#....based off a dream i myself the mod had

[shittydrawnsollux]

day 35: ??

TC: hEyYy~ SoLbRo~

TC: iVe AlWaYs ThOuGhT...

TC: yOuRe ReAl InTeReStInG~

TA: !!

TA: ...

TA: *oh HELL no. iive kii22ed two many guy2 at thii2 party already.*

TA: ...

TA: huh-

TA: oh that wa2 all a dream thank gog.

TA: ......

TA: why the fuck diid ii dream about THAT??

#daily #day 35 #sollux captor #homestuck #badly drawn #badlydrawn #bdhs #gamzee makara #gamsol #solgam #?? technically?? #....based off a dream i myself the mod had

[glossglamour]

Full Robert Sean Leonard 'House'-a-palooza Interview: "As we know, I’m straight, but yeah, it’s like, homina homina homina."

May 01 2006 | By Maureen Ryan

Do you watch the show much?

"I can't watch it. I mean, Hugh doesn't watch it because he's anal and … eight years old. [laughs] And by the way, I don’t buy it, I think he does watch it.

“I watched in the first year. We live in New York and [my fiancé] was in California] and she likes it because I’m on it. But then she left, she had to come back to New York, and what are you going to do? The idea of me watching myself on TV, alone in Santa Monica, was just about... just short of, like, a bottle of Maker’s Mark and a shotgun away from shooting myself. [much laughter]  So I haven’t watched it all season. But when I have watched it, I’ve been mildly confused and Hugh is appropriately grumpy."

I have this theory that a lot of my favorite shows aren’t even about what they’re supposed to be about -- they have to be set in a hospital or police station or outer space or whatever because the network can market that, but they’re secretly not even about that. Like, “House” is really about ethics and morality.

“Yeah, sure, I think that’s true.”

But you can’t pitch that show to the network. “Hey, we have this great show that examines personal morality!"

“‘It’s based on “A View from the Bridge.”’

Right! They’re really going to for that.

“Yeah. [laughs] I think it’s good, and when it’s right, when the show works, the mystery works. It has a Sherlock Holmes-ian feel to it, and you do kind of want to know what’s wrong with [the patients]. And it is interesting, the turns and twists that get you there. And there’s always a little bit of character-driven fun stuff in between, of who these people are and how they affect each other. And that’s it at its best. And I guess that could be true of any show.

“It’s tricky, you’ve got a lead character [who’s different from the TV norm] and you’ve got to be careful because those characters can be one-note. He’s the cranky guy, he’s the Australian guy, I’m the friend in one or two scenes a week. You just have to be careful, and I think we are, we have a really great team of writers. And the numbers are building, people are watching.”

So this two-parter on May 2 and 3, I think the unofficial subtitle is the “Festival of Foreman.” I guess they’re his Emmy episodes, and that’s fine. But you’re hardly in them, what’s up with that?

“Honestly, I’m okay. I don’t want an Emmy. This is what I want -- I know exactly what I want. I did play with a guy named Skip Sudduth, ‘The Iceman Cometh,’ seven years ago. I saw him five years later, and I said, ‘Geez, Skip, where have you been? I don’t see you at readings anymore.’ He said, ‘I’ve been on “Third Watch.”’ It sounded familiar but I’d never seen it. He said, ‘I’ve been doing it for five years.’ I said, ‘Holy crap!’ And he was back doing theater. That’s my dream.

“And it’s happening. I walk down the street and people say, ‘Where are you?’ and I say, ‘I’m on this show called “House.”’ My friend Lewis Black [from 'The Daily Show'] said, ‘What is it called? “Head”?’

“I’m okay. I’ve never been happier than where my career is now. And I don’t want it to change necessarily. Money’s good, and I’m glad I’m getting that, and I’m putting it away for later in life when I do more Tom Stoppard plays at Lincoln Center and make no money. But really, I’m great. I don’t mind working two days a week.

“Because those other guys, the Scooby gang, or the Mod Squad -- they are at that studio for 16 hours a day saying ‘tachycardia, lupus, blablahdeblah.’ Honestly, I’d kill myself if  had to do those scenes for that long. I’m very happy with the size of my role, I don’t want it to get any bigger. I’m happy.”

So we won’t see the very special “House” episode where Dr. Wilson almost dies?

“That might be how I get off the show.” [laughs]

Well, you could die and come back as a ghost. Then it would be the “House Whisperer.”

“Yeah [laughs]. The hair makeup people were saying one day, ‘Oh, I love those scenes with you and Hugh, there should be more of that.’ And I’m like, ‘Shhh! Don’t say that!’ I’m the luckiest man in Hollywood. I work only with Hugh, pretty much, who’s great. And I work two days a week.”

Do you fly back and forth to New York then?

"No, not really. They don’t let me because they need me around, the schedule changes so much. I’m going to try to get away with that a little more [in the upcoming season]. Now that [my fiancé] is here, I really will kill myself if I’m out there as much as I was last year, without her.”

So five days a week you’re doing what – Botox injections? Going to the mall? Watching “Maury”?

“Rob Lowe once said the secret to being an actor in L.A. is sleeping as late as you possibly can and going to be as early as possible. I remember him saying, ‘I recommend pajamas by 4:30 p.m.’”

What’s interesting about this show is that they’re taken something that could be a very formulaic procedural and quite often turn it on its head.

“I didn’t know anything about TV, I’d never done [a TV show], but I now know very well that there are procedurals and character-driven shows. ‘Law & Order’ is a procedural and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is a character-driven show. The test [as to which category a show is in], someone once said to me, which I thought was hysterical, is this question: Did Sam Waterston sleep with [the assistant DA] on ‘Law & Order’? If the answer is ‘I don’t give a [hoot], I want to know the next element of the case,’ then it’s a procedural.

“Our show is weirdly, and there must be precedent for this, but it’s weirdly equally both. I think it’s very much a procedural, and without that sick patient every week, we wouldn’t work. And without the character stuff it wouldn’t work. And weirdly, people do care if House sleeps with one of our characters, and also care equally what’s wrong with this person and how they’re going to solve the case.”

I guess I like the character stuff better, but you’re right, it probably wouldn’t work without the suspense of the weekly case and somebody being critically ill.

“No, I think you need that. I think the echoes of Sherlock Holmes are too strong. The original idea of the show was House and Wilson, like Holmes and Watson. But it got away from that, and his team is Watson, if you want to be technical about it.

“I’m more like … the only way I’ve found to define it, and it’s so pretentious that it makes me want to jump out a window, is like King Lear’s fool. I’m like the only one who tells him the truth. And [Wilson] has nothing to lose. I don’t work for him and he doesn’t work for me. I’m the only character who chooses to be with him as opposed to being there because of a job. And because of that I have the freedom to tell him what I think. Not that Cuddy holds back much.”

I think her role is to say, "No! Bad House!"

“Have you talked to Lisa Edelstein [who plays Cuddy]? She’s so great. This Japanese woman once said to her, ‘You on “ER”!’ And she said, ‘I have been on “ER,” but now I’m on “House.”’ And [the woman says] ‘Oh yes, “House.” You say, “No, you don’t!”’ Every time we do the table read, I burst into laughter at some point, because there is the voice of that woman in my head, ‘You say “No, you don’t!”’ That’s the entire definition of Lisa’s character. Not completely, but we laugh [about it]. We have the same dilemma. We’re on this show that we’re … kind of on. Crew members say, ‘How long have you been on the show?’ ‘Uh, since the pilot.’ They really don’t know what we’re doing there.”

So in terms of the other stuff going on in your career, that’s going well, all the theater stuff?

“I’ve achieved everything I wanted to do. When I was growing up, I wanted to be Kevin Kline, Sam Waterston. I grew up watching the Public Theater and Shakespeare in the park and Marion Seldes. I mean, I may as well be gay.”

I’m not entirely sure you’re not.

[laughs] “But the thing is, I got it [i.e. his goals]. I’ve done 14 Broadway shows and got a Tony award, and now I’m making money and no one even really knows. I’m getting away with murder. If I come back to New York in two years and nothing’s changed, I’ll be thrilled. All I really want to do is [act in] plays, play with my dog, have kids. My desires are pretty simple. I don’t really want to do movies anymore. I’m pretty tired of camera acting.”

Why are you tired of camera acting? Is it the repetition of it?

“No, no, quite the opposite. We don’t rehearse enough. We do scenes where people barely know their lines, where people just about know their lines. In theater, you do it so many times and you get so familiar that then you can actually start having fun with it. And I really miss that feeling.

“It’s true of films too. I don’t know. I think I’m fine on film, but … I have walked offstage and thought, ‘Wow, no one has done that better. People may have done it as well, but not better.' I’ve actually had that feeling after ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night,’ or a Shaw play or whatever. I’ve never felt that way with film. I always feel like, ‘Boy, Donald Sutherland would have done that a lot better.’ [laughs] I just don’t think it’s what I do best. I think I’m fine, but there are people who are eerily good at it. In all humility, of which I have none [laughs], that’s how I feel about my work on stage. I really do feel that I’m gifted at it.”

Just to change gears completely, what happens in the finale?

“Well, I think the finale is a bit of a cliffhanger. Something very exciting happens. It’s extremely exciting and freaky and I think it’s great. I can’t say what it is. You end this season very curious about how the next season is going to start. It’s a great final show and a big cliffhanger.”

So it seems like Hugh Laurie is so disparaging of his own talents. But he’s so good as House.

“Some people ask me, ‘Oh, why does Wilson want to hang out with House so much?’ and I’m like, ‘You idiot.’ [laughs] House is designed to be attractive! He’s brilliant, he’s self-deprecating, he has a limp. But yeah, Hugh hates himself and he’s very funny about it.  There’s no better combination in my book. Like Lewis Black.”

But as an acting partner, he’s good to work with?

“Oh yeah. The thing is, with this part, Hugh has a huge obstacle he has to deal with, having an American accent. His problem isn’t our problem. We as the audience don’t have that problem, because what he doesn’t know is that he does it perfectly. But of course he doesn’t hear that. That’s why he can’t watch the show.

“When you’re doing an accent, you don’t feel like you’re interesting in the role. Even if everyone around is telling you that you are. And to be in a play is one thing, but to be on TV show that runs for years, I don’t know how he’s going to do it. To be that hard on yourself and be that disappointed in your own work. But as I said, and underline this four times, he’s wrong.”

And then he obviously hates when anyone calls him a sex symbol. You read his quotes when people ask him about that stuff and you can feel the embarrassment rising off the page.

