunch of presents. They’d been a random assortment, as usual, but you’d loved it all. A skin care gift set, the Pikachu hat and a Pusheen stationery set. Your colleagues at your admin assistant job had given you the side eye when you’d added yet more cute and strange things to your already colourful and cluttered desk but you’d ignore them.

This picture had been one of the best taken of you recently and you smiled gently as you made it your profile picture. You didn’t like being photographed, constantly convinced that you were unattractive but your friends were convinced otherwise.

Everything looked to be set up and you wondered what you meant to do now, when a sudden notification pops up on the screen with ‘20 Matches Found’. Sudden anxiety makes you feel sick, stomach rolling with nerves as your veins practically fizz as you click on the view more button. These were people who the app had compared your own answers to and considered to be the best matches.

There’s a tiny moment of waiting as a tiny flower in orange and pink blooms and you sigh when it finally clears. The profiles are shown in descending order with those most matched to least. A tiny refresh button in the corner let’s you see that you can refresh your matches if necessary.

Each profile shows their profile image, their name, age and location. Scrolling through them, you note idly that you seem to have got a wide range of people that you had matched with. A 24-year-old swimming instructor named Kim Chaeyoung, a 31-year-old high school English teacher named Seo Jinwoo, a 29-year-old mechanic called Park Jisoo and more.

It was interesting to see the wide range of people that had come back and you perused their profiles carefully, reading the little description they’d written for themselves along with a few answers to questions similar to what you’d had to answer. The app seemed to pull a range range of questions for you read, with each person’s being slightly different.

You supposed it meant that you would need to ask for that information and you found yourself curious about one or two people, pressing the little button that indicated it would bookmark their profile for later viewing. Apparently you had a week to make the first interaction before it would vanish.

Humming lightly, you wondered if anyone would be interested in talking to you?

Everyone looked so pretty on here and you wondered if you matched up to them. Would they consider you worth their time? Biting your lower lip, you shrug your shoulders and decided you had nothing to lose really. You didn’t know these people in real life and no one would laugh at you for simply reaching out and trying to make a connection.

You come across one profile that makes you pause though, your brow lifting in surprise as you wonder why on earth the app has matched you with this guy. The two of you don’t even look like you come from the same planet, nevermind have enough aligning interests to warrant being in your top 20 matches at the moment.

Clicking on his profile, you read through his basic info question while you purse your lips, making soft noises in your throat.

Jung Hoseok. 28 years old. IT Technician.

He sounded pretty normal and you wouldn’t even give it a second thought normally, but his appearance did not match the casual job description he had. Maybe you were just being stereotypical here, but most of the IT people in your workplace were of the nerdy looking variety. And you only say that because every one of them wore some form of Rick and Morty or other pop culture shirts.

Which you were fine with, because you enjoyed most of the same things too. But no one looked like this guy.

The reason you were so surprised was because of his profile picture, and despite your earlier thoughts about just sending messages to everyone for the sake of it, you felt a well of anxiety rising again as you looked at him. This guy is quite possibly the most handsome man you’ve ever seen, the kind of guy that people only think exists when they’re rich and famous.

But he’s also completely unlike you. He’s evidently at some sort of event as he has a bottle of beer in his hand while his other hand is making the metal horns shape. One eye is closed to camera, winking while his tongue is poking out of his mouth on one side, white teeth visible beneath pink lips amidst gold skin. A silver ring pierced his lower lip on the right while a small ball is visible in his tongue.

His hair is jet black, gleaming in the crappy lighting in a messy state that looks slightly wet while his exposed skin has a sheen of sweat on it. A red and black shirt unbuttoned on him, rolled up to his elbows to reveal toned forearms that are completely covered in vibrant and bright colour.

The tattoos make what you presume to be full sleeves on both arms, his left arm appearing to be a swirling galaxyscape with brilliant galaxies, planets, moons and more interwoven with, bizarrely, dragons that are almost transparent. They look beautiful though, and you get an image of space dragons made of fine dust flying through the vast expanse of space as you look at them.

His other arm looks to be a mesh of things together, flames and flowers and skulls and ships. None of it makes any sense to you, but you’re positive it probably means something to him. One of the sleeves expands onto his hand, the one showing the horns and you eye the clock tattoo that takes up the space.

His tattoos look to expand beyond his arms as the black top beneath his shirt gives tantalising glimpses of the black and colour tattoos that obviously sprawl across his chest. Strands creep upwards, almost to his neck and you get the impression of something fiery, the soft wisps of red and orange looking like burning embers on his skin.

This guy...looked like he belonged in a metal band or tattoo shop. And he was...beautiful, way out of your league.

Which was why you had to have experienced an out of body moment when your finger presses the message button, the screen popping up with an automatic message pre filled out for you.

“Hey, Flower shows that we’re good matches so I’m reaching out to you! If you would like to talk to me, please respond!”

Scowling, you deleted the message, deciding it would be bad manners to just send the template message to someone that you were attracted to. That thought gives you pause, acknowledging that you are in fact attracted to him. He looked like the kind of guy who would take one look at your profile and laugh himself home at the prospect of doing anything with you.

The man clearly thrived on social situations, enough of his profile gave that away and again you wondered why the app matched you together. Maybe he had some secret love of Pokemon or something. Looks could be deceiving, obviously.

And even if you’d never listened to a metal song in your life...you were always open to trying new things. If you were going to open yourself up to the prospect of online dating, then you may as well go fully out of comfort zone.

Swallowing, you carefully type out a short message and spend the next five minutes reading it over as anxiety and fear swirl within you. Indecision causes you to wonder whether you should just delete it all and ignore his profile, going for the safe option of someone who looks like they’d be more accepting of you on your list.

But the allure of something so unlike you pulls you in and you press send, watching the message swoosh away and changing his profile to a soft pink to indicate that you’d initiated contact. Almost immediately you feel sick, body going cold as you pant ever so slightly.

Oh god, he’s going to read that message and take one look at your profile then delete the message. He probably had hookups all the time, the kind of guy you shouldn’t get involved with. You had no interest in being a one night stand and- you shake your head, clenching your teeth and taking a deep breath.

Stereotypes are damaging to yourself and others, you tell yourself quietly. There’s no reason to paint him with a negative brush already when he’s not even had a chance to do anything. And so what if he only wanted hookups? It was the 21st century, men and women could sleep with who they wanted, as often as they wanted and they shouldn’t face the prejudice you’re showing him already.

Before you can even think anything else though, your phone sends out a soft, melodic note and you look down with wide eyes. The message icon has an orange notification on it, signifying that you have a new message on there. Hesitating, you wonder if it’s just one of those generic ‘welcome’ messages that you sometimes get when you sign up for sites.

But the name of the sender tells you very much that it’s not a generic message, and the cold fear mixes with nervous excitement and trepidation as you see Jung Hoseok’s name. He must have already been on his phone to have responded so fast, and you wonder if he’s just sent a polite ‘thank you but no’ back.

It would be awfully nice of him if he did. Embarrassing, but polite.

Opening the message, your jaw drops and eyes widen as you read what he’s responded with.

You: Hi. I don’t know how to use this properly, so I’m sorry if I do it wrong. You showed as a match and...well I guess I say I’m interested? Not as a friend, unless you want that. I mean...the other way. Feel free to say no! Y/N

Reading it back over, you cringe at how...you it sounds. Hesitant and awkward and shy. Dammit, why couldn’t you just seize the moment and sound confident for once? Say something bold that would attract his attention.

And then you read his response.

Hoseok: Hey Y/N. Thanks for reaching out. How are you tonight?

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tripstaysnoided · 4 years

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Flow Just Like Water

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Story and writing-related transparency update and my many shames...

The Question on Everyone’s Mind

“Hey you haven’t updated No Stars over Uptown in almost a year...”

Hmm, I hate it when you’re right. (This section has been rewritten ad-nauseam to curb back the bitchiness by the way)

So back in early/mid 2018, the idea was to divorce Uptown from a person who influenced it (and myself) heavily. She was my most important audience member, the closest friend I ever had, and unfortunately someone who used her power to bully, ostracize, and hurt others with my help. I cut contact when the hurt + some self-awareness finally reached me. Apologies were made and I feel like my work will never be done with it, but there was still Uptown.

Between censored comments, entirely recasting Axel’s save, different plot threads, and a load of disclaimers, there was nothing that would scrub her influence from the story. There was no way to cleanly drop everything because of how deep her influence went. It disgusted me to look back at it, and I had to private the blog because I feared what it endorsed, even if just in the past.

I pulled back from that sims writing community. I had its main thread on the Official Forums removed too (I guess if that was a mystery to anyone). It was a surrender that I never wanted to do, but I had it in my mind that if I was gone, then she wouldn’t be there either. Uptown became this cursed item, and as I quietly retired it, I noticed that she went quieter too. Not gone, but enough to make me sleep easier at night and even occasionally say hello to old friends.

And I hope deep in my heart that no one else is getting hurt in my place, but now this is gonna haunt me all day huh!

The two paths forward...

1) Complete Uptown rewrite that I’ve been threatening everyone with all year. While it won’t ever be clean because I can’t undo time, I do have a sound outline for a story that is much more true to my actual vision and how I’ve evolved, with a few necessary boundaries in place that are going to be there for all stories moving forward: no more casting calls and no more collaborative efforts. I am not going to open myself up to this happening again, even if the people have changed.

2) Same as above, but I continue the original Uptown as a favor to loyal readers alongside the rewrite. I would try to put the effort into it that I initially did, but with no promises on an update schedule and no advertising. I did ask myself “is there Patreon but without pledging money, just the private posts function” but it could operate as part of a private forum, a members-only part of a website, etc.

Also readers of the original would be beholden to a rule of “don’t spoil the rewrite for new readers, c’mon guys”. I mean, not really, but it is a good courtesy to extend to people.

Priority on this isn’t high but you at least will see what is!

I will probably make the blog public again either way due to the many broken links on my Tumblr but we’ll see. There are other things to deal with as I shall list!

Where Life’s Been Regardless

Been spending more time with my grandpa every weekend. Life’s pretty good and he’s warming up to my dogs.

Shiny New Webbed Site

Cucumber Fields Forever is a site I own now. We have a full domain, cucumberfieldsforever.com, a blog with one post, and the framework needed to host stories the way I want to and still through WordPress. The functionality of likes, comments, and following should still be the same but you know...I’ll take feedback too...

The main blog still has an undefined purpose though I do have drafts sitting around about:

The maybe/maybe not hoax band that was on the Metal Archives and the history of Funeral Doom Metal.

The curious case of when Sims 4 babies get their genetics and my only collaboration (read: was talking about it with a friend and might quote her if needed, it’s actually a bit of a doozy)

Amazon.com’s fake dried udon noodles, an actual issue by the way.

Things I’m reading! (This’d be a monthly feature if so)

For the sake of unity, I am thinking of solutions for hosting old and shameful content there including Uptown and for the real fans in my followers feed, Eight Cicadas...a world I totally have plans for too (not really). I don’t want them to be front-and-center, and that’s why I mentioned forums/members-only content. I finally have that power! Maybe.

Ooooh but what are the costs? Not too much to handle, that’s what. 😉 (Like really, I don’t need any hand-wringing about this, I can manage my finances)

Project Queue (In Order of Confirmedness)

Outrun the Scythe: have you seen me post out-of-context Sims 3 pictures? Did you want more? Did you hope it was Linda in Custody? If the answers are yes, yes, and “meh, whatever you want”, then you’re in luck.

Outrun the Scythe is a Sims 3-based tale of a young gay man and his zombie grandma, as they are both offered separate roles of being the undying intermediaries between the world of humans and the influence of a race of space daemons. It’s pretty familiar if you’ve been following me pre-Uptown, taking some cues from stories I’ve kept under lock and key like Eight Cicadas, The Chains of Lyra, and the not-so-locked-up Ironstar Immortals (of which Outrun is just the direct sequel to sans any retconning...ah the smell of early 2013 and performative heterosexuality)

Ah, back to my roots.

It’s a hybrid of gameplay, story, and lore about my little race of daemons with a lot of my own idiosyncrasies that I’m not really ashamed of: basing it off a super-polarizing Sims 3 challenge from a site I moderate, using a lot of EA’s pre-made townies and their genes, lots of unnecessary posemaking, stupid references. It’s a comfort to have in my roster.

While the first few chapters are in the middle of revision, I have around six in the queue and will be making this public when I have ten. I’m guessing December then?

Undocumented Black Widow Challenge: I just did this for fun/forum kudos (yes, in fact I have joined many forums), there was going to be a short story but it was quickly becoming something against my code of ethics. I mean, sims die and all. (read: I had to choose between “heterosexual widow” and “widow with some same-sex marriages that still end in tragedy, reinforcing negative stereotypes to the public for the sake of me not getting bored and detached during gameplay” so there were no good choices. Except for her affair with the mailwoman, 10/10) I hope to finish this before October ends and get my medal on Boolprop, I’m pretty far through it all. I might upload the sims involved anyways. This is for TS4.

I mentioned it because it’s keeping me busy. But not for long!

NaNoWriMo 2020: Dipping my toes into that again! It’s not sims-related, just a tale of lesbians, nosy neighbors, a haunted beach house, and some light murder and kidnapping. And I actually got my brother to scout out locations for me this weekend. If there’s any demand, I can share chapters as the rough drafts are finished, especially for the sake of proofreading.

Not saying I’m publishable, but wouldn’t it be nice? Will keep me occupied for much of November.

Untitled “Dear Diary” Challenge: Tired of feeling left out of the fun on the Boolprop forums, their “Dear Diary” challenge was the one that appealed to me the most on first glance. Why? Probably once I found an idea that let it be set in the early/mid-2000′s to begin with and explore some interesting characters through diary entries (which I have mixed feelings on as a literary device but I think that’s just me saying “well I didn’t like Dracula”, yes you get bonus points for writing it like a diary)

Also writing is the one skill I’m good at across multiple games. Wanna hear me bitch about the cooking skill tree in TS4 or riding in TS3? I’ll spare you.

I guess I could have included “spending time on Boolprop with old and new friends” in where my life has been. It’s a nice lil community if also a place with its own idiosyncrasies as well. So it doesn’t feel like I’m promoting another community if/when I make a thread there for Outrun the Scythe, I want to have a couple chapters of this ready to go by Outrun’s release, though it’s not gonna be the highest priority compared to it nor as long because I think I can blast through the gameplay quickly.

This one will be played in TS4 due to it having the easiest writing skill/I dunno variety is the spice of life. And hopefully another December release.

Defunded or Forgotten?: Oh shit I actually released stuff in 2020 and told no one? I do have a “mortifying ordeal of being known” sinking feeling whenever I get a site hit because it’s not my best work (but good enough) and veered sharply into issues I may be over my head in, though I try to be a good noodle with research and listening. Maybe hiding is bad after all.

Being based off a very flawed and incomplete Sims 3 challenge I found in the annals of the Official Forums, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work just making sense of things. And I’m scared of working on reconstructing the house but I haven’t abandoned the project yet. The story has eight chapters so far and is pretty game-based with some additions here and there. Scared of how long it could be though!

Date for this unknown.

Untitled Sunlit Tides Decadynasty: another year-long abandoned TS3 project with a much stupider reason why. Last update was about Hua getting ready for her wedding, and I wanted to do some poses for a bait-and-switch wedding chapter because to put it mildly, her real one was an absolute disaster.

Blender decided to fuck up its interface again, I got discouraged (this probably does account for some of the Uptown delays too), and when I decided to plow forward, it was for other projects instead.

Meanwhile I played all the way to Gen 5′s teenhood and the only thing stopping me is time (it takes almost 30 minutes to load the file right now, though they’ll be looking at moving towns in a couple gens) and maybe fear of the Logic skill.

Date for this also unknown but it’s easy to pump out updates once I’m in the groove for it. My third heir had a difficult life so maybe I’m just trying to bury it.

Also I just noticed the view count there was really good and probably because I linked it here on Tumblr last year. Thank you so much guys. I can’t really fret over views on Carl’s forum these days thanks to the years-long death spiral pretty much every forum anywhere has been riding on. But it’s a nice surprise. And it’s an alright little challenge recap to read during your lunch break or whatever.

The Wawas

I figured I’d end on the real news everyone wants! Both the chihuahuas are a year and a half now and reached their adult size around a year ago. For the most part, they are happy and healthy dogs.

#state of the uwunion #long post

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kc-anathema · 4 years

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I’m so sorry I did another long post so soon...

So a long time ago, I received a flame on Spec Ops 98: Jazz's Interrogation at Soundwave's Pedes. I hadn’t received a flame in a long time, and I haven’t received one since (which is amazing, since this was on chapter 26 back in...dear heavens, 2015. This fic is officially an epic.)

In fact, I stopped reading the flame once I realized it was a flame, about four chunks in. 2015, five years ago, I was changing principals, changing schools, trying to figure out how to marry my Canadian then-fiance and figure out immigration. (Fun type--marry her in Vegas, wait a couple years, bring her over. Use a lawyer to make sure it’s all kosher.) So yeah, didn’t read.

And then a concerned reader mentioned to me that I didn’t deserve this awful flame and that they loved the story. And I thought...oh yeah, there was a flame on this. That was a couple months ago.

I finally decided to break the flame apart like I used to. This feels very nostalgic to me. I found out that this is really the flamer’s only claim to fame--they flame fics and troll writers. I’m not going to name them then, although you can find the easily on the ff.net review page for this fic.

My father once told me that, if anyone ever spraypainted slurs across my house...leave the slurs up. Don’t pay to remove them. Let the awful words stay up until everyone in the neighborhood is begging us to take them down again.

I think leaving the review there says more about her than me. And I’m going to enjoy clawing this apart, I think, like a cat scratching apart a lizard.

Flame begin:

We’ve got a problem if Soundwave is involved here and he’s not pulling his usual ‘Decepticons, Superior’ line. Add on a fic about perverts and we get this. Ah, well. What are you gonna do?

Remember the character Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, and how he said “Bazinga” all the time? That kind of went from a joke to an overused character crutch. Like ‘dynomite!’ or ‘did I do that’? Is it really good to rely on a character line to the point where we can call it ‘usual’?

“I’ll take my pleasure and that sweet aft” – Sounds like a cheesy commercial for Robot Chicken. Fireflight is locked up in a dungeon and is about to be whipped by a BDSM Starscream. That’s not at all OOC. Basically it’s a fanfiction that talks about fanfiction.

I...um. Yes. Yes, it’s an OOC line modeled directly after pulp fiction zines and tijuana bibles. I literally looked up several of those on the Internet Archives and various old men’s magazines covers. It’s not fanfiction directly, although it’s certainly what fanfic evolved out of.

Do these look subtle? Low key? Classy? Tasteful? It’s cheap trash and it’s fun as hell. I don’t think readers at the time thought that these were in any way true. This is right along the lines of drawn hentai. So I think the flamer admitted despite themself that I did good.

“We’re stuck here in the middle of a war...we don’t have time for sex” – That’s right. But that fact doesn’t apply does it?

...reading trashy, porny magazines is not sex. It’s actually something you do when you can’t get sex for whatever reason. I would know. A lot of us would know. Apparently not the flamer. No one thinks that “hey, I got a chick/dude willing to bang right now...but the new issue of Men’s World is out! Can’t miss that!” Unless you have some serious fetishes that your partner is too weirded out by, I think this does indeed apply.

Then Jazz gets captured and lo and behold, Soundwave is revealed to be the Christian Grey of the story. I hope he has some maid outfits for Jazz.

...our flamer hits the sludgy bottom of the joke well and grabs their shovel. They do not try very hard for originality in their insults. And, while Grey was a jerk, Fifty Shades wasn’t quite a prisoner of war scenario. No, that was a cheap romance for chicks. I’m writing more akin to men’s...oh.

The flamer is a chick.

Their only bdsm or bad romance experience is with Fifty Shades.

I don’t think they read much.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we have a shower scene. Damn if it’ll be Carrie!

Iiiiiiiiiiiii did not write a shower scene?

Dudette, did you even do the reading you say you did?

There’s no point in adding moral ambiguity, especially in regards to Soundwave. He won’t be swayed easily, or at all, by Jazz’s speech. He’s cold hearted for a reason. He serves the Decepticon cause until the very bitter end. He’s a lot like Shockwave that way. Highly doubtful he would find meaning or even the relevance of writing pornographic fanfiction, but eh, this was never meant to be serious, was it?

...no. It’s a humor fic. The flamer is criticizing a humor fic for being humorous. Kudos for identifying the genre? I mean, the flamer is also complaining that I did not write Soundwave as a one-dimensional factionalist without examining what that means for him and how the mission creep has left the original political crusade behind. It’s not like I took pieces of Soundwave from Gen1, IDW, and the comics and blend them all together.

This reminds me of the fanboys in the TMNT fandom who keep pushing for every iteration to simply rehash their nostalgia boner for the original toon. I feel like I’m getting the Transformers version of wanting less of this:

because it isn’t the familiar characterizations of this:

“So what’s the down low?” – You, Jazz. You’re going to give the down-low to Soundwave. I can’t wait to read how shiny his robo-vagina is.

...wow. Classy there, flamer. Also I really don’t think they read anything. This whole fic is plug n’ play. There’s exchanging of cables, talk of code and positronic souls and sparks and revving engines. There isn’t a drop of sticky, spike, or fluids.

Chapter 15’s sex scenes bore me. Nothing is worse than having a guy ask to remove every bit of clothing. Just do it already! And why is Jazz a virgin? Come on!

Look--the thing about sex and fetish and whatever revs your engine is that it’s not going to rev everyone’s engine. You don’t like the type of interfacing here? Fine. I don’t like those kind of sex scenes in my porn either. But I wasn’t write that scene for porn. I wanted write warbuild Jazz dealing with violent subroutines while interfacing with Prowl. I had fun with it.

Why is Jazz a virgin? The previous 15 chapters discuss that.

I really don’t think the flamer read the fic.They scanned for anything remotely sexual, so I don’t think I’m going to take anything they say about this fic being ooc for perversion’s sake.

“Everyone here is damn pervy” – In which a character talks about the author.

“We gotta get Soundwave to finish writing his story” – Why? I mean, what’s the point? It’s not doing anything for them, unless it’s to show how castrated Soundwave is. I’ve seen him act better in Mary-Sue fics.

There is a whole plot about Starscream and Skyfire, and I thought I could trust the readers to be intelligent enough to make the leap with the parallels between Soundwave and Jazz.

This is literally the only review that questions why Jazz said that.

The Mary Sue shot just echoes the Fifty Shades swipe. I think this flamer did most of their flames roughly ten years ago--the insults are pretty dated.

The Decepticons don’t know about Ratchet? Why? I mean, he’s one of the oldest dudes there. He has a reputation. When you have a reputation, people know about you. It’s inevitable. I think your inner logic slips a lot.

At this point, I literally have 21 previous chapters of world building.

I am not surprised that the story’s logic was slipping away from one of us.

It’s funny to read the forum responses in the story. It’s like the author is trying to make fun of detractors yet ends up making fun of herself.

Okay, this part is hilarious for a reason only briefly noted in the fic. I think that the only things this can refer to are the comments from the chapter titled Flames of the M4gn1f1c3ntSkyPr1nc3--because those are literally the first flames/comments I put in the fic. And I didn’t write them!

My wife wrote them! I don’t write Starscream well but she just poured those out like water--she’s seen more of the hysterical side of fandom, particularly the earlier TF fandom, and I snipped out pieces for the fic.

So...I mean, we’re pretty happily married, so I don’t think she counts as a detractor. ^___^ Ultimately I started writing this fic for her.

“Your optics make me crazy” – Not at all a cliché.

Good thing I didn’t write that, then. Here is that little section in the Prowl/Jazz section. (Took me a bit to find it since I plugged that into the Find and couldn’t bring it up.)

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

I like what you do to me. Jazz allowed him in, tilting his helm. I never really understood it, y'know? How mechs could lower their guard so much. Let someone this close.

And now? Prowl drew back, wanting to see Jazz for the answer. With a quiet ping, he warned the other mech even as he raised his hand, touching Jazz's visor.

I still think you're crazy always going on about my optics, Jazz said, venting even as he disengaged the locks and let Prowl gently remove the blue polycarbon.

Your optics are perfection, Prowl corrected him. And you let me see them. Hundreds of mechs wondering what's under that visor, but I get to see.

Still shy about letting someone else see them, Jazz turned his head, only for Prowl to touch his cheek and turn him back, coaxing his optics to open with a soft brush of his thumb.

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

Not bad for an asexual, I think. I mean, it’s not like I have a ton of hands on experience, being kinda broken that way. But I have read plenty of pulp magazines and pulp radio shows!

This didn’t take long. I skimmed through this work, because there was so little content. Lots of ridiculous shit, though. Soundwave writes fanfiction, the Autobots are weirded out/turned on, capture Soundwave, Soundwave realizes that his whole life was a life and decides to defect. Yeah, about that. He wouldn’t do it lickety split, let alone EVER. Hell, the reactions in the forum bits show what some would think of this, if they weren’t too busy fapping.

The funny thing is I don’t think the mechs can even fap. I don’t write them doing that. But yes, flamer, I do believe that you skimmed through the work. Particularly since you’ve recounted it backwards...Soundwave captures Jazz as the capstone to a long internal conflict within himself, but rather than go through chapters of internal monologue and Decepticon politics, I started the story as close to the inciting action as possible, not quite in media res.

I won’t hash out why Soundwave defects. I mean, I spent 22 chapters at that point explaining it. But it’s my fault the flamer skimmed, I guess?

Needless to say: the romance bored me senseless. It was poorly written, and overall there’s really no skill attached to this. You don’t grip the audience and Jazz’s virgin mode made me roll my eyes. Reads like a first-time waifu manga.

Nah.

I’ve been writing way too long and am more than self-aware enough of my own failings that I’m also pretty self-aware of my own strengths, too. And no. It’s not poorly written. I definitely feel I could improve the first few chapters a bit, but that’s because I wrote those over five years ago and I’ve improved since then, too.

Empty insults. Maybe if the flamer had gone so far as to give a critique beyond a couple of misquoted lines and their own headcanons, I might have listened, but there’s literally nothing of substance here beyond a child tantrumming that I’m stupid and bad and should feel bad.

As for the other pairings, booooooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.

Usually I have a fun time setting these fics on fire, but this one bored me senseless. Yes, it was stupid, but the author’s attempt to authenticate it are just as sloppy as anything else.

“Authenticate”?

Is this person talking about using fandom tropes as my setting?

There are 22 chapters at the time, and now 51 chapters, building up this world and using roughly 20 years of fandom background to inform the fic.

Maybe if they hadn’t skimmed, they might have found something interesting. But considering that they skimmed over anything character related and stopped for the sex scene--I don’t think that says anything about my writing and more about their own proclivities.

They were trying to read one-handed. A plug n play fic. A long meta look at fandom in war in a humor fic. And they came here for the sexy times.

I don’t have to draw the conclusion here, do I? Well, for the flamer, probably. And then they’d glance at it for a second, call it sloppy, and say I showed nothing, and what I showed was boring, and that boring stuff was ooc anyway.

One thing I am thankful for is the fact that it is not long.

51 chapters later and I’m still not done.

Nothing’s worth remembering in this and I don’t need to tell you that these characters either act like simpering imbeciles, or are virginal waifus. All I’m missing is a senpai in the bed, some tissues, and some high quality lotion.

...why do they keep referencing gay human sex? I mean, I get it, they’re saying that it’s similar to yaoi fics, but.

This is anti-yaoi with its last hurrah, isn’t it? The late 90s, early 2000s, rising from its sludgy well to try to shame the easily cowed and intimidated, the young writers easily startled by long lines of text. No wonder the citations used are so...15 years ago. I mean, who was talking about Sues even 5 years ago. That criticism kind of faded a long while ago, even then.

I think the sad thing is, even the badly written Sue sex fics end up being more interesting than this. If Ebony Darkness D’Mentia Raven Way were to come along, I think this story would get better. What with her ‘I shot him a gazillion times’ lines.

...and there’s the cherry on the top. Third cheap shot firing blanks. Sue + Fifty Shades +...shit, I can’t even remember the title for that infamous fic. It’s that old.

...this fanfic flamer is old.

Like, don’t get me wrong. We’ve got fandom moms and grandmoms who cut their teeth on fandom print zines in the earliest conventions. They’re not “old” in the same way.

This person has lost any joy, humor, or playfulness that fanfic comes from. No one should go into fanfic expecting fine art. I mean, sure, it happens sometimes, but this is a playground of pulp, experimentation and just plain childish fun.

All in all, not worth remembering. It’s makes me tired to read it. It’s not even stupid enough to make me laugh. You’ll still get a fail rating for me, especially with the shitty version of Soundwave here.

Yes, fanfic flamer. You are indeed tired.

He should be on Big Brother. He’d be great making soy lattés and purees.

Big Brother in 2015 was in its 17th season. There were roughly around 6 million viewers at the time. The demographics for the tv viewing audience were graying even by the 2000s, and by 2015-18, it was significantly older.

Granted, it’s a very tenuous conclusion to draw, but combined with the old fandom references, the anti-yaoi vibes I’m getting, and the fanboyish desire to curate their own headcanon of a character to the point of insulting writers on the internet...

Flamer grew from being a reader to a bitter, old person angry and the whipper snappers for writing stupid, trashy crap that they criticize with broad, unspecific insults.Flamer is the stereotypical mean adult in any 90s cartoon or heavy metal rock video.

A little depressing. Poor flamer. I do hope they found more creative, engaging, and positive things to do.

Me? I just wanna rock.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk on pulp fiction and bitter cultural creators.

#in a nutshell #sorry for another long post #I just wanted to finally do this #after thinking about it for awhile #felt like a loose end #fandom #fanfiction #transformers fanfic

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master-sass-blast · 4 years

Text

It’s Truly Magical.

IT’S HONEYMOON TIME!!!

Summary: You and Piotr enjoy your honeymoon --by going to Disneyland, no less.

Pairing(s): Piotr Rasputin x Reader.

Rating: T for implied sex, mention of needles, and briefly referenced childhood trauma but this fic is a fluff fest I promise.

Set after “In the Dawn of a New Day.”

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @super-darkcloudstudent, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @nebulous-leo

“So let’s see… a week and a half is… uh…”

“Make list.”

You stare down at your suitcase as you try to do the math in your head. You’re trying to pack for yours and Piotr’s honeymoon.

Because the two of you are married now. You, Y/N Rasputin, managed to snatch up the world’s greatest catch for yourself.

Suck it, universe.

“That’s… ten-ish days, so ten outfits –except for the nice dinner, so that’s another outfit, oh, and the plane flights…”

“Just make list.”

The two of you are going to California, courtesy of your uncle; you two get to spend the first four days of the trip at Disneyland, and then the rest of your honeymoon will be spent at a little beach house AirBNB where the two of you can just chill and enjoy the ocean.

“So that’s like… twice as much underwear? Three times as much?” You blink when you remember that this is technically your honeymoon. “Do I even need underwear?”

“This might be easier if you made list, moya lyubov’.”

“And I’ll need… uh…”

“Darling wife of mine.”

You smile bashfully, butterflies fluttering in your stomach at the reminder that you’re his wife now, and look over where Piotr’s sitting on your two’s bed.

He smiles at you, loving and endeared, and tosses a pen and notepad at you. “Just make packing list already.”

(You do, eventually, wind up making a list –though your husband does have to help you with the process.)

***

The day of the flight brings its own boughs of anxiety and struggle. There’s the prospect of trying to navigate the airport properly and get through security –which promises to be a headache regardless of how much time you give yourselves—and then underlying tension that the two of you might get thrown out for being mutants—

But the unarguable worst part of the day happens before the two of you even leave home to head to the airport.

Piotr crosses his arms over his chest, face strained with worry as he stares down the small vial of yellow fluid in your hands. “I do not like this.”

You’re not cleared to fly on commercial flights –and technically won’t ever be, since the psychic scarring on your brain is permanent—without having your mutation repressed in some way, shape, or form. After an extended discussion between Hank, Professor Xavier, Alyssa, and your uncle, the four of them figured that you’d be unlikely to get a repression cuff or collar through airport security, which only left one option to keep your mutation repressed in the event –albeit unlikely—that you had an episode.

Repression serum.

The dose in the vial is only enough to get you safely to California –and you’ll have to use it all for it to work properly. Another vial will be provided before you and Piotr leave California to come back home. There’s no way for you to use it under any other circumstance or hoard it away for later, and Alyssa and Professor Xavier were both confident that you were well past the issues that led you to using it regularly that you wouldn’t be likely to relapse—

But yeah, you don’t like it either.

“It’s what we have to do, sweetheart,” you say, expression grim as you load up the syringe. “It’s for everyone else’s safety. And mine.”

“I know,” Piotr says, paling slightly as he watches you prepare the injection site on your arm. “I just… I really do not like this.”

“It’s going to be okay, honey,” you reassure him. “I’m going to be okay. I promise.”

There’s really not much else to say, considering what you have to do or your history with the repression serum, so you take a deep breath and insert the needle into your arm.

The serum hits as fast as you remember it hitting (since the dose was calibrated for your resistance to the stuff). Within about thirty seconds, you can feel your connection to the air around you being tamped down. It’s almost like someone’s put on a very thick jacket all over every inch of your body.

You grimace once you remove the needle and press a piece of gauze against the injection site. “I don’t like that.”

“Are you alright?” Piotr asks, panic evident in his voice and on his face as he kneels in front of you. “Do you feel sick? Do we need to see Hank?”

“No, no, I’m fine, I just don’t like how the serum feels,” you clarify. “I don’t like not feeling connected to the air. It doesn’t feel good.”

Piotr blinks as understanding flickers across his face, then he abruptly claps a hand over his mouth and stands, turning away from you in the process.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” You quickly set the syringe and the now empty vial aside and stand, maneuvering so you’re positioned in front of your husband. “Piotr, talk to me. What’s going on?”

Piotr shakes his head as he wipes a few tears away from his eyes. “I was afraid… that you would like it. That you would miss using serum. And that you do not… it is big relief to me.”

Tears well up in your eyes as your heart tears for your mush of a man. You wrap your arms around Piotr’s waist and hold him while he takes deep, shaky breaths. “It’s okay, Piotr. I’m okay.”

And you are. You really, truly are.

***

Getting through the airport is just about as much of a hassle as you anticipated. It’s confusing, it’s chaotic, there’s far too much standing in line involved, and the ratio of people to available outlets –logically—should’ve caused a bloodbath by now.

Fortunately, you and Piotr don’t get tossed out for being mutants (even though the two of you “pass” relatively well, you’re both legally required to register as mutants, which always opens up the risk of being thrown out of anywhere that checks your ID).

(Piotr also doesn’t set off the security checkpoint metal detector when he goes through it, which –while logically being a good thing—is honestly kind of disappointing.)

You opt to lean against your husband’s shoulder while the two of you wait to board, at which point you lament over having to wait even longer, to which Piotr remarks that the two of you will still get to board earlier than everyone else because you’re flying in first class, which prompts you to pull out your boarding pass and study it—

“We’re flying first class?”

Piotr chuckles as he drapes his arm over your shoulders. “You just realized this?”

“You’re the one who checked all the tickets and reservations, not me!”

The ticket does, in fact, confirm that the two of you have first class seats reserved –next to each other, too, which is a bonus.

“Why’d my uncle get us first class seats?” you ponder quietly. “It’s so expensive.”

“Probably my size,” Piotr reasons. “I have trouble fitting in smaller seats.”

You shrug, then smile up at your spouse. “Well, we can at least have fun with flying first class for the first time!”

“That we can,” he agrees before dipping his head to kiss you.

***

As it is, Piotr still barely fits into the first class seat. It’s clearly better suited to accommodate him than an economy seat –but only barely.

Fortunately, you don’t need the dividing armrest down to be comfortable, and you’re more than happy to be closely snuggled against your hubby for several hours. You take the window seat so Piotr has an easier time getting in and out of your seat and nestle up against him while he scans the in-flight safety pamphlet.

“You two are absolutely adorable,” one of the flight attendants comments with a smile. “We don’t see a lot of super lovey couples on the flights.”

“I think it helps that we’re flying out for our honeymoon,” you joke; at home, it’s a well known fact that you and Piotr are a pair of regular lovebirds –though, the added buzz from the wedding and honeymoon doesn’t hurt.

The flight attendant beams when you show off your engagement ring and wedding band. “Congratulations! That’s so wonderful! We do offer complimentary beverages and snacks to our first class passengers. Maybe some sparkling wine to celebrate, or a cookie and some milk if you’re not alcohol drinkers?”

You look up at Piotr. “Cookies and milk?”

He smiles down at you, then nods at the flight attendant. “Cookies and milk would be nice.”

***

Fun fact: A non-stop flight from New York to California is a little over six hours.

Additional fun fact: years of being able to fly one’s self makes travelling by plane a touch lackluster.

“We’re not even breaking the sound barrier,” you whisper to Piotr at one point. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He merely snorts and kisses the top of your head.

All in all, though, it’s a good time. The two of you snuggle against each other as the plane soars through the skies, Piotr fills you in on all things Disney, and you play games provided on the little screen interfaces on the backs of the seats in front of you.

You’re also provided a proper meal a couple hours into the flight –and, much to Piotr’s delight, it’s reasonably healthy, if not necessarily portioned out for someone of his size.

“The perks of flying first class, I guess,” you comment before starting in on your food.

***

Actually arriving in California, admittedly, is a bit of a mindfuck, solely due to the time difference between the East Coast and the West Coast.

“None of this feels right,” you mumble as you try to reconcile the earlier time to your inner body clock.

“Imagine how I felt first coming from Russia,” Piotr comments as he scans the directional signs to figure out where the two of you need to pick up your luggage.

“Shit, yeah, that’d be insane.” You frown. “How does your family manage to jump between here and there, then?”

Piotr shrugs. “Lots of coffee, probably.”

***

The process of getting to the famed park is far less drawn out than the flight. Once you two have your luggage, you head over to the car rental place and pick up your car –rented so the two of you have a reliable way to get around for the rest of your honeymoon—and take the half hour drive to the park.

You give Piotr a goofy smile when another motorist curses you out for abiding by the traffic laws. “It’s like we never left home.”

Piotr just tips his head back and laughs.

***

To make everything extra special, your hotel reservation is at one of the hotels in the park itself –very appropriately named “Disneyland Hotel.” The two of you get checked in and head up to your room—

And it’s nice. There’s a massive king-sized bed that sits directly across from a combination dresser and TV cabinet. A desk and chair sit next to the dresser-cabinet combo, and a cushy looking armchair sits next to the bed on the far side of the room. Everything’s decorated in warm, inviting tones of brown and gold, save for a genuinely pretty blue and gold carpet. On the other side of the bed, closest to the door, is another door that leads to a bathroom.

It’s nice. Clean. It has amenities like a mini-fridge and a coffee maker and an ironing board.

It’s also like almost any other hotel you’ve ever been in.

Piotr shrugs when you remark as much. “Were you expecting something else?”

“I don’t know… mouse ears everywhere? Super bright colors and patterns?”

Piotr chuckles as he sets yours and his suitcases down. “The crucial experience is park. Rooms are supposed to promote rest and relaxation.”

“Fair enough.” You dart over to the window on the far side of the room to check out the view, then chuckle when all you can see is the parking lot. “Oh, damn, can’t get this view anywhere else.” You whip out your phone to take a Snapchat video of the view, then tuck it back in your pocket and turn around when you hear Piotr groan and the bed creak ominously.

He’s dropped face-down into the bed, arms spread out like a starfish and legs hanging haphazardly off the bed.

You cross your arms over your chest. “Feeling comfy, baby?”

“Planes do not agree with me,” he laments, voice muffled by the bed.

“I bet.” You cross over to the bed and hop up next to him. “How about this,” you suggest as you gently rub his back. “We just get some room service –because I’m hungry—and then just stretch out and rest. We’ve got four days here at the park; that’s plenty of time to check everything out.”

“Sounds wonderful.” He lifts his head and grins at you. “We are at Disneyland.”

“Yeah, we are,” you reply with a grin of your own. “Are you excited?”

He giggles and nods before dropping his head back down. “Very.”

You gently run your fingers through his hair and kiss the top of his head before turning and rummaging through the nightstand drawer for a room service menu. “You get comfortable, babe. I’ll get us some food.”

***

The two of you eat and take a little nap before unpacking. Since you aren’t staying the entire duration of your trip at the park, you only unpack what you need –a few clothes, some toiletries, a couple of things to do during down time…

And, in your husband’s case, an entire pantry’s worth of healthy snacks and protein bars.

You gape as Piotr carefully tucks away a supply of unsalted veggie chips, mixes of dried fruit and nuts, crackers with “extra fiber” (whatever the fuck that means), and a couple boxes of protein bars into one of the dresser drawers. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Piotr! We are on vacation!”

“We still need to eat!” he retorts defensively.

“They have restaurants and room service here!” you argue, trying to hold back amused laughter. “And we can always buy food if we need something they don’t have!”

“It is still less expensive this way,” he reasons.

“The park expenses are on someone else’s tab, and we’ll still have to get groceries for the rest of our trip.”

The gears in Piotr’s head visibly turn while he processes your statement. He huffs –and shoots you an amused glare when you giggle—and continues unpacking his snacks. “Just wait until end of trip, when you are sick from travel food and I am not. You will eat words then.”

“The only thing I want to eat is your dick,” you fire back, snickering when the tips of Piotr’s ears go red. You pick up one of the boxes out of the dresser drawer and read the label. “‘Multi-grain Nutritional Crackers, now with Extra Fiber.’ Honestly, you are such an old man.”

Piotr shakes his head, takes the box from you and puts it back in the drawer, then lifts you up into his arms. “Not old just yet.”

You giggle and press your lips against his.

***

The following morning hosts massive bouts of excitement –Piotr—and general disgust at the existence of mornings in general –you.

Your mood does perk up, though, upon having some proper breakfasts in one of the restaurants in the hotel –accompanied by coffee and some of the park’s legendary Dole whip, no less. By the time the two of you head into the “attractions” part of the park, you’re just as pepped up as your Disney-loving hubby.

The two of you wander around a bit, getting a sense for the park and where everything is, until—

“Babe!” You point at the Alice in Wonderland spinning teacups ride. “Let’s go on that one!”

Piotr acquiesces, and the two of you get in line for the ride. It takes a fair bit of standing and waiting, but eventually the two of you are ushered onto one of the massive teacups. You both get settled, then wait for the ride to start.

“What’s this for?” you ask, tapping a stand in the middle with what looks like a steering wheel attached to the top.

“To spin ride,” Piotr explains. “It makes cup spin faster.”

Your eyes widen as you stare at the device. “I thought the ride just spun the cups on its own.”

“It does.” Piotr gestures to the frame the cups sit on. “Entire ride spins like merry-go-round. Riders can spin cups while ride spins.”

You grin, borderline maniacally. “Fuck. Yeah.”

Once the ride starts, you immediately start trying to spin the cup as fast as you can. Under any other circumstances, you suspect the cup would spin without too much resistance.

However, those circumstances don’t involve having the world’s heaviest Russian husband in the cup at the same time.

You grunt as you try to spin the cup. “Dammit! Why do you have to be so heavy?”

“It is not end of world, msyhka,” Piotr chuckles. “Just sit back and enjoy ride.”

“I want to go fast! But I can’t do that because I just happened to shack up with the one Russian juggernaut that eats lead for breakfast!”

Piotr laughs again –then grips the wheel and gives it a mighty yank.

You shriek, delighted, as the cup whips around at maximum speed. The world dissolves into a blur of color and noise as your hair whips around and smacks your face.

It’s like flying without the physical effort of flying. It’s amazing.

“That was awesome!” you giggle as you stumble off the ride. “We should go –babe?”

Piotr staggers after you, looking considerably worse for wear. He’s gone pale –paler than usual, at least—and clammy looking, and his jaw is clenched tight. “I think,” he manages in a weak, shaky voice, “that was mistake.”

You put your hands on his arms, helping steady him. “Holy shit, baby, you look awful. Come on, let’s get back to the hotel room so you can lay down.”

“Perhaps that would be for best,” Piotr agrees as you steer him in the direction of the hotel.

***

“No fucking way. The Steel Boy Scout can’t handle rollercoasters. That’s incredible!”

“I mean, in his defense, it was a spin heavy ride,” you say to Wade as you stroke Piotr’s hair.

The two of you are back in your hotel room; Piotr had opted to lay face down on the bed and bury his face in a pillow, while you’d opted to call Wade and update him on how the vacation was going –or, rather, wasn’t.

“Yeah, well, still,” Wade insists in your ear. “It’s funny. He’s a superhero who battles diabolical villains on a regular basis, and he can’t handle spinning around a little.”

“I mean, you make a valid point—”

The bed lurches as Piotr shoots off it and sprints to the bathroom.

“Ah, shit. I’ve gotta go.”

“Has Chernobyl finally decided to blow?”

You wince as the sounds of Piotr emptying his stomach contents into the toilet emanate from the bathroom. “Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”

***

You spend the rest of the day in the hotel room to let Piotr properly recuperate. You order room service for the two of you once Piotr’s feeling well enough to eat, and otherwise spend the day texting, scrolling through social media, or watching TV while you hold your husband and stroke his hair.

All in all, it’s a day perfectly spent.

And, fortunately, Piotr’s feeling well enough by the time the day comes to a close that the two of you can catch one of the park’s famed fireworks shows. Granted, you have to stand off to the side so Piotr doesn’t block anyone’s view, but it’s still a stunning spectacle to behold.

(It also gives Wade’s fireworks “demonstrations” a run for their money, which isn’t something you’d ever thought could be possible.)

“Are you feeling better, honey?” you ask as the two of you stroll back to the hotel, hand in hand.

“Much.” Piotr squeezes your hand gently. “Tomorrow should go much better.”

“Here’s hoping. No more spinning rides for you, mister.”

Piotr chuckles and shakes his head. “On that, we are agreed.”

***

The following morning, Piotr’s in a much better state than the previous day. After a hearty breakfast at the hotel, the two of you head back into the attractions part of the park and scope out more rides to try out –with a strict emphasis on “non-spinning” for your husband’s sake.

Eventually, the two of you come across a ride called “Big Thunder” that seems promising. The two of you hop in line to get on the ride—

Except upon finally being able to get on said ride, it turns out that Piotr’s too big for the safety mechanisms to work properly.

You burst out cackling as Piotr sheepishly extricates himself from his seat and steps back onto the platform. “We can’t win with you, huh, baby?”

“It would see not.” He kisses you gently. “I’ll see you back at walkway.”

You smile at him and blow him another kiss as he heads towards the exit.

Then, an attendant comes by to check your harness and the harnesses of the other rides. There’s the sound of the motors that run the coaster coming to life and hissing –and then the ride shoots forward.

And you scream.

***

“It was awesome!” you gush to Piotr once you find him outside the ride. “It’s like flying, but I get to sit down the entire time. It’s basically perfect! Although, I think we’re gonna have to skip rides while we’re here. You’re not gonna fit on… any of them, really.”

Piotr chuckles and kisses the top of your head. “You can still go on rides, myshka. This is your trip, also. And there are calmer rides and other attractions I can enjoy.”

“Alright.” You take a moment to check a map of the park that Piotr downloaded and sent to your phone. “Do you want to go find a ride we can both go on?”

“That sounds very nice.”

You smile and take his hand in yours, then the two of you head off in search of a ride that both of you can go on.

***

The two of you wind up going on Astro Blasters –even though neither of you are very good at hitting any of the targets—and going on the famed Pirates of the Caribbean ride together, and you also hit Splash Mountain and the Indiana Jones rides on your own.

(Piotr pays to get pictures of you riding the rides on your own and gets a good chuckle out of your open-mouthed, exhilarated expressions.)

You also take time just to wander around the park and take everything in. You two take a selfie in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, spy the Mickey Mouse costume character strolling around and saying hi to kids, and generally take in the sights and sounds of the park –of which there are many.

Just like the advertising says, it’s genuinely magical.

***

“Are you enjoying Disneyland?”

Piotr grins as he wipes his fingers on a napkin. “Da. I really am. Are you?”

