#we should stand with devs and encourage them to tell us what we can do as players to fight against this

[thefirstknife]

First, I wanna say that I do NOT condone the extenely nasty and toxic behavior of various parts of the fandom, especially towards the devs. But I'm starting to wonder more and more if this is actually something the company brought on themselves? The game at this point relies on an increasingly expensive and predatory FOMO model and a lot of players seem to exhibit symptoms of genuine addiction to the game, or at least a very unhealthy relationship cultivated by that FOMO and "well I sunk all this money in I can't just stop now" mindsets. Which leads to players burning out and being irrational, which leads to some players being ruder or cruel and gives toxic players (who would be toxic anyway) a community that doesn't reject them out of hand because the community itself is so exhausted and frustrated and genuinely struggling to have a healthy connection to the game due to the entire model it operates under. It doesn't mean the devs or other players deserve the cruelty they've faced, but it feels like this behavior breeding among the fans is the natural consequence of the direction the game has gone. (I notice this in various mobile gacha type games that are heavily FOMO and predatory, too--the addition and sunk cost issues seem to make it truly difficult for people to be able to behave rationally)

In a way, I guess? It's not really the devs making these decisions though, it's the executives and marketing which pretty much has nothing to do with the game itself. It's still Bungie, but this stuff goes beyond just Bungie and just Destiny and just game development.

Basically, what people are mad about is capitalism. But since it's much harder to fight a whole system we live under and the system under which games are being made, people instead turn to individual companies and then also on devs, mostly because devs are the ones who are visible online. A marketing CEO from Bungie who signs off on these decisions isn't on Twitter.

I definitely wouldn't say that any company "brought individual employee harassment" on themselves. Like, no matter what state the game is in, you should never go for the random devs online and people should know that, no matter how mad they get. They're definitely not making these decisions and a lot of them are actively against them. For example, this is from a senior narrative designer at Bungie:

Note that the first thing he mentioned is "monetization and business interests overshadowing artistry." This isn't isolated, it's just one person who wanted to share, but it's a general sentiment among the actual devs. Nobody wants their work to be subjected to the aggressive monetisation schemes that ultimately piss off the consumers and ruin the product itself.

But as I said, the issue here goes above and beyond just one game or one dev studio. A lot of people keep talking about awful monetisation in Destiny, but I genuinely can't agree that Destiny, of all games, is the worst game monetisatio-wise. I'm actively involved in games that are worse and especially games that became worse, the best example of which is Overwatch. I don't think Destiny gamers could even comprehend how awful Overwatch became monetisation-wise. And that doesn't even begin to dive into other horrible practices in the gaming industry.

The point isn't to say that just because there's worse than Destiny, that Destiny is fine. It's definitely not and some things have certainly changed for the worse, though there were also horrible practices in Destiny before that were since removed. There used to be loot boxes. Like, actual gambling loot boxes. I would honestly just buy the ornaments directly rather than being tempted to buy 50 loot boxes and gamble. The only good part was that dismantling items from loot boxes could give you bright dust, but that makes sense for loot boxes that you had to buy with silver. So technically you bought that dust with silver. You could get them also for levelling so there's that, but that was really the only way to earn anything. Grind insane hours and hope for the best or take the easy way out: buying boxes for money. I cannot stress enough how much gambling is the worst predatory practice in existence in the gaming industry. Nothing else will ever be as detrimental and scummy as encouraging gambling. People don't really remember this or even know, but the switch to direct purchase is actually better.

However, of course, the increase in the amount of things that are silver-only is definitely felt. One of the worst parts is shaders for me. Shaders got no business being for silver and in bundles where you technically have to spend $10 for a shader. Event cards are also a sore spot; they're literally just Eververse bundles, but with extra steps that tie them to an event so you feel like you're earning stuff in gameplay. They come together with random currency (tickets) that stays unused unless you buy the card. It's 100% made to make people want to pay.

But sometimes the criticism on monetisation is also really superficial and from people who don't understand game development. One of the examples that people often use is dungeon key. Now, personally, I think that dungeon key should be separate for each dungeon instead of forcing you to buy 2 dungeons at once for $15. You should be able to buy just one. Like, come on. However, the idea that we have to pay for dungeons is not a predatory practice. It's content that has to be made and requires resources and dev hours (regardless of what people think of the dungeons). People will usually say "dungeons used to be available with seasons!" This is a lie.

Before WQ, we had 4 dungeons released since vanilla D2. Shattered Throne was the first and it was a part of the expansion. Pit of Heresy was second and it was a part of the expansion. Prophecy was a part of Season of Arrivals (!). And Grasp of Avarice was 30th Anniversary, a separate pack that had to be bought separately. Out of all dungeons available so far, only one was a part of the season and I genuinely don't even know how they managed that and I feel like some devs probably laboured over Prophecy essentially for free. So the idea that "dungeons were just for free in seasons" is just a lie. Only one was, an exception that possibly negatively impacted developers. If we want 2 dungeons per year, we will have to pay for them. And we do. It's either that, or maybe they can include one dungeon in the expansion and that's it. I wouldn't mind that, but the same people shitting on devs are also the people who shit on devs over "content droughts" and "not enough content" so I don't think that would satisfy them.

The point is that while some of the criticism is absolutely warranted, a lot of complete misunderstandings and lies often get mixed up with it and this all results in the situation we're in now where the only thing that the community is doing online is being negative and spiralling into dev harassment. And they end up feeling justified because the company is engaging in predatory practices. It's very easy to get into that mindset and to feel like you're not just allowed to harass, but encouraged.

The biggest issue with monetisation is always people who spend a lot of money aka whales. And by a lot, I mean a lot. Like there are people who buy every single thing in the store (and this is applied to all games). An average player buying a shader once in 3 months is not a problem. The whales are what shows up on marketing reports and what makes soulless capitalist ghouls add more of this shit to games. Which makes it even worse that the people who are perpetuating this hate train against monetisation riddled with incomplete misleading information and lies ARE WHALES. Aztecross who made the big video is a whale. Last time people checked his stream, he literally had 8000 silver in his account and people who watch his streams have said that he frequently has segments with his chat where they look at the store and he buys stuff, ON STREAM, while also asking his chat which items he should get. He's a hypocrite who is doing this to earn more money and is, to me, not any different from the soulless capitalist ghouls that work in gaming industry marketing departments.

The best thing he can do, if he cared about this topic, is to stop playing and stop making content about Destiny. Like, that's genuinely it. If he and other content creators like him are so serious about this topic and believe that the monetisation is such a serious problem in Destiny, they should stop spending money, stop playing, stop marketing the game and stop making content for it. There is no other way for Bungie to get the message, certainly not by going at random devs. And then after that, the next best step would be to involve yourself in political action to bring stricter laws to the whole gaming industry when it comes to predatory and anti-consumer practices.

In the meantime, serious talk: if any video game ever made you feel like you have to spend money, especially money you don't have, and you spent that money against your better judgement, please reach out to someone. It's not shameful and you're not alone. Games are a hobby and entertainment and should never put you in financial risk or ruin. If any video game is too much for you and you can no longer pay for it, but you feel like you have to keep playing and it's risking you financially, again, please reach out to someone. There are people who can help you deal with these feelings, especially if you know you can become addictive. The gaming industry as a whole preys on people's need for entertainment and dopamine rush and if you can't resist it on your own (which is, again, not a shameful thing), there's options to get help. This is mostly about the extra stuff like microtransactions, but it also works for just base game stuff. A year of Destiny content is cheaper than a year of some other games, but it doesn't mean that it's something everyone can afford. You can absolutely skip seasons or even expansions. You can also wait for them to be on sale and I always recommend looking out for sales anyway. There's genuinely very little value in being constantly pushed by FOMO and there IS a way to get out of the FOMO mentality. You can work on that, especially with people who can offer professional help if you need it.

Never let the capitalist scum control you.

#destiny 2 #bungie #long post #ask #it's gonna take a lot more than just being mad at a video game to change the system #unfortunately #also unfortunately when we go at devs that doesn't really touch the people who actually make these decisions #and might even be worse for the devs who have to work in these conditions. being harassed by players and pushed by bosses #i definitely understand the frustration though. i know a lot of people get pushed into this by frustration #the capitalist hell we live in hurts everyone but the ones on top and fighting among each other benefits them #we should stand with devs and encourage them to tell us what we can do as players to fight against this #honestly i want game devs to go on strike so bad. game industry strike NOW!!!!!!

[tanadrin]

Dev Patel and the Green Knight

I finally got around to seeing The Green Knight. Overall, I enjoyed it--David Lowery does a good job capturing the essential weirdness of the tale, which is very much about taking a mundane circumstance (a Christmas feast) and suddenly catapulting the reader into a mythic otherworld through the intrusion of the alien and monstrous, and the fantastical costumes, dramatic lighting, and dissonant score all contribute very well to a sense of otherness that permeates the original story.

But I find it interesting--and, I'll admit, a little frustrating--that no modern film adaptation of medieval literature is really capable of taking the story it's adapting on its own merits. This isn't an objection to modifying the source text, or taking it in new, non-literal direction. I can think of plenty of adaptations of work that play with the source material in interesting ways, and are better for it. Even very faithful adaptations like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings are inevitably going to alter the source based on the need to adapt it for the screen and the whims of the director. But when it comes to medieval classics, texts like Beowulf or Gawain and the Green Knight are always held at arm's length. An ironic layer is always interpolated into the original story, and even in modified form the story is never allowed to stand on its own.

Contrast, for instance, modern retellings of Arthurian legend; or Wagner's Nibelungenleid; or something like Neil Gaiman's book of Norse mythology. These are all adaptations of much older stories, all medieval; and the authors typically happy to let the stories operate on their own terms. In fact, that is often a selling point: dipping into these tales is a way of sampling an alien culture, one that is remote from us in time rather than space, and part of the sense of heightened drama is the understanding that these stories do not necessarily depict the world in the same way that modern realist prose does. They are fairy-stories, in the Tolkienian sense, and something not quite even like "high fantasy," which, although it is a genre which owes much to the mythic tradition, is usually *told* in the same manner as other realist fiction. And you could take these stories and re-cast them in a realist mold--that's definitely been done with Arthurian legend, either via anachronism or trying to place them in an era-appropriate historical context, and even that yields something quite like the original in tenor, even if the language used to relate the story is often very different.

Watching this movie, I was *strongly* reminded of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf, in that this did not feel like an attempt to adapt Gawain and the Green Knight for the screen. It felt like an attempt to tell a story *about* Gawain and the Green Knight (the text), a story which does not stand on its own. You don't have to have read the text to understand the movie (although I think some directorial decisions would be a bit mystifying if you hadn't), but the movie definitely situates itself *as a response* to the text. Which is an odd choice! Actually, another good point of comparison is Spike Jonze's Adaptation. It started life as an adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, but Charlie Kaufman sort of gave up writing that halfway through and wrote a movie about the difficulty he was having writing *that* movie, and the result is something very weird (and very good) that is full of metafictional elements that depend on the existence of this other work, in a way that a straight retelling of The Orchid Thief for the screen obviously would not. And while The Green Knight isn't that extreme, it is definitely playing on the structure of the medieval poem, and replying to it.

The core of the movie (as I understood it) is a tension between young Gawain's aspiration to knightliness, his ambition which is born at least in part from his mother's encouragement, and his own failure to live up to the heroic ideal of greatness. Not chivalric--this is a movie in which the ethos of chivalry makes not even the briefest of appearance, which is weird given that it's nominally an Arthurian romance, and that the chivalric ethos is extremely important to the original text. Instead we have a generic greatness being described, one which is associated with renown, with taking part in mythic events, and with achieving high rank and honor. In the service of seeing her son obtain all this, Gawain's mother seems to cast some kind of spell, whereupon the titular Green Knight appears at Arthur's Christmas-feast; and as in the poem, a game of beheadings is proffered. Gawain accepts the challenge, beheads the knight, and the knight rides away, promising he'll meet Gawain a year and a day hence at the Green Chapel. So far so straightforward. When Gawain sets off a year later to meet the knight, his mother gives him an enchanted belt to keep him safe from harm. Gawain goes on to have a couple of side-of-the-road adventures and mishaps, the kind of thing that's par for the course when you're telling an Arthurian romance, until he arrives at the house of a mysterious benefactor, just about a day away from the Chapel, who grants him hospitality until the day of his challenge.

Now, in the original story, this is where Gawain gets the magic belt, and it's hugely important: Gawain and his host promise to exchange anything they might receive at the end of each day, when the host has been out hunting all day and Gawain has been in the house recuperating from his travels. During this time, the host's wife repeatedly tries to seduce Gawain; and Gawain is trapped between the imperative not to sleep with his host's wife (a major violation of the rules of good chivalric conduct!) and the imperative not to offend the woman (also a violation of those rules). He succeeds, for the most part; he is forced at one point to give his host a kiss at the end of the day, since the wife kissed him; this is shown as him holding nothing back and acting in good faith on the vow he made to his host. When Gawain finally rebuffs the wife for good, she insists that, even if he won't sleep with her, he should at least take a magic belt she has woven that will keep him from harm. He does; but he does *not* give this to his host. When he finally goes to the Green Chapel, the Knight returns the original blow as promised--but only nicks Gawain lightly. He reveals himself to be none other than the host who was sheltering him; the nick was his reprimand for withholding that final gift, but because of his good conduct he is otherwise left unharmed. The whole thing was a test of sorts, one which Gawain passed. Despite flinching at first from the blow, and keeping the belt secret, he shows himself ultimately to be a man of good (albeit not perfect) conduct, and *that* is why he wins honor from the whole affair.

The movie takes this basic narrative and alters it in key places, completely changing the valence of the whole thing. First, Gawain gets the belt at the beginning of his quest, as mentioned; he loses it on the way, but when he reaches the castle, the wife of his host (who succeeds in seducing him with a handjob) presents it to him as if she had woven it herself. He does not actually engage in the game of exchanged with his host, who is *also* not the Green Knight. And we're treated to a monologue about the color green from the wife that feels beat for beat like it's been ripped off from someone's undergraduate essay about Gawain and the Green Knight, which is a little weird even in the context of the rest of the movie. Finally when Gawain reaches the chapel, the knight goes to return the blow--and Gawain completely chickens out and flees. We are then treated to an extended sequence of Gawain returning home; being feted as a hero; earning his knighthood (presumably by lying about what happened); succeeding Arthur as king; him abandoning his low-class beau once she bears him a son, and marrying a princess; going to war; his son dying in a war; and finally, as an old man, being trapped in his throne room as a besieging army breaks its way inside. Just before they do, he removes the magic belt from around his waist, his head fall off, and bam--we're shown this has been an Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge thing this whole time, and the Green Knight has not yet landed his blow.

Gawain finally takes off the belt, throws it aside, and tells the knight to go ahead--and the knight bends down and congratulates him. In context, the reading seems to be this: the belt is a talisman of Gawain's mother's influence, of external expectations for what kind of man he is. The Knight is Arthur or perhaps an agent of his, and the test in *this* case is whether Gawain can be his own person. All the events leading up to this point are perhaps a part of the original magic Gawain's mother cast, an effort to Lilith Weatherwax her kid to greatness by putting him into an epic story. Implicitly, then, the Gawain and the Green Knight we all know is the false version of the tale, the tale as Gawain's mother would have it told.

This is all very clever. But I'm afraid it's so clever it falls apart in the end. Because the structure of the original story that this depends on is dependent in turn on taking the whole notion of chivalric virtue seriously, which this movie plainly does not. Gawain is shown as irreverent and lustful and a bit of a party animal--lovable and good hearted fundamentally, but definitely not an Arthurian hero. That's fine, but that's a very modern sort of character, one that feels out of place in a movie that is trying very hard also to be tonally unmodern, firmly embedded in a mythic otherwhen of Arthurian legend. Moments of slice-of-life mundaneness, while charming, strain mightily against the epic tone the movie tries to take in other places, and strange events like a ghost seeking her lost head or immense giants striding the landscape. We are jostled: are we in the land of myth? Or are we in historical Britain? We cannot be in both!

And this is a movie that was definitely made by people who had read the original text; not just the original text, but also a great deal of criticism *about* the original text. The movie namechecks the theme of fivefold symmetry that's incredibly important to the structure of the poem; there's the aforementioned undergrad essay about colors about 3/4th of the way through; and there's the fact that the structure of the original plot (down to Morgan LeFay in disguise as an old woman in the host's castle) is present in altered form in every detail. But none of these details add up to much. There's a weird homoerotic kiss with the host that implies that in fact *he* wanted to sleep with Gawain, in addition to his wife; the ghost Gawain encounters early on tells him the Green Knight is in fact someone he knows (and therefore *can't* be the host; I think it's implied to be Arthur, like I said, but this is never quite confirmed), and while all these things *about* the original poem are shown, none of them ever get integrated thematically into the plot.

I think as a result, whatever Lowery was going for, the whole movie kind of falls apart in the end. And that's a pity, because somewhere in there is just a really weird, visually striking, really gripping, embellished-and-polished-for-modern-sensibilities-but-also-thematically-true-to-the-source retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight. And that would have been a much better movie! What are we to make of this, a movie that purports to be telling a story-behind-the-story, but one that leaves no room or context for the original? After all, Gawain in the end does *not* flee, does not return home a coward and a liar; presumably, he earns his honor, and can be honest about what happened. But if he is honest, none of the rest of what we have been shown makes a lick of sense, or has any point.

One feels a bit as if modern directors, when confronted with medieval texts being a bit weird, a bit alien in their worldview, instead of realizing that's actually something people like some of from time to time, feel like they have to construct an artificial bridge between the Middle Ages and the present day. But because it is invariably metafictional and self-referential, as if to say "don't worry, we know nobody REALLY wants to watch a bunch of boring medieval shit played straight," it comes off as cringing and ashamed of its source material. This isn't a plea for historicity! Gawain and the Green Knight is not history. But one does occasionally want to see an adaptation of one's favorite works without directors being ashamed of the text they are adapting! And since most people will not have read the original, I am rather confused about what the director intends for the audience to get out of all these references that are dependent on it, but don't stand on their own merits within the narrative of the movie itself.