“Yeah, he hates that stuff. And even more than the ‘sexy’ stuff, he hates the ‘you’re brilliant’ stuff. Of course there’s a part of him that likes him, there’s a part of all of us that likes that. [But him being hard on his performance], it’s not false vanity.

“I think Hugh does work he’s proud of and does work he thinks is good, I’m just not sure it’ll ever be this [show]. Having an accent… acting is letting go and forgetting yourself, it’s the opposite of ego. It’s flying away and getting away from yourself and forgetting. And when you’re doing an accent, it’s virtually impossible to do that.

“It’s hard when you're in a play, doing the same lines, the same way for eight months. Hugh learns 72 new lines a day and has to put an American accent on them. It really is an actor’s nightmare. I’ve done [with accents] Brian Friel plays, Martin Sherman plays, Tom Stoppard plays, and maybe five months into it you have a night where you kind of feel OK and kind of forget the accent and let go and let the scene happen. To have a strange accent in your mouth while playing a role, and then be judged for it, that’s hard stuff.

“And can I tell you, when you have dinner with Hugh Laurie [speaking in his real accent]… I miss that voice.”

Yeah. He called me once directly for an interview. I was expecting the publicist to put him through, but it was just that voice on the phone. I was sort of thrown for a minute.

“As we know, I’m straight, but yeah, it’s like, homina homina homina.” [laughs]

---- [source (part 2)] | part 1 | part 3 ---

it took me two hours to track this interview down. it might be the longest one he's ever done. first i tracked it down to tumblr pages posting about it with no source please stop doing that. then i found a short youtube video of laurie saying "homina homina" on an snl skit i think and someone in the comments mentioned the site where the rsl interview was posted. however the site wouldn't let me in, i guess they took it down so i headed to archive dot org. i didn't have a specific link though so that didn't really work out either. then for nearly an hour i tried a wide range of word combinations on google until i stumbled upon a livejournal page of rpf hugh laurie/rsl fanfic. SOMEONE tysm karaokegal posted the exact link i was looking for in the comments. quick trip to the wayback machine and here you go!

i should be on those ethical hacking competition things

#house md #hatecrimes md #gg.txt #robert sean leonard #rsl #interview #source hunting success #hugh laurie #james wilson #gregory house #i nearly went insane #trying to find this thing #part 3 is an interview w katie jacobs #part 1 is general quotes #muted

[tsams-confessions]

We're coming off anon with this one boys. It's long and I apologize but it's been weighing on my mind for quite some time.

There are three things people tend to know me for in this fandom. My art, my fanfics, or my thread on TSBS server. Said thread is a place where I talk about the psychological aspects of the show, as well as do character analyses and sometimes even analyze entire lore uploads for the kicks and giggles. I'm a psychology major, I also have ASPD. I made the thread so I could talk about Eclipse, who at the time I suspected had the same disorder I do and which was later confirmed less than a week after I made the thread. Since then Ruin has also been confirmed as an ASPD haver, which I personally deeply enjoy. It's fun for me to talk about my disorder and relate it to the show since ASPD is really hard to understand. 99% of people are inherently capable of empathy, and about 2% of that 98% lose that ability during childhood. So it's understandably not a very well-understood disorder. It's also a very scary and dark disorder, and I can say that honestly because I live with it. Due to this fact, it tends to be villainized in media, and I am very refreshed by the fact that TSAMS does a good job of not making their ASPD havers raving lunatics with a thirst for blood. 

Anyways, that's just background information. So far I haven't met very many weirdos about ASPD in this fandom. Almost everyone is very chill with the fact that I am a sociopath and I haven't received a ton of weird comments about it. It's a relief since I deal with a lot of open stigma and harassment irl because I refuse to pretend to be something I'm not. However, there was an instance in my thread when I was actively talking about ASPD, and a new member decided to. . . I don't even know. It was creepy and weird, and really uncomfortable. They basically told me that I'm 'too nice of a person to be a sociopath' and that they could tell that I wasn't a sociopath because they see the good in people. They also said that they were surprised that there are sociopathic people and inferred that sociopaths are pretending, whatever that means. They kept going to keep making weird and stigmatized comments about the disorder, as well as continuing to compliment me in a very unnerving way. I think about it a lot because it was very uncomfortable to be interrupted like that in the middle of talking about ASPD. There was the new mod online and participating in the conversation, but they didn't say anything to the person who was actively making me uncomfortable, even though I expressed such in the chat. 

I deal with a lot of stigma and ableism in my day-to-day life, where people tell me that I can't be a sociopath because of really stupid shit. Like the fact, I get along with people or want to help people in the medical field. Or the time-tried 'but you're a woman' comments. I don't understand why the mod kinda just left me to fend for myself and ignored the person causing issues, and while I don't hold it against them, I do have anxiety about this situation repeating itself in the future. It's not easy to talk about a disorder that the average person could not even dream of understanding, and it's even harder when people who don't know you are trying to tell you that your disorder is fake based on flimsy reasoning. It's really invalidating of the actual hellscape I had to survive to be able to even turn 18, and it rakes up my anxiety to a 10 just at the thought of it. There's not a lot of safe spaces for someone to talk about having a dark disorder, and even less for something as rare and misunderstood as ASPD. It's hard enough as it is being a high-functioning sociopath, and I just needed to rant, I suppose. Haha, could make it a "tl;dr even I get offended sometimes."

Anyway, not dropping names, but it wasn't a private matter. Nor am I upset with the mods, it's just a thing that happened that I think about a lot because it's a very rare thing for me to be offended. Glad that the majority of this fandom that I've interacted with has been willing to hear me out ASPD, but I just worry about having a repeat situation like this. It's a very sad thing to witness in this fandom that talks about inclusivity. We can't pick and choose our disorders, and where there are canon sociopaths in the show one would think the fans would try to be a little more educated on the disorder (not directed towards anyone and I appreciate the people who are willing to ask me things about it instead of making assumptions).

.

#sun and moon show #the sun and moon show #tsams #sams #tsams confession #< block this if you dont want to see these #mod 1blood #ableism cw

[soya-ix]

Love Letter

Written for Day 1 of @hisakikiweek 2023

I wasn't made for love

And you weren't made for sideshows

I don't get the jokes

For you it's how the day goes

I made up my mind. I'd be on my own

I thought I'd always known

I was taught to fight

And be the bravest soldier

Trained to be the light

For what lies on my shoulders

I don't need a man. I'll do it alone

I thought I'd always known

But I was your secret mission

Kept failing but you never gave in

You fought and prayed for a different ending

It did the trick. Now we write new pages

I don't show off scars

But you know when to cure me

When they speak of us

They'll say that it's a mystery

I'm perfectly fine. I know you'll be home

Guess I didn't really know

That you had a bad addiction

Ran in your veins and you couldn't quit it

You paced in haste in search of an exit

Then stayed by my side and we'd last like a legend

Love was an obligation

Best served with reputation

You knelt before me

I checked your eyes

Fixation was all inside

In the death of a faux romance

I saw true love come to life

'Cause I was your secret mission

Lingered in dreams, kept you up and haunted

You tossed and turned til daylight came in

Out of the woods, in the clear you found something

'Cause you had a bad addiction

Conquered your heart, then left you out there fading

A kiss on the lips and you broke the curses

Cutting through fate, in love we are falling

(Some more reading for those who're interested in why I wrote this👇🏻)

A few months ago our mod of the event @sabishi-tomo told me there may be one-sentence prompts for the creators in this year's HisaKiki week. And very randomly someday, I thought of this question for myself: if I were to describe HisaKiki in one sentence, what would it be? It was a fun challenge but also extremely hard. I couldn't think of something proper just by myself. So I borrowed a line from Taylor (of course) and rewrote it. Then I thought it looked like the end of a bridge. So I wrote a bridge. Then I thought if I have a bridge why not finish the whole thing? I've always wanted to write something about HisaKiki. So I tried harder and finished the whole thing.

I wanted to find words to describe their relationship, and their story on the whole. The first question I thought I should answer was "what's unique about HisaKiki?". And one thing that came to me, which later became the opening line, is that Kiki doesn't seem like she's made for love. She's born and raised to be a leader. And inherently she is one. Growing up, she's always trying to be stronger, more independent and reliable — to her that's what it means to be a qualified leader. For that reason, and perhaps for genetic reasons as well, she seems cool and aloof most of the time — not a typical lover. Meanwhile, "love" is one of her main obligations — she must marry, for political purposes. So she's not "made for love", but she is obliged to "love". And it's fascinating that she's actually falling in love with the one she chooses to be "in love" with. Mostly based on that, I wrote these (supposed) lyrics.

At first it wasn't meant for any prompt we have this year, but halfway through the writing process I noticed it could be seen as a love letter from Kiki's perspective, so here I am sharing it for Day 1 :D

There are lots of concepts, references, descriptions etc. that I borrowed from Taylor, so for the Swifties it would probably be extra fun to read. Haha ;)

Hope you liked it!💖

#hisakiki #hisame lugis #kiki seiran #hisakikiweek2023 #hisakikiweek #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #ans

[mod-kyoko]

could i request sfw or nsfw hcs (or both, whatever u feel like doing atm) of leon kuwata ^-^

feel free to go wild

omg omg

i've had this blog for years and you're the first person to ever request leon how does that make you feel

also i rarely get nsfw requests and i'm a little deprived of them honestly

⚠️warning: nsfw content

general sfw and nsfw leon kuwata hcs (gender neutral!reader)

sfw

his arm is always around your shoulders. it's kind of an ego boost for him to be perfectly honest

his favorite way to kiss you is by taking your chin between his thumb and pointer, and guiding your mouth to his

favorite kind of date? bonfire at night. could be the two of you or a group of friends

just, screaming at the world, staring at the flames, burning things, angsty stuff

he's in a sort of phase where he wants to feel like he's on top of the world

you know, while he's young, he wants to do crazy things together

so he has a bucket list

skydiving, travel, meet a famous person, all that usual stuff you find on a bucket list

even as you grow up together and gain more realistic dreams, he will never stop trying to make your lives interesting

he eventually did become a rock star as he always wanted, and he has you to thank for kicking his ass whenever he wanted to give up

he knows how to play acoustic/electric guitar, base, and drums

of course this man is gonna serenade you with his acoustic while holding a rose between his teeth because he's goofy like that, anything to make you smile

(his guilty pleasure is country music but rock n roll still has his heart)

nsfw

leon knows his tongue piercing is hot, and he uses it. like imagine the head-

i also kind of like the idea of his goatee brushing against your bare skin while he's giving head or making out (but if you're not into that i get it)

this guy likes getting his hair pulled. even when he's being dominant/on top, if you dig your fingers in his thick ass hair and give it a good yank he will cum on the spot

i also like to think he is very loud. not necessarily the whole time, but the moments leading up to his orgasm he will progressively get louder and louder and that's how you know he's about to bust

he gets off on his own pain. dig your foot into his groin, claw his back, squeeze his head with your thighs

he'll also like to see you cry, especially if you're wearing mascara. he likes to dirty you up, knowing that his huge cock is too much for you, that you're overestimulated and just want to cum

♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧

i always be doing this to myself, i'll be indifferent to a character and then someone asks me to write for them and i'll be simping over my own damn writing and now i love leon

-mod kyoko

#mod kyoko #danganronpa imagines #danganronpa headcanons #danganronpa #danganronpa x reader #leon kuwata #leon x reader

[lost-technology]

So, I've been reading the first part of GeminiWillow / @somereaderinblue's Purple Hyacinth AU, Part the First, Hush, little baby (don't say a word). I, of course, have been getting emotionally devastated by it. (The AU is that Tesla is born with Knives and Vash was the first Independent Plant and suffers Tesla's canonical fate. Also, Rem and Luida have switched roles, Ship 3 and Ship 5 switch roles. Also, from reading tidbits on their tumblr, it seems that Livio/Razlo are going to be the "Wolfwood" for Tesla). I brainstormed a bit of it with them, having seen their proposal and sharing ideas. This is NOT a co-write. I'm just eager to see where it goes. Now, one thing I have noticed when reading Hush little baby is that there is a LOT of obvious inspiration from two chapters of my own long WIP (Rem Lives AU), Survivor's Guilt - Chapters 6 and 7 specifically, which are flashback-chapters to the Tesla situation. PH-author drew the surnames of SEEDS-crew from my fic, which they thought were canonical. (I corrected them and anyone who reads comments on that. I nicked the names from The SCP Foundation as a reference to another media with morally dubious scientists). There are other similarities, as in, a lot of inspiration from my fic, as well as some things I've seen in other people's fics there (that handle Tesla), as applied to Vash. There are some unique things in there, too (like, now I'm kind of kicking myself for not even thinking of having Tesla share dreams with the dependent Plant-sisters like Vash does, but it would have made my chapters too long and my story was Rem-centric / firmly in her POV even as it was third-person). I kept thinking about why I am very chill regarding people borrowing some ideas and a bit of style from my fanfictions.

Well, first of all, it's because we're all writing fanfiction - simply put. We aren't being entirely original here, as we are expanding upon a source-material that we don't own the copyright to. Also, we are limited in scope because of said source material. Second is an experience I had about 2 years ago in another fandom. There was someone whom I was doing some fic-collaboration with because we mutually had some OCs we admired - like "Can I use your OC in a fic as a cameo-mention?" and so forth. It was pretty common in the teeny, tiny sub-fandom of a big fandom I'd found myself in because said tiny sub-fandom were for a bunch of literal clone / cult-survivor mook characters who did not canonically even have names let alone individual backstories and could be shaped to fan-creator's wills in the aftermath of the canon on the premise that they'd finally gained their freedom. It was pretty much "Instant OCs, just add imagination" without running into the messiness of self-inserts / "sonas." This tiny sub-fandom also started doing pretty much a collective fanon regarding the culture that these types of characters would develop and what they had in their former lives as soldiers. I wound up on a Discord for this sub-fandom and its fanons and I introduced the concept of roleplay to it, but the person who ran the Discord was obviously uninterested, so they made a separate Discord for it and set up a few folders and moderators. Problem was, I was made one of the Mods without knowing much of dip about Discord's functions and the person who'd set it up set up a bunch of folders based upon one popular fanficcer's locales, probably without their permission. In addition to this, I'd wanted to do a roleplay-story with one other person, but borrowing some of said fanficcer's ideas. I contacted them privately and discussed what was allowed and what was off-limits and proceeded. I had apparently misread some of it, because before I knew it, I had this person I'd once collaborated with roaring out the gate that I was plagiarising them, using things without permission and they also were upset over the folder-locale names (and didn't seem to want to listen to me when I told them I was not responsible for those, but they were besties with the forum creator, so I think I got scapegoated). It coincided with me being once a very admired fanficcer in the fandom to being "that person on the forum who became the friend that nobody liked." I got into it with another person, and I could just feel the tension, like, my neurodivergence done got me again and I didn't understand how to human, so multiple people were annoyed with me. I spiraled out of control - I'm bipolar, so I'm shit on the best of days, but this sent me into a full manic episode. I unfortunately lost my shit on a lot of people, which basically made absolutely no one want to listen to my side of it when I tried to explain that I had not, in fact, plagiarised and had simply made some permission-mistakes on something that wasn't even a public fanfic but was a two-person roleplay tucked away on a private discord that was never going to become a fanfic. Paranoia-person who was all "wounded lamb, she plagiarised me!" (over a mistake I thought we'd discussed and worked out) turned the ENTIRE tiny-subfandom against me, plus the greater side of the fandom it had originally shot off from. This included someone who was not previously involved but who ran another popular Discord doing a public tumblr callout post telling the entire fandom not to interact with me anymore. This lead to me becoming suicidal. I had lost an entire friend-group and then-some. Long story short, I'm not paranoid and have determined myself not to be a bitch. If someone in my fandoms likes some of what I am doing, as long as it's not copy-paste, they are free to borrow some stuff from me. You can borrow some of my ideas and style, as long as you add your own flair to it. I don't want to hurt anyone like others have hurt me.

#fanfiction #rant #I do not discord anymore #I deleted my discord account entirely #I found I wasn't using it #the large communities intimidated me #and the smaller ones I was afraid I was going to bork up on #I have trouble talking to people in real time

[vf-thompson]

Film Review: Midsommar Reveals the Unspeakable Horror at the Heart of Going Over to Dinner at Your Swedish Friend's House

So, this was a weird one to watch with my mom and sister over Christmas break, 2021, while i recovered with her from a tumultuous emotional upheaval in my life. You know when your anarchist food distribution network implodes on itself because of assault allegations, and then your entire life blows up from the emotional fallout because you were supposed to move in with the guy at the center of it all? No? Well, when that happens, it leaves you in the right frame of mind to suggest Ari Aster's Midsommar as a perfect bit of family bonding to watch with your death doula mother and estranged intrepid globe-trotting sister. "You guys like psychological thrillers, right?" i naively said, queuing the film up. As Mr. Aster so beautifully illustrates in this nasty little movie, there truly is no place like home for the holidays.

My first viewing of the film had been two years earlier, when i was living in a thirty-bedroom party house near a large university, which was honestly pretty similar to the sinister Nordic society that Aster dreams up here. i was myself (allegedly) on shrooms when i wandered into the living room to see Florence Pugh's simpering, miserable face, surrounded by breathing flowers.

It wasn't until later, viewing the film in full with a close friend in their room, that i realized the flowers in this movie are just f**kin' like that.

i had seen the trailers for the film, been interested, and promptly forgotten of its existence, having not yet seen Aster's previous nightmare, Hereditary. Watching it that night in my friend's darkened lair of a room, stoned to the bone while she ran torture mods on her Sims on her laptop, i was a changed woman. i was, now and forever, Ari Aster's little bitch, cursed to simp for everything the man touches until i am pushed from the top of the senior citizen high dive cliff myself.

i'll be the first to admit that Aster by no means makes perfect films. Built on the bones of classical tragedy and comedy the way they are, they are rudimentary films, hardly cerebral like his contempories Eggers and Peele. There is something almost primal about Aster's gaze. Pelle sums it up best, as he explains the function of his remote village's midsummer festival to the film's protagonist Dani: "It's like a play," he says. Indeed, as Hereditary turns a bare bones haunted house story into a Greek tragedy, this film turns the macabre pageantry of rustic European folk dancing into a basic, almost paint-by-numbers, slasher flick. The cast of mostly disposable college students are picked off one-by-one by the rural pagans. It's hardly breaking new ground here—but treading old ground seems to be Aster's primary project. The man dances on top of graves with a wicked abandon, and if you're not privy to his particular brand of self-aware theatre kid shenanigans, it can be... a lot.

My mother and my sister were, for example, less than enthralled with my gushing over the ways Aster deftly compares the base, cathartic tradition of watching a bunch of co-eds get their shit wrecked with ooky-spooky horror-fied neopagan rituals. What can i say? i thought that she, as a hospice nurse who studies death practices around the world, would think it was interesting.

At its core, Midsommar is a movie about losing all the stability in your life, and having it completely colonized by found family, like honey bees building their hive in the skull of a lion. Found family is usually a treacly trope, one which ties characters together through strength found in their shared struggled against adversity. Midsommar flips that on its head, introducing us, in a manner not unlike Disney's classic film Meet the Robinsons, to the adoptive familial unit from hell. It raises the spectre of classic daylight horror cinema like The Wicker Man, trampling on its burial mound with manic dancing feet. Family traditions can be murder. As stated, the message is blunt as a hammer. Aster is not a subtle film-maker. Indeed, the opening shot establishes the whole film, just as in Hereditary, as nothing but an elaborate puppet show where the puppets bleed. A lot. In many respects it is the same movie told over again, with Aster's dolls moved from the dollhouse to the garden outside.

Simply put, the movie is incredibly pretty, incredibly fun if you're into this kind of things, absolutely insufferable if not. The soundtrack, color-grading, and ending sequence are transcendent. When Father Odd tells Dani "Welcome home," upon arriving in the village, you will either fall for their intoxicating spell, or you'll be smart enough to get the hell out.. Either way, i recommend it heartily, and can not recommend (allegedly) dropping shrooms at the same time as the characters in the film enough.

Read on LetterBoxd HERE.

#horror #reviews #film reviews #psychedelic horror #ari aster #midsommar #social thrillers

[mysterious-ocarina]

Life is an Ocean

I was bored and Karl is underrated so here we go. based off a song. My first work, I'm doing my best. This is my current hyper-fixation so just deal with it. I'm sure the story is all over the place but it's just for fun :)

Song Inspiration: CVS by Winnetka Bowling League

CW: car crash, cursing, anxiety, panic attack (let me know if I missed something)

Main Masterlist

(6.8k words)

It has been raining for a whole week, borderline storming. Valerie and her brother were cooped up in the house and getting bored of it.

"Dude, I'm fucking bored. I wanna go somewhere," she said her thoughts aloud. Her brother gave her a look that said she was an idiot.

"Where would we go? It's dark as hell outside and pouring rain," he replied. 

And so Valerie convinced him to get ice cream in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain. It would just be something fun to do.