You grin back and lean over to kiss his shoulder. “Yeah. It’s pretty awesome.”

The two of you had opted to stop for lunch after a bit, with Piotr citing that getting overtired or going too long without eating in the baking California heat would wind up doing either of you in. You’d decided to get a corndog and a soda, whereas Piotr had purchased one of the famed turkey legs and a bottle of water.

(The picture you’d taken of Piotr biting into his turkey leg was nothing short of priceless.)

“I want to get something to remember trip by,” Piotr continues as he polishes off his turkey leg (which had taken him the same time to eat as it had for you to devour your corndog). “Proper memento.”

“Well, Mikhail did give us that jar of money after the reception,” you point out. “You want to use that to get a little honeymoon treat? Maybe some matching mouse ear headbands?”

Piotr beams and nods. “That sounds wonderful.”

***

The two of you resume wandering around the park after eating lunch. You briefly stop to watch a parade of characters and decorated vehicles go by, then resume the hunt for some proper mementos to commemorate your honeymoon at the park.

Which, actually, is easier said than done. The park has several shops scattered throughout it and different kiosks by rides that host specially themed mouse-eared headbands. Trying to compare all the options available, let alone narrow things down to a top pick, is almost too tall a task to handle.

(Not to mention that the headbands themselves are egregiously expensive. Holy shit.)

Eventually, though, you settle on a sequined Minnie Mouse ears headband –complete with a sequined red bow with white polka dots—while Piotr opts for a classic –sequins free—Mickey Mouse ears headband.

“I think we look pretty good!” you declare as you post one of the selfies you took of you and Piotr to Instagram.

Piotr brushes a soft kiss against your temple. “I agree –but you look best.”

You sputter and duck your head bashfully. “You’re awfully sweet, Mr. Rasputin.”

“Says person eating cotton candy.”

“Not my fault it’s good.” You split your last bite in half and offer part of it to him –then gape when he actually accepts it. “What’s this? You actually ate cotton candy!”

Piotr rolls his eyes good naturedly –though he does pull a face at how sweet the candy is. “Is my vacation. I eat treats if I want.”

You grin and giggle, then yank on his hand and head in the direction of another vendor stand. “Ooh, come on! I need to get a pretzel!”

“You just finished cotton candy.”

“Yeah, but—” you glance around and lower your voice carefully “—I need to get a Snapchat of it so I can send Wade a snap about being a ‘childless whore fucking up the pretzel line.’”

Piotr’s eyes widen and he claps a hand over his mouth to stifle a massive snort. “What?”

“Baby, please?”

He shakes his head, but ultimately acquiesces. “Lead way, myshka.”

***

You wake up on the third day of your trip with sore legs and feet, a barely there stomach ache from eating too much cotton candy the day previous, and an erection pressed against your ass.

You grin when Piotr’s lips start pressing against your neck. “Morning, sweetheart. Feeling good?”

“Chrezvychayno.”

You sigh, content, when his hand latches onto your hip and his other arm presses against your chest, pulling you flush against him. “Y’know… we’ve pretty much done everything we can do in the park. We could just…” You swing one of your arms back so you can slide your hand down his side. “Stay in bed today. Order room service. Do what all honeymooners do.”

“That,” Piotr murmurs huskily, lustily. “Sounds perfect.”

***

You two spend the last day of the Disney part of your trip largely lazing around. You stroll through the park to get more pictures and check out a few more rides, but other than that you two simply enjoy each other’s company until the time for your dinner reservation at the renowned Blue Bayou restaurant comes. The two of you take a few hours to get cleaned and dressed up for the dinner –a cocktail dress with blue and purple flowers for you and a suit with a blue and purple tie for him—and head over to the Blue Bayou restaurant.

The space itself is nothing short of breathtaking. There’s trees along the edge of the outdoor dining area, and lanterns and flowers are strung across the space to give it a soft, ethereal feel.

You two are seated in a quiet corner of the dining area at a sleek black table bordered by chairs with elegant backs that look like wrought iron; the waiter hands you two your menus and takes your drink orders—

And then it’s just you and Piotr.

You glance up from perusing your menu and smile at your husband. “Anything in particular looking good?”

He “hmms” thoughtfully. “Possibly lamb… or roasted chicken.”

“They both look good,” you agree. You nudge his leg under the table, then grin at him when he looks up at you. “Love you.”

Piotr beams at you. “I love you, too.”

The waiter returns a couple minutes later with your drinks, jots down your orders, then takes your menus and whisks away once more.

Piotr reaches across the table –careful not to knock into either of your glasses or the candle at the center of the table—and takes one of your hands in his. “So. We are married.”

You grin. “Hell yeah we are.”

He smiles back, then gazes thoughtfully at the engagement ring and wedding band on your left hand while rubbing circles against the back of your hand with his thumb. “What comes next?”

You let out a huff. “I mean… we have a house to furnish.”

“That we do,” Piotr chuckles. “But I meant more for us. What do you want us to do next, as couple?”

You glance around surreptitiously, then quietly suggest, “Have lots of sex?”

Piotr snorts. “Duly noted, myshka. Answer question seriously, please.”

You sit back in your seat, taking a moment to enjoy the way his thumb rubs against your hand before mulling over the question. “I don’t know. Right now, I’m kinda just content to enjoy the moment and our new life together.”

Piotr nods after a moment. “Okay. And… in future?”

“Kids, eventually,” you say, flashing a demure smile at him. “I mean, I think we should get the house furnished and functional first, but… maybe in the next year or two.”

Piotr smiles at that, eyes sparkling and face glowing. “Alright. It is your body; you set all rules.”

“I think in a year or two we can start trying,” you reiterate. “But, right now, I’m just looking to enjoy us. You.”

His smile softens, and he squeezes your hand gently. “That sounds very nice.”

You smile back, slowly getting lost in the depths of his sparkling blue eyes—

It really is magical.

#sass writes #piotr rasputin x reader #colossus x reader #IT'S HONEYMOON TIME #BOW CHICKA WOW WOW #deadpool fanfiction #x men fanfiction

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aweebwrites · 4 years

Text

Move on Dragons Ch 15

"Any luck yet Sensei?" Lloyd asked from the bridge of the Bounty, watching Little G eat his fill from the small bowl of wild berries in his palm, the others next to him.

"Yes and no." Sensei Wu admits, something akin to frustration in his slitted golden eyes. "I managed to get closer this time but your father is a slippery man who insists on not being found. He has taken traveler's tea to leave the realm so I must follow him." He told them, shifting the view of the device to the sight of the small camp with an empty teapot there, the outed campfire still burning.

"I will still have to figure out just which realm he escaped to but there are only so many he's willing to visit. I may be unable to contact you all for some time longer." He forewarned them.

"That's cool Sensei. Everything's pretty chill on our side still. Nothing too major has come up and our tech team is getting closer to figuring out how the device works." Cole says as he glanced at Zane, Nya, Pixal and Jay close by.

"Indeed." Zane nodded at the screen showing their Sensei. "We've already learned how to turn it on and off but we're getting closer to figuring out how to activate its interface." He reported.

"That's good. Having a direct line to Vortica will prove to be most helpful." Sensei Wu nodded then looked to Kai who was a little jittery if his shifting wings and flicking tail wasn't enough indication. "Is something the matter Kai?" He asked him and Kai blinked then shrugged.

"Nothing's actually wrong but…" He says then grinned. "Wu and I will be checking the Dragon Dimension today. We hit the 2 month mark since the dragons left so we're gonna see how things are doing. We aren't expecting much progress so quickly, even though 5 years have passed there, but we're looking for small signs that the planet is recovering." He told them.

“It won’t be in its best shape but… I’ve missed the place, you know?” He added with a shrug and the others could relate.

They haven’t been there for long but it really was beautiful.

"I see. Be careful however. Extinction usually brings forward evolution in both animals and plants alike." Wu warned him and Kai nodded.

"I will be. We'll let you know the news of what's up next time we chat." He promised and Wu nodded.

"Then I will contact you once I am able to." He promised them.

With that, their conversation ended with well wishes and goodbyes.

“This infernal device is highly frustrating.” Pixal says glaring at the small device she held in hand.

“But it’ss pretty fun to sssolve! It’ss kinda like a rubix cube!” Jay grinned, taking it and looking it over, his flicking tail almost tripping both Zane and Cole, all of them used to he and Lloyd’s tails to know to stand clear of the area behind them.

It took a lot of adaption to work around their individual changes, especially both Jay and Kai’s changes as theirs was permanent. It didn’t bother either of them much anymore- Kai didn’t have a problem with, too used to it as he was- but there were days when they did miss being human and on days like that, their much bigger family was there for them.

“Are you ready Kai?” Wu asked, looking down at the team’s ship from where he sat near by.

Somewhere in the past week, they began being able to speak like them. Zane knew better than to question how they were able to what with the structure of their mouths. Pixal knew better not to as well, not after almost short circuiting trying to figure out how Zane too got the ability to shift. Both nindroids decided to call it magic and left it at that.

“Yeah.” Kai says as he walked over to the edge of the ship, pulling out the dimensional crystal.

“Don’t forget the camera so we can keep track of the planet’s progress.” Nya called and he turned around catching it with his tail.

“Thanks sis. I’ll get all the footage you guys need.” He grinned then hopped over the edge of the ship, using his wings to catch him.

“You guys sure you don’t need us to come along?” Lloydie asked, stepping forward from where he and the others stood.

“Nah. It’s just a quick in and out. We won’t be more than 5 minutes tops.” Kai reassured.

“Just make sure to stick close to my father.” Morro cautioned and Kai smiled, flying over to stroke his snout, bumping his forehead against his.

“Don’t worry Mor-bro. We’ll be fine.” He reassured and Morro wasn’t ready to admit he needed the reassurance.

He knew their world was in a bad state, knew it was dangerous to go as they weren’t even sure what the oxygen levels were like right now and with both Kai and his father going there… He blinked once Kai held the crystal out to him.

“Why don’t you send us off huh?” He grinned and Morro blinked at the pink gem then balanced on his hind leg and accepted it, the crystal tiny in his paw but he picked it up between his claws and glanced at Kai as he flew back to where his father was. “Just hold it up and it’ll do the rest- but make sure not to do it twice or else the portal will close.” Kai warned and Morro nodded before holding up the crystal as instructed, a large portal opening up close to the two as he did.

“Sit tight. We’ll be back in a jif.” Kai winked before he flew in as Wu walked through.

The first thing Kai noticed once he stepped through was that the sun was setting- which was good since the air was uncharastically hot. That combined with the obvious decline in air quality made it a little difficult to breathe. He glanced up at Wu as the dragon looked around at what once was a lush, bountiful planet, now reduced to desolence, nothing but broken and dead trees standing around the base of the mountain they called home. The sky held a noticeably redder colour and it was quiet. So uncharastically quiet. Kai turned the camera on, moving forward still, looking for any signs of life thriving here. There were bones of animals passed, decomposing still and fungi. Well. At least they were clear signs of life.

“We won’t be able to ascend the mountain. The air gets thinner the higher you go and it’s already difficult to breathe at sea level.” Wu spoke up as he too walked around, keeping his pace slow and his breathing even.

He couldn’t afford to get even slightly winded. As a dragon of his size, his lungs demand a large amount of oxygen with each inhale, amounts that the planet could no longer satisfy. He couldn’t stay for very long still, else he collapses from oxygen deprivation. But their future depends on any signs of life. Fungi was a good start but he was hoping that more complex life survived the decline in the planet’s environment. If not, then they would be in Ninjago for far longer than he originally thought.

“Nothing. Maybe we should try in a different area? This is still kinda on a slope so maybe if we head to flatter land…” Kai suggested, turning to Wu.

“Perhaps.” Wu says in consideration. “However-” He was cut off by a cough that quickly descended into a coughing fit.

“Wu!” Kai yelled, alarmed as he flew over.

“I’m… Afraid I cannot… Stay any longer here…” He rasped, barely able to prevent himself from coughing further.

“Then go back!” Kai urged, looking back to the portal and he nods, heading towards it. “I wanna look around for a minute longer but I won’t go far.” He told Wu as he paused to see if he was coming.

“... Be careful.” He warns and Kai nodded, watching as he returned to his world.

Kai looked up, the moons, rings and stars in the night sky holding a reddish tint from the oxygen deprived atmosphere before he looked around again, hoping for even the softest glow of an insect but finding none still. He sighed, turning the camera towards himself from where he had still been filming.

“Five years past here and no signs of complex life. I’d look around a bit longer but it’s not exactly easy to breathe here, despite my body needing less oxygen than the dragon’s. It’s dark but it’s still pretty hot out and the air is thick and heavy. Maybe things will be in better shape after five more years. We could probably even chek different locations then.” Kai shrugged at the camera recording him. “Might as well head back now.” He says quietly, looking at the reflective lense before he frowned, spotting something strange.

He glanced back and up, looking at the sky suspiciously. Strange. He could have sworn he saw some kind of light- It flickered in again, growing brighter and larger this time. Kai’s eyes widened at the familiarity of the phenomenon in the sky. No way… He turned the camera towards it without much more thought, on the defense as he narrowed his eyes at the swirling multicoloured vortex above. Suddenly, two figures came tumbling out and Kai’s eyes widened before he darted forward, dropping the camera and catching one- then two, before they could hit the ground. Oh man were they heavy! A small sound from one of the two figures caught his attention and he really looked at them.

“Oh boy.” Was all he could think to say.

Wasn’t this a situation.

Outside the portal, Morro was fussing over his winded father, creating a gentle but oxygen filled airflow around his head as he caught his breath.

“Kai’s still in there. What’s taking him so long?” Cole says with a frown, wings out and opened, ready to perform a rescue mission if he must.

“If he doesn’t come out in the next minute or two then we go in.” Lloyd says, looking across at Cole and he nodded.

You better be ok Kai…

____

“Ugh!” Pixal growled in frustration.

“I agree! This is hopeless! Almost two months and we’re hardly any close to figuring this thing out!” Nya yells, resisting the urge to throw it down to instead place it on the table.

“I feared we wouldn’t be able to uncover the mysteries of this advanced technology. It appears this is becoming reality.” Zane says with a tone of frustration as well.

“I don’t know guyss, maybe we’re overthinking thingss.” Jay spoke up and they looked at him, both parts unimpressed and curious.

“Have you even interacted with this device? I think overthinking is quite necessary.” Pixal pointed out.

“No no.” Tempest says as he took over, Jay on the back burner. “I think Jay’ss got a point. Doess Vortica ssseem like the type of persson to use anything overly complicated? Doesn’t matter if complicated is within her knowledge basse, I think ssshe’d use sssomething that only takess a touch or two to activate.” He says as he used his tail to pick it up and bring it closer.

“Maybe turn it on then swipe?” Tempest mumbled as he did so, sliding his thumb against a pink panel before he blinked once a holoscreen and keyboard popped up, an image of Vortica sticking her tongue out at the top, making it clear this was a messaging interface.

Tempest smirked at the surprised, borderline angry looks both Nindroids and Nya wore, Jay yelling up a storm in the front of his mind.

“Well. I’ll be damned. Looks like the mystery is solved at lasst.” Tempest huffed.

____

“Alright. Let’s go in.” Lloyd says as he walked forward, Cole on his tail.

Before they could get any closer however Kai walked through the portal, struggling with the weight of the figures in his arms.

“Is that-” Blaze says with wide eyes as he and the others walked over.

“They are…” Wisp whispered, not sure if he should go on the defense or assist.

“Well. There’s two faces I never expected to see again. Especially like this.” Mist spoke up as Morro closed the portal.

“... Indeed…” Was Wu’s contemplative hum.

Perhaps… This was for the best.

____________ (I'm trying for updates every 2 days now for this fic. Also I cannot write the name Green Bean/Greenie and take it seriously so I updated Dragon!Lloyd's name to just Lloydie. They still call him Greenie and he's still annoyed by it but that's kinda in the background. Can you guess who came through the portal? ;)Thanks for reading!)

#ninjago #lloyd ninjago #kai ninjago #jay ninjago #cole ninjago #nya ninjago #pixal ninjago #Sensei Wu #morro ninjago #original characters #aweebwrites' work

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tenroseforeverandever · 4 years

Text

The Perfect Blend Chapter 3

Characters: Tenth Doctor (aka James Noble); Rose Tyler; Clara Oswald; Amy Pond; Jeanne Poisson; Donna Noble; Sylvia Noble; Wilfred Mott; Mickey Smith; Martha Jones; Clyde Langer

Tags: Human AU; fake relationship AU; coffee shop AU; stalkerish!Reinette; hurt/comfort; angst; romance; fluff; Christmas; New Year; New Year’s kiss

Story Summary:

Trying to escape from an predatory ex-girlfriend who will not accept their break-up, James Noble (aka The Doctor) finds himself in a coffee shop where he meets a barista (aka Rose Tyler) who makes him the perfect cup of tea and lends a sympathetic ear to his tale of woe.

Chapter Summary: James and Gramps discuss James’ Christmas announcement; and on New Year’s Eve, Clara and Mickey are concerned that Rose is mooning.

Chapter Notes: Sorry for the wait. Real life is messing with me, right now. I hope the next chapter won’t take quite as long.

As always, a big hug of thanks to @rose--nebula and mrsbertucci, for taking precious time out of their lives to beta my work. As always, all mistakes are mine.

Read also at: AO3; Tsp; FF

THE PERFECT BLEND - CHAPTER 3

CHRISTMAS DAY

James trudged up the darkened hillside at the back of the house, carrying a large flask full of tea in one hand and an old car blanket under the opposite arm. He took a long, clean breath of fresh air, relieved to have been able to slip away and leave the hubbub and bickering behind him. Despite the (rather deceptive, he thought) sense of freedom, he was feeling self-conscious, and he hesitated as he approached the old lean-to at the top of the hill.

“You don’t really have a date for the gala, do you son?” Gramps’ voice emanated from the rickety little shelter. “C’mon out from behind there, James. I know it’s you. I’d know those footsteps anywhere. Yours and Donna’s both.”

James couldn’t help the fond smile that crossed his face. “I brought some hot tea,” he came around the corner of the lean-to to the familiar sight of Gramps sitting on his tattered, old lawn chair, the box for the new telescope opened before him, “and I thought you might like some help putting your new toy together."

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact both would be very much appreciated.”

James spread the blanket on the ground and knelt on it. He handed the flask to Gramps, pulled the telescope box toward him, and unpacked all the bits in front of him, organizing them and piecing them together.

“I don’t think I’d get through that lot without your help. Thank-you, son.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble. You know how I love tinkering with things. And it’s a brilliant evening for stargazing, even if it’s a bit cold. I should have this in working order in no time.” James turned his eyes to the stars and sighed. “It’s always so peaceful up here.”

“Tonight, especially so, I’ll wager.” Gramps took a long sip of tea. “After that bombshell you dropped on that lot.”

James snorted. “Dropped it on myself, if I’m being honest. You were right, I don’t really have a date for the gala. I never planned on taking a date at all. I was just looking forward to meeting with some of my colleagues out of the office and… they’ve asked me to put together a little firework display to bring in the New Year, so I can’t just back out. The Uni wants something spectacular, something special this year. This gala is all about fundraising for the new Medical Sciences wing, after all.”

“Blimey! Pyrotechnics?” Gramps gawped at him. “You’re not creating that yourself, are you? Surely there are all sorts of regulations about that sort of thing.”

“Weeell…” James ran a hand through his hair, “actually, its digital pyrotechnics. I’ve developed a holographic interface to create some 3D fireworks indoors.”

“I have to admit, I’m a bit relieved to hear that.”

“Oh, there are still plenty of ways for it to go wrong, and if I have to spend the evening fending off her… But don’t worry, it won’t be like the blender… I swear,” he added at the sight of his grandad’s dubious expression. “Besides, I’m collaborating with a bunch of people from Computer Sciences and we’ve already had a few test runs, but I’d like to give it a bit more pizazz. A few tweaks to make it ultra-realistic.

Gramps sighed. “You know the old saying? If it ain’t broke...”

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

“Well, I would never have guessed you knew much about that sort of thing. You’ve never actually studied computer graphics, have you? Never mind something so grand as all that holographic stuff.”

“Nah,” he sniffed a bit boastfully, “but it isn’t really a big leap from the programming I’m doing for my bionics research… Weeell, not that big. Weeell… I’m a quick study.”

“My clever boy! But the question is, if you can’t back out of the gala altogether, what are you going to do about the fireworks currently going off back down there?” He waved an arm in the direction of the house.

James groaned in response. “All the studying in the world won’t help me with that... Oh, here, Gramps, have a look! Your telescope’s ready to go.”

“Oh, blimey, will you take a look at that beauty.” Gramps marvelled at the telescope, rubbing his hands together. “You shouldn’t have spent all that money, though…”

“C’mon… have a look. There’s Saturn.” James pointed to the sky. “Something easy, first, to get the hang of it. Then the universe is yours to explore.”

They took turns, well into the night, peering through the telescope, sipping hot tea and discussing possible solutions for James’ “French dilemma”, as they’d come to refer to Jeanne.

James reminded himself he had nearly a week before the gala. He was clever and not too bad looking, if he did say so himself, even if he was a “skinny beanpole” by Donna’s assertions. Surely, he wouldn’t have any problem finding a suitable date by New Year’s Eve, someone who would convince Jeanne, once and for all, that he had moved on.

NEW YEAR’S EVE

The bell jingled above the door, and Rose looked up from where she was clearing a table to greet the latest customer. It was New Year’s Eve and the shop had been busy over the lunch hour as people dropped in to grab a coffee and a bite to eat before heading home to prepare for the evening’s festivities. No matter how busy, she always made a point of trying to welcome everyone with a bright smile whenever she could. It was just good customer service, building loyalty, welcoming her guests. Goodness knew her little shop needed all the help it could get to stave off the competition of the big chain coffeehouses.

But perhaps she’d been trying a little harder than usual over the last week or so, her chest filling with a faint, fluttering hope that, when she looked up at the sound of the bell, it would be to the sight of tousled brown hair and sad, earnest eyes and a request for the best cuppa in London.

But it never was.

And that wisp of hope would fade, drifting away on Rose’s soft sigh, her heart emptying a little more every time.

A wistful smile playing over her lips, she brought the used dishes to the counter. As she passed Clara, who was serving the latest customer, her friend arched her brow at her. Rose ignored the shrewd look and handed the dishes through the passthrough to the young dishwasher who took them from her with an overblown sigh.

“You can go home soon, Clyde. Just do this last load for me, yeah? Then a quick mop of the floor and wipe down those counters, and it’ll be all spic and span, ready for the New Year.”

“You sure, Miss Tyler?”

“Yeah, course. The lunch rush is over. Everyone’s heading home now. I can take care of anything else that comes up.”

“Thanks, Miss Tyler!”

Rose turned back to the service counter where Clara was completing an order of a Peppermint Hot Chocolate with a flourish of whipped cream and candy cane crumbs. She called out the customer’s name, handed them their chocolate, then spun to face Rose. “You’re mooning.”

Rose fixed her with narrowed eyes, shaking her head in a teasing warning. “I am not!” Then, latching on to a perfect way to change the subject, her eyes shot to the clock. “Hey, shouldn’t you be heading out by now?”

“Don’t worry. I’m just about to go. The baking’s all set to go for tomorrow.” She grinned. “Besides, I’m not meeting Jenny at the salon for another hour. We’re both going to get our hair and nails done, then we’re going out to bring in the New Year in style.” She winked at Rose.

Rose couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholy. As much as she loved her shop, she sometimes wished she was going out to celebrate, too. But she tried to sound upbeat, for Clara’s sake. “Ooooh, sounds like fun!”

“See, Rose,” Clara offered her perkiest know-it-all smile, “this is one advantage of same-sex relationships. There’s so much extra stuff you can do together. You should seriously consider it. You’re a catch! Better that than mooning after boys.”

(So much for the change of subject…)

“I am not mooning! It’s just a quiet afternoon, yeah. It’s just the letdown after the lunch rush. And, though I know we’ve had this discussion before, I’ll remind you again: I’m not like you. My options remain limited to…” she blew her breath past her lips, and rolled her eyes, “…boys. Such as they are.”

“I suppose… but you have been mooning… for nearly two bloody weeks, ever since that Doctor bloke dropped in.” She waggled her eyebrows.

“Shut up!” Rose’s cheeks burned and she forced herself to maintain eye contact with Clara. “I have not.”

“Pu-lease!” Clara chirped over her shoulder as she disappeared into the little staff room. She reappeared a few minutes later, tying the belt of her coat around her waist.

“I’m not mooning,” Rose insisted, failing to hide the slightly petulant tone from her voice.

“Oh, relax,” Clara scoffed gently, as the bell above the door rang again, “I’m just taking the mick.”

“Hey, did someone mention my name?” the familiar voice sounded from the doorway and both girls turned to greet Mickey Smith with wide smiles.

“Only in jest,” Clara quipped.

Mickey stuck out his tongue at her. “See if I ever cover a shift for you again!”

Everyone laughed and Rose piped up, “Oh, you can’t stay away. Not when you get to spend New Year’s Eve with me.”

“You’re right, there, babe.” Mickey gave Rose a soft, friendly peck on the cheek as he walked past her to the staff room. “Although,” he called out through the door, “Martha might have something to say about that.”

Mickey was Rose’s oldest and closest friend. She had known him literally all her life. He was a few years older than her, and they had grown up on Powell Estate together. They’d even dated a few years back but had quickly realized they were destined only to be the best of friends. Being lovers hadn’t worked for them, much to Rose’s mum’s chagrin. Jackie Tyler had chided Rose about getting airs and graces, thinking herself above dating a mechanic. It had taken a firm word from Mickey to get her to listen to reason, although she still lamented from time to time that Rose would end up an old maid.

That had been years ago, and now Mickey was dating a young surgeon, Martha Jones, who worked at the local hospital. They had met when she had brought her car to him to be repaired and had hit it off right away. A year later, he’d asked her to marry him. Rose, who had rapidly befriended Martha, was thrilled for them both.

Mickey often came to Pete’s Coffee Dimension, after work at the garage, to help out and to make sure Rose, Clara, and the other employees had time for a dinner break. He often stayed the evening, chatting, when Martha was working a night shift. Tonight, he was covering Clara’s shift, so she could have the evening off with Jenny. Martha was on call at the hospital and would be dropping by later, if she was free, to ring in the New Year with her fiancé and Rose.

“Right then, I’m off,” Clara announced, “now that you’re here to help hold down the fort, Micks. But I should warn you,” she grinned, gesturing toward Rose with a jab of her thumb, “this one is mooning…”

“Oh, what’s this then? Mooning? You’re going to be a right misery all night, ain’t ya?”

Rose snapped her arms over her chest. “You,” she fixed Clara with a fierce glare, “are going to be late. And for the record,” she turned her glare on Mickey, “I am not mooning! End of story.”

“All right, all right!” he held his hands up defensively. “You’re not mooning. Blimey! Don’t kill me. Not a great way to start the New Year, yeah?”

“’M not gonna kill ya.” Rose drew Mickey in for a hug, then turned to Clara, pulling her in for a hug too. “Happy New Year, you. Thanks for looking out for me, both of you. Now off you go, Clara. Wish Jenny a happy New Year for us, yeah?”

“Definitely! Happy New Year!” Clara cheered, giving Rose and Mickey a last big squeeze and calling through the passthrough to Clyde before heading toward the door. “Give my love to Martha.” She gave a parting wave and backed out onto the street, the bell tinkling behind her.

The shop remained quiet, a few customers straggling in through the afternoon. Clyde had long since left and Martha had texted to say she would be by shortly. Rose glanced up at the clock: just gone three.

“So, babe,” Mickey fixed Rose with narrowed eyes, “I have to agree with Clara: you’re not quite yourself. Deny it all you like, you are mooning. Not after some bloke, is it?”

Rose groaned.

“It is!”

“Look, I’m just feeling a little, I dunno…” she shrugged, “…not exactly sad, but jus’…”

“Mooning.”

She smiled. “It would just be nice to have someone special to share the holidays with, ya know? To dress up and go out somewhere nice. I love the shop, I mean… it’s my life, my dream. But it would be good to get out once in a while.” She leaned back against the counter and laid her head on Mickey’s shoulder, as he wrapped a comforting arm around her.

“You’ll find someone.”

“Yeah, maybe. No one as good as you, though.”

“You kidding me? I was a rubbish boyfriend… at least to you. I hope I’m doin’ okay with Mar.”

“She thinks you’re bloody wonderful. But us,” she nudged him with an elbow, “we were just never good together like that. To me, you’ve always been a lovely friend, a big brother, yeah. Always there when I need you. But sometimes, I just feel like I want someone to be a bit more than a friend. I’m just afraid…”

“That you’ll end up with another–”

“Yeah, Jimmy Stone…”

Mickey growled, “If I ever get my hands on that tosser… how he treated you…”

“Enough,” she shoved him a little, knocking him off balance, “you’ll scare away all the customers, looking all aggressive-like.”

“Like there are so many of those…”

She frowned at him, unimpressed.

“Fine…” He grudgingly relaxed, and Rose snuggled against him again. After a few quiet moments, he spoke again, “So tell me about this bloke?”

“What bloke?”

“The one that you’re mooning over. You can’t lie to me, babe, I know there’s someone…”

“Not really…”

“C’mon! Give.”

“There’s nothing to tell you. I hardly know him. It was just… a feeling… he seemed sweet. That’s all. But I’ve only ever seen him the once.”

“And…”

Rose shrugged. “He was nice, but waaaay out of my league. Working on his third Ph.D.”

“An older man! Shit, Rose!”

“No, no! He looks like he’s only a couple of years older than me,” Rose giggled. “I don’t think he’s even thirty. He’s just really clever. Says he’s a genius. Like I said, out of my league. Not that it matters. He’s only come in the once.”

“Wait a minute! This isn’t that… erm… what was it… Doctor-bloke who went gaga over your cup of tea, was it?”

Rose flushed, biting her thumb.

“It him, isn’t it? Clara told me about him. Said you thought he was a bit fit.”

“It was none of Clara’s business! Nothing happened. I don’t even know his proper name and he doesn’t know mine. So, it don’t matter, yeah.”

“Well, he’s an idiot if he didn’t bother to come back and get it, that’s all I can say. Not worth all the mooning.”

Rose opened her mouth to say something more, but at that moment the bell jingling heralded another customer entering the shop.

About an hour later, Mickey huffed to himself as he wiped down the tables. Martha had arrived a little while ago, given him a quick peck on the cheek, and then she and Rose had disappeared into the kitchen ostensibly to get a start on a thorough New Year’s cleaning… but Mickey knew what really was going on was a good old gossip. Either way, it left him as the front man, taking care of the customers who occasionally wandered into the shop.

The bell chimed above the door. Mickey gave the table he was tending to one last wipe and looked up to greet the man who burst into the shop on a cold blast of wintery air from the street. “’Lo,” Mickey said, “Happy New Year, mate! What can I get you? Something to go?”

The man looked frantic. Even his hair looked frantic. He dragged a hand through it, making it stand up even more on end. “No… erm… no thanks. For here, please. I think I’d like to stay here for a bit.” He loosened the black bow tie at his neck, leaving the ends to dangle, and unfastened the top button of his shirt. “Blimey, that’s a bit better. Always feel trapped in a tux… unluckiest suit in the world. Never liked ‘em… Nothing good ever came from wearing a tux.” This time, he ran both hands through his hair.

“Yeah, mate, I get it. I don’t like a monkey suit much either. Look, take a seat and I’ll bring you a menu, but to be honest, you look like you need something a bit stronger than a posh coffee.”

Mickey left to grab a menu from the stand at the front of the service counter and returned to the man, who had seated himself at a table by the window. His legs were jittering with nervous energy. He took the menu from Mickey and glanced over it with glazed eyes.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he looked up from the menu. “Just putting off the inevitable. My life is over after tonight.”

“Mate, you have a brand-new year coming up! New opportunities. How bad can it be, yeah?”

“You don’t understand. If I don’t show up with a date to the Uni Gala… she’ll…” he spat out the word, “she’ll… Fuck! I’m doomed.” He slumped over the table.

“I’m sorry, man. Wish I could help.”

“No,” the man straightened up, “I’m sorry.” He looked down at the menu again. “I’ll have… hmmm… I’ll have… You know what I need… I need a cup of tea. It did wonders the last time I was here.”

“I can do that! Nothing like a good cuppa, yeah? Oh, blimey, my best friend, Rose (she own’s this place!); well, her mum is known for making the best cuppa, and taught Rose everything she knows. But,” Mickey added conspiratorially, “I honestly think Rose makes it even better. But don’t tell her mum I said so… she’d flay me alive.”

“Rose?” The man’s expression relaxed as he muttered the name, a small smile toying with his lips. “Her name is Rose…”

This man was a bit odd, Mickey thought. Not a bad sort, just a bit odd. “Can I get your name for the order then?”

“Oh, right!” He broke out of his daze. “My name, of course. The Doctor.”

“The Doctor…” Mickey repeated slowly. The name was so familiar, but he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Yup! That’s me! Just ‘The Doctor’. It’s easier that way. My real name’s quite common.”

“The Doctor…” Mickey mulled the name around in his mind again, and suddenly all the pieces fell into place. “Wait! You’re the Doctor! The Doctor who was in here a few days before Christmas. You ordered a cup of tea, yeah?”

The Doctor quirked a suspicious left eyebrow at Mickey. “Yeeess… a brilliant cup of tea. What about it?”

“Oh, mate! You said need a date for tonight?” Mickey had never considered himself to be much of a matchmaker. If he was being honest, it would never normally have crossed his mind. He was much more of a live-and-let-live sort of bloke. But this time, it was Rose’s happiness at stake, and when it came to ensuring Rose’s happiness, there were no holds barred.

“Erm… yes… yeah… but, it’s too late. I’m never going to find a date at this time. I told you, I’m doomed.”

“Nah, not tonight, you’re not. Mate, I think I may just have the answer to all of your problems!”

#ten x rose #ficandchips #human au #fake dating #coffee shop #stalkerish ex #romance #hurt/comfort #fluff #angst #christmas #new year #new year's kiss #tenroseforeverandever's fic

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roseymoseyberry · 5 years

Text

Juxtapositional Affection (gift fic)

Happy new year, y’all! Starting it off with a @secretsolenoid for Libby! Honestly all their prompts were *chef kiss* but I couldn’t help being drawn to their Rodimus/Thunderclash one asking for “Roddy finally getting some love and appreciation because LL 25 made me sad”

Because listen. I’ve wanted to write these boys for a while. And LL 25 also made me sad and I’m always ready to write fix-it fic for it at the drop of a hat.

So to you, Libby, you wonderful brilliant mind you. I hope you like it!!

Franchise: TFIDW/MTMTE/LL

Ship: Rodimus/Thunderclash

Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for some references to interface (but it doesn’t happen in the fic), swearing, and some drinking of robot alcohol. Other warnings/relevant tags include Lost Light 25 spoilers and hurt/comfort (heavy on the comfort)

Link to read it over on AO3!

Summary:

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“What? That I could manage to under and oversell myself? Because I assure you it’s very possible.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to oversell yourself, Rodimus. You’re incredible.”

“May I join you?”

Rodimus’s helm shot up from where it had dipped while lost in his thoughts, vision blurry for a second before his optics found focus. He already knew who he was looking at even before they had though. To say that Thunderclash’s color choices were distinctive was, by Rodimus’s estimate, an understatement.

Suited his name at least.

Rodimus snorted, amused by his own thought.

“Would be rude of me to say no at this point, wouldn’t it?” Rodimus said dismissively as he turned back to his untouched drink on the bar.

Thunderclash didn’t jump at the opening. He didn’t move much at all in fact, still just standing there.

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“Can’t be worse company than drinking alone.”

“Nevertheless, it wasn’t my intension to--”

Rodimus pinched the bridge of his nose and ex-vented tiredly before cutting Thunderclash off, saying, “Just sit down. Or don’t. I really don’t care.”

A lie, judging by the small kernel of elation that bloomed in his chest when Thunderclash pulled the stool next to him out to sit on, but Thunderclash didn’t need to know that. Frankly, nobody needed to know how lonely Rodimus had become that he was happy to be with Thunderclash of all mechs.

Rodimus tipped his helm back and emptied his drink in one go to chase the thought away. It burned, but he didn’t mind so much by the time he was finished and slammed the cube down with a clatter.

Thunderclash was watching him with bright optics and a small little frown pulling at his full lips.

Instead of voicing concern though, he wisely asked a more general, “How have you been, Rodimus?”

Rodimus shrugged, fiddling with his now empty cube with one servo while he braced his cheek on the other.

“Oh, you know. Taking a break from divine quests to do some soul searching, and when that becomes too mind-numbingly depressing I take breaks by helping with Megatron’s trial, which is just a barrel of fun. So, you know. Fine. You?”

Rodimus had expected the frown to deepen; to receive an earful of overly sympathetic prattle; to have pity roll over him like the worst kind of flood.

But, instead, Thunderclash huffed with understanding.

“Just about the same, though without the trial. Instead I’ve used my soul-searching breaks to plan a way out of it altogether since I’m not sure I can take much more.”

Rodimus blinked before lifting his helm off his servo, asking, “A plan? You find another map in another Matrix or something?”

It was a joke, but Rodimus knew he sounded more hopeful than he had intended.

But Thunderclash shook his helm.

“No, nothing so divine as that. Just a ship and contacts who would be able to connect me with jobs that need doing.”

Rodimus put the cube down and turned on his stool to face Thunderclash. His knees brushed against the other mech’s thigh, but Rodimus paid it little mind as he said, “Wait, wait, wait. You’re planning on become some sort of spacefaring errand boy?”

Thunderclash actually looked a bit abashed as he confirmed, “I wouldn’t put it that way, but I suppose so. At least until something more substantial comes along.” It was only when Thunderclash lifted his cube to his lips, no doubt looking for a chance to better gather his thoughts, that Rodimus happened to notice it.

Thunderclash’s cube was already rather small – a cocktail of some sort – but in Thunderclash’s large hand it was nearly comical.

Apparently comical enough that Rodimus caught himself snickering tipsily. When Thunderclash looked back at him, frowning, Rodimus realized how it must have come across, and stammered, “No, that’s not – it’s not the errand boy thing. It’s your servos and how small the cube looks in ‘em. It just struck me as funny, and ho boy, the timing of noticing that could not have been worse, huh?”

Thunderclash blinked at him again before, softly and warmly, chuckling as he lifted his servo.

“I suppose I do look rather silly, don’t I?”

“Very. Also, that cube looks way too small in your servo,” Rodimus quipped, and when that just got another startled chuckle, he added, “Also, I’m overcharged so you really can’t hold anything I’m saying against me anyway.”

“I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Thunderclash replied, lifting the drink to sip from again.

Maybe it was the engex settling in, but Rodimus’s frame eased a little bit, his spark warming with the surprisingly pleasant company.

Yeah, it had to be the engex.

It definitely wasn’t the very idea that maybe he and Thunderclash had something in common.

“So. Spacefaring errand boy. You think that gig is gonna be enough to keep your mind off the horror that is soul searching?” Rodimus asked.

Thunderclash didn’t reply right away. He tilted his helm a bit as he put his cube down, the lines of his face straightening as he gave it serious thought.

And alright. Yes. He was handsome.

“I don’t know for certain that it will be,” Thunderclash admitted as he peered down at his drink, “but, for as painful as it can be, the soul searching did reveal some things.”

“Yeah? What did that particular torture session manage to pull out?”

Thunderclash’s lips curled just enough to be considered a smile, though to call it a happy expression was a stretch. “I realized that yes, certainly, I would prefer to have a more important goal than simply running errands. I feel more at ease when I know my task is meaningful and true. But more than that, I think…” Thunderclash trailed off for a moment, optics glancing at Rodimus briefly before returning to his cube, the smile slipping away. “I think that’s all that those things gave me. If I’m following Primus, or the Autobot cause, or moral obligation, there is reassurance that I’m doing good. There’s no room for my own doubts.”

Rodimus swore his spark was choking him.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I suspect that the grandiosity of the goals has never been truly why I enjoyed my quests. Rather, the journey and the ones I shared it with – that, above anything else, is truly what I loved.”

There was silence then – well, as silent as a half-filled bar could be considering the din of conversation and laughter that drifted around them. But none of it could truly penetrate the tension that hung between them.

And then Thunderclash huffed an ex-vent, apologetic as he said, “I hadn’t meant to get so serious.”

“No, no, that’s--” Rodimus closed his mouth, swallowed, and then reached up to rub the back of his neck as he said, “I get it. I—yeah. I get it. I really get it.”

Thunderclash finally looked up, their optics meeting, and—

And he smiled.

“I had hoped you might understand.”

And Rodimus laughed, short and genuine, shaking his helm as he spun in his seat back towards the bar.

“What?”

Rodimus looked back at Thunderclash sidelong as he lifted his servo, waving down the bartender. If his night was going to involve spiraling down a drain of commiseration with Thunderclash about getting planet bound while simultaneously trying to ignore how Thunderclash was actually relatable and consequently suddenly so much more attractive, then he was going to need another drink. “What ‘what’?”

“What do you find so funny about that?”

“I told you. I’m overcharged. Can’t be held accountable for what I say or any inappropriate laughing.”

“I can still ask why though, can’t I?”

Rodimus shrugged as his attention was halved between Thunderclash and the bartender down the line. “Another of the same,” he asked, and the bartender nodded in understanding. But then their optics drifted to Rodimus’s drinking partner, going wide and bright, and the bartender scrambled for the drink wall.

“You can, I guess,” Rodimus finally said as he turned back to Thunderclash. “Maybe I find the idea that a big fancy hero like you would want to relate with somebody like me to be funny.”

The space between Thunderclash’s optics furrowed as he frowned.

“What?”

Rodimus gestured with a thumb towards the bartender over his shoulder. “Take stuff like that. I’ve been here all night, no biggie, but right now? I can promise you that bartender is coming back with a free drink and it’s for you because one look and they’re swooning.”

Rodimus wasn’t sure exactly what he had thought Thunderclash’s response to that would be. But flustered hadn’t been it.

“No. No. That’s not true--”

Rodimus’s cube hit the bar along with a little cube just like the one Thunderclash already held in his servo, served with a wide, spellbound smile.

Rodimus smirked in victory as Thunderclash looked between him and the bartender, thanking them before forcing shanix into their servo for the drink. He looked, of all things, slightly miserable. When finally the bartender was gone, Thunderclash frowned.

“Fine. I’ll admit there is a…” Thunderclash paused as he seemed to consider his words before finally saying, “An unwarranted hero worship that follows me around. But I think you sell yourself far too short, Rodimus.”

“Only when I’m not overselling myself,” Rodimus replied before sipping at his drink.

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“What? That I could manage to under and oversell myself? Because I assure you it’s very possible.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to oversell yourself, Rodimus. You’re incredible.”

Rodimus nearly choked on his own oral lubricant. Thunderclash had sounded so genuine, and now looking at him, Thunderclash looked at him so genuinely.

Rodimus blinked, aware that his face was showcasing his surprise for the whole room to see.

“You’re serious.”

“Very.”

“I swear I’m not fishing for compliments, I just really need you to explain yourself. Immediately.”

Where Thunderclash had looked so torn about being doted upon, now he lit up like a new born star, optics bright and back straightening.

“Rodimus, you’re a Prime. You are literally so pure of spark that the Matrix accepted you wholly to make you a Prime. That alone should be proof enough that you’re an incredible mech.”

“That’s—that’s so not how it works. And besides, you’ve had the Matrix too.”

“As a carrier and a carrier alone,” Thunderclash was quick to argue, servo lifting to his chest. “It was certainly an honor to be entrusted with protecting such a holy relic, but I was a vessel for the Matrix and nothing more. I never communed with Primus like you have.”

Rodimus shifted on his stool, spark warming where it squirmed in his chest, and he wasn’t sure if it was from remembering how wonderful it had been communing with the Matrix, or if it was the sheer reverence with which Thunderclash looked at him.

“You could have if you’d wanted.”

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Thunderclash said with a casual shake of his helm, sounding almost amused, as if Rodimus had made a joke.

Rodimus’s jaw dropped as he stared at Thunderclash’s face, realizing aloud, “Holy frag. This whole humble shtick of yours is actually real.”

“I’m just being honest.”

“What you are is neurotic and honestly? It’s kind of a relief,” Rodimus said, laughing in disbelief and shaking his head. Before Thunderclash could disagree though, Rodimus plowed ahead, saying, “But alright, fine, I’ll give you your Prime worship moment. That’s an easy pull though, so you’re gonna have to dig deeper than that if you want to convince me.”

“You say that like it’s a challenge,” Thunderclash replied, smiling warmly, sweetly, adoringly. He lifted one of his big servos, lifting a finger with each point as he started, “You’re endlessly brave, charismatic enough that your mere presence crushes personality ticks, strong enough to make hard decisions others would wilt under, determined and driven as hell--”

“Ok, ok, that’s enough--”

“—You’re a talented orator with so much earnestness to your speeches that you move mechs to do the impossible, you’re absolutely stunning to behold, your ability to withstand such high temperatures makes me very suspicious you must be an outlier of some sort--”

“Enough!” Rodimus insisted, shoving at Thunderclash’s shoulder even as he laughed, less from humor and more from the bubbling heat suffusing his frame from his spark outward, flattered and appreciated and flustered in turn. He was pretty sure if he let Thunderclash get any further, he would burst into flames right there in the middle of the bar. “You’re so embarrassing. And—did you just say that I’m hot?”

Thunderclash blinked, mouth closing and opening again, before he started, “I just pointed out that you’re able to withstand hot temperatures--”

“Before that.”

“You’re a talented orator--”

“Nuh uh, you’re not getting out of this one,” Rodimus insisted, grinning as he leaned sideways and elbowed Thunderclash. “Come on, let me savor it. It’s not every day The Thunderclash says you’re easy on the optics.”

Thunderclash’s gaze strayed from Rodimus’s face to where his servos fiddled with the small cube in their grasp.

“Very easy on the optics,” he finally confirmed as he glanced back at Rodimus again briefly. And Rodimus swore there was a small smile curling at the corner of Thunderclash’s lips.

It was a very cute smile.

Rodimus felt something flutter within him and the heat of his frame started to creep up his cheeks.

“Why, Captain Thunderclash, did you come over here with the intension of taking me home with you?” Rodimus asked, voice full of teasing demureness.

Thunderclash’s optics went wide, flaring as his servos clenched tight, completely encasing the cube within them as every inch of his frame screamed backtracking.

“No, that was not my intention.”

“Really? Because you look pretty nervous there, buddy,” Rodimus pushed, leaning closer so his shoulder pressed to Thunderclash’s arm, his knee grazing Thunderclash’s thigh. His optics were fully focused on his drinking partner now, intent on finding the actual answer to his question.

Thunderclash swallowed heavily before saying, “My personal affections, be they as they may, were not the reason I came here tonight.”

Rodimus stilled, his processor stalling on what was, essentially, an admittance wrapped up in a mystery.

And really, what did it say about him that Rodimus chose to follow the mystery instead of trying to come to terms with what Thunderclash’s ‘affections’ might entail?

“Then why did you?”

That actually made Thunderclash look even more nervous. After a moment of returning Rodimus’s gaze, he lifted the half-drunk cube in his servos and downed it in one large swallow. The cube was placed down much more gently than Rodimus’s had been, and then the second waiting cube was lifted and downed in two gulps.

Rodimus realized his optics must have gone wide and his jaw dropped from surprise.

Thunderclash’s optics were blazing with either engex or determination as he turned to face Rodimus fully.

“I want to ask you to join my ship.”

Rodimus blinked and his mouth moved soundlessly until he managed a weak, “What?”

“As my co-captain,” Thunderclash continued, his expression torn between hope and fear. “Whatever issues I may have had with who shared that position with you previously aside, it seems like a system I would like to try myself, and I would be honored if you joined me.”

“That’s…” Rodimus began before just as quickly he trailed off, not sure where to even begin. His processor whirled madly to understand while his spark throbbed in his chest hard enough it nearly hurt.

It seemed impossible.

It had to be impossible.

“That’s nice,” Rodimus started, forcing casual amusement into his tone as he tore his optics from Thunderclash’s to look at his drink, “But if you had wanted to frag, you really didn’t have to come up with this whole charade. The compliments were plenty enough to convince me.”

Thunderclash didn’t respond right away and Rodimus didn’t dare look at him. Every second that passed further cemented for Rodimus that that’s all this had been, an elaborate come on, nothing more--

“I do have feelings for you, Rodimus. To try to say otherwise would be a lie and that’s the last thing I intend to--”

Rodimus released his drink so he could drop his face into his servos, ex-venting exasperatedly as he interrupted, “Please don’t say it like that. You can just say you want to frag. Interface. Whatever.”

“But that’s not true,” Thunderclash insisted. “There is more to it than mere physical attraction.”

“Great. You wanna frag with feelings. And you know what?” Rodimus straightened up again, pinning Thunderclash with a pointed look, “Fine. Drop all this slag about ships and errands and being fragging co-captains. Just admit you’re picking me up and I’m all yours for the night. Deal?”

It didn’t work though.

If anything, Thunderclash’s frown deepened, his optics sad and frustrated and determined.

“I’m not fragging you tonight, Rodimus.”

Rodimus hated how the stern tone mixed with hearing Thunderclash curse actually had the very unintended effect of warming Rodimus’s systems. He really wouldn’t have minded at that point if they did frag. Found some dark corner and just felt something.

“You could. I’m saying yes.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“Yeah, but what you say you’re asking is insane. And I know I called you neurotic earlier, but this is too much, even for you.”

Thunderclash’s mouth was a tight line, his gaze intense and calculating.

When he pushed his stool back and offered his servo, Rodimus assumed he had won, until Thunderclash said, “Come with me to the ship. See it for yourself.”

Rodimus looked down at the offered servo, so large that he realized his would probably look just as silly in it as the cube had.

It would look out of place.

But the large servo was warm and welcoming under Rodimus’s palm.

Thunderclash had insisted they walk instead of drive, citing their inebriation, and no amount of arguing would get him to shift into his alt mode. So finally Rodimus had settled for walking next to him.

It was late, but an early late – any mechs who didn’t have plans to be out for the night would be at home already, and any mech who did plan to be out wouldn’t be leaving to go home for hours yet. Besides the occasional group moving from one bar to another, Rodimus and Thunderclash were alone as they made their way across the neighborhoods.

And once Rodimus stopped questioning Thunderclash’s intentions, conversation became pleasant again. They talked about their shared acquaintances and friends, about travelling in space and the various shenanigans they had each gotten up to in those good old days, about how different Cybertron was, how difficult it was to find a place in it all.

Rodimus had almost been surprised when an actual ship appeared in front of them.

“It doesn’t have a name yet,” Thunderclash said as he palmed a panel beside the entrance. “I tend to overthink things like that and get wordy, so I hope you’ll do the honors.”

Rodimus snorted, still a bit tipsy as he looked up at the ship.

“So we’re really still acting like I’m going to be in there any longer than it takes to frag my processor out?”

Thunderclash sighed but didn’t bother to comment as he stepped back to gesture Rodimus go inside.

It was no Lost Light – or Vis Vitalis for that matter – but the ship was in, well, shipshape. New as far as Rodimus could see. If it wasn’t, it had been repaired and cleaned so thoroughly that it might as well have been. Approximately half the size of the Lost Light but it didn’t feel at all claustrophobic.

It was nice.

It looked like opportunity.

“Tell me you didn’t pay money for this old junker,” Rodimus teased despite himself. Even if Thunderclash couldn’t see through his sarcasm by now, the way that Rodimus looked around with wide optics as he let his digit tips trail along the wall no doubt would have.

Thunderclash was beaming from cheek to cheek when Rodimus happened to look back at him.

“It’s nice to be back on a ship again, isn’t it?”

“The only way it could be better is if you’d had the artificial gravity activated,” Rodimus admitted as he made his own way down the hallway, directionless but still quite sure he could find the bridge with quick, long strides. Every fiber of his being insisted he had to find the bridge immediately. “I don’t care how many smartaft scientists try to tell me it’s impossible to feel a difference. You so can.”

“It feels less… restrictive.”

Rodimus whipped around in the middle of the hallway, unperturbed when Thunderclash nearly walked into him, too busy grinning as he pointed up at Thunderclash.

“Yes! That’s it exactly! Primus, it’s like you’re in my fragging head,” Rodimus said before laughing and spinning on his heels again. “While you’re in there, mind telling me where the damn bridge is? I have to see that bridge.”

“You’re heading the right way. Just turn left at the fork,” Thunderclash explained as his heavy pedesteps thudded behind Rodimus again. He sounded nearly as excited as Rodimus did.

And then, finally, there it was.

Clean, spotless even, with consoles aplenty and cushioned chairs at each. Three large dark panes of glass dominated the entirety of the front half of the room, darkened by the shutters drawn across them while the ship was docked. But out in space—

Rodimus hadn’t realized he was moving until he was stood at the main console, digits light against the edges, resting where they would have were this his Lost Light. But his optics were wholly enchanted by the shuttered windows.

Because out in space those very windows would be filled with hundreds upon thousands upon millions of stars and planets and nebulae and galaxies, all glittering with their brilliant light, setting the the vast vacuum of space ablaze with their siren call.

And his spark felt full to bursting with the desperate longing to answer them.

“Do you like it?”

Rodimus managed to tear his gaze away to glance over his shoulder. Thunderclash stood to the side and just behind him, servos tucked behind the small of his back, watching him with optics bright with anticipation.

And Rodimus’s could feel his intake constrict with emotion.

“It’s beautiful.”

Thunderclash’s face lit up bright enough it could have been a glittering star all its own.

“It could be yours. Ours.”

And Rodimus swore his spark was going supernova.

“Holy frag. You’re actually serious.”

Thunderclash stepped up to his side and reached out his palm to the console. Immediately the computer whirred to life and the screen blinked on, welcoming Captain Thunderclash before starting to run diagnostics and spit out reports on the ship’s current status.

Not once did Thunderclash look away from Rodimus.

“I’ve already altered the program to accept a second captain. I’ll register you in the computer right now if that’s what you wish.”

Rodimus looked down at the console and Thunderclash’s large servo still pressed against it. His would look so small in comparison, but the console would accept him nonetheless. The ship would accept him.

His digits twitched where they just skimmed the edges.

“Why?” Rodimus finally asked, doubt and fear sparking into nameless frustration as he turned back to Thunderclash. “This ship is yours. Mechs will trip over themselves to join Thunderclash’s crew. In no time at all you could be off this planet and out there--” Rodimus gestured out towards the windows, out at the view they would have when the ship was where it belonged, “—and it would be all yours. The ship and the crew and the journey, all yours. Why would you want to share that with a disaster like me? Why would you want to tell anyone you share a ship with Rodimus Prime?”

But Thunderclash didn’t crumple this time. Yes, there was sorrow that marred the curve of his lips, but his optics were stern and his servo fisted against the screen.

“Because you’re incredible, Rodimus,” Thunderclash insisted, as if there was no room for argument.

And Rodimus didn’t know what else to do but lash out, snapping, “Oh, shut up,” because he couldn’t have this, didn’t deserve this. “You don’t know anything about me.”

When Rodimus tried to move his servos away from the console, to storm out, to leave this beautiful ship in Thunderclash’s big sure servos, one of those very servos darted from its place on the console to grasp his wrist.

“I know that life has been cruel to you,” Thunderclash blurted out. There was a simmering anger behind his words, but it wasn’t at Rodimus, not with the sad slant as of his features. It wouldn’t have taken much to slip from his grasp. “I can’t even begin to understand what it’s like to be you, Rodimus. But I can look at the facts, follow the sequence of events in your life, and see that you’ve been dealt a harsh life with impossible choices. No one would blame a mech for being crushed under the weight of any one of the burdens given to you, and yet you’ve endured them all and you’re still here, and you’re still full of a youthfulness and drive that the rest of us have long lost, and that’s incredible. You’re incredible.”

Rodimus realized he should do something. Talk, or move, or something. But he was frozen to the spot, processor and spark stalling.

Thunderclash’s servo was so warm where it carefully cradled his wrist, and it was the only anchor Rodimus could find to keep him in the moment.

“How – how do you know?” When Thunderclash just made a soft inquiring noise, Rodimus managed to clarify, “My life. How would you know it was—was--?”

“I’ve admired you for quite a while, Rodimus,” Thunderclash interrupted, his servo squeezing in what might have been comfort. If Rodimus didn’t know better, he’d say that Thunderclash almost looked a little embarrassed. “I’ve—well. I guess you could say I’ve been a—an admirer since I first heard about you during the war.”

Rodimus stared at him.

And then, from somewhere deep down, Rodimus burst into laughter.

“Wait, you’re a fan? Are you fragging kidding me?” Rodimus asked, shaking his helm in disbelief.

And Thunderclash did continue to look more bashful -- and that alone was insane, that Thunderclash was bashful about him – but still he confirmed, “That would be a way to put it, I suppose.”

“You’re crazy. This is crazy. You’re Thunderclash. People keep signed and framed photos of you! The Big War Hero Thunderclash cannot, in any conceivable universe or timeline, be a fan of me. And I’m kind of an expert since I’ve been to a few so you can take my word on that.”

Thunderclash didn’t look the least bit convinced. In fact, he simply shrugged.

“I doubt that very much since it was only timing and circumstance that gave me my fame,” Thunderclash said, as if it were nothing. As if he wasn’t dismissing all the fanfare and hero worship that surrounded him as nothing but luck. “I had a long time to work through the mistakes of youth before the war was even on the horizon, and then my failures in war were accommodated because they were surrounded by similar one and thus lost in most mechs’ memories. I never had the sort of impossible decisions handed to me that you had, and so early in your life too.”

Emotion was back in Rodimus’s intake with a vengeance, threatening to choke him.

“You’re crazy.”

And Thunderclash simply smiled.

“I have little doubt that in different circumstance you could have easily surpassed my fame by megamiles. And in my opinion, you should have. You deserve it, not me.”

Thunderclash’s servo had relaxed enough around Rodimus’s wrist that the heel of his palm covered the back of Rodimus’s and his smallest digit brushed the heel of Rodimus’s palm. It was nothing for Rodimus to close his digits around that digit like a lifeline.

“I’ve done awful things.”

“We all have, Rodimus.”

“No, not just – not just fighting and killing. I mean—Nyon—”

Thunderclash’s grip tightened, squeezing comfortingly.

“An impossible decision with no right answer. Anyone who tries to guess what they might have done is full of slag.”

Rodimus was pretty sure his choked laugh sounded a little too much like a sob as he said, “Wow, first frag, now slag? Who knew Mister Big Hero had such a filthy mouth.”

Thunderclash’s chest was warm where Rodimus’s forehelm thudded against it and it didn’t move away which was a good sign. The way Thunderclash’s servo slowly and hesitantly moved from Rodimus’s wrist to his elbow was even better.

“So. You really don’t lie, huh?”

“I don’t make it a habit, no.”

“So you really want me to co-captain this ship with you.”

“I do.”

“And it’s not just because you’re disgustingly in love with me.”

Thunderclash’s spark throbbed hard enough for Rodimus to feel echoing through his chest and it brought a wobbly smile to his face.

“Gross. I can’t believe you’re in love with me. That’s so embarrassing.”

“I didn’t say that was true!”

“You give good hugs, Thunderclash?”

There was a beat, silence save for the softest whisper of a buzz from the ship computer.

Then Rodimus was pulled in close to Thunderclash by powerful arms and those huge servos wrapped around his back and his shoulder. Rodimus was tucked in to the angles and planes of Thunderclash’s frame, held tightly and warmly, and that hold only tightened when Rodimus slipped his own arms around Thunderclash to grasp at his back.

Thunderclash didn’t say a word about the slight tremors that raced through Rodimus as, slowly but surely, the emotions that had a vice grip around his spark melted away.

And even then, Rodimus lingered, basking in the gladly given affection.

“So?” Thunderclash murmured, gentle even as his voice hinted at teasing. “Your verdict?”

Rodimus shifted the barest amount possible to allow him to look up at Thunderclash. The larger mech’s back was bent so he was curved the slightest big over Rodimus.

“Not bad. I’m sure you’ll get it with some more practice.”

Thunderclash’s chest rumbled when he chuckled and Rodimus decided he really liked that.

“Now, I’m not a vain mech, but I know this is one area where I am actually rather talented, so I think you may be lying,” Thunderclash said.

Rodimus snorted in turn, but he relented, “Fine, fine, you win.”

And the resulting gorgeous slant of Thunderclash’s mouth when it was Rodimus he was smiling at was breathtaking.

It made him want to kiss Thunderclash stupid.

So Rodimus pushed up onto the tips of his pedes and did just that.

Thunderclash’s ventilations came to a sputtering stop. When Rodimus pulled back, Thunderclash’s optics were still wide open and overbright, his mouth slightly agape.

“I accept,” Rodimus said, and Thunderclash blinked stupidly at him.

“Accept?”

“The ship. Co-captaining. Keep up, won’t you?” Rodimus teased as he stepped back and out of the cradle of Thunderclash’s arms. “As far as that crush of yours goes, you still got some work ahead of you, buddy. I’m not an easy prize to win.”

Thunderclash still looked shell-shocked as he managed, “No, I… I suppose not.”

Since the console was still logged in on Thunderclash’s account, it was easy for Rodimus to tap at the screen to bring up the crew list. As promised, there was a second, empty slot for Captain, so Rodimus typed in his own name and pressed his servo to the screen.

And just like that, the ship accepted him and hummed nearly inaudibly as it began to build his account.

“So,” Thunderclash started, and Rodimus turned back to him to find that at least some of the mech’s senses had come back to him. In fact, there was the slightest of curls to his dumb beautiful mouth as he continued, “No fragging tonight?”

Rodimus laughed hard enough that his vents wheezed.

“Primus, Thunderclash, give it a break and stop hounding me for my spike for a second, would you?!” Rodimus said with what had to be the dumbest grin on his face as he grabbed Thunderclash by the servo and tugged him back towards the door leaving the bridge. “That said though, I do need to see those captain quarters of yours. If I’m moving in, I have to know ahead of time if I’m commandeering them or if we’re gonna have to remodel a couple other rooms to make my captain suite.”

“Oh?” Thunderclash asked, easily falling into step behind Rodimus.

And maybe Rodimus’s servo was small in Thunderclash’s, but it still fit just perfectly.

#secret solenoid #fanfiction #maccadam #i'm seriously so happy i got to write these boys finally #i really hope you like it libby!!!

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mrgrant9559-blog · 6 years

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Witch Way Is Right? Part 7

AN: I’m doing this part mainly because of how dark part 6 was. This part should be adorable and light. To be honest here, I have no idea how or when this is gonna end. It could have a billion parts like @littlemisssyreid ‘s The Tower (no offense to you if you read this, The Tower is iconic). Anyways, here’s part 7!

Summary: (Y/N) is a male witch and also comes from a family of witches. When (Y/N) is backed up in a corner by his brother, who chose the dark path, he is forced to choose his own fate, choosing the light path. This causes an Ecliptic War between Light and Dark Witches. During this war, an eclipse (both solar and lunar) is happening, and won’t end until one brother is left standing. With the help of the Avengers and other helpful heroes, will (Y/N) be able to defeat his brother, or will the world be forever secluded in darkness?

Subject: Avengers x Male!Reader

Characters: Avengers, Reader, Reader’s mystery trainer

Tags: @thegreatficmaster @avengersohyeah @lzzywinchester @uselessace @writeyouin

Word Count: 1.8k

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

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Later That Day:

Reader’s POV:

I surprisingly wake up from a peaceful sleep, despite having to go through that hellish nightmare that Wanda had to wake me from. Once I went back to sleep, I had a really good dream, or at least I think I did. It’s slipping my mind already. As I’m trying to rack my brain about what I dreamt, I get a whiff of a pleasurable aroma. It must be coffee and its calling my name.

As I’m putting my full pj suit on, I try to remember the last time I had coffee and thats when it dawns on me. I have never had coffee before. I mean, I never really had a reason to mainly because it would’ve made me hyper as a young person and I honestly thought it tasted gross, but now that I’m 18, I’m sure it’ll taste good, right?

I walk out of my room and follow the hypnotizing smell of coffee beans coming from down stairs. I start to gallop down the stairs when I hear someone humming? The humming sounds soothing and tranquil, almost like an oceanic breeze with the sounds of crashing waves in the distance. As I approach the smell, which is coming from the kitchen, I get a look at whose making the humming noise. I realize who it is and quickly retreat back to the wall next to the kitchen entrance so that the person doesn’t see me. That person being none other than Steve Rogers himself! Him and Natasha must’ve came back from their mission last night while I was sleep. While I was having that god-awful nightmare.

“Hey, you must ee the new recruit!” a voice suddenly says, causing me to almost jump out of my skin as I look at who was clearly talking to me. It was Steve. Alright, (Y/N) you can do this. Just say hi and walk into the kitchen. Simple, right?

As I start to open my mouth, nothing comes out. My mouth is just flapping about while he lets out a cute, soft chuckle. DAMMIT! WHY DO I HAVE TO BE SO WEIRD?! “I’m Steve Rogers, but judging by your phone case, you probably know me as Captain America.” He says pointing down at my phone in my hand.

I quickly shove my phone in my pocket. The one person I mostly don’t want to know about my phone case finds out about it. SHIT! I really need to change my phone case. He offers his hand to shake and I grab it firmly and shake it. At least that went well. Suddenly Steve’s eyes widen in surprise. “Thats a really firm grip you got there” he says. Son of a biscuit eating, bulldog. How am I supposed to keep my cool with this guy for 4 more days if all I do around him is awkward shit. Can you really blame me though? I mean just look that those beautiful blue eyes and that shiney blonde hair. And don’t even get me started on those fucking arms of his.

“You want some of this?” he asks pointing down at something.

“Hell yeah!” I say rather loudly. “Wait, I’m sorry, what were you talking about?” I stammered.

“Well, what were you talking about?” he asks with a surprising face.

Dammit, busted. “Uhh… I was.. um,” I started stammering again. “talking about the coffee, of course.” I scoff. Nice save.

“Oh good. Yeah, anyways the coffee maker is over there on your right.” He says pointing towards the coffee maker. “You know where the mugs are, right?” he asks.

“Uhh… No actually I don’t. I just got here yesterday and wasn’t really given the grand tour.”

“Oh, well if you want I’d be more than happy to give you a tour when we’re down with the coffee if you want.” he says.

“That sounds great!” I say enthusiastically. I take a sip of my coffee and grimace in disgust. Man, coffee tastes AWFUL. Steve must’ve noticed because the next thing I know, he starts pouring this milk-like substance in my mug. “What was that?” I asked. Honestly, if he wasn’t Captain America, I’d be pretty pissed off.

“Hazelnut coffee creamer. It should make your coffee taste a whole lot better. Dr. Banner told me about it before he disappeared.” He explains. I start eyeing my mug carefully. Even though the only thing thats changed about it is the lighter shade, I can tell it looks good. “Trust me, its good!” He says convincingly.

Alright, here goes nothing. I take a light sip and sure enough, it tastes amazing. Way better than before. My face lights up and he lets out a subtle chuckle. “You’re right! This tastes great.” I say laughing.

“See, I told you!” He says laughing as well.

In the midst of us both laughing, Tony and Black Widow walk into the kitchen as well. I look over towards the beautiful red head and flash her a smile and a wave.

She smirks at me and returns a wave. “Your (Y/N), right?” She asks while Tony pours her a cup of coffee.

“Yeah and you must be the Black Widow.” I assumed.

“Uh-uh.” She says with the same smirk as she shakes her head. “If you’re gonna be apart of the team, then you call me by my real name. Natasha Romanoff.”

“My apologies, Ms. Romanoff.” I apologize.

“It’s ok, just don’t do it again.” She jokes. I let out a little laugh as she ruffles my hair and goes to grab a seat next to me. I don’t know what it is about her, but I like her. She seems really down to earth with the people she’s familiar with but also like she’ll crush you with her bare hands if you get on her bad side. I guess its safe to stay on her good side, then.

I finish the last bit of my coffee, which was right before Steve was done. He taps the table to get my attention. “Alright, rookie! Ready for the tour?” He asks and I nod my head.

“Ok, you kids have fun now. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Tony says jokingly.

“Cool it, Tony! I’m just gonna show him around the place since no one here has done it yet.” Steve replies.

“Well, if thats the case, then you wouldn’t mind if I tagged along too, right boys?” Natasha says.

“Not at all.” I say. “The more the merrier!”

Natasha gets up from her chair and starts to head towards Steve and I, until Tony adds in something.“Alright, well just make sure you guys are ready for the party tonight.” Tony added. Steve rolls his eyes while Natasha groans.

“What party?” I ask.

“Stark, like his father, loves to throw parties for no exact reason.” Steve explains.

“Except now, Captain, there is a reason and its a pretty damn good one.” Tony says, getting up rest his hand on Steve’s left shoulder.

“Ok, what’s the good reason, then?” I ask.

“It’s for you.” Tony says pointing at me. “We’re cleebrating a new recruit to the team since we haven’t had one in 6 months. Unless, you’re not comfortable with us doing something like this for you.”

Thinking about it, it would give me an opportunity to get to know the team a lot better. Plus, it could take my mind off the current situation I’m dealing with. We’re dealing with. “Actually, I’d love to party with you guys. After what I’ve been through these past couple of days, I could really go for some real fun.” I say causing Steve shake his head in disapproval.

“Great! Which means I have a use for all that champagne I bought a week ago.” Tony says. The mention of alcohol at the party must’ve triggered Steve cause next thing I know, Steve and Tony get to arguing.

“Tony, don’t you think (Y/N)’s a little too young for alcohol?” Steve says.

“Well, he doesn’t have to have any. Unless you want to, (Y/N)?” Tony asks me.

“Uh… W-Well..” I stammer.

“It doesn’t matter if he wants to or not, Tony. He’s only 18!” Steve adds.

“If thats the only problem, Rogers, then we can just have the party in the UK. That way he’ll be at the legal drinking age.” Tony adds. Thats actually a very good idea. In the US, I’m too young to drink. But, if we go to the UK, I’ll be able to since the legal age there is 18. Plus, I’ve always wanted to go to the UK.

I finally gather the courage to speak up for myself. “You know what, Tony? I’d love to have the party in the UK! I’ve always wanted to go there, and I’ll actually be able to celebrate my recruitment. So, count me in!” I say with as much enthusiasm to light up the night sky.

“I like you, kid! You really know a good time when you hear one!” Tony says. Then, he looks up at the ceiling. “FRIDAY, send an invitation to everyone on the Avengers & Friends list to a party we’re going to be having in London, England, UK.”

“Right away, sir!” A lady said with an almost normal sounding voice. She sounded like Siri, but with more emotion. If thats even possible.

“Whose Friday?” I ask.

“Friday’s my personal AI. She’s basically the interface computer system for almost everything I use.” He explains pretty briefly. “Anyways, I’ll let you get back to your two tour guides over there. In the mean time, I have a party to get ready for, and I suggest you guys do the same when your done showing him around. Also, (Y/N) if you want, I can invite your parents too.”

“That’d be great, actually! Thanks again, Mr. Stark.” I say and he winks at me before walking out to the hallway. I turn around and see Steve burning holes in Tony’s back while clenching his teeth in… Anger? I didn’t even know Captain America got angry.

“Ok well we better get a move on. Don’t wanna be late to your own party, do you?” Natasha asks and I shake my head. “Alright then, come with us…”

“Actually on second thought, you guys go ahead without me. I’m gonna take a quick nap before the party starts.” Steve says interrupting Natasha before storming off to the elevator. Damn, I must’ve really ticked him off somehow.

“Alright, lets hurry up then.” She says, paying no attention to Steve’s annoyed tone but noticing the concern writen all over my face. “Hey, don’t worry about him. He gets a little heated when Tony gets his way. Same goes for Tony if the roles were reversed. All he needs is that nap he was talking about and he’ll be back to his star-spangled, self.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I say, trying to sound more agreable than I really am. Natasha hooks her arm with mine and we begin the tour.

_________________________

Alright so now that I’m done with this chapter, I realize how shitty it is and how much I’m dragging on these situations… Sorry but I really can’t help it. I get so into the character’s dialogue, but I hope you guys enjoyed!! Peace!

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studiousbees · 7 years

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[App Review]—LingoDeer (Japanese)

**EDIT** The LingoDeer team read my review and fixed some of the things I pointed out :>

Learning Japanese?? I was originally going to review LingoDeer’s Chinese lessons next, but I was contacted by the team who developed the app and the lessons after the read my review on the Korean course. They asked if I was learning Japanese and, if so, if I could do a similar review for the Japanese course (please note that I have never done any sort of sponsored review or anything like that; I review what I want and I review them honestly). I said I would, so here we are! Maybe this will get me back on track with studying Japanese, anyway. Those of you who were around during this blog’s early stages will remember I was studying Japanese for a while, but I had to abandon it because I just didn’t have enough time ㅠㅠ Welp, it’s time to start again!

I do want to note that, other than the obvious language difference between this review and my review of LingoDeer’s Korean course, there is also a huge difference in my perspective between both of these reviews. Having studied Korean for over seven years now, my LingoDeer Korean review was done more from a been-there-done-that perspective. A lot of my intuition as not only a long-term Korean learner but also a Korean grammar blogger and a language teacher went into it. However, I am nowhere near the same level in Japanese, so this review is written from much more of a beginning learner perspective, with a bit of my teacher brain as far as what is and isn’t effective for language learning thrown in.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s jump on in!

What is LingoDeer?

LingoDeer is a language-learning app for the three major east Asian languages, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. It is developed by teachers of those three languages, so that’s pretty cool!

Very first impressions

As I said in my review of LingoDeer (Korean), the LingoDeer app’s design and interface is very clean and visually appealing. I do get some loading screens still, but none of them are super long unless I’m on my home Wifi. I’d been thinking about maybe getting a new, stronger router anyway...

Learning Hiragana and Katakana

You can start with learning Hiragana and Katakana, or you can just skip it and go straight to learning the actual grammar and other material. For the sake of this review (and since my Katakana memory has always been pretty bad), I did the Hiragana and Katakana courses. Before you start a level in the Alphabet section, you can flip a toggle for whether you want to learn Hiragana or Katakana. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter since they are presented together and you will be asked to match the corresponding Hiragana and Katakana. I have actually never used a source that teaches them together in this way, and I really like it because it made it easier for me to remember the Katakana. The main differences between doing one writing system vs. the other (for example, choosing to do them in Katakana mode instead of Hiragana) is that you will only be presented with stroke order diagrams for the set you chose, and they will occur more frequently. At the end of the day, the choice is yours.

Again, the sound files in this app are really great, so you can hear the sounds very clearly. My only real issue with the Hiragana/Katakana-learning exercises is when you have to match multiple pairs at once. There are a few screens like that at the end of each level, and if you want to hear the readout of the sounds as you do them, you have to flip a toggle on the screen because the sound is off by default. Since this is a language learning app, I really think it would make more sense to have the sound on by default. Also, you have to flip the toggle every new screen rather than flipping it once and that being your setting for the level. Having to flip it every single time just to get the automatic audio got annoying pretty quickly.

Just as the Korean course had extensive Hangul charts, there are interactive Hiragana and Katakana charts in the Japanese course. You can click on the individual spaces to have the sounds read out, which I liked. However, there seems to be a little bug such that sometimes when I go to the charts they don’t read out when I press the spaces. In those cases, I have to restart the app for the charts to work properly.

Finally, there are notes explaining the Japanese writing system, and they’re quite extensive! This app certainly does give a lot of information.

Getting in to learning

This app is currently structured 100% for beginners in the sense that you must start with the first level. There is no way to test up into a higher level. This test up feature is there in other comparable apps, so its absence here is very noticeable. Until such a function is (hopefully) added in, anyone who wants to use this app will have to obligatorily do the lower levels first regardless of their skill level.

All of the actual learning levels have grammar notes at the beginning, which you can access if you swipe to the tile left of the first lesson tile. I think it would make more sense to have the notes tile be the first one you see, as it is easy to miss and the notes give a ton of important information that beginning learners really should read. The notes are detailed and very helpful, but there are some typos here and there, and I noticed some unusual Romaji (though I’m not sure if it’s just that they were using a different Romaji system... are there multiple Romaji systems??). The word for “China,” which I had always seen before in Romaji as “ch(y)uugoku,” was written as “tyuugoku,” which threw me off.

When you get into the learning levels, you can choose how you want writing to be displayed, and there are a TON of options! You can go for full on normal Japanese writing with the Kanji and all, Kanji with Hiragana (my setting), Hiragana only, Romaji only, Hiragana and Romaji... you can choose what would suit your needs best and adjust as you become more comfortable reading Japanese.

As for actually learning, there is a variety of activities including word-picture matching, listening and choosing the right answer, inserting grammatical elements into the right places, and unscrambling sentences, and more. The only thing that I really wish the learning levels has is some speaking practice! I’ve said it many, many times before, but HelloChinese is a similarly structured app that has speaking practice built into all of its levels. If LingoDeer also had it, I would be so happy~ Also, as I mentioned in my LingoDeer (Korean) review, this app is fairly quiet in the sense that it does not automatically read out sentences for you on some screens, and there is no indication given that you can access audio for those screens. It would be nice if there was maybe a little play button to make it clear that you can hear audio on those screens with no auto play, or maybe an overall option (that could be toggled on or off as you please, of course) for automatic audio playback.

One other little bone I have to pick is that, when doing syllable-by-syllable unscrambling of sentences, the app starts indicating what the first syllable you pick should be within about three seconds. Maybe some people like the hints, but I could do without them for sure. I would be happy if the time to hinting was increased, or if there was a toggle to turn it off completely.

Upon completion of a level, you can get up to five stars. When you first start studying, you set a goal for how many stars you want to get each day, and if you choose the lowest possible number (five) and do a single level perfectly, your study for the day is complete.

The biggest error I have seen in this course so far is that the notes in the “Household” section (as far as I got so far) are missing ㅠㅠ I sent a report in, so hopefully that’s fixed soon. Considering how responsive the LingoDeer team has been to me so far, I’m fairly confident it will be fixed soon.

Overall, I like the structure of the lessons and the pacing. I could definitely see myself using this app long term!

Review and stats

(This section is more or less copypasta from my previous review, so feel free to skip it if you read that one!)

If you want to go back and review vocab or grammar flashcards, there is a section where you can do that. The review questions are the same as the regular level questions. You can choose to do a single lesson, or you can combine lessons for a comprehensive review. Also, there is spaced repetition listening practice, which is pretty cool. You can choose how you want the words and sentences presented, with Japanese, the English translation, or just the audio and no writing. After listening, you can reveal the correct answer and rate your recall/performance “weak,” “good,” or “perfect.” You can also choose if you want a word or sentence-focused review. Seems like a good feature.

As for stats, you can check how long your learning streak has been ongoing, and it even tells you how long you have studied for. There are some little achievement badges for things like learning time and streaks also. You can also set a time for reminders to study if you would like. However, I notice that the app is not synced to your phone’s clock but some other clock, perhaps that of the server it’s hosted on. So, for example, if I use the app in the morning here in Korea, it will still count any stars I get to the previous day since the app’s date hasn’t rolled over yet. There is not an option to change the app’s clock to sync to your time zone as far as I can tell.

Oh, and there is offline learning! You can download the course take it with you if you are, say, going on a flight or off to some remote area where there is no internet or cell service!

Conclusion

LingoDeer’s Japanese course is really fun and easy to use! The grammar notes are very informative, and the lessons are not too heavy so they don’t feel burdensome or intimidating to a new learner. The pros and cons:

PROS:

GREAT audio files

Lots of good notes and information on grammar

Spaced repetition practice and flashcards

Study reminders

Lessons that are informative and useful without being overwhelming

Offline learning

CONS:

No function to test out of lower levels

Typos in notes and other places

App clock not synced to phone clock

No speaking practice

#studyblr #langblr #learning japanese #japanese resources #lingodeer #language learning apps #app review

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twiststreet · 6 years

Video

youtube

Tumblr Gifs: The Movie (2017)-- I went and saw the Thor movie. I didn’t see the second one of these and I had mixed feelings about the first (which I saw on video), but it looked a little more palatable than those movies usually are, for some reason-- they did a good job advertising that one, though I don’t know if you can do a bad job when you pay the money for a Zeppelin track for your ads. I grew up in Ohio-- they put Zeppelin in the water supply out there, back then. They put the song on like 2 or 3 times because they know it works, and I guess they didn’t have any other ideas of what would work...? (They’re doing a terrible job with that new Black Panther trailer though-- the song they chose was some guy going like “Wicky-wicky-wild!” or “oh yeah oh yeah” over and over, all shitty, while Black Panther used his jump-onto-cars superpower over and over... Black Panther’s the Car Jumper of the Marvel Universe...)

Anyways: this was entertaining enough-- this was sufficient, even though these movies continue to be really bad at story and this has got to be one of the worst looking movies of the year. You can tell when they hand things off to the second-unit that does all their action shit because there’ll be parts where it turns into a videogame that look kinda like movies, but the rest looks like the most amateurish shit. This looked bad for a Marvel movie. It is just wretched looking, even by comparison to other Marvel movies which mostly have pretty visually incompetent directors-- when your movie looks bad compared to a Joss Whedon movie, that is some bad news. I heard the director made another movie but yeah, I'm in no hurry to see that if this is as good as he can do. And the basic storytelling doesn’t really work because there’s no momentum or much to the point of view... though I think some of that is actually intentional and maybe to the movie’s benefit. Like, it doesn’t tell a strong Thor story, but some fans' point of interface will be Valkyrie and other fans, it’ll be Loki or whoever (those girls need to find themselves some Jesus, though)...

Anyways, it works for what it’s supposed to be (which is not a lot, really, but people seem to like it, so). They rip-off the right parts of Walt Simonson (who I don’t know if they thanked-- I saw a bunch of thank you’s but I couldn’t pick out Simonson fast enough-- it’d be really weird if they didn’t thank him because man, I don’t know, (a) I just love that dude generally-- what a dude, but (b) also he’s got the best bits in this)(though they don’t play his stuff out nearly half as well as Walt did but that’s a separate thing). That Tessa girl who plays Valkyrie, from War on Everything, is fine as hell. There are jokes and the movie kinda relies heavily on the charisma of its actors, which is usually when these movies are good (like, Ant Man or the first Iron Man were all about enjoying watching the cast interact in the same way this was-- I think these movies go wrong when they stray too much from that into like ... pretending to “tell stories” or “have themes”, where they’re just not good at that shit).

And the director’s at least a comedy guy, so the jokes aren’t all shitty and bro-y like that horrible Guardians sequel (which is still the worst movie I’ve seen this year)-- it’s not as good as Ant Man, the jokes are more in that Apatow-y “here’s some silly business for this one scene, we’ll figure out what jokes end up in the movie after test screenings” kind of mode, but ... I thought a bunch of jokes actually landed. But I mean, fucking Jeff Goldbum man. You have to be some kinda sourpuss not to enjoy a movie where they just told Goldbum to Goldblum-it-up. I mean, the whole movie is very smirk-y, but I don’t know-- it wasn’t like that awful Guardians movie where I had to sit through the movie being like “here’s a pretend-serious part to this piece of shit movie.” It didn’t have an hour long ending where they’re running around special effects lava that felt all divorced from the rest of the movie, like the bad ones of these movies usually do (e.g., Guardians 2, all the Cap movies, Iron Man 3, Avengers 2, etc.)-- like, the ending at least relatively speaking felt like it stuck to and paid off the audience’s investment on the characters. It kind of stayed at the right level, which was just ... genial and wanting-to-please and wanting every individual moment to end up a tumblr gif. (It was very much a tumblr-gif movie).

My favorite part though was definitely when Thor wakes up with his pants hanging half-off his ass though and the movie spends like 30 seconds contemplating that he’s got one of those lines around his hips, I don’t know what you call those -- because the gaggle of single women who wandered into the theater yelling “Hiddleston!!!” made a sound during those 30 seconds that was so joyous and ... it sounded basically involuntary. Like, I’m not into that dude’s butt-crack but getting to enjoy their joy second-hand was a lot of fun. So, that’d be my recommendation: see it in an audience full of hard-up ladies because they will have some responses to the movie that are pretty life-affirming, if you’re a big fan of hormones.

Before the movie, they showed one of the most offensive trailers I’ve ever seen though. It was about how Thor had to go to Afghanistan after 9-11, and how America finally had to use the power of guerilla warfare against brown people’s superior weapon-power. Which: what??? The scrappy United States had to show brown people what it means to fight with heart instead of better weaponry. And like, somebody has to tell Thor about how the U.S. revenge-murdered a fucking zillion brown people after 9-11 and took selfies of ourselves torturing them while we did it, I guess, cause Thor’s Australian ass done fucking forgot. The trailer was like the real life version of that Frankie Boyle joke (”Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but they’ll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad”). They made that movie about Afghanistan already, and it took less than 20 years! It only took 16! America’s just some scrappy Australian butt-crack dudes on horses now, and not an empire of fucking flying death-robots, it turns out! It was a fucking crazy trailer.

#movies i saw in 2017

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tarysande · 7 years

Text

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: Cool Aunt

Heyyy, why not update a story I haven’t updated in more than a year while everyone is off playing new game? *finger guns*

(In all seriousness, sorry for the long delay. I don’t anticipate one NEARLY as long again. This chapter sets up an arc I’ve had in my head for years!)

On AO3

Cool Aunt

After three hours spent as sole caregiver to her brother’s daughters, Solana was beginning to have serious doubts about her own suitability as a parent, which made her current state of impending motherhood all the more terrifying. No going back now. Not even if she was having sudden visions of just how woefully underprepared she was. And she was. In vivid color.

Taking the girls off their parents’ hands for a day had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Step one to reaching coveted cool aunt status. Girls day out. Or in. Something. Fun. Definitely fun.

To be honest, she hadn’t actually thought that far ahead when she made the offer.

Garrus had an itinerary of political obligations as long as his arm, which only made Solana shudder and wonder how she could ensure her own position in the Hierarchy rose no further than it was already. Though Shepard had been perfectly willing to stay and entertain the children, Garrus did not disguise how much he wanted her with him. More than that, Solana knew they were far more effective a team when working together, especially when it came to fighting for things they believed in. Solana wasn’t privy to the details, but whatever it was they were dealing with now left a grim expression on her brother’s face whenever he thought no one was looking. Shepard’s wasn’t much better.

While arguing with one or the other of them was possible, when they presented a unified front, Sol wasn’t sure they’d ever actually failed. Being on kid-duty for a day seemed a small price to pay, if it helped relieve some of the tension lurking beneath her brother’s plates or in the furrowed cant of Shepard’s human brows.

Off they’d gone, and with them Naxus and her father to their respective work, leaving Solana in possession of two sleepy girls and many hours to fill. The sleepiness had worn off after breakfast, replaced by the kind of frenetic activity Solana usually associated with a firefight. Or stims. Or stims during a firefight.

And that was only hour one.

On hour four, tired to her bones and having exhausted all avenues of entertainment via vid-watching or reading or playing in the garden with nothing resembling nap time in sight, Solana bundled the girls into her skycar and took the scenic route into town. This served the dual purpose of helping pass time and avoiding some of the worst areas of Reaper destruction still in the process of being cleaned up. She didn’t need to ask to know Tyrra was uneasy; the girl sat in the back seat with her hands folded, looking anywhere but out the windows. Beside her sister, hip pressed to hip and shoulder to shoulder, Rose kept up a steady stream of conversation requiring no responses. Most of it seemed to be about some vid series Solana had never heard of.

With sinking certainty, Solana realized she was going to have to know these things at some point. Hot vids, and the names of the characters in them. The right toys. Lingo.

How to change a dirty baby. How to feed one. How to stop one from crying.

“Spirits,” she muttered under her breath.

“Are you okay, Auntie Sol?”

“Of course,” she lied, wondering about the stats on new parents who somehow broke their offspring in the first week. Or day. Or hour. She wondered if there was a record. She wondered if she was going to break it.

Machines she could do. Code? Without a doubt. Even the trickiest, most finicky wiring? Not a problem.

Real living creatures were a whole other matter.

There was, after all, a reason why she’d never kept pets.

“It’s just you have a real funny look, like the one Dad gets when he’s gotta go on the vids.”

“He hates the vids,” Tyrra added. Solana didn’t miss the way the girl’s subharmonics seemed to ask if Solana hated them the way Garrus hated public appearances.

With a touch more honesty than she was entirely comfortable with—and how honest were you supposed to be with children about things like this, anyway?—Solana replied, “I wasn’t busy hating anything, I promise.” One hand waved in the general vicinity of the alien lifeform now growing within her. “I’m only a little nervous about this whole having a kid of my own thing.”

“Why?” Rose asked, so guileless Solana could’ve hugged her. “You’ve been doing real good with us, except for when you almost mixed up the breakfast foods and when you almost locked us out of the house and when—”

Tyrra cleared her throat loudly.

“Oh,” said Rose. “Sorry. Yeah. You’re doing good. Definitely.”

She said definitely exactly the way Garrus would have said it. Only Garrus would have smirked. And then Sol would have had to kill him.

“I think you get used to it, anyway,” offered Tyrra, finally looking up from the hands folded in her lap. “Taking care of babies. They don’t do very much. Just eat and sleep and need their diapers changed. Mostly they like it when you hold them and sing to them, and they don’t like loud noises. They like to feel safe.”

Solana’s breath caught when she realized Tyrra was speaking from experience, and that the experience hid the kind of grief no nine-year-old kid should ever have known. Sol was forced to correct for an unintentional swerve. The weave and drop made Rose giggle.

“Well,” Sol said, too brightly, her subharmonics hiding nothing, “I have to admit I don’t have any experience at all. Garrus is the older brother; I think he did all the baby stuff when I was small. That’s what my mom always said when he pissed me off later, anyway: ‘Be nice to your brother, dear heart, he used to change your diapers.’”

“Dad’s pretty good with babies,” Rose agreed, kicking her feet back and forth. Solana noticed she was wearing different colored socks pulled up overtop of her envirosuit, one pink and one bright blue with sparkly stars. “Mom’s soooo bad.”

Tyrra’s mandibles fluttered in amusement. “She really is.”

Solana laughed. “If Shepard—of all people—can set such a low bar, maybe there’s hope I’ll be able to step over it.”

Tyrra glanced out the window and didn’t immediately look away; the smile remained on her face. Solana couldn’t help feeling it was a victory. “I think she doesn’t do well when she can’t talk to them.”

“Sounds about right.” Solana held up a finger. “She’s good with words.” She’s held up the other. “She’s good with guns.” Opening her palm, she shrugged one shoulder. “Something she can neither talk to or shoot at probably causes no end of discomfort. I should remember that.”

Tyrra laughed. Rose leaned forward against her restraints and said, “One time she almost dropped a baby someone wanted her to hold, like, for a picture? It was screaming and wriggling and the mom was all ‘Please, Commander Shepard’ even though Mom’s not a commander anymore but I guess that’s how everyone knows her and the baby was just like, ‘Wahh’ and Mom was getting all flustered until Dad kinda saved her and made a joke about always having her six even against, um, the most hostile hostiles? It was pretty funny. Then the baby puked right in her face. Like, a lot. I think it was on the vids. You should look it up.”

“Oh, I will,” said Solana, grinning. “I absolutely will. Now, girls, I was thinking we might do a little shopping, but we could also—”

When the crash sounded and the skycar began plummeting to the ground, Solana’s first thought was that there’d been some kind of rockfall—her route had taken them close to the mountains to avoid the worst of the valley’s Reaper destruction—but the screech of metal on metal whispered an even more alarming truth. They were under attack. Her fingers danced over the haptic interface, trying to wrestle back control and even out the car’s trajectory. Beneath her talons, her instruments recorded a flash of energy before flickering and dying.

She swallowed her panic because she had to. She had to.

In the shadow of the mountain, the interior of the vehicle was dark without its glowing lights and reassuring screens and readouts.

Rose screamed once, high and terrified. Tyrra remained silent, talons digging hard into the seat.

“It’s okay,” Solana said, breathless. The side of the car bounced hard off the rock face, potently punctuating her lie. She reached for the weapon at her hip, while scrambling for the other in its secret compartment under her interface panel. The first she attempted to hand to Tyrra, but the older girl only stared straight ahead, mandibles pulled tight to her face and eyes so wide Solana knew she was seeing something very different from the inside of a falling car.

—beasts wearing turian faces krogan bodies turian teeth tearing turian eyes and her leg her leg her leg leave me dad leave me just go on without me save yourself they’re turians oh spirits they were turians once—

Rose took the weapon before Solana could stop her. Her face was wet with tears beneath the envirosuit’s mask. With a weary sadness so at odds with her usual ebullience, Rose closed her hands around a grip far too big for her little hands and said, “I know what to do, Auntie Sol. Aim for the eyes. Always point at the eyes and pull and pull and pull and pull and don’t stop.”

Some of the pressure from above eased. The backup generator stuttered to life, providing enough power for Sol to get the safety landing gear mostly extended, though she had to release her restraints and reach for the manual controls to do so, and the damned things still stuck half-in, half-out. When the second crash came, her head hit the side window hard enough to make her see stars.

—turian faces krogan bodies turian keening from a monster’s throat—

The roar in her ears refused to diminish. Clutching at her weapon, she tried to see into the back seat, but her vision remained alternately blurred and dark. Pain arcing down her spine and across her belly stole a low keening note from her throat.

—i won’t leave you you know i won’t leave you—

Metal crunched. A third attack from above was enough to finally push the car into the dirt, and though the landing gear cushioned them somewhat, the lack of power and maneuverability sent Solana against the window again, curling so her back and cowl took most of the damage. She blinked, swiping at the blood in her eyes, gasping around the pain. She’d had worse. She’d lived through worse.

—turian teeth tearing—

“Rose? You okay, dear heart? Tyrra? Tyrra?”

“Yes,” replied Rose promptly. “Is…is it Reapers?”

“The Reapers are gone. I promise.” Solana swallowed hard, tasting yet more blood. Her bad leg felt strange, hollow. Like the phantom limb tingling she’d suffered before her surgery to replace it. Another screaming ripple of pain twisted her gut. “Is Tyrra—”

“She’s in the bad place.”

The driver’s side window imploded in a shower of glass that skittered across Solana’s plates without enough force to cause damage. She wasted neither time nor words, turning her gun in the direction of the sound and shooting. No satisfying sound of injury met her shots.

“Rose, tell me what you see.”

In a whisper, Rose said, “There’s a lot of legs, Auntie Sol. I can’t see their faces. It’s not Reapers. I think it’s—”

Unconsciousness found Solana before Rose finished. She fought it, clawing at the light with everything she had. Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.

—they’re turians oh spirits they were turians once—

#any four walls #shepard vakarian family shenanigans #shakarian #solana vakarian #garrus vakarian #femshep #rose and tyrra #mass effect #my fic #fanfiction #sorry

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dapperkobold · 7 years

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Review at Random: Dawn of War 2

Dawn of War was a competent game desperately in need of a quality of life update. Dawn of War 2 is... different. The quality of life improved, but it’s still subject to some troublesome issues that make me frown. Also, bad replayability.

(I already did Dawn of War)

Graphics-wise, it’s fine. Move along. Sure, people who are picky about graphics will no doubt frown, butt they’re rather nice, effective, and not disruptive. Sound quality was similar.

Gameplay, however...

Let me open with a bald-faced admittance that I’m not a multiplayer player. I don’t do the PVP thing. It’s not an interest of mine. I play campaigns, I like plot and campaign missions. As a result, I have no idea how the multiplayer in this game works. The campaign is doing its own thing with its own rules.

The base campaign is really closer to a... let’s call it RTRPS: Real Time Role-Playing Strategy. You have your space marines, they level up, you equip gear that the enemies drop, you gain more stats and abilities as things go on. At the same time, the control scheme and setup means that you’re really playing an RTS game. The resulting hybrid system is... well, it’s not amazing, but I’d love to see it refined until it was. It works, certainly, it’s even good, but it could use some fine-tuning.

You level up, you invest points in stats, you get abilities. Usually I’m hard on stats in video games (especially MMOs, but that’s a line for another time), but this time they’re really straightforward. Health, energy, ranged damage, melee damage. Nice. You unlock abilities in the stats as you level them up, and those abilities are the real power behind your units.

In missions, you get equipment (called wargear as per the Warhammer tradition) and you slap those on your guys. There’s no money or stores, only what you pick up in the wild. Extra gear you can throw in the hopper for extra EXP. Not bad, I suppose, but I’ve become disenfranchised with gear systems in general and especially leveled ones. Oh yes, gear items have levels and if you’re not that level you don’t get to use that gear.

Thankfully, the gear in this game isn’t too bad. It’s mostly linear progression, but there’s occasionally the difficult choice. If this game did have a store, however, I’m pretty sure that would foul it all up, so I’m very glad it does not.

Story-wise, it’s not bad. Not amazing, but I’ll take it and be happy. The characters are fairly compelling, the voice acting is good enough, and the overall plot is really good except for the Eldar.

It’s no wonder that the Eldar are a dying people. How did they get a successful civilization in the first place with such terrible communication skills? And for being ‘master manipulators’ they... really are not. They can’t even manipulate Orks right. They aren’t smart, they don’t seem to have a solid tactical or strategic understanding, much less the social skills to really manipulate people, and they aren’t good at their jobs.

B- to B+ story, but I’m leaning towards -.

Level design I’m going to be harsher on. You’re on every single map at least twice, and I think it’s sometimes three or more times. none of the levels are super memorable, and it’s sometimes downright frustrating. Bosses are fairly common, and they’re more a drag than anything else. I was never in serious danger in a boss fight, partially due to the boss’ bad AI.

That’s not too say that the game was too easy. No, the game as a whole wasn’t too easy, just most of it was. But then some parts of it are way too hard.

I wound up playing on easy mode because the entire game has a bad case of Jekyll and Hyde. You can breeze through most of a mission, and then 3 of 4 guys are dead and the last one has a giant tank bearing down on him. By the same nature, you fight smart and bypass most of one area, and then just breeze through the rest because you just bypassed the hard part of the mission.

That said, if I could turn up the difficulty mid-game, I would have before the end. Once you get into mid- and late- game, you can blow through most anything with no trouble. You can go look up build guides for your marines if you want, but let me tell you a little secret:

There’s no doubt that you’re going to wind up overpowered. The question is how overpowered you’re going to be.

I don’t know how it is on higher difficulties (I’ve heard some horror stories) but on lower difficulties you’ll likely be fine as long as you don’t specifically hamstring yourself. Once you get past that initial hump, do the extra missions, give all your extra gear away to charity... you’ll be fine. Trust me.

However, I’ve saved the best for last: The game still has some interface issues from the first Dawn of War. The Escape key still does nothing, the hotkeys are better but still a mess, and there’s no grid layout.

Pathfinding has improved, though, barring a few MASSIVE bugs. I think there’s something wrong with Avitus’ AI that doesn’t like rocket launchers, but at least there’s no need to call down an artillery strike on your own men.

Overall, I’m not going to play through it again any time soon, but it was fairly fun.

But wait! I didn’t just get Dawn of War 2, I got ALL of it. That means I got Chaos rising and Retribution, too!

Chaos rising is more of the same. Same quality of plot, same unneeded Eldar, same quality of gameplay, same quality of RPG elements, and a slightly improved difficulty curve. You can import old saves, too, permitting you to go from ‘overpowered’ to ‘hilariously overpowered’.

That said, I’d like to go into detail on that improved curve. It no longer has harsh changes mid-mission, it now changes between Jekyll and Hyde between missions. Also, free advice: the first Eldar mission is a Hyde mission. PUT THE JUMP PACK ON YOUR FORCE COMMANDER AND BRING THADDEUS. BE READY TO LEAVE THE GROUND-POUNDERS BEHIND.

Trust me.

Really, that’s my thoughts on it. If you liked the first Dawn of War 2 campaign, you’ll likely like Chaos Rising. If you didn’t like the first one, I don’t see this one changing your mind. It has the same system, the same hotkeys, the same characters, and Avitus still doesn’t like rocket launchers, just use a heavy plasma gun or a lascannon, trust me.

Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising: second verse, same verse as the first verse.

Dawn of War 2: Retribution is quite different, though.

The RPG elements have been streamlined, the stat points now buy abilities directly and equipment has been made into more of a suite of options instead of a mostly-linear progression. I found myself actually considering my loadout and changing it instead of just rolling with the best everything, something that had only barely happened in the first two campaigns.

In addition, you can get more units, like vehicles and infantry, like it’s an RTS game! Woah! However, the level design still feels very much like it’s made for a group of four heroes instead of an army, and I found managing a large group of infantry to be tiresome, so I just wound up using elites and tanks and occasionally melee units when I felt I needed more melee presence. It worked, though.

The story stays at about the same rate, though, maybe lowering a bit. Not complaining much, it’s still not bad. Eldar are still superfluous.

The space marines campaign does lose a few points for me for benching the force commander, though. With the smaller cast and having already explored the character depth in the previous campaigns, lacking Mr. ALIEN BEANS for me to laugh at made me a little sad. Diomedes does have his moments, but that force commander and I had a good time together.

In addition, each map is surprisingly well-made, with a solid deign and no repeating. It went over well enough I wouldn’t be against re-playing it at some point. Which is a good thing, since that’s what I’ll be doing if I want to try other factions.

Yes, the other factions all have campaigns too! No, wait, it’s just the space marine one with less cohesiveness. Well... I’m not surprised, actually. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. And while the campaign is good, it’s not so good as to make me want to play it again back-to-back.

There’s a few bugs that Retribution adds, much to everyone’s chagrin, including a sound bug that crashes the game and a few other things, but they added in a option for grid hotkeys! Yay!

It turns out that’s not as great as it could be. The order of abilities does not appear to be based on the kind of ability or the placing of the accessory in the slot, but some kind of internal counter. As a result, the hotkey that corresponds to a given ability (especially from accessories) can change every mission sometimes. It’s better than the old set up, but still aggravating.

Overall, Retribution is pretty good, yeah, but it could use more polish, except for the non-space marine campaigns, which are honestly pretty vestigial.

EDIT: I missed a few things! The below conclusion is still accurate, but maybe read the add-on.

So... after all that, I don’t know how to feel. It was a fun romp, but nothing to write home about. I might play it again, eventually, but not anytime soon, and certainly not as much as I play Starcraft 2 or the Arkham games. It’s not an amazing game. I won’t kick it, but I will say it’s not for everyone, and if you want to full experience, you should wait for a sale.

I’d say that on number scores I’d put it above half, on a tier ranking I’d call it a B maybe C, on up or down I’d give it a up, and on a grade sheet I’d give it a B-. Could use some work, but I’m not going to ask you to go back and do it again.

#reviews at random #Dawn of war 2 #warhammer 40k #stuff i made #Darnit Avitus move #Avitus go shoot the chaos marines #Avitus-#Fine #be that way.#I have tarkus #I don't need you

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soulbore · 4 years

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@chanceofpunching ━━ SAVED THREAD - below the read more is all the past writing from google docs━━━━ ⌈ Kara & Kara ⌋

“Thanks.” Kara pops up the small little device in her palm, eyes searching the familiar interface for similarities. And a few glaring differences. “Well, I don’t know how this works, but I know how mine looks, and yours has things that mine doesn’t that are…definitely broken.” Her smile turns apologetic as she offers it back up to the other Kara, “Which makes me wonder if that’s the…time part. The Legends?” A curious question, chin tipping backwards, “I’m twenty seven. Well…turning twenty-seven. Why? How old are you?” They look…the same but Kara’s starting to realize that doesn’t hold a lot of weight with Kryptonians. Not on Earth. “You know, you’re…the closest me–I mean…Kara. That I’ve met to me. Out of all of the universes I’ve seen, I’ve never seen another one where Alex and I aren’t sisters which is…hard to imagine.”

And easier to divide herself between them. It’s easier to look at herself in such a different world and imagine that it’s not her, because it isn’t with such a huge part of her life gone.

Seriousness settling: “Everyone’s okay, right? You’re not in an emergency to get back to…wherever you were going? Apocalypse, giant man-eating squids, Nazis?”

━━━━

Kara watched her one way home taken from her, but she could trust her. Or...herself. KAra? Wow, yep, she was still trying to get used to this. Kara chuckled, pushing her lips together and nodding. “That it is, I don’t know what happened between the travel but something caused it.” Kara’s own smile brighten as she nodded. “Yes, the legends! Sara found someone to fix it up so if they needed me I could just pop into whatever time they needed instead of them always coming over here. They also have the ability to travel to different dimensions too.”

Twenty Seven….

Oh boy.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

“I’m...thirty nine,” Kara said, realizing how far into the past she went. That was a good twelve years. “Yeah, there’s a lot of versions...and a lot of… yeaaaah,” Kara reached up to rub the back of her neck, chuckling a little at the history on her mind. “I have an Alex, still kicking and handling me getting into trouble 9/10ths of the time,” She said and then heard the question.

For once, nothing was an emergency. “Not that I know of, Barry just wanted to talk so I was heading that way and well… wound up here instead. Though, I’ve been through too many apocalypses, Nazis, and… haven’t dealt with a man-eating squid. That’s a first,”

━━━━

“You’re—” Kara pauses, fingers curling a little around the device before it’s handed back fully, blinking a little before she laughs. Smiles. “Oh. Well...I’ve never met an older me, before.” A beat, adding, “Actually...I don’t think I’ve ever met...a nice me, before. I’m pretty sure I prefer this to someone trying to, you know, um...cut out my heart.” She rushes through the last part before she shakes her head, “But I’m glad you have Alex. And, trust me, man-eating squid? Not as fun as it sounds. Still kind of cute, but will make you smell like Red Lobster for weeks. Without the biscuits. I don’t recommend it.” Her smile is a little easier, though, now that she knows there’s no emergency. No other world on fire--no other danger--no one else potentially hurt. It’s a rarity for both of them, probably, and Kara works through it, “So...right now we don’t actually sound that different. The only difference is age, I’ve unfortunately wrangled a giant squid, and you’re...married.” She shrugs. Totally not a big deal, despite that persistent ache in her chest. Definitely an alternate universe. “Practically the same,” A sheepish laugh, reaching up to curl fingers around her...own shoulder before nodding, “Well, if it’s not an emergency, we can go get lunch, catch up because I really want to know if you have flying cars, and then contact our Barry. Cisco might be able to vibe you back to where you need to go. Does...your Cisco do the vibe thing? They’re really great.”

━━━━

Kara grinned as she nodded her head, taking the device back and putting it into a pocket. “I’ve met a few different...mes?” Kara stumbled on the word, a smile on her lips as she chuckled because it sounded amusing. “Not all of them are bad, some are just...misguided,” Oh… the cut your heart out deal. “Yeah, that was a bit nerve wracking…. Overgirl?” Kara questioned, seeing if they had a similar timeline. In a way, she was sure they must have had the same life, the same design, but little things were different with each one. “I think I’ll stick with my dragons. They sound nicer than a man-eating squid,”

Kara shifted her boots as she moved up beside her, still amused that for one the whole, Kara having a hidden identity came in handle here. Kara chuckled. “I am, for a year now,” She added and placed her hand on Kara’s shoulder. “Maybe one day for you too. Trust me, there’s someone out there, if we are the same well, I know the feeling before,” The feeling that she couldn't be with anyone, the fear of hurting someone, the idea that she was meant to be alone. Though, Kara wasn’t sure if this other Kara felt the same way or not.

“We don’t… have flying cars?” Kara said, a slightly confused look. “Well, unless you count alien cars. Nothing too special just yet, though I’m sure Lena is trying to come up with the up and coming cure for cancer,” Kara added and then nodded. “Cisco does! Though, it's just dimension jumping and some offensive attacks and lal. No time travel. Cisco and Ray on my world worked together to make my device,”

━━━━

"Well, there goes my bet with Alex." A laugh, kind--friendly--and, okay maybe a little disappointed because flying cars would be pretty cool. Inefficient and likely horrible for the environment, but at least then Alex could commute into work next to her, most mornings. The thought of passing her sister over her morning bagel and coffee through the clouds is enough for eyes to soften underneath her laughter. "Ohhh," It's a wistful sigh of a near groan--anticipatory. Playful jealousy at its best, "I want dragons, let's switch and...wait."

Kara pauses, hands raising up, "Was that actually what she called herself? Overgirl? We...weren't really on a name basis. Well, we were, but--you know what I mean. Anyways, yeah, I'm sure Cisco will be happy to get you back home, then. Or...wherever you're going. We'll figure it out."

No rush. It's still a little weird. And kind of nice.

The soft of far softer shoes than boots brush along asphalt as Kara Danvers walks beside her older superhero mirror and her voice is quiet when she finally pipes up, "I'm glad you found someone. I think I--well, I don't know. Maybe it's just...not in my cards. Everyone else--" A beat. A pause. Trying, voice a little more serious, unknowingly a little firmer. Steel underneath the soft sound of her shoes along the ground. "It's probably not a good idea for me. What's it like, though? Are you happy?" She turns towards her, steel bending. Softer. Smiling, "How long have you been together?"

━━━━

A chuckle came from her lips as she knew all too well these bets. "Hopefully your best wasn't with food, that's a hard blow to the stomach. You could always stick a pony in her room, she'll forget about the bet pretty easily," Alex still hasn't let her down about it. Kara couldn't hold back the laugh as she looked over to her. "They might be around, somewhere. He's an absolute sweetheart!" She said and then paused.

"Well, she didn't actually call herself that. Cisco has a thing of naming people and he called her that. It was better than saying Supergirl Doppelganger or copycat or something odd." Kara nodded her head, hoping it would take long. She rather not disappear again. She's done that one too many times. "hopefully not too difficult," Then again, this tech was twelve years into this future.

Oh, da jevu. How many times did she say that? That she wasn't meant for this. "I've said that far too many times to count. You got plenty of time, don't cut yourself short yet. Who knows, maybe she's hiding in the ocean," Kara teased a little, but it troubled her a little bit. Because Kara didn't give herself enough credit and.... Rao. Now she could see what Cat was meaning.

The question made her smile just at the thought. "I am, we both are. I've known her for about fifteen years. Though only married for one year, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Except for the whole...kidnapping, experiments, locked in the black mercy, and yeah, those messes in a half,” Kara really couldn’t even count how many times they had problems in a half.

━━━━

A laugh--bright and loud, "Do I want to know what happened to the pony? Oh, Rao." And there Kara's mind goes, faster than like, zipping through possibilities. Fifteen years. Just because they have enough similarities doesn't mean there aren't probably some glaring differences. Like...knowing someone for fifteen years that she'd wind up married to. The math is quick, easy and Kara laughs a little hard, unable to keep it hidden, when she imagines it being someone like Lucy. That would make Thanksgiving pretty awkward. She doubts anyone else could be more awkward to bring around Lois than that.

Kara's cheeks darken. Moving on from that thought. Maybe it's someone she doesn't know. Never will. Alternate universes are...funny that way. So why does Kara suddenly feel a little sad behind the softening smile? "Her? Well, at least this time it wasn't Oliver. Felicity might have let it slide once. Um...twice? Right past funny into...very awkward territory. It...sounds like--" The smile dims into something understanding, "You've been through a lot with them. Don't...you ever get tired of it? You know. The…" A suck of air through teeth that might be too sharp if glasses didn't temper it. "Putting them in danger. Not that...you have, I just mean I--you--we--" A beat, wincing. "Sorry."

Because that thought lingers, knowing what it's like to have a black mercy who she cares too much to let go. Was that...this Kara's? Was it another Krypton? Was it losing someone else she loved? The thought made her a little nauseous.

━━━━

Kara paused for a moment as she thought about it. It bothered her, all the time. Cat risking her life for her, and she no doubt would risk her own life for Cat. And, perhaps at the beginning it terrified her but now, well.... maybe it's because they have both been through so much, and they have both promised to protect each other. Cat has done it on multiple occasions. "Don't be sorry, its logical. I've thought about it plenty of times before as well. But Cat, she's... stubborn."

The thought just made her chuckle, but at the same time she took a breath and looked over at Kara. "Its hard, that's no lie, and I'm sure you understand that. But, when you find your shesur zrhytherevium, it's just like... the risk are known, but your heart cares far more than the risk. I think the best way to explain it is like protecting earth, in a way. Even knowing the risk, you do it anyway," She'd risk everything for Alex, and everything for Cat. Just as she would do anything to protect the earth.

"Are you alright?" Kara questioned, stopping as she shifted to look at the younger girl.

━━━━

For a moment, Kara wonders if her super hearing is off. If maybe, for a moment, words mean different things where this Kara is from, or if she just hit a traffic light while flying through the city very, very hard with her head. Because there's no way she just heard--

"Ms. Grant?!" Okay. Because there's no other Cats that--who she--

Kara slowly, slowly blinks, "How did--why w--when--nevermind." Both palms shoot up because that blush definitely burning deeper. And...deeper. And-- Stammering, more than a little...surprised is a good way to put it. "My...boss for years, journalist, feminist icon...Cat?"

━━━━

Kara started to giggle a little, realizing this is how she must sound so many times over. “Mrs. Grant,” Kara responded, as she tilted her head slowly. “Its a long story, a very long story. Like I said, fifteen years of time,” She allowed more of the words to stammer out of her mouth. “Careful, Kara, you look like your about to lose your ability to talk,” She couldn’t help to tease herself (is this what it was like when Alex and Cat teased her???) and nodded her head.

“Sounds like we have the same Cat, yes, that boss. Assistant for about 5 years, friendship for 3. Before anything even came around romantically, she helped in more ways than one. And if she’s the same Cat here, I think you know what I mean,” Kara couldn’t imagine a world where Cat Grant didn’t help Supergirl in some way.

“Which reminds me, what do you do here? Just curiosity sake,”

━━━━

Another blink, eyes still wide. Voice still catching as she-- what does she do? "Well it's not Cat!" It's a practical octave above her regular pitch and replaying her own sentence back only flares cheeks brighter than the cape curved around older shoulders. "That's not what I--I mean I didn't--that's so not what I--" A series of embarrassed, particular words tumble out of her mouth beneath her breath, because this is a thousand times more...everything. Than Oliver had been.

"Please ignore I said that. I--that's--" Lips part. Close. Open again before the idea (and that memory of a ring) settle, "Wow. Okay. Ms--Mrs...Grant. Right. That is...so much more unexpected than anything else you could have said. Here. Sorry. You just...wow."

Alex will never let her hear the end of this.

Kara clears her throat and rolls her shoulders back--smiles despite the faint blush still on cheeks. "Okay, so...you're...married to Cat. Congratulations." Congratulations??? A faint wince. "I mean, you sound happy." A sheepish laugh, "Right, I'm...a journalist. If that's what you meant. What do you do?"

━━━━

Kara's eyebrows rose, staring at Kara at the sudden outburst and even she wasn't sure how to deal with that. "O...k. I never meant that?" Maybe she said the wrong thing, she tried to think back to the sentences she just used. "I meant in the, boss of CatCo, kind of...Cat. I'm sorry," Kara offered, not sure how to rectify her poor speech. She's still trying to get a handle over the idea that this world practically reflects her own.

"If it helps, I didn't see it coming until it hit me in the face?" Kara stated, still remembering how the feelings just came about slowly, and it wasn't anything Kara ever expected. A chuckle left Supergirl's lips as she heard the congratulations. "Thanks, I think. And I am." No matter what seem to hit the two, she was.

"Same, still. but I'm also the Editor-in-Chief. I don't know if you have someone named Snapper on your earth, but on mine, he retired a few years back and well, I got a promotion," Snapper may have been a jerk now and again, but he was good at what he did and he was a good person deep down. Just very very rough around the edges. But he helped her many times over and she wouldn't be where she was without Cat and Snapper's persistence in pushing her in the right directions.

━━━━

“I know you didn’t--I mean I didn’t mean to--” Kara stumbles enough over her words quickly enough that she might break the sound barrier with sharp breath before she laughs a little, nervous and sheepish, shaking her head. Because it’s...her standing in front of herself, not actually Ms. Grant, who won’t suddenly materialize to give Kara that look while she’s nervously stuttering and somehow, knowing that both makes it better and worse when she raises her hand. Apologetic, “You shouldn’t apologize, I should. I’m sorry. There’s...an infinite number of universes, apparently, I can...well, I’m surprised but…not for the reasons Alex is definitely going to tease me about in around an hour.” Her laugh is a little easier, overcoming the shock in favor of something else, entirely. A smile. At least some version of her out there is…happy. And making it work. It’s a little uplifting to the romantic, maybe—makes it a little easier to breathe in a way she hasn’t felt in…years. Like maybe it isn’t all hopeless if there’s a world where she winds up…not fighting giant squid and somehow keeping a relationship together for—

Long enough to get married. It hurts, a little, but…it’s nice, too. Maybe hope is always like that, a faint little ache that she’d always rather have, than not.

“It’s actually more surprising Snapper retired.” The laugh is a little brighter—friendlier—because…well, it’s easy to feel comfortable around someone she’s theoretically known for decades. “So…” She leans a little closer, eyebrows raising, “That has to mean he finally at least gave you one story, right? Maybe there’s hope, after all.” It’s easier to bury her hint of a sigh after that—bury it behind the smile as she slowly starts to continue walking back down the street, towards food. Hopefully. “Do you like it? Editing.”

━━━━

"Kara," Supergirl said softly as she pulled to a stop and touched her shoulder. "Relax, its okay. Your just talking to....yourself? I get it," She said with a smile, trying to calm down her younger self. "I do the same thing from time to time," A grin crossed her lips as she looked down and then back up toward her. "It could be worse, way worse." Kara glanced around, everything looking completely familiar to her (and the stares and smiles from those in National City were always familiar). "Where is this food place you wanted to go to?"

CHuckling, KAra nodded her head. "He, quote unquote, said he needed a very long vacation away from the magical alien mumbo jumbo. But somehow manage to compliment me at the same time. I don't know how that man manages both to being insulting and complimenting at the same time." She nodded her hand and looked over to her. "Several. I've gotten 2 pulitzers which caused him to crack a grin. It was scary, in its own way. But, he is proud of those who work under him. You'll see. Arrogant, grumpy, cranky, but he's a good guy. Just don't buy him bear claws,"

Putting her hands behind her back, walking as she thought about it. "I wouldn't say its the editing I like, but more, the other journalist I get to help. I think that's what I like the most, helping the others the way I was helped. Though, a bit nicer,"

━━━━

#chanceofpunching #→ kara / replies.#→ general / close starter.#→ OV 02. kara.

0 notes

jamesbyerj · 5 years

Text

The Tale of Lucien - JosephRussell

In this Mod Author interview, we’re chatting with [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/4958252]JosephRussell[/url] (formerly Treacleman), the author of Skyrim’s most popular male follower mod in 2018 - [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20035]Lucien[/url]. As a special bonus, Joseph has created a video version of this interview for you to enjoy! [center][youtube]94pE2USikns[/youtube][/center] [b]Thank you for joining us today, Joseph. [/b] Thanks for having me, Picky, it’s an absolute pleasure. [b]For those in the community who don’t know you, tell us about yourself. [/b] My name is Joseph Russell – I’m a full-time engineering student and a part-time writer, but I’m probably best known as the creator and voice of [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20035]Lucien, the custom-voiced follower mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim[/url]. I’m based in the UK, I drink an awful lot of tea, and I have a cat called Grey. [b]If you had to pick your absolute favourite game of all time, what would it be and why? [/b] Oh, now without a doubt, that has to be [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croc:_Legend_of_the_Gobbos]Croc: Legend of the Gobbos[/url]. It’s a platformer from 1997 which is hated by an awful lot of players, mainly for its ridiculous control scheme, but I absolutely love it. It was the first game I ever played, it has a great sense of adventure and whimsy, it’s stuffed full of secrets and comes with what has to be one of the best video game manuals ever written. Seriously, it’s wonderful. [center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1571388973-1250387189.jpeg[/img] [img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1571388976-174584659.jpeg[/img][/center] In terms of play-time, of course, I’ve spent more hours in Skyrim than any other game by a huge margin. Even vanilla, it’s got hundreds of hours of content in there, and with modding, it’s pretty much infinite. It’s a great game to get lost in, and now I’m making content for it as well as playing it, it really is a big part of my life these days. But nonetheless, Croc has my heart. [b]There might be some in our community who have yet to meet Lucien, what can you tell us about him? [/b] Well, there’s a lot I could tell you about Lucien, but I think I know someone who could do a much better job, so I’ll just [url=https://youtu.be/94pE2USikns?t=134]hand over to him.[/url] [quote]Hello there! My name is Lucien Flavius. It’s an absolute pleasure to do this interview. As I so often seem to say, I’m a scientist, philosopher, amateur wizard, and something of a musician, though I suppose that’s more of a hobby. I’m here in Skyrim on an academic expedition, and I’m in need of someone a little tougher than me to show me around and make sure I don’t die. I’ll pay you handsomely for the job, and if you’re willing to train me, I’ll do my best to help you out in battle however I can. I’ll also sing to you, read to you, and comment on hundreds of different situations in Skyrim, including content from other mods. Ah, did I mention mods? Oops, there goes the fourth wall! Well, anyway, if you fancy giving me a go, hop onto the Nexus, Steam or Bethesda.net and download me! What’ve you got to lose? Right then, back to you, Joseph![/quote] [b]Is Lucien inspired by a previous Skyrim character you played as or does the inspiration come from elsewhere? [/b] There’s a lot of me in there. He’s very much how I think I might react to the situations Skyrim presents you with. He’s a bit of a wuss, he’s very academic, he’s more likely to run from a fight than confront it, he likes singing, he likes bad jokes… I tend to amp up those aspects of my personality for Lucien since I think it’s quite funny seeing how someone like that reacts in a world of tough, strong barbarians and assassins. The voice I use for him is basically mine but just a little bit posher. That’s really handy when it comes to voicing so many hundreds of lines for the mod. I know Gary Hesketh, who voices [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1461]Inigo[/url] (a fantastic mod that everyone should download), goes through this complete vocal transformation to create his character and keeps it up for over seven thousand lines of dialogue. I’m not that talented, I’m afraid, so a posher, wussier version of Joseph Russell it is. [b]Before Lucien, your mods included typo fixes and patches for Bethesda’s Creation Club content, what inspired you to make the jump to your own fully-featured follower mod?[/b] The typo fixes were originally made for my own personal use. As someone who does a lot of writing, spelling and grammar mistakes can really bother me, and pull me out of my immersion in-game. They’re such easy mistakes to make, and so many of Skyrim’s extremely talented modders don’t have English as a first language or don’t come from writing backgrounds, so it’s totally understandable why those mistakes sometimes slip through the net. But I thought, why let it bother me when I can go in and fix them?! The Unofficial Creation Club Updates came much later, but stem from the same sense of perfectionism – I wanted the Creation Club DLC to fit seamlessly into the game, so set about tweaking the files to my tastes. Again, they were mainly for personal use, but I’m happy to hear some others have benefited from them. [center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1571393699-129330473.jpeg[/img] [img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1571393702-694628268.jpeg[/img][/center] For all those patches, though, as satisfying as the results can be, the work itself isn’t fun. There’s no creativity in there, it’s just dull, repetitive busywork, so I always hoped to move onto something more enjoyable one day. Working on the patches gave me the skills and familiarity with the Creation Kit and xEdit that I needed, so when I set about making a story-based mod, I already knew how to do a lot of what was required. I tried a couple of times with quest mods that never got off the ground, and collaborated with the awesome [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/37834630]MihailMods[/url] on adding quests to a couple of his locations, but I found that quite hard technical work when what I really wanted to do was write. A follower mod really seemed like the answer to that – while there’s certainly still a lot of technical work in setting things up, the vast majority of it is writing hundreds and hundreds of lines of dialogue, and it really is a lot of fun! [b]How many hours would you say you've put into the development of the mod? [/b] Ooh, that’s impossible to say, really. I started work on Lucien in September 2017, released in September 2018 and haven’t really stopped since. Thousands of hours, certainly. Lots. [b]As you are the voice actor for Lucien, do you have any tips for budding voice actors to get that perfect recording? [/b] While I’ve done a bit of amateur dramatic stuff over the years, I’m not a professional, so don’t have much experience in voice acting outside of this role. However, the key thing I’ve found in voicing Lucien is that you really do have to remember to act. It sounds obvious, but it’s so easy to fall into a “reading voice” when it’s actually really important to focus on varying your pitch and tone, and sounding like you’re talking to another person rather than a microphone. When we’re talking in person, so much of our emotion is communicated through our eyes, faces and body language, and in voice acting, all those visual components are taken away. All you’re left with is the voice, so it’s really important to pump up the emotion in all your lines to 150%. If it feels over-the-top when you’re saying it, chances are, when you listen to it back, it’ll sound just right. Also, don’t be afraid to indulge in a little method acting every now and again. In Lucien’s training scenes, when you’re teaching him how to take a hit, that’s the sound of me punching myself in the stomach you can hear. The stamina training has me doing press-ups, and the fight scenes have me waving my fists around, ducking, dodging, and pretending to throw fireballs. It looks a bit silly, but hey, it works for me! [b]What hardware and software do you use when working on the mod? [/b] I think this is really one of the most important things when you’re voicing a mod. The difference between good and poor-quality hardware is incredibly obvious to the listener, so it’s a really good idea to invest in some high-end kit. I use a [url=https://focusrite.com/usb-audio-interface/scarlett/scarlett-solo-studio]Focusrite Scarlett Studio Solo Pack[/url], which comes with a great quality microphone and amplifier. I also use a pop filter, sponge cover, and shock mount to minimise the impact sounds of consonants like “t” and “p”. In terms of software, I do all my recording and compression in [url=https://new.steinberg.net/cubase/]Cubase[/url], which came with my microphone kit. It’s also great for various vocal effects, with which I had an awful lot of fun creating the voice of Dumzbthar. When the bulk of the work is done, I tend to do a bit of tweaking, mainly batch normalisation, in [url=https://www.audacityteam.org/]Audacity[/url]. For modding, all of my creative work is, funnily enough, done in the [url=https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Landing_page]Creation Kit[/url]. When it comes to the finetuning and bug-fixing phase of modding, however, that’s when I break out [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/164]xEdit[/url]. Where the CK is a sledgehammer, xEdit is a scalpel, and it’s incredibly handy for tweaking individual records, conditions, wording etc. in a contained environment without impacting the rest of the mod. It’s also how I clean my mods before uploading, which is a vital step I couldn’t do without xEdit. [center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1571393692-224015333.jpeg[/img] [img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1571393696-1623892697.jpeg[/img][/center] [b]Lucien has interactions with numerous other mods, including other followers. How did you choose each mod to add support for? [/b] Well, to start with, [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1461]Inigo [/url]was a no-brainer – Lucien draws so much inspiration from that mod, I simply had to have them interact in some way. After that, I just picked mods that I myself love, or that I thought would work particularly well with Lucien. For instance, Auri, from [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11278]Song of the Green[/url] by [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/2424584]Waribiki[/url], has a wonderful dynamic with Lucien by way of the sheer contrast between their personalities. Writing those interactions was a delight, and I’d love to expand them further sometime. Another example was [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4341]Moonpath to Elsweyr[/url], one of Skyrim’s first quest mods and one of the first mods I ever downloaded. It’s relatively small these days but adds an entirely new province to explore, which made it a perfect candidate for an interaction patch, with so many opportunities for lore-bites and sand-related jokes. There are a few technical limitations that influence things – followers and locations I can interact with easily, but for quest, new-lands and weapons mods, I need a patch. This simply isn’t worth it for mods I can only add one or two lines for, so I prefer to choose mods with lots of potential for a large amount of dialogue to maximise that “value/download” ratio. [b]Are there any other significant mods you'd like to support in future? [/b] Yes, lots! [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11802]Legacy of the Dragonborn[/url] support has been planned since day one, but it’s such a massive mod that covering it properly would take several months of development, so I’ve been ticking off other high-priority things first. [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10917]Beyond Skyrim – Bruma[/url] support is coming soon, and I plan to keep adding more and more interactions and expanding the existing ones for as long as I work on Lucien! [b]Do you have any favourite mods or mod authors? [/b] Ooh, tricky question, I have so many! I’ve already mentioned [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1461]Inigo[/url], [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11278]Auri[/url], [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11802]Legacy [/url]and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4341]Moonpath[/url], which I love. All of [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/684492]Arthmoor[/url]'s mods are must-haves, and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/3959191]EnaiSiaion[/url]’s stuff is all fab too. I’m a huge fan of anything which adds immersion to the game, so I never play without [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/671]Frostfall[/url] and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/645]iNeed[/url], both amazing pieces of work. I could go on for hours listing my entire load order. Ah, but a special shoutout goes to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/4995023]Nuukem[/url]’s [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20061]SSE CreationKit Fixes mod[/url], for making my life about a billion times easier. [b]Is there anything else you want to say to the Nexus Mods Community? [/b] Just that they’re wonderful. I’ve been bowled over by all the love and support the community’s given to Lucien over the past year, and I can’t wait to bring everyone the next update, and lots more for a long time to come! I’m certainly not going anywhere anytime soon. Lucien can join your adventure in [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/95029]Skyrim[/url], [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20035]Skyrim Special Edition[/url] and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimnintendoswitch/mods/46]Skyrim for the Switch[/url]. [line] A big thank you to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/4958252]JosephRussell[/url] for taking the time to respond to our questions. As always, if there are any mod authors or mod projects you'd like to hear about, don't hesitate to send a message to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975]Pickysaurus[/url] and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597]BigBizkit[/url]. Published first at The Tale of Lucien - JosephRussell

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Amazon – Final Rating

Written by TBD

It’s time to see how Amazon: Guardians of Eden fares in our PISSED rating. In my rating I’ll be specifically comparing it to the developer’s predecessor, Martian Memorandum.

Do I feel like I was treated to an incredible journey of adventure? Let’s find out.

Puzzles and Solvability

Ah, puzzles. Those who’ve been reading along have probably noticed my frustration with many of the puzzle choices in this game. In previous Final Ratings I’ve mentioned my trilogy of ‘bad’ puzzle design. I’m going to add a fourth bad puzzle to that list in future due to this game.

Mazes: No mazes in this game. And they could have easily done a repetitive jungle maze so, thank you Access Software.

Dead-ends: Sigh – there are a lot of dead-ends in this game. I came across a few myself but could see many potential others. I see no good at all in these dead ends. They detract from the atmosphere and urgency and add to the frustration.

Bad mini-games: There are a few little mini-games; the river canoeing, the walking around the slaver boat avoiding the first mate and solving puzzles. They work well. They both add to the game and don’t overstay their welcome (okay, paddling down the river overstayed its welcome a bit with its three long sections – I did four sections, but that’s largely a dead-end issue.)

And now…Timed sequences: Oh, the timed sequences in this game. In general these timed sequences add to the atmosphere that I’ll get to in the “E” section. But from a puzzle standpoint – constant deaths without giving me time to think are just annoying.

Some of the inventory puzzles are baffling. Giving the boat Captain cigarettes and a nugget of gold as passage is ridiculous both from a story perspective and because both items can be easily missed and even if I knew a gold nugget would be required, which I had no indication of, the last way I’d expect to get it would be from a poor serving boy in a small village.

Some other puzzles would be much more rewarding if I hadn’t been rushed by timed sequences. The bridge of death sequence could have worked excellently but I spent most of the time there just dreading the moment I ran out of time – let me try a few things before I die, game!

I can’t think of any particularly good puzzles. Turning on the librarian’s car headlights so she leaves her post back in Chapter 2 was one of the few times I got some information and had to work out what to do. I also somewhat enjoyed the cannibal village where I had to solve a few simple puzzles – but the potential enjoyment was quickly tempered by frustration as I was in a timed sequence.

The Chapter style hurt here. After the first few chapters each screen was largely separate and once I entered I couldn’t leave without solving the puzzle. This would have made the game easy without the dead-ends – perhaps the dead-ends were an attempt to make the game more challenging. Have I mentioned how much I think dead-ends detract from the puzzle-solving experience?

I mentioned when I was stuck near the end that I wouldn’t be happy if I needed an arrow after not being able to take obvious arrows earlier – fear my wrath, Access!

The empty eye socket stares blankly toward me and the arrows sticking out of his ribs steadfastly refuse to be interacted with…

… however, a different arrow hiding behind a nondescript bush needs to be taken in order to proceed two chapters later

I told you I wouldn’t be happy, game. I was already going to score very low here so this issue isn’t altering the final score but I still wanted to vent my frustration.

I considered giving this game either a 2 or a 3 for this category, but I also thought I might give it some credit for the included hint system. So how about we stick with a 3.

Final score: 3

Interface and Inventory

The interface itself is largely a slight improvement over Martian Memorandum’s. The inventory list and verb icons have changed from text to graphics.

The lack of tooltips, which I’ve mentioned as a negative in a few of my recent Final Ratings, has more of an effect here than other games. When I’m at the Bridge of Death, the middle of the bridge is a different item to the rest of the bridge. But of course, I don’t find that out until after I’ve died quite a few times because I’m in a timed sequence and don’t have time to properly examine my surroundings. Pixel hunts aren’t fun!

The inventory works well enough. The graphical representations have a text label when I move the mouse over them. (See Access Software, you do know how to do tooltips – try using them in the game screen as well.) There is combining of inventory items, which was used a few times and worked simply, with the graphics of the two items zooming out before the graphic of the combined item zoomed in.

It is good that items that are no longer useful leave my inventory so I don’t spend too long trying inventory objects on everything when I’m stuck, but why do I have Jason’s car keys with me for the entire game?

I gave a 3 to Martian Memorandum, so I’ll leave it the same. There are some graphical improvements but the negatives are exacerbated by timed sequences and dead-ends.

Final score: 3

Story and Setting

The story was good. Much of what I liked about it will actually be covered in the Environment and Atmosphere section so I’ll stick to story and setting for the S rating.

The story was simple, but fun. It didn’t have the emotional impact that Martian Memorandum had on me, and it wasn’t anywhere near as fun an adventure story as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but it was still good. Even when I was frustrated by the puzzles I still wanted to keep playing to see the story play out.

I’m still wondering why Maya decided to spend the night just outside the secret door to the safety of her temple, giving Sanchez the opportunity to catch up to them, shoot Maya and find the secret door.

The Amazon jungle makes a good setting for an adventure game. My first thought was that the jungle setting was slightly underused here, but as I thought more about it I recalled that there are a lot of set pieces in the jungle – we saw cannibals, piranhas, a small village, an old Spanish treehouse, and of course the Amazon river itself. Most of the sequences are very short and the ones that are long are only long because they’re full of deaths and reloads.

The game is worthy of a solid score here.

Final score: 6

Sound and Graphics

The FMV sequences were an admirable addition – having full video when talking to people was nice and added to the movie serial atmosphere they were going for. Fully voiced adventure games are becoming closer to the norm now but full motion video is still new and only used in a few games. I’m sure it will take on and most games will be using FMV in a few years…

Apart from the FMV, the graphics and sound are about as expected for the time. It’s not as good as some of the best games, but it’s good enough. Things generally look like what they are supposed to. Which is understandable when you realise they actually used toys with paintings as backgrounds.

They did make some alterations after digitizing. Including turning an orange car blue!

The voice clips have a noticeable clicking sound at the start and end of each, but I’m not sure if that’s a dosbox emulator issue and it’s not distracting enough to change the rating.

The music again does its job. As usual for me I don’t remember much game music but when I go back to sample it for this rating the different pieces are appropriate for each situation and do their job of not distracting me from the game, so a thumbs up without being exceptional there.

Martian Memorandum got a 4 for the sound and graphics section. The slight improvement gives this game a 5.

Final score: 5

Environment and Atmosphere

The atmosphere is great. They were aiming for an old fashioned serial feel and nailed it. I felt somewhat Indiana Jones-y (it’d probably give me more of that feeling if I hadn’t recently played an excellent adventure game that made me feel extremely Indiana Jones-y.)

Though technically swinging on a vine is more Tarzan-y than Indiana Jones-y

And despite my disdain for them, the timed sequences do help the atmosphere here! They add to the urgency and the feeling of danger. I still hate these sequences with a passion, but for the purposes of environment and atmosphere, they do have a positive effect!

One negative though – the dead-ends detract from this somewhat. After a few deaths I stop thinking about the setting and game and just concentrate on trying to do things before time runs out.

What would Indiana Jones do if he forgot to pick up something that would become useful two chapters later? Would he give up, upset that he missed the item, or would he find some way to solve the problem with the items at hand? Alternate solutions to puzzles could have helped here – this game was designed to live by its atmosphere – bringing the story to a dead halt and forcing me back a few chapters lessens the impact considerably.

Martian Memorandum got a 6 here, and this game does the atmosphere a little bit better but undoes some of the good work with the immersion breaking dead-ends. I’ll stick with a 6 for this one.

Final score: 6

Dialogue and Acting

The dialogue was pretty good. Almost every character was a stereotype and written exactly as you’d expect. But that fitted in to the cheesy 50s serial vibe they were going for and worked well at evoking that vibe throughout. The game never fell into the trap of taking itself too seriously. Colonel Sanchez in particular is very over the top, both in writing and acting.

Colonel Sanchez – just a pair of glasses and a sense of humour away from being Groucho Marx

The dialogue puzzles in the game weren’t as successful. Maya leaving after I failed the dialogue puzzle because I was mistrustful of her made little sense, particularly after I found out her history. They’d work better if we got multiple chances to succeed or if they were less specific about what was required – the chances of me working the puzzle out by thinking it through rather than trial-and-error was low, but at least failing dialogue resulted in a death screen rather than another dead-end.

Ah the acting. In some ways it hits the ‘so bad it’s good’ mark – my particular favourite was Jason’s “Nooooo” when his brother sacrifices himself for their safety. Other times it just hits the ‘it’s bad’ mark.

It’s no surprise that when I looked the game up on IMDB, almost all of the actors had only this game as an acting credit. But they give it a good go.

I did like that there was physical acting as well as voice acting. Talking to people and having them physically move their mouths and bodies as they reply added to the realism.

I gave Martian Memorandum a 7 before taking away two points for bad grammar and spelling. I was pleasantly surprised that I only found one error in this game. I wasn’t particularly looking for them so there may have been more but they were a major distraction in the previous game so I’m very happy Access put the effort into getting it right this time.

This game also improved on Martian Memorandum by having more acting – the cheesiness of the acting, while often bad, served a purpose. How much of that cheesiness was a deliberate decision rather than just a consequence of actors unable to convey subtleties doesn’t change that the result worked often enough. If the game had taken itself seriously the acting would have been a negative here.

But the writing evoked less emotion than Martian Memorandum. I still feel something when I think of the massacred colonists of the Stanton Expedition. So I’ll give us a 6 for this. A slight step down overall but a step up in proofreading and acting.

Final Rating: 6 Final Rating

This gives us a Final rating of… 3+3+6+5+6+6*10/6, which equals…

48 seems fair. I liked this game a little less than Martian Memorandum, which scored 50, and while I appreciated the dedication and success at emulating the cheesy mid-20th century serials, as a game the frustration to enjoyment ratio ended up rather high. It started on a good note though and I was really enjoying it, but it started to get increasingly frustrating around Chapter 6 or 7, which was coincidentally when I started hitting dead-ends and timed sequences.

In fact, this entire Final Rating can be summed up by a comment made by ShaddamIVth in the penultimate gameplay post…

The B-movie element is surprisingly gripping, they seem to be well aware of how cheesy they are being and using it to good effect. If only they were aware of how frustrating they were being with the timed sequences, I have never felt them to be fair in adventure games where you’re supposed to explore as much as possible.

Well said, ShaddamIVth. I couldn’t agree more.

So for my personal PISSEDOFF rating, where I include how much fun I thought the game was. What would be my Overall Fun Factor rating? 3. A score of 3 from me means I won’t be playing the game again in the future but it did have some kind of redeeming quality. The bottom line is that I just didn’t like this game as a whole – it wasn’t terrible, but the frustrating parts made much of the second half of it a chore rather than fun and that frustration quickly overtook the good the game did. I’d have likely enjoyed it a lot more if I wasn’t playing it for the blog and could just use the hint section as soon as I started to get frustrated. But I wasn’t, so the PISSEDOFF rating ends up as… 3+3+6+5+6+6+3+3+3*10/9 which equals 42! A much lower score but a much more ultimate answer.

The crew from Access Software will be back in 1994 in their continuing attempt to combine full motion video with adventure game puzzles when they release Under a Killing Moon! And we’ll be there to cover it sometime between 2019 and 2022!

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs to TBD

Blogger Award -100 CAPs – For playing through the game for everyone’s enjoyment (I would have gotten more CAPs if I got 1 CAP every time I reloaded to an earlier saved game)

55 CAPs to Joe Pranevich

Classic Blogger Award – 50 CAPs – for playing through Wishbringer for our enjoyment (MEOW!)

Telling Tales Award – 5 CAPs – for passing on the news about Telltale Games going out of business after making a number of Adventure Games in recent years.

30 CAPs to Laukku

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for guessing the Final Rating of Amazon by simply averaging the other Access games

While Stocks Last Award – 5 CAPS – for letting us know that we should download our Telltale games again because they should now work without DRM

Aces High Award – 5 CAPs – for letting us know that the Ace Attorney series will be coming soon to current consoles and PC for the first time

Classic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for guessing the Final Rating of Wishbringer

24 CAPs to Lisa H

Does Whatever a Spider Can – 5 CAPs – for pointing out that the Amazon must be home to a new terrifying creature – the spider-jaguar!

For Granite Award – 3 CAPs – for pointing out that the useless clue may be useful in some circumstances

Film Crew Award – 4 CAPs – for pointing out that Allen Roberts’ favourite film is actually real!

If Wishes Were Horses – 7 CAPs – for pointing out more alternate solutions to Wishbringer

Get Out of Jail Free Award – 5 CAPs – for mentioning that there are more ways to escape jail in Wishbringer

20 CAPs to Leo Velles

What’s Your Story Award – 20 CAPs – for submitting his What’s Your Story answers

20 CAPs to Michael

Appreciation of Your Appreciation Award – 4 CAPs – for twice thanking TBD for sacrificing his time to constantly reloading old saved games.

Abstinence Award – 3 CAPs – for being disappointed that there wasn’t a sex scene at the end

Six Degrees of Murray Award – 3 CAPs – for playing the Kevin Bacon game without including Kevin Bacon

Tell it to the Judge Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out that Darlene looks (and acts) suspiciously like Judge Judy

Dog People Award – 5 CAPs – for noticing that with the exception of the Coles, most adventure gamers aren’t nice to our feline friends in their games (MEOW!)

12 CAPs to Alex Romanov

Assistance Confirmed Award – 2 CAPs – for confirming that Voltgloss’ hints would be required

Assistance Granted Award – 10 CAPs – for helping TBD when he got stuck in front of the Amazon Queen

11 CAPs to ShaddamIVth

Succinctly Said Award – 6 CAPs – for inadvertently summing up TBD’s final rating in a single paragraph

Bad Luck Award – 5 CAPs – For pointing out that there may in fact be graphics in Wishbringer and that the graphics just meld into the black background (MEOW!)

10 CAPs to Voltgloss

Assistance Granted Award – 10 CAPs – for helping TBD when he had gotten himself dead-ended by not breaking into a truck and stealing the driver’s cigarettes

10 CAPs to Ilmari

Solidarity Award – 5 CAPs – for showing sympathy at TBD’s annoyance with timed sequences

It Is Very Dark Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out an alternate solution to getting to the theater in Wishbringer

10 CAPs to MisterKerr

Friends With Benefits Award – 5 CAPs – for having a friend’s dad work for Access during the day and being able to see this game while it was being made as a kid

More Friends With Benefits Award – 5 CAPs – for having helped members of Access Software at Comic Con as an adult

6 CAPs to Will Moczarski

Encoded comments Award – 6 CAPs – for discussing Wishbringer with possibly the longest sequence of ROT13 ever seen in our comments section

5 CAPs to limbeck

Choking On Ambitions Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out the dangers of treating precious gems as food.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/amazon-final-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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