The acting was good, the set design and costumes were terrific, I loved the slow and measured pacing and the weird score, and the design of the Knight himself, and the landscapes and almost everything else about the movie. So I don't think it's a waste of time, especially if you have read and enjoyed Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original or in translation. But it's definitely a pity to see a movie that was, well, *almost* great, but ended up merely OK.

#gotta put that undergraduate degree to work from time to time #we spent a *lot* of time on this poem

[lightrises]

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

#hollow knight #hornet (hollow knight) #hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #the radiance #hk radiance #herrah #hk herrah #hollow knight meta #sup folks it's been a minute since i dropped a whole dang essay but Here We Go!!!!!!

[bottomvalerius]

I'm curious about your Lucio x Valerius takes, plus I'm feeling chatty!

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

I don’t think I’ve talked too much about them on here so thank you for letting me spill out my brain worms lmfao I’m going to also sprinkle in how I would see Donna fitting in with the two as I don’t think I’ve really explained that either lmao

I’ve mentioned that the devs alluded to their affair being a lapse in judgment for Valerius; I take that as in Lucio pursued him first, and Valerius eventually relented. I see it being very similar to how Lucio and Nadia got together; Lucio can be very charming and flirtatious, coupled with his easy going attitude; all of these things lead to it being very easy to sleep with him lmfao

I know we make jokes about Valerius sleeping his way to the top, but I don’t actually think he did that at all. He’s most likely of noble birth-- he worked for his place as consul. I think after the first time they sleep together, Valerius is mortified. He doesn’t want to be just another common trollop who gives away kisses to get what he wants; he wants to be taken seriously as Consul. I can see him feeling like he ruined his chances of ever being taken seriously again should their affair get out-- this is also why I think he gets so embarrassed any time it comes close to getting out. (I think, though, that more seasoned members of the staff know lmao) 

I’ve mentioned in another post that I don’t see Valerius feeling secure in his sexuality in the sense of how many partners he’s had and what he does in the bedroom. I think sleeping with Lucio would only worsen that internal struggle for him.

Lucio, however, loved it! I talked about how Lucio craves attention and validation and that I think their affair would happen right around where his and Nadi’s relationship is turning south. He likes the attention Valerius gives him one-on-one, and I don’t see him being emotionally mature enough to really see how sleeping with him affects Valerius. And again, Valerius is a great liar; not only can he brown-nose Lucio, I can see him fully convincing him that everything is fine. 

That being said, I don’t think Val would really have the self-control to stop the affair. Like I said, Lucio is very charming, and Valerius also craves validation from others. I also think he gets a sick sense of pride at “replacing” Nadia; I HC that he’s a lot more adventurous in the bedroom w/ Lucio mainly to one-up her. don’t cha wish ya girlfriend was HOT like me >:3

Despite it seeming like the affair was short-lived (possibly a one-night stand ?), I think the fact that Valerius tried sleeping with Lucio while he was sick is a tell-tale sign their relationship was something bigger than that. I think they would wind up being very co-dependent on each other for very similar reasons. Valerius wants to feel wanted; Lucio wants him, wants anyone, to give him attention. I wouldn’t go all out and say they were in love, but it might have felt that way, you know?

I personally think that Nadia not only didn’t care, but she probably encouraged the affair to keep going (not knowing the guilt Valerius felt with it of course). To use archaic terms, she’s very happy to give Valerius her “wifely duties” if it means Lucio is off her back more often lmao

Okay Donna takes under cut lmfao

I’ve mentioned this in fics + other posts, but the only reason Donna doesn’t sleep with Lucio is because Valerius asks them not to. They all inevitable do a lot of couple stuff together (Nadia/Lucio + Donna/Valerius), but Donna tries to avoid being one-on-one w/ Lucio (whereas they are always alone with Nadia lmao)

This is in part because Valerius knows how easy it is to get caught up in him. He still feels a heavy amount of guilt over the whole thing, and he doesn’t want to let Donna get in the middle of it. He knows it’s a messy affair, but he doesn’t want to stop it just yet. It is a very much “Do as I say, not as I do” situation. 

Donna’s main concern is obviously Valerius’s wellbeing; they’re more paranoid of Lucio somehow using the affair against him, as he could do it at any given time. However, they don’t think it’s right to tell Valerius to stop it all together. Valerius knew and was intimate with Lucio before Donna, and they understand that cutting it off would completely upheave Valerius’s entire routine. They’re not jealous of Lucio; they just don’t trust that he’s smart enough to not let it slip and ruin Val’s reputation. 

“I don’t want you getting hurt.” “But what about you, Val?” “I’m not going to! This isn’t about me!”

However, Lucio is jealous of the fact that Donna refuses to be with him one-on-one, but they’re totally fine being with Nadia. It creates a lot of unspoken tension between them; Donna is a bit oblivious of Lucio’s feelings, which in turn agitates him more (this is very common for them LMAO). Like a child, Lucio wants everyone to play with him and doesn’t understand why they won’t lmao 

#asks #valucio #headcanons #i hope these make sense fishgifhdgdfg #long post

[miss-spooky-eyes]

intersection (a belated OC Kiss Week fic)

Yes, I am extremely late, but in my defense I didn't know OC Kiss Week was happening and it coincided with some insane work.

Author Notes/What to Know:

This is a fic about the (near) kisses of my IA/Cipher Nine, Devinahl, and @sunsetofdoom's Smuggler Teo. I encourage absolutely anybody & everybody to read what she's written about Teo, which you can find the most important & glorious pieces of here, here and here.

'Karia Madeesh' is the alias used by the future Cipher Nine during her adolescence as a schoolgirl spy tasked with befriending the children of important Republic figures. I think that's all you need to know, but Dev's backstory fic Riddle goes into much more detail.

Warnings: Um ... nudity? Mentions of vomiting? Extreme teenage dumbness?

Thank you thank you thank you to Sunset for lending me Teo and letting me get way, way, way too much into my feelings about him, especially his teenage depression. I hope you like it.

Further thank you thank you thank yous to @vespertine-legacy for reading various versions, encouraging me and gently correcting me on minor details like the names of my characters 😘

‘Childhood is long and narrow, like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own.’ - Tove Ditlesen

Part One

New Baxeid, 3652 BBY/1 ATC

Teonine Lunulata didn’t often wish he was somewhere else. Didn’t see the point.

If he closed his eyes and opened them to find he was in a completely different place, it wouldn’t change a thing; he’d still be there.

Right now, though, he would like to be anywhere - back in his room with the door closed, preferably, but a classroom, his form tutor’s office, the gym even - other than here.

A fresh wave of shrill laughter crested over the top of the already too-noisy compartment, and Teonine winced as pain stabbed through his temples again. He huddled further back into his corner, one arm wrapped around his stomach to try to keep the length of plastic tubing from slipping out from underneath the baggy sweatshirt his mother would be furious to find out he still owned because it was so old and shapeless. Winding the tubing around his waist beneath the overlarge garment usually worked well enough to conceal it, as long as he kept his distance from people and it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to that; but he hadn’t done that good a job securing it this time, thanks to the shaky hands and the rush he’d been in, and anyone he bumped up against in the crowded carriage was going to notice something. Even if he was surrounded by idiots.

The shuttle bumped and jolted as it jerked on to the next mag-rail, eliciting more shrieks and squeals from the nearby knot of girls as the passengers swayed and clung on to each other to keep their balance. Teonine splayed the fingers of his free hand out on the wall behind him, and wished he was dead. As if the noise and the stabs of pain it elicited from his head weren’t bad enough, the smell of upwards of fifty people crammed into the compartment was rapidly becoming unignorable, even with the scented bands he wore on his tresses to keep his pheromone receptors from becoming overwhelmed. And he wished he hadn’t thought about that, because half the people in here were miners with all the sweat-and-damp-and-body odours that entailed and someone standing near him was wearing far too much perfume and he had puked up way too much way too recently for that cocktail of smells to be filling his nostrils.

Teonine swallowed down hard on a wave of bile; the dumb kids from his school standing near him might be ignoring him now, but if he threw up his guts over their jacketed backs you could bet they’d start paying attention. Don’t puke, don’t puke, he chanted silently in time with the rumbling of the shuttle on the mag-rails, don’t puke don’t puke don’t puke …

The wave of nausea abated and his insides settled down into a muttering sourness. Shivering, miserable, Teonine huddled into his corner and wished again that he was anywhere but here.

Not that it was anyone’s stupid fault but his own that he was here, of course. One day a month, the students were allowed to leave the carefully-curated grounds of the school, get on the mag-shuttle which was the only means of transport between the various different settlement bubbles on the space station, and visit New Baxeid. New Backside, as the students had inevitably christened it (quite the sophisticated wit, whoever had first thought that one up), lived up to its informal moniker; it was just a hub of offices, warehouses and what passed for upscale residences and shops which catered to the bureaucrats and corporate types who ran the mines on this system’s various lifeless planetoids and asteroids. But to the kids who spent the rest of the month inside the ergonomically-designed buildings and wandering the manicured lawns of the Pantomathia Academy (and you could guess what the students in their infinite wit and creativity did with that name), positively the finest school in Republic space for wealthy parents who wanted their kids to be able to do anything except escape, it represented the only opportunity for a monthly crumb of freedom.

Teonine usually didn’t bother going. He’d been at Pantomathia for three years already, had exhausted the possibilities of New Baxeid - at least, the bits that students were allowed to visit - within the first term, and ‘town’ weekends were usually a good opportunity for him to work on his still in relative privacy. But whatever he’d decided it was a good idea to try fermenting this time had done a number on the pipes, which had made an urgent trip into town imperative. It wouldn’t have been so bad, Teonine thought with the clinicalness of the truly hungover, if he hadn’t tried drinking the results last night despite knowing they’d started to dissolve inert plastic.

His stomach lurched at the very thought, and he pulled the cuffs of his sleeves over his balled fists, shivering. At the tender age of fifteen, Teonine had had some truly miserable hangovers, but the way he’d felt when he’d woken up this morning had taken the prize for sheer awfulness with room to spare. Only the knowledge that this was his only chance for a month to get new tubing and prevent an unthinkable future lapse in his supply could have made him crawl out of bed. Even then it hadn’t been until well after what should have been lunchtime.

Don’t think about lunch.

That was how he’d ended up in a situation he normally avoided like Talaxii foot-rot; the last shuttle to leave New Baxeid in time for the school curfew, crammed into a compartment crowded not just with weary workers and miners headed back to their residential blocks, but with the kids who thought that waiting until the very last minute to get back to the academy made them somehow cool. The ones who liked to hang back and stray down the side streets and talk about staying out past sunset, when school rumour had it that illicit and seedy nightspots catering to the transitory miner population sprang to life and stayed open till dawn. As if they’d ever dare try it.

In the frantic jostle to get on board the shuttle, Teonine had ended up getting swept to the back of the carriage with the absolute worst and dumbest kids from his class; Torsin Fralx, blond and beefy, and his cronies Voka Ginn and Fotze the Gran - all boys Teonine’s mother had gently forbade him from having anything to do with (‘If only I could believe your good influence on them would be stronger than their bad influence on you’) - and the Kel’Dor twins, Aun and Zu, whose father served with Teonine’s mother in the Senate (‘What a quaint family, really quite civilised, such a shame the way those boys play would be much too rough for you, Teonine’). They were all being particularly loud and obnoxious today, vying with each other to impress the girls who were standing next to them in a tight little huddle, Tixia and H’Rukn and the new one, pretending to ignore the boys but shrieking with laughter a little more piercingly every time Fralx did something dumb. Knowing Fralx, the girls’ laughter was going to be audible only to certain aquatic species by the time they got back to school.

None of them had acknowledged Teonine, of course, despite the fact that he was standing within a few feet of them; if Senator Lunulata’s descents upon the school (once when Fotze accidentally gave Teonine a nosebleed in gym, and then when Teonine accidentally let slip that Fralx sometimes called him ‘squid-boy’) hadn’t done the trick, the fact that their parents had absolutely warned them not to do anything to upset the offspring of such an influential politician would have. He’d been safely invisible for the best part of his three years at Pantomathia, and that was exactly how he wanted it. He just wished they wouldn’t be so fucking loud, that was all. Some people had hangovers.

‘Give it back, Voka, you kriffing herder!’ Fralx bellowed nearby, and Teonine closed his eyes, trying to pretend he couldn’t hear that voice rattling through his skull. There was the sound of scuffling feet and grunts, and a Rodian yelp before Fralx was yelling again: ‘Got it! Hey, Karia, did you see that? The skrag tried to nick my kriffing holocard! Kriffing skrag!’

Behind closed eyelids, Teonine rolled his itchy eyes in their sore sockets. Pantomathia liked to bill itself as ‘Polishing the Best and the Brightest’; in Fralx’s case, they were definitely buffing a turd.

‘Dastardly,’ said a girl’s voice, dripping with boredom.

‘Hey, hey, Karia, do you know what time it is? Do you remember I said I’d show you our game? Do you remember?’

‘Kriff’s sake, Fralx, she remembers, don’t tell the whole room,’ drawled another girl; the exaggerated Coruscant accent meant H’Rukn, who liked to pretend she didn’t come from Uphrades.

‘Yeah, it’s supposed to be a secret, you skrag.’

‘You’re the skrag, skragface!’ More scuffling feet.

‘Are we going to show her the game, or are you skrags just going to feel each other up the whole ride?’ H’Rukn again. ‘We’re nearly out of the bubble.’

‘Kriff, you’re right.’ That was Fralx. ‘Where’s the datapad? Tixia, do you have it?’

There was a momentary pause, and then Teonine heard the bored girl say again, ‘Ooh, it’s a circle that flashes. I can’t wait to tell all my friends.’

‘The circle’s just for picking the players,’ Tixia was explaining. Teonine peeked from under half-closed eyelids; the Mirialan girl had her datapad out, and was glancing suspiciously all around her in a way that would have betrayed she was up to something she shouldn’t be if anybody had been paying the slightest attention to the students at the back of the carriage. ‘Well, player, really. Then the person who gets picked, picks their player.’

‘Player for what?’ the bored girl - it was the new girl, Karia something - asked, and Tixia and H’Rukn dissolved into giggles.

‘To go in there with,’ Aun, or maybe Zu, buzzed through his antiox mask, and Teonine heard the other one rap on the back wall of the compartment.

‘The airlock?’ the new girl asked, and Tixia and H’Rukn laughed harder than ever.

‘“Take My Breath Away” is a Panty-mouth tradition,’ Fralx announced pompously. (So were bullying, self-harm and eating disorders, Teonine thought.) ‘You draw lots, and whoever loses has to pick someone to go into the airlock with, and we seal you in.’

‘And you can’t get out while the shuttle is between the bubbles,’ Ginn interjected eagerly.

‘She knows how airlocks work, skrag-for-brains,’ Tixia told him.

‘So how long till the next bubble?’

‘Seven minutes. No getting in or out.’ There was another gust of giggling.

‘So it’s an excuse to make out, except you could also both die.’

‘Someone did die once!’ Tixia exclaimed. ‘There was a power failure at the coils and the rail de-polarised and these two girls were in the airlock and the emergency hatch systems failed too -‘ This station really attracted some incompetent engineers, Teonine thought - ‘and when the repair crew came they didn’t know anybody was in there so they blew the back hatch and the girls got vented into space.’

‘Still with their hands down each other’s pants,’ H’Ruk’n added.

‘Sure, whatever.’

Teonine gave in and opened his eyes. Fralx and his minions had their backs to him, facing the girls; through a gap between their shoulders, Teonine could see Tixia, H’Ruk’n and the new girl, confronting the boys like an opposing team. Tixia and H’Ruk’n had their arms round each other’s waists like they always did, but the new girl had her hands on her hips in a way that would have looked cool and provocative on someone with hips, and which, to be fair to her, she was very nearly pulling off with the equipment at her disposal. All the kids who could grow or buy long hair were wearing it the same way that year, in absurdly long, high pigtails that were meant to imitate lekku, but hers was cut short in a profusion of seemingly careless flicks and spikes, and dyed a violent blood orange. She had on a synthleather jacket like the spacers Teonine had sometimes seen in New Baxeid, and tight pants, and she had enough piercings in her nose and elaborate cuffs on her ears to almost camouflage the cybernetic implants that looped her ears and extended delicate silvery arms almost to the corners of her eyes.

Karia Madeesh, that was her name, and she looked just as cocky and pleased with herself now as she had when the form tutor had introduced her to the class with an injunction to make her feel at home and ease the difficult transition between schools while she stood there running her eyes over them all like she was trying to decide who was cool enough to hang out with her.

Usually that sort of thing would get you eaten alive at the Academy. But because everybody had already heard that the new girl had got kicked out of her last school, and who knew how many before that, they were all agog to find out exactly what she’d done; and when she acted like she didn’t even want to know them, that sealed the deal, because these were some of the smartest, best-educated morons in the galaxy.

‘It did happen,’ Fotze was insisting, braying through his nostrils the way he always did when he was blustering. ‘My brood-uncle Gakze was here twenty years ago and he said -’

‘No, yeah, I’m sure you’re right,’ Karia said, examining the orange-painted fingernails of one hand. ‘I’m sure it’s a really dangerous game of … kissing.’

‘Like you wouldn’t be scared to go in there,’ Fralx scoffed, rapping his knuckles on the emergency hatch in the back wall of the carriage.

Karia shrugged. ‘I think I could just about handle it.’

‘So do it, new girl.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t you need your little flashing circle to pick a player?’

‘Usually. But since it’s your first shuttle ride, and since it’s all so tame and juvenile, I think you should go in.’

‘Torsin,’ Voka whined.

‘Shut up.’ Fralx had stepped forward, and Teonine had seen him on the edge of losing his temper enough times to be able to picture the look on his face with perfect clarity. ‘So? Are you going to go in there, or what?’

Karia inspected her fingernails again, flicked some stray lint off her sleeve, tossed her hair out of her eyes and said: ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’ Teonine saw the set of Fralx’s beefy shoulders relax, and was laying his own head back against the wall, losing interest again, when she added: ‘With him.’