It started out fun. They got to a nearby ice cream place. After they finished eating they danced in the rain and laughed at how silly this all was. It was cold, but they didn't care because they were having the time of their lives together.

Valerie was driving them back home, when the rain got heavier. Taking a sharper turn than she meant to, the car started to hydroplane. As the car ran right into the side of the road, she tried her best to hit the brakes but the car wouldn't stop going. She doesn't quite remember anything that happened next. She just remembers hearing the sirens and calling out for her brother. She also remembers the first thing that happened, when she woke up in the hospital.

Valerie's parents were there when she woke up, asleep in what looked like uncomfortable positions in the hospital chairs. She looked over towards them to ask what happened. She sat up leaning on her wrists, forcing her to cry out in pain and fall back into a lying position. The sudden noise awoke her parents. They had very mournful looks on their faces when they finally looked at her.

"Valerie, you're okay," her father sighed in relief. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. He hugged her tightly, cautious of her injuries

"What happened? Why do my wrists hurt like hell? Where's Trev?" She asked without taking a breath.

"Honey, you were in a car crash with your brother. The nerves in your wrist and hands were severely damaged during the crash. The doctors said that it will take a lot of practice and time for your hands to go back to normal," her mother sobbed out. 

Valerie felt like her mother was purposely avoiding the topic of her brother.

“Where’s Trev? Is he alright?” she softly cried. She had a feeling she already knew the answer.

“He didn’t make it honey,” her father cried. The family sat together and mourned their loss together.

- A couple of years later -

Valerie's POV

I turned on my computer and logged onto Minecraft. The familiar and comforting logo lighting up my screen. The feral boys wanted to do a simple speed-run with me, but I know them well. They most likely modded it with weird shit and wanted to see my reaction to it. That is usually how a feral boys + GamerMouse video goes. Them being . . . themselves and me, just dealing with it. I swear I'm their mother or something.

My hand slightly shook as I logged into discord. It's been a while since that terrible day and my hands still don't feel like they're doing any better than before. I wasn't in the best mood today because earlier, I dropped a glass cup and it shattered, making a mess in my kitchen. The glass wasn't really worth much but I just get so frustrated with myself when I’m not doing as well as I want. Hopefully, the feral boys can bring my mood up.

It looked like Karl, Sapnap, and George were already in the vc so I quickly joined them. I made sure to lower my headphones' volume expecting to hear screaming.

"Sup losers," I said in the peppiest voice I could.

"AAH! O-M-G, IS THAT A GAMER GIRL" Someone screamed. Judging by the accent, it had to be George.

"Nice to see you too, Gogy. Where's Dream and Quackity, when are we streaming?" I asked.

"Both of them said that they'll join in a little bit. We can wait in the server," Sapnap replied to me. "We were just teasing Karl about this girl that he likes."

"Whatever Sap, at least I don't have to third wheel green and blue over there," Karl nervously laughed out.

"Awww, don't make fun of DNF. They have some pretty good fan-fiction. I definitely ship it," I said. Just then, Dream happened to join the call so of course, I started singing for them, "Sometimes, all I think about is you, late nights in the middle of June. Heatwaves been faking me out, can't make you happier now."

Everyone started cracking up at my terrible singing, instantly bringing a smile to my face.

"How in character of you Mouse? You know, you should stream reading fanfiction made for you. I'm sure there are lots of interesting pairings," he laughed out. I rolled my eyes knowing he was commenting on an old stream I did about a year ago. It was very weird to see people shipping me with pretty much every guy in the SMP. It was intriguing, to say the least. 

"Whatever Dream. I would have you know that my fans are exceptional authors," I exclaimed.

Slamming on my desk excitedly I asked, "Now, who's going to stream cuz I'm ready for whatever you guys have planned for me"

- Skip towards the end of the stream -

"Damn it," I cursed my screen as it told me I died for what felt like the hundredth time. "I freaking fell off the stupid end tower again. It's my stupid hands, they're doing it again."

The whole stream, my hands had been acting up at the worst times making me die a lot. I've fallen in lava and fallen from high places because I couldn't hold the shift button and I've absolutely sucked at most pvp today, except one match with Karl but I know he was going easy on me. I was in a foul mood, but I tried not to show it because Quackity was streaming.

"It's okay lil GamerMouse," Karl softy replied. He knew how frustrated I get with my hands so he usually makes a point to make sure I know that it's okay and to not feel bad. "We could practice pvp a bit later if you feel up to it?"

"Maybe. I still haven't had dinner yet so it would be after I eat," I chuckled out. I had forgotten to eat before the stream and I was getting really hungry.

"Chat is freaking out. Half of them are calling you a simp and the other half are saying how sweet you are," Quackity told us in his high voice. The whole stream, Quackity's chat was commenting on Karl and me. Lots of shipping was happening.

"Oh shut up. Karl's just an amazing person who knows how to treat a lady. Do you know how to treat a lady, Quackity?" I laughed out loud. During his streams, I love picking on Quackity. It's just so much fun.

"I'll have you know, I'm a gentleman," Quackity scoffed.

"I'll believe it when I see it, 'Guys, please! I'm a gentleman I promise' " George mocked. All of us burst into laughter.

"Okay, I think I'm going to end the stream here guys," Quackity barely got out through the laughing and did his outro. 

Once the stream ended we hung for a couple of minutes in the vc before everyone left until it was just me and Karl.

"Just let me know when you want to practice, okay Val. You can also tell me if something is wrong," Karl told me comfortingly. He was always just so sweet and had so much patience with me.

"I'm fine, I just dropped a glass earlier and I guess it's still bothering me. I can’t stop thinking about how I won't be able to do MCC this year," I replied solemnly. I was really hoping my hands would be getting better so I could join all my friends in MCC but it didn't look feasible this year.

"Well then, we can just practice more. I promise, we will do parkour practice every day together until you become the best Minecraft player this world has ever had," Karl said enthusiastically. He seemed very excited to help me out.

"It's okay Karl. I think I'm just going to go to bed early tonight or work on that 1000 piece puzzle I still haven't finished," I tried to joke but Karl knew me well enough to know I didn't feel better. "I'll talk to you later."

"Okay talk to you later, Val," he replied.

I left the call and shut down my computer. My head is just so full of thoughts, I need to just relax and stop thinking about everything. 

Lately, the more I talk and hang out with Karl, the more I feel something I can't explain for him and I don't know how I feel about that. I've been best friends with him since I joined the SMP, thanks to Sapnap, but I can’t help but wish it was more. Especially when he is so sweet to me, how could I not want him to be mine.

As I was walking into my bedroom the doorbell rang. I was very surprised when I opened the door, to see Karl standing there with a bag of Taco Bell in hand.

"I brought my favorite lady her favorite food," he smiled at me. Speak of the devil, or more like an angel. Did he just call me his favorite lady and did he really drive all the way to Taco Bell for me?

"Is that a chicken quesadilla?" I asked like a little gremlin.

"It most definitely is! It's all for you because I already ate," he replied, handing me the food. "I knew you were hungry and you only live like 20 minutes away, so I thought I would grab you some food.”

Okay, catching feelings makes sense now. Who wouldn't catch feelings for a guy who brought them food when they were hungry?

He grabbed me a plate from the kitchen and made himself comfy on my couch. He was in some khakis and a comfortable-looking beige sweater while I was in some sweats and a t-shirt that I'm pretty sure I stole from him.

"What kind of music do you feel like listening to today?" Karl asked while he was scrolling through his phone. "Corpse has a new song, we can play that and then just let Spotify roll with that.

"Sounds good to me! I heard the song earlier this week and I've had it on repeat," I replied.

I sat down on the couch and started to pig out on my food. I didn't realize how hungry I actually was.

The next couple of hours were kind of chill. We sat and listened to music while just chatting. 

"Were you still going to do that stream tomorrow? What were you planning on doing?" Karl asked. By now I had my head on his shoulder and we were cuddling. Platonically, of course. We've always cuddled but now that I've developed these stupid feelings, it feels kind of weird, but It doesn't matter because I love it. "Didn't you want us to join you?"

"Yeah, I was planning on doing a chill stream. I was hoping I could get you, boys, to join me since my chat loves the feral boys. I also asked Niki to join and she said that she would love to," I replied excitedly. I haven't had the chance to stream with her in a long time. "How does a Q&A stream sound, or is that not creative enough? I wanted something lowkey."

"I think it will be fun. I'll definitely be there," Karl smiled at me. He checked the time. "Dang, it's a lot later than I thought. I'm going to head out. I will see you tomorrow in your stream, okay?"

"I'll see you then. Goodnight and drive safely Karl," I softly spoke to him as he left. Today, I realized that he is the most important person in my life and these feelings were only magnified.

"Hello everyone and welcome to today's stream. Today I was thinking of doing a Q&A and I have a bunch of my friends to make it a lot more fun." I laughed out. I was feeling really good so streaming looked very easy today. "I have the beautiful Niki Nihachu, and then a couple of random guys I picked up off the side of the road earlier."

"Well dang, didn't know you loved us that much. You hear that boys we got an upgrade from 'the dumpster' to 'the side of the road'," George sarcastically replied to me. "Come on, shout us out. You know you want to."

I rolled my eyes at him and flipped him off, "I have a brit, snapmap, a duck, a green blob, and Karl Jacobs!" I could hear all the guys talking over each other about their nicknames and giving me nicknames while Niki and I just laughed at them. 

"I'm a brit too, Valerie," Niki exclaimed through her laughter.

"Yeah but you're a pretty brit," I winked at her. We were cracking up, "You're in my top 5 of British people!"

"I'll take it," she replied. I could tell that the chat was already enjoying the stream.

"Okay everyone, I'm going to open up donations and you guys can send in your questions," I told the camera. I could already see some starting to load in.

[note: the _underscore_ is the questions being read by the dono voice]

_Hello GamerMouse, I really love your content. It never fails to make me laugh. I was wondering if you were single <3_

This made me laugh, my fans were always asking if I was single but it didn't really bother me too much, "Sadly the answer to that question is, yes I am single. Have been for a little while." I could see chat filling up with people saying how I was too pretty to be single and other stuff like that.

"Yo, she's single boys, who got dibs?" Quackity exclaimed at us. "I bet Karl gets first dibs, he lives the closest to her."

The boys started to tease Karl and chat was just egging them on. I started to blush a little but I hoped no one paid enough attention. Little did I know, Karl was watching my reactions and definitely saw me blush at the accusations.

_If you had to date any smp member, who would it be? also please say hi to my sister katie, she adores you :)_

"Oooh, answer the question mousy. Whom do you pick?" Dream asked.

"Firstly, Hello Katie, I'm glad you like my content. Secondly, I am not answering that," I laughed out.

"Aww, she's blushing!" Sapnap screamed, immaturely. "She definitely likes someone."

_hi I was wondering how you came up with your name_

Thankful for the new subject I answered sweetly, "I'm glad you asked cuz not many people know. I got my name GamerMouse because all of my friends are taller than me and I was always teased for being so short. Getting called short, and sometimes even small, turned into being called a little mouse. Then I just got creative and added Gamer in front of it. Fun fact: My original name was going to be Anonamouse because I was planning on being a faceless streamer."

_height check :)_

"She is definitely 4'11" guys," Quackity teased. 

"Haha, so funny Alex," I said monotonously. 

“She’s 5 foot 1,” Karl replied.

The boys immediately started to tease Karl about his knowledge of you but he just waved them off.

The stream was going well for a bit until the next set of questions came. 

_why did you start playing Minecraft and how did you get into the smp? are you going to be in mcc this year_

"Sad to say that I won't be competing this year. As most of you know, my hands are damaged and not very steady at all. I had been friends with Sapnap for a while, and he helped me find video games that I liked so I could practice my hand-eye coordination. I enjoyed Minecraft the most so I played that a lot and soon Sap asked Dream if I could join the SMP and then here I am. I owe it to Sapnap for how far I have come these past couple of years," I replied. 

I could hear some of the boys giving fake tears and sniffles to my little speech. A good thing too, because I could feel myself tearing up a little and I needed to laugh.

_How did you damage your hands?_

My face dropped but I tried to play it off so no one saw, "I damaged my hands in a, uh, car crash with my brother a few years back."

I immediately regretted mentioning my brother because I knew chat was going to go crazy at the new information. The chat was filling up with people saying they didn't know I had a brother, and asking where he was, and if he would be a guest to one of my streams.

"Guys, I'm really sorry but my brother won't be in, uh, any of my streams or videos," I said probably a little too quickly. I could feel myself start to panic. I didn't want to say the wrong thing while I was live with thousands of people watching.

I heard my phone ding a couple of times and I would bet it's texts from Niki or Karl because they knew how sensitive I was about the topic of my brother. I started to panic, even more, when people started asking me why my brother wouldn't be joining any upcoming uploads. 

I tried to tell them as calmly as I could, without crying, "My brother passed away in the crash. . . the passenger airbag malfunctioned."

As I said that, the chat seemed to slow down and I held my breath. I could feel my heart in my throat. I knew that there are a million different things that people could say about it and I didn't want to have to deal with it live. 

There was an influx of messages saying they were sorry for my loss and lots of kind words. I could feel a wave of relief at all the really kind messages. Apparently, my fans were a lot more considerate than I thought they would be. 

But the next donation I would get would send me in a downward spiral. I know most people aren't evil, but some really just wanna watch you burn.

_if you were the one driving, does that mean you killed him?_

Everyone in the VC froze. No one knew what to do or say. How does someone respond to a comment like that?

It felt like time had frozen and the world was quiet. It didn't take me long to feel like I was suffocating so I did the outro as best and quickly as possible, ended the stream, and left the vc as quickly as I could. 

I heard my phone ding with text messages but I couldn't move. I was a deer in headlights in front of my monitor. The next thing I knew, I was running into my bathroom emptying my stomach into the toilet.

Karl's POV

"if you were the one driving, does that mean you killed him?" I heard the dono voice say. 

There is absolutely no way that someone said that. At first, I thought that I misheard it but when I realized how silent it was, I knew that it actually happened.

Before I knew it, Val did her outro and the Stream ended. GamerMouse left the call.

"Oh, shit," Sapnap exclaimed in shock. "Did that just happen? Did Val leave? What's wrong with that person?"

"It says that Val isn't in the call anymore," I heard Niki sigh. "That was a shitty thing for that person to say, she's very sensitive about that topic. I think I'll call her to see if she's alright."

"Wait, don't worry about it Niki," I replied quickly. "I'm going to go to her house right now. If I know her well enough, she might be having a panic attack right now and she wouldn't answer her phone."

I left the call before I received an answer and ran straight to the door and grabbed my keys. I got into my car and headed straight to her house. Thankfully, she lives really close.

The whole drive I couldn't stop thinking about how livid I am that that person had the audacity to say that to her. I felt bad enough that the topic of her brother came up while she was streaming, but for someone to actually blame her for something like that. I just needed to make sure she was okay.

That's all I've been thinking about lately. That she was okay. I've always wanted her to be okay and happy but for some reason, this felt different. I wanted to protect her. Protect her from haters on the internet, or protect her from her own thoughts that she sometimes succumbs to.

I arrived at her house in no time. I didn't even bother parking in her driveway, instead, parking in front of it very crookedly. I ran to the front porch, pulled out the spare key she gave me, and let myself in.

"Valerie," I softly called out, hoping I didn't scare her. "Where are you?"

She didn't respond but I think I heard shuffling from her room so I headed there first. As I passed by her computer room, I noticed that her computer was completely shut off. I made it to her room and found her curled up on the floor next to her bed. “Val, it’s Karl. Can you hear me?”

She didn’t say anything but when she looked up at me, she relaxed at the sight of me. It hurt me to see her like this. All I wanted to do was hold her close and whisper sweet nothings to her, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her.

“Val, I need you to do something for me okay? Just look at me,” I softly voiced. She slowly looked at me while taking her shallow breaths. She nodded at me, so slight that if I wasn’t studying her, I would have missed it. “Just follow my breathing and listen to me.”

“Can you name 5 things that you see right now?” I calmly asked her. I could see her staring at my abdomen, watching me breath and trying to copy it. 

“I see. . . you. . . my comforter. . . the clock. . . my laundry. . . and the door,” she stuttered out.

I could tell she was doing her best to calm herself down and it seemed to be working slowly but surely. “You’re doing amazing, can you tell me 4 things that you feel?”

“I can feel the carpet. . . my phone in my pocket. . .the wall behind me. . . the hood on my jacket.”

Every second that passed just reminded me of how strong I thought she was and how much I admire her. “What about 3 things that you can hear?”

“My ceiling fan, the ticking of the clock, and your voice.”

She was doing better already. “Now what about 2 things that you can smell?”

“I can smell the candle on my nightstand and the cologne that you always wear.”

I blushed at the fact that she knew this cologne was my favorite but now was definitely not the time to dwell on that. “Lastly, can you tell me 1 thing you taste?”

“I can taste the chocolate I ate during the stream,” she softly spoke. Her breathing was pretty even by now and she seemed to be calming down.

“Wanna move to the bed, I can pick you up?” I asked her. She couldn’t possibly be comfortable where she was sitting.

She looked up at me and nodded slightly. I carried her to her bed and laid down with her. She laid her head on my chest, falling into a comfortable silence. 

“Thank you so much, Karl. Thank you for everything you do for me,” she whispered. I just pulled her in closer to me in response. It was this moment that gave me the realization that I was in love with her. I wanted her to be mine, to protect her. She was the one I wanted and I just knew that I had it bad for my little mouse.

A week or so after Dono incident -

I woke up feeling better than I have in a while. I didn’t have any kind of plans except that I might stream later and knowing Karl, it’s likely he’ll be over here at some point. Maybe he could join the stream.

I was grabbing a cup of coffee when the front door  opened. The only person with a key was Karl so I wasn’t worried about it. I yelled out for him, “I just bought some more Monsters for you, a couple should be in the fridge. If not, check the cabinet.”

As soon as he came into the kitchen he gave me a big hug before going straight for the fridge. He looked really cute today. He was smiling really hard like he was excited to see me. This made me flush a deep red but I turned around, hoping he wouldn’t see, “What’s got you all giggly? It’s too early in the morning for that.”

“Nothing in particular, just happy to see you!” he exclaimed. “What do you wanna do today?”

“Would you be down to do a stream with me? I don’t really know what we will do, though,” I asked him. I adored streaming with Karl, even if it was just an excuse for me to hang out with him. He always manages to bring this full of life energy that always puts me in an amazing mood.

He took a seat at my kitchen table, looking around my place presumably for a stream idea. His smile grew as he looked at me, “What if we did a cooking stream?”

“Can we bake instead? I found this really good looking banana bread recipe that I want to try,” I exclaimed. He immediately agreed to this idea and we started to prepare my kitchen for the stream.

We had to set up a camera that would be in a good position to see us as well as the whole kitchen. As Karl went to go buy any groceries that we would need, I cleaned my kitchen because it was a mess.

I could tell that Karl was excited to do this stream. I couldn’t tell if he was just excited because cooking streams are always fun, or if he was just excited to be doing it with me. I’m hoping it’s at least the former.

“I’m back, can you come help me bring the stuff in?” Karl called out for me. I immediately went to go help and saw the entire back seat was filled with groceries. 

“We’re only making banana bread, what’s the rest of this for?” I giggled.

“Well I got excited, and went a little overboard. We can have dinner together tonight, if that’s alright with you?” He seemed nervous and maybe even insecure as he asked this, but he was shyly smiling at me.

“Of course!” How could I say no to him? I could feel that I was blushing so I decided to distract myself with other preparations for the stream.

- Skip to stream -

“Hey guys, it’s Gamermouse and I have a special guest for today’s stream!” I pointed to the side of the kitchen that Karl entered through. He put on a huge smile for the camera. I could just feel the excitement coming from not only Karl and I, but the viewers as well. There were lots of comments shipping us, just excited to see us in the same room, as well as excitement for today’s stream.

Every time I went live this week, I’ve been paranoid that I was going to be receiving a lot of attention for my freak out with the incident, but it seemed that most people moved on from it, or at least were courteous to not talk a lot about it. I have seen fans defending me about it on Twitter though, which warms my heart. Karl also reminds me that if something happens, he’s there to comfort me.

“We thought it would be a lot of fun if we did some baking. I saw a recipe for some banana bread I’ve been meaning to make so I’m basically holding Karl hostage making him bake with me,” I tried to say seriously but I couldn’t contain my laughter.

“I’d do anything with you, you wouldn’t need to hold me hostage,” he whined at me. I blushed but tried not to read too into this comment. There’s no way that he means that, it’s just for the content.

Remembering that I’m live with thousands of people watching, I start getting the ingredients together.

- after the stream -

The stream went really well. Dream, George, and Sapnap ended up joining the stream later and made fun of us for burning the bread. Karl and I got into a miniature food fight that the boys just egged on. Right now it was just Karl and I, cleaning up our mess in the kitchen.

“That was a really fun stream,” Karl mentioned. I hummed. That was probably the most fun I’ve had in a while, and half the time I would forget that I was even live. It just felt like Karl and I were just baking together. It was so domestic, sending butterflies through my stomach.

“It definitely was. We should do it again even if we aren’t streaming,” I shyly replied to him. He immediately agreed to do it again with me. We soon had our planned dinner together before he went home.

This whole day was amazing. Karl seemed different but in a good way. He seemed very confident and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that he flirted with me more than once today. I was constantly a blushing mess.

As I was laying in bed, I logged onto Twitter as I usually do. There were so many tweets about Karl and I, most of them shipping us. There were so many people talking about how cute we looked together. This didn’t help the already growing feelings for the fluffy-headed gamer boy.

Soon enough I was scrolling through pictures and clips that people posted and I couldn’t stop the smile from growing on my face. Someone managed to clip a moment that I didn’t even know happened.

It was towards the middle of the stream when Karl and I were having our food fight. Karl and I were both giggling at the mess that we just made. I was facing Karl, attempting to get some of the flour out of my hair. He was staring at me and you could see him, not so subtly, look me up and down and smile. This was the kind of smile you gave someone you adored, someone that you admire, you love. 

I couldn’t believe that this was a real clip, that this actually happened. I didn’t mind at all, though. I saved the clip to my phone before falling asleep, thoughts of Karl on repeat in my mind.

-Next day-

“Hey Val, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Karl mentioned. 

I quickly turned my head towards him. I wasn’t expecting that, and my head was running through everything he could possibly say, “What’s up?”

“Well I was thinking that we could have a meet up. I was hoping that Nick and Alex would be available to come up here,” he said excitedly. It looks like he’s been thinking about this for a while. I even would bet that he already has stuff planned for us to do, streams included.

“That sounds like a lot of fun. All of you could stay here, at my place. One of them can stay in the spare bedroom. My streaming room also has a futon that the other one could use,” I started to ramble. He was smiling at me the entire time I was talking, admiring me. I blushed under his gaze.

“I’ll go call them right now to see if they’re down. Be right back, cutie,” Karl rushed before he went to my office to call Nick and Alex.

Now I was out of breath. Did he actually call me “cutie”? He’s been like this pretty much since the cooking stream. He’s been, what I think, is very flirtatious. I keep thinking that I’m hearing him wrong or that the little touches were just accidents. That they didn’t mean anything. But it’s been happening too often for me to be crazy. It’s driving me crazy.

Karl quickly came back with the most adorable smile on his face, “They were both able to come. They both got tickets to get here on Thursday and they’ll be here for a week.”

“Then I better get the place ready for them. Maybe some snacks too,” I said as I was getting up. I grabbed my keys and put my shoes on, “Wanna come to CVS with me? It’s just around the corner so we can just walk there.”

He quickly nodded and put his shoes on too. We started our walk together, falling into comfortable conversation. By the time we got to the cvs, I was in an amazing mood. Spending time with Karl just does that for me.

We got a bunch of random snacks. We didn’t know what the boys would want so we just decided to get a bit of everything. We decided to split up so Karl and I ended up having separate piles of candy and chips we were going to buy. We went to check out together, though.

“Find everything okay?” the woman smiled at Karl. There was something about her that I already didn’t like. I didn’t know what it was because she seemed nice enough.

“Yes, thank you. We are having our friends over so we wanted to spoil them with food,” Karl replied happily. 

The woman kept scanning his items while she talked, more like flirting, “What a sweet friend you are? They’re lucky to have you.”

“Oh um, thank you. I’m lucky to have them,” Karl replied. I could tell that Karl was getting a little awkward. It looked like he didn’t know how to reply to her flirtatiousness. I tried not to read too much into the fact he wasn’t flirting back at her.

The entire conversation between Karl and the woman, who we finally learned her name was Vivian, was not only making me uncomfortable, but it was making me jealous. I didn’t like this person flirting with Karl at all but there wasn’t anything that I could do. Karl wasn’t mine to be jealous over. Vivian was finally done scanning our stuff, “Here is your receipt, as well as my number so you can call me later.”

“Oh, thank you. It was nice to meet you,” Karl quickly replied before grabbing our stuff and leaving. I was in a way more lousy mood than I was when we first got here and I didn’t talk at all on the way home. I felt bad for Karl, it’s not like he did anything wrong. I was just in a bad mood.

Skip to the day we had to pick up Nick and Alex. I was definitely feeling better than I was a few days ago, but Karl was smart enough to know that something was up with me. Of course, he knew something was wrong with me, he’s basically my best friend. Thankfully, he didn’t ask about it because I wouldn’t be able to lie to him.

We had about an hour until Nick’s plane would land and then another 45 minutes before Alex’s flight landed. We still wanted to go to the airport pretty early so we could get a good parking spot. We were currently just sitting in Karl’s car waiting.

“Val, are you okay?” Karl finally asked me. I was dreading this. I love the fact that he cares enough about me to ask but I don’t know what to say because there was no way that I would lie to my best friend.

“I’m okay,” I smiled at him. He obviously didn’t believe it for a second. I was starting to feel guilty about this.

“Come on Valerie! I’m not oblivious, I can tell that something has been bothering you for a few days. Why won’t you tell me what it is?” He sounded slightly annoyed with me, but I was annoyed with myself too. He rarely used my full name.

“I just can’t tell you, Karl. I’m fine, please don’t worry about it,” I huffed out.

“But I’m worried about you, Val. you mean alot to me and it hurts to see you not your usually bubbly self,” Karl said to me. He wasn’t yelling at me, but his voice was intense. I didn't know what to do except spill my secrets to him.

“I’m sorry, Karl. The past couple of days have just had me thinking about everything. It started when we went to CVS,” I confided in him. He was watching me intently. The care in his eyes was too intense so I had to look away from him.

“When the cashier was flirting with you, I was extremely jealous. She reminded me of the fact that you are my best friend and nothing more. I was reminded that I had no right to be jealous because you aren’t mine. This whole week, I’ve been thinking about all of this and that’s why my mood is so poor. It’s because I’m in love with my best friend, when I shouldn’t be,” I rambled out. I was talking pretty fast so I don’t even know if he picked up all of that.

He was staring at me, smiling softly. I didn’t understand why he was smiling like that at me.

“So let me get this straight. You,” he pointed at me, “were grumpy this whole week because a cashier was flirting with me,” he pointed at himself. 

The way he said it, I realized how stupid it sounded, “I know how stupid this sounds, I just-”

He interrupted me with a finger over my mouth, “Well, if you were paying attention that day, you would have noticed that I threw away her number. I threw it away because the only pretty girl’s number that I need is already on my phone, under the contact of ‘Mouse.’”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Did he actually say that my number was the only girl’s number that he wanted? Did he also call me pretty? All I could do was stare back at him. I could have sworn that his face was moving closer to mine. All I could do was hold my breath.

“May I kiss you, beautiful?” He asked me. I couldn’t speak so I just nodded my head.

And to say that we kissed, would be an understatement. He put his hands on my face, holding me in place. He leaned in and immediately, I felt like I was on fire. 

His kiss was contradictory. He was passionate, like I was a drink of water in the desert but he was also soft, like I was a beautiful piece of glass that he didn’t want to break. The butterflies in my stomach that I always have when I’m with him, we’re fluttering around threatening to come out.

“You’re beautiful, and there isn’t anyone that I love more than you. You are so much more than just my best friend. You are my entire world,” he whispered to me. I started to tear up a little at his confession but he just wiped my tears away and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

“Now, let’s go wait for Nick to get here,” we got out the car and he immediately grabbed my hand to hold. We both made our way inside the airport with huge smiles on our faces, hand in hand.

#karl jacobs #karl jacobs x reader #mcyt #dream smp #karl jacobs dsmp #karl jacobs mcyt #karl jacobs x you #fanfiction

[sg2tiger]

Finally, this is my 2022 gaming wrap up! Usual ramblings under the cut.

Pokemon Throwback

With my 6-year old nephew living with us, it's my job to get him on and off the school bus. Last year, when he was in preschool, he had the afternoon class, so we had all morning to do whatever before we had to get ready. It ended up becoming a regular part of the routine to play Pokemon for an hour or so before get dressed time...and the game he chose specifically was LeafGreen. What we actually ended up playing was a FRLG romhack I found with a grab bag of pick-your-own QoL changes called Pokemon Throwback. In essence, we were playing LeafGreen, but things like cut trees staying cut, ability to obtain all pokemon in one cart, phys/special split, consecutive-use repels and other things just made life a bit easier, especially when coupled with the emulator's fast forward feature (GREAT for grinding).

Ultimately, over the course of the school year, we made it through the entire main game, Elite Four, and all of the Sevii Islands (I was pretty burned out by then, and he actually wanted to move on and play Gold, but he also didn't want to stop until we got his Dragonair to evolve...and it had about 5-6 more levels to go after we beat the Elite Four...). Then we went back, caught all the legendary birds, and Mewtwo. We didn't catch 'em all, but we DID catch every single Unown of the alphabet, which took about 3 weeks (again, we only played for about an hour every weekday) and probably made me go more insane than catching 'em all would have. In the end what matters is that he had fun and was excited to learn more pokemon than just the handful of popular ones on his pajamas and stuffed toys. And he really did learn them, and retain what he learned - kids are smart! Even if his sense of nicknaming was essentially 'the animal it's based on + y' (he had a real crisis when we caught Horsea).

We played the game on my phone, with my bluetooth controller. I really liked this controller and was pretty bummed when I upgraded to a slightly bigger phone and the mobile clip just simply did not fit anymore (we still use them as Switch controllers for multiplayer, but still). I ended up getting a different type of mobile controller that attaches horizontally for my new phone, which will hopefully accommodate at least one more phone in the future before they start making them TRULY gargantuan.

Minecraft: Arid Adventures

One night...at a time where I actually hadn't played Minecraft for several months...I had a weird dream. It started out with a friend gifting me some kind of VR survival horror game about exploring desert tombs and recovering artifacts while being pursued by the angry undead guardians. At some point, the dream called for sand physics, and my brain reached into the video game sand physics databanks and pulled 'minecraft sand blocks falling all at once'. The dream then shifted from a more realistic style to that familiar blocky aesthetic (though the non-aesthetic elements were still very survival horror and NOT minecraft). When I awoke and recounted the dream, the minecraft image ended up being what stuck with me, and I wanted to see if anyone had made any kind of desert-themed modpacks. I found...one, which I didn't really like, so I took it upon myself to spend a month and a half working on my own.

The result is a sort of desert-flavored kitchen sink pack, filled with tons of places to explore, loot to discover, challenging enemies, and some light survival with thirst/temperature mechanics (offset by lots of food items to hydrate and keep you cool because I didn't want hardcore survival to be the focus of the pack). I spent a lot of time creating a huge arid ecosystem of modded desert, badlands and savanna biomes filled with tons of desert ruins, bandit camps and other structures across the landscape. But despite how much time I spent fine-tuning and playtesting it, when we actually got it on our friend server we ran into more than a few problems...like the massive overspawning of deadly, deadly scorpions. Still, regardless of some oversights, I'd like to think the pack was a success, and we had some fun playing it together between April/May (I spent half of February and all of March putting it together).

Arid Adventures was ultimately my less-polished-than-I'd-hoped first foray into learning how to make Minecraft modpacks, and I've applied a lot of what I learned about things like NBT structures and datapacks to other packs I've made since. Still, I've got a soft spot for this one, and I'd like to recreate it on 1.18 or 1.19 if possible...and I think it should be, I'm just waiting on one mod in particular to update (Team Abnormals' Atmospheric, for its additional desert biomes as well as resources like aloe and yucca which my bespoke desert food mod incorporated as ingredients for lots of recipes). Maybe when the time comes that I'm able to remake and polish it up a bit I'll even post it publicly on CurseForge. I'm pretty shy and have a massive lack of confidence in my work, though, so I tend to just keep my packs private for our friend group server 😔

(we’re actually currently playing a winter-themed modpack called “Arctic Adventures” which is “Arid Adventures but Cold”. Except not really, because I just took a light vanilla+ modpack I’d made and threw a couple winter-themed mods on top of it. But I thought the name was funny, so maybe there will be more [x] Adventures packs in the future)

Vigil: The Longest Night

You can really tell that 2021-2022 was me trying to work up the nerve to play the actual Dark Souls by warming up with various Soulslikes first. I don't even remember how I discovered Vigil, but probably I figured that if I liked Hollow Knight and Salt and Sanctuary I'd have fun with Vigil too. And I did, actually. Unlike the aforementioned, I even finished Vigil with 100% completion, grabbing all achievements over the course of two playthroughs.

Combat and healing felt a lot more forgiving than the others Soulslikes I'd played, at least if you picked the right perks. I ended up running axes, focusing entirely on that tree and the general survival one, and generally it always felt like there were very few enemies and even bosses that gave me a truly difficult time by the latter half of the game (several of the early bosses did kill me many times). At least, as far as the 'main' content goes - once I hit the bonus bosses like Bluemagpie and Redsparrow I really felt like I had to memorize every possible move the boss could take and counter appropriately. Frankly, if not for the fact that I misunderstood one achievement as having to collect EVERY weapon/armor set in the game, I probably would have given up on fighting Redsparrow after my first 10+ deaths...but I persevered and killed every optional boss in the game too.

I think what I spent the most time on in Vigil was just my obsessive determination to discover every nook and cranny on the map, because games like this where your map is fogged until you traverse it always compel me to reveal it all (I'll never forget the hell Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey put me through because of this urge of mine). The game is absolutely chock full of little secret rooms that you can just barely see a hint of on the map...usually there will be a small passage you have to slide through or something, sometimes hidden behind breakable objects or just otherwise in places you wouldn't think to look. I'd call it the 2D equivalent of Dark Souls' love of invisible walls. Between hunting down places that I sensed held secret passages and trying to platform my way through the trees in the forest areas, I got really into unfogging the map. But hey, in doing so, I was also working my way through all the various loot required for achievements, so one gameplay loop always fed into another in a satisfying way.

I feel like Vigil is the kind of game that's easy to overlook in the sea of 2D soulslike metroidvanias out there, but I had a good time with it. By the end I even really wanted to know more about the story and the lore, unfortunately somewhat marred by a translation of questionable quality. And with the way some of the endings played out, I'm really hoping that there might someday be a sequel, because it definitely feels like the devs left an open door for there to be. I'd say if you're into this kind of game, though, Vigil's worth checking out.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

I was pretty torn between rating this "Pretty Good" vs. "Decent", because I feel like my expectations for this game were unfairly high, but I also feel like every time I play I find something that I feel like the game COULD have done better, but for some bizarre reason chose not to. Kakarot was a game I was looking forward to a lot when it first got announced, because conceptually it seemed like something pretty different that had a lot of potential to be interesting. And while I think Mistake #1 was choosing NOT to start the story off with kid Goku in the original Dragonball (which would have suited the survival and exploration mechanics so so SO much better if we started off with him before meeting Bulma) I understand that we must bow to the whims of the marketing gods at the end of the day, and 90% of the target audience doesn't care about the original DB at all. Still, despite the name being 'Kakarot', it was obvious that a lot of the game would be spent playing as characters who are NOT Goku...and in particular, Gohan, and the idea of playing through his training with Piccolo with these game mechanics sounded like a lot of fun.

That comes to my first issue with the game...speed/pacing. And I get it, because the game spans the entirety of DBZ from Raditz to Buu, but even so it always feels like we're skipping way too fast through the parts of the story that would service the gameplay the most. I thought what would make this DIFFERENT than the usual DBZ fighter is that we would NOT be skipping over the 'less interesting' parts quite as much, because the gameplay involves more than JUST fighting this time around, but more often than not I still found that it skips massively through major story beats when it should slow down and try to be more immersive. I've been playing intermittedly over the course of a few months so I don't have a lot of specifics off the top of my head, but the most recent part I finished was the whole entire Ginyu Force segment...in the space of about 45 minutes.

I remember being irritated that the game barely conveyed what an actual THREAT the Ginyus were to Gohan/Kuririn/Vegeta before Goku shows up, because of the way you still 'win' even the losing battles of this game. And while I know we're kind of in an era of de-bloodening the Dragonball franchise as a whole, the lack of violence also really lessened the impact of the absolute beat down Rikum gives everyone, and thus also diminishes just HOW powerful Goku - who shows up and stomps him in 10 seconds - has become. Then the whole Ginyu body change bit is just kind of raced through with little ceremony at all despite being one of the more iconic aspects of the whole Namek arc IMO...I don't know. I felt like Goku went from space ship to healing tank in even less time than usual, and in a game that's literally named after the guy it's EXTRA noticeable just how little time is spent focusing on him (admittedly if you go over all of Z in your head you'll realize Goku is actually out of the spotlight for a whole lot more than you'd think, but the game's fast pace doesn't help matters either).

Again, I'm sure a lot of this is just my own expectations being unreasonably high for a Dragonball game, but it bums me out when the general presentation - the extremely faithful cutscenes, the soundtrack, etc - is really immersive, but then they'll just go and race through a whole story segment to get to the next fight. Oh, I remember another one that annoyed me. Imagine if the game wasn't afraid to actually let you control BULMA for the brief interlude where Popo takes her to Kami's spaceship! Imagine actually having to explore around as Bulma (you could even give her Popo's magic carpet so she could still use the game's flight mechanics) and scavenge for mechanical parts (which is already a thing you CAN DO in the game mind you!!) to try and do some repairs to the ship. Or just having to search around the area, maybe in the middle of a blizzard (it was a snowy place iirc), to find the ship at all. Instead the game just kind of went from 'Vegeta got away' to 'but they found a spaceship to go to Namek' almost IMMEDIATELY. Being that I'm playing the game alongside my nephew, who started to get curious about Dragonball (I think he saw some kind of Goku vtuber playing Minecraft on youtube or something, and got excited when he found out that I knew all about Goku), there's lots of bits like this where I end up having to summarize some of the stuff the game glosses over, because watching the story unfold via this game IS his first exposure to Dragonball (which I guess in a way makes it a good thing that the violence is generally pretty toned down compared to the original).

Anyway, yeah, idk. I feel like even when the game does let you explore it's all very barebones and watered down. The fact that only the story cutscenes are voiced and all the original sidequests are just grunts and noises also irritates me because it feels so lazy (Xenoverse does the same thing but idk, it didn't bother me there, I guess because all the battle dialogue was still voiced and it was just overworld stuff that wasn't). I also don't feel like I ever really have to use mechanics like fishing or cooking or any of that stuff because the battles are pretty easy? At least on normal difficulty, because the combat system is so simplified compared to a proper DBZ fighter. It's more about like, Touhou-style attack dodging than anything, which is fine, but I find that it's rarely challenging enough that I feel like "damn I should have spent more time scavenging ingredients to cook food before the battle!". It just feels like they tried to make a game with these survival RPG mechanics but didn't know HOW to, so they're very tacked on...and they just made a bog standard 'let's rehash the same DBZ story once again' Dragonball game when it COULD have been something better. Especially if they dared to start with Kid Goku's life. Sadly I know that a AAA game focusing on OG DB is basically a pipe dream.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights

After I finished Vigil I was feeling hungry for more 2D metroidvania soulslikes, and Ender Lilies just happened to go on sale like, a few days later. It had really good reviews so I picked it up and spent the next few days playing it obsessively. In fact, based on the dates of my achievements from start to end, I finished the game in less than a week (31 hours total), 100% completion with all achievements. And after I did I just kept feeling like...it wasn't enough and I wanted more. I really got sucked into the world and its atmosphere, particularly through the amazing soundtrack. And once you start digging and trying to understand the lore, it's extremely compelling as well.

While I'd really like to see the devs make another game like this, maybe even set in the same overall world, I'm not really sure if I want a sequel per se. In a way, Lily's story has just begun, but I also don't feel like I want to PLAY whatever lies in her future. Probably because if I did it would mean what awaits her is more monsters and more sadness. But I really would like to explore more of the Ender Lilies world, perhaps beyond the boundaries of the kingdom, or maybe even delving into the past of the Ancients before the events that lead to the game's story.

I can't really talk about the game too much without spoiling too many things that I think are just better discovered for yourself. The game is tough, but not unforgivingly so (especially if you're not going for all the achievements), and it's pretty short if you can hit 100% in just 31 hours. I'd absolutely recommend checking this one out, especially if other similar 2D soulslike metroidvanias seem too challenging. Or at least watch someone else play it (ideally without commentary). Ender Lilies is a whole experience, between the art and the music and the story and the lore and the way the gameplay itself just clicks, and it's one of those things that I'm sad I'll never be able to play for the first time again.

PS - I want more games to take a hint from its map system, particularly in highlighting a room when I've collected everything in it to let me know I really didn't miss anything, because that shit is SO fucking clutch when you're achievement hunting, or just if you're the kind of person who hates the idea of overlooking anything.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

As I mentioned in the addendum of my 2021 post about Three Houses, it took me so long to finish that game that I actually saw the release date of Three Hopes (mid to end of June iirc) as my deadline. And that wasn't because I had any intention of GETTING Three Hopes (especially on release day, because I just don't buy games like that), but because I knew my Three Houses-loving friends WOULD, and I'd be right back in No Spoiler territory with them after just finally breaking into the inner circle of 3H spoilers. Thankfully I did manage to finish my final route (Crimson Flower) just a week or so before Three Hopes came out, and I even played the Three Hopes demo afterwards to see what it'd even be like (I've never played a Warriors game before). When I saw that the story was actually pretty engaging I was like, oh, this is less brainless than I thought, maybe I'll buy it (eventually)...and ended up getting a gift copy from a friend instead. Nice!

Except...while my Three Houses friends all expected to get obsessively sucked into it (after also enjoying the demo), and I was excited to actually be there with them this time, they unexpectedly became engulfed by a DIFFERENT fandom...progress sort of halted on the Three Hopes front...and then I became the one who was afraid to spoil THEM by pulling too far ahead, so I slowed down...and eventually that just sort of killed my momentum entirely and...yeah. I've stopped playing for now.

Being that I had done the two Eagles routes back to back as my last two routes in Three Houses, AND that being the favorite house of said friends (and the one they were also gonna pick first), that's where I'm at. I have no idea how far into it I am because the game seems surprisingly on par with a normal FE game in terms of story pacing...maybe halfway, or not quite halfway through? I wanna say I got to chapter 8 or 9 before I burned out. I do want to go back to it at some point, ideally when (if?) my friends become re-interested, but either way after how long it took me to push through Three Houses I suppose it was a good time for a Fire Emblem break regardless. I've still got a bunch of other Switch games (notably Shin Megami Tensei V) waiting on my shelf, and I had intended to jump on that when I finally finished Three Houses before Three Hopes came along and threw me that curveball. I've just kind of had the cartridge in my Switch ever since, deluding myself into thinking I'm 'still playing it' because I know the minute I take it out that won't be true anymore.

I suppose I should actually give a review, huh? Well, despite how not far at all I actually am in the game (considering the other routes), I feel like I've played enough that I've seen pretty much every type of gameplay mechanic. I gotta say, despite it not being a turn-based strategy, it feels a lot more Fire Emblem than I thought it would. Just about every downtime activity from Three Houses reappears here in some form, and there's a lot more to do at your base and on side missions than I expected. Trying to get all S ranks can also be really addictive and I spent a lot of my playtime retrying the same missions over and over because I felt like just one small change could improve my time and get me that S (and so far, with maybe one or two exceptions, I've managed to S rank every mission by retrying it a few times). The missions are also still very much what I would call strategic, just in a different way, and the main missions especially give you lots of options for how to tackle your objectives so long as you've been thorough about clearing the map and picking up resources and intel along the way.

I find the gameplay pretty overwhelming with the realtime combat when so much is going on, so the way I adapted to that personally is that I spend a loooot of time pausing and opening the map screen to issue orders to the other characters. Then I usually pick one and try to carry out my own goal while they autonomously work through theirs, periodically swapping to someone else to see how they're doing and just for the variety of playing as someone else here and there. But I'm basically ALWAYS checking my map every 30 seconds to get a feel for where my units are and what they're doing, and what needs to be done...which I found helped me keep track of things a bit better amid the stream of endless enemies, special attacks flying around, and being constantly bombarded with dialogue while I'm trying to fight. It took a bit of getting used to but I think it's pretty fun once you get the hang of it.

What surprised me the most when I played the demo (and made me consider getting the full game at all) was that the story does play a big part in the game. I guess I just sort of expected an excuse plot that sent a bunch of familiar faces out to use anime moves against an army of bad guys. I have no idea how the plot kicks off for the other houses, but what really drew me in with the Eagles was how the decision to reveal and act on one thing at a much earlier point in the plot lead to a completely different outcome, spinning the usual Three Houses story off into an AU that still felt internally consistent with the original characters and events. When it came up, I was like, "no way, that's going to basically change EVERYTHING!" and got really sucked into the plot even before the demo wrapped up - so kudos also to the demo for providing enough content to actually suck the player in. That said, this game is very much only for people who finished Three Houses...at least, I sure can't imagine being able to keep track of the story, or even being interested in it, if not for knowing what ORIGINALLY happened and how differently a few factors of Three Hopes influenced them to change course. So while I'm sure there ARE Warriors fans out there whose interest in the game is mostly that aspect, I think for most people you're not gonna want to just pick this up without having played the original first...IMO, anyway, this game is NOT Standalone, despite being an alternate universe version of Three Houses' plot.

But yeah, I do wanna go back to this someday, because I was enjoying myself. I think just the combination of my friends falling off (not having anyone to talk about it with anymore after liveblogging ALL of Three Houses to them felt weird) and just generally needing a break from these characters after 8 straight months of them warranted a break. It's time for me to accept that, pop out that cartridge, and move on...I'll come back eventually. Probably...

DARK SOULS: Prepare to Die Edition

So, after all those soulslikes paving the way, we finally arrive at this point. All of it, training me for the mindset to go into a game known for its frustrating level of difficulty. I'd actually had Dark Souls in my Steam library for YEARS (that's why it's the old Prepare to Die Edition and not the Remaster), but only now did I finally feel like I was ready to take it on. And so, after applying the DSFix patch/mod (and one other mod that makes crates/barrels occasionally drop things like arrows and throwing knives because I was gonna smash them all anyway (currently really missing this in DS3)), I began my journey in June 2022...and only just wrapped it up in November.

I talked about this a bit in my Undertale review back in 2020, but what you know/expect/feel about a game before going into it can very much affect the experience you have when you finally play it. In the case of Dark Souls, I was strongly influenced by fear of how difficult it would be, due to its reputation. That fear lead me to watch lots of videos before playing, as a way to kind of prepare myself for what was to come (because going in blind was too scary). Most of these were challenge runs, so the focus was on the boss fights, but it all gave me enough of a taste of the general progression and various hurdles I'd be facing along the way. As such, I often knew exactly how to prepare, and how cautious to be making my way through areas, which trivialized a LOT of that expected difficulty.

To give perhaps the best example, I was very aware of Blighttown's reputation because it's practically a meme. People hate this Blighttown place. It's full of aggressive enemies and a deadly poison swamp that's become a staple of all future FromSoft games. It's the worst area of the game. Etc. Granted I later found out a good deal of the hate was due to the terrible framerate the game had on consoles (wasn't an issue for me on PC, at least with DSFix), but I imagine a lot of the hate also comes from people recklessly rushing their way through the upper level and getting caught by the constant ambushes, especially from the toxic dart guys. But because I KNEW ABOUT THIS REPUTATION, I went through Blighttown very slowly and cautiously. I had my bow ready at all times and a solid supply of arrows, which I used to tag enemies from a distance so they'd come attack me one at a time instead of ambushing me in large groups. I came prepared with blooming purple moss from Darkroot Garden to counteract the toxic from the blowdart guys, and since I knew they wouldn't respawn when killed I wasn't really afraid of them in the first place - after all, once they shot me, I'd pretty much know their position and be able to kill them, heal the toxic, and be on my way.

Aside from one or two deaths by fall damage (one particularly funny one was when I saw an item on a ledge that I could practically sense was schmuck bait...but I jumped down to get it anyway, and sure enough the floor collapsed under me and I fell to my death) I didn't have any trouble from Blighttown AT ALL, and definitely not one bit of frustration. It was TENSE, because of how dark the place is and because I was in constant fear of being ambushed, but it just didn't really happen because I could always spot the ambush from afar and tag the enemies individually with my bow. In a few areas with particularly dangerous drops of walkways I just decided that I didn't need the items that badly and ignored them. I got to the middle level bonfire without issue, and then made my way to the bottom of the swamp from there rather easily. And despite the poison swamp at the bottom itself being an obstacle, I had already gone back to the asylum to pick up the Rusted Iron Ring (though originally that was so I could get through the pool in Darkroot Garden), and the enemies at the bottom are much weaker than the ones in the top half of Blighttown so you're really only using your estus to heal off the poison anyway. I spent a lot of time farming the slugs down there for titanite shards and it felt like the poison, while it lasts for a million years, REALLY doesn't even do all that much damage, so as long as you don't panic and keep an eye on your health bar it was really easy to just periodically heal through.

The point is...one of the most hated areas of the game was a piece of cake to me because of the way I approached it. And I approached it that way to begin with because I went into the game knowing about its difficulty, preparing myself accordingly, and taking it slow and steady instead of rushing through and getting caught in a dozen ambushes. Of course this experience is built on the back of the millions of players who played this game when it WASN'T a decade old, and I'm not trying to trivialize the experiences of people who DID struggle with Blighttown by saying 'just like go slower lol'. But I do think it's fascinating how much easier this game is when you approach it the right way. I think, if I didn't know about all this stuff in advance, I too might end up trying to play it like Skyrim or something, just recklessly running into ambushes and traps and swinging my weapon wildly with no regard for enemy attack patterns. But by 2022 I think almost everyone knows that you can't play Dark Souls that way, and they probably wouldn't even try. And if you're not trying to play it that way...it's really NOT that hard of a game at all. It's a challenging game, and it will punish you for playing carelessly, but it's a far cry from the reputation the game has for being hard for the sake of hard. In fact, having recently played Megaman 1-3 with a friend via Switch Online, I feel like THAT is much more of a hard-just-for-the-sake-of-laughing-at-your-failure kind of game, where it just feels insurmountably difficult for no reason half the time, in a very un-fun kind of way. And the whole time we were playing it (and making heavy use of Switch Online save states along the way) I kept thinking about Dark Souls, and how much more forgiving it is than fucking NES Megaman (or NES Mario, or lots of NES games tbh).

Anyway. While this preparedness probably is the entire reason I was able to push through the game and finish it with 100% completion (even if it took me 6 months of playing cautiously), I did also end up feeling like it trivialized my experience in a sad way too, because I didn't really get to learn what the game wanted to teach me by punishing me, since I always knew what was around each corner. That's why I'm currently playing Dark Souls 3 blind (though I'll go back over a walkthrough once I finish an area to pick up items I missed, I'm NOT looking into things ahead of time). I think I probably would have been too scared to play Dark Souls blind, which is why I used those videos as a crutch in the first place, but I'm stronger now and I want to have that experience.

So, would I recommend Dark Souls? Yes, unless you absolutely hate third-person action RPGs in general. I think even if you're afraid of Dark Souls for its difficulty, you should give it a chance. Don't feