#the covers are a lot better when they don’t try to perfectly replicate whatever the fuck Brian Wilson was doing they aren’t him

[pebblezone]

this Tylenol ain’t shit w

#talkingcore #emotions. man. #there’s so much music that I just haven’t listened to in a bit and it’s making me feel things it’s not even like sad things I’m like damn #how long has it been since I’ve listened to beautiful stranger by Madonna as featured in Austin powers international man of mystery #but also something in my brain feels like it needs to cry like I don’t feel like I physically can but something needs to be released #so do I go pet sounds? smile? falsettos? I feel like I need to be in a sleeping bag and Contemplate #fun fact! Kendra Morris has an absolutely stunning cover of don’t talk (put your head on my shoulders) #I’m pretty neutral on beach boys covers tbh I’m never crazy about them since like they really never measure up #how many mid covers of god only knows can I take? not many. but like she & him have their little Brian Wilson tribute I like that. #the covers are a lot better when they don’t try to perfectly replicate whatever the fuck Brian Wilson was doing they aren’t him #brain wants to go melancholy mode but I’ve no clue over what. girl just tell me what I’m supposed to be sad over I’ll commit to the bit #need to keep listening to new stuff but also need old stuff Maybe that’s it maybe I just need old stuff again? like routine?? shit idk #also like at 5 am I woke up and remembered how in choir people kept comparing me to the director they had the year before me #and the thing is she had the same name as someone else in choir that was student teaching my first semester so I kept thinking they were #referring to her Id be in my choir fit my silly suit my proud butch uniform and they’d be like oh this is so ‘insert name’! #and it kept throwing me off because the student teacher was like. not like me at all so I was like fuck #what kind of girl core energies am I accidentally emitting this is Bad. so anyway 5 am I’m like fuck it I need to research this person #I search. find her. she’s butch. I’m blessed. they weren’t lying like man we do such a good job at being generic! yay! #butch And in choir! love to see it! keep thinking how I am destined to be like in my 40s doing mundane tasks #I’m gonna be soooooo good at watering plants and putting salt on the sidewalk before it snows and cleaning drains #need to be a dad mom so fucking bad you don’t get it I need to drive carpool and take off work for dentist trips and watch hgtv #AHHHH i think that got rid of some of the sad lfg💥💥💥💥this must be super long god damn sorry

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

And now I’ve watched episode 3 of Walker because of reasons. (You guys asked, that’s reasons.) #1

My review of episode 1 got a lot of positive feedback and a lot of you asked me to cover more episodes! But my review of episode 2 didn’t get much feedback at all. Possibly because episode 2 was boring and you can only make so many funny jokes about the glowy wife before it gets stale, so I get it, it’s fine. It was boring for me too. Hopefully this gets funnier! I actually have high expectations for this episode, since apparently it introduces NotDean. You know, the childhood friend who Walker loves like a brother and is the Han Solo to Walker’s Luke Skywalker. Like, what. Stop comparing Jared Padalecki characters to Like Skywalker 2021 challenge. *insert you keep using that word...*

Anyway, in case you missed it - here are all my reviews of Walker episodes, in chronological order.

EDIT: *screeching* GUYS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS. YOU CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS. Read to the end, don’t stop at the padalacting. I’m begging you asdfghjkl

Alright. Let’s start this. Actually I have a thought before we start. You know, I was thinking that episode 3 of Supernatural is when Dean gets genuinely introduced as a person. Sera Gamble and Raelle Tucker were the first to give Dean the personality that stuck and developed into the character that we love. Dead In The Water is, not coincidetally, the episode that sold Supernatural to me. The first couple of episodes were weirdly compelling, without which I wouldn’t have continued watching, but you must understand that I’d never watched horror before. It really wasn’t my genre. I was just watching on the assumption that it would get better at some point, and if it didn’t I’d stop. But Dead In The Water got me. Because that’s when we’re really shown Dean for the first time. The rest is history and now we’re here.

So I wonder what will happen in episode 3 of Walker. Is it going to magically pull a Dean out of the hat and get me?

Let’s start. The Texan countryside. The yellow, glowy light tells us this is a flashback. Closeups of Jared and Gen. He is somewhat concerned. He’s at the wheel of a car, still on the street - a red Mustang. Unlike the red Mustang of the horseman War, it is a convertible. Fun fact: a Mustang was Kripke’s original idea for the Winchesters’ car, but then switched to the Impala for body-in-the-trunk reasons. I am the 😬 emoji.

Actually guys I need to show you a couple Jared faces. I think they’re supposed to be purposely comedic faces, but honestly this is just how he acts normally. I promise I am not coming in this with a bias towards Jared’s acting. I just observe, with my eyes. He was actually good in many Supernatural episodes.

I just can’t see Cordell Walker. I’m just seeing Jared and Gen Padalecki delivering what is a somewhat padalecki acting in front of my eyes and I swear I had to close the video in the middle of this scene and start over because of a sudden attack of second-hand embarrassment.

Let’s continue

Basically, Walker is trying to drive the Mustang, but he is not good at it and the car stops after two meters. He feels exactly how I feel when I watch Walker.

“Damn it!” Jared exclaims, jaredly. I think that this scene is supposed to be set Many Years Ago, because Walker is wearing a backwards cap and Emily has her hair styled like Bad Janet but straighter, which actually says a lot about this show somehow.

God, I wish I could gif the entire scene to show you guys the padalacting. I mean, I could, but ain’t nobody got time for that. Have a bit of the scene.

For some reason she puts this thing on the dashboard, because he “puts your mind at ease”.

He makes more Jared faces, which we’ll skip because I don’t want to spend 7 hours on this.

Wait look at this shot of the car (with some bonus Jared face).

Why does this look filmed by your dad with a videocamera on Christmas afternoon after you received a toy car as a present? I suddenly have a newfound admiration for the directors who did Impala shots on Supernatural because it would seem car shots are not that easy to make. Maybe this is why Supernatural always filmed at night with a black car.

Guys I am telling you, if you need to watch one scene of Walker in your life, watch this scene. It’s so embarrassing. I almost decided to gif the moment of the car going and commenting “nyoom” but the Impala does not deserve this.

Anyway.

Listen, if I have to see thing thing over and over, you have to see it too.

He’s brought the damn thing onto a new cop truck while on a stakeout with Ramirez, who is just as happy about it as any normal person would.

I think they’re outside a strip club, judging from the posters outside.

He keeps quoting lines from the scene with his wife, which is sort of weird since Ramirez is not his love interest. Yet. Oh no. Don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t even thinking of doing that. Ramirez has a perfectly fine boyfriend.

Walker says that since they’re sitting there just waiting for the suspect’s movements or whatever, they should use that time to get to know each other, like “favorite movies, the teams you root for, middle names”.

Ramirez is me.

He’s like ~let’s bond~ and Ramirez goes immediately for the jugular and asks how Stella (his daughter) is doing. “Wow” he says. He says he and Stella are “in a good place, I think”. You’re not and we’re definitely not. This is the bad place.

Basically, they’re trying to live in a bubble of ignoring her upcoming court date for the marijuana thing. Ramirez says that the easy route is not a good idea. He’s like, are you speaking from experience? Basically they keep implying Ramirez also has a ~bad girl past, which I can absolutely live without.

Aaand now we see the inside of the strip club. The suspect is there, a lady with a Latinoamerican name, apparently bisexual because she’s surrounded by a woman and a man in underwear, the woman is touching her, it leaves no doubt about it. 😬 Enter the stripper on stage, who captures the lady’s attention.

The stripper is a man. Dressed as a slutty cowboy. There’s glitter.

Yeah, you read it right.

Oh no. No I absolutely change my mind. If you have to watch one scene of Walter, it must be the slutty glitter cowboy stripper.

There’s. There’s a. There’s a slutty glitter cowboy stripper.

The CW could do slutty glitter cowboy strippers and Dean Winchester is not there?!

I repeat, they killed Dean Winchester and then did slutty glitter cowboy strippers in Walker?!

This is a travesty. This is an outrage.

Crime. Pure crime.

Listen, I’m not optimizing these gifs, take these super quick gifs, I can’t possibly spend my night optimizing glitter cowboy stripper gifs. But you need to see.

What’s the target demographic of this show? Texan housewives? The gays? Are they trying to test all the waters and see what happens? Is Walker going to become about gay people and Jared’s character a secondary character in his own show?

Wait

*sweats* Are they really trying to replicate Supernatural in everything after all?

The bisexual lighting is there and all.

The guy in skimpy underwear is distracting. I can’t believe yesterday I saw a Jared interview where he said he couldn’t watch Supernatural with his kids because of all the violence but Walker is a show you can watch with kids. I mean, aside from this scene, Walker is definitely more kid-friendly than Supernatural for obvious reasons. But hey, since Supernatural already was non-kid-friendly, they could have at least put more dudes in skimpy underwear.

You know what, I think they’re just aiming for Texan housewives.

“You’re hotter than Austin asphalt” suspect lady tells the stripper. You know. Something normal people say.

(If Texan people actually speak like this, do NOT tell me.)

Guys, we’re only four minutes in. It’s midnight. I will continue tomorrow...

*screams into the void* These have been the four wildest minutes of my life.

#marghe watches walker for some darned reason #cw's jared: legit texan

[implexedactions]

My Little Ember - Enji Todoroki

Platonic!Yandere!Enji Todoroki

A/N: Okay, I’m late. I missed a lot of due dates. This isn’t even beta read. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. But here it is anyway!

This is Yandere content, and as such, one should be cautious of viewing this if you have certain triggers.

“Wake up, my little ember~ Did you have a good rest?”

 You blink your eyes open and look around. You are in “your” bedroom, a cruelly comforting place. A room in Enji’s giant mansion, covered in pastels and various kid-friendly entertainment. The nicest cage money could buy. 

 Enji’s hand rests on your shoulder. A warm presence on this otherwise cold day. Your eyes flicker up at the cyan ones looking compassionately down.

 “Uhh, yeah, it was fine, Enji…”

 Enji sighs and rubs his hand against your shoulder. 

 “I told you, kid, call me dad.”

 “But-”

 Enji raises a warm finger to your lips.

 “Come now, enough of that. I’ve let you sleep in long enough; it is already 7:30 am. I have been cooking breakfast in the kitchen for you.”

 You look away dejectedly.

 “I’m not hungry.” 

 “Hush, you need your breakfast if you want to grow big and strong like your old man!” 

 He promptly lifts you out of bed with just one arm, shoving you over his shoulder. You don’t fight back, instead just lying there, looking at the upside-down room. 

 Humming a tune, he carries you out of your bedroom, and into the empty mansion that you both share—pristine white walls and furniture, broken up with the odd child-proofed edge or photo-frame. 

 He abducted you four months ago and ever since seemed to be treating you as his child. Everyone who saw Endeavor knew he probably didn’t have a stellar home life, but this was absurd. 

 He walks down the stairs to the first floor, walking through a massive living room.

 “Enj-uhhh, dad?”

 Enji hummed with delight as he kept walking, you swaying up and down on his shoulder, getting slightly dizzy.

 “Yes, my little ember?”

 “Do you think I-uhh, we, could go outside today?”

 Enji stops in his tracks, his grip on you tightening and warming. Not noticeably, but enough. 

 “...Ember, I am not too sure if that is a wise decision.”

 Of course. It hadn’t worked the other 50 times you asked, why would it work now?! Why was it so hard for you to find ANY time away his watchful eye.

 “What a fucking surprise…”

 “Hey!”

 He pulls your now shaking form off his shoulder. One hand around your waist, one around your head as he brings you in front of him, hovering off the floor. His eyes are thin, a scowl on his face. You feel his hot breath coming from his nostrils. You have never been more scared in your life of this man.

 “Do not use that foul language, Y/N Todoroki. I will not tolerate it. Do not make me discipline you.”

 “I-uhhh, sorry…” you stammer out, avoiding his gaze. 

 His hand moves your head and forces your eyes to meet his disappointed ones.

 “I have raised you better than that, haven’t I? Apologise properly.”

 “Uhhh,,,Sorry, Father, that I, behaved inappropriately…” you say, staring into eyes that only villains are privy to.

 His face warms and he pulls you in for a hug. 

 “Apology accepted!”

 He places you down on the floor, but keeps your hand in a vice-like grip.

 “Now! We can’t leave those pancakes waiting, can we?”

 Enji  pulls you along, almost causing you to fall over a few times to keep up with his faster gait. He walks into the kitchen,and the smell of pancakes fill the air. He places you down on a seat, grabbing a plate and putting some pancakes on it, before serving it to you. You detectedly pick at the pancakes, staring out the window. It’s an overcast and cloudy day, might rain later. Enji seemingly notices this. 

 “Feeling melancholy, oh sorry, I meant, are you feeling sad??” He pries, softly bumping you with his elbow to get you to pay attention to him.

 “You kidna-” You got to interject, but get interrupted. 

 “I have something that might cheer you up! Look at this, my little ember!”

 Enji reaches over to grab the wet batter, he pours a bit into one of his cupped hands, and after putting down the container, presses his other hand over it. After a few seconds, he pulls apart his hand to reveal a potato-shaped pancake with imprints of his hands on it, perfectly cooked. 

 You fail to look impressed, to which Enji sighs. 

 “You will find it more interesting when you have your own quirk, I bet!”

 “...You realise I’m quirkless right?” You’ve been quirkless forever, you weren’t thrilled about it, but you made do, or you did, before this deranged hero kidnapped you.

 “Do not worry, my sweet little cinder. You are just a late bloomer. Your powers will come in soon, I guarantee it! You are a todoroki! It is in your very nature!”

 “But I-”

 “You might even get a fire quirk like your old man! Imagine how much I could impart to you! Are you not excited?!”

 “No, not rea-”

 “You will go to UA of course, but that might be putting the cart before the horse, champ. We should think about primary school before that...”

 Wait, what? Ignoring the fact that he’s trying to enrol you in primary school, this would mean you’d get out of the house, and presumably, to a teacher, who’d figure out you’re not a kid, and are in fact, being held against your will. 

 “I’d love to go to school Dad!” you cry enthuasatically, desperate to get out of the house.

 “Ha! You’re certainly eager!” He saddles up beside you and pulls you into his side, tussling your hair. 

 “Although...School seems a bit dangerous, looking at UA and what happened with sho- maybe instead, we could try a different approach, my little ember.”

 “But I’d really like to meet oth-” You need to force this issue, you can’t let him shut this issue down like this. This is your one chance to get outside the house.

 “Hmmm! How about instead, you use packet learning for general education, and well, we will cross the hero bridge when we get to it. Heh, maybe I could teach you about being a hero and intern you myself if you try to get your hero license! Would that not be fun, your old man teaching you how to be a hero?”

 He presses you into his side more, face pushed against his pecs, preventing you from speaking. It’s meant as a sort of hug, it mainly just hurts quite a bit. 

 “Just know I love you no matter what the outcome is, okay? Powers or no powers. Hero or no hero. You’ll always be my little ember!”

 Despite your flails and protests, Enji carries you to the couch, sitting you down next to the TV. The sun has risen fully, becoming mid-morning. 

 “Alright, kiddo. Want to watch some cartoons? How about that backyard science one? We could try to replicate, er, repeat,  the experiment later?”

 “Could I-er, we, watch that detective movie? I saw an ad for it, it looked interesting?” The issue is gone now, he will only deflect any questions, you’ve tried MANY times to get that to work. Might as well get SOME enjoyment out of this day. 

 “Hmpfh, you saw an advertisment for that movie? I need to monitor what you watch more often, that is much too dark for a young mind like you! Let me put on that science show…” 

 Enji goes to grab the remote, but you slap it out of his hand.

 “Stop this! Stop pretending that I’m your child! Stop trying to coddle me!“

 Enji goes to touch your shoulder, concern plastered over his face, hiding something sinister. 

 “Don’t fucking touch me you creep! Everyone knows you fucked up your first chance at a good family life, and this isn’t a fucking do over, you abusive, coddling, tormentor!” 

 Enji sighs.

 “And I was having such a nice morning too.” 

 Enji’s face grows dark as he stands up from the couch, before turning around and bending down to your level. Fast hands pinning your shoulders to your side, keeping you in place as an intimidating and vilanous look takes over his face. 

 “I will give you 5 seconds to apologise, and just maybe, I, your FATHER, can find it in my heart to lessen the SEVERE punishment you are getting, kid.”

 “1”

 “I’m sorry! Please! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” 

 Enji’s face contorts into a smug smirk as confusion takes over yours.

 “2”

 “W-What? But-I’m sorry! Please listen to me!”

 You thrash useleslly against the hands holding you in place, desperate to try and escape his gaze. Reduced to a whimpering and crying mess as you think of the ‘discipline’ your father will inflict.

 “3”

 “Please! I said I’m sorry! What more do you want from me?!”

 You’re on the edge of hyper ventilating as Enji stares you down. His hands are warming up, grip tightening, only causing your thrashing to become even stronger. Your attempts to break free don’t even budge him an inch.

 “4...Do not make me count to 5...”

 “Please! Enj-Father! I’m sorry! I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll eat those pancakes! I’ll play along! Please, don’t hurt me!”

 Enji’s smug smile and piercing eyes will haunt your dreams.

 “...5. I thought I had raised you better than that, my little cinder. Oh well, time to-”

 Lightning and thunder interrupts the countdown, an ear-splitting crack emanating from outside the sealed house. Enji jumps to cover you, as you yelp, the already anxiety inducing conversation ruining your nerves so much a lightning strike scares you. Immediately, Enji’s menacing demeanor melted away. 

 “Oh, I thought it was a villi- nevermind.”

 Enji looks down at you. Your form is shaking, tears spilling out of your eyes. Looking both catatonic and extremely wound up, as you fail to comprehend your surroundings, simply mumbling to yourself about punishment and forgiveness.

“S-Sorry. Forgive. Forgive m-me.I-I-”

 “Do you see, my little ember? The threat of punishment WAS the punishment.

 His hands pulled you into his broad chest, shushing you and rubbing warming hands up and down your back. You keep on crying, your turbulent emotions entirely out of control, not knowing how to react. You feel like your sanity is so fragile, anything will break it. You simply focus on a spot upon the wall, and nothing else. 

 “It is okay, ember. It is just thunder. I will protect you.”

 “...not scared of thunder...” you mumble. He chooses to cocoon you further with his massive body, noticeably warming himself up to protect you from the potential cold.

 “You do not need to lie, little one. I am not expecting you to be perfect, okay?”

 He pauses, mulling over his next words. 

 “I am only expecting perfection from me.”

#implexedactions #enji todoroki #yandere #yandere bnha #bnha #boku no hero academia #reader insert #platonic yandere #Long Fic #ImplexedWriting

[elladescent449-artspace]

It Started With the Milk : Chapter 8 - Home Sweet Home

‘It’ wasn’t home. Once Leo got back to the lair, he could tell Raph about everything, come up with a plan, and they’d be able to fix Donnie before anything else happened. ‘Easy as pie,’ the ever-positive-mental-personification-of-Raph said, after another moment he heard him say, ‘you know how to make pie?’ Leo wanted to chuckle, he really did but he was too stressed to laugh. After landing in a surprisingly soft pile of garbage, Leo had considered scaling back up the fire escape to protect April but reconsidered. He trusted her, especially because there were times where she proved herself to be more capable than them, but his chest still ached and his mind still worried as he left through the alley’s manhole.

Below the surface of the streets the water was still high from the rain. A shallow layer of water covered the brick walkway that soaked his shins as he ran. Leonardo took a sharp left around a corner and he could see a distant light from the lair. He picked up speed and after a moment he could make out the silhouette that stood by the entrance.

Raphael turned to the sound of Leo’s splashing. Alertly, he shouted “Leo!” before running towards his brother.

Leo stumbled as he slowed. “Raph, I-” He was crushed in a hug before he could process the motion.

The hug was tightened even more as Raphael pulled him closer to his chest. “It’s okay.”

Leo could feel his brother's voice vibrate through him at the close proximity, it felt safe, and it felt familiar. Leo’s arms slowly trained up Raph’s back as he returned the hug. “I was so scared,” Leo’s voice finally cracked and he could feel a sting develop in his throat as he tried to fight the tears that welled in his eyes. “It happened so fast and Donnie- It almost got me.”

Raphael dropped to a whisper. “Leo, you’re fine, you’re safe.”

“I don’t think that I am, I don’t think any of us are.” Leo only had to push a little to get Raph to release the hug. He looked up to his face, his expression strained with anxiety. “Whatever it did to Donnie, it wants to do to me, and I think it wants to do it to all of us.”

“Let’s go sit down and we’ll talk about it.” Raphael placed his hand on Leo’s back as he began to guide him into the lair. The temperature of their home was stark in contrast compared to the cold sewer pipe. Leo felt a wave of warmth wash over him as he went from the dark shadows of the walkways to the painted light from the open ceiling.

They passed by the kitchen and into the central room, where fragments of wood were still scattered on the floor. Looking up, Leo saw a comically turtle-shaped hole in the vert ramp. He would usually laugh at something like that, maybe even take a picture and send it to April, but it only made his stomach quiver with anxiety.

As they passed the ramp, Leo started: “It’s Donnie’s body.” There was only silence in the lair as they walked. “It’s his voice, it’s his face, but It is not Donnie.” He looked to Raph, who listened patiently as they entered the TV room. “It’s taken over him and maybe it’s-” Leo began trying to find a plausible reason, he hadn’t thought about how it had blended so well into their family circle. He flopped down onto his beanbag and raph pushed over his own before sitting down, leaning forward to get close to his brother. Leo sucked in a sharp breath, “maybe it’s, like...downloaded his memories too, that explains why it's been able to replicate him so well.”

“I… see,” The doubt in Raphael's voice hit Leo like a hammer.

“I’m not lying,” he uttered.

Raphael brought his hands up with a calming gesture. “I know, I know you’re not-” “I’m not joking about this Raph,” Leonardo needed to convince Raph before it was too late, before that thing came home. “Please, this is serious,” he begged.

There was a second of silence as he cocked his head to the side and read Leo’s face. Everything that Leonardo was saying was sincere, but… Raph gave a sigh as he placed his hand on Leo’s shoulder. He made eye contact with Leo as he calmly said: “I know it’s not a prank, but…”

“What?” A prank. A prank.

Raph shut his eyes for a moment and grimaced before trying again. “Leo, don’t you think that’s a little out there?”

There was a moment of silence brought upon by Leo’s shock before he scoffed. “We’ve fought mutant pigs with tentacles for arms, stinky plant mutants, giant spider ladies, a hypnotist hippopotamus,” a dry laugh escaped him as he continued, “and you’re saying that a body controlling parasite is a little out there?”

“Hold on, what I mean is-”

Leo cut him off, his voice beginning to rise. “He hasn’t been acting like himself, Raph.”

“I haven’t noticed anything, and when I saw him earlier-”

“That’s the thing!” Leo sprung up, coming up to eye level with his massive brother, “nobody has noticed but me.” He pointed to himself as he continued, “I talked to Mikey about it, and he didn’t notice anything either, but I am telling you-”

“Leo…” Raph tried to interject

“It is not Donatello.”

“Let’s just calm down, okay?”

“Raph, please.” He began to plead, his hand motioning over his heart, “you didn’t see it, he intentionally lost a dance battle to me, Raph,” Leo covered his mouth as he gave a quiet yawn.

Raphael closed his eyes as he sighed. He brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, “Leo…”

Leo continued, his voice cracking under the emotional strain as he tried to make his brother understand, to make him believe him. “He practically recycled Shelldon, didn’t give a second glance when Mikey broke the tank-”

“Mikey broke the tank?”

“That’s not the point!” He shouted, surprising Raphael. “Don’t you realize what a mix of that means? Donnie would never. Ever. Disassemble Shelldon. That project is his pride and joy and for him to just open him up and leave him?”

“You saw Shelldon taken apart?”

“Well, no.” He stumbled over his own words as he realized what that sounded like,“but Mikey did!”

“Mikey knows about this?” Raph asked.

“Yes! But he didn’t believe me either,” he knew that he sounded frantic, but he continued, “this thing is a master manipulator, and it’s like it already knows everything about us from Donatello.”

“Leo-” Raph tried to interject.

“These facts have been building on eachother, “And then today he ghosted April, and attacked me!”

“What do you mean he attacked you?”

“I was trying to leave to go pick up April and he grabbed me, It tried to-” Leo’s voice cracked again. The memory of being pushed to the ground made his throat dry, “It tried to put a parasite in me, but I was able to get away before It did.”

Raphael sat quietly, listening to his younger brother's panicked words. He opened his mouth before shutting it again, trying to think of how he could possibly follow up. “How long has this been going on for?”

“Days Raph, it’s making my skin crawl.” A tear fell down his face and he quickly wiped it away. “I’ve been so- so panicked by all this that I feel like i’m losing my mind, I haven’t slept and I-” Another yawn ripped out of Leo as if on cue, making him stagger backwards as Leo covered his mouth. His brother stood. Raphael pressed the back of his massive hand against Leo’s forehead, effectively cutting him off and obscuring his vision.

After a few seconds, Raphael whispered, “you’re warm…”

Leo exhaled, “I was just running.”

Both of Raphael’s hands grabbed Leo’s face as Raph pulled him in, pressing his beak against his forehead. After a moment he hummed, releasing his smaller brother. “Leo, could you be running a fever?”

“No, I'm not running a fever!”

In an attempt to ease the conversation Raphael lowered his voice. “You don’t have to yell, i’m just making sure that you’re not-”

“Delusional?” Leo’s voice strained.

Frustration began to build in Raph’s demeanor as the conversation moved from rational to accusatory. “I’m not saying that.”

The tone was shifting in a way that Leo didn’t want. He was trying to make Raph get it, but the concept of this bad-thing-that-was-happening just wasn’t forming in his head. “Donatello” had integrated itself perfectly, it had taken days for Leo to notice something before he figured it out, so maybe if he took this from a different direction… “I’m sorry, a lot has happened today.”

Raphael’s expression softened. “It’s okay, look, let’s just talk this out, alright? I’m trying to understand.”

Leo folded his arms as he shifted his stance to something more comfortable. “I’m trying to explain this to you without sounding crazy,” he chuckled.

“Why don’t we start with the skate ramp,” Raph placed a hand on his arm. “What happened there?”

“Okay.” Yes, better. This was good! Leonardo would tell him his side of the story and maybe then Raphael would start to understand what was going on! Leo took a deep breath, he was going to tell Raph everything, from the attack, to April’s apartment, to everything It said and the parasite in the bottle. “I was leaving to pick up April and-” There was the sharp sound of pressurized air and then he felt a pinch strike him, and then Leo began to feel numb.

Raphael immediately noticed the fog in Leo’s eyes as he trailed off. Leo looked down and Raph followed his vision, spotting the brightly colored yellow dart in his thigh.

“Raph-” Darkness was already closing his vision. He took a step and his legs buckled beneath him. Leonardo tried to grab his brother, to use him to steady himself, only to find that his hands weren’t working anymore.

He couldn’t feel it, but Raphael caught him before he fell. After another second Leo lost consciousness all together, succumbing to the empty blackness. Raph looked up. On the second level of the lair, standing with a wide stance, Donnatello lowered the tranquilizer gun.

“Why did you do that?” When there wasn’t a response a familiar anger krept into Raphael’s tone. He repeated himself, “Donnie, why did you do that?!”

Donatello sighed and rolled his eyes in annoyance. “He was clearly showing signs of insanity,” he said matter-of-factly. He set the dart gun down to lean against the wall before he began to approach them. “Our best option would be to treat him for a level two fever before he infects anyone else, just give him to me.”

Leo was fully limp in Raph’s arms now, a few tears escaping from his peaceful expression. Raph didn’t know if that was an effect of the drugs or from the pain, or maybe if it was from the fear he felt right before he went unconscious. “Actually,” he twisted away from Donatello’s reaching arms, “I have a better idea.”

Donatello visibly twitched at Raphael’s response, “Raphael, as the smart one-

“As the leader,” the emphasis on that word was stronger than Donnie’s,“we’re going to treat him the same way we treat any sickness, Mikey, go get the plastic seals.”

“Roger that!”

“Micheal.” Michelangelo stopped in his tracks at the warningly low tone Donnie held in his voice. Looking at Raph with a dark expression, “what’s the big deal? I can just give him something in my lab and we can get this over with.”

“Look, he is terrified,” he held Leo just a bit tighter. “If it is a fever, it’ll pass in a couple of hours like it always does,” they weren’t cruel.

Through gritted teeth Donatello said, “he’s a danger, not only to himself,” he raised his tightly bandaged hand, practically shoving it in Raph’s face, “but to us as well!”

A pang of guilt and uncertainty pulsed in Raph’s chest, “you’re right Don,” a small smirk appeared on his purple brother's face, “but,” and the smirk disappeared, “He’s sick and he’s scared. We don’t want to make it any worse… and besides, you hate sick people in your lab.”

Donatello’s fist clenched for a moment and Raphael matched his brother's stare with equally narrowed eyes. His face still contorted with frustration, Donnie muttered, “fine.” He turned and left the room towards his lab, ripping the tranquilizer gun from the wall as he went.

The awkward silence that was left made Raphael feel tired. ‘Is this the right choice?’ he thought. His mind flicked over that short argument and he suddenly felt confused, since when did Donnie play the doctor of the family? Sure, he had enough chemicals to analyze stuff, but he had nothing in the medicine department. So why did he want Leo in his lab?

“Hey,” the soft tone pulled Raphael from his thoughts as he turned towards Mikey. Michelangelo put a gentle hand on Raph’s shoulder. “Don’t worry Raph, Leo’s gonna be okay.” And with that Michelangelo turned and left to get the plastic seal they would use on Leo’s door.

Raphael sighed as he rubbed a hand over his face. “I sure hope so.”

And here's the link! : https://archiveofourown.org/works/28420926/chapters/79888930

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #It started with the milk #chapter 8 #Raph and Donnie conflict! #Not much #but its there! #Oh also it's not Donnie but close enough #my writing

[marvelmadam08]

Baby Blues 11/?

Summary: Ace goes to his first doctor’s visit, and Alex checks in with her doctor.

Warnings: First shots, crying, doctor visits, slight jealousy. Fluffy Dad!Chris content. Body insecurities, health concerns, and mentions of sex.

A/N: Rest in Power to Chadwick Boseman, our Black Panther and King. He gave us so much while battling cancer, not just Black Panther. The work he has done in the amount of time he had left a mark, and cannot be replicated. Chadwick Boseman has been such a force in Hollywood that no one could ever forget him. My heart goes out to all his close friends and family.

Also, let’s not make this about Black Panther 2.

~~~~~~

6 Weeks Old

“I mean they can program a robot to perform surgery on a grape but they still have to jab a n-e-e-d-l-e into my baby’s skin for vaccinations.” Alex glared at a few of the other moms in the waiting room, eyeing Chris up and down with Ace. 

Chris fed him while Alex filled out the medical file. He was noisy drinking from the bottle, but he took to bottle feeding easier than Alex expected. She watched from the corner of her eye, Chris was a natural, jumping right into action whenever Ace needed something. Seeing him walk around the house with Ace never got old. He was always singing songs to him, some made up. Alex’s favorite so far was the one called ‘Doggies Are Friendly’, in attempts to get Ace to warm up to Dodger. No luck.

Overall seeing Chris Evans with a baby was enough to get any woman excited, and willing to give him more. So she could understand the gazes he got from the other moms, but that didn’t mean she had to just sit there and let them undress her husband with their eyes.

“Al, he can’t understand you.” He watched Ace, unaware of the extra eyes lusting after him

“He’s intuitive Chris, he knows what I mean." Alex frowned, thinking about the how upset Ace would be once he got his shots. She always thought her mother was being overprotective when she was younger but now she understood it completely. She could hear him crying now, and the thought made her eyes sting.

Chris finally looked up, after hearing the infliction in Alex’s voice ”What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t say that, we’re not gonna bottle up our feelings.” 

She half shrugged “I guess it’s a mental thing. I mean I know he has to get the shots- I just feel like I’m a monster, purposefully putting him through pain.”

“Baby, it’s a required check up, the first of many shots down the road. You aren’t a monster, you’re a mother.” 

“Evans?” the nurse called out from behind the counter

“Are you gonna be okay?” Chris asked as they stood, shifting Ace against his shoulder to burp him

“If you’re asking me if I’m gonna cry, I’m making no promises.” she quickly admitted

Alex hovered over the nurse while she weighed and measured Ace, and checked his heartbeat. Ace’s face when the cold stethoscope touched his chest was adorably deadpan. However, Chris was the one with all the questions, discussing development stages with the nurse the entire time. Going over Ace’s feeding and sleeping routine, asking if the amount of sleep was too little or too much. Would changing the baby wipes would cause any rashes. How soon would it be before hiding out if he was actually allergic to food or animals. And he jotted it all down in his phone, Alex stopped the nurse short when she offered to give Chris her number for any future questions.

“Al, I can hold him.” Chris offered once it was time for the vaccine shots

“No, it’s fine. I can handle it.” She kept Ace’s head turned away facing Chris. The nurse took a step closer, syringe in hand, Alex moved away slightly. “Sorry.”

The nurse tried again, Alex turned the other way.

“Mrs. Evans, I need you to stop moving him.”

“Al-”

“Okay, you hold him.” she conceded, before handing Ace over to Chris

She chewed her nail and watched from her new spot. Ace cried the second the nurse stuck him, Chris felt tears rising to his eyes. He went to wipe them away before anyone could see but more spilled over hearing the cries getting louder. Ace fidgeted against Chris, a heartbreaking attempt for him to move away from whatever stuck him.

“It’s okay baby.” Alex did her best to soothe him while the nurse prepped for another shot. She looked up at Chris, his cheeks wet but he kept his face straight, Alex wiped the tears away from her husband’s face before repeating “It’s okay baby.”

Seeing Ace’s lip poke out while the nurse moved in to stick him again nearly made Chris go into full defense mode, but he bit the inside of his cheek when the crying started again. Ace’s, not his.

“It’s okay honey, we’re all done with the shots.” the nurse soothed, covering the puncture points with small smiley face band-aids

“Yay, all done!” Alex clapped while Chris kissed the top of his son’s head to calm him “You okay?” Alex gave her husband some comforting back rubs

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He sniffled

"Good because now we have to go to my appointment."

***

After chewing down the nails on her left hand, Alex was half through her right one when she was called into her doctor’s exam room. Chris offered to go in with her, but she quickly declined, knowing she would have to be undressed for part, if not most, of the check-up. She done her own self-examination last night, seeing how different she looked down there. 

She didn’t want to be vain about it, but the first thing that popped in her head once she looked was how much she needed to get a wax. The second was equally as vain as it was humbling when she thought about having sex with Chris again. Her husband, AKA, Captain freaking America, who could eat to his hearts content and still come out looking as cut as the day she met him. Alex wanted to kick him and kiss him at the same time.

“Well Alex,” her doctor spoke, going over her notes “my main concern for you right now, is your blood pressure. It’s a little higher than usual, what’s your diet like at home?”

“More red meat than before, loads of pasta.” Alex paused to think “I tried string peas, y’know just for research purposes, surprisingly good.”

She chuckled “I tended to lean towards the squash when my first kid was born, but peas were a close second. What about stress?”

Alex shrugged “Fine, I guess. I mean, I can deal with it.”

“Alex, you can’t take this lightly. Stress can be just as harmful as smoking, for both you and your son. You are still breast feeding right?”

“Yes, and I started pumping.”

She jotted down some more notes “Mhmm, and how’s that going? No issues? Low milk supply? Pain while nursing?”

“Aside from the nipple chaffing, not really.” Alex picked at her nails, her doctor noticed

“Alex, I can’t help if you’re not one hundred percent honest with me. It’s bad enough we have doctors that downplay our symptoms because of a bullshit theory that Black people, specifically Black women, have higher pain tolerance. Don’t put on a brave face, not when it comes to your health.”

“Well when you put it like that- I hate pumping, I hate feeding sometimes too. It’s like a bunch of pins and needles sticking me when I do it, just sucking the life out of me. I don’t recognize my body anymore, and I’m warning you now, it’s not pretty down there. As for the stress, my husband and I have been fighting over what’s best for Ace, and our marriage. Which makes me concerned for when I go back to working. My Dad damn near broke his back, my son won’t sleep for longer than an hour, and I think he hates our family dog.” Alex exhaled a sharp breath 

“You feel better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“If you don’t like the feel you have when pumping when why do it?”

“Chris wants to be included in feed Alexander, my son, which I get. He’s gonna be back and forth between working and home again, so he wants his chance to bond with him.”

“But breast feeding is also uncomfortable to you?”

“Only when he fights trying to latch, but once he does and he’s calm, it’s worth it.”

“Have you ever considered formula? Lots of new moms do it, even rotated between that and breast milk. It’s actually proven to help both the mom and the baby.”

“We’ve talked about it, I voted against it.”

“I’m not saying you should, ultimately it’s your choice, but I will recommend, giving it a shot considering the stress you might be going through.” she scribbled down a few more notes “Now physically, how do you feel?”

“In my vagina?”

“There too. Please scoot forward and lay back for me.”

Alex followed orders and put her legs in the stirrups “Mostly tired, out of everything I’m exhausted. I’ve been walking to try and slim down a bit, but the weight isn’t going anywhere.”

“That’s to be expected, a lot of new moms hope for the baby weight to drop right off.” Alex’s doctor explained while pulling on her gloves “However, a lot of it is your uterus trying to shrink back to it’s regular size after being stretched out for nine months. Perfectly normal to like your body isn’t the same anymore, because it’s not. It gets easier the more kids you have.”

Alex chuckled “I don’t plan on having another one for a while.”

“Are you taking birth control?”

“No, Ace’s spit up on my clothes is all the birth control I need right now.” Alex shifted slightly “Plus I don’t really get in the mood too often now a days. Not sure if it’s emotional or mental but I’m just not ready to bring intimacy back in just yet.”

“Well physically, you’re good to go. Stitches are all healed, no signs of infection or tears. I will recommend going easy though, as well as a birth control, in case your mood changes.”

“Thanks, what do you recommend for my marriage?” Alex asked jokingly

“I have an acquaintance who’s a marriage counselor. I can give you her contact information if you like.”

“Um- I think I’ll pass this time Doc.”

“Okay then, I’ll let you get dressed and just talk to Toni at the desk before you leave to set up your next appointment.”

Chris stood once he saw Alex reenter the waiting room, Ace was fast asleep in the carrier.

“What did your doctor say? How are you doing?”

Alex did her best not to hesitate “A little concerned about my diet, said my blood pressure was a bit high, but overall-”

“Are you okay?”

“Chris, let me finish.” she gave him a reassuring smile “I gotta fix my diet, limit my stress and my blood pressure will be fine.”

“What did she say about- other things?” he hinted, a light blush creeping to his cheeks

“Well- my insatiable husband- I should wait a little longer. Nothing is wrong it’s just what she recommends.”

Chris nodded “Okay, not a problem.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders “We’ll wait, doctor’s orders.”

“Doctor’s orders.”

#chris evans x ofc #Chris Evans #Black Writers #OFC #babyblues #marvel #Avengers #Defending Jacob #devil all the time #Sebastian Stan #black reader #the falcon and the winter soldier #rip chadwick boseman

[takivvatanga]

sick day

“Mum? My head hurts.” Stella coughs as she pads into the lounge on her bare feet, her blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her little face flushed, blue eyes burning bright with fever. She’s stayed home sick today, same as yesterday, same as the day before. 

Whatever illness it is that is making its way around at school, it’s horrid. Neville has it too, apparently. Assire thinks about Mary, about how she must feel having a sick child to look after once again - even though this isn’t bad. Well, it is, but it’s nothing compared to… the horrible thing that happened. Assire remembers Mary’s little boy. Clever and quick and so very full of energy, full of life - until he began to fade, his body slowly but surely giving way to something dark, some insidious decay that got hold of him and would never let him go. 

Assire had kept her distance, hesitant to interfere in another woman’s grief. They barely knew each other, back then. To reach out would have been inappropriate, surely. But Assire can’t help but feel that she let her sister in law down. Better give her a call, later on tonight. See how she is, see how Neville is. Assire might not be able to make up for the missed opportunities of the past, but she has here and now, doesn’t she? Never too late to set things right, do things a little differently. Yes, she’ll do that. She’ll call.  “Mum!” Stella’s voice is thin and reedy, thick with congestion. She sounds much younger than what she is, when she’s unwell. Assire beckons her closer, and Stella doesn’t hesitate, climbing up onto the couch and curling up in her mother’s arms, blanket trailing behind. She coughs again, wipes her runny nose with a crinkled pyjama sleeve. Assire brushes a strand of dark hair out of her daughter’s face. Her skin is hot to touch, a little sticky. How bright her eyes are. Blue as the sky on a clear morning, blue as the ocean on a sunny day. Stella has her father’s eyes. Assire wishes Stella looked more like her, doesn’t realise that she is right there, reflected so clearly in the way Stella frowns, in the way she blinks her eyes in astonishment, in the restlessness in her little hands.   Sometimes I still don’t feel as if you’re truly mine. A part of me. You feel so far away, and at the same time you’re so close.  “Can I get a hot drink?” Stella shifts, pushing her bare feet against the armrest of the couch, pressing closely against her mother’s body. Assire pulls her close, presses her face to the crown of her daughter’s head, inhales deeply. Stella smells like green apples and Vick’s Vaporub, like wax crayons and unwashed pyjamas. She needs a shower, but Assire doesn’t want to force her to have one. Not when she’s unwell like this, not - Assire doesn’t want to force Stella to do anything. No. She wants her to choose, to make up her own mind, to walk her own path without restriction, without limitation. “She needs discipline”, Mary has told her, more times than Assire cares to remember. “She needs to learn how to cope with having rules. I understand what you’re trying to achieve, I really do, but it doesn’t work like that.” But Mary doesn’t understand, and as far as Assire is concerned, things are perfectly fine just the way they are. 

“I’ll make you some tea, alright?” Assire stirs. Stella clings to her. “No, Mum! Don’t get up!” Assire sighs, relents, settles back into the couch, tugging at the edges of Stella’s blanket. “No hot drink, then.” “But I’m thirsty”, Stella whines, in her sick-little-kid voice. “Can I just have some of yours?” “No, sweetheart. That’s black tea. It’s not for kids. And it’s gone cold anyhow, see?” She picks up her cup - with its chipped rim and its fading print of cavorting cats, her favourite - and presents it to her daughter. Stella holds it tightly, with both hands, the remnants of bright pink polish still noticeable on her little nails. Stella has lovely hands. Nothing like Assire’s own, their skin thin and sallow, already flecked like those of a much older woman, the nails bitten down almost to the quick. Stella’s hands are slim with long fingers, her nails fast-growing, strong, perfectly shaped. The hands of an artist or a musician, a clockmaker or a surgeon. What will she grow up to do with those hands? Assire worries about Stella. Stella still cannot read. She only pretends, guessing the words based on the letters she can make out, relying on her memory to replicate the texts of her story books. At Stella’s age, Assire had been reading fluently for quite some time. As a matter of fact, she cannot recall ever not being able to read. Not like there was much reading material available when she was small. She’d read street signs instead, street signs and work rosters and every now and again that rare treat of a discarded newspaper that the wind had carried over the fences of the compound. FLASH SALE DON’T MISS OUT! Weekend Weather Unemployment at Record Levels Stella sniffs at the dark liquid in the cup, pulls a face, glances up at her mother with her bright blue eyes. The little girl takes a sip, erupts in a violent coughing fit.  “It’s gross, Mum!” “I told you.” “I want a hot drink! Hot chocolate or milk with honey in it!” “Well, you’ll have to wait for me to make it then.” Another cough, smaller this time but twice as phlegmy. Stella spits into her pyjama sleeve.  “Alright. Can I play on your computer while I wait?” “No, sweetheart. Now let me get that drink for you, yeah?” “I don’t want a drink no more. I want a story instead. Can I have a story, Mum?”  Stella looks up at her mother with pleading eyes. As much as she sometimes resents her inability to be normal, like other mothers, her stories are the best. As far back as Stella can remember, Assire’s tales have taken her on a journey, deep into the centre of the earth or far beyond the skies, into other worlds, murky dreamscapes where nothing is ever quite as it seems.  “Any more”, Assire corrects her daughter sternly. “Speak properly please, Stella.” The little girl sighs, rolls her eyes. “You sound like auntie Mary! She always tells me to talk properly too. I don’t know why it’s so important. You know what I mean anyway.”  “You’ll understand someday. It’s complicated.” “You always say that when you don’t know how to explain something.”

Assire bites her lip, taken aback by the accuracy of her daughter’s observation. This is a discussion she is nowhere near prepared to enter into right now. “A story then. Alright. Are you comfortable?” Stella wriggles under her blanket, inching even closer, settling down to rest her head in her mother’s lap, her restless little hands tugging at the tassels on Assire’s scarf. She loves her fiercely, in this moment, with her messy hair and her sticky skin and her febrile eyes, in her unwashed pyjamas with her unbrushed teeth. Don’t grow up, she thinks. Or at least, don’t grow up too fast. “Am now.” Stella coughs again. Assire pushes a strand of hair out of her daughter’s face. “Let’s see. A story. Well, a long time ago, or maybe somewhere in the far distant future, far above in the High Wilderness Beyond The Skies, there was a girl. Only she wasn’t an ordinary girl. You see, instead of being born, she was made.” “Made? You mean she wasn’t a real girl?” “Oh, she was. She was just...where other people are made of skin and flesh and bone, she’d been put together from bronzewood and ivory and copper and steel and instead of a beating heart there was a clockwork contraption in her chest.” “Was she brave?” “She was. She was incredibly brave, actually. She-” “She was never afraid!” “No. She was afraid all the time. Of a lot of things.” “Then she wasn’t brave.” “She was. Because you see, being brave doesn’t mean never being afraid. Because if you’re never scared, that would make it easy to be brave, wouldn’t it now? But being brave isn’t supposed to be easy. It gets easier, though. What being brave means is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway.” Stella doesn’t reply. Assire can tell by the way she wrinkles her nose, by the way she purses her lips, that she is thinking very seriously about this. Good. Remember that, Stella. Remember that it is alright to be afraid. Because we’re all afraid, in our own way, and anyone who says they aren’t, well, they’re lying. “What did she do, in the Skies?” “She was a traveller. An explorer. She met a great many people on her journey, and if any of them were in need of help, she did whatever she could for them. Until one day…” Stella listens intently as Assire spins her tale, but soon her eyelids grow heavy, her curious questions and interjections become less frequent. Assire lowers her voice, little by little, and soon Stella’s breathing becomes slow and even, every now and again disrupted by a small cough. Assire begins to hum, deep and low in her throat, a strange melody that she cannot recall ever learning, but she has sung it to Stella for as long as she can remember. Stella’s Song, they call it. It’s something they share just between the two of them. She’ll be too old for it soon, just like she’ll be too old for bedtime stories. Assire wishes she could stop time, to keep her daughter here, like this, curled up in her lap, blissfully oblivious to life and all its hardships, its temptations, its wrong turns. Innocent. Where will you go, Stella? Who will you become? The thought fascinates and terrifies her at the same time. “We’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”, she whispers as she straightens out the blanket that covers the sleeping child. “We’ll have to find out.”

#vignette: assire #vignette: stella #i started this ages ago and abandoned it #then today i came back to it while trying to do sth else #funny how that goes but i'll take it tbh #nothing happens just a moment between these two #i love them so much #also i am so proud of assire actually being responsive to her kid #i think that was the time when their relationship was at the best #when stella is like primary school age #it deteriorated pretty rapidly once stella hit her teens #and had to be rebuilt when stella came home as an adult #it's not until the end of assire's life when stella moves back in to look after her parents #that they truly understand each other and see each other for who they really are #it's GROWTH (tm) #also shoutout to the fact that the story assire is telling her #is pretty much stella's sunless skies verse

[fencesandfrogs]

cloudtail’s daughter au

so i decided to do a full write-up of this au instead of doing a second post to cover books 4-6 and then everything will be self-contained.

the essence of this au is pretty simple: dovewing does not, imo, fulfill the prophecy by being the granddaughter of firestar’s nephew, because that’s at least 3 “kin” away from him. so while i think she’d actually have to be princess’ daughter to fit, i’ll let her be firestar’s grandniece and call that “close enough” because it’s better.

anyway, there’s no real reason for this to change anything, but i think given who cloudtail and brightheart are, and how close dovewing and ivypool are to whitewing, it would probably change quite a few things.

[4k words. 15 minute read. proper section headers.]

this is a big summary so i’m sure i’ll forget things, i’ve already had to add in the events caused by the dovewing/tigerheart romance/conflict that carries through the first three books, and that cloudtail being an atheist has a major effect on ivypaw. i know i wrote a detailed summary of the first arc, where i didn’t forget any of that, but nothing exists for the second arc. anyway this au is tagged cloudtail’s daughter and apparently i have a lot to say about it so i’m sure if you click on the tag you can find info about it. assuming this isn’t the first thing i post. which it might be.

section one: things that don’t happen

so i don’t want this to be a po3 rewrite, which means i’m going to take a moment to explicitly discuss what doesn’t change.

first, po3 stays pretty much exactly the same. i want jayfeather to be a warrior too. i also want him to be dovewing’s brother. but the au where brightheart gives birth to dovekit, anxiety child, and jaykit, blind, and feels like a failure despite the fact that its not like her half-blindness is genetic, is not this au. that is another au.

anyway, hollyleaf does keep herself more together, because she needs to be alive for some family drama. she’s in background character hell (BGCH) for a while, though, especially the first book.

she still goes to the tunnels, mind, she just comes out sooner.

but otherwise, despite my personal tastes, i’m not changing po3 very much.

section two: brightheart’s litters

okay so cloudtail and brightheart have four children, i believe, and my choice is either to replace whitewing, or to replace the others. now, i don’t particularly care for either of these options, but i’d rather they have their second litter younger, so we’re replacing amber/dew/snow. this still lets you have old queen drama, but not so much that you’re like “brightheart how on god’s green earth did you have 3 children with no issues”

instead, she’ll have dovekit and ivykit at about the same time whitewing had them.

now, for complicated cat genetic reasons, cloudtail could have been a black cat. now, here me out: what i mean is, if he wasn’t white, he could be black. basically, white is a masking color in cats, it goes on top of whatever pattern they would have displayed. both he and brightheart would have to inherit one dilute gene (princess was not dilute, so she had to carry it), and then either dovewing or brightheart are tortie, and that’s the best i can do for keeping dovewing grey.

i, personally, lean towards tortie brightheart, because i always pictured her that way, but i have seen some pretty cute tortie dovewing.

ivykit inherits red from her mother, and is tortie either way, because tortie ivypool is cute.

in fact, i’ve been tinkering with the idea that ivykit and dovekit have kind of mirrored grey and cream spots. not, like, perfectly mirrored, because that’s not how tortoiseshell/calico (they would technically be calico, since they have white) works, but close enough to be cute.

section three: arc one (summary)

these books are going to have six protagonists (dovekit, lionblaze, cinderheart, hollyleaf, jayfeather, ivypool, in that order) with a secondary character who gets less chapters but the most important b-plot (ivykit, hollyleaf, lionblaze, jayfeather, cinderheart, dovewing).

arc one focuses on “two braincells” i.e., dovewing, lionblaze, and cinderheart (sorry bb, ur not like the other two, but i’m putting you somewhere) and the main theme is dovepaw learning to manage her power. it’s a tug and pull between dovewing: glass canon, and dovewing: can’t do shit.

cinderheart and lionblaze also have a romance going on, which irritates ivypaw, who has a bit of a catalyst with the dark forest in the middle/end of the arc (like in the original). we only get this through external perspecives, though, because when this happens, lionblaze is in the secondary position.

one of the ways to fix this book series is to decouple it from ivy and dove, much as i love them. both the beavers and the dark forest make up a b-plot in this arc, while the quest for the third prophecy cat, as well as growing tensions between clans, take center stage, and lionblaze and cinderheart work in the second and third book to give us the adult perspective of the tension that dovekit and ivykit can’t in the first book.

mostly, this is fairly low stakes. part of that is because characters are having stakes appropriate for them, rather than smeared around in a book. (looking @ u, flametail buddy). so dovekit/paw spends her first book worried about apprentice things and doesn’t get to narrate again until the end of the series.

section four: book one — growing shadows

i think the fourth apprentice is a stupid name, okay?

so book one is dovekit and ivykit, for pretty obvious reasons.

although actually i’m pushing off the beavers in this to book two or three. i’m not 100% sure where i want that, yet.

so anyway, dovekit is born and wow is she anxiety child. (i call dovewing anxiety child a lot, because, well, she is? i feel like it’s sort of implicit in the books and i’m making it explicity.) anyway, she’s in sensory overload like 100% of the time. see, she was born late, and so she didn’t have her powers kick in over time like lionblaze and jayfeather. nope. she got the adult version right away.

so she spends a lot of time hiding with cloudtail because he’s big and fluffy and not complicated to look at. cloudtail and brightheart are understandibly pretty worried about her, because no one really knows what to do about it. she’s skittish and distractable and extremely sensitive. she hates going out in the rain, hates bright sun, etc.

(side note: dovekit’s powers extend to pretty much all her senses. she can see, hear, and smell much farther than she should, and she can taste and feel much more strongly than an other cat.)

ivykit doesn’t feel unloved, but she does know her sister is getting more attention, and that always kind of hurts, even if you’re understanding.

cloudtail and brightheart work to try to help dovekit get on her feet, but they’re not super successful. she learns to cope enough to be able to function as a kit, but she’s always kind of a strange, quiet kit. she doesn’t know how to talk about seeing too much because she doesn’t realize its too much.

dove is given to cinderheart, because lionblaze is a terrible mentor for small anxiety child, and ivy is given to lionblaze. this will also create drama later, just wait.

so the main plot of this book is keyed into dovepaw learning to hunt. the stakes are pretty low, honestly. they’re mounting around dovepaw and ivypaw, but the girls are too young to properly understand everything.

dovepaw is initially successful hunting due to some luck and being good at spotting prey, but she can’t replicate it. ivypaw only trains with her a bit at first, and she sees this success, and feels like her parents’ attention on dovepaw made dovepaw better than her.

this gets ivypaw into the dark forest. this is the b-plot: ivypaw training, realizing she made a mistake, and not knowing how to get out. plus, she doesn’t have to mind her sister. (ivypaw is raised by an atheist, so while she’s smart enough to eventually work out that these cats are evil, she doesn’t have a sunshine and rainbows view of starclan. that’s the only way i can justify her not being smart enough to nope the fuck out of there, even if she is really young and really angry.)

in clan life, ivypaw knows she needs to look out for dovepaw. she doesn’t mind, but she gets to experience a life without that in the dark forest.

dovepaw does mind how everyone treats her like she’s made of glass. she sees cinderheart talking to brightheart and jayfeather and firestar and feels like everyone thinks she’s useless. so she decides to go out on her own and prove she can function.

dovepaw starts sneaking out at night and she finds the tunnels. her senses dampened, she panicks, running deeper and deeper, getting lost. fallen leaves will find her, and help get her strength up and then get her out. kind of like with hollyleaf, who is out of the caves by now.

ivypaw sees everyone searching for dovepaw and starts to feel guilty about wanting more attention, and the fact that part of why she wants dovepaw back is so people pay attention to ivypaw again. she also feels responsible for this.

cinderheart is distraught, because she really did care about dovepaw, and it’s been three days, her scent tracked to the tunnels but it was raining and no one has seen her since, so she’s probably dead.

ivypaw, grieving, refuses to accept that dovepaw is dead and she hunts outside the tunnel mouth until she thinks she hears something.

dove and ivy reunite and return to the clan. ivypaw’s convictions that dovepaw needs to be protected are strengthened, and dovepaw knows she failed in her goal. everyone is happy to see them.

we get some fretting about how washed out everything is, how the rain didn’t even stick because the soil is so dry. that’s a cue to the drought, which will be a bigger deal next book.

section five: book two — fading echoes

honestly i’m not attached to book titles, but this works here too.

so this book is split between lionblaze and hollyleaf. i’m pretty sure hollyleaf is out of the caves by now, but i haven’t decided if she’s rejoined the clans. she feels strongly for fallen leaves: they’re listed as mates on the warrior cats wiki, and if hollyleaf and jayfeather are both going to have ancient dead ghost mates, she’s at least going to visit hers. her end goal is to get him to starclan so they can be together after her death.

anyway, this is beavers book. i don’t have a ton to say about it because it’s pretty much the same, except hollyleaf goes with dovepaw and cinderheart and she’s our pov as dovepaw falls for tigerheart because (and this is my understanding of her logic in the books to begin with): “big fluffy tom is safe fluffy tom.”

lionblaze feels the disconnect between him and ivypaw, but he can’t help that cinderheart is away. ivypaw is clearly preoccupied, but he can’t tell with what. his larger conflict is in finding the third cat.

this isn’t a filler book, per say. the tree falls and that happens, and lionblaze gets thrown into rebuilding camp. ivypaw feels doubly abandoned. lionblaze tries to win her affection, but he doesn’t know how.

beaver crew gets back. dovepaw has stars in her eyes. ivypaw is close to passing her warrior assessment, but lionblaze can tell she’s holding back because she doesn’t want to leave dovepaw. dovepaw can hunt by now, but she can’t really split her attention.

she’s scared of going into battle.

after a border skirmish where dovepaw just freezes, ideas of her being a medicine cat are raised.

ivypaw sees tigerheart in the dark forest, and she goes all bluefur being like “snowfur ur bf has rabies” on dovepaw, who is not happy with this. ivypaw pushes dovepaw to be a medicine cat because of this. the sisters are squabbling and barely talking.

book ends.

section six: book three — distant whispers

again not 100% sold on the names.

so this is cinderheart’s book, and she’s going to figure this out, because dovepaw and ivypaw are falling apart, and dovepaw deserves to be a warrior. so she convinces firestar to let her and lionblaze take ivypaw and dovepaw to the mountains. she believes, well, i’m not sure i haven’t worked that part out.

anyway, they go.

the tribe is like “yeah the world sure is a big place with a lot to look at. that’s why only half of us look.” (i know that’s not exactly how cave guard’s work but close enough.)

cinderheart is like “hm. what if, dovepaw, just a thought, what if you just, you know, avoid battles? i know it’s part of clan life but judging by the two souls crammed into my body, i’d say there’s been very few major conflicts over this and, reasonably, you should be able to avoid being chosen for battle control.”

dovepaw says, “but cinderheart, i’m a main character! unless i’m being punished or taught a lesson about duty, i’ll be automatically registered for every battle patrol until i die!”

cindheart says, “you’re right, i’m so sorry. hey ivypaw, [whoops yeah ivy and lion are here too sorry i forgot to mention that] what if you two learn to work as a team.”

dovepaw says, “i don’t want to work with her.”

ivypaw says, “that’s a great idea.”

because dovepaw talks very quietly (she forgets not everyone can hear as well as her), ivypaw wins.

they spend at least a month in the tribe, maybe longer, i’m not sure. eventually, they decide to go back. dovepaw is never happy in the tribe, it’s way too loud all the time, but she does manage to sort out her hunting issues, and so fighting is left.

so there’s still a big push for dovepaw to consider maybe being a medicine cat.

but that is not this au. this is the jaywing/dovefeather au where they basically switch roles. there’s a really good fic where dovepaw goes to riverclan for a while that i love and anyway this au is a as-close-as-possible to canon au for me to rectify my issues with dovewing in canon (nominally, i don’t have any, but i think her character was displayed…curiously, and i’m mad about the prophecy.)

ivypaw is team medicine cat. cinderheart and lionblaze are struggling. cinderheart eventually teaches dovepaw an extension of the techniques of the tribe, and they work out that dovepaw can kind of, track the cats she’s with to anchor herself in battle. this means dovepaw no longer is tied to ivypaw for her success, and so they both become warriors.

while they’re still in the tribe, ivypaw has time away from the dark forest and lionblaze finally puts two and two together, and that basically makes up the b-plot for the back half of the book, lionblaze trying to get ivypaw to admit what’s going on and then trying to help her.

dovewing’s senses begin to return but since they come back slowly she’s able to manage them. so she quickly excels in hunting.

ivypool cottons on to the dark forest breeding loyalty between its members, not to their original clans, and realizes that this is going to threaten all four of the clans.

end book with a bang, end first arc. we will now turn to the actually-have-more-than-two-braincells crew (sorry cinderheart, you don’t deserve to be in this group, but your prefix doesn’t end in -y, so you can’t be with jay/holly/ivy in the brainy crew.)

section seven: arc 2 (summary)

so this arc is when the main conflict (dark forest battle) becomes obvious. dovewing’s problems have been sorted out, so she’s pushed into BGCH for a little bit while the smart adults sort things out.

book three ends with ivypool realizing the dark forest isn’t a personal problem, but a clan-group (like, all of the clans together? not sure how to call it) sized problem. ivypool, jayfeather, and hollyleaf together manage to sort out a lot of the dark forest’s eventual plan, and they try to sort out a way to solve it. then the battle happens. that’s basically the summary?

in here, the clans start working together way sooner and the prophecy comes out way faster.

section eight: book 4 — the forgotten character

alright, hollyleaf is liberated from BGCH. actual title is still the forgotten warrior.

hollyleaf and ivypool start to bond, and hollyleaf is convinced all the clans need to know about what’s up.

ivypool disagrees, and they talk about it like rational people.

hollyleaf and fallen leaves are still cute.

jayfeather has his timetravel thing in this book so he can do flametail’s job in the next book. he gets to talk to hollyleaf and fallen leaves about it.

i don’t think i’d mess with jayfeather and briarlight’s relationship in this au, because i think it’s sweet in canon as is, but you know i have thoughts about half moon and briarlight. anyway, jayfeather gets his book next, this is about hollyleaf.

fallen leaves helps hollyleaf learn to control, idk, spirit dream travel? jayfeather helps with this too. hollyleaf has to share extra hard with jayfeather because she took up a disproportionate amount of time in lionblaze’s book.

so anyway, hollyleaf is learning to travel into the dark forest. similar to the way dark forest cats leave it? but in reverse. this is the main plot.

like the second book, it’s not really filler, so much as lower stakes, and like the second book, i don’t have a ton to say about it because the plot is self evident. unfortunately, hollyleaf has the two “chill” books. sorry bb.

anyway, this is building into jayfeather going all angry old man yells at sky at starclan next book, so the biggest conflict in this book is hollyleaf realizing she can just, leave. she can go back in time the way jayfeather did, but on purpose, save fallen leaves, and they can be alive.

i mean, that wouldn’t actually work, not the least because i’m not keen on hollyleaf being a reincarnation, espcially in the reincarnation-lite universe, but also because she can’t save fallen leaves, then he wouldn’t be a sharpclaw, not really, and like a whole host of other issues but anyway

at the end of power of three, hollyleaf runs away from her problems. this book is about her standing up to defend them.

i don’t know if she explicitly breaks up with fallen leaves, but they have a falling out that won’t get resolved until after the great battle. this is a mutual/not mutual thing where they both know that fallen leaves is stopping hollyleaf from fully committing to helping her clans now, but they love each other.

relationship conflict that isn’t forbidden romance.

speaking of, ivypool getting close to hollyleaf means that the two of them start to reconnect with their siblings. hollyleaf’s actions alienated her from jayfeather and lionblaze and she kind of just was sad and apologetic but they didn’t want to forgive her.

(sorry hollybush, says jayfeather,

that’s not my name, says hollyleaf,

oh, says jayfeather, guess i forget. well anyway, i have a new sister now. her name is dovewing.

dovewing?, says hollyleaf. but you don’t like her.

it’s okay, says jayfeather, she never tore my family to shreds and then abandoned me to deal with the fallout.)

(jayfeather and hollyleaf always seemed closer to me than lionblaze and either of them, until hollyleaf’s whole event. anyway he remains petty about everything and lionblaze stands by him because, well, he’s not wrong, also dovewing is important to cinderheart so he feels like he should be on her side on this which means jayfeather’s side. even though cinderheart is friends with hollyleaf look i said lionblaze is a loveable dumbass already, didn’t i?)

so anyway hollyleaf is sad and ivypool sees that and is like “hm maybe i shouldn’t be a petty bitch for no reason” and this is fine until after this series is over when dovewing and tigerheart are like “bitch we gon b together”

dovewing’s emotions get jayfeather to, well, not go back on his actions, but recognize hollyleaf is the most effective person to work with. because lionblaze and dovewing are just. so dumb.

and yeah this book ends with things feeling almost hopeful.

section nine: book 5 — sign of the moon

i cannot overstate how little i care about the titles of these books.

anyway, jayfeather and cinderheart.

i don’t have a ton of thoughts about this one. jayfeather reunites starclan, cinderheart helps convince ivypool and dovewing to work together. this is the book where clans find out about the propechy but not the dark forest that is for next book

they know something is coming, but everyone agrees not to give ivypool away yet. they like her, you know, alive.

anyway, i don’t have much to say because it’s pretty obvious what happens, because this is just a bunch of events from other books crammed into this book, now, and they’ve been written and i don’t see the need to make many changes.

cinderheart and lionblaze have kit drama, maybe? cinderheart counsels dovewing about tigerheart, maybe? my point is it’s not super important.

the book ends with the two warriors to every camp. and dovewing, jayfeather, and lionblaze, are going to get split up.

this is my biggest change so far imo because it’s the most plot relevant.

dovewing is going to shadowclan with ivypool. jayfeather is going to windclan with…i’m not sure yet? i don’t want him going to riverclan because leafpool has ties to riverclan and, well, i want jayfeather to get a chance to stand on his own. and lionblaze goes to riverclan, with either cinderheart or hollyleaf.

jayfeather is super grumbly about this, but admits that it’s important as a show of unity, and also, he’s pretty functional in wind clan? like they’re all playing to their strengths.

jayfeather learns to navigate pretty quickly, dovewing appreciates quiet and also not being that-strange-cat who everyone is super careful around, and lionblaze is big and gregarious and enjoys riverclan being chill and friendly. so yeah, people get a chance to chill and be happy.

ivypool is in position to be angsty next book.

end book.

section ten: book 6 — the last hope

despite my claim that the biggest change is sending the three to different clans, i don’t have a lot to say about it.

basically, well, okay

first, we see ivypool and dovewing again. reminder that last time we were in one of their heads, they were apprentices. in book one.

dovewing couldn’t even hunt last time we had her pov.

so there’s a few chapters to some characterization that happens. dovewing is no longer anxiety child. she’s somewhat shy, she’s soft spoken, but she’s not skittish. you can’t surprise her. and she’s intense. she’ll just stare at you with wide eyes if you come talk to her until you say something she wants to respond to.

ivypool sees why dovewing and tigerheart are good together. she’s still not supportive, but, like, he understands her. he doesn’t treat her like she’s fragile, but he also is kind and forgiving and soft to her.

plus he’s a total simp for dovewing. that helps.

anyway, ivypool gets along fairly well in shadowclan. i don’t have ton of thoughts about this.

ivypool, hollyleaf/cinderheart, and jayfeather’s companion, as well as half of the other cats away on missions, are acting as messengers between their host clans and their home clans. that’s how ivypool gets to find out about info. they meet on the island every morning. or something.

anyway, this bit is where i most hate the set up of this with two pov per book hard cap because it’d be cool to see into everyone else’s head but that’s for novellas and side stories.

the battle happens.

everything sucks. dovewing has basically committed to tigerheart, but bramblestar’s storm messes with the timeline.

and that’s pretty much it.

section eleven: what’s next?

so i swore i wasn’t starting new fic and then i thought of this and now i do want to write it so, maybe?

the most important thing is:

tl/dr: the reason dovewing shouldn’t have been a prophecy cat is because she’s not the kin of firestar’s kin.

#dovewing #ivypool #jayfeather #cinderheart #lionblaze #hollyleaf #warrior cats #cloudtail's daughter #mine #txt #22nd #February #2021 #February 22nd 2021 #q #essay #long #lovewing dovewing

[weasleydream]

The life and grief of Percy and Y/N Weasley -Part 5

Okay guys, here is the part 5 with one of the most important scenes in the twins’ life... honestly I don’t know what to think about this one, I guess it’s alright but I couldn’t do better... 

Also, I know in the book Ron said Percy was the one who decided to leave but I can’t help but think maybe Arthur told him something, so don’t be surprised by how things turn.

Anyway, as usual, don’t hesitate to tell me about your thoughts and I hope you’ll enjoy!

Masterlist 

(gif not mine) 

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Their first fight with their family 

The storm provoked by Barty Crouch’s case didn’t last long. Apparently, the Ministry wanted nothing more than cover it up, and with good reason: according to Harry, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was the responsible, he was back and had killed Cedric Diggory at the end of the third task of the Triwizard Tournament.

I didn’t really know what to think about it. I couldn’t find reasons that justified why Harry would have lied, but the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, had affirmed it was false. Besides, Dumbledore was known for his ideas sometimes a bit crazy. This new had installed tensions in our family: our parents supported Dumbledore without even thinking about it along with everyone in the house, except Percy. My twin trusted entirely the Ministry, he couldn’t even imagine that our government would lie to us. As I said, my opinion wasn’t really decided yet.  

After the end of the Tournament, my work in the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau hadn’t changed at all, it was still boring and full of reports. But Percy had spent a week without having anything to do, his superior not being here anymore. He had been completely lost and devastated, convinced his career at the Ministry was over before it could even properly start. I had done my best to reassure him, but he wouldn’t even listen to me. However, after a week, he was offered a new job. He had stayed very secret about it, not bothering to tell anyone what he was doing. Merlin, if the situation could have stayed like this… Because as soon as Percy had revealed us what his new job was, all hell had broken loose. 

I was helping Mum in the kitchen, listening to her constant interrogations about what was going on between Bill and Fleur Delacour.

“I mean, she’s French.” muttered Mum. “I don’t even think she sees who Bill really is. She’s just interested because -”

“Mum, we don’t even know if something is happening between the two of them.” I laughed. 

Mum shrugged, claiming she just wanted what was best for her son. I rolled my eyes, perfectly aware of the fact that she would kill the girl herself if she thought it was best. I heard Mum calling for everyone and put the kettle on the table. Fred, George, Ron and Ginny arrived, followed by Mum who was glancing worriedly at her magical clock. Dad’s and Percy’s hands were still pointed on “At work”. Bill’s one was on “Travelling”. A few seconds later, Bill entered the house and joined us. 

“I’m starving!” He took a bit of stew. “Dad and Perce are not here?”

His question seemed to summon them, because Percy arrived soon in the kitchen, followed by Dad. His eyes were shining and he couldn’t repress his grin. I looked at him and raised an eyebrow, silently asking him what had happened, and he raised a finger, as to say “wait a minute”. He waited a few minutes for everyone to be quiet and cleared his throat. 

“Yes my dear?” Mum looked toward him.

“I’ve had a promotion. I’m now Cornelius Fudge’s personal assistant!”

I was pretty sure he expects shouts of joy from our family, and I was on the verge of congratulating him when I saw Dad’s look. A deafening silence took place, only disturbed by Mum’s gasp. 

“How is it possible?” asked Fred in disbelief. “After Crouch?”

Percy frowned, clearly disappointed by the lack of support he was receiving. 

“Does it really matter?” I intervened, glaring at Fred. “Whatever happened, Perce is promoted. That’s great!” I caught a glimpse of Percy’s weak smile.

“Yes, that matters, Y/N.” said Dad. His voice was calm and strangely formal. “That matters because Fudge has recently ordered to search a few offices in the Ministry and mine was one of them.”

“And?” I didn’t understand what this had to do with Percy’s promotion. 

“And they probably want to spy on us - they want informations about Dumbledore.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Percy’s voice was quiet, and when I looked at him, I saw a fire in his eyes I had never seen before. His cheeks were slowly becoming red, and a vein started to palpitate in his neck. He was getting angry. “That’s bloody ridiculous. You’re being bloody ridiculous, father.”

“Percy!” Mum exclaimed.

“Why can’t you support me?” continued Percy.

“Do you want me to congratulate you because you’re being used by Fudge?” Dad’s voice was slowly filling with anger too, and I knew this wouldn’t end well. 

Percy got up so quickly that his chair fell backward. Dad did the same, and the two men were facing each other, fists trembling and faces twisted by a barely contained rage. 

“Percy, dear,” started Mum. “You know Fudge doesn’t trust Arthur because of our proximity with Dumbledore. Now that You-know-who is back, he -”

“That’s the point.” Percy hissed. “Don’t you think the Ministry would warn us officially if he was really back? Let me tell you how you’re blinded by your stupid trust in Dumbledore.”

“Harry said it!” intervened Ginny. “He saw him!”

“And it’s stupid to trust him!” screamed Percy. 

Ginny got up too. She was next to me, and I vainly put an hand on her arm to calm her, not being able to do anything else. I was taken aback by Dad’s insinuations and Percy’s behaviour. Ginny pushed my hand and glared at me, hissing I should calm Percy. However, I didn’t say anything, for the simple reason that I agreed with him. Partially, anyway. 

“And let me tell you how blinded you are by your ambition!” Dad was exploding. “Are you really choosing the Ministry over you own family? Are you betraying us like that?”

“Can we say it’s a betrayal when the trust wasn’t really here?” Percy scoffed. 

Dad seemed shocked, and the first tears fell from Mum’s eyes. None of them knew what to say, and George spoke for them.

“What the hell does that mean? You never trusted us? Are you gonna make yourself the victim of the story?” 

A short silence followed, during which I looked at everyone. Bill and Ron were the only ones who didn’t show a pure anger, they were more shocked by the turn of events, along with Mum who was desperate.

“You’re a true git.” spat Ginny.

“I forbid you to talk to me like this.” he groaned.

“And I forbid you to talk to your sister on this tone!” yelled Dad. “I don’t know what we’ve done for you to become that pompous prat I have in front of me right now but I’m telling you -”

“Come on, think about it a minute!” replicated Percy. “I have to fight these prejudices and mockeries about our family! Things I endure because of you and your passion for muggles! And you wonder why I’ve had to act the way I did? I have dreams and an ambition!” 

“My passion for muggles is what offered my this job.” hissed Dad. “It’s what provides us the money for you to eat each day!”

“And it’s also what prevents you from having any ambition!”

I knew what would follow. I grabbed Percy’s arm, begging him to shut up, but he just nudged my hand, looked at Dad in the eyes, sending lightnings, and said it.

“That’s because of this stupid passion that we’re poor!”

That was it, it was too late to calm things. Dad jumped forward, as if he wanted to punch Percy. The latter also stepped up in front of Dad, ready to fight with his hands if needed. Bill got up at the speed of light and placed himself between the two enraged men. They were both trembling, their muscles tensed, and I felt like they wouldn’t need a lot to pass the point of no return. 

“If what I have to offer you isn’t enough, you know where the door is.” spat Dad. 

“No!” screamed Mum. “No Arthur! You can’t do that! Percy! Percy come here!”

Percy was heading to the stairs. He stopped and muttered:

“Your loyal to Dumbledore, I’m loyal to the Ministry. If you betray the Ministry, then I’m not on your side. I’m not a Weasley anymore. Not that I ever really was.” he added with a lower voice.

And he left. Mum let out a heartbreaking sob and fell on her knees. Ginny and Bill rushed to her side. I was still sitting on my chair, my stew now cold, and trying to process what just happened. Percy was furious, because Dad didn’t support him. I understood him perfectly, because all he had ever wanted was to impress him. But he had said terrible things...

I suddenly felt four pairs of eyes on me. Dad, Fred, George and Ron were glaring at me, waiting for my reaction. 

“Well Y/N, I guess you have a choice to do.” said Fred with a cold voice. 

“What?” was all I managed to say. 

“I guess you will follow Percy once more, that’s what you always do, don’t you? At least do you understand how stupid he is?”

“He’s not stupid.” My voice was quiet. I was afraid Dad would scream at me too if I spoke louder.

“Not stupid, huh? Then you agree with him?” George’s eyes were shining with an unusual anger. 

I didn’t know what to answer. Did I agree with him? No, of course not. 

“If you agree you get out of here too.” said Dad with a calmer voice than before. He looked coldly at me. “If you choose Percy over us, you don’t live in this house anymore.”

“Why do I have to choose?” I was on the verge of crying. “You can’t do that Dad, you -”

“I can do whatever I want!” He yelled. “And I don’t want traitors in my house or in my family!”

His fist abruptly hit the table, making everything tremble, me include. I had never seen him like this, never. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I almost didn’t hear Ginny’s voice because of the sound of my own heart. 

“Because none of you understands.You don’t understand how we’ve never felt like we were family.”

“That’s bullshit.” hissed Fred. 

“A stupid excuse.” added George.

Ginny just looked at me with a contemptuous look. I noticed Ron was gone, probably with Bill and Mum.

“I thought you were smarter than that, Y/N.” Dad’s voice was bitter, and he looked at me like he would look at a stranger. A particularly repulsive one. “I thought you were better than that. You disappoint me. Not even defending your own family.”

“My family? I’ve had hard times feeling like I was part of it.” The anger was boiling inside me, and all of sudden I felt the urge to grab my wand. “Percy and I have always been the strange kids! Always the ones everyone made fun of, at school and at home! Mum and I are the only one who have always supported Perce when none of you did! If this happened tonight, it’s because of you!” I yelled, looking alternatively at Dad, Fred, George and Ginny. 

My heart sank when I saw only looks full of hatred. None of them regretted. They had abandoned Percy, and they didn’t care. 

“I won’t give up on Percy.” I murmured. “I will support him, in the very same way you should have supported him. You should be ashamed. Don’t even dare to say you’ve been a perfect father to him” I added toward Dad. 

I had stepped in front of him, my back straight and my head high. I didn’t even flinch when he raised an hand as if he wanted to slap me.

“Arthur!”

Mum’s horrified scream seemed to make him come to his senses, and his eyes showed the first hint of regret of the day. But it was too late. I turned the heels and left the kitchen, nudgering Fred with my shoulder in passing. I joined an infuriated Percy in our room, and I let out a painful sob. He immediately took me in his arms.

“I’m sorry Y/N, it’s my fault, I’m sorry…” 

“No, it’s not your fault.” I muttered. “They are wrong. Not about everything, but still.”

“Why did you defend me? You knew how it would end.” 

“Yes, I knew, but I’ll always be on your side, Perce.”

We quickly gathered our most needed stuff and I followed Percy in the stairs. He was holding my bags too and passed in front of all our family except Dad. They were gathered in the living-room and no one made a move to prevent us from leaving. Well, Mum would probably have done something if she wasn’t crying so hard. I followed Percy in the cool air of the night and without consulting each other, we apparated in the Diagon Alley. 

The rest of the night had been a blur. I only remembered Percy reserving two rooms at the Leaky Cauldron and leading me in mine. I didn’t really sleep, my head was full of regrets. I had said awful things to Dad, things I obviously didn’t think. Or was I honest? But the look of hatred on his face, on Fred’s one, George’s one, Ginny’s one… Seeing how much my only little sister hated me was particularly painful. I had tried everything to develop a strong bond with her, but she had always kind of rejected me, claiming Fred and George were her favourite siblings. It was the same thing with Ron… He had to hate me too. 

I stayed curled up in my bed most of the next day. Percy had brought me my breakfast but he didn’t show up for the lunch, and I suspected him to be as lethargic as I was right now. I wanted to go and check on him, I wanted it badly, but I felt like I was covered with a blanket knitted with all my mistakes that prevented me from moving. Instead, I stayed where I was, selfishly hoping Percy would be the first one to move.

And he did. The sun was disappearing, leaving the sky coloured in bright red - what an irony, even the sky taunted us, remembering us the family we had just lost. He knocked softly at the door and didn’t wait for my response. He had a plate with sandwiches in the hand and an awful guilty look on the face. He handed me the plate and we ate in silence. 

“I’ve found a flat.” he finally mumbled. “We can’t stay here forever.”

An insidious fear crept in me. I tried to fight it with all my strength, persuaded that no, Percy wouldn’t leave me alone. But that opened the door for all my other worries and insecurities and soon, I found myself panting, sobbing and panicking all at once. Now used to my panic attacks - I had had a few ones since the first, before passing my OWLs - Percy immediately grabbed my hands, tightening them as if he wanted to break my bones, and keeping his voice rather calm. 

“It’s okay, Y/N, you’re okay, I’m here…” 

I finally regained a normal breathing and put my head on Percy’s shoulder, not daring to look him in the eyes. However, he knew better than that, and he knew perfectly how I acted when something was bothering me. 

“Tell me what happens, Y/N.” His voice was sweet, filled with worry.

“Can we stay together?” I choked out.

“Of course we’ll stay together Y/N. Of course. I’ll always be there for you, you know that, right?”

I only nodded before closing my eyes. I didn’t have the courage to deal with the subject we had avoided since the precedent day, nor did Percy because he hold me without saying anything. 

In fact, we didn’t talk about our family until the following week. We had moved in the little flat Percy had found, in a muggle street in the heart of London, and we had spent our days at the Ministry. I didn’t leave my office, absorbed more than ever by the reports I had to read and classify. Ironically, I found three reports written by Charlie. During this week, I barely saw Percy. He was busy running behind Fudge and had rough days. It occupied his mind, so it was for the best.

Indeed, it was painful for the both of us to think about what had happened. Percy often saw Dad in the corridors, but they always ignored each others, acting like strangers. I couldn’t stay as stoïc as my twin, though, because the two times I had run into Dad, I had turned immediately the heels and left while fighting my tears. 

Useless to precise that the following weeks had been the hardest of my life, and probably of Percy’s too. He had told me about Mum’s visit while I was to the store, and he had broke down for the first time in front of me while confessing he had just slammed the door in front of her. He also had a hard time telling me how went Harry’s audience with the Wizengamot and I caught the bitterness in his voice when he mumbled he had seen Dad holding Harry’s shoulders. 

For my part, I was beginning to doubt the Ministry’s great intentions. I couldn’t help but remark some strange cases or events, and I thought their obsession with Harry and Dumbledore was exaggerated. I suspected Percy to think the same even if he hadn’t told me so, but he would never admit it, considering it was the reason we had fought with Dad. 

We had been informed by the Ministry when Dad was attacked before Christmas. No one in the family had found it useful to warn us, and we headed to St-Mungo’s one day, at the very beginning of the morning so that we wouldn’t see anyone else. Percy was quite reluctant, not because he didn’t want to see Dad, but because he was terrified we would come face to face with Mum, or Fred, George, Bill or Ginny. I didn’t blame him; I was too. What if he wasn’t alone? When someone led us to his shared room, he was still sleeping and no one was here. 

“Put the card on the bedside table and let’s go.” he mumbled once a healer had assured us he would be okay.

“We can’t go see them, Y/N.” said Percy with a sigh.

I did so, delicately shifting a vase in passing. I put the card in evidence, hoping Dad would see it and read it, and I followed Percy out of the room. 

_ _ _

The world Percy and I had built around us to protect us of the pain crashed when he saw He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the very heart of the Ministry of Magic. It was undeniable now. We had been wrong since the beginning. Our family had been right and soon, a war would explode without a doubt. It was something hard to process, and it was harder considering the guilt and the fear that were almost suffocating us. We were beyond terrified to go back at the Burrow, but I wanted nothing more than to make sure everyone was alright.

“Why? Why can’t we?” I was getting angry.

“Because we would put them in danger. You-know-who was in the Ministry. His Death Eaters too. How can we be sure the Ministry isn’t infiltrated? They could watch us to get informations about our family.”

I stayed silent. He was right, of course. 

“Do you think they will forgive us?” I murmured. 

He didn’t answer.

The following weeks, we did as Percy said: low-profile. We kept our habits, doing nothing more than our work, being extremely careful of what we said. I started to wander innocently at Dad’s level, trying to figure out if everything was alright without him even seeing me. During the following year, a constant horror took place in our world. Breakouts from Azkaban, disasters after disasters in the muggle and the magical worlds… Ron and Bill had been attacked, both nearly died, but the fear for our family (along with the shame) prevented us from seeing them. Ironic, wasn’t it? 

We knew the moment of truth was approaching. Soon, we would have to choose between us and our family, and we already knew what were our priorities.

To be continued 

Part 6

#harry potter #harry potter imagine #harry potter imagines #percy weasley #percy weasley x twin reader #twin reader

[pernatius]

Lost in Space Part 4: Ch 5

Ch 4

Summary: Having lost Earth, an unnamed Space Explorer is haunted by a mysterious, black figure as she begins to drift away from those closest to her.

Part 1: ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5

Part 2: ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5

Part 3: ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5

————————

Her horse comes to a halt. She gets down and turns to help me off. Lit before me is the ship. Hesitantly, I headed towards it. With every step I took my feet sunk into the sand, making a soft crunching noise. The closer I came to it, the larger its mouth, its doorway, became. I felt immensely small compared to it. Instead of creating a warm atmosphere the light from my crown causes it to become even more haunting. As I turn my head, I shine it across the ship’s interior and as I do I see the ghostly figures of Skeema, Mikrovos, Saamuki, and Ashley all laughing. The feeling that it gave me should be nice, but it’s empty. We never got to laugh together and maybe we never will. Thinking about it, about Syco, has my grip tighten on the ship’s doorway. Hearing her get back on her horse, I turn around and ask right when she’s about to head off, “Wait.” Stopping her horse, she turns to me. I gulp as I can feel my dark companion looking at me, judging me, from the darkness behind me. I point at my crown. “Don’t you want this back?”

“No, I made that for you. It might help you out again soon.”

Again, she’s about to leave, but I stop her for the second time. “No, wait, that’s not it. What did your brother mean back there? What kind of punishment?”

She shrugs before responding with, “I don’t know. Probably removing my head again. Maybe a little longer than last time.”

“He’s done it before?”

“Yeah, remember how I said that wasn’t the first time he acted that way? I brought another off-worlder a couple of years ago.”

“Does it hurt?”

She takes a moment to think about her answer. “A little-No, a lot, actually, but it’s whatever. It’s not like it’ll kill me.”

“Why are you acting nonchalant about this,” I flail my arms in the air, “I get he’s your brother and all, but that isn’t caring, and trust me I know when someone is.”

“Even if I do agree with what you’re saying, what am I supposed to do about it? Leave him? Where am I supposed to go?”

Placing my hand on my chest, “You can come with me. I mean I don’t have a planet unlike you. I don’t know where I’m headed to now, but all I know is it’s certainly better than staying here.”

“Thanks, the offer is tempting, but I’m sorry. I can’t accept it.” Hearing her say that, breaks my heart, but I try not to show it. Smiling, though not as real as S1Y’s, I accept her decline. So, I turn back towards the ship. As I do, she continues with, “I hear it’s getting intense up there. Be careful.”

“Same to you...um.”

“Licata. My name is Licata.”

“Be careful, Licata.”

“Thank you. Maybe one day we’ll meet again.”

The door closes. I’m left to wander inside the ship alone, but not blinded thanks to the literal health hazard above my head. Heart racing, as I move towards the glowing, blue screen, my hand shakily touches it. The ship’s lights turn on, giving me a sigh of relief because the ship isn’t utterly damaged. Then, I motion for the ship to ascend out of its sandy prison and as it does I find Licata on her horse racing off back towards her brother and friends, towards a pain I hope doesn’t last too long. 

I’m hundreds of feet off the ground, but I wave at her anyway. I know it’s silly. I mean there’s no way she could see it up here, but she turns and looks up at me. If she had a face I imagine it to have smiled. 

I look down at Vecta and I remind myself that sometimes we have to lie to ourselves so we can forget the painful truth, so we can keep going. So, I lie to myself that I’ll be able to see her again because I don’t know what’s next. All I know is that the impossible lies ahead because I don’t know when or even how, but I plan to get Syco back for this. From him starting another war to causing all of them to be in that zombified state, I plan to fix all of that. However, I don’t know where to even start. 

Circling the ship, circling me, is the unknown. I stand in the middle of some black canvas with hundreds of glowing paint splatters. Each varies in color and size. Further out in front of me, a faint dot is seen exploding. It shoots out a ray of colors from brown to yellow and sparkles of purple. I had witnessed a supernova, which gets me to conclude that it’s probably a sign I shouldn’t start there. So, I steer the ship to the nearest dot, planet.

Proudly landing the ship perfectly, I stride out with my chest puffed out. When I step onto the planet, I see someone exit their ship in the corner of my eye. With us making eye contact, especially them looking at me funny, I hurry back into the ship. I’m reminded that I’m a human, a species low on the universe’s totem pole, thousands of lightyears away from where her homeworld is supposed to be. I can’t just walk out like I own the place. Like I’m not doing anything illegal. I have to think of something soon unless I want to get kicked off this planet as well, or worse. Pacing back and forth, I remember about Saamuki’s spacesuit. So, I rush to get it and when I pull it out I see two large holes punctured through the chest area. “Oh, yeah. Right.” 

Remembering the last and final time it was used, I throw it aside. With that being my only option, without a disguise, I take a seat and slouch with my arms crossed. That’s when my faceless companion makes their appearance. Beginning to quit this whole insane plan, which I need to repeat and emphasize that it’s absolutely impossible, especially now, I look at them with annoyance.

They replicate my crown on their head, grab it, and fling their arm. A staff similar to Licata’s is now wrapped underneath their fingers. 

“I can’t believe I’m attempting to try to have a conversation with you again, but I don’t need some staff. I don’t need another weapon. I need something to cover me. Besides, I don’t want to burn my hands anytime soon.” My attitude gets them to swing their staff at me. I rub the now pained site. “What the hell?”

Instead of answering me with words, they have their staff vanish and grab my crown. Again, they make a staff. This time, they swing the end that’s being swallowed by fire at me. I yelp, but the fire goes right through me. Upon my shock, they turn the staff into a rope and fling it at me. I catch it right when it’s about to hit me. 

“Okay, I get it. I think. It’s just an illusion. Magic? Maybe it’s hi-tech? I mean either of those explains how it’s able to float on my head, but whatever. That doesn’t matter. Just tell me how you made,” I nudge towards the piece of rope in my hands, “this.”

“Relax.”

“Relax? How on Ear-space can I relax? After everything I’ve been through.” Someone on the other side of the door is heard knocking. “And now with that? How can I relax?”

“Ashley. Mikrovos. Saamuki. S1Y. Skeema too. They all believe in you. They may not have acted like it half the time, but they do. You know they do because if they didn’t I wouldn’t be saying these things.” They morph into a complete copy of me. It weirds me out, but it’s not the weirdest thing I’ve seen. 

“I-,” for a moment that figurative saying about a cat getting one’s tongue happens to me, “That’s the most I’ve heard you say, but thanks. I needed that. Well, I mean thanks for me reminding me? You’re me, apparently. God, this is so weird.”

After they smile, they disappear once again. Another knock is heard. I let out a long, soothing exhale. I tell myself it’s time for me to learn. It’s time for me to mature, or at least learn to finally calm down, so I can think with my head rather than rely on my impulses. If I want to do it. If I want them back, or at the very least try, I have to relax. I close my eyes. 

Reopening them, I don’t get what I imagined. What I hoped, but it’s still useful nonetheless. Getting out of the ship once again, I greet the woman that was knocking on the ship as Licata’s species. The woman is slimy, light green, and covered in red dots. She could be considered completely naked if it wasn’t for the several badges on the right side of her chest. On each, they’ve been etched with words, but they’re much too small for me to read. In a rough, scratchy voice she asks, “I got a report you have a human on board this ship.”

“Human? I’m certain I have none of those. Why would I?” I let out an obviously fake laugh, which gets her to look oddly at me.

“Well, I can’t merely write your word in my report. Move aside.” I do and she checks around. Seeing her slime drag across the floor, across what’s now my ship, grosses me out and annoys me because I somehow have to clean that up later. “What a surprise. You don’t. I told that man it’d be impossible to find a human this out in space, especially after Earth’s imprisonment.”

“Imprisonment?”

She opens her mouth and slides her hand down her throat. A pen and paper, which are drenched in her slime, are taken out. She points her pen at me before saying, “You haven’t read about it yet? It’s all over my feed. Everyone’s been talking about ever since this morning.”

Earth isn’t gone. I didn’t cause the death of millions. Ashley and I still have a home. 

“Do you know where Earth is? Do you know where it’s being kept?” I grab her shoulders and give her a slight shake, which I soon regret. 

Grabbing my wrists and moving my now slimy hands off of her, “As if that kind of information would be public. Besides, it doesn’t matter if it was because it’s only a matter of time before Earth gets what’s coming to it. Those humans broke one of the highest laws of the universe.” She writes down some notes for her report. 

“Okay, do you at least know how to get to Saamuki?”

“Who?”

“She’s The Eyes of the Underworld’s sister.”

“Why in the universe would you want anyone that has to do with one of the universe’s worst criminals?” She squints her eyes on me, suspicious. 

“Ugh, I don’t have time for this. I’ll go ask someone that does.” 

Pushing her out of the way, I head towards the bridge leading to the city ahead, but before I’m an earshot away from her I hear her mutter, “Why do I always get the weird ones?”

The city up head is a combination between New York City and Tokyo as the buildings are squished together with bright neon lights attached to them, but subtract the rectangular shapes their buildings tend to be and replace them with circular and triangular shapes. Also, there’s a giant, white celestial body a bit too close to the highest skyscraper. Midway through my concentration of walking towards the city, I hear someone giggle. Turning to the sound, I see a child, who looks like a human mixed with a fish, standing on their tippy-toes with a red balloon in one hand and the other holding onto the bridge. I first write it off as just them being weird until I see a group of gigantic fish splashing from point to point in the water below us. It’s scary to watch, as their size reminds me of the serpent, but because of how elegantly they move they replace that with a sense of awe. Getting closer, moving next to the child, I see the waters change color every time a fish hits the water. Every second of their show then on has me as hooked as the child. As much as I’d like it to last just a tiny bit longer, it ends with one of the fish shooting out water into the sky, which has the child clap. I clap too soon after. 

Once the child turns away I too turn away. As they head elsewhere, I continue my walk towards the city. Even though my face doesn’t show it I’m smiling because, as random as that was, I take that as a good sign. I take it as a sign that the road ahead won’t be as terrible as I first thought because it showed me that even in the darkest times, when things seem impossible, they’ll always be something beautiful, something absolutely amazing, to help you get back to the light. To remind you that the unknown is just that. Just the unknown. Bad things will always happen on the roads you don’t know, on the roads you’re not comfortable with, but that doesn’t mean good things will never happen while on them. The unknown attracts both the bad and the good. You just have to keep walking forward until you find what you’re looking for.

#198 #lost in space #writers #writers on tumblr #writeblr #my wrting #creative writing #spilled ink #wlw #scifi #fiction #fantasy

[andysawesometoybox]

Real Ghostbusters: Firehouse. Kenner. 1987

I’m just going to say it: Kenner’s Real Ghostbusters toy line is one of the greatest toy lines’ to ever hit shops. Ever. The End.

I would not be the person I am today without these toys, along with Star Trek from Playmates and Batman. Any Batman.

Let’s cast our minds back to the mid 1980’s! Ghostbusters was everywhere. We’d had the first movie at the tail end of ’84 and then the animated series in ’86. And what does a good cartoon need? A toy line! In fact, the vast majority of cartoon’s in the ‘80’s (and today if we’re being honest) were really just over the top toy adverts and really, Ghostbusters was no different. So toys were needed fast. In steps titan toymaker, Kenner. 

Kenner had an incredible track record at the time having created the DC Superpowers line and oh yeah, STAR WARS! So, to say that Kenner in the ’80’s was on a roll would be a huge understatement.

As I said, the Real Ghostbusters toy line from Kenner was massively responsible for shaping my childhood. It was a vast toy line with a massive assortment of figures and vehicles (all of which I will look at in the future), but it only had one proper play set: 

The Firehouse

To me, Kenner’s Firehouse is one of THE greatest play sets ever made. When you really look at it, it’s a pretty simple toy. It’s a building. More basic than that, it’s just a big hollow box with two whole levels, 1 balcony level and a pretty cool fireman’s pole (more on that later). 

But, to me, that hollowness is one of this play sets greatest assets. As a kid, you filled that space with your imagination. It may sound corny, but it’s absolutely true. To me, the mark of a truly good play set is the ability to use it beyond the brand that it was created for. I cannot tell you of all the different toys that this play set played headquarters to. From the great Transformers/M.A.S.K war that my brother and I would play, to a strange parallel world that my Star Trek away team would discover. Or when He-Man would come over and visit the Ghostbusters just because we could. And they never seemed out of place, because it was a building. But that does not take away from the awesomesness of this piece.

It has the two walls, front and site and then a huge cut away for easy access inside. The vast space inside could easily be taken up by the placement of the Ghostbusters’ car, ECTO-1. Now, I’ve seen this set critized in the past because Kenner didn’t make it long enough to truly house the car, but I don’t agree with that. Sure, if you try to make the car stay inside the building, it’ll either roll out the back or push through the double doors at the front, but I didn’t care as a kid and I sure as hell don’t care now. As a display piece as an adult, I kinda dig the look of Old ECTO bursting through the doors, it looks awesome. The only issue with having the car inside the Firehouse is that it doesn’t leave much room for the figures on that floor. But that’s why you have other levels! 

The upper level, which spands the entire thing, thus being a complete floor. It’s bare but has some figure pegs over the large grate in the middle of the floor (more on that in a bit). It also has the fireman’s pole attached at the top. I LOVE THIS THING. To simulate the famous pole from both the movie and the cartoon, Kenner created this system where you attach a figure onto the red platform, two figures work best for balance but it will work with one, then, on the roof, you flick the switch and that activates the pole! The platform, with figure(s) attached, begins to spin down the thread of the pole at great speed before landing at the ground floor. It’s frigging great! Yeah, ok, it is annoying to have to thread the damn thing up again each time, but I really never really cared as a kid and it never got old. Kenner created a pretty good way recreate the pole from the film/cartoon. Sure Playmobil’s version probably makes more sense, but as a kid, this was rad!

The decals that come with the set adds to it. We’ve got a picture of a scary looking old woman on the upper floor (who actually has her own figure and is totally a scary ghost!). We have some book shelves on the middle level, giving us the idea that this is where Egon and Ray would do their research, and on the bottom level, we have decals of various looking industrial type contraptions that no doubt helps the ‘Busters in their never ending battle against the paranormal! I will say, that this set also comes with a full on ECTO Containment unit that you could put the various small ghosts that come with the Ghostbusters figures. I do have it somewhere, but right now, I’m not sure where! It’s rad though.

On the outside, Kenner have done a marvellous job with the sculpt. It looks just like the Firehouse from both the cartoon and the film. Which is a real Firehouse in New York City, by the way. On the side wall, we have more decals of exposed brick, to give us that “rundown” affect. We also have the windows. So yeah, not much going on here, but pffft.

The front as I said really replicates the design of the real building really well. Then we get one of my favourite little pieces, the Ghostbusters sign! This one is actually a replacement that I was lucky enough to find in eBay for a good price. I lost my original years ago and never thought I’d find another, but I did! Wohooo!

This brings us back to the roof.

Like the upper floor, the room has this large grate that lines up perfectly with the one on the upper floor just below it. Everyone who’s ever played with Ghostbusters toys knows what this is for. That’s right. The SLIME!

Slime has always been popular with kids toys and what better toys to use slime with than frigging Ghostbusters! Kenner’s line came with many vats of slime, in many different colours of the life on the toy line. The idea here was to pour the slime through the roof grate, onto the figures waiting on the upper level, that slime would then oooooze down the upper level grate, covering whatever was on the ground floor. I had many of the vats myself and you know what? I hated them!

Seriously, I know that I am in the minority here, but I hated slime as a kid. Still do. Why in the hell would I want to cover my toys in sticky goo that I would then have to wash off later. Or worse, what if I forgot to?! It would dry into this horrible thing and still leave sticky……NO! I’m not having it! This is not something that I’ve come to as I got older, I’ve very much felt this way since I was a kid. I know other collectors are totally cool with it but honestly, keep that crap away from my toys! (picture is Slime from the 2016 Ghostbusters movie toy line)

VERDICT

So, what’s the verdict here?

Honestly, it’s still epic. I’ve owned this thing for well over 30 years and just having it set up on display in my studio, with the toys and car, brings me so much joy every day. I’m not just reminded of all the Ghostbusters fun that I had, but of all the other various toys that my brother and I used it with to play together. So many great memories, all from what is basically a hollowed out box with a Ghostbusters logo on it. Genius.

You can find the Firehouse on eBay pretty easily, but it’s expensive and the price has really gone up a lot recently. I’d imagine it has something to do with Hasbro’s Real Ghostbusters reproduction figures that have recently come out. I have a Winston, he’s awesome and still mint in box! 

I’d be surprised if Hasbro do a reproduction of the Firehouse, but if they did, it would be hugely expensive!

Toy Score: 10/10

#Ghostbusters #RealGhostbusters #Real Ghostbusters #Kenner #toys #toy #toycollector #toy collector #retro #retrotoys #retro toys #the real ghostbusters #therealghostbusters #venkman #egon #ecto #slime #slimer #80s

[mysticsparklewings]

Ziggy Crossing

Still not quite sure I'm 100% back into the swing of things (posting regularly and being more present) yet, but time will tell. For now I'm testing the waters. Anyway. In the time I've been away, I ended up talking to some friends about (to the surprise of absolutely no one) Animal Crossing, and in that conversation, the idea of drawing my cat, Ziggy, as an Animal Crossing villager came up. I'd toyed with it before after seeing some other people draw their pets as villagers, and that conversation more or less sealed the deal for me to at least try it, even if my attempt didn't pan out and see the light of day. Obviously, things went pretty well because here I am posting this. The first step, as it is 90% of the time for me, was to come up with a sketch and go from there. I primarily used Olivia and Lolly [pre-existing Animal Crossing cat villagers] as my references--Olivia for the pose and eyes, Lolly for the stripes and some details regarding the ears and face--but I also checked certain things across the various cat villager models so that details could be consistent where they needed to be. I think if I missed the mark anywhere, it's probably in the proportions. Namely the size of the head and length of the body. But I think it's close enough that unless you compare it directly to Olivia's model that I referenced for the pose, the proportions aren't so off that it's distracting or off-putting. I did originally have trouble figuring out what pattern to put on her shirt though because the real Ziggy doesn't really have anything I could pull a pattern from. These days she does wear a white and silver collar, but that's not a whole lot to work with. So I left that alone while I pondered how I wanted to go about coloring the whole thing. My plan at the beginning was to use this sketch as a test piece for some acrylic paint markers I recently acquired (which you will be seeing me talk about in the future), but once the sketch was finished and I went back to check the colors I had (you know me; gotta have a swatch chart for everything), it was pretty obvious that if I want this to be my dear Ziggy and not just a random tabby cat, I needed to figure out a different coloring method. I could have just done regular acrylic paint, but that sounded like a chore and thus I was not interested. Same with gouache. Colored pencils were on the table, but the main problem I have with those is that they can be pretty slow and personally I think their texture really lends them better to replicating the 3DS/Animal Crossing: New Leaf style, as opposed to the look of New Horizons, and that's not what I was going for here. That left me with two main options: Watercolor, which was a hard pass for this kind of art (at least for Ziggy herself), and alcohol markers, which I did use quite a bit on the last Animal Crossing artwork I made, and they had worked out fairly well. Alcohol markers it was! Of course, even after that decision was made, there was the issue of how to handle the lines of the drawing. When I was planning on using the paint pens/acrylic markers/whatever, that seemed a lot simpler because, in theory, I could just use the same pen I wanted to color with to do the outlines and then fill them in. And because that would be using mostly opaque paint, if I needed to I could just cover up any overlap with relative ease. Alcohol markers don't play by the same rules though, so I had to re-think all that. In the end, I pulled out a pale warm gray Polychromos pencil close to the main color of alcohol marker that I had picked out that I figured would also be light enough to blend in everywhere else. That way I could have the defining lines that I needed without having to worry too much about them being visible in the final product. [For clarification: I picked a Polychromos because once sharpened they tend to hold a point longer and better than the other colored pencils at my disposal and I really needed to keep a sharp point as long as possible to do the lines here.] In retrospect, I do think it might have been to my benefit to pick out a pink for doing the inner ear lines, but the end result there isn't so awful that it single-handedly (paw-ed-ly?) ruins the drawing for me. It's just something to take note of for next time if there is a "next time." Once I had my lines (including doing the eyelashes and mouth with one of my usual black fineliners), the next challenge was the actual coloring. Mostly because I had to be very careful around the edges so that the marker ink didn't feather out too far (as alcohol markers do on any paper that isn't marketed as "bleed proof" because that's what bleed proof in paper actually means--not that it won't bleed through to the other side, though that is less common with that kind of paper, but that it won't "bleed" across the page), and I also had to be a little careful and choosy about how I did any blending or shading. Again, my blending and shading plan was going to be different had I used the acrylic markers. The main thing I ended up doing here was trying to find areas that needed to be layered so that the one-color shading could act as a line/barrier between sections. Best example: Where the ears meet the head, I shaded the bottom portion of the ears. You can also see this a little bit where Ziggy's tail meets her body and where the legs intersect at a few different points. By no means did this turn out perfectly, considering that I really wanted to stick to use as few colors as possible (which means pretty much all the shading is just layers of one color to darken it) which means there isn't as much distinction or variation as there could be. And I feel it necessary to note here that I was worried when I first finished the lines that the eyes looked wonky, but after coloring pretty much everything else in that concern dissolved because 1. It's harder to tell and 2. Even if they aren't exactly the same, it makes visual sense because it looks like her head is slightly turned, meaning the eyes wouldn't be identical anyway. Never underestimate the power of coloring your work in! Speaking of which, you might be wondering about her shirt by now. Well, after toying around with some ideas I got it in my head that a good way to tackle that problem might be with washi tape, as I've used it in this manner before and worked out pretty nicely. Even though it wasn't a lot to work with, I did like the idea of the base color for her top being white like the real Ziggy's collar, and that narrowed down my tape options considerably. Of the options I had that I thought would be suitable, I ended up having a choice between one with small rainbow-colored polka dots and the decidedly less vibrant small triangles that you see here. The polka dots seemed a little too peppy for Ziggy, so I went with the triangles. And this, I must say, is one of those artistic decisions that I feel even better about the longer that I see the end product.   The main issue I have with using washi tape, and thus why I don't use it in this way that often, is because cutting the washi tape to fit a specific shape is a process that doesn't get much easier even with practice.  And even if it did, that wouldn't eliminate the very real possibility of cutting or indenting the paper underneath while you're cutting the tape. Of which, I have not yet figured out how to totally avoid short of forming the washi tape on a separate piece of paper, cutting it there, and then moving it to the final piece. But that method comes with its own problems too, so... Still, I made the decision to go through with it here and just accept the rough edges/lack of precision and all that. Before I put the tape down though, I did do a little shading with some light gray markers that I was counting on showing through the tape to give it a little more dimension. Seeing it now, I do think I could've stood to go a little darker, but again this isn't something that totally ruins the end result for me. Just something worth noting. After all of the above, I was left with one lingering problem: The background. Which I've noticed seems to normally be a "problem" area for me in that I don't always have a solid idea for what to do with it. I did consider what exactly I wanted to do earlier on in the process, before I started on Ziggy on the final paper, even. Briefly, I thought I might cut her out and put her on a separate background as is sort of a go-to background method for me. Something just didn't feel right about doing that here though and it feels like I've done that a lot lately (you know, when I've not been drowning in mandalas for NaPoWriMo...). So it was at this early stage that I locked in the idea of adding in the background in later, probably doing something kind of loose to give a general idea that hopefully wouldn't take too much time or effort. We've already established that I wasn't super keen on the idea of using acrylic paints or gouache for this drawing, and that remained true for the background too. Although, I don't really like using alcohol markers for backgrounds either because it can be tricky to keep things smooth and consistent. That left me with colored pencils and watercolor. Colored pencils are usually hard pass for backgrounds for me for a number of reasons. So! Watercolor, hmm... I drew Ziggy here on my darling Strathmore 400 series mixed media paper because I love how it handles markers and it has enough weight and texture to it that it handles a lot of my other go-to options with little fuss. Watercolor is really the only thing I have trouble using on it, the main problem being that sometimes (not always) the paint doesn't like to blend out super smoothly and certain watercolor techniques don't work the same on it. This doesn't mean it's useless for watercolor (at least not for me), that just means I have to be more careful about how I choose to work with watercolor on it. In this case, the blending issues lined up with the idea I had of letting the background have more texture since Ziggy came out a lot smoother by the very nature of alcohol markers. Somewhere in all this, the idea struck me to use my Gelatos to leave behind some crayon-like texture. That idea seemed fitting to me since Animal Crossing is a fairly light-hearted and child-friendly game, themes that crayons go along with. The gelatos are water-soluble but not every color dissolves completely when activated with water. This should be pretty evident here because I didn't try to hide it. I wanted quick and easy, and without a doubt just letting the texture do whatever it wants is the quick n' easiest method to use with the gelatos. Once I'd done a bit of back and forth with two greens and two blues to give me the solid suggestions of a sky and ground, it still felt like it was missing something. Ultimately, it seemed like a good idea to me to try and mimic the triangle pattern/texture that New Horizons features. (In past games you could get squares or circles for a grass pattern at random.) And while I as per usual I had to think on how to go about this, in the end, the best solution I could come up with turned out to be drawing the triangles in with alcohol markers. Truly, I'm surprised to be reporting this because I fully expected the creamy nature of the gelatos to make using alcohol markers on top feel disguising and unproductive. But not so! At least not with the limited gelato use here. The creamier areas do soften the color of the marker, but I think that worked to my advantage. Although, I did end up using a little bit of my yellow Moonlight gel pen because I felt like I needed some yellow triangles for balance and I knew transparent yellow markers wouldn't do what I wanted. But that brings us to the final product. I'm happy with it. And I do really like how the grass ties in with Ziggy's green eyes. It's just a nice little touch of visual cohesion in my book. As I always say, I'm sure it's not perfect and there are some missteps here and there or things that could be improved. Nevertheless, it was a fun experiment and serves as good encouragement for me to continue playing with the lineless look, among other things. I do have to note though that it feels super weird to just leave the eyes like this with no indication of shine on them! I made the choice not to since it's not a common trait with the official character models (at least not for eyes in this same style) but part of me still feels like it's incomplete. As I've said before recently and I'll probably say again, I can't promise I'll be getting back to a regular upload schedule now, but it's on my mind. I want to get to that point soon. I do have the acrylic markers I mentioned to talk about and another supply in the mail, and some other art in my backlog. So if you can be patient with me a while longer, there will be more from me to look forward to. In the meantime, please be kind to yourself and others. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram 

#animalcrossing

[xxwritemeastoryxx]

Painted Souls Part 1

Author: xxwritemeastoryxx

Pairings: Eventual Elijah Mikaelson x Reader

Word Count: 2.5K

Warnings: None. 

Author’s Note: Here is the beginning of another series! Because I obviously don’t have a lot of those going on already XD I couldn’t wait any longer to get this up. So I hope you guys enjoy it. ♥

“Let's just face it,” Y/N said as she dipped her paintbrush into the light blue paint before bringing it up to the canvas in front of her. “You were the lucky one to know you have a soulmate. I on the other hand apparently don't have one.”

Elena laughed and shook her head as she looked around the canvas in front of her to look at Y/N. “Everyone has one. Yours just doesn't seem to write on themselves like the rest of us.”

Elena had been right. Everyone in the world had a soulmate that the universe declared they were destined to meet. From the moment they are born, their skin became a connection to their soulmate. A simple pen mark, paint splatter or even the embedded ink of a tattoo would be shared between the two until it had been washed off their skin. In the case of a tattoo, well one would hope their soulmate didn't make drunken decisions or at least hoped they shared the same interests in things.

“My whole life I've been waiting for some kind of indication that my soulmate is out there but I've literally seen nothing.” Y/N said as she eyed the painting for a moment before rinsing off her brush, wiping the excess water off and dipping it into a dark green. “Not even a tattoo to help at all.”

“Hey, he asked me about it before he got the tattoo.” Elena said as she worked on her painting.

“My point exactly.” Y/N said as she used light strokes of her brush to add the little details she wanted. “All you two had to do was write messages to each other on your arm and that was it. I've tried that and nothing.”

“Maybe if you said you're gonna get a tattoo on your ass of something obnoxious, you might get a response.” That caused Y/N to laugh and shake her head.

“You would think with how much I paint or even write on myself I'd get a response to stop or something.” Y/N tilted her head as she took another look at the painting before her. Her Y/E/C eyes flickered back and forth between the canvas and the picture she had clipped to the corner of it.

The image a beautiful landscape of mountains and fields. Y/N had taken the image from a magazine for her current art project she was working on for her college art class. The canvas held an exact replica of the image. All Y/N had to do was add in the textures she felt it needed to bring the painting to life.

“Maybe your soulmate doesn't care.” Elena said as her brown eyes never came off the canvas. “They don't care that you cover their hands and face up with paint as you do since they know you love to do it.”

“Or there isn’t someone on the other end.” Y/N sighed as she ran the back of her hand across her forehead. A smudge of white paint leaving a trail in its path. “I just figure that while you are off riding into the sunset with Damon, I'll just give up on actively searching for a person I don't even know exists.”

Elena opened her mouth to tell Y/N not to give up when the dorm room door opened quickly and Caroline rushed in. Closing the door behind her, she walked over to where her best friends were sitting on their stools in front of their canvases.

“Oh my god.” Caroline said as she walked closer to them. “My mother is so going to kill me.”

Both Elena and Y/N looked at Caroline with a raised brow. “What now?” Y/N asked. This wasn't the first time Caroline had came running in declaring her mother was going to kill her.

Unzipping the sweater she had on Caroline pulled it off and pulled the straps of her tank top towards her neck, revealing the tattoo that ran along her left collar bone to over and down her left shoulder.

A small smirk pulled at Y/N's lips. “Is this in retaliation for the star on your foot?”

“Seriously, Y/N. This isn't funny.” Caroline's voice sounded panicked. “This is a tattoo I can't hide.”

Even though Caroline had been in college, her mother still wasn’t too fond of tattoos. Something like this wasn’t going to sit well with the sheriff when she eventually went home. The thought alone had made Caroline run her hands through her blonde locks until her hands came to a rest at the back of her neck.

“Technically you didn't get it.” Elena chimed in as she placed her paintbrush down.

“She’s got a point there, Care.” Y/N said as she began applying a few different paints on the back of her hand to blend.

“Why couldn’t the universe just give us a name written on our skin? Not this we share whatever they put on their skin.” Caroline said as she began to pace the room.

“It could be worse.” Elena said with a shrug. “Be thankful your soulmate has good taste.”

Caroline sighed. “I can handle the paint splatters, and I can handle the occasional pen marks that appear from time to time, but this,” She said as she gestured towards the tattoo. “I don’t think I can handle. How does one get use to something they didn’t even want?”

“You'll learn to love it.” Y/N as she used the paint mixture on the back of her hand to add some texture to some spots on her painting. “Isn’t that the point of it?”

“Says the person who's soulmate has never made any kind of contact.” Caroline said placing her hands on her hips.

Y/N raised her brow as she looked towards Caroline. “Do you know how lucky you are? Yours has a tattoo challenge with you. Elena is practically in a long distant relationship with hers. I've got nothing.” She shook her head as she placed her paintbrush down and stood up off the stool. “I'd be happy to see some sign that the universe isn't going to leave me alone, but I apparently don’t get that luxury. To be honest, I’m glad I don’t. Look at how much you are hating something that person who is perfectly made for you has gotten.”

Caroline opened her mouth to say something but quickly closed it before looking towards Elena. Elena shook her head and gave her a knowing look. One that Caroline knew had meant she had taken things too far.

“Look, Y/N.” Caroline said sighing. “I know I should be grateful. I just hate when things come so unexpectedly.”

Picking up her overused cleaning towel, Y/N began wiping the still wet paint off her hands. “You like being in control.” She said with a shrug. “That tattoo shows you aren't in control of everything and it scares you.”

“Y/N/N is right.” Elena said with a nod. “Its unexpected and it's driving you insane. But you'll live with it.”

“As much as I would love to stay and help you sort out your control issues,” Y/N said as she walked over towards her dresser. “I have an interview at the gallery soon that I need to get ready for.” Opening a few different drawers, she pulled out what she wanted before making her way over towards the bathroom. “It's not the end of the world, Care.” She called out before closing the door.

It had been one of Y/N’s dreams to have some of her work showcased at Richmond Gallery ever since she had attended for the first time when she was five. To see all the different work hanging on the walls as a child had inspired so many different things in her mind. That was all it took before she begged and pleaded with her parents to get her a better paint set.

The child in her was bouncing up and down in her seat as she waited in the lobby. While calm and collected on the outside, everything inside Y/N was everywhere. The child bouncing, her nerves joining in, and even her mind over thinking everything on the spectrum of ‘what ifs’.

Even as the director walked out and greeted her, Y/N was trying so hard to not let her nerves get the best of her.

“We’ve been keeping track of your progress, Ms. Y/L/N.” The director, Joyce, said as she lead Y/N towards her office. “You’ve made quite the name for yourself already.”

Y/N gave a small smile. “I was inspired from a young age and I haven’t let up on it since.”

“Oh I know.” Joyce said giving Y/N a smile as she rounded her desk and took a seat. “Between your High School and College art shows, our recruiters have had an eye on you. I figured it was about time that we begin the process of showcasing them in future shows.”

“That would be amazing.” Her smile was growing with every passing second. “Here is my portfolio.” She said as she took a seat and handed it over. “It’s got everything in there but my most recent one.”

“What is your most recent one?” She asked as she took the portfolio and began to look through them.

“Landscape of the Smoky mountains.” Y/N said with a nod as she watched Joyce flip through her portfolio. “It was in a nature magazine and I replicated it for a class project.”

Joyce had hummed her response as she continued to look at the images in front of her. There had been plenty of people who had looked at her work before, but in that moment it made her nervous that Joyce was looking at them.

“When is that project due?” Joyce finally asked as she looked up from the portfolio.

“Not for another month.” Y/N said with a small smile. “Always eager to paint and get them done ahead of time.”

Joyce nodded her head and closed the portfolio before handing it back to Y/N. “I’m liking what I’m seeing.” She gave Y/N a smile. “Let me speak with my business partner and I’ll let you know soon when we can get you set up for your own showing. Sound like a plan?”

“Of course.” Y/N said as she quickly nodded her head. She was trying to contain her excitement in that moment.

Joyce stood up from her seat and Y/N did the same. “You have my number so it should be easy to see when I’m calling.” She said as she stuck her hand out in front of her.

Taking Joyce’s hand and shaking it, Y/N nodded her head once more. “I look forward to your call.”

Y/N plopped down on her bed the moment she walked back into the dorm room. Elena chuckled as she had watched Y/N do so and made her way over to Y/N’s bed and plopped down right next to her.

“So how did it go?” She asked as she looked over at Y/N.

“Great.” Y/N said with a smile. “She’s gotta talk to her partner about some details and she’ll get back to me. But it's that waiting to hear back that’s going to kill me.”

“They’ll call you back, Y/N/N.” Elena said with a nod.

“I know.” She said looking over at Elena. “You know what this means right?”

Elena smiled. “You’ll be a paid artist if someone buys your work?”

Y/N laughed. “That too. But I was going to say we’ll have to go shopping for cocktail dresses.”

“Right.” Elena said with a nod. “You know when we tell Care, she’ll demand that she pick things out for us.”

Y/N shrugged as she ran her hand through her Y/H/C hair. “It actually wouldn’t hurt to do that. One less thing for me to worry about.”

It had been right in the middle of the girls enjoying their takeout that Y/N’s phone had started ringing. Three sets of eyes landed on the phone that had sat right in front of Y/N next to her Styrofoam tray.

“Answer it!” Caroline said from her spot across the table.

Quickly swallowing the food she had in her mouth, Y/N answered the phone. “Hello.” Caroline and Elena watched as Y/N listened to the voice on the other end of the call.

While they could only hear bits and pieces of the voice on the other side, they were watching Y/N intensely. They watched ever slight tug of her lips, the way her eyes widened from time to time before she gave a response to whatever the question had been. They had even watched as she jumped out of her seat and made her way towards her side of the room.

“Of course!” Y/N said into the phone as she reached towards the desk, grabbing a black fine tip marker off of it. Biting off the lid, she held her arm in front of her as she began writing the necessary details. What time the show started, what time she needed to be there by and the address of the gallery, even though she had already knew it by heart. “Correct, its not due for some time.” She said with a nod of her head as she looked towards the now drying painting.

Both Caroline and Elena looked over in the direction of the painting before looking back at Y/N. They were waiting for the call to end to hear what they’ve known all along. The take out that was sitting at the table was going to be forgotten the moment Y/N hung up the phone.

“Yes, I’ll be sure to bring it.” Y/N said with a grin pulling at her lips. “Thank you so much! I’ll see you then.”

The moment Y/N had pushed end on the call, excited shrieks filled the room from the girls. While Y/N knew she was eventually going to get her own showcase, it made it all the more real to hear the actual details from the gallery itself.

“Now we need to go out to celebrate!” Caroline said as she stood from her seat. “And you need to be dressed for it and not in pjs.” She said walking up to Y/N grabbing a hold of her arm and began pulling her towards her closet. A groan passed Y/N’s lips but she followed her. 

“Wait.” Elena said and it had caused both Caroline and Y/N to look over at her.

“What is it?” Care asked with a raised brow.

“Y/N, your arm.” Elena said pointing towards the arm Caroline had been holding.

Both Caroline and Y/N looked down at her arm. Right next to the info she had written down on her arm had been the neatest handwriting she had ever seen. It caused her eyes to widen as she looked at the words. Words that she hadn’t written. 

I wouldn't miss it - E

#the originals #the vampire diaries #Painted Souls #Elijah Mikaelson x Reader #reader insert #Soulmates AU #Elijah Mikaelson #Caroline forbes #Elena Gilbert #series #new series #Elijah Mikaelson x you #fanfics

[erikchamber]

Fox’s Blaster (Super Smash Bros Ultimate)

This is my first finished prop and I am incredibly proud of it. It is not my first prop because I’ve started a few in the past and just never got around to finishing them either for complications, not enough skill, or just boredom; but it is the first prop I’ve completed. I intend to finish all those other, but I just wanted to ride the motivation for this one and it certainly paid off.

For anyone interested in how I made it, please continue reading.

(Tried to edit which messed up my post so most of the pictures are unreadable. Trying to fix, but connection is shoty. Check out someones reblog to see all)

Step 1: References and Drafting

First I needed to get some reference images for the blaster. Thankfully, Smash Bros has a convenient in-game camera mode so I was able to zoom in and take screenshots of the blaster in any frame of gameplay. 

I briefly considered making the blaster able to open up like in the second image above, but I had no idea how to do that and figured it’d take too long to figure it out, let alone actually make a prop capable of that. So, I decided on a single piece prop with nothing moving. Better to keep things simple when you’re starting out.

Now I had to draft outlines for it. I use Rhino 3D for all of my drafting, whether 2D or 3D.

I imported my reference images and traced them as best I could. Unfortunately, since there’s no option to turn off perspective in Smash, some dimensions were a bit off, but hardly an issue.

Before I went any further, I needed to make sure I had the right scaling, so I made a mock-up. Since I needed the handle to fit my hand, I made it out of layers of PVC foam board and just used cardboard for the rest of the gun.The sizing was actually perfect by coincidence, but I needed to determine the best thickness. I tried out a few thicknesses for the handle with different numbers of layers and found 5 layers of 6mm foam board was perfect. 

Next I made a 3D model to make sure all my dimensions looked right when put together.

Step 2: Materials

Before I did anything to start making the physical prop, I had to plan out all my materials and cuts. I did some adjustments to my traces so that a length wise cross section would fit into several pieces of equal size. Below, to the left of the yellow lines, are one of each kind of cross section I need. There are 7 total layers. The largest pieces are within layers 2-6, comprising the main body of the blaster and part of the handle, as well as support for the laser-sight barrel. After those are the two outer layers for the handle which will have some beveling, and then layers 1 & 7 include a few smaller pieces to add bulk to the two bulging sections at the top of the gun.

The section to the right of the yellow lines are for planning out how many cuts to fit into each board of material (For some reason I doubled a few layers on the right sheet, not sure why).

Materials (everything in the finished product):

6mm PVC foam board (celtec)

1″ PVC pipe

1.5″ PVC pipe

PVC cement

Spray paint

Acrylic paint

Tools and disposable materials:

X-acto knife

Straight-edge of some kind

Sand paper, both fine and course versions

Blue painter’s tape

Brown paper

PVC pipe cutter (any kind of saw will also work)

Thumbtack (or something with a fine point)

Large piece of cardboard (painting surface; can use whatever you don’t mind being spray painted)

I spent some time debating what I wanted the blaster to be primarily made out of. I had worked with PVC foam board before and I knew it was high quality and would provide a good weight to the prop. I also considered EVA foam which I’d just heard about at the time, or just plain cardboard. PVC foam board was the best choice, though I does take a few passes with an X-acto knife to cute through 6mm, but if you’re patient it’s worth it.

Step 3: Cut and Assemble

Now comes the tedious part.

Since I had digital plans I printed out full-scale outlines of each part. I then taped the sheets down on the PVC boards and used a thumbtack to poke the corners of the outlines and leave small impressions in the board. Then with a straight-edge I used my X-acto to connect the dots and cut out each piece.

Below is layer 5, i.e. the middle most piece of the blaster.

The PVC board is pretty dense, which adds to it’s quality, but like I said I had to run through each line several times before cute when all the way through. Do not rush this part. I may have been a bit too anal about it, but I did not want any mistakes at all.

Some pieces required beveling. I do not have any kind of table saw or other tool made specifically for beveling so I did it all by hand with my X-acto knife. This requires even more patience than the last part. Once you cut too much, you can get it back on and look the same. I recommend listening to some music or have a show play in the background, just be careful with the knife and always cut away from yourself.

Once all the board and pipes where cut I cemented everything together. You can see the other parts which have beveling. Again, takes a long time, especially when it’s circular.

What I found is despite my best efforts, not all the parts where exactly aligned and flush with those next to it. this part was 0.5mm too high here. This one was 1mm too thick there. I spent a lot of time sanding everything down so the edges were all aligned. I didn’t get everything perfecting flush due to my limited tools, but I was happy with it. This actually killed two birds with one stone because I would have needed to sand it down anyway so the paint would hold onto it better.

Step 4: Painting

Now for the fun part.

The base of the blaster is black so I can paint the whole thing a black coat, but for the grey on parts like the outer handle I’ll have to tape sections off to protect the black.

As you can see, the only thing I taped off from the black coat was the Star Fox emblem on both sides of the barrel. Since it’s small with lots of curves and made of tape, I had to be delicate with cutting it.

But I think it worked out. Just a little tap residue to wipe off.

The grey was fun because of how I had to weave tape between all the joints and crevices. As you can see, used brown paper and taped that on, rather than cover the whole thing in a layer of tape. Just tape along the edge of the paper and attach.

Lastly, the finer details, i.e. anything orange or blue. I did all these details by hand, again using painter’s tape to make sure my lines were exact. Don’t forget to sand whenever you put on a new layer of paint. I forget to sand for the orange on the picture below the first time and the acrylic ended up peeling off. Sand so the paint can grip onto something rather than a smooth surface.

And voila!

Pretty damn close to Nintendo’s replica (below), don’t you think?

From start to finish, this took me about 2 months in my down time. 1 month drafting and obsessing over how every detail needed to be replicated perfectly, and 1 month of actually building it. I should have paid a little more attention to the spray painting, though. I’ve never spray painted before I had trouble figuring out the right distance to hold the can, and some of the grey paint found it’s way under some edges of the tape, but not a big deal. And maybe some time spent to texture the handle.

Overall, I absolutely love it! It’s got a great weight to it, feels wonderful in my hand. I don’t think I’ll ever cosplay as Fox, but this has been a wonderful use of my down time rather than just web-surfing and video games all the time. I built something with my hands. There’s nothing quite like it.

If you enjoyed this, consider supporting me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/erikchamber

#star fox #fox's blaster #smash bros #super smash bros ultimate #ssbu #smash bros ultimate #gotta blast #cosplay #prop #cosplay prop #sci-fi #pvc foam #first cosplay #blaster #nintendo #fox mccloud #spam b

[shooter-nobunagun]

Quarantine UST 3

//Look, I’m on a roll, and I plan to ride it as long as I can.

Warning: some ‘ero’ content this chapter, (wet dreams and masturbation)... ^^;;; teenage hormones, man XD;

“Oh my god Asao-san, I just don’t know if I can keep this up for a month! It hasn’t even been a week and I’m starting to go a little nuts...and I’m the very definition of an introvert,” The sniper vented, chatting with her best friend Kaoru Asao as part of her now-established bedtime ritual. “I seriously can’t believe there’s like, three more weeks to go...ugh.”

“Oh Sio-chan, I think you’ll be all right. Given the circumstances, it’s perfectly fine to be getting a bit of cabin fever. Have you gone out at all?”

“Well, no...I mean, I just spend some time in the yard or go for a quick walk around the block, but since everyone’s all ‘don’t go out unless you need to’, it’s not like we’ve been making any supply runs since the first one,” the sniper grumbled. The vehicle Adam requisitioned from the Yavin had arrived just yesterday in the form of an all-wheel-drive, manual transmission sedan, but since most places were closed anyway, Sio didn’t foresee them going on any joyrides anytime soon. “Newton and Gandhi were saying it would be nice to just go for a drive, but I don’t know. Jack’s always so strict...can you believe he still keeps tabs on me daily to make sure I’ve done my training?”

Her friend laughed lightly on the other end. “Isn’t that his job though? You said Jack-san is your team leader, right? Besides, would you really be keeping up with your training if he didn’t remind you?”

“...”

“...Well, there’s your answer.” Sio groaned and buried herself in the pillow. “But I hope you’ve been remembering to take care of yourself too, Sio-chan. I mean, you said you’ve basically got free time after you do your training, right?”

“Sure I guess, but it’s...I dunno, Asao-san. I’m not used to constantly being around other people like, 24/7. Even back in the Logan, I feel like I had more privacy...but when you’re in a house, well...” She thought back to this morning, whereupon Newton had stepped out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a thin t-shirt and purple thong, Sio narrowly avoiding another nosebleed as she rushed to the toilet before Newton could try and ‘greet’ her. “It’s a bit...weird to see all your teammates when they’re so, well...casual.”

“Hmm; does it make you uncomfortable? Maybe you can ask them to respect your privacy or be more considerate around you.”

“Hah, that’ll be the day,” Sio rolled her eyes. “Newton and Gandhi...let’s just say their definition of consideration is way different than mine. If anything, the only person I actually don’t have to worry about is Jack...though I’ve got other issues with him...”

“I see...” Her friend mused on the other line. “Still, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but have you actually told them that? Do they know their actions bother you? Or are you just doing the whole ‘polite Japanese’ thing and shrugging it off?”

“I mean, well—I want to, but—”

“‘But...?’ You know Sio-chan, I’m not saying what they’re doing is okay, but at the same time, you also need to stick up for yourself,” Asao gently chided, Sio whining because she knew her friend was right. “I know you don’t like talking to people, but everybody’s gotta start somewhere, right? It seems like they just don’t realize it, but I’m sure if you actually told them how you feel, they might back off. And if not, well, at least you can escalate that to someone in charge.”

“Haaaaaahh...I know, you’re right; I’ll try...but they’re so intimidating at times, the way they’re so...forward,” the sniper flopped backwards onto the pillows. “Ironically, Jack’s the only person I’ve been able to actually talk back to...”

At this revelation her friend made an interesting noise. “Oh? You told Jack-san how you felt? Even though your last three messages to me were about how strict and scary he is?”

“I-I mean, it’s not like I plan my conversations with him, it’s just sometimes he gets so annoying I just react automatically—”

“—Well, what did he say?”

“He—” The sniper caught herself as she recalled their conversations from earlier in the week. “...He, actually apologized, now that I think about it...when he lost his temper from helping me to the laundry, he...he admitted he shouldn’t have been so harsh, that he was just tired...” And then the next day he helped her with the ironing, and giving her lunch...

“Ooh?” Asao’s voice took on a high note. “Really now...I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover, can you? Well that’s good, it means things do change when you actually speak up about them.”

“Well sure, but I’ve still got a long way to go.”

“Why don’t you ask Jack-san for backup? He’s the leader, right? I’m sure his words carry some weight.”

“I, well...I could, but...he’s already helped me out a lot. I’d feel bad if I constantly went to him with my troubles...” Sio hugged her knees to her chest. “I mean if I really had to, sure...but I wanna try and handle this on my own, first. Besides, it’d probably be more effective if it came from me.”

“‘Atta girl, Sio. I know you can do it.” Asao cheered from the other end. “But it’s getting pretty late on your end, isn’t it? You should get some sleep, even if you’re not going anywhere. A routine sleeping schedule will help you feel better.”

Sio glanced at the clock, which was about to strike midnight. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, thanks a bunch, Asao-san. If there’s one thing I’m grateful for about all this, it’s that I can finally chat with you whenever I want.”

Her friend laughed. “Of course, Sio-chan. I’m really happy about that, too. Take care! And feel free to text me whenever! Oyasumi.”

“Oyasumi.” Yawning, Sio set her phone on the nightstand, stretching like a cat before crawling underneath the fluffy duvet. “I’m so glad Asao-san’s my friend...I don’t know what I’d do without her...” Turning off the lights, she laid her head down and was asleep within minutes. ------ “Nnng...hnn, uhn...”

It was hot, but it felt good. Her legs ached, but again, she couldn’t seem to stop. Her body turned over and her hips moved on their own, grinding clumsily against a lump of blankets.

“Unn...hmm...hmmm...!! Nnng...!!”

It felt so good; a heat bubbling up from her groin, tickling her senses in a way she’d never felt before. Yet it never seemed to be enough—no matter how much she pushed her hips she couldn’t get enough, because it just felt too good—

“Ahn...ah, ah...nng...y, yes...” Her breathing grew strained as her body grew desperate. To reach that peak, that...whatever it was. Her limbs were quivering as she rolled over again, this time one of the extra pillows wedging itself perfectly between her thighs. “Oh, yes...ah, right ther...kimochi ii...iii...!”

Almost there! So close!

A tingle of electricity went up her spine as the edge of the pillow rubbed right against that sweet spot between her legs and Sio’s eyes shot open, gasping for breath as she woke up right on the verge of ecstasy. “Wha—what the, what’s...huh...?” For some reason she was breathing as though she’d run a marathon, and her clothes were all sweaty...

‘Oh no, do I have a fever? Is it the virus?!’ In a panic she slid out of bed, ignoring the strange throbbing between her legs as she fumbled for a thermometer. “37.7 degrees Celsius...whew, normal.” Sighing with relief, she slowly crawled back to bed, now finally noticing the strange tightness down there, throbbing in time with her pulse. “Nnn...what the heck, why do I feel so...weird? My body’s all...hot and tingly, b-but I don’t have a fever...”

The sniper could only recall vague remnants of some dream she’d been having moments earlier, but like most dreams, it vanished the second she woke up. Bits and pieces remained however, Sio closing her eyes as she tried to remember what was making her so hot and bothered.

‘It was...I was...really hot? Something...no, I think it was someone touching me...but, it wasn’t scary at all; it felt...gentle, and really good...’

Before she knew it, one of her hands slipped down between her thighs, Sio unconsciously now trying to replicate what she’d experienced in the dream with her own hands. A finger gingerly rubbed a slight bump on the outside of her underwear and she shivered, a shock of pleasure running through her body.

‘Yes, it felt, like this...it felt, so good...’

“Hnn...it’s, just like my dream...” She mumbled, mind falling back into that hazy pleasure halfway between dreams and reality, as Sio started touching herself in earnest. The sniper wasn’t even aware of what she was doing, only a vague knowledge of something she’d read in health books came floating up—but that was quickly shoved aside as her fingers became a little more confident, rubbing a little harder now and the pleasure started climbing.

“Ah...ah, nng...it feels really good...h-how, what is...” She was panting slightly, not even realizing her other hand had snaked underneath her shirt and was gently stroking her breast. 

‘W-Wait a minute...what am I...am I, touching myself...?’ Suddenly she was conscious of where her hands were, just what she was doing; a finger still rubbing between her legs—only now there was a slight dampness seeping onto the fabric.

Sio blushed, finally realizing that this was what masturbation was—but at the same time it felt too good for her to stop. ‘W-Whoa...is this what...masturbating feels like? It’s...kinda embarrassing to admit, but it does feel really good...’ Sighing, she decided to just continue and see what happened. Besides, at least she had her own room here, and nobody shared a wall.

“Mnn...it’s, not enough...I want to feel, more...” Biting her lips, the sniper slowly shed her damp panties, heart pounding in nervous excitement as it occurred to her she was going to pleasure her most private place, with her own two hands. ‘Somehow, doing something kinda...naughty like this...I’m getting excited...’ Gulping, she gently reached a finger down, only to pull away in shock as she felt something moist and slippery. “Wha—uh, why’s it all wet down here?” She reached finger down again, and this time pushed a little deeper, her stomach clenching as her fingers started exploring the region. 

“Whoa...I’m getting really wet...I can’t believe that really happens,” she mumbled, rather enjoying the slipperiness across her fingertips. Between the hot, slick folds, untangling her dark curls—she squealed as her fingertips finally brushed against that most sensitive spot, now hard and engorged from stimulation.

“Ahn...! W-what is this...why’s it feel so much better...compared to, anywhere else...” Moaning very slightly, Sio started fondling her clit, using two fingers to rub circles around it as the other hand now massaged her breasts. “Oooh...god, this feels amazing...”

Slowly but surely, that same, slow-burn tension from her dream was now building up in real life. The sniper was using both her hands at this point, one to massage her sensitive clit while the other poked around her folds, coating everything with her juices that were now dripping down her thighs.

“Ah, ah, ah...oh god, it’s happening...th-that, same feeling...from my dream...!” Her body was hot all over, limbs starting to twitch as this new tension built up somewhere deep inside her. Her hands were more forceful now, rubbing tight circles around her clit, back arching every so often as she tried to reach that goal again, before she woke up. Her legs were spread underneath the covers, hips undulating as she tried to push herself to the peak.

‘I-It’s, so close...I-I’m so close, why can’t I...’ Moaning in frustration and arousal, she took a break, panting for air as she gently ran her fingers all over her smooth, soft skin. ‘In my dream, I think there was someone else...who was doing this to me...and it felt so good...’

She didn’t remember much, but she knew whoever it was had much larger hands than her; they were calloused but firm, gentle as they fondled her breasts, then her opening, teasing her with that same, steady pressure until she was sure she could bear it no more.

“Ahn...ah...ah...ah, ah, ah—oh god...!” While she fantasized about her mystery dream lover, her fingers punished her clit with a desperate fervor; Sio felt her legs twitching, hips bucking with the same rhythm as her fingers while her body pushed itself towards an orgasm. 

‘It’s so good...I-I think I’m coming...I’m, gonna, cum—!’ For some reason right at the precipice, Adam’s alabaster-white torso flashed in her mind, with those toned muscles... With a startled cry she climaxed as the heat crashed over, a searing pleasure overwhelming all her senses at once. Clenching her teeth, she pushed a finger against her throbbing clit, rubbing it every so often and shaking from the aftershocks until everything subsided at last, Sio letting out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.

“Hah, hah...ooohh, that felt...incredible.” Heaving, she fumbled for a tissue and wiped up the mess that had formed between her legs, as well as any residue from her fingers. “Man, who knew you could make yourself feel so good, with your own hands...is that why people do this...” 

At last she snuggled down underneath the covers, now very satisfied and quite exhausted (no wonder people did this in bed; it made you so sleepy!) Before she fully conked out again though, the image of Adam’s body floated up again, Sio blushing with realization.

‘Wh-What the hell...why am I think about him now, i-it’s not like I want to see him naked or to, to...do that...to me...ugh, must be because I was chatting about him with Asao-san, that’s why...’

She pulled the covers up resolutely and forced herself to go to sleep, trying desperately to ignore the burning in her cheeks. ---- “Good morning love! Goodness, did you sleep too late again? Those bags under your eyes will become permanent at this rate,” the blonde tsked as the sniper rubbed her eyes and let out a huge yawn.

“A-Ah, uh, B-Beckham-san, you—”

“I thought I told you, call me ‘Jess’—”

“Right, Jess-san, er...”

“—Another late night gossiping with your friend?”

“Ah, Gandhi-san—”

“Oy, what’s with the chatter?!” All three stopped talking as their leader walked into the kitchen, hair still tousled. “And for the love god, could you two put on some damn clothes?!” He glared at the two, one of whom was walking around in knickers and the other who was completely shirtless, much to Sio’s chagrin. “This ain’t a uni dorm...”

“Such a prude, Adam...you really need to get laid, love.” The blonde teased much to their leader’s chagrin but went to change, as did Mahesh, Adam blushing and grumbling all the while about how it’d been barely a week and already they were devolving into a couple of degenerates.

“O, Ohayou, Jack-san...” The sniper steeled herself now that it was just the two of them, doing her best to not look at anywhere even remotely close to his body; the events of last night were still fresh in her mind, and she certainly hadn’t forgotten the weird tingles she felt every time she even thought about him.

‘Just play it cool, Sio, it’s not like that meant anything; it just means you’re attracted to a muscular body, that’s all, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s him...’

“Hn? Oh, mornin’ squirt...” The silver-haired man gave a slight glance her way, before opening the fridge and grabbing out breakfast items. “You eat already?”

“Not yet...I-I mean, I was just gonna eat some toast and jam—”

“—want eggs with that?” 

The sniper’s head shot up. “E-Eggs? Ye—I mean uh, I...um, if it’s not too much trouble...”

“‘S fine, since I’m already making some for myself.” With a practiced hand he cracked two eggs simultaneously, Sio watching in amazement as he skillfully flipped them. “So, how d’you like your eggs?”

“Uh, sunny-side up, please! But a little less runny.” Her eyes continued to stare, however, Adam smirking a bit as she let out a small noise of wonder.

“What’re you so excited about? They’re just eggs.”

“Ah! It’s just, I’m impressed, Jack-san...you really do know your stuff. Like, you cracked those with only one hand, just like they do on TV!”

Her enthusiasm was infectious; it took all his willpower to not just smile back at her, though that didn’t stop his heart from thumping loudly in his chest. Seriously, what was going on? He couldn’t possibly...well, like her, could he? 

‘Like’ has many connotations...it doesn’t have to mean romance...

“Well, practice makes perfect, squirt. You could give it a try if you want,” he cast her a glance, but the girl only laughed nervously.

“Maybe some other time...trust me, you don’t wanna know how I did in my home ec classes...”

A few minutes later there were two plates stacked with eggs, toast, jam, and (in Adam’s case) a couple rashers of bacon and small ramekin of baked beans.

“Uwaa!! This looks so delicious! Ittadakimasu!” The smell of a perfectly fried egg on top of crisp, buttery toast... Sio let out a hum as she happily munched her breakfast, the weird libido-lust thing all but forgotten. “Now I know for sure, you’re really good at cooking, Adam. Did your mom teach you?”

At that comment Adam paused mid-bite, but the sniper didn’t notice. “...You could say that. She taught me the basics, and I...just practiced a lot on my own.”

“Oh? So is like, cooking one of your hobbies, then?”

“...Not particularly. I don’t mind it, but I became good at it out of necessity, more than anything else...” Suddenly his voice became melancholy, and the sniper wondered if she said the wrong thing, again.

“...Oh. I-I’m sorry, I uh...didn’t mean to...pry...” She awkwardly took a sip of her tea; the silence was deafening, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Eh; it’s fine. I don’t talk about it, because...what’s the point,” Adam sighed, scraping up the remaining beans and spooning it onto his toast. “I mean, when you’ve only got your mum lookin’ after you an’ no other family...you grow up pretty quick.”

“Ah, Jack-san...” Before she could say anything else however, the other two members finally returned, thankfully dressed this time. As Jess and Mahesh set about getting their own breakfast, she quickly excused herself to go help Adam with the dishes.

“Here, why don’t you let me load them? I can do it now, thanks to you...”

He gave her a curious look, Sio unsure of how to decipher that expression, but the next thing she knew he nodded in thanks and left her at the sink.

I wonder...if something happened to him in the past. Though Adam didn’t anything else after that, just from that one sentence Sio knew now that Adam grew up with a single parent, and no other siblings—or other close relatives, even. Perhaps that was why he was such a loner; it was always harder to open up to others when you spent so much time relying on yourself.

“Need some help, Sio-chan?” She looked up and Mahesh and Jess were carrying their plates to the sink. “Thanks for cleaning up, by the way; believe me when I say we appreciate it!”

“Oh, it’s no big deal...I mean, we’re gonna be here for a while, so might as well help out.” 

“You are just too sweet!” The blonde practically crushed Sio into her generous bosom, and the sniper instantly stiffened. "You deserve a reward—”

Those lips. That tongue. Almost mesmerized, Sio just stared as Jess drew closer, but then...

“—Oh!”

Sio blinked, not quite sure what just happened. It was as if her body reacted on instinct, her arms pushing Jess away just before they could make contact, and now both she and Mahesh were staring at her with bewildered looks.

‘Oh boy, I’ve done it now...still, here goes nothing...!’

“Look, Jess-san. I...I get that’s how you show affection—a-and maybe you Europeans are more used to it, but...I don’t like it. It...really makes me uncomfortable when you just...get so close to me, all of a sudden...s, so, s-so...” Her arms were shaking with fear, but the need to say what she really felt was even stronger. Asao was right; she couldn’t stay silent forever and hope that one day people would be able to magically read her mind. She needed to take the initiative, no matter how awkward it made things.

“So...please, don’t...do that to me. Please...” Her voice wavered and the sniper could feel tears pricking the corners of her eyes, but she couldn’t back down now. “Please...don’t just, suddenly grab or, touch me like that...I don’t like it at all. And same goes for you, Gandhi-san; I don’t like guys who are so aggressive like that.”

And before either of the two could say another word the sniper fled up the stairs into her room, her courage finally depleted. ------ “Cooking as a hobby, ‘ey? Heh, why not, squirt...” Lo-fi hip-hop was streaming through the headphones, Adam absently checking his email (for once) while relaxing to some music. It’d been nearly a week since Command dropped the bombshell on them, yet the platoon had adopted to its civilian lifestyle with almost shocking speed. Sure, he still had to make sure everybody was keeping up with their training, and once a day he personally checked in with either Saint-Germain or the Commander herself, but other than that it was surprisingly...chill. 

Well, aside from random incidents such as seeing Jess waltz around in black lace knickers, and Mahesh’s annoying habit of not putting on a shirt unless he had to. And oh yeah, that first night where Sio blindly walked in on him just as he’d gotten out of the shower.

The squirt... Sio Ogura. His fingers stopped typing as the petite girl crossed his mind. She was different. Unique. At first, it was easy for him to dismiss her as just another newbie who was in way over her head, but she’d proven to be surprisingly capable in their last few missions.

‘An’ now she wants to learn how to keep house...how cute.’ Adam snorted lightly to himself, but it was rather adorable watching the girl stumble her way through learning how to use the washing machine, and loading a dishwasher. He had to admit, the girl was stubborn and intuitive; even if it felt like she was missing a screw or two in the common sense department.

Maybe she wasn’t as much of a squirt as he initially pinned her to be. ‘I probably shouldn’t keep callin’ her hanninmae...but what else should I call her? Sio?’ He frowned; that was a little too personal, and if he remembered correctly, Japanese people generally didn’t appreciate strangers calling them by their first names. 

That had to be earned.

“Like a certain someone, ‘ey?” He muttered to himself. Adam didn’t miss the fact that he was the only holder whom she addressed by his e-gene name, instead of his real name. Truth be told, it pissed him off that Jess and Mahesh just casually used ‘Adam’ whenever they wanted, but it was too much trouble to bother correcting them. Besides, whenever he did, it usually went in one ear and out the next.

He sighed and shut the laptop. “Might as well go check in on them...” Stretching, he shuffled to the sniper’s door, and was just about to knock when heard a sniffle. “Huh.” He leaned closer and put his ear to the door. 

She’s crying. Startled, and without even thinking Adam opened the door, the sniper whirling around in bewilderment at his sudden intrusion.

“Oy, what’s going on? Are you all right?”

“E-Eh?! J-Jack-san??” The sniper hurriedly wiped her eyes, but it wasn’t enough to get rid of the the tear tracks on her cheeks.

“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“U-Uh, um...I—wait, wh-why are you in my room?”

“Uh...” Shit. Good question. Adam wanted to say that he heard her crying and was concerned, but she might take it the wrong way. ‘Actually. she definitely would take it the wrong way.’

“I, I uh, just wanted to check if you finished your training yet, but I heard you crying—I-I thought you hurt yourself or something—I—” He fumbled wordlessly for something, but even his Jack the Ripper couldn’t think of an excuse for this situation. “A-Anyway, sorry about...barging in like that. Guess we’re tit-for-tat, eh?”

“O-Oh...I, it’s...you don’t need to worry about it, Jack-san. I-It’s—I can handle it myself...I’m, fine...”

Adam raised an eyebrow, gently making his way to the side of the bed. “You sure about that, squirt?”

“I-I, uh...” The sniper stuttered and looked away.

“Hey, look; I, uh, know I’m probably not the most approachable guy, but I’m also your squad leader. And that means if there’s something botherin’ you, I’m more than willing to listen.” Adam slowly rounded the corner, sitting the built-in reading bench by the window. “An’ I’m not just sayin’ this ‘cause I’m the leader. If you wanna talk about it...I’m all ears.”

The sniper hiccuped a bit more, grabbing a tissue and hugging her knees to her chest, but still didn’t face him. Adam waited patiently until the tears seemed to have stopped.

“W, Well...it’s, m-more like, i-it has to do with, the other two...N-Newton-san and Gandhi-san. U-Uh, y-you know how both of them are alway so, so...touchy-feely,” Adam made a low rumbling noise at this, “s-so, earlier I, b-basically told them I didn’t...appreciate that, a-and, and...” the sniper squeezed herself into a tighter ball, if possible. “I, pushed Newton away...b-but, I didn’t mean it like that, I wasn’t trying to hurt her or say that I hated her, but I just didn’t want to be that close, and—”

“—You didn’t do anything wrong.” Adam’s low tenor cut through her anxiety-babble. “That’s on them, for not respecting your personal space...” Oddly enough, he felt as angry as he’d ever been—even moreso than his usual irritation at their tiresome antics. If it was just him, then fine; he could brush it off, but the fact that not only was Sio been so bothered by it, but she felt guilty about telling them off...

“I, I know that...b-but still, I...don’t want them to think I, hate them or anything like that...” The girl finally lifted her head, eyes now red and puffy from crying. “I, still think they’re good people...I just, don’t want them to keep getting so close to me like that...” Before she could go into another round of waterworks Adam was handing her a tissue, which she gratefully accepted.

“Honestly, it’s about time we addressed these issues. Especially if we’re gonna be living together for the next few weeks, I can’t let this keep happening. Hell, you’ve got more balls than me; you actually said something, where as I...just shrugged it off.”

At this the sniper looked up in surprise. “R, Really? Y-You, never told them you...don’t like it, either?”

Adam barked out a laugh. “Heh...surprising, isn’t it? Yeh, I’m surprised myself, honestly...can’t say exactly why I never did, except I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea t’ get all wound up with someone whom was going to be working with indefinitely. I don’t know...” he leaned back into the cushions, eyes closing in some lost memory. “Perhaps it’s because I figured, if I could put up with it, then maybe it’s better to do that, instead of protesting...” Adam shook his head. “Who knows. I guess to be honest, deep down, I’m someone who’d rather not rock the boat, you know what I mean?”

Whoa. He was much different than her initial impressions, for sure. Sio never would have guessed that Jack the Ripper—no, Adam Muirhead, was actually much more reserved than she thought. Not to mention the fact that, just like her, he preferred to stay quiet and bear the burden, instead of speaking out.

“Mn...I, definitely get that.” Before she knew it Sio quirked a small smile. “Heh, wow, I...I didn’t know we had similar thoughts...”

Adam returned the smile, and to her dismay the sniper felt her cheeks blushing. “The things you find out when we’re not in battle, right? Anyway, don’t beat yourself up. It’s high time we cleared this up; I’m gonna call a meeting tonight. Don’t worry about feeling awkward; I’ll handle it, and if they make a fuss—well, let’s just say I’m not above using my authority to make sure they stay in line...”

Sio nodded, though she sincerely hoped it was just a matter of misunderstanding and ignorance. The last thing she wanted was to strain the relationships between them, and who knew how that would affect their performance in battle.

“Also, squir—I mean, Ogura,” her ears perked at the sound of her real name, “er, it is all right to call you, that, yeh?”

Her heart started drumming in her chest and that strange warmth was flooding her body again. “O-Oh, of course! Th, thanks, Jack-san...”

“Cool. Anyway, I’m sorry you had to go through such a beastly thing, but...I’m grateful you told me about it. You really are something else, aren’t you?”

“Ah...” Those wide maroons stared at his back, Sio now shyly clutching her pillow. “Th-Thank you, Jack-san...not just for doing something about this, but...thank you for listening to me. I really appreciate it...”

Adam felt his face grow warm. “...You’re welcome. Oh, and uh, one more thing,” he paused at the doorway, “my name is Adam. My real name is Adam Muirhead.”

“Then...thank you, Adam-san.”

#documentation #//heuuurrurur #//wow #//haven't been on a roll in so long #//its GOOD

[schalaasha]

Top 20 Games of the Decade

Hi, I felt like writing about my top 20 games of the decade because I kept thinking about it. This is a semi-ranked list, but I decided not to throw numbers into the mix since, really, outside of the top 2, I can’t think of how to rank the games prior to them. I also commissioned hyiroaerak (@/HRAK__S2 on twitter, https://hyiroaerak.weebly.com/work.html) for art to commemorate this occasion.  Our characters are cosplaying as characters from our games of the decade!

Mega Man 10

I actually like Mega Man 10 more than Mega Man 9 out of the two platformer revival games in this series. Though a bit of background on this: Mega Man 4 is my favourite, and I prefer the games that are not 2, 6, 7, or 11, so I suppose that contextualises this for others.         Either way, despite it not having weapons that were as useful as Mega Man 9’s, I felt like 10’s level design and pacing worked more for me in my favour. Though I’m saying that as someone who liked the double fortress design in earlier games so that might invalidate how I feel.

 Time Attack mode from Mega Man 9 returns as well as Proto Man (but he’s unlockable right off the bat). It also has a proper Challenge Mode compared to Mega Man 9’s challenges, whereby challenges for certain levels or bosses are unlocked when you actually do it in the main game. Being able to play as Proto Man off the bat allows for the fluidity Mega Man had in 3 and beyond by letting you slide and use charged shots. I personally liked being able to play as Proto Man off the bat as while he has the 3 and beyond advantages for his moveset, he is a glass cannon and you still have to watch where you’re going.

 I feel like the levels were a little better designed and if I needed more of a challenge, Hard Mode was still there to cut my teeth on. I liked the colour schemes throughout the level maps a lot more than 9’s as well. The bosses felt particularly gripping and trading blows with them fit into a nice rhythm.

 It has more content than Mega Man 9 and I had a lot more fun with 10 than I did with either 9 or 11. The formula itself is pretty static compared to other Mega Man games, but I like simple things. Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s just a nice piece of cake at the end of the day and that’s all I really want.

  Trauma Team / HOSPITAL: 6人の医師

When I started university for the first time in 2006, I was pre-med.  I eventually got sick and tired of the politics and people in the program (ie: folks saying they only wanted to go to med school so they can get rich or make friends with pharma reps who might give them perks), and I left the program to pursue program majors and a minor to prepare me for speech-language pathology instead.

 We had a Wii in our student lounge. My main university campus wasn’t exactly big and a lot of the people who hung out in the student center were kind of cliquey. I think I had the benefit of being really good friends with one of the guys who was the biggest social butterflies at the school so I got to meet a lot of people or get involved with stuff if I felt like it. So that meant I got to play with other students in games or wi-fi sessions during classes or after classes if I didn’t have to commute home right away.

 Because almost everyone I knew at my school wanted to go into medicine, everyone played the Trauma series. Some kids played Under the Knife during class. Some kids played Second Opinion on the Wii in the student lounge. Some kids played New Blood. This was before like… Farmville took over everyone’s computers at the time.

 Trauma Team came out way after that, and some of us were either graduating or staying in school an extra year because we didn’t know what to do after the recession or knew what to do but needed extra courses for graduate school.  So the Wii was free to use.  I don’t think people hooked it up as often anymore anyway. By 2010, a lot of us who had met each other in first year decided to go our separate ways, not even in the same majors or programs anymore. A lot of us either branched out into research, psychology, neurology (like me), kinesiology, epidemiology, forensics, genetics, etc. So Trauma Team for the rest of us who were still there was a good fit.

 Trauma Team took some influences from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic considering that was when the development phase occurred. Now, I live in Canada, and Canada was one of the focal points for the 2003 SARS outbreak. This was when health bodies in the country decided to make some changes to how they respond to potential pandemics. A lot of things they tell medical students or any students studying health policy (like I was at the time) emphasized how different parts of the hospital or medical or health care staff need to work together in order to care for a patient. I actually find the different professions involved in Trauma Team useful and a reflection of what my class of 2010/2011 became later on (a lot of us graduated in 2011 and took an extra year).

 Diagnostics and Forensics were what I was really interested in since they don’t play the same as surgery/emergency medicine since they played out like a point-and-click. Later on in life, I had to look at so many medical reports and radiology reports and file them but by then I realised what my patients had but I can’t tell them myself since I’m not a doctor. But Trauma Team gave me a chance to do so and practice my terminology as a student. A friend of mine, who ended up becoming a doctor at a hospital in Toronto, really enjoyed endoscopy since it merely involved using the Wiimote as an endoscope and the nunchuk to steer. A lot of us played co-op too.

 The difficulty in Trauma Team, I felt, was decreased from previous games. But that doesn’t really spoil it. It was a varied game and it looks fantastic. It’s a shame that the game style hasn’t been replicated or given a sequel in later years, because while I’m older and my classmates are doing completely different things and I haven’t seen some of them in years, I’d love to take a stab at these types of games with a well-practiced laboratory technologist’s hand.

  Sonic Colours

I think it goes without saying. My first community when I joined the old forum was the Sonic community. Just a bunch of people who were interested in talking about Sonic so much in almost every thread that we ended up making a community thread together. I don’t post in the new forum everyone is at but I still talk to mostly everyone via different social mediums.

 I wasn’t around when Sonic Colours came out but I think I remember reading the joy everyone felt when nearly universally everyone in that thread seemed to really like Sonic Colours. I remember the thread title still. I preordered Sonic Colours because apparently previews were saying it was… good? I didn’t bother playing Sonic Unleashed until after I’d joined the forum, but hearing Sonic Colours would be a return to form since I was one of those people who didn’t adjust well to the 3D games made me interested.

 Sonic Colours is everything I wanted from a 3D Sonic game. Or rather, a 3D version of a platformer. I didn’t really like where 3D platformers were going because they were hard to look at, hard for me to pay attention to, and to be honest I got dizzy while playing a lot of them since you’re expected to work in a 3D space as opposed to a 2D space so it was really hard for me to process. I really like the hybrid nature of the level designs that’s where Sonic Colours got me.

 Sonic Colours isn’t without its hangups: some of the levels are really short; existing mostly for ranking/getting red rings. Sonic’s jump is pretty floaty. The script is fairly short even if the jokes can be funny. Bosses are reused. Sonic Colours is not a perfect game, but the attempts it made were fantastic enough in its own right.

 The music continues to be great, but the areas are visual spectacles. Whatever you think of the series, it’s fairly undeniable that the games try to have style. From the lighting, to posing, to setpieces, to colours used in assets in the level design – Sonic has always had really great ideas.  Sonic Colours is no exception – areas like Aquarium Park, Planet Wisp, and Sweet Mountain have a variety of neat level ideas and they look good trying to execute it. From popcorn on the floor to one of the best darned water levels in all of video games due to the drill wisp, to a fresh take on a grassy knoll with beautiful music, Sonic Colours can bring tears to your eyes because of what it attempts. Terminal Velocity Act 2 is also one of my favourite parts of the Uncolourations games partially because it’s a well-executed setpiece, but it also showed me that maybe those 3D racing bits aren’t that bad.

 The bosses may be really easy, and the final boss ends far sooner than it should before it could perfectly execute its Kamen Rider reference, but I think the point was to fully enjoy the theme park that Sonic Team threw at you this time.

 In 2020 I like to say that out of all of the Uncolourations games, Sonic Unleashed is my favourite due to the balance it struck and its presentation/artstyle, and basically having one of the best soundtracks of the previous decade. But I recognise everything that Sonic Colours brought to the table. If it wasn’t for Sonic Colours, I wouldn’t be friends or acquaintances with so many people that I am with now.

  Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Have you ever played a game that made you feel warm and toasty? Canadian winters can be really cold, you know.

 When I lived at my old run-down house, my old room didn’t have good insulation. Whenever it got cold, my room got really cold. I had my own personal heater because we didn’t really have a good heating system in my room either. So I only wore flannel pyjamas, wrapped myself in faux-wool blankets all the time, and went to sleep covered in at least four quilts or comforters (which is something I still do out of habit sorry). I used to make hot choco every day because it was just so cold in my room.

 I love Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Kirby’s Epic Yarn makes me feel warm and toasty inside because I think of being wrapped up in yarn and sheets and scarves and I just feel so happy. There are so many pastels used in KEY’s earlier stages that I can’t help but to feel toasty and happy when I’m playing it. It’s not the most challenging game. The game is really easy and all you mostly do is collect furniture, music, beads, and parts of the results wheel in every level, but I don’t think that’s the point of it. The point is just to have fun. Watching Kirby turn into a car to sprint, watching him turn into a little parachute or transform during those vehicle bits, you just can’t help but to feel so enveloped by the cute.

 Being able to interact with cloth by pulling a loose button and releasing something, taking off tags, pulling on stray thread, spin balls of yarn… it feels so fulfilling because it’s a clever use of the medium. It’s exactly what you’d do if you’re stitching or knitting. Placing furniture around Kirby’s little apartment makes the Animal Crossing fan in me so happy.

 I appreciate the lengths Good-Feel went to producing the level designs. They took photos of the fabric they bought and created the graphics that way. The music is calm and relaxing, with lots of woodwind and piano and lighter sounding instruments. The entire game feels so soft and sweet. It’s a visually-impressive game since everything animates incredibly fluidly.

  Cuphead

Like anyone my age or older, I grew up watching a lot of older cartoons by Max Fleischer with watercolour backgrounds, hand-drawn characters with a lot of focus on expressions, rotoscoping, etc Lots of slapstick and musical scores out of that decade.  I would have never believed I’d play a video game that looks like that but here we are playing Cuphead this decade.

 Cuphead is a blend of that artstyle with older run and gun style games. It combines a gunning experience with puzzles, reflexive actions, and dying… and dying a lot. And learning. Underneath it’s cartoony and child-friendly veneer lies a game that is unrelentingly difficult. There aren’t really any checkpoints in the game save for one. You can’t regain lost health. It’s just you versus the game. You may spend hours on one single level learning everything about it. And you can’t beat the game until you finish off every other level on regular difficulty.

 Different levels have different forms: they can be run and guns á la Contra, which are actually, oddly enough, breathing room levels. They’re probably the “easiest” levels in the game. Other types of levels can be straight up shmup-like boss fights where you’re flying in a plane. They can be hard as a regular shmup.

 The best crafted types of levels are the ones that include platforming as part of their boss battles because they use the artstyle and ideas involved in the art piece as interesting platforming mechanics. You have a more limited control scheme but the scenario you’re involved in is really interesting and unique. You fight a woman in a play and the setpieces in the play change according to how far you are in the boss fight, for example. The game also has a parry mechanic whereby you can double-jump off of anything that’s coloured pink and fill your super meter in order to kill bosses faster. The parry cues change per boss so it’s really cool to see what they look like every time you encounter something new.

 I think while Cuphead can be utterly unforgiving, I think it should be experienced at least once for how much work was put into making things look so fluid and how creative every boss and level can be. It’s what I wanted the UBIart framework to eventually evolve into. I think the game’s aesthetics and sound are its own reward in addition to that feeling when you finally conquer That One Boss.

  Asura’s Wrath

Asura’s Wrath was a game I was incredibly iffy on even buying at all. I heard about how the ending was part of paid DLC, that the game didn’t have a lot of gameplay, and that it was incredibly unremarkable. I don’t think I had a remarkably low bar or anything for this, but I decided to purchase it on the cheap.

 Asura’s Wrath definitely isn’t a game for everyone, and I feel as though it’s an acquired taste. The main character’s art might not jive well with everyone, the lack of ‘play’ will probably deter some folks, and its episodic nature/final chapter unlock sequence would probably get on people’s nerves. With that said, at first, it seems to be an action-cinematic game without necessarily expanding on the “action” part. A lot of it at first seems to be a bunch of QTEs to move the narrative along, with the narrative not necessarily being that strong in the first place. I think that’s due in part to the game’s structure initially. The first few chapters and the first act truly don’t seem very remarkable. The Buddhist and Hindu aspects of the game are very obvious and very central to the game’s plot, but at the same time, they don’t seem to be specifically mentioned whenever someone talks about the game to me. The Asuras were not one singular character or a god, but a race of warlike beings exhibiting wrath and pride. They were incorporated into Hinduism and Buddhism through their mention in The Rigveda. With that said, I was continually impressed by how many references—whether it was mere mention of regular terms/concepts/people, the artstyle and inclusions of things like lacquer skin, mandorlas, Vajras and Pretas, and also Siddham script—was included in this game. Asura’s Wrath ended up feeling incredibly natural and a nice way of shedding some light on non-Judeo-Christian religions.

 Anyway, I genuinely liked that the game felt like a playable anime. I don’t feel like the game would be as effective if it were put into another genre, or were less cinematic. It ends up getting its message across with its carefully-researched artstyle, great scene direction, well-composed music, and penchant for feeling like it was a fantastic shounen anime. I also feel like the game has more combo-based gameplay than people give it credit for. A lot of the complexities come to the forefront on Hard mode, and going for S-ranks and finding ways to do that quickly and effectively on higher difficulty modes is always an interesting affair.

  Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I finished marathoning all of the Ace Attorney games in 2010. I don’t recall if I was doing it before Ghost Trick but I think what enticed me to get the game was its amazing animation. I hadn’t seen 2D sprites move that fluidly in a very long time. Characters have exaggerated movements, exaggerated dances (ie: the panic dance), and they have big flashy gestures to show off the game’s animation engine.

 You’re introduced to all sorts of eccentric characters, many of whom don’t overstay their welcome (Circus case from AA2, I’m looking at you). You have a desk lamp, a doggo, a dancing detective, a little girl who’s the focal point for one episode, etc. Everyone’s dialogue is relatively snappy, their expressions and animations make them stand out from others, and due to how everything is presented right down to the character art portraits, everything just jumps off the screen.

 Because you’re a spirit with amnesia, you’re given the ability to go through time, and also the ability to through environments by hopping from object to object and possessing them in order to influence what happens in the past to save people in the present.  This is just a path to trying to figure out who you really are or to find who or what killed you. A lot of the gameplay revolves around trying to figure out which objects to manipulate and when in order to influence an outcome. It makes the game partially point and click, but also partially a physics puzzler. I don’t think I remember a single object in the puzzle segments that was wasted. In other circumstances, you must manipulate time in order to save someone in their last four minutes.

 If anything, I feel like Ghost Trick is a necessary inclusion simply because of its style and attention to detail, as well as its sort but sweet story where nothing overstays its welcome. Its soundtrack also feels similar. The game is fairly consistent and nothing really changes in terms of progression over most of the game. But I see that as a plus as opposed to a minus for the most part. It helps to bring the game to a compelling and surprising conclusion.

  Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I marathoned all of the Assassin’s Creed games in one year prior to Assassin’s Creed III since I wanted to see what the deal was with the series because the first game wasn’t that great from a play perspective for me. The thing that resonates the most with respect to Assassin’s Creed for me is marshmallow-flavoured birthday cake and a bag of regular Bugles. I started this marathon on one of my birthdays that decade.

 Assassin’s Creed II is one of my favourite games out there, but Brotherhood adds so much to the formula despite its middling storyline compared to its predecessor. But that’s because most of Ezio’s growth happened in the previous game. He is a middle-aged man searching for the Apple of Eden, and while the story does not carry as much emotional impact, that isn’t exactly what I’m looking for with respect to the earlier AC games.

 One of the things I absolutely love about the earlier AC games is its attention to detail even if it isn’t necessarily completely accurate. At first I missed the fact that I could explore many different towns like I could in AC2. But then I realised how big Rome and its surrounding area is. Rome is gigantic, and it has so much attention to detail with historical buildings everywhere (which you need to pay to rebuild), old tapestries from the era, citizens dancing in the streets, lovers flirting with each other behind pillars, etc. There are more roofs and buildings to parkour over and between. The game adds towards that require you to take over them before you can use them to gain access to vendors and things to renovate. You can also find the glyphs (much like the ones from the previous game) to solve puzzles in order to gain access to more lore.

 I genuinely love the renovation aspect of this game. It’s more involved and a lot better than what the previous game tried to do with its economy. You renovate in order to gain access to shops, which in-turn generates income for you, and then you can renovate other stuff based on the income that you generate. It’s something that I’ve come to miss in later AC games. It felt a lot like a Suikoden game in some aspects.

 Platforming missions return in the form of finding parts of a cult and cutting the beginnings of a conspiracy off by its limbs. They’re faster paced than AC2’s tombs and there is more variety in terms of what you platform through. I like both types equally since one allows you to marvel at the beauty of a cathedral, while the other allows you to clock a few folks while making your way through a lair.

 In addition to the lairs, there are different types of missions for each faction that you forge alliances with, there are Da Vinci missions that involve new war toys and blowing things up in a scripted way. Assassin missions can vary in terms of how you carry out the assassins (albeit still scripted; improvisation was not a thing until ACUnity).

 The crux of AC: Brotherhood is being able to recruit assassins to your cause. Random citizens throughout Rome may be under attack by Borgia soldiers, and once you save them, they are recruited to join your cause. You level them up, send them out on missions, improve their gear, and ask for their help when you can and when they’re available. This feature gets expanded upon in later AC games but it gets a very good start here.

 Brotherhood is so full of content and a lot of little things that playing it for me makes it feel like comfort food for me. It may not have the best story and it certainly isn’t as memorable in that sense as its predecessor. But it’s so fun that I can’t help but to feel satisfied every time I turn it on.

  Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

I played the original Pac-Man CE on 360 years ago at my cousin’s house, where they added a timer and a morphing maze to the base original game. I thought it was a neat novel thing at the time but didn’t think further.

 Pac-Man CE DX adds more mazes and more mechanics and more modes to the championship edition base. It added sleeping ghosts where, if Pac-Man moves near them, they wake up and they chase him around the maze in a line until you can finally eat them all and rack up a huge score. You can also elect to use a bomb at a small expense in order to save yourself and send ghosts to the middle of the maze again. These changes assist in maintaining the game’s flow and it never makes a score attack daunting or boring.

 Devouring big long conga lines of ghosts following you is so satisfying while you’re listening to a bumpin’ soundtrack and chilling out looking at the cool lights on the maze. Really and truly, while at its core, PMCEDX is a score attack game, it makes for a beautiful loving chill sensory experience and I couldn’t ask anything more from it.

  Deadly Premonition / レッドシーズプロファイル

I think I, like a lot of people, was introduced to this game via the GB series. I didn’t have an Xbox 360 so I eventually imported the Japanese version for the PS3. The game’s dub was already in English; the text was in Japanese and it was pretty easy and reasonable to get through. Deadly Premonition actually the Guinness World Record winner for most critically polarizing horror video game since the reviews at the time were so all over the place. And yes, I will contend that Deadly Premonition is definitely not for everyone.

 I am not the type of person to play shooters. I actually hate them a lot. I don’t like gushing blood in video games, and I don’t really like the act of murdering someone in a game. I used to play a lot of survival horror games when I was younger on the PS1 and PS2, but a lot of the time you’re dealing with the undead or oddball things going on around you so it’s not nearly as bad I think. It’s funny; I deal with people’s bodily fluids and body parts all the time in real life as part of my job (ie: I’ve had to help dissect someone’s stomach before fresh out of the operating room), and it doesn’t bother me. But the mere act of seeing it done or doing it, makes me feel squeamish. I don’t like it. I don’t even like watching blood being drawn from me or needles being stuck into me, even though I’ve done it to other people as part of my work.

 For the most part, inexplicably, in Deadly Premonition, you’re dealing with the undead anyhow. I’m not the best person at shooters, but I certainly know what’s a good one and what isn’t.  Deadly Premonition is not a very good shooter. It’s really janky. Some of the weapons don’t make sense in terms of how balanced they are. The controls are also really janky. This is not really a surprise considering the game’s strength wasn’t supposed to be its shooter aspects. In fact, those parts weren’t even supposed to be there.

 Deadly Premonition is often cited as an artistic piece or a good game simply because of its story and character writing.  It has an excellent main character who was cast almost perfectly. It has a lot of eccentric characters filling the town of Greenvale to help you solve the murder mystery or help obstruct it. The end result of having an unreliable narrator works out in the game’s favour. It helped sprout pop culture references, weird humour, quirky dialogue and more. I have certainly never watched Twin Peaks but I got the allusions either way since the show was so big. Slowly uncovering how every cast member lives their lives throughout the town and every day makes you more emotionally connected with them.

 Greenvale is more of a sandbox than just a place where a crime is committed. You can play darts. You can race cars. You can do a ton of sidequests somewhere that will reward you elsewhere. You can collect trading cards??? You can carry some lady holding a pot everywhere? You can taste-test for one of your coworkers? You can do a lot of stuff that makes zero sense but I still end up enjoying it all anyway.

 It looks like a PS2 or Dreamcast game or something and I almost found that utterly endearing in the era in which it was released. The soundtrack itself is so dissonant and doesn’t always fit the situation. Sometimes the sound mixing is so all over the place that it often results in making a scene more hilarious than it should be. There’s a song that’s just… American Idiot… on the soundtrack for some reason. Along the way, you start wondering “is this game real? Am I real? Is this really happening right now?” and yes, yes it is.

 In the end, because of its cult success and getting people talking, it allowed Swery 65 to make more games. Deadly Premonition was lightning in a bottle for him. He followed up with D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (unfortunately in limbo). He cowrote Lord of Arcana and Lord of Apocalypse. He recently released The Missing. If anything, I’m more interested in what he makes. I’m eagerly looking forward to The Good Life.

  999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Text/Puzzle-adventures, rather than pure visual novels, became a staple of some players’ libraries due in part of the popular Ace Attorney series, Professor Layton series, and whatever Mystery Case File games that were published by Nintendo. 999 is not a pure visual novel. It’s a puzzle adventure game with visual novel elements. With art by Kinu Nishimura and a story written by Kotaro Uchikoshi (who had a few visual novels under his belt), it was difficult for me to ignore this game. I was also at a point where I really wanted to get into a lot of the games that Aksys published so it was a natural choice to buy.

 A lot of the localization and language in this game was edited so that while it stays true to the spirit of the original language, a lot of care was put into making the dialogue and writing sound natural in the English language versus going line by line exactly. It worked out in the game’s favour because the script was fairly large. Based on Uchikoshi’s past games, he likes to ask a question and generally incorporate some pseudoscience in his narratives. 999’s version of pseudoscience ended up being morphogenetic fields (see: Rupert Sheldrake). This theory ended up the basis for a few characters and it is the way the story unravels. He also took inspiration from another older game of Chunsoft’s: Banshee’s Last Cry where the player is put into an unsettling position right off the bat. Indeed, 999 starts the player in media res, but the player is already in trouble when you begin to control the main character.

 The puzzles were added to the game so that it would be received well by a wider audience than just visual novel readers. They were naturally and seamlessly integrated into the experience that the game became almost wholly about the puzzle rooms and whatever flavour dialogue occurred during the puzzle rooms. A lot of inspiration seems to have been taken from browser-based escape games like the Crimson Room from 2004. Escape the Room games were a subgenre of point and click adventure games and it was nice seeing the concept integrated in a narrative experience that wasn’t Myst (see: http://www.fasco-cs.net/ for more information). Due to the puzzles being a fundamental part of the game’s story, with them getting more and more difficult, the final puzzle for the entire game at the end of the true route is both a relief and also incredibly impactful due to using both of the DS screens and also revealing a lot to the player about the narrative.

 If I had criticism for the game, I feel like it would be having to play the game repeatedly, doing the same puzzles repeatedly in order to unlock another prerequisite ending for the true ending. I did not play the later port which rectifies this but I’m not entirely sure that being able to see the branches would be great for the game either. I also feel like, just like a lot of Uchikoshi’s writing and previous games, that when the characters start cracking jokes when they have to urgently do things to not die, the tone feels a little off.

 With that said, 999 is one of the more compelling text/puzzle-adventures from last decade, and it uses its native platform to its advantage. There weren’t a lot of games that used the DS screens to convey a narrative properly but when you are faced with the revelation that the game was using the two screens for a remarkable reason, you feel like the game is a natural and powerful addition to any DS library and gives significance for the dual screens.

  Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

The funniest thing about Metal Gear Rising was that I actually disliked it at the beginning when I first started playing it. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time, and I didn’t ‘get’ the parry mechanic. At first, I guess I was playing it for the sake of playing it? It definitely took me a while to even warm up to it. The camera was obnoxious (and still gets to be obnoxious in some places), and I felt incredibly nauseous while playing it sometimes.

 It wasn’t until I got to the Mistral boss that I finally … found what I was looking for… I’m sorry. I’m serious, though. Metal Gear Rising truly shines during the boss battles. When I finished that particular boss battle, I’d reflected that I was smiling like an idiot the entire way through. I don’t think I’d fought satisfying boss battles in years prior to that. Returning to previous chapters told me that Platinum really likes to frame and teach players via trial by fire. Learn to parry yourself, here’s a test to see if you can parry well and you can get a trophy for it, here’s the final test to see if you can even parry (Monsoon). I loved that Metal Gear Rising threw a lot of what we knew about Metal Gear Solid out of the window, with a significantly interesting score, boss battles that centre around the climax of a battle (expertly done via excellent sound design as I noted in my SotY writeup this year), and a more interesting and personable version of Raiden. It relies far more on offense than defense and stealth, and that’s okay to me. It ends up separating Raiden even more from Snake.

 The final boss is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of affair, and I ended up loving every single part of it. I felt like it was one of the best final bosses in years. Don’t know how to parry? You’re fucked. Don’t know how to use the game’s other offensive rush tactics like Defensive Offense and running? Good luck. The game makes sure you try to know how to do these things before even bothering to attempt the boss, with the major roadblock being Monsoon. And if you can’t parry by then, the game brutally tells you that you aren’t doing it right by making the boss battles ramp up to significantly require you to use one of the game’s core mechanics for elegant combat. This isn’t the most elegantly-designed game whatsoever. In fact, it can be really sloppy. With that said, it’s one of the better action games I played all decade.

  Papers, Please!

Papers, Please is work. It feels like work because it is work. You can grant freedom and admittance to people, or you can just take their freedom away or not permit them to cross the border. Everything you do is controlled by the government, or by rules and regulations. If you do something wrong, you’re written up. Do enough wrong, and your pay is cut. Do enough wrong and your pay is cut multiple times, and you can’t provide enough for your family. Everything about the game just feels like work. Even right down to the end of the day when the whole thing feels like a budget calculation and spreadsheets. Everything about the game’s UI feels a lot like work. Where do you allocate space to do your job? How much money do you allocate to heat/food/medicine? It ends up feeling very tedious, but somehow fulfilling.

 You are an immigration officer in a fictional Soviet state. The interesting part of the game is that it doesn’t only feel like a job, but it also feels like government and self-evaluation. You end up studying why the government keeps regulating the border the way they do, and thinking about how mundane the job can be. You know that people’s livelihood and family lives hinge on whether or not they cross the border, and sometimes your penchant for following the rules and disallowing people across the border may be called into question when people plead with you to go through. Do you accept docked pay so you can reunite people or save people from slavery, or do you do as you’re told and live with the consequences of your actions. In a small way, your ethics are called into question. It’s a nice reminder that a lot of things, despite people being people and having their own stories, generally seem to come down to bureaucracy and pieces of paper as opposed to a full understanding of humanity or extenuating circumstances.

 I’d also like to add that Jorji is one of the best characters of 2013 to me. I think his glass half-full philosophy / if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again philosophy is something to look forward to whenever I encounter him in-game.

 In many ways, Papers, Please feels a lot like the Milgram experiment. Are you going to make cruel judgement calls to separate a family, or keep people in slavery because the authorities and higher-ups essentially tell you to do your job so you can keep your family healthy? Papers, Please in many ways is written incredibly well. It doesn’t use reams of text to make you understand the overall premise of the game but through your actions, you’re also helping to tell the story. That’s the sort of weird and wonky player “agency” that I find interesting.

  World of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series had a better decade than the last decade, I feel, considering the quantity of releases increase from the previous decade.  However, it had a lot of growing pains to deal with at the beginning of the decade. Final Fantasy games sell well all the time, and more people playing games than ever, it makes sense that sales numbers continuously increase. Attach rates aren’t as large.  Final Fantasy XIV came out in 2010 and it was not a good game at all to the point of having to be structured for its 2013 re-release. Final Fantasy XIII had mixed reviews, as well as its subsequent direct sequels.  Final Fantasy All the Bravest wasn’t exactly the best mobile debut for the series. The brand also suffered from dilution – the Final Fantasy name was attached to almost anything and everything for the sake of sales, and numerous spinoffs were released and the quality varied.

 Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, originally planned to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis setting with Final Fantasy XIII were renamed and rebranded/redesigned to be their own titles: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy Type-0. Both games also had mixed reviews and multiple delays. If anything, I can probably say that this decade was the most divisive for Final Fantasy fans.

 World of Final Fantasy came out during the same year Final Fantasy XV. I think I’ve made my feelings about Final Fantasy XV fairly well-known.  Perhaps my feelings about that game influenced how I felt about World of Final Fantasy but as someone who has played this series for decades (for reference: the first game is one year older than I am, and my first Final Fantasy was the first game), I felt like World of Final Fantasy was a love letter written to fans like me. I am a long-standing fan of the series over the course of decades and have been through its up and downs, and while I don’t like every game in the series (we all know how I feel about half of the games in the series, after all), I can still look at them for their influence on the rest of the series.  I also like the newer games equally as the older games and dislike and like games from all of the eras, so I don’t really have issues with how the series is represented in general unless the games are really bad.

 World of Final Fantasy feels like a Kingdom Hearts-esque exploration of the Final Fantasy games while throwing Pokemon into the mix. It involves a lot of older references as well as bringing new references in and throwing it into a presentation mode that fans of all ages can enjoy. The main characters are chibi which fits right into how the older games represented characters, but they can also grow taller to represent how the newer games are represented. You can create stacks of party members according to their height and balance well accordingly out of classic Final Fantasy enemies and characters in order to battle against other classic Final Fantasy characters, villains, and monsters.

 The game is exactly what I wanted a mainline Final Fantasy to look. It retains a cartoony look, embracing stylization while adding so much detail to the areas’ setpieces so that they also stand out while the characters move around on the map. I also felt like the score was also a brilliant blend of old and new: with Masashi Hamauzu composing the score but also remixing older Uematsu themes to fit within the context of the score. The score was loftier compared to Hamauzu’s older works and the strings, synth, and piano works incredibly well to bring the game’s world to life.

 The idea for WoFF was to try to bring younger fans into the fold, hence the Pokemon-like influence for using and rearing many classic FF enemies so that children could start to recognise them. The loftier script was also written in-mind taking into account both lighter storytelling from older FF titles and some darker bits taking into account newer Final Fantasy games. I’m not too sure that SE was very successful with bringing younger fans into the fold, but the way the game was written fit well with what I remember liking about FF for the first few games I had played. I also enjoyed that characters were chosen for their involvement to the plot versus them simply picking the most popular ones. This is why we got characters like Eiko and Shelke as well as regular FF mainstays. All of the characters were woven into the story well, as citizens of Grymoire as opposed to characters who just have their regular identities transported into Grymoire instead.

 I felt like the Pokemon mechanic was handled well. I even loved it enough to have the idea commissioned in combination with our FFXIV characters.  I liked that it changed up whatever skills you had access to, it influenced your stats, and it looked adorable to boot.

 I would absolutely love to see a mainline game made by this team because I felt like the loose style of storytelling and worldbuilding made for a very good Final Fantasy game, and in essence, WoFF was the real Final Fantasy XV to me. It felt more “Final Fantasy” than a lot of the games released in the same decade, or even compared to ones released in the previous decade. It was a nice step and touch to demonstrating that there were staff members who remembered what Final Fantasy is to older fans.

  Va-11 Hall-A

I’m too young to have a big attachment to older PC games like the ones on the MSX or the PC-88/98. But I’ve always had a fondness for their graphics and their music, like sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong time or something. It’s one of the reasons why I gravitated hard to the PC Engine—I felt like it was a way for me to finally experience stuff like that.

 Valhalla is supposed to be a bartending simulator but in reality, mixing drinks is a bit of a break and distraction between the visual novel bits. Usually if you’re stuck in a futuristic landscape akin to Bubblegum Crisis or Blade Runner, you’re asked to investigate a mystery or explore it. But nope, you’re a bartender making drinks and making enough to scrape by and pay your rent. You hear a lot about the world from various clientele while you serve them drinks but you don’t necessarily have to do anything with the information they give you.

 I worked as a medical administrator for a few years and over that time, I got to hear a lot of stories, meet some famous people (like been on TV people or youtubers or people who got paid to do things for celebrities), and just meet a lot of neat and interesting regular people. I got to hear stories about people’s health or their personal lives or witness people falling in or out of love. You don’t necessarily have to do anything with that information (in fact you can’t due to patient confidentiality), but the stories become sealed in your head. I can’t help but to think of some of these people I met for those few years or where they are now. I actually run into some of them at my current lab so I keep getting to see some of their stories. You eventually learn how quickly icebreak in situations like these to make people feel at ease or find a topic of conversation while they’re waiting. I even used my phone to gauge news because a lot of the time when I got home, I was too tired to do anything or getting news in the palm of my hand was incredibly easy to do.

 In this sense, I understood Valhalla. It may look dull and it doesn’t look special but you’re the one who makes it so that it doesn’t have a dull moment in the bar. You’re the one who has to make it enjoyable even if your pay sucks. Because you don’t want to be miserable either. It’s through the conversations with others that you learn about Jill because she has to add commentary too. Everyone has a different way of requesting something and it’s up to you to figure out how to decipher it. It’s a lot of like practice in being in the service industry.  You need to consistently gauge a conversation in order to actually give the client what they want to unlock more conversation.

 The pacing in this game may be a little slow, but it doesn’t feel like a hindrance because the writing is really good. Something always happens to keep you interested or you have to mix drinks to keep yourself on your toes. The humour comes across well, and nothing really falls flat. Part of the reason why I feel like the writing is genuine is because the game’s developers wanted to write something that reflected how they live in Venezuela, akin to laughter in the middle of despair according to the developers. The writing is balanced well with the music and the visuals which makes the whole package a wonderful experience.

 This game also has Rad Shiba so it belongs on the list by default.  

  El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

I had gone to Catholic Schools all my life. I was even in a nursery school operated by nuns when I was a toddler, and they always tried to get me to write with my right hand instead of my left (which left me ambidextrous for some things lol).  Because of my experiences with religion growing up, I absolutely had questions and doubts and concerns with metaphysics, theology, and epistemology. Every Catholic, I think, as they grow up and have to take religion classes, and having to take what the province mandates as metaphysics are somehow inserted into math and biology syllabi without even being mentioned in the coursework at all, questions it. And that’s okay. You should. The best religion and philosophy teacher I ever had growing up always said we should question everything we learn including what he taught us.

 Going through school, though, and reading the Bible and having Bible study, my friends and I always sorta wondered what it’d be like if a game was made about this stuff?  I know it may be a little sacrilegious but there are so many stories in there that would fit a game. Throughout my life, as I became acquainted with others from different branches of Christianity or other western religions, I talked with others who played games who… surprisingly had the same ideas and desires?  It probably won’t ever be done. El Shaddai is inspired by the Book of Enoch and while it is considered as non-canon in most Christian and Jewish sects, I guess it might come close to what some of us wanted.

 El Shaddai was a game that I picked up mostly because I bought almost every niche game back then. I just looked at some of the trailers, thought it looked just okay, and picked it up because I felt like Ignition was going out of business and it would be a novelty item. Ignition did not have the best reputation among the people I talked to back then. I played Lux-Pain whose localization left a lot to be desired. Nostalgia was a middling RPG. Arc Rise Fantasia’s localization left a lot to be desired despite being a good game. Deadly Premonition had an English dub already but the text localization wasn’t that great. I felt like El Shaddai was the most polished game that Ignition released. They got incredibly great voice actors, including Jason Isaacs. They developed a score attack combo ranking system for replayability. They had a fantastic art director and background art. They made two bishounen that screamed for female audiences to pay attention.

 All of it didn’t exactly work out for the time the game came out, and I always contended that the game was released before its time. Unfortunately, all the effort put into El Shaddai didn’t exactly save Ignition. I feel like if El Shaddai were released in the later half of the decade, it would have been accepted. However, I also feel like its marketing was mishandled. It doesn’t feel like a Devil May Cry successor. It shifts between genres continuously. It is very much like Nier in this regard: it is not for everyone and it has its own unique feel that sets it apart from other games.  It is also a score attack action game, not a hard character action game.

 One thing I really enjoyed about El Shaddai was that all of the setpieces aren’t exactly the same. It ranges from a watercolour painting to abstraction to 2D children art to more abstraction to Final Fantasy VII and keep going like that. It references rhythm games, 2D Platformers, racing games, action games, Devil May Cry (with its own brand of Devil Trigger to boot), and other genres to create something that syncs up very well with the rest of the game due to lore reasons: different enemies prefer different things so that’s why each environment looks different or the gameplay styles may be a little different. I’m okay with this because it shakes things up per chapter and the game doesn’t feel stale at all. You’re expected to adjust to new mechanics per area.

 The combat is a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, where certain weapons beat other weapons, or some bosses change which weapons they’re weak against (and the game gives you other weapons so you can adjust accordingly during fights). The weapon you wield also modify your platforming abilities (ex: one allows Enoch to dash, one weighs him down, etc), and they also vary in terms of character strength. In order to obtain G-rankings for each stage, the player needs to analyse which weapon would be the most useful for certain enemies and combo while guarding, guard-breaking, and stealing enemies’ weapons.

 I am putting El Shaddai on this list because I really enjoyed it for what it was. It’s a brilliant score attack action game with a fantastic soundtrack and fantastic art design. It made for a pleasant sensory experience and made some religious figures fairly compelling with good character designs. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding and prettiest score attack games I’ve played this decade.

  To the Moon

Everyone goes through life with regrets. I’m in my thirties now and I think I’ve done things I’ve regretted, or I didn’t other to do something and I’ve regretted that. Kan Gao was inspired by his grandfather’s illness when he was writing and making To the Moon, he’s noted that when he gets old and when his time would come, he might end up regretting some decision he’d made throughout his entire life.  Everyone goes through that when faced with introspection. You can have the courage to love, you can feel pain, you can live your life fully, or not live it enough. To the Moon explores this, and while the writing isn’t the best and can be a little messy (this gets improved on in Gao’s later sequels to this game: A Bird Story and Finding Paradise), I understand what To the Moon was trying to accomplish. To the Moon is an exploration of everything that life throws at us, and the results of the decisions made throughout our lives that touches everyone and everything around us until our time passes.

 Eventually you build up so many wishes and have a big bucket list but eventually there will come a time where you won’t remember why half of those things are on those lists.  To the Moon relates the story of Johnny Wyles, an elderly man on his deathbed with one wish: to go to the moon. The problem is that he could not remember why. The general flow of Gao’s games have involved two scientists from Sigmund Corp, specialising in wish fulfillment at the end of someone’s life, creating memories for people in their final moments to generate comfort for the patient. How ever you may feel about the moral implications of generating false memories for someone prior to their end of life, this is merely a set up for traveling through time to understand what the patient had wanted and what they’d accomplished.  

 Johnny’s character revolves around another character with an ASD. I will also note that my brother has autism (compounded with a multisystem syndrome). While the central focus was on Asperger’s Syndrome (Tony Attwood books being mentioned in the game), I’m a little happy that ASDs are being brought up in games and the game truly hit home for me. The writing may not be stellar, but I felt that the theme of the impact of medical disorders was communicated well. Particularly the theme of why communication and connections with others is so difficult for those with ASDs and those who take care of those who have ASDs. It’s easy to sympathize with the characters trying to express what they mean to each other.

 The game itself is relatively short. Regardless of its length, players must confront some uncomfortable situations and emotions that people struggle with daily or even at different points in our lives. I’m older now and I appreciate this game a little more since I’ve come to experience more of what the game had been trying to tell me a decade ago. The writing may not be the best, and it can be a little messy at times with respect to how it’s presented and written, but a lot of its messages come across as utterly genuine. Slowly unraveling the reasoning behind Johnny’s desire to go to the moon is beautiful. This game is quite human and I appreciate all three games that are a part of this subseries that came out this decade.  I am looking forward to more.

  Nier Gestalt

If you’ve played a Drakengard game or the first Nier game at all, you kind of know what you’re getting into.  Not the best graphics of the decade, plays pretty janky, having bosses that can be difficult to manage, etc.  So going into Nier Gestalt in 2010, I knew what I was getting into. Not a lot of people bothered playing this game since I don’t think it got as much promotion considering it came out during the same year a mainline Final Fantasy game got localized.  Nier also got a little scrutiny since the west got a different protagonist from the Japanese version.  I will say that this worked out in its favour, since the protagonist being one of the central character’s father versus her brother makes for a better, more interesting story than having yet another shounen protagonist.

 I will support the case that, like the Drakengard games before it, Nier Gestalt was difficult to get into. The gameplay is jank.  Easy is too easy.  Normal doesn’t drop enough stuff to warrant playing on the mode. Hard can be a little hard but eventually it evens out. I generally used spears for the charge portion of the combo but in the end it doesn’t necessarily matter what weapon type you use. It doesn’t even matter if you use magic or not unless the game prompts you to do so. It’s either broken or not and the game doesn’t have a set balance for anything. Combos are boring and you’re essentially mashing a button. Even playing through the Nightmare DLC for extra drops, it continues being like this. I was used to playing shmups so it wasn’t necessarily revolutionary that AoE attacks looked as though they were spat out from a shmup either.

 I wasn’t quite understanding why game started acquiring a cult following, because what I’d played of it was pretty boring and standard. “It’s just a regular ARPG starring an older character versus a young protagonist,” I said to myself. I guess that was the reason.  I didn’t quite understand why, even past acquiring Kaine, because I guess I accepted that there weren’t a lot of NPCs and certain towns were the way they were due to, what I surmised were, RPG conventions. It wasn’t until I finished the questline for the brothers, where their mother tried to run away with a man and abandon her children, that I finally started to understand.

 Within every substory, there was something that resonated with someone.  I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to abandon their responsibilities, and at the same time I understood. Sometimes you just want to take care of yourself. With the way the older brother sort of understood why even through his anger and disappointment, it resonated with me. I finally ‘got’ the story, so I wanted to play more. This became one of those rare games where I played only for the story and lore and abandoned any hopes of the gameplay getting better.  I fished, I upgraded weapons, I did enough sidequests for the trophies. I almost platinumed this game, but since the drop rates are so terrible for this game, I didn’t.

 I started enjoying the game for what it was. It was genuinely a fun romp where it feels like everyone taking part in the game’s design contributed something unique and something they were fond of.  If you read any interview from Emi Evans from this time period, you’d realise language is something she’s particularly fond of, so much of the composition and lyrical content of every song was a phoneme from any language that would make it sound like an evolved or a sort of Esperanto version of a current language. This came into play with the game’s lore, and many of the interviews were interesting to read from back then.

 Many of the game’s stages borrowed from different genres of video games. There were the obvious shmup references, the rail shooter reference, the visual novel reference, the Resident Evil/fixed angle horror game reference, the Shadow of the Colossus references, the 2D platformer references, the Zelda references, the top-down puzzle game references, etc. For what the game lacked with respect to its combat, the game excelled at reliving genres and putting maps together in such a way that it felt like an ode to other games and genres that inspired it. The City of Façade’s language being a loose phoneme reconstruction of Japanese felt right at home with the dungeon’s Zelda references complete with Zelda fanfare for me. The Forest of Myth being one long visual novel was so hilarious and unique at the same time.  

 Playing more of the game and opening up the lore with every playthrough was neat. I don’t particularly like when games waste my time, but Nier made each new playthrough worth it. Killing bosses quickly for a trophy, redoing dungeons to see the enemies’ perspectives, and unlocking more of the story and learning more about the world that came from a Drakengard ending felt satisfying. As someone who was studying linguistics at the time, constructing nonsense words from drops out of different morphemes to act as accessories or armour was really amazing for me.

 Much of Nier felt organically put together, from characters’ writing and what they wanted from each other, to the dungeon design, to maybe even the combat design… it felt like a truly special game made from the heart with as much lore as it could possibly include. I had purchased the Nightmare DLC primarily to get weapon drops and while it isn’t nearly as interesting as the rest of the game, it has some implications for the lore. The music and resulting soundscape lends so much to the worldbuilding and includes many peoples’ languages from the area with French, Japanese, English, German, etc phonemes thrown around to sound utterly organic and special.

 At the end of this, I have come to realise that despite saying to myself that I never played this game for the game… I’ve been lying to myself this entire time. I actually did play the game for its game parts. Those are the bits I remember the most about it, and they’re the reasons why I genuinely loved the game. It’s unforgettable for me and it’s why it’s one of my favourites in general.

  Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

I did not care about MMOs in my late 20s because I was far more focused on finishing school and actually working hard in my field. I think by the end of university, I barely played games because I literally didn’t have time for them. I probably stressed myself out a lot. I threw myself into a semester where I had what felt like 500 evaluations, had to study a lot, had to write papers, and I ended up breaking up with my ex-boyfriend amicably. I was on my own a lot and to be honest, I think I felt okay that way. I think maybe others thought I was unapproachable.

 My best friend now turned fiancé had been begging me to start playing Final Fantasy XIV for a really long time, since he was in the beta prior to its 2.0 release. I made excuses and said I won’t play until a speedster class was implemented since nothing really stuck out at me. In reality, I was mostly busy. Well, Ninja got implemented late 2014, so I ran out of excuses. I got a copy of ARR but to be honest, I didn’t have time for it and I didn’t play it much so I didn’t bother to try harder since my focus was elsewhere.

 Luckily, I got into a semester where I didn’t have that much coursework to think about so I ended up playing XIV more. I caught up during ARR and really my intention was to only play through ARR and finish the story and quit. But my fiancé’s friends were so nice and welcoming to me. When the servers shut down for Heavensward maintainance and I’d finished the ARR storyline literally that night, I made the conscious decision to buy Heavensward. By that time, I was falling a little too hard for my best friend and I really liked my newfound friends. I wasn’t ready to leave Eorzea yet.

 Of course, I had some quests to finish up during Early Access so I didn’t get the opportunity to play with anyone I knew during the main storyline for Heavensward. Heavensward was leaps and bounds above anything I experienced in ARR. The story was well-written, the English voices were recast and given better direction, character deaths were meaningful, a smaller cast made for good character building, the environments were large and you could only assume things happened in each area eventually (they didn’t in the long run), each area was different, it reminded me of Canada… Heavensward made me feel at home.

 Almost every job felt built on, since nothing was really truly culled. A lot of what you got felt like an extension of what you already did. The three new jobs didn’t start out too well or too balanced. Machinist was a mess. Astrologian felt weird. Dark Knight had some growing pains but probably performed the best out of the three once the Alexander raid was implemented given that its specialty at the time centered on magic defense. I was one of the five people who really liked bowmage since it required you to think before you cast but you still did a lot of damage if you thought before firing. I swapped to an omnihealer main officially halfway through the patches because my fiancé requested it.

 Heavensward had a lot of growing pains. For all the team did for the base game, they took a six-month vacation to recharge. 3.1 wasn’t really worth the wait and a lot of people quit the game or stopped playing because nothing really meaningful was added to the game other than a faceroll raid, poorly-tuned exploration missions, and two dungeons. Gordias earlier in the expansion nearly killed the raiding community as a whole.  3.2 didn’t fare too much better, though it did add the best raid tier that has yet to be topped. 3.3 was when FFXIV solidified itself as an MMO with a grand story to tell, with one of the best conclusions a Final Fantasy game had seen in almost a decade. The sound design was near-perfect for this patch, and it was when a lot of us genuinely felt comfortable with the game and its future. Heavensward wasn’t perfect; it still had its missteps and balancing issues, but it was the most comfortable and profoundly skilled I’d ever felt with the game.

 Final Fantasy XIV may not be what it used to be.  I feel old and I feel like I’ve played the game for a really long time.  Now while it’s riding the wave of success, currently having the best story Final Fantasy has seen in a very long time, I can’t help but to remember Heavensward when we finally felt assured about the game and it felt like a cohesive gift to players who were active at that time.  I got to know so many people during Heavensward, and now I’m engaged to my best friend partially due to our experiences together playing at that time.

  Undertale

The late half of 2015 was a really bad year for me. The first half was really great. I started playing FFXIV often, I finished the hardest year I’ve ever had of my 9 years of university so far with high grades and was going full-on hard into my residency year, I fell in love with my best friend.  I was pretty happy since I finally felt very successful.

 If anyone can recall (or this may be new to the person who is reading this), towards the end of 2015 my dad was falsely accused by our neighbour of possession of a weapon (it was a gardening tool), and he had a restraining order put against him so he couldn’t live with us anymore.  My little brother is severely disabled so that’s why I still lived at home so I could help out.  Without my dad around, it was so much harder.  I came home from my days at the hospital every day after a 12-hour day, had to babysit my brother since my mom still cooked food to carry for my dad who had to live at my aunt’s, somehow had to find time to study for my licensing exam and do some work for school and my thesis, had to find time to socialise a tiny bit otherwise I’d go crazy, maybe had to take my brother to his appointments by coming home a little early, and then had to find whatever time I had left to sleep.  I stopped posting on message boards because I literally had no time to do so and I wouldn’t have anything of value to contribute to discussions either.  

 I detached myself from a lot of people. It was actually kind of lonely. It was really hard. I lashed out at people when I shouldn’t have. I don’t look back on those days other than the bright spots with fondness at all.

 Before that, everyone was telling me to play Undertale but I sort of didn’t want to? I felt like the fanbase was sort of making the game unapproachable around the time it came out. By the end of the year, I was so out of the loop about games that I didn’t give a hoot.  A friend of mine, Shadow Hog, bought the game for me on Steam. I still have the e-mail message for it.

 My now-fiancé got his own copy so we could play it together because at that point I didn’t want to do much of anything alone. I was actually sinking deeper into depression and verging on a mental breakdown. I was not mentally sound and every single week it felt like someone had to save me from doing something stupid.

 I started Undertale and I didn’t really think much of it at the start.  I can’t remember when it started clicking with me but maybe it was around the time I got into a battle with Tsunderplane and Vulkin and got to Hotland that I gave up and started having fun with it because it was just… silly. It was time to let down your hair and have some fun for once and not feel completely guilty about it.

 The idea of having to win and achieving a certain ending by sparing your enemy isn’t necessarily new – SMT’s demon negotiation, Silent Hill 2’s morality system, and MGS3’s fight with the Sorrow have some sort of sparing mechanic. The hybrid of a turn-based battle system with enemy negotiation, as well as dodge system inspired by a shmup makes every encounter both strategic (ie: having to avoid bullets while also sparing enemies in a set order per battle) and consistently active.  Unless you are going for a certain other ending, you cannot just sit there and hold down the attack button and expect to win.  That said, this makes a lot of encounters a little longer than a standard RPG battle, but the flavour text for each uniquely-designed enemy makes many of the battle worth it. Undertale isn’t a hard game unless you’re playing on a certain route. But I don’t necessarily think the gameplay part of Undertale speaks properly for it. The dungeon maps are relatively simple. They all have their little gimmicks. The battle system is relatively easy to understand.

 The reason why Undertale has such a prolific fanbase is primarily because of its character writing and ability to make and use memes properly enough that they catch on. Many of the characters are easily encountered early, are easy to draw (propels a lot of fanart), and understand due to the character writing. What also helps is that the game is 4-6 hours long, and it came out at the right time with the right kind of word of mouth.  Undertale could have easily fallen into the sea like so many other RPGs before it but it didn’t.  My fiancé and I were shopping for work clothes one day at a store that sells business clothing, construction clothing, and scrubs. He was wearing a shirt with the Delta Rune on it since he loves game shirts that are relatively subtle. Even then, one of the sales clerks pointed it out and was pretty excited to see it.  It was pretty crazy to both of us how popular Undertale had gotten.  I don’t think the popularity was unwarranted. I think it’s a fantastic game, helped by a considerably lengthy varied and catchy soundtrack. Granted, I was not as exposed to how explosive its popularity was when it came out. But I understood why so many people liked it. It wasn’t for its gameplay.

 As I progressed through Undertale, instead of thinking of the lore (which was well-written), I was thinking of how the monsters treated your character with respect and love because you treated them that way.  They didn’t go out of their way to fear you, and welcomed you as one of their own.  In the end, they were hesitant to even kill you, and you were hesitant to kill them.  Even then you still had the spare/save commands.

 At the very end, you only had the Save command.

 And that’s how I felt. When Hopes and Dreams started playing, I couldn’t help but to cry. When I was repeatedly nudged to press the Save command, I didn’t actually feel like the game nudged me to do so. That was something I wanted to do. Just remembering how depressed I was when I started playing this game and then progressing to its true end with Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World playing, I couldn’t help but to feel like my hopes and dreams were still alive.

 Even if I was going through a really hard time in my life, hope was still there as long as I had people around me that supported me all the way through. That was the time in my life that I realised who my real friends were. And in the end, I felt like Undertale told me my friends saved me and that my dreams weren’t crushed, now matter what threw at me.

 And that’s why it’s my game of the decade. It may not be the most perfect game that came out this decade or the objectively best-crafted, but it did so much for me. When I was prompted for my game of the decade, Undertale was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t question it. I just knew. I don’t think we’ll get another Undertale again in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say that I gave it a shot and I love it for what it is.

#games of the decade #gotd

[dwaynepride]

Already A World Away; pt 1

Summary: After an emotional and intense night at the bar, Pride and the reader must deal with the aftermath of a hasty decision.

Words: 2,047

Warnings: None

Tags: @pageofultron @stanathanxoox @starryrevelations @6adb0y @thegoodlonelydalek @consultingdoctorwholock @thebeckyjolene @diaryofafan17 @specialagentlokitty

Notes: a continuation of Stay With Me by @specialagentmonkey. i HIGHLY recommend you read that one first, for some important context. this fic isn’t really a stand-alone fic, it’s a continuation. you might be able to piece together what happened anyway but??? monkey’s fic is so good anyway so just fuckin read it

Part 2 | Part 3

Dwayne’s dreams were merely replaying the events at the bar, last night. In his sleep, he’s touching your hand, feeling the warmth of your skin despite the chill of rain threatening to chase it away. And it hadn’t, because it’s still soft and warm and urges him to feel more of it. Your eyes are on him solely, yet his dreams can’t replicate the exact look you had. The way the low lights glittered off your eyes, looking like stars.

And his dreams surely can’t perfectly recreate that first kiss; searing and intense, his hands cupping your cheeks and trying to put as much of himself into it as he can. There is a small detail his subconscious leaves out, though. That little noise you made in the back of your throat - the noise that fueled Dwayne’s fire and deepened the kiss. But he’s glad he remembers it. Glad it’s seared into his memory because it was one of the best sounds he’s ever heard.

Either way, the dream-kiss is enough to wake him up, dragging him away from the pleasant memory into the faintly-lit reality of his bedroom. Dwayne inhales immediately, air filling his lungs and exhaling to try and slow the quick beating of his heart.

It was a damn realistic dream. Pride rubs his hand over his face to try and clear his head of the images because that’s all it was; a dream, no matter how good it was or how much he wanted it to be real.

And it wasn’t real. You coming into his bar, soaking wet and crying. His offer to stay at the office with him for a little while. The kissing. It had to be a very realistic, very cruel scenario that his brain cooked up for him during the night. Dwayne huffs at the thought, sitting up in bed and blinking around his dawn-lit bedroom. There was no way you were here, in his room, sleeping...

Dwayne is surprised at how quickly he recognizes your shoes in the corner of the room. Your coat, which was soaking wet last night, is thrown over a chair to air dry.

He hears a loud, sleepy sigh from the other side of the wall. His blood goes cold, swallowing as he pulls the covers away to stand and silently make his way around the shelves. Dwayne’s bare feet make little noise against the old wood floor; he’s able to sneak up and squint through the low-light to see your curled up, sleeping form in the old pull-out bed he keeps stashed away for when Laurel comes to visit. You have an old quilt pulled up to your chin, hair adorably messy from sleep.

Dwayne swallows down his shock, stepping away back toward his own bed. It wasn’t a dream. You were really here, using his bedroom as shelter until you find a new little place for your own. And how long will that take? It’s not exactly easy to find a good home in New Orleans; everything was too expensive or too far away from the office or not in the best neighborhood.

The place you had with your ex was perfect...

With a huff, Dwayne shakes his head and quietly walks out of his bedroom, descending the cold stairs to start with breakfast. You had a long night, and you’ll be hungry.

Though, try as he might to distract himself with making grits, Dwayne couldn’t pull himself away from the fact that you were sleeping soundly right above his head. And now that the shock of reality had dwindled away, it was being replaced with the harsh feeling of doubt at the whole situation that he created on a whim, because he was kissing you and it felt right.

Was it really a good idea to let you stay here for potentially weeks? Would Dwayne lose control of his feelings, like he did last night? Initiate another kiss before you were ready - preying on your vulnerability?

No. No, he wouldn’t. Because right now, you needed to be around friends, and that’s what he is. As much as it hurt to think it, Dwayne was still your friend, and one poorly-timed make-out session in his bar in the middle of the night doesn’t change that.

Maybe in time, after you find a new place and you’re moved on, things can continue. A sweeter kiss after a perfect little dinner date and Dwayne wouldn’t have to try to cheer you up because you’d been walking in the rain. It’d be better than anything that ex-boyfriend of yours could stew up, that’s for sure.

But for now, Dwayne forces his attention into cooking.

--

When your eyes finally blinked open, blurry with sleep, things didn’t look familiar at all. The wallpaper of your bedroom being replaced with brick walls and chipped paint and old boxes. For a slight moment, the unfamiliarity of the room startles you, and your head pops off the pillow to the look around.

The old springs of the pull-out bed creak loudly under your shifting weight. Pale sunlight is creeping in from the window on the other side of the room; a nice change from how unpleasant the sunshine beamed in through the window at your place. And after a couple moments, you recognize the room and instantly feel a lot safer.

There was a certain calmness to waking up in Pride’s bedroom.

You sit up, ignoring the creaks of the springs. The room was silent; Pride must be up already. He was a heavy-snorer, you’ve learned. And there was no snores to be heard.

And you smirk at the thought; it took a little longer to fall asleep because of the noise, but it wasn’t all around unpleasant. It was nice, knowing he was just on the other side of the wall. A mere ten feet away, if you needed him.

Though, the smirk fell once you remembered the events leading up to sleeping in Pride’s bedroom. The kissing and touching and the intense feelings they brought. You look down and inspect the hoodie he lent you when your clothes were too soaked to wear, and a rush of heat suddenly makes it too warm to wear. God, you kissed him last night. Kissed him a lot. You could still remember the heat of his skin on your fingertips. How good he smelled and how right it felt to have him so close, standing between your knees, and it only worsened the blush.

What the hell were you going to say to him?

Well, you had until you went downstairs to figure it out, because the last thing you wanted was for him to come back up here and fetch you for breakfast. So you throw the blankets aside and stand, making for the door. Pointedly ignoring Pride’s unmade bed and his shoes laying in the corner next to yours.

You can hear him cooking even from the stairs. The clattering of pots and pants. The smell of biscuits and grits and sausage in the air, and your belly rumbles despite the ball of anxiety making you sick. You’re halfway down the stairs before remembering you’re supposed to be thinking of a way to start the awkward conversation. By the time you cross the archway, you’ve only come up with a ‘The bed was really comfortable.’

Pride looks up when you enter, and he offers a big smile. “Good mornin’!” He greets, head motioning to the table. “Breakfast’ll be done soon.”

He goes back to his cooking, leaving you to numbly pad over to the table. It was confusing, how normal he was acting. As if you’re just the first one on the team who came into work so your breakfast will be the hottest. You sit and look up at him, wondering why. After last night, after the passion he exhibited in his kisses, you kinda found it hard to believe he wasn’t fazed.

Pride might’ve been able to keep up the outward impression that everything was business as usual, but it was hard for him to keep his eyes on the food. It was hard to ignore that little jolt in his gut when you walked in, still wearing his hoodie and shorts and looking adorably wide-eyed, as if expecting a scolding.

But he keeps his conflicting feelings buried, for now. Concentrates on not letting the grits burn.

“Do you need help?”

His eyes dart upwards, seeing you lean forward in your chair, eyeing the breakfast. Pride shakes his head. “Nah, it’s almost done,” he answers lightly.

You’re quiet for a moment before speaking up again, “I can make some coffee?”

Pride blinks, pulling the grits off the heat with another slower shake of his head. “We’re out. I called Christopher and asked him to pick some up on the way over.”

He hears your soft sigh and the slight creak of the wooden chair when you shift your weight in it. “Alright, well, I can wash the dishes after breakfast, okay? All of them.”

This time, Pride’s reaction is much more visible on his face. When he straightens up and fixes his knitted-brow look at you, that’s when your gaze finally drops away from his. “I just wanna help out, okay? If I’m gonna be staying here until I find a new place, I don’t want to be a burden. I can help out with dishes or...whatever...”

The way your voice drops off at the end doesn’t help lift the weight from Pride’s heart at your proposal. “You don’t gotta earn your keep, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Pride responds, pouring some grits into a bowl with care. Puts a buttered biscuit on top before continuing. “You’ve been through enough.”

“But I’d feel bad if I just did nothing. I want you to know I’m grateful.”

He swallows, lips forming a tight line as Pride picks up the bowl and carries it over to the table. And as he sets it down, you’re still not looking at him; he sees a hint of pink in your cheeks, and wonders if he’s blushing, as well. But he sits down, anyway. Head lowering to catch your gaze and a hand resting on your arm. “Look at me,” Pride says, and you do. “We’re friends, and friends are there for each other. I’m happy to help.”

His words hang between the two of you for a few awkward moments. It was odd, saying out loud that you were friends. Obviously, you were; Pride had become one of your closest friends, and that’s a part of what drove you to him last night. But on the other hand, friends don’t make out in the middle of the night in an empty bar. When they do, they don’t normally stay friends.

But, on surface level, his words make sense. So you nod your head and turn into the table, picking the spoon and scooping up some of Pride’s delicious grits. The action seems to please him; he pats your arm and stands up to continue breakfast. The rest of the team outta be here soon.

He’s not sure how he’ll explain the situation to them. It was personal to you. Maybe a little humiliating, even though Pride is certain the team would be sympathetic. He’ll just make it clear that it’s a very temporary thing. Just until you find another place. Chris will definitely offer to help. So will the others.

And deep down, Pride is sure that it’s the best course of action. You’ll get back on your feet, bounce back from that asshole who tried to make you choose between him and your job. And maybe, after all that, you can pick up where you left off at the bar. He’s already missing the feel of your lips against his. He hopes you feel the same.

But if Pride’s being honest with himself, he’s not looking forward to the day when you find a new home for yourself, and he’ll have to pack away the old pull-out mattress again. Lay in bed and think about you and tuck the bar memory away, deep in his mind, in case it never happened again.

Dwayne already likes the idea of having you around all the time.

#ncis new orleans imagine #ncis nola imagine #ncis new orleans reader insert #dwayne pride x reader #dwayne pride imagine