Teonine saw every head whip round to follow her pointing finger, and reflexively looked round himself, with the result that his cheek and nose collided with the wall his head was leaning on. There was a hot bloom of pain in his face and a cold lurch of nausea in his stomach and he staggered away from the wall a little, then - idiotically - looked back at the wall again, as if there could somehow be somebody standing behind him.

Fralx’s mouth was open and he was spluttering, apparently lost for words, and a very small, very secret part of Teonine took a mental snapshot of that image. The rest of him was still trying to turn around and look behind him again.

Karia sidestepped Fralx and took two or three steps towards Teonine and the chances that this was some galaxy-sized misunderstanding were further reduced as she looked at him curiously and said, ‘Teonine, right?’

‘Um,’ Teonine said. After a couple of seconds, some neurons kicked into gear in his faltering brain, suggesting that wasn’t enough of an answer, so he added: ‘Er.’

She smiled at him, or at least started to, before she clearly registered the noises he’d made in lieu of words and the smile sort of slid off the side of her mouth. ‘Um … OK?’ She tilted her head to one side, caught somewhere between amusement and confusion. ‘You know about the game, right? So … do you want to?’

Did he want to? Did he want to? Did he want to -? Teonine wasn’t used to being asked what he wanted, except by grown-ups sometimes - visiting professors and more-or-less distant relatives and connections of his mother’s - and that was always ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ and that question was always just a cloak for what they really wanted to know, which was ‘Are you going to fall in line or not?’.

Sometimes he thought about wanting, how it worked, what it must feel like: Like a tug inside, a finger hooking itself inside your waistband, pulling you onwards. Sometimes he thought he could sense wanting by its absence, but that wasn’t better, it just left him feeling like a speeder bike with no ignition key.

He might have felt the tug or not, standing there in front of a cool, pretty girl who’d just asked him in front of everyone to make out with her, but he had no idea how he was supposed to know when his whole body was ringing like a bell with the shock and the heat of being spoken to, looked at, picked.

He didn’t know what he wanted.

He knew he didn't want to say no.

So he said: ‘Yeah. OK.’

She smiled and rolled her eyes at him, but not in a mean way, more like she was inviting him to laugh with her at how stupid everything was, and that made him feel another new thing, like something that had been tightly wound in his chest was unspooling, like he might be turning all sorts of colours on the inside. ‘Well, come on then.’

She reached out and took his hand, just like that, like it was a thing anybody could just do; and led him through the centre of the loose knot of kids, pulling him confidently after her, towards the back right corner of the carriage. Teonine heard a few disbelieving mutters and splutters, but for the most part the kids were silent, silent as Fralx, who seemed to have stiffened into statue-like immobility. Not silent because they were avoiding speaking to him in case they upset Senator Lunulata’s precious boy, but silent like they genuinely didn’t know what to say, like they were truly confounded. And to the complex cocktail of emotions Teonine was conscious of experiencing was added a secret squirm of shameful pleasure at how much he was enjoying that.

Voka Ginn hesitated, looking uncertainly over at Fralx, but Karia raised her eyebrows at him and he knelt down by the emergency hatch, connecting his datapad to the controls and tapping in a few commands (slicing, isolating and slaving controls like these was something even the lowest-achieving pupil at Pantomathia’s computer science classes could do). The hatch cover jolted slightly as it sprang free, and Voka moved quickly to catch it before it could fall on to the floor, although it was hardly likely that anyone in the crowded, noisy compartment would hear it if it did, or bother pushing their way through the tightly-packed passengers to investigate.

Karia raised her eyebrows again, at him this time, and feeling like he was lost in a place he was supposed to recognise, Teonine let go of her hand, knelt down and crawled through the hatch.

He had to release his grasp on the tubing hidden underneath his sweatshirt as he did so, and as he made it through the hatch, it started to slip free, one end of it uncoiling and snaking down towards the floor. Hurriedly he grabbed it and tucked it back into place as he got to his feet, just in time as Karia crawled through after him.

Teonine only had time to register a confused impression of the inside of the airlock - grimy metal, a few nets hanging from nails on the wall as if things had once been stored in here and secured in case of ventilation - when the light shining through the entryway was suddenly extinguished as Voka Ginn replaced the hatch after them.

It was … dark. Teonine probably should have been expecting that - why would there be lights inside an airlock? - but in his agitated state the suddenness of it came as a shock which ratcheted his panic up another notch. In a few moments his eyes would have adjusted, but for now all he could make out was the dim movement that was Karia getting to her feet.

‘Cosy,’ he heard her say with casual sarcasm.

It was small - which, of course it was, why would an emergency airlock on a groundside mag-shuttle be big - but the design rationale didn’t make Teonine feel any better about the size of it. It was the same width as the compartment, of course, but in length it was narrow; Teonine reached out with the hand that wasn’t currently keeping the tubing from falling out of his sweatshirt and felt his palm flatten against the back panel of the shuttle. It was rattling faintly, which was not reassuring; right now, if the maglocks that kept it shut were to fail, they would still be able to breathe the air and feel the warmth of New Baxeid’s atmospheric bubble, but in a few seconds …

As if on cue, there was a faint sucking thunk from both the panel at the back and the direction of the hatch, and a familiar shudder ran through the floor.

‘We’re out of the bubble.’ He had tried to speak quietly, to keep it from being startlingly loud in the quiet, but the words came out in more of a terrified whisper.

‘I guess our seven minutes starts now.’ He saw the fugitive gleam of Karia’s implants as she turned her head from side to side as if trying to survey the space.

His own eyes were rapidly adjusting to the darkness, and he looked around him. What he saw was not particularly encouraging. There were big patches of sealant in several places as if covering up places where the metal seams had begun to part, and, worse, none of them seemed particularly fresh. The control panel in the corner, which would instruct the back panel whether or not to open into the hard vacuum of space, had a distinctly jerry-rigged look; Teonine was almost sure there were a couple of loose wires hanging from it, and the floor and walls in the other corner seemed to be darker than the rest of the airlock, as if blackened by fire. Teonine wondered whether he’d been too quick to dismiss the story of the girls who died in here during a game of ‘Take My Breath Away’ as a school legend.

As if reading his mind, Karia said: ‘Wow. We really might die in here.’

He blinked. ‘Wait - you can see?’

‘A bit.’ He saw her hand come up to point at her implants, and a wave of several different perfumes hit him at once, somehow. ‘Magic eyes. Courtesy of Mom and Dad.’

‘Oh. I guess mine are too. From my parents, I mean.’

She giggled as if his weak joke had been a lot funnier than it was. ‘So how much can you see in this light? How many fingers am I holding up?’

Teonine didn’t need to be able to see in the dark for that. ‘One. The middle one.’

‘Oh yeah?’ She thrust her hand in front of his face, trying to cover his eyes with her spread fingers while she waved the other one. ‘How about now?’

Teonine’s senses were suddenly flooded by conflicting chemical scents; he jerked his head away instinctively, choked on a hasty breath.

‘Hey - you OK?’ She drew back, looking concerned.

‘Yeah,’ Teonine said breathlessly, still trying to force down the choke that pinched at each inhalation. ‘Sorry - the perfume -’

‘Huh? Oh. Yeah, we were testing them out at the store, you know, Largxel’s? I guess we put on kind of a lot.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘I can’t even smell them any more. Is it awful?’

‘No, it’s just - a lot -’

‘Maybe it’ll help if it’s just one scent. Hang on.’ She pushed up her jacket sleeves and sniffed at her wrists and forearms. Teonine saw dark slashes streaking her skin, and thought for a wild second they were wounds, but then realised they were cosmetics of different shades, sampled on her forearms and the backs of her hands. ‘Here - I think this one’s the nicest. Just try to smell that.’

She lifted her right wrist to his face, so close in front of his nose that it almost grazed her skin; his head swam again.

‘Just breathe,’ she told him, her voice carrying such authority that he automatically did what he was told, concentrating on the strongest scent, the perfume she’d told him was the nicest. He knew he knew the different components of it, the creamy notes on top and the earthy, dried body, but he couldn’t put the right names to them; he just concentrated on breathing them in, focusing on that one scent as, slowly, his overwhelmed senses calmed down.

‘Better?’ she asked him, still holding her wrist up to his face.

‘Mmm-hmmm.’ Teonine wanted to nod, but he knew if he did his nose would touch her skin, so he tried to shrug with his body while keeping his head perfectly still. ‘Yeah. How did you know that would work?’

‘When I got my implants …’ She trailed off, and then gave him a wry smile, finally pulling her wrist away from his face. ‘Let’s just say I get it. Being overwhelmed by something other people are barely aware of.’

‘Oh.’ Teonine had heard the other kids circulating some story about how she got the implants; something about needing them to repair damage sustained in some Imperial bombing, some outpost somewhere where her parents were serving, he hadn’t really been listening. ‘Do they - I mean, did it hurt?’

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘You just have to focus on one thing, and shut out everything else. Everything’s fine when you learn to do that.’ She lifted one hand as if to touch his tresses, but stopped short. ‘Aren’t those band-things supposed to filter out … stuff?’

Teonine fought the urge to flick them back over his shoulders. ‘They block. They don’t filter. But sometimes -’

‘I get it. Making a mental note not to wear seven different perfumes next time I go to make out with a Nautolan.’

Teonine had almost been starting to, if not relax, then unwind slightly, but at the mention of making out his hearts jumped so hard he felt as if he’d been punched in both sides of his chest simultaneously.

‘I haven’t, you know. Made out with a Nautolan before.’ She was definitely standing closer to him than she had been before. ‘Have you? Made out with a human?’

‘Uh -’ Teonine felt like distant areas of his brain were fusing together. ‘I - um -’

‘But you’ve, you know. You’ve done this before.’ Karia laid it out like a statement, but it was unmistakably a question.

The air was definitely getting thinner in here. ‘I don’t -’ He didn’t know how to explain that he avoided the dumb kids that played this game, avoided being on this shuttle, avoided everything. ‘I never got picked before.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t have to go into a dark airlock to kiss someone. You can just, you know, kiss them.’

When she made it sound so simple it was difficult to point out that maybe she could, but he couldn’t. Teonine floundered, trying to figure out what he could say that would convey how hopelessly out of his depth he was without betraying, well, how hopelessly out of his depth he was.

He got as far as ‘Um -’

‘So you’ve never kissed anyone. That’s cute.’ She adjusted her stance, shifting closer into him; he felt her torso brush against the arm he still had wrapped around his front, clutching on to the tubing concealed beneath his shirt. ‘Do you want to?’

There was that question again.

He felt the faintest tug as Karia curled her fingers into the front of his sweatshirt, not pulling, just resting there. Now he couldn’t smell anything but the perfume she’d got him to focus on; it seemed to envelop them both like a cloud, cutting them off from the rest of the galaxy. She was looking up at him, her head tilted back and her expression soft, and she was -

She was really pretty.

The thought took hold of him so suddenly he felt as if the ground had dropped away from beneath his feet; maybe he could do what she obviously expected him to, just bend down and kiss her, just as easily as she had taken his hand before. Maybe he could just lean down and put his lips on hers and let whatever happened, happen. Maybe it really could be that simple …

He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, definitely almost about to do it, when she tilted her head to one side, looked up at him through her eyelashes, and said, ‘You know, I bet your mom would hate it if she knew you were in here with me.’

Just like that, whatever Teonine had been tentatively feeling was erased as if it had never been. ‘What?’ he said, too loudly.

‘Isn’t she some big-time senator? I bet she’d hate it if she knew her son was alone in a little dark airlock with me.’ Karia’s hand in his sweatshirt tugged lightly, teasing. ‘Did she warn you to stay away from me?’

In point of fact, Senator Lunulata had called before Karia even arrived at the school to warn Teonine to avoid her (‘She’s the kind of misguided young woman who could seriously impede the pursuit of your goals, sweetheart’). But Teonine didn’t feel the smallest desire to tell Karia that. His hangover had suddenly returned in full force, hammering in his temples and lurching in his stomach and hot little prickles breaking out all over his skin, and all he wanted was to crawl into his bed, or at least out of this airlock.

Karia’s hand released its grip on his sweatshirt; numbly, he could feel it travelling slowly up his chest. ‘Did she tell you I was a bad girl?’

There was a distant lurch of the shuttle on the rails, and Teonine’s stomach heaved in tandem; he squeezed his eyes shut for a brief second and managed not to be sick, but it made him feel like he was falling backwards. He opened his eyes, but the falling continued.

Her hand was sliding around his collar now, towards the back of his neck, and her face seemed closer, somehow. ‘Do you know why they call me a bad girl, little fish?’

He shook his head, unable to open his mouth for fear he’d be sick. The floor of the airlock seemed to be sliding out from under his feet, tipping him backwards, and there was a faint whistling sound like air was escaping somewhere.

Her hand was pushing against the back of his neck, tugging his head downwards, and he felt her breath against his jaw as she whispered: ‘Wouldn’t you like to?’

The shuttle swayed again, and his stomach was yanked out from under him, and Teonine fell.

*

There was something cold and metal behind his head, and a raised voice. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled automatically.

‘What?’ A girl’s voice. Panicked. ‘What did you say? Are you OK?’

‘Sorry,’ Teonine said again. There was cold metal underneath his legs and butt too, and it seemed to be rumbling and jolting. He put out a hand, and felt more metal, vibrating under his hand with an unmistakable rhythm.

Shuttle. The word set up a train of associations in Teonine’s mind. Shuttle. Airlock. Dark. Cramped. And …

‘Oh fuck.’ He put both hands on his face, and felt how cold and clammy his skin was. ‘Oh fuck.’

‘Dude, you have got to tell me if you’re OK.’

Teonine opened his eyes. He was half-sitting, half-leaning against the bulkhead which had been behind him, his legs sprawled out on the floor in front of him; and kneeling between them, looking scared, was Karia.

‘Are you all right?’ she demanded.

He’d fainted. A girl had tried to kiss him, and he’d fainted.

‘I’m OK. I’m fine.’ He pushed himself backwards, or tried to, but his hands slipped, too damp to get a purchase on the grimy metal floor. ‘Sorry.’

‘You just went down.’ She was pale, and the darkness of the airlock drained the colour from her virulently orange hair. ‘I was just - and then I saw all these colours go off on your, your things -’ She gestured to his shoulder. ‘And then you just went really green and you - you passed out.’

Clearly, his protective colouration had kicked in, a display to warn away predators. Teonine didn’t even have the energy to feel embarrassed about that, even though to another Nautolan it would be the equivalent of pissing his pants. He shifted. No, at least he hadn’t done that. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Are you sure?’ She reached a hand towards his head. ‘You still look pale -’

Teonine flinched away; he thought he might actually die on the spot if she touched him right now. ‘It’s OK, it’s just - I was -’ He sought wildly for an excuse. ‘I’m - I guess I panicked. I’m claustrophobic.’

In the half-light, he thought she gave him a strange look, but what she said was: ‘Oh. Oh shit.’ She scooted backwards towards the other end of the airlock, giving him as much space as she could. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Teonine passed a hand over his clammy forehead; the pain in his temples had subsided to a dull but persistent throbbing. ‘I mean, you didn’t know.’

‘Yeah, but I ask you to come in here, I put you on the spot in front of everybody -’ She waved her hand at the wall adjoining the rest of the compartment.

Teonine wouldn’t have believed his spirits could sink any lower, but at the reminder that the rest of the kids from their class were on the other side of the partition, waiting with bated breath to hear what had happened on this side, they slipped another few notches.

Karia clearly picked up that she wasn’t helping, because she cut herself off in mid-sentence, eyed him warily for a second. ‘Don’t worry. Just breathe, OK?’ She checked her wrist chronometer. ‘We’ll be inside the school’s bubble in a couple of minutes, and then you can get out.’

Get out and begin the rest of his academic career as the freak Nautolan who fainted when a girl tried to kiss him. And to think that this morning he’d genuinely believed his life couldn’t get any worse.

Karia was rooting in her shoulder bag. ‘I really thought I had some water in here. Do you have any? You should have some water.’

‘Huh? No. I don’t have any.’

‘That’s ironic,’ she said nervously. ‘You’re, like, a fish out of water. A fish out of -’ She caught his eye. ‘Never mind.’ She sat back against the wall, hugging her knees, mirroring Teonine’s posture. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You really don’t look so good.’

‘I’m fine.’ Seeing her sit like that made Teonine suddenly realise he was missing something. He bolted upright, patting down the front of his sweatshirt -

‘Looking for this?’ Karia held up one end of the plastic tubing. It had clearly come loose and slithered out onto the floor.

‘Uh - yeah.’

‘I nearly had a heart attack when I saw it coming out from underneath your sweatshirt. I thought it was, like, your weird Nautolan intestines or something. Or your dick.’

Teonine, caught mid-inhalation, spluttered. His head throbbed again. ‘Thanks.’ He yanked the tubing towards him. ‘It’s - uh - I need it for class - it's a science project -’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Just tell me if you’re building a bomb to blow up the school. I’ll help.’

Teonine smiled weakly. ‘It’s nothing. I - well - I’ll show you sometime.’

‘Sure you will, little fish.’ Karia glanced at her wrist again. ‘We really are nearly out, I promise.’

‘No, it’s OK, I just -’ Teonine broke off, biting his lip.

She looked concerned again. ‘What? What’s up?’

Could you maybe not tell everyone - not tell anyone - about that thing where I fainted on you? He couldn’t even muster up the energy to try to form the words, despite the growing knot in his stomach when he thought about the looks on Fralx and Fotze’s faces. ‘Nothing.’ He leaned his head back against the wall and longed for his bed.

Distantly he heard her say, ‘It’s OK, you know. I’m not going to say anything.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Teonine mumbled.

‘I mean it,’ she insisted. ‘We just won’t say anything about what we did.’

‘Then they’ll assume I freaked out or did something weird,’ Teonine said wearily. ‘It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.’

‘You know what? You’re right. It is fine. Because I’m going to fix it.’ She clapped her hands, startling Teonine out of his daze, and jumped to her feet. ‘Give me a sec.’

Puzzled, he watched as she ran her hands violently through her short blood-orange hair until it lost its carefully-defined flicks and stood out from her head in a fuzzy sort of way. Then she undid the second-to-top button on her shirt. Lastly, she did a weird sort of dance on the spot, jumping up and down vigorously and slapping her cheeks.

‘What are you doing?’ Teonine asked.

‘Trust me.’ She stood stock still for a minute, and Teonine thought she was mouthing something at him, until he realised she was trapping her bottom lip between her teeth and scraping her top teeth over it.

Then she dug in her bag and pulled out a shiny tube of something - lipstick, Teonine realised, as she opened it and scrutinised the colour. She smudged some on her thumb and carefully dabbed her lips with it, then turned to Teonine. ‘Up.’

He pulled his feet in and slid his back up the wall until he was standing; his head swum a little, but he stayed upright. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Making you look the right kind of mess.’ She painted more lipstick on her thumb, reached out to touch him and then hesitated. ‘May I?’

Teonine still didn’t know what she was doing, but he nodded anyway.

She reached out and carefully brushed her thumb against the corner of his mouth, then, seemingly as an afterthought, smudged it against the collar of his sweatshirt. She scrutinised him narrowly, then, apparently satisfied, nodded and put the lipstick into her pocket.

‘Now,’ she instructed, ‘when we get out there, just wipe it off with the back of your hand and look embarrassed.’

Teonine touched the corner of his mouth gingerly with his fingertip. ‘That part’s not going to be a problem.’

‘If somebody asks you what we did in here -’

‘They won’t.’

‘- Just don’t say anything and act like you’re too cool to talk about it. I’ll handle the rest. Trust me, I know just what to say.’

Karia looked down at the tubing he was still holding. ‘Should we try and stash this? Or fit it in my bag? No,’ she decided, ‘stick it back up your sweatshirt. If anybody looks, they’ll just think you’re trying to cover up a boner.’

Teonine, trying to wrap the tubing back around his midriff, choked again and dropped one end.

Karia rolled her eyes and stooped to pick it up. ‘Oh, come here.’

‘Thanks,’ Teonine mumbled, head swimming again as she turned him around with a hand on his shoulder, then back to face her again, wrapping the tubing around his abdomen where it could be concealed by his baggy sweatshirt. ‘You don’t have to … Thanks.’

‘One thing about me, little fish? I might get my friends into trouble, but I always get them out of it.’ She tucked the end of the tube underneath the coils. ‘There. That should be OK until you get back to your room. I’d tell you to go straight back there, but you always do.’

Teonine knew she was trying to make him smile. He knew he should want to smile. Instead, he said, too loudly: ‘You don’t have to be nice to me, you know.’

She laughed, picking up her bag and swinging it over her shoulder. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said, briskly. ‘If only because I triggered your … claustrophobia.’

A shudder passed through the floor and walls, and Teonine heard the faint thunk of seals relaxing, pressure equalising, as the shuttle passed through the atmospheric shield and into the school’s bubble.

Karia was already kneeling by the hatch. She turned to look back at him over her shoulder. ‘There’s another reason, of course,’ she said provocatively. ‘For being nice to you.’

Teonine tensed. ‘What?’

‘Well, you owe me one now, little fish.’ She winked at him. ‘Don’t forget, will you? I know I won’t.’

Teonine knew she was teasing, but as he squatted down beside her and waited for Voka Ginn to unseal the hatch, he felt the familiar, leaden weight of obligation settling into his stomach.

*

Part Two here.

#swtor #swtor fanfiction #swtor fic #oc kiss week #oc: teo lunulata #oc: devinahl #other people's cool ocs #how do you do fellow kids #overuse of the word skrag

[blubberquark]

Belated Protector Postmortem

I made the game Protector for the 46th Ludum Dare game jam. I did not make a tumblr post about it during the jam. Don’t think Protector is my best jam game, but what can you expect from a jam game? Hardly a glowing endorsement, I know. Download it from itch.io at this link, or don’t.

With some distance, I think it’s interesting to tell you why I don‘t think Protector is that good... or maybe “good” is not the right word. Some friends and other Ludum Dare entrants had encouraged me (privately) to keep working on it after the jam and fix the bugs. In my opinion, Protector is fine the way it is (for a jam game anyway), but any more work on it will be a waste of time. There will be no post-compo releases of Protector.

If you are just getting started making games, Protector could be a good example of when to stop working on a prototype. But first, let’s do the usual “game jam postmortem“ song and dance.

Game Description

In this moody puzzle-ish platformer, you control an invincible character tasked with guiding a small (and very vincible) dog through the level. You cannot control the dog.

Instead you can pick up and throw a bone, but you can’t carry the bone. When you press the bone throwing button a second time, the dog will chase after the bone.

One the dog is running, you cannot stop it. You also cannot call the dog to return to you. You have to clear the path for the dog before you let it loose.

What Went Right

Scope: I scoped Protector aggressively minimal. I remember feeling a bit under the weather on the first day of the jam, so I decided to take it easy and submit something small. I was okay with submitting a small game in the jam category. I just had this idea I wanted to try out.

There is only one level, and it’s not all that big. I submitted on the morning of the third day, with everything I wanted in the game, without losing any sleep, and with some time to spare.

Theme: The idea was my own take on that last level in Bastion, when the kid carries the battering ram, but as an escort mission. The main character was supposed to be some kind of brute or barbarian loosely inspired by the barbarian class in Diablo II. Obviously you keep a dog alive, because that’s the theme of the jam.

Character Designs: I think nailed it with the brute and dog sprites. The brute is big and faceless, and the dog is small and cute. The proportions of the brute convey that he is strong and slow, and his shield (but no sword) should clue you in about his purpose.

Simple Dog Behaviour: The dog runs and bounces around pretty quickly. Once the dog is running, all bets are off, because you are too slow to catch up. You have to set everything up so the dog won’t kill himself, because he’s not a cat with nine lives. He is a dumb dog.

Any kind of AI or pathfinding would have made the dog less predictable, and the main objective of the game is to keep it alive (that was the theme of the jam), so simple, fast, predictable movement was key. The player has to be able to predict the dog’s path before it starts running.

Level Design: The level is not that big. There is a variety of obstacles and set pieces, and these are all easy for the player character to navigate, but potentially lethal to the dog. In addition to multiple platforming challenges, there are two unique “set pieces” that break up the monotony.

There are five different ways for the dog to die, and the level is constructed to make the player experience each of them once. Some are obvious, like the lightning cloud and the tower that shoots arrows, but the level is designed so that every player dies at least once. After mastering an obstacle once, it should pose no challenge on repeat playthroughs.

What Went Wrong

Controls: The controls are very simple, based on only the four arrow keys, X and C. These can be mapped to the left stick and first two buttons of a gamepad. In walk mode, the two buttons jump and call the dog, and the “up” direction is used to raise the shield.

In throw mode, with the left/right axis controls the throwing angle, and the up/down angle controls the velocity. This control scheme feels too cumbersome. The X key is used for calling the dog and throwing the bone, based on context. This also feels cumbersome, but it makes it less likely for players to accidentally throw or call the dog when they want to jump. I still had to resort to putting the controls on the screen at all times.

For gamepad controls it would have made more sense to use the direction of the left stick for the throwing angle and velocity. For keyboard+mouse controls I could have implemented a mouse-based throwing system like in Gunpoint or a parabola indicator that shows where the bone will land. I could also have gone the other way with a Worms style throwing system in which the throwing velocity is proportional to the time the button was held. As is, the throwing uses the same buttons as platforming, but it doesn’t feel good.

Bone Physics: The bone physics was kind of bouncy and floaty. I implemented my own physics because the bone was the only object in the whole game that needs halfway realistic bouncy collisions. The player and the dog use platformer physics, so there was no need for a physics engine like Box2D, libODE, or pymunk. The bone is modelled like a simple spinning ball. I could have made the bone less bouncy to give the player more control, maybe even cheated by making it less bouncy only in the x-direction. I could also have gone in the other direction and modelled the bone as a rectangle or two balls connected by a line.

Dog Platforming: The dog sometimes gets stuck in a wall or on a ledge. This is bad. I could fix this by making the dog fall down or turn around when this happens, but that would make the problem worse. I’d rather have the dog (or the bone) stuck in a weird position until the player gets it out than having it sit inside a pit in an unwinnable position with believable physics.

The way bone physics and platforming work is very janky, but that is because the obvious fix would have unacceptable gameplay consequences.

Main Gameplay Loop: It goes like this: throw bone - move into position - let dog loose - wait for dog - retrieve bone - throw bone - move into position, and so on. There is no way to call the dog back because that would make certain puzzles too easy, no way to set multiple way points for the dog, no way to ask the dog to fetch the bone back to you, and no way to carry the bone - otherwise you could just walk over and drop the bone there.

The gameplay loop as it stands just doesn’t allow that many puzzles, and changes to the gameplay would make the current puzzles too easy. Adding more content is more or less incompatible with the current gameplay, and changes to the gameplay loop would break the existing balance.

Allowing the player to carry the bone, to use different tools than the shield, to call the dog back would destroy the game design.

What I Learned

Escort missions suck. I already knew that hidden complex systems are not fun, but even indirect interaction based on simple systems is hard to get right. Beyond that, I did not try anything new and outlandish. I just had the idea about the big protector and the little dog.

The most surprising thing was how poorly Protector was rated in the “Mood” category given the relatively high theme score. Having no sound really did me no favours, and neither did the GameBoy screen resolution or the 5-colour palette.

But importantly, despite all the gameplay shortcomings, this still works as a short game. If the game is short enough, it can be carried by novelty, and players will forgive janky controls, even if the controls are part of the game’s main difficulty. I relied on this insight in other jam games, but it does not translate to long-form games.

This is a bit meta, but it is important to understand when a game design does not work. To some degree I think game jams even encourage a kind of toxic positivity towards young people learning to program. By all means, you should encourage people who want to try their hand at game design, and you should not go out of your way to disparage teenagers learning to code or programmers who make programmer art because the graphic design in their enterprise software day job is done in a different department. All too often, instead of “keep it up“, we tell people who are getting started to keep working on their jam games. If a game has load of bugs, on some level it would be nice to have them fixed, and these bugs are an obvious starting point for a post-jam version of the game - but when I see buggy games with experimental gameplay ideas, I don’t always encourage the devs to keep tweaking the mechanics until it works. Some experiments have negative results, and that’s okay.

Some jam entries are great games, successful experiments if you will, but they can’t easily be made into longer games. That’s also okay.

Can We Fix This?

“But hypothetically” you ask me, “how would you turn Protector into a longer game if I hired you to be a game designer?”

Okay. Hypothetically. In this hypothetical world, you pay by the hour, no unpaid overtime, and no bonus based on how well the game sells ;-)

We need a story that glues all the levels together, and the dog platforming would be at most a third of the game. Maybe in some levels you and the dog fight side by side, maybe you explore some of the levels with the dog on a leash, maybe you tie the leash to a post at the level entrance and come back when you have cleared everything.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have through-line that connects different types of gameplay, different set pieces and minigames.

In order to make the platforming and puzzle solving more interesting, you would have a different load-out in different levels. Some platforms are dog-only, and you would throw the bone (or a tennis ball) up there because you can’t reach it yourself. You would need a way to recall the bone (or tennis ball) or a way to recall the dog, maybe a dog whistle. Maybe you just have a limited supply of dog treats per level. Earlier levels just have the bone, and shield, later ones introduce mobility items for the player character, tennis balls, a collar, a leash, dog treats, a dog whistle, and so on.

It would be a fun idea (or a gimmick) to have most of the upgrades be for the dog, but that’s not very fun to actually play.

Another possible problem is if the dog handling becomes an afterthought, or a drag in the player, going back to fetch the dog after the level has been cleared. Escort missions are not held in high regard among players, so this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With all these mobility items and larger levels, we would need an improved dog AI. We also could not have the dog fall into a pit of spikes, instead it should refuse to jump into unsafe distances, and somehow communicate to the player. We would also need a way to get the dog back down if it got up the wrong platform, and a way for the player to reset progress to the last check point or re-fill dog treats without creating an exploitable loophole where the player can just walk back and forth to the vending machine and win a level with infinite dog treats.

Oh no, the dog AI sounds complicated now. Complicated hidden systems are not fun, and training AI-powered animals is not that difficult code-wise, but it is difficult to pull off in a way that is fun and legible to the player. I still remember Black&White. Those animals were a gimmick. Somehow we need a way for the dog to communicate things to the player. Can the dog talk? Is there a bark code? Can the dog smell things?

One thing we absolutely must not do is vary the dog AI between levels. Players will have a really hard time as is, because the smarter the dog gets, the easier it becomes to accidentally mis-predict what it will do.

Think about all the parts of this rather comprehensive proposal: Complex AI, some kind of story, different controls, unlockable items, and level/puzzle design that integrates all of the above, all written from scratch or re-written for the bigger game. I’d rather spend the time on something else.

#game development #gamedev #aseprite #ludum dare #ldjam #postmortem #game jam #on the shortness of games

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #332

i’m even more tired than before to try and think up song lyrics, i’m pasting from Word and then fucking off to bed lmao.

What was the last video message you received on your phone? I think it was a clip of Doris (Sara's beardie) eating and just being her perfect self? Was your last birthday cake homemade or store bought? Store-bought. One thing you miss about middle school? Shit, nothing. Middle school was the worst. Do you have any shirts signed by famous people? No. Have you ever entered an art competition? Yes. Would you ever pierce yourself? No. I am very much about having a professional do your body mods/art. Plus, I have tremors in my hands. Do you live in a safe neighbourhood? Supposedly. We haven't lived here nearly long enough to know. What is the last thing you did that shocked someone? /shrug Do you often find yourself questioning your future? Only always. Have you ever been for a ride in the back of a truck? Yeah. Do you like your license photo? I hate my permit picture. Are you into superheroes? Who’s your favorite? Not very, but I like 'em enough. I always say my favorite is Deadpool, but I know he's technically an anti-hero, but whatever. If you don't include him, uhhhh... maybe Spiderman. Have you started watching any new TV shows recently? No. Have you ever been able pet a normally wild animal, like a tiger or dolphin? No. :( At least, not to my recollection. Have you ever eaten snow? Yeah. There's actually a winter treat 'round here that you make with snow and sugar called snow cream. Good stuff. What is the messiest area in your home? Right now, the spare room/my wanna-be "office." What’s your favorite computer game genre? Still horror, like video games. Do you have any exes your parents never liked? No. Have you received financial help from your parents in the past 5 years? I'm completely financially dependent on them still. Are you a fast or a slow eater? I eat like, stupid fast, but without being messy. People *cough*Mom*cough* will absolutely point it out, but I seriously can't help it. Making a conscious effort to eat slow feels way too weird. What was the last thing you purchased from a small local business? I don't know. Is there anyone in your family/household whom you frequently argue with? No. Have you ever used chewing tobacco? Ew, no. Tell me what's on your mind? I've been considering yet again reaching out to some tattoo parlors and asking if they're open to hiring someone to handle the front desk and take care of business besides actually performing piercing and tattooing, given my tremors. My group therapy has kinda been encouraging me to use the possibility for social exposure, and besides, I'm very comfortable in the environment and just general aura of tat parlors. I'm sure I'd have to answer the phone, handle money, and obviously talk to costumers, but I know and accept that. I've been at such a stagnant point with my social anxiety in particular that I have to start pushing back harder, and doing this I feel would be one of the most relaxed, social job positions I can hopefully handle. I don't dare to even try this though until I get vaccinated to protect my immunocompromised mom. Writing this all out has actually been pretty encouraging about this idea... Do you wish you never dated someone you dated? Yeah, Tyler. It was such a "I'm lonely and he was nice in high school, so we'll try it" situation. I got nothing from it. Are you scared of growing old alone? Pretty badly. What are you listening to right now? I'm listening to/semi-watching John Wolfe play the remaster of Resident Evil 2. What breed was the last dog you saw? He was a German shepherd. Would you ever go swimming during a thunderstorm? No. Any time a thunderstorm was brewing and I was in the pool, I'd always get out. What is the next concert you will attend? Mom and I plan to see Ozzy when/if he reschedules his tour after he had to cancel with his Parkinson's diagnosis. What was the name of the last pet of yours that died? Teddy. :/ What's the highest science class you have taken? I don't know, actually. What makes you squeal like a school girl? No shame, seeing Mark and Amy do something cute together actually does this, lmao. What’s your favorite symbol? (i.e. the pentagram, the cross, etc.) Do fictional ones count? Because in that case, the Halo of the Sun from the Silent Hill franchise. I'm getting it tattooed somewhere at some point, I'm thinking the left side of my neck. I'm either gonna fashion it in a way where it looks branded on or carved into me. Have you ever been on anti depressants? For all of my pre-teen, teen, and some of my adult life. Apparently, I've only had one truly educated psychiatrist out of no less than a dozen I'd seen, because he fixed me right up. He taught me that those who suffer from bipolarity should avoid anti-depressants; they ramp up your bipolar symptoms. Instead, mood stabilizers are favorable. And what do you know, after I was prescribed a stabilizer and a catalyst for that medication, my depression decreased dramatically and became handleable. Have you ever starved yourself? Kinda. What’s the stupidest name you’ve ever given a pet? I had a guinea pig named Harry Potter. For no particular reason lmao. I'm not even a Harry Potter fan. Do you have nice legs? God no. Do you like fedoras? Okay so I know I am in the strong minority, but I actually do, haha. What is your favorite food group? Carbs. @_@ Have you ever got told that you should be a model? No, but one of the most flattering indirect compliments I've ever gotten was being mistaken for one. Jason's phone wallpaper was one of my favorite pictures of myself with my first snake, and someone asked him if I was a model. ;v;' What song is in a language you don’t speak, but you love it anyway? "Donaukinder" by Rammstein is one of my faves. Who’s a villain you sympathize with and why? SOBS Darkiplier bc his origins are so damn tragic and unfair. What book do you think should be directed as a film? Was The Giver ever made into one? I don't remember that book well, but I do recall it being absolutely beautiful. Have you ever found a stranger’s note somewhere? If so, what did it say? No. Have you ever edited Wikipedia? No. Have you ever edited any other wiki? Yeah. I have thousands on the Silent Hill wiki, where I'm one of the admins. I'm also a content moderator at the Team Ico (Shadow of the Colossus devs) one. Every now and again I used to go on the meerkats wiki as well, where I mainly fixed the fucking nightmarish grammar. Very briefly, I edited at the Dragons of Atlantis wiki as well. Do you get scared when you know some virus or sickness is being passed? Not very, but of course I still acknowledge the risk and am more conscious of hand washing and stuff. What popular social media platforms AREN’T you on? Snapchat, I don't actually use my Twitter, I don't have a personal Instagram... There may be more, idk. Is TikTok a "social media platform?" Because I don't have that, either. What was the name of the first porcelien doll you got? Never had one, given I was afraid of dolls as a kid. What’s your favorite Paramore song? "Decode." Would you be happy with a life without romance? To be entirely honest, I'd feel like I was missing something. Was your childhood happy? Mostly. What fundamentally matters do you? Love, kindness, peace, all that gooey stuff. Is true world peace ever possible? As much as I hate to admit it, I don't think so. The human population is far too big to come to a unanimous agreement on anything. Do you hold yourself to higher standards than you hold others? Yeah. Would you ever own a pet black widow spider? No. I'm getting more into the idea of owning invertebrates (I jabber enough about wanting tarantulas, and there are others, like mantises, I'm interested in as pets), but black widows, I'm not into the idea of having. Too venomous for me to be comfortable risking. If you have a job, what is the longest shift that you've worked? N/A Do you know all of the words to "Bohemian Rhapsody?" FUCK YES I DO. ^ Do you sing it with all of the different voices? sho nuff Do you own more than one copy of a certain book? No. Do you like interpreting poetry or just reading it for fun? Both. I love symbolism, so I get joy out of digging for subtle meanings in poems. Do you have a favorite Dr. Suess book? Yeah, it was always Green Eggs and Ham. Do you watch The Walking Dead? If so, favorite character? Not the show, but I've watched let's plays of the games, haha. In which case Clementine is inarguably one of the best female characters in a video game universe. Who has/had the most mature romantic relationship you’ve seen with your own eyes? Uhhh. I mean I never saw them much, but probably my late grandmother and her last husband. He was fucking incredible to her, and Grammy adored him as well. They helped each other so much and just obviously had the purest love between them. When was the last time you got something for free (legally)? What was it & have you enjoyed it so far? Lmao do balls in Pokemon GO count? Their occasional free boxes are the reason I can play the game because PokeStops are essentially non-existent here, so yes. What is the one fruit you can’t stand to eat? How about vegetable? The first one that came to me were oranges. I enjoy orange juice, but I just caaaaannot with the white veiny shit that you can't totally get off when peeling it. Without that, I might actually enjoy them, but idk. As for vegetable, asparagus is absolutely abhorrent. When’s the last time you actually recited the pledge? If you aren’t American, do/did you have anything similar in your country that you do during a time at school? Probably not since high school. Last person you shared food with? Ummm I have no idea. It's really just Mom and me here and we eat our own stuff. What was the last song you heard for the first time and enjoyed? I believe it waaas... "Down In The Park" by Marilyn Manson, maybe. If your life was a TV show, what would be the theme song? My inner high school emo just screamed "All Signs Point to Lauderdale" by AD2R. Who are some of your favorite female fictional characters, and why? Gahdamn, there's a lot. I don't feel like going through a mental list in my head and then describing why. A character (in anything) you wish hadn’t been killed off? Vol'jin; I think the entire WoW fanbase will forever be pissed about it. It was THE most "lul we dunno what 2 do w/ him anymore, let's let a totally random, unnamed, unimportant demon kill him" like what the fuck, Blizz. Most of his "oomph" was in the book, and I just really wish they'd done so much more with him in the game. Has anything “cute” happened in the past week? Off the top of me noggin, no. When did you last say “I love you”? Did you mean it? Yesterday to Sara. OF course I did. Is there someone who pops into your mind at random times? Hi, PTSD, how are ya. Have you ever slept all day? Essentially. When I was on a larger dose of my anxiety med, I physically couldn't stay up for barely even five minutes, and when I'd lie back down, boom, I was OUT. I stayed on that dosage for I think just that one day, it was so bad. Can you have kids? Well, I have a functioning menstrual cycle, so I would assume so. Doesn't mean I will, though. What colors of mascara have you worn on your lashes? Only black. Do you like eating sour things? Hell yeah, I love sour stuff, candy in particular. Do you like pickles? fuuuuck yeah Did you ever have a really close friend move away? Yeah, in elementary school. I feel bad I can't remember her name at the moment... What's the most creative thing you've ever done? I mean, I guess the things I've written in RP. What's the most creative thing someone has done for you? For me? I don't really know. Do you like to watch ghost-hunting shows? Sure, they're some of my favorites. What’s something you’d like to be better at? Social interaction. Have you ever stayed up to talk to someone who was sad? Yeah. Do you think you would make a good parent? No. I know I wouldn't. The only time I ever wanted kids was with Jason, and honestly, I really hope I don't end up with a man because I never want to deal with that urge again and make a mistake. I'm just in no way emotionally fit to be a mother. How many best friends do you have? Just one. What do you cry over the most? My PTSD, honestly. I never sob about it anymore, just shed some tears. What language did/do you take in high school? Latin for one semester, then all four available for German. Which sports do you follow? None. Who was the last person you talked about marriage or having kids with? About marriage, Sara. Kids, the subject was lightly touched upon with Girt, though "with" was never a part of it, but obviously implied seeing as we were dating with long-term in mind. Have you ever been in a house fire? No, thankfully. Have you ever made out for one straight hour? them is rookie numbers Are you any good at remembering phone numbers? No. I literally don't even know my own, nor my mother's. I need to fix that. Who is your best friend of the opposite sex? Girt. Do you have a bookshelf? If so, just one or how many? No. If I gave you twenty bucks what would you do with it? Save it to go towards Venus' terrarium. Is there a movie from your childhood that you still watch today? Well of course! I'm unashamed to watch any "kids" movie I enjoy, like Disney ones. Most "kids" movies tend to be better than those intended for adults, it seems... Are you afraid of mice? Oh no, I adore mice and I think had a pair as pets before I got rats. What type of souvenir do you usually purchase when on vacation? I can't really answer this; I haven't gone on nearly enough vacations to develop a theme. I can say confidently though it'd probably be something small. If you could see any musical on Broadway right now, what would it be? I don't enjoy musicals. Have you ever watched Doctor Who? One or two with Sara, yes. I know we at least watched the weeping angels episode. If you read, which book or series did you enjoy most as a child? Warriors by S.E. Hinton. Sometimes I wanna get back into them, but I am YEARS behind and more into Wings of Fire anyway, so. I don't read nearly enough for both. How do you get rid of your hiccups? Literally no trick seems to work for me. I just suffer lmao.

#survey #surveys #questions

[ma-gic-gay]

"Did you kill my brother?"

"What are you talking about, Jason?" Sonny asks his business partner who's clearly found out the truth.

"AJ. Did you kill him?"

"It's complicated-"

"No it's not. Either you pulled the trigger and let out the shot that killed my brother or you didn't, Sonny. I need to know what you did."

"Ava, she-"

"I didn't ask what Ava did, Sonny, I asked what you did. So just tell me already, did you shoot him with the bullet that killed him?"

"Yes. I did, I shot him because Ava made me think that he was the one who killed Connie. She told me that he'd killed her and I was mad. God, I was so mad that I killed him. Ava, she encouraged it, and I shot him because I thought I was avenging Connie's death."

"I can't believe you," Jason snarls at his mentor. "You thought I was dead! I died trying to protect you, and this is the thanks I get? You push my brother to drink again after my grieving mother calls him home because she needs one of her kids alive. He bonded with Michael! He was a part of my family again and you shot him. You killed AJ and didn't tell me for years. I found out about it because of Cyrus!"

"What the hell is Cyrus doing contacting you with that information?" Sonny asks, confused and upset. "And how the hell did he find out?"

"He sent me a tape with the audio of AJ's death, Sonny. I hate that man more than you could believe, trust me. But you hid this from me for years! I've been back so long and you hide from me that you're AJ's killer," Jason shouts, hands running through his hair.

"So did Carly!" Sonny weakly defends himself and he sees that the fire blazing in Jason's eyes softens slightly.

"This isn't about what Carly did! She didn't pull the trigger! She might not have told me that, but at least she didn't kill him. At least there's that. But you? I can't forgive you. You destroyed my mother. Monica, she needed to know one of her kids was okay and then the one that is, you just have to kill him too? Seems to be a pattern of yours, doesn't it?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You kill AJ and the reason everyone thought I was dead was because of you too, because I was trying to protect you. Kristina's been in a car bombing, Michael got shot, Avery was conceived on my brother's grave, Joss lives her life with bodyguards constantly around her, Dev died, Dante got shot- by you!- should I go on? That's just your kids and AJ, not even half of the stuff you've done. Should I go on?" Jason asks, shouting at him now.

"I know you're upset that Sam left you, Jason, but there are better ways to cope with it then by screaming at me," the shorter of the pair attempts to rationalize.

"Upset? Sonny, Sam left and she took my kids with her. Trust me, that doesn't cover the half of what I'm feeling right now. But I'm fine without Sam here, you know what I'm not fine with? You, who is supposed to be my friend, killing my brother and hiding that from me for so long." Jason fires back.

"Don't take this out on me, Jason," Sonny says, trying to impact this conversation somehow.

"What would you do if I'd done something like this to you, Sonny? I covered your ass so many times, I did everything you didn't want to do or couldn't do. Hell, you're only not still calling Carly a worthless slut because of me so don't you for a second act like my anger isn't justified. I raised your kids when you couldn't. When you were having a major life evaluation, I went to prison to protect your kid. While you were upset and angry, I was comforting your wife! I stood by you through everything, Sonny. Everything! I've got a right to anger, a right to being mad at you, and a right to downright hate you right now!" Jason shouts loudly.

"And I'm grateful for that!" Sonny shouts back. "But you're not listening and you're blaming everything on me when I'm not the only one to blame."

"You're the only one who pulled the trigger. Whatever Carly did, she would never do that to me or Michael," Jason reminds him.

"She helped me cover it up for months," Sonny tells him.

"To save your sorry ass so Michael wouldn't have to deal with more bad things! Her not telling the cops that you killed him, and lying to Michael about it, that was for him. Don't think for a minute it's because you're some amazing person because you're a killer of innocent men!"

"Don't you dare defend her and trash me in the same sentence! I did it to protect you, Jason!"

"Does she think I know?" Jason asks.

"Yes," Sonny admits. "I didn't want you to come back and get bombarded with bad news."

"I quit. I don't need your protection, I never have and I never will. You, on the other hand, might need some from me."

At that, Jason storms out of the office and drives over to the Corinthos home, where Carly is. He's got to find out why she did what she did.

He lets himself in and she smiles when she sees him at first, but quickly registers that he's emotionally conflicted. "What happened, Jason? Are you okay?" The blonde asks, rushing over to check him out. "You don't feel hot, so you're not sick. What's wrong?"

"Did you help hide it from me that Sonny killed AJ?" He asks her quickly when they're seated on the couch.

Confused, she says, "No. He said you knew, that he'd told you."

Jason sighs, his head in his hands. "I didn't. In fact, I just found out that he did that a few minutes ago when Cyrus sent me the recording of his death."

Frowning, Carly envelopes him in a hug. "Jason, I'm so sorry. If I had known, I would've made him tell you or told you myself. God, I'm so stupid! I should've known never to trust Sonny when it comes to this stuff."

"You thought I knew and I wouldn't have a reaction? For years, Carly, all I had for a family was you and Michael and Sonny. He killed my brother. You thought I'd just be fine with it?" Jason asks his best friend, hurt. "For someone who prides herself on knowing me, you really don't if that's what you think."

"He told me you were mad, told me you were processing! I didn't bring it up because I didn't want to watch you as your heart broke," Carly tells him, tears flooding her eyes but her far too stubborn to let them fall. "When we thought you were dead, I almost died, Jason. I was going to pull a Carly, I swear to God, and lose it at an inconvenient time. I know I should've been the one to tell you, I know, but I couldn't stand to watch you while you found out such terrible news. Sonny had me thinking you knew already so I thought there was no point to me telling you anyways."

"Believing what he says about me always seems to mess with you, doesn't it?" Jason asks, a small frown on his lips still.

"Yeah, it does," Carly agrees and the two sit there for a few moments in silence, reminiscing about the past. Before their lives were so complicated, when all that mattered was staying out of jail, each other, and Michael. "It always ends up fucking me over."

"That it does," he agrees, smiling softly.

"What are you smiling about? You just got terrible, earth shattering news, Sam and the kids left, and I ended up lying to you for two years. Why are you smiling?" Carly asks.

"Thinking about the what if's of life," he responds. "What it'd be like if not for that night."

"I made several offers for us to leave the country with Michael," Carly reminds him, chuckling. "Mainly after you came home, but still. You and I, we were in such a real life love and we had everything right. Except timing. When you were ready to confront your feelings for me, after an excruciatingly long period of time, I had slept with Sonny. When I had continually told you mine, you weren't ready to deal with it yet. Timing's a bitch."

"If we left the country, you wouldn't have Morgan, or Joss, or Donna," Jason reminds her.

"And you never would've met Sam, or had Danny, or Scout," she counters. "You think we would've worked out, had we done that, had I not slept with Sonny?"

"If I'd let us, probably," Jason admits after pondering it for a moment. "It would've been hard, but I think we would've. Provided, of course, neither of us backed out."

"You were the one who couldn't deal with it," Carly teases him.

"Yeah," Jason agrees, "I couldn't. Maybe what I felt was too strong or something, I don't know."

"Hey Jason?" She asks him a few minutes later, them both in their own worlds, thinking about what if's and their past.

"What?" He asks her, smiling slightly. His eyes give him away, blue and full of so much emotion in so many different forms.

She doesn't respond with words, just kisses him. Their lips intertwine and all feels right with the world for a moment as they're kissing.

But all good things must come to an end and they pull away. "That was-"

"Unexpected," Jason finishes, smiling at her. "Good unexpected."

"Glad we can agree. What's this mean for us?" She asks.

Instead of answering, he initiates a second kiss, a slightly more passionate one but roughly the same.

"Correction," Carly asks when they pull away, "what's that mean?"

"I don't know," he admits. "I don't know everything. I know that felt right, but you're married and I'm single."

"How do we keep ending up in this situation?" Carly asks, laughing. "First with AJ, then Sonny- our first marriage, when I was in love with you for half of it. And now, again."

"You get married too often," he smirks at her. "That's how."

"Well, maybe the third time of this is a charm," Carly smiles back. "It's an expression for a reason, after all."

Jason considers it for a minute. "God help me I'm going along with a Carly plan," he smiles.

"God help us both," Carly smiles before kissing him again.

I just watched you go through all the stages of grief. You ok???

[beautyandthewarcanons]

Life is Risky: Entry Thirteen

My heart was pounding. I ducked down as Evie fired, the shot missing me. As I took this chance to subdue her before she could fire again, I did not realize that the sound of the gunshot alerted the figure in the darkened hallway. I forced Evie's hand downward, shoving her toward the wall, causing her to drop the gun. I barely had a chance to pin her there when I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my side. A surprised gasp was heard to my left. I looked down, and saw the end of a sword's blade stuck in my side.

Evie's eyes widened, making a mad dash for the gun. Dominic's foot reached it first, sliding it behind it as it slid across the floor. Dev grunted in the background, noticing the gun had stopped just outside of his reach. I felt the sword being freed from my side, choking out a cry as I fell to my knees. I hugged myself as I witnessed Dominic grab Evie then, spinning her around. She screamed and thrashed for a few moments before the blade of the sword slashed her throat open, splattering blood upon the wall.

She fell to the ground where she lay still, not to rise again.

I jolted when Dominic lowered himself, taking off his jacket and ripping a piece off to wrap around my side. I was trembling, my breath shaky. "I think you may have lucked out, boo." He said as I gasped for air. "I don't think I hit any major organs. You'll want to get to a hospital, though. I would bring you myself... but there's one tiny problem." He drew his hand inside his jacket, withdrawing Dev's gun. "I know what you're after. And you're going to do anything to make sure your sister is safe. Believe me when I tell you... I understand. However... I need that man alive." As my eyes widened, Dev sucked in a silent breath in the background. He tried to remain discreet as he crawled toward the other gun lying near him. "I can promise you that I'll make sure your sister is safe, protected. I have access to a plethora of special resources. You expressed how you feared she would never get the chance to learn from this. I assure you that she will. I think losing a precious sister, one who sacrificed so much, is lesson enough to be careful of whom she engages. She underestimated him. She failed to see the threat." As he spoke, I choked out an angry sob, trembling more as I stared at him. "Don't take this personally. What you've done is commendable. That's why I want to make this quick. You don't deserve to suffer." He glanced at Evie's corpse for a moment. "I'll make sure you're remembered. I'll make sure everyone knows you are a hero." I felt the barrel of the gun against my head, then. "Such a shame, boo. Such fire has to be quenched..."

At that moment, the sound of a gunshot filled the air.

I cowered in a ball, whimpering as my eardrums rang from the explosive sound. When several moments passed, I looked up to see Dominic staring at me, his expression unreadable. His brow furrowed, and then I noticed blood beginning to trickle from underneath his hat. I watched as he fell limply to the side, and behind him, I saw Dev lower his arm as the gun he held smoked.

"The cops will be here soon. Get out of here and go after Ambrosia. You're the only one who can save her now. Dev said.

I shakily nodded, still shaking as I mustered the strength to get to my feet. I winced as I moved toward the door, fumbling with the handle before stumbling onto the front porch. I had to get to the car and get Ambrosia far away from this place.

---

[Flashback]

I groaned, my whole body screaming from the impact of the fall. I mustered what strength I could to push myself up, using the wall as a support as I looked around inside the dark corridor. "Ambrosia?" I called out. I spotted something then, going over to it.

Her flashlight.

I picked it up, flipping the switch. I shined it all around me, and she was nowhere in sight. I called her name, limping through the corridors. I wandered into the recreational area of the building, entering a room with an empty indoor pool. Every sound I made seemed echoed, amplified. Just then, I heard a whimper. I shined my light into the pool cavity, gasping.

"Kara!" She cried. "I can't get out! I can't reach the pool ladders!"

"I'm coming!" I shouted back. "How did you get in there?!"

"Someone brought me here!" She responded, and I stopped. "We aren't alone!"

I took in a shaky breath, swallowing as I noticed a chair nearby. I grabbed it, dashing over to carefully hand it to her. "Stand on this, you should be able to reach the bottom rung!"

Ambrosia nodded, grabbing it as I shined the flashlight on the ladder so she could see. "I think I've got it!" She exclaimed.

"Okay. Take it one step at a time. Nice and slow. Just keep looking at me, okay?" I encouraged her. She nodded, her hand grasping the next rung. Just then, she froze, her eyes widening in terror. "What's wrong? Ambrosia-"

Before I could finish, I felt myself being flung down into the pool cavity. Before my head was swimming, I heard Ambrosia scream, and everything seemed to move in slow motion. I struggled to sit up. The side of my head felt moist. I could taste liquid copper in my mouth. I could feel thudding all around me. Suddenly, Ambrosia's voice pierced through the haze, and she ran to me as people who were no longer human began to fling themselves into the cavity with us. Ambrosia helped me to my feet as they began to crawl toward us, groaning, crying, screaming. Their whispers echoed and buzzed about my head, all muttering the same thing.

"We are many... many are we..."

Ambrosia trembled in fear, clinging to me. I grabbed an iron pipe lying near us, the side of my head bleeding as I kept her close to me. I glanced up, seeing a familiar face turning away to leave us to our fate.

Rayne.

Our fate was doom. There was no escape. We were both going to die here. The evil of the world brought us to this culmination, the epicenter, to snuff us out.

No.

No!

NO.

Ambrosia was too great of a light. I would not let her die here. She didn't belong here. This darkness was not meant for her. I could feel it in the very fiber of my soul.

I could barely see anything. I could only hear them. "Stay with me." I hissed to Ambrosia.

And then, I swung away.

Painful screeches pierced the air. I could feel them scratching and clawing me. But the only feeling that mattered was Ambrosia's cling. The feeling of her face against the back of my shoulder.

I bumped into the chair, then.

I grabbed Ambrosia, shoving her toward the chair and grabbed her hands to shove toward the ladder. As she rose, I felt their hands grasping me. The pipe was torn from my grip, and I began to drown in their evil whispers. I knew it was over.

Then... a light.

Screeching filled the air. My breathing quickened, watching the monstrous humanoids writhe and bleed together. Blood began to erupt from the pool's drains. Ambrosia cried my name as the thick liquid began to engulf me.

For several moments, silence filled the air.

Then, a gasp for air.

I felt her hands grab mine, pulling me to my feet. Our arms around each other, we stumbled and limped down the corridor.

When I woke, I was in a hospital. Staff, our cousins, my grandmother, expressing relief as I came to, and concern over my alleged "health scare."

But Ambrosia was seated closest to me. She never left, never let go of my hand. We looked at each other, as we both knew.

She was always the last, and always the first.

---

[Present]

Dread filled my whole body. I limped over to the car only to see the door was left open, and Ambrosia was nowhere in sight.

"Ambrosia!" I called out, trying to steady my breathing. "Ambrosia!" I looked around, beginning to limp down the road. As I did, I approached a grassy clearing, the clouds in the sky gathered in the distance. They emanated an ominous hue, exhaling sharply. Something inside told me to go forth. "Ambrosia!" I cried out once more, stumbling over myself as I tried to run into the clearing. As the edge of the clearing became more prominent in the distance, that's when I heard it.

The sound of bells chiming.

And I saw her standing in the distance, her hair billowing in the gentle breeze. For a moment, she was like an angel.

But then, he approached her from behind, placing a hand on her shoulder. Dread once again gripped me as he turned her away, bringing toward the edge of the clearing. So too his red blanket billowed. I sucked in a breath, running toward them. They reached the edge, the ground dropping down steeply beyond.

A bridge sprouted forth then to end with a door.

As much as my body stung, I didn't stop. Fate brought us here. What I had seen in nightmares all my life, this was the point of no return. I either ended it here, or it ended us.

[Decision prompt system: deactivated.]

[Primary program prompts will now resume on automatic.]

#beauty and the war #beautyandthewarxplayingpieces #beauty and the war x playing pieces #beautyandthewar #dont take this risk #donttakethisrisk #poisonappletales #fanficion #interactive #suspense

[nearlynorth]

Day Two: Role Swap

Baz Pitch was thirsty. He hungered for blood, let his fangs slide out of his gums. He reluctantly drained rat after rat until he finally wasn't thirsty anymore. Until one day he wasn't.

——— Simon I'm cold. Why am I cold? This is the first time this has happened since my magic erupted, even after I lost it. I normally wake up twisted in my sheets, sweat soaking my pajamas while Baz sleeps beside me shivering. Something feels wrong.

I do a mental check of my body.

Feet. Check. Stomach. Check. Face. Check. Wings. Not there. Tail. Not there.

I sit up suddenly. My wings and my tail are gone. My last connections to magic, gone. Tears begin to leak out of my eyes as I cry silently. I don't want to wake Baz. He sleeps like the dead, which I guess is fitting, even though he's not dead. It's the point of one of our only arguments, the fact that I think that he's not dead. He insists that he is, the self-deprecating twat.

I look over at Baz, my panic momentarily forgotten. He's sleeping in an odd position under the blankets, it looks like he has a pillow underneath him.

I feel my stomach rumble, and I pray that it doesn't wake Baz. I watch him open his eyes, and just stare at me.

Baz I hear Simon's stomach rumble and I laugh quietly to myself. He must want scones. Simon is a bottomless pit, no matter how much he eats he could still keep going.

I shift uncomfortably. There is something poking at me, making it hard to lie flat. It's pushing me up from the mattress.

I turn to smile at Simon and I have to stop and stare.

He looks different. He's still beautiful but in a different way. He's still covered by those freckles and moles that I love, but his normally tawny skin is paler. And his wings, his wings, and tail are gone.

I sit up to get a closer look at him, and he gasps.

"Baz, why do you have my wings?" Simon says to me. His voice is awash with disbelief, and Crowley, that's how I feel.

"I don't have wings!" I say indignantly, even as I get up out of bed to look in the mirror. "Crowley, I do have your wings."

Deep, blood-red wings are sprouting out of my shoulder blades, ripping twin tears into my shirt. A barbed tail in the same shade is flicking in between my legs. I'm not as pale as I normally am, and when I flick my tongue to where my fangs normally would be, I feel nothing.

I'm still staring at the mirror when he says, "Baz, I'm hungry."

I roll my eyes at him. "Simon, you're always hungry." In the mirror I see his face begin to show signs of stress, and I turn around to face him. "Simon, what's wrong?" Worry begins to creep into my voice.

"It's like I'm hungry and I'm thirsty at the same time." He whispers. Strain is evident on his face.

Is it possible that since I have his wings and tail, he got my vampirism? That doesn't seem possible, but you never know with Simon. The holes have been being filled, and Bunce's father says that Simon could get his back too. His magic always was explosive. Could this be a sign?

I walk over to him and I lay a gentle hand on his shoulder. Simon's cheeks are puffy with fangs, and he's paler than usual. "Simon, let's get you some blood, and then call Bunce."

"Penny," he mumbled around the fangs. "She'll know what to do."

I nod and lead him into the kitchen that was attached to our small flat. We had made the decision to move in with each other three years into our relationship. Crowley, if Dev or Niall could see me now. They'd say that I've gone soft. But that's true. I've gone soft for Simon Snow, and I'm finally not afraid to admit it. I was so scared for so many years.

"Snow, sit." I point at the mismatched chair that resides at our round wooden table. As he sits down, I go to the fridge and pull out a cup of blood. We had managed to find a sustainable blood source for me, with blood coming from a magical butcher in London that caters specifically to vampires. "Do you want a straw?"

"Yes," Simon's words are muffled by the fangs that are filling up his mouth. He grimaces and shivers.

I push a straw through the plastic film on top of the blood cup and hand it to him slowly. His vision must be heightened, and his hearing should be amplified as well. I'll have to be careful not to frighten him.

"I'm going to go call Bunce. Is it okay if I leave you here for a few minutes?" I ask quietly. I don't want to overload his senses. One of the few memories that I have from when I was younger is just the feeling of being completely overwhelmed.

Simon I shake my head at Baz when he asks if it's alright if he leaves. I don't want to be here alone. Everything feels so different. My balance is off because I don't have my wings and tail, and I'm cold. When these stupid fangs go away I'll have to tell Baz that I'm sorry for leaving the window open on all those nights at Watford. No wonder he was always so insistent that it was closed, I'm freezing.

And I'm thirsty. These dumb fangs are filling my mouth and making it even harder to speak. My words are being caught physically too instead of just mentally.

I take the cup of blood as Baz pulls out his phone to call Penny. We moved into separate flats recently as Micha moved to London. She moved in with him and I moved in with Baz.

The blood is weird. It has a metallic sort of taste and it feels weird to be drinking blood through a straw, but it makes the fangs slide back into my gums.

I can hear Baz talking quietly with Penny as I drink the blood. Penny was hesitant about Baz at first, but she has warmed up to him. Baz helped me a lot in those first days after I lost my magic. He helped me understand that my magic wasn't what made me me. It was only a part of me.

"Bunce," Baz says simply on the phone.

I'm surprised when I am able to hear Penny's response, a single word. "Hello." Baz is always talking about how he can hear me even when I'm in a different room.

"We need you to come over immediately." Baz is looking at me. I used to hate when he got that look in his eyes, the one that fills his eyes with concern. But now I know that it means that he cares about me. I used to feel like I was useless when he looked at me like that. It wasn't his fault, it was a product of my own mind. Now I just feel loved.

I smile at him to show that the fangs are gone. He smiled weakly back at me, filling in Penny on what happened.

"I'll be right over. Let me just check in with my dad." Penny always wants to do research.

I suppose that I can wait a few minutes for her to come. I don't feel as uncomfortable now that my fangs are gone and I've finished the blood. I just feel cold.

"Baz," He whips his head around to look at me. It's interesting to be able to see my wings without looking in a mirror. Baz looks gorgeous with them, like an avenging angel. "I'm sorry for arguing with you about the window being open."

Baz I feel my face break out into a smile when he apologizes. The idiot's finally realized that I was actually cold for all those years and not just opposing him. "I'll get you a blanket." Walking with the wings is cumbersome, but if Simon can do it, I can.

As I'm coming back with a blanket, Bunce arrives. She walks right into the flat, letting herself in with her key. A map is cradled gently in her arms.

"Oh, wow." She breaths out, taking in Simon before turning to me. "This really is a powerful spell."

"Really? This could be a spell?" Simon asks. He's gotten better at not flinching when magic is talked about. He used to hate any mention of magic at all. "Who could've cast it?"

"That's what we are trying to figure out." I bring the blanket over to him and drape it around his shoulders. "I didn't cast it, so the only reasonable solution for who cast it could be..." I trail off, letting Bunce finish my sentence.

"You, Simon. It could be you." Bunce finishes.

Simon looks stunned. He never was good at hiding what he felt. "What... how... how is that possible?"

Bunce lays the map out on the table carefully, revealing London and its surrounding areas. Large circles are filled in on various spots on the map. "This is a map of where all the holes, dead spots, places without magic, that used to exist."

"Used to exist?" Simon's eyes are blown up wide.

Bunce nods. "Can you see where they are filled in? That's because the dead spots no longer exist. The magic has returned to these places, and we think that it could have returned to you."

"We?" Simon manages to tear his gaze away from Bunce to stare at me.

"I've been talking with Professor Bunce. I think that your magic could have returned to you, and that's what prompted the switch." I place a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Simon looks like his whole world just blew up. He's slumped against the back of the chair and his eyes are half closed.

"Try casting a spell." Bunce encourages. "I recommend Flick of the Switch." She said the words without magic purpose behind them, so that she wasn't casting a spell.

"What's that from?" Simon asks, astonishment turning into curiosity.

"It's from a popular song. Trixie used to use it all the time when she wanted to switch the properties of two things, so it should work for you." Bunce tells Snow, smiling at the memory of Trixie.

"Flick of the Switch." Simon says forcefully. There is magic behind the words, and my body begins to tingle.

I can feel Simon's magic encasing my body. It feels different than how it did at Watford, with no smoke smell coming off of him. When I make eye contact with him, he's giddy.

Simon I'm magic. I'm a mage again. I can do magic. I cast the spell and it works, it actually works!

My magic feels controllable now, not like how it felt when I was the Chosen One. I feel like how I did when I was sharing my magic with Baz, except I'm doing this by myself.

I connect my eyes with Baz. When I open my mouth to speak, my vision goes black for a few moments.

When my vision comes back, I see Baz standing close to me. He no longer has wings.

I smile at him and reach back to feel if I have my wings back. They are there, like they always are.

"Baz, I can do magic." I say to him, my smile huge.

"I know, Simon, you can." Baz pulls my face to his, and gives me my first kiss with controllable magic.

#COC 2019 #Carry On Coundown #Carry On Countdown 2019 #Snowbaz #Simon Snow #Baz Pitch #I know that it’s a day late #I didn’t know how to end Ghost-o-Matic

[rpgmgames]

April’s Featured Game: Folkloria

DEVELOPER(S): folkloriarpg ENGINE: RPGMaker MV GENRE: Adventure, RPG SUMMARY: Folkloria is a lighthearthed turn-based RPG set on a floating island inhabited by mythological creatures. You play as Weaver, a young and unassuming griffin determined to rescue his family from the clutches of Dr. Zeralidius, a shady businessperson from the world below the clouds who plans to modernize the peaceful island.

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *Oi! I'm Domino, a wannabe artist. I've been drawing all my life, a passion I inherited from my father, but only recently I decided to publish my work online. Through the years I have tinkered with basically all iterations of RPG Maker, making silly short games with my friends before attempting to develop something full-fledged.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Domino: Folkloria is a very simple, cartoony turn-based RPG which spices things up with timed hits, counters and a variety of partners. The game takes place on a floating island inhabited by anthropomorphized mythological creatures. The protagonist of the story is Weaver, a child griffin determined to rescue his family from the clutches of Dr. Zeralidius, a shady businessperson from the civilized world who wants to forcefully modernize the island. Along the way he will meet new allies like Lauper, a thousand-year old phoenix who needs his help to drive Zeralidius out of the island, and Akinai, a kitsune merchant who will supply them with the best items she has to offer. I still haven't shown all the party members, but among them are a buff minotaur lady, a shy but frightening wendigo and a sculptor gorgon. 

What inspired me to make a game was the indie scene in general. I have always dreamt of being a game developer since I was a kid, and when indie games first started becoming really popular I thought to myself "Hey, I could probably do that!". The folklore theme of the game was decided completely at random. When I first created the character of Weaver with my friends years ago, we wanted to make a traditional 2D platformer. We came up with a griffin character since being part lion and part bird he could fly, run fast and use its claws to attack. That decision alone basically shaped up the rest of the setting, and I started populating the game's world with different mythological creatures.

How long have you been working on your project? *Domino:  The game in its actual state was started at the end of 2015, but the basic setting and characters (specifically Weaver, the protagonist and Zeralidius, the villain) were conceived as far back as 2012. I didn't pay much attention to it during the following years since I was working on another unrelated project with some friends, but after things fell out with them I decided to revisit the concept and flesh it out.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Domino: Of course! If it wasn't obvious enough, the game is heavily influenced by Nintendo RPGs, especially the Paper Mario series. I always loved the simplistic approach towards the RPG formula those games have, and I also adore turn based combat with timed button presses. I think it keeps the player engaged. Graphically, Mother 3 was a big inspiration. The art style of that game just resonates so well with me, with that colorful palette and the black outlines that make the sprites stand out so much.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Domino: The biggest challenge was overcoming the limitations of the engine itself. I chose RPG Maker because it's very easy to pick up, as I'm mainly an artist and I don't know anything about coding. But as time passed, I noticed that even when using countless scripts I couldn't achieve the battle system I had in mind for my game, which required timed button presses and numerous character animations. So one day I decided to try making the battle system from scratch, using only common events and script calls, and it worked smoothly. In the end it felt extremely satisfying to see something like that work as intended, and by experimenting with script calls and variables I at least learned something about coding.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Domino: Like I said before, the game was initially conceived as a 2D platformer. Then, when I picked up the project again years later, I envisioned it as a bare-bones boss rush RPG with Weaver as the sole playable character. As I started adding more features like partners and equipment, I felt those would be wasted in a boss-only game and I finally decided to include random enemies. Since then the game hasn't changed much, but to this day I always find myself revisiting minor stuff like the design of some NPCs (and I should seriously stop doing that!).

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Domino: I prefer to work alone, as I am very picky about how characters and gameplay aspects are handled, but I still enjoy receiving feedback. I have a very close friend who doesn't actively work on the game, but always tell me what I'm doing right or wrong, and I find his help invaluable. So far I'm doing well one-man-armying the project, I will have to find a composer sooner or later though, since making music is the only thing I can't realistically do by myself.

What is the best part of developing the game? *Domino: Animating the character sprites and seeing them interact in battles is incredibly satisfying to me. Being an artist at heart I'd say spriting in general is my favorite aspect of game development. Another thing I absolutely adore is worldbuilding, researching the mythical beasts from all around the world and trying to incorporate them in the game by giving them my own spin.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Domino: I haven't played many RPG Maker games, but I did enjoy LISA the Painful and OneShot immensely. I was impressed by how far these two games in particular pushed the RPG Maker engine to its limit.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Domino: Self-inserting isn't something I like to do in games, so this is a hard question for me, but I think I can relate with Weaver, he mostly keeps to himself but he's always willing to help his friends and family.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Domino: Yes, I regret not having started working on this project earlier and wasting too much time during the planning phase.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Domino: Absolutely! I would definitely love to expand the game's lore further through comics and other side projects.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Domino: The sense of accomplishment of having completed and released a game! But deep down, the thing I'd love the most is having fans of my work and seeing my characters drawn by other artists.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Domino: The whole marketing part scares me. I really don't know how to promote my game, so getting it noticed is going to be pretty tough for me.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Domino: Oh man I am bad at this. I'd say... when starting, keep the scope of your game small. Make something that you, as a player, would enjoy playing. Don't try to follow trends and, most importantly, value every bit of constructive criticism, but remember that you can't always please everyone!

Question from last month’s featured dev @plueschkatzeart: How do you keep yourself motivated?  *Domino: Sharing my progress on the blog for everyone to see is what keeps me motivated. Since I set myself the goal of posting at least once a week I've become more productive than ever. Of course, the positive response I receive from my followers also help. Another thing that encourages me to keep working on my game is seeing other developers succeed; that gives me hope and drives me to do my best!

We mods would like to thank Domino for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Folkloria if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpgmaker #pixel games #indie games #pixel art #rpg maker #rpg maker mv #gotm #game of the month #folkloria #folkloriarpg #interview #upcoming games #april #april 2018 #2018

[cedarmoons]

get a little love

fandom: the arcana wc: 4.5k pairings: pre-game asra x fem mc, hella nsfw; mentions of asra x nadia, asra x julian, and mc x julian (@ devs give us a poly route already jesus). part of the handle with care universe, but can be read alone.

it’s asra’s bday today,,, so you know i gotta be a ho! it’s what he would want, tbh. happy birthday to the #1 magician of my heart! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 

[read on ao3]

get a little love (nsfw)

She wakes to Asra’s body burning just shy of too-hot behind her. He’s pressed against her back, chin on her shoulder, ear pressed to the pulsepoint in her throat, hair tickling her jaw. His fingertips rest on the center of her abdomen, bare palm against naked skin. It burns like a brand, and once again she is reminded how desperate she is for touch, for closeness, for intimacy. Somehow, over the course of the past year, her desire had become a need, a lake unable to be filled.

That need is a starved creature inside her; once treated with kindness it had become ravenous, and every touch feeds it, encourages it. She will get up, and go about her day, and remember the warmth of Asra’s hand on her stomach throughout the day as if it were fresh and new and not an hours-old memory. She will get up and think about how the heat of his chest had bled through her robe and touched her scars. She will get up and think of Asra, flushed and panting, moaning her name.

She does not want to get up.

So she gnaws on her thumbnail until it breaks between her teeth, then gently lowers her hand to rest atop of Asra’s. He shifts and her breath catches, but except for a twitch of his fingers—a twitch she feels acutely, despite the minor brush of his skin over hers—he does not stir.

It is dark. It is either very late, or very early; their nap had robbed the rest of the day from them. Were she facing the window, she would know how much time they had lost, but she is not, and she is reluctant to disrupt Asra simply to confirm her knowledge.

She instead stays as still as possible, enjoying the warmth of him pressed against her, the blazing heat of his hand draped over her navel.

At some point, Asra’s steady breathing hitches, and in his sleep his heartbeat picks up. He sighs against her throat, warm breath tickling her skin, sending a rush of sensation from her scalp to her toes. Her hand tightens around him. Asra makes another sound, one that makes her mouth go dry, and his arm tightens around her.

She should wake him up. Already she can feel him hardening against her, can feel the minute shifts of his hips as his body seeks out more contact. But then Asra sighs her name in his sleep, murmurs please, and she bites her lip, squeezing her thighs together.

She remembers his promise, before they’d fallen asleep—wanna make you come. twice. maybe three times. She doubts that he will manage to fulfill it, but she does not doubt that he will try.

Heat simmers in the pit of her belly, creeping lower, and she swallows, hard, tracing patterns on the back of his hand, very lightly, very aware of every place his body touches hers. Asra makes a slight, desperate sound and presses against her, cock hard against her heated skin. She presses back, biting her lip and letting her eyes fall shut.

With a reedy gasp a few moments later, he wakes up, and she does not dare to breathe. Her heart hammers in the center of her chest, in her fingertips, between her legs. Her whole body is alive, and the night is either very old or very young, and her need for touch, closeness, intimacy is no longer sated. She opens her eyes and looks out into the room.

“Good dream?” she asks, breaking the stillness. Asra laughs and stays still, though his arm remains draped over her, forearm propped on her hip.

“Yeah,” he says, roughly. “I—” he breaks off with a curse, resting his forehead on her shoulder. Without a word, she presses back against him, grinding slowly against his hardness, and he gasps, shifts, gasps again. His breath comes ragged and stuttering; once again, she thinks perhaps it is the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard.

“Tell me,” she bids him, and hears his swallow. She reaches behind her, squeezes his hip, scratches her nails lightly over his skin as she maneuvers her hand to rest against the small of his back. The flesh under her palm is searing, slightly damp with sweat. Were she to cut his skin, she suspects she would see flames instead of blood. He groans against her throat, hips moving in miniscule shifts, careful brushes of contact. She feels every one of them.

“I was—” He stops with a hiss, rocking against her a bit more desperately, now. His hand drags up her stomach to palm her breast, roll her pebbled nipple between his fingers. Ziah whimpers, reaching down between her legs with her other hand. She takes him in hand, swallows at his moan, and moves until his cock rests between her legs, the hard, hot line of it flush against her slit. She’s still wet from last night, and sweat had gathered on her thighs. Asra’s sigh shakes as he begins to move, in and out, in and out.

The air feels too-thick, too hard to breathe properly. All she can focus on is where their bodies meet—chest to back, thigh to thigh, arms and mouths and fingertips. She is dizzy with want, grateful that she is lying down; she suspects her legs would fail her, right now, if Asra were to try to get her to stand up.

Asra presses his face into her hair, pinching her nipple until she arches into his hand. Then he releases her breast, moving his hand to the other one, giving her other nipple similar treatment until she writhes against him. He whispers another curse, rocking between her clenched thighs, and his second hand manages to move downward, pressing down on her own.

“You were?” she prompts, breathless. His warmth, his touch, surrounds her, and she cannot think. “Tell me your dream, sweet.”

It is only a few moments before he collects himself enough to answer, but the absence of his voice feels an eternity.

“I was with you and—” he cuts himself off, moaning, his hips jerking against her in a way she can only think to describe as helpless.

“Nadia?” she guesses, voice already rasping. His desperate gasp and a single buck of his hips are her answer. His aura reaches out to her, trembling and potent in his desire. When she presses her magic against his, a warm, caressing touch that make them both shudder, his breath comes in what almost sounds like a whine.

“Yes,” he whispers, breath hot against her cheek, and he kisses her ear. The confession thrills through her. He kisses her ear, slows his thrusts to a smooth, careful rhythm, hands tightening to a bruising grip on her body. The oath he rasps into her hair is hoarse, wrecked.

She suspects she should feel jealous, or insecure, or hurt, somehow, that he had sought out another during her time at the Lazaret. But all she can feel is longing, a desire to know and love this Nadia as Asra so clearly does. (Besides: she had had Julian, and Asra had had Nadia. He had not been alone; she had not abandoned him; he had been loved, he was loved, he is loved. How wonderful, how lovely that knowledge is.)

She cannot stop her own answering moan, cannot keep herself from moving her head, offering her throat so he may mark her as he pleases. He takes her up on her silent gift, ducking his head, worrying at her throat with his teeth. She gasps when he bites down, eyes closing, already aware that he fully intends to make this bruise impossible to hide except with magic.

“Tell me,” she manages again, and despite the rasp in her voice her request is a demand, firmer than last time. She drags her nails down his thigh, gripping and kneading his flesh before moving to put it at the small of his back, pressing down on his body in time with his own thrusts, directing him. With the hand between her legs, she cups his cock, using her thumb to rub his own fluids into his soft, heated skin, teasing the sensitive slit. Asra bucks, moans, and his exhale is hard and shuddering, as if his lungs had emptied with it.

His hand that covers hers grips her wrist, fingers curling to press against her hammering pulse; its twin has moved back to her stomach, feeling the flex in her muscles as she rubs herself against him. “Tell me,” she orders, squeezing him gently, never hard enough to hurt. Her palm is slick with his arousal.

“We were both?” she prompts again, shuddering when his hand maneuvers beneath hers, spreading the lips of her sex, his longest finger easily finding her clit and starting to rub it in slow circles. Asra’s face is buried in her shoulder, and she lifts her free hand—the one that had been pressed against his lower back, pushing in time with his thrusts—to tangle in his hair, gently pulling his head back. “Asra.”

“Fucking me,” he hisses out, and her mind goes utterly blank. She pictures Asra caught between her and his Nadia, flushed red and panting as he is right now, and the want that sweeps through her makes her breath catch. Behind her, his breath hitches, falls, hitches again. His cock throbs in her hand, once, and his hand stills on her clit, allowing her time to breathe, to think. Her pulse thrums between her legs; her palm is wet with their mixed arousal.

“Mizi,” he breathes, and he is truly desperate now, nearing his end, she can hear it in his pulse and his breath and his voice. His hands spasm on her body. “’M close, Mizi, oh—”

She recovers from that brief mental image and swallows. “No,” she says, voice still hard, commanding, unfamiliar to her but not unwelcome. “No, not that name. Not mine. Hers, sweet.”

“Nadi,” Asra sobs, “Nadi, please, I want—”

“Yes,” Ziah says, and he comes with his teeth in her shoulder, biting hard enough to bruise. His spend fills her palm, splashes out onto her thighs and mound, but by some miracle do not get on the sheets. Asra stays curled against her back, twitching and trembling and undone, breathing hard through his nose. Threads of his hair tickling her skin. She closes her eyes, enjoying his closeness, taking note of how hotly her cheeks burn, how wet she is.

She would, she thinks, very much like to meet this Nadia. Soon.

Once he is soft between her thighs, Asra kisses her shoulder and pulls away, drawing his aura within himself as he does so. She shifts, turning onto her back, uncaring of how her robe splays open, exposing her body to the cool night air. Her hand is sticky. Her nose wrinkles at the sensation. The bed groans as Asra sits up and stands, turning on one of the gas lamps, spilling golden light over the room.

He brings back the same towel that is still wrapped around his Ace of Wands—the name of the toy makes her snort, and he grins at her, a knowing light in his eyes—and uses it to clean her hand, her thighs, using water from a nearby vase. He looks at her fleetingly from underneath his eyelashes, and the upper half of his face, including his ears, are still red.

Ziah catches his hand, brushes the backs of her clean fingers against his cheek until he looks at her. “Are you embarrassed?” she asks. “You needn’t be. Come here, sweet.”

He does, moving slowly, resting his cheek on the pillow beside her. She shifts onto her side, facing him fully. He smiles at her, and though it is close-lipped, his cheeks still dimple. Warmth floods her heart, and her stomach flips at the sight. She leans forward, kissing first his left eye, then his right. She smiles when he laughs, more a tired huff of breath than true amusement, and ducks down to kiss the etches in his skin where his dimples rest, then the corners of his mouth.

Asra catches her chin and lifts his head, kissing her properly. She sighs through her nose after he pulls away, pulling her close. “I love you,” he tells her.

“I know.”

He still looks troubled. “I don’t want you to think that… this changes anything. That this changes us. Nadi is—she’s different. She wasn’t—” he catches himself, mouth turning down into a scowl, before he takes a breath. “I care about her. I care about you. I…” he trails off, lost for words, then frowns. “I’m not explaining myself very well.”

“I am not asking you to choose between us,” Ziah replies, amused.

“You will always be my choice,” he says, unhesitant. “Every time. It’s not about choosing one of you, it’s—I want—ugh. I need to think about it.”

She reaches up again, stroking his cheek, heart thumping when he turns his head and kisses her palm, though he does not meet her eyes. She does not tell him that perhaps she should not be his first concern, his only love. He is so young, still: younger than thirty, if she remembers correctly. Twenty-five? Twenty-six? It does not matter. His life has so much to offer. “Still, I would like to meet her. You love her, and the people love her. I wish to know why. I wish to see why she is your spring.”

Asra smiles at that, smile bright against the night. “You’ll love her,” he promises, voice hushed. “I—I hope you’ll love her. You two might have to warm up to each other first.”

“I hope so, too,” she whispers back. There is a long moment of quiet consideration. His fingers trace an aimless pattern on her hip, the softness of her belly.

He eventually hums, and with a wicked, dimpled grin, says, “I promised you three orgasms.”

He remembers. Of course he does.

She rolls her eyes. “I wish you luck,” she tells him, sincerely.

He touches his chest in mock woundedness, though he’s laughing. “Your lack of faith hurts. It’s hurtful. I’m hurt. Just for that I’ll make it four.” She audibly scoffs and he laughs, leaning forward, his rose quartz pendant falling to dangle above her chest. As he stares down at her, soft affection in his eyes, the amusement fades to seriousness. “Can I touch your back this time?”

Ziah swallows, and after several long moments of deliberation, she nods. Asra grins and sits on his haunches, waiting as she sits up. He kisses her as he takes hold of her robe, gently pushing it down her shoulders to rest at her elbows. He breaks the kiss then and waits, and Ziah takes a deep breath, lifting her arms to free herself of the robe. She wraps her arms around him as he reaches around her and shucks the robe from the bed, letting it flutter to the floor.

He sits back and pulls her into his lap, smiling when her breath hitches, though her legs unfold to wrap around him, knees tucked against his sides and her ankles crossed at the small of his back. Her arms tighten around his shoulders and he moves until his back is to the wall, which forces her legs to spread wider to accommodate the lack of space.

Asra reaches up, smoothing back stray hairs that have come loose from her braid. His other hand moves from her hip to curve around her body. She tenses when his fingertips move up, when his palm presses flat against the center of her back where the worst of her scars are, but after several long moments when his hand does not move, she relaxes, exhaling hard.

Her heart is hammering. “No pain?” Asra whispers.

“No pain,” she tells him. “Only you.”

One day, she will only think of Asra’s hands on her. One day, the scars on her back will not haunt her. She eagerly looks forward to that day. Asra smiles and kisses her, and while she is distracted, he lowers the hand at her cheek to the wet heat between her legs. She gasps at the first brush against her clit, hips shifting into his touch.

“Sensitive?” he asks, with a tone of voice that implies he knows the answer.

“You’re a terrible tease,” she replies, winding a hand in his hair and tugging. Asra snickers, firming his touch, using his hand at the small of her back to help her rock against his hand. It’s an awkward position, one that cannot be easy on his wrist, and after a moment she shifts, getting to her knees. “Better?”

“Perfect,” he murmurs, peppering kisses over her breasts, nuzzling her heart. He moves his hand down to cup her sex, then presses the heel of his hand against her clit. She gasps, a tremble running through her legs, and rests her cheek atop his head. She listens to Asra’s breaths, calmer than before, and his heartbeat as he slips first one finger into her, then two. She is so wet she takes him easily. He curls his fingers inside her, his other hand moving down her hip to squeeze and knead her ass.

“Look at you, Mizi,” he whispers, and she cannot stop her whimper, grinding down against his hand. She’s close, and he has barely begun. He kisses her throat, whispers against her skin, “Beautiful. I love you so much.”

“Ah—Asra—” She clutches at him, thighs trembling beyond her control. She has a terrible feeling that her legs will give out if he keeps touching her, and she will simply fall to the bed. Asra sucks her nipple into his mouth, curling his tongue around the peak at the same time his fingers crook inside her and his palm presses down—

She comes with the ghost of his name trapped in her throat, curling forward, shuddering in his arms. Her cunt squeezes his fingers, rippling, and she grips Asra’s hair and shoulder, burying her face in his throat. “Good,” he croons in her ear, “good, Mizi, just like that.”

His hand does not stop. The air is thick with the sounds of her pleasure, her gasps and moans and the wet sounds of his fingers fucking her, his whispered praise that makes her skin break out in gooseflesh. (Good, she is good, she is good she is loved—)

His thumb brushes her clit, and she whimpers, tightening her hold on him. She jerks, twitching with the aftershocks of her orgasm, but his arm—wrapped around her waist, holding her fast against his chest—does not let her pull too far away. She whimpers, oversensitive, every nerve prickling. It hurts, but she does not shy from this pain, not yet. She is not certain this is a pain she wants to turn away from.

Before she can decide, Asra says, “You’re so good, Mizi. So good. I love you. Can you give me another one?”

His voice is honey, silk, smooth as murmured shadows.

Still, she hears him distantly, as if she were underwater; she curls forward, gasping against his shoulder, nails digging into his skin. She feels surrounded by his warmth, immobilized by the pleasure-pain that shocks through her, unable to do anything but listen, feel. She cannot hear whatever noises he is pulling from her, whether moans or whimpers or pleas—she can only hear him. He’s still whispering to her, and every one of his praises warms her, makes her feel the bolts of pleasure he coaxes from her body far more acutely.

She does not know how long it takes, but when she comes again, it is when she is leaning against him, no longer standing on her knees. Her toes curl until they crack and her hitched breath against his throat sounds like a sob. She shakes as her orgasm washes over her, and is left slumped in his arms, boneless, aching.

Asra’s arms are tight around her. “Two,” he says, far too smugly for his own good. She says nothing, too sapped of energy for coherent thought, but she manages a small laugh, mostly muffled by his shoulder.

The night is not so dark, now; the skies are graying with the onset of dawn.

“And it only took two hours,” she finally says, taking a deep breath. Her legs are still trembling. Her whole body feels numb.

Asra laughs. “I don’t think it was that long, but even if it was? Worth it.” He carefully pulls his hand from her, kissing her cheek when she whimpers, and lowers her to the bed. His fingers are pruned and paler than usual, shining with her slick. She watches as he sucks his fingers clean, closing his eyes at the taste of her. “Mm. Delicious.”

She shakes her head, and Asra grins at her, tongue curling around the pad of his longest finger, his skin wrinkled to the knuckle. She rasps a curse and he laughs, shifting her in his lap, gently setting her on the bed. “Was that good for you?” he asks. “Was it too much?”

“It was good,” she says, and is surprised to learn she means it. It had been too much, and that had been what had made it good. She does not think it could be a regular occurrence, but perhaps once or twice more, later… she would not be opposed to once or twice more, she thinks. Later. Once she can walk again.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks, looking insufferably pleased with himself.

“Water,” she whispers. He kisses her cheek and gets up at once, uncaring of his nakedness as he goes downstairs. She stares at the ceiling, catching her breath, feeling the sweat shining on her body begin to cool. It has stopped raining outside, and as it is very early morning, the neighbors have not even begun to stir.

Asra returns with a glass and a pitcher of water, and she drinks half of it. Asra drinks the rest. He places them both on the dresser, next to the wine bottle full of olive oil they’d used last night, and sits heavily on the edge of the bed. Ziah scoots down until she can press her chest to his bowed back, resting her cheek at the nape of his neck. Her nails draw random patterns on his shoulders, making him shiver.

“It’s almost six o’clock,” he says. “I checked.”

“Come to sleep,” she bids, softly. “The shop does not open for another few hours. I know you must be tired.”

He shifts in her arms at once, tugging her down to the mattress and pulling her close. He kisses her inner wrist, lips lingering at her pulsepoint, and after several minutes of cuddling and whispering of nothing, he falls asleep first.

—  —  —

She wakes up some time later to find him gone, with a note indicating he’d gone to the palace for the day. But he surprises her a few minutes after she closes the shop for lunch, carrying a mango sharbat in one hand and a loaf of pumpkin bread in another. He greets her with a kiss and goes upstairs.

“I’m only here for lunch,” Asra explains once she joins him upstairs. She raises her eyebrow, moving to grab the breadknife to cut the loaf in two, but he catches her hand, pulling her back and kissing her palm. He looks at her, eyes half-lidded, and his lips curl into a smirk as he says, “Mm, I had something else in mind.”

He gets her on the couch, pulls a pillow from the couch and kneels on it before her, spreading her open with lips and tongue and fingers. He takes her apart, her thighs trembling around his head, her fingers buried in his hair, her mouth open in a silent cry. After she comes, and he has left a hickey in the smooth skin of her left inner thigh, he looks up, smirking, lips and chin wet. “Was that three? I think so. Hm. I’m losing count.”

She rolls her eyes, but cannot stop her smile. She tugs him up to kiss him, tasting herself on his lips and tongue. “Upstairs,” she whispers, “or here?”

He smirks at her, and the heat in his eyes sends a thrill through her, pooling between her legs. At his choice, she takes him upstairs by the hand and lays him down half-naked on the bed. She slings a leg over his hips so she straddles him, then takes his hands and presses them into the mattress. She aligns him and sinks down in one smooth stroke, making him gasp, bucking up into her.

It does not take long—she had nosed the collar of his shirt aside, leaving his collarbone and part of his shoulder naked to her gaze, and had been busily sucking hickeys into his skin when his hands tighten in hers and he gasps her name and comes inside her. She has a sigil that prevents pregnancy and her monthly bleeds, but that does not stop Asra from casting a contraceptive spell anyway.

She lets him wrap his arms around her afterward, lets herself linger in the afterglow, nosing at the underside of his chin until her stomach growls. Asra laughs, weakly, his hands trailing up and down her clothed back. “Guess that’s my cue,” he says. “They’re still expecting me at the palace. Just wanted my lunch first.”

She opens her mouth, ready to point out he hadn’t eaten anything, until he smirks at her and she realizes his meaning. Her face heats, surely reddening to an extraordinarily embarrassing degree, and she says, “Must you phrase it that way?”

Her voice is almost a squeak. Again.

Asra grins, delighted, eyes crinkling in the corners until they’re slits of purple. “You’re a snack, Mizi,” he says, snickering.

She blushes harder, fighting both the urge to smile and the urge to cover her face with both of her hands. Instead she climbs off of him and tosses his clothes at him. “Oh,” she says, affection warming her voice, “get out, you. I will see you tonight for dinner.”

“Yeah you will,” he says, laughing too hard to put on his pants. She shakes her head and crosses to him, tilting his head up, kissing him fiercely enough to steal his breath. He sighs when she pulls away, tugging her closer and resting his ear over her heartbeat. After a moment, he pulls away. “Okay, okay, I’m going.”

“Hale and whole,” she reminds him.

“Always,” he promises. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she returns, and kisses his forehead before returning downstairs to her sharbat and pumpkin bread. Asra dresses upstairs, and when he comes downstairs, he walks across the floor to kiss her cheek.

“Three,” he says.

“You promised me four,” she returns, daring to look at him out of the corner of her eye. He smiles and kisses her cheek again.

“Tonight, then,” he promises, and leaves whistling a sea shanty.

(He keeps his promise.)

#the arcana #asra #fic #if u look carefully... u see the moment my kids stopped taking themselves seriously #nsft #i might revise the ending later but im tired n i got work tmrw #enjoy my fellow thorsty peeps #rip in pieces mobile users #ziah

[lokiarsene]

So I just passed the point where Okumura gives his press conference, and there’s been something bothering me.

Goro’s reaction to Okumura’s collapse is immediate, intense--he retches, nearly gets sick. This is not the reaction of someone who is callous, ruthless, and cold-hearted. When Sae floats the idea to him that the PT disposed of Okumura because they were getting rid of a pawn that no longer served its purpose, Goro does not say this theory is wrong, but rather tries to shift her focus off the PT as the guilty party and onto someone else.

This shifting of blame is similar to what we see Goro say in the end of the second episode of the anime. He tells Sae that the mental shutdowns are likely happening at the behest of someone else’s will. I choose to believe that this means the director of the anime (1) noted that Goro has been giving hints to Sae and the PT (through TV interviews) that there is a larger scheme at work behind these incidents, but that (2) he’s unable to divulge the full details of it very likely due to his life being on the line should he risk such a thing.

Goro’s power with the Metaverse--what makes him special--also makes him suffer because of what Shido, Okumura, and the conspiracy members force him to do. I also believe that the director of the anime has noticed this, which is why he’s been saying repeatedly that Goro is an important member of the team, and that they’re going to show more scenes with him.

Now... I brought up Goro’s reaction for another reason. When Sae asks if he snooped around on her laptop, his response is also rather intense. He says that he values justice too strongly to stoop to such a level, that information and the truth, though valuable, should be obtained through just and proper means. I bring this up as even more evidence that Goro is not a cruel, merciless person. His strong sense of justice is unshakable--it is a conviction that he clearly holds dear. And it is this very conviction that makes his ~twist~ of being the culprit all along absolutely fucking stupid.

Goro’s strong sense of justice and his desire to uphold it above all else is completely incompatible with his role as the one inducing all the breakdowns and shutdowns. You cannot have one with* the other, and the fact that the writers did put these two together is what contributes to so much of P5′s latter half and its handling of Goro make no goddamn sense to me.

ETA: A good friend (@cincosechzehn) mentioned that Goro is extremely good at compartmentalizing his justifications for working with Shido, and that it is seeing Okumura’s death that really shakes him. Up to this point, he could rationalize away the other incidents of the rampages and shutdowns, but Okumura’s death wasn’t so easily dismissed.

Said friend also reminded me of another Goro fact: while he’s an incredibly rational person, he’s also clinging to a self-admitted insane grudge against Shido, a grudge that leads him to behave irrationally.

The game did its best to build up dislike of Goro from the early arc, since he’s badmouthing the PT constantly on TV. However, the game also sets up a perfect chance of Goro to rescind his views of them because of their methods, and because he gets closer to them and sees that sometimes, justice has to be enacted through almost impossible, downright magical, means. This would have been the perfect turning point for him to be “converted” as a true Phantom Thief. And, in fact, it makes all the more sense for this to happen.

But what about the tweest betrayal, you might ask?

You know who fits that bill and fits it better than anyone because it would fly in the face of expectation?

Haru Okumura.

She has ample reason to turn on the Thieves because of what happened to her father. In fact, her being the traitor would be as surprising and groundbreaking a decision to subvert a trope as Aeris Gainsborough’s death in Final Fantasy VII was. The devs even said that Aeris was the sort of character no one would expect to die--killing her was one of the most radical acts for JRPGs at the time. And she’s not just killed, she’s brutally murdered right before your eyes. (She gets more powerful in death, but the point still stands).

Goro Akechi’s death does not serve such a purpose. It does not surprise us. It does not do anything groundbreaking within the genre. It doesn’t even make sense within the internal logic of the game’s goals, themes, and overall message. It is lazy, sloppy storytelling.

But what about the black masked intruder that has been sneaking into Palaces without the PT noticing? That can still be Goro--he can be infiltrating the Palaces and keeping an eye on the PT from afar. This can be why he’s so insistent that maybe the same power the PT have is similar to the power of the psychotic rampages.

But what about the mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns? Easy.

Get rid of the mental shutdowns. Make it only the psychotic rampages instead. The rampages still lead to general chaos and disarray, and still act in the conspiracy’s favor. The principal can still die even from a rampage--it could have been a horrible accident that killed him (which, y’know, it already was) instead of him just shutting down completely. Okumura’s death could either have been a rampage as well, or it could be the one time where the PT did everything right and yet Okumura still died.

Think about it. Those who had their Treasure stolen were still incredibly weak after the change. They did recover, but who’s to say that a run of bad luck wouldn’t result in the opposite? After all, it’s pure chance that determines who’s physically harmed in the psychotic rampages that Goro inflicts onto other people--so why not have Treasure-stealing result in the same thing? The game even goes out of its way to say “hey, you might be on top now, but a swing of bad luck could be just around the corner, so watch out!” Okumura dying even if they do everything right--and Haru’s subsequent betrayal--could be just that very thing.

This leads to the PT reconsidering both their mission and the value of it, and eventually reconvening with a stronger resolve after Haru’s betrayal / Goro joining their team. Heck, Goro can even be the one to encourage them to keep at it, because it’s clear that getting justice through normal means won’t work in a world where the other side is cheating. They’ll have to fight Metaverse fire with Metaverse fire.

This could also lead to a showdown with Haru sometime later, if the devs so desired. But that wouldn’t even be necessary: her betrayal could be just that, and she could wash her hands entirely of the PT. This would serve as a grim reminder that even if you try your hardest, you can still fail and let someone down. And honestly? That lesson would be much, much better to learn instead of “you can fail to save the one person who by all rights should have been saved like the rest of you.” The PT can try to redeem themselves by going after Shido, the true master manipulator, and they can win the rigged game to put an end to Yaldabaoth’s schemes. But they can never make up for what Haru lost--and that’s something they’ll have to live with.

As for the Empress Confidant link not being used--easy. Just make it Lala Escargot instead, you cowards.

#p5 replay thoughts #long post #meta

[sarcastic-pasta-games]

Posting my extremely long youtube comment here. :)

Hey guys, lead dev Katie typing this up ! And this will be LONG but I'm going to tell you the story of this game's creation!! 

Wow. WOW. What an amazing conclusion to this series and, in a way, to this whole journey we've been on since we started making the game. I actually teared up when it ended. Seeing how much this game meant to people is astounding. I'm so glad you liked it. I had so many doubts, was so worried people would hate it or think the end was too personal or something. But I'm glad that wasn't the case. 

 First off, round of applause for our amazing VAs: 

CelestialSushi: GLaDOS, Billy, Undyne, Napstablook Citrus/David Z: Narrator/Employee #207, Papyrus  Emmykat Voices: Jenny, Mei  Jay Ikalima: Newscaster Steve, Bigby Wolf, Officer, Potato Man, Rhys Amy: Bea Amanda: Fran Bow Cat: Alex Melodiva: Baby CasualSoul: Cliff mr.blueandwhite: Phone Guy KatieMarie999 (me): Newscaster Betty, the turrets, Alphys, Mae 

 By the way, the PAX group was Jessica, Oonagh, Cat, and me. :) 

Now that there's enough in this comment to really go into detail, I can post spoilers. Well now, what did you guys think of it NOT being Anti? What's so funny is that I came up with the idea 6 days into the first Antipocalypse, so when I announced I was making a game in November of 2016, I'm sure a lot of people thought Anti would be a contributing factor. Don't worry, Sarcastic Pasta Games WILL cover his story. ;) 

It all actually started with a bit of advice from my mom. She basically told me not to kick myself while I was down. See, I believed (and, in a lot of ways, still believe) that I was a failure with useless skills and talents that would never amount to anything. I thought I could never make a difference in the world. I have ADHD, so I was never a good student and had already dropped out of college once, constantly working dead end jobs that I hated and making pennies. I'm not especially organized and I struggled with the most basic tasks. The only thing I ever had going for me was creativity, which I'd always been told was pointless by general society. But I always wanted to use it to help people. To enrich their lives. 

So it was that day, the day my mom gave me that advice, that I made a decision. Inspired by Toby Fox and Scott Cawthon, I wanted to make a game. And I made a promise to myself right then and there, standing in front of the house I was living in at the time, that I would make a game with a message about how everyone is valuable and not to bully yourself. Because we don't see that message enough. It's something we all need to hear. Of course, I had a grand total of zero ideas other than this vague image of someone fighting against their alternate self as the final boss. 

About 2 weeks later, Jack posted his Fear of Failure One Year Later video. I'd been in the community since that January, so I hadn't seen the first video, but of course I watched it because by that point, I had come to love the channel silently (I wasn't active in the community at the time). And it hit me. Right then and there. It was perfect; Jack had self doubts about himself and I knew that, on some level, there are 2 sides to him: the one on the channel and the one in his personal life. So immediately, this game's ending sprang into my head. Jack vs. Sean. 

Bear in mind, the community was on FIRE during this time. It was October 2016. Anti was making his first appearances on the channel. But while you were all freaking out, I was telling myself "well, this idea is nice and all but I'd never be able to actually do it. What do I know about game making? I could never make this game." I bombarded my sister and Jessica (assistant everything) with new ideas for it. Until finally, probably tired of me talking about it, they told me that if this game idea was really that stuck in my mind, I should actually DO it. I should take that first step and find some people willing to help. 

So I did. November 11th, 2016. I posted a call for help in the Jacksepticeye tag. And Novmeber 12th, 2016 was the day we officially began development. It's worth noting that Jessica, Alina, and I are the only people who were there for the entire development process. But it was such an amazing process! I want to point out that it was Amy's polishing of my original idea that turned the whole Sean section into what it was. She helped me write it; we spent 4 or 5 hours one evening just coming up with every single aspect of the battle and writing the dialogue. I'm sorry if some of it wasn't accurate, but we didn't know exactly what you were going through, Sean, so we couldn't say for sure. I'm glad a lot of it was accurate though. 

In one of the areas of the gallery, there's a place you can find all our production flubs. Some bugs we ran into while testing and goofy things we did to amuse ourselves. It's a shame Jack didn't see it because that was a lot of fun! We kept such a good sense of humor while making the game. 2017 turned into one of the most emotionally taxing years of my life. The community, and the team, was there for me. They kept me from going to a dark place. I always had this game, this beautiful project I had started and had come to love so much (Jack is right, this game absolutely was my baby; I've even said that a few times) to keep me going even as I was facing a lot of real life adversity. The first person ever to play the demo and eventually the real game was KittyCatThang, who volunteered and became one of my best friends. Her let's play is on theawkwardandthegraceful and it's a LOT of fun to watch because she actually knew a bunch of the people on the team but we wouldn't tell her any secrets so we got some awesome, very genuine reactions. She yells at me a few times, it's hilarious. Love you, Cat! 

Jessica had been one of my best friends since March of 2016, when we met on an Undyrus DeviantArt group (we met Lundy Lawrence there too, she did some Cliff fan art at the end). Told you the Undyrus community was amazing. They all found out what we were doing and supported us, even though most of them had no idea who the heck Jacksepticeye was. And Lundy, the aforementioned Undyrus fan, actually started watching your videos as a result! Anyway, onto Jessica, she was so reluctant to help but once production had gone through, she had come to love this game. Jessica, I love you and words cannot express how thankful I am that you helped me so much with this game. 

Honestly, the whole team is just... they are some of the best people you'll ever meet. They made my dream game come true. And the fact that you all love it is a testament to how encouraging this community really is. I never would have found them without it. And those words at the end, with Jack talking right to the player, it's your name in that section. If you play the game, Jack is saying all that to you. And I genuinely believe every word of it. You are amazing and you are capable of incredible things.

I'm not some professional writer or voice actor or game developer. I'm someone with a passion and a drive to make a game. I poured a lot of my personality into this project and it's better than I ever dreamed it'd be. I'm just a straight C student from Maryland with horrible ADHD who got inspired to make a game. And if I could do this, you can do anything. It just takes a really strong passion. Really, I'm not special at all. I just found the right group of people through the channel of an Irish dork. I'd never made a game before. And yes, I'd been writing stories since I could write, so naturally the writing aspect came a lot easier to me (as I'd been writing stories for 18 or 19 years by that point) but we all have gifts and talents. 

I leave you all with this, a quote from The Lego Movie, which was a contributing factor in the inspiration for this game and one of my favorite movies of all time: "You are the most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the universe. And you are capable of amazing things. Because you are the Special. And so am I. And so is everyone." 

That's what this game is about. No go and find your special gift, no matter what it is. I can't wait to see the incredible things you all do. Thank you for joining us on this journey and we hope to see you (Jack, that mean you too) in Glitch in the System and our other future games. 

Our Twitter is @Sarcastic_Pasta and we're on Patreon. Our fan games will always be free to play and we're so excited for the next one. And subscribe to this youtube channel if you want to see our trailers, as we'll be posting them here (in addition to a pretty sweet Undertale musical). And keep an eye out for the demo for Glitch in the System! 

Again, thank you so much. We really appreciate every single one of you. 

~Katie 

#jacksepticeye #long novel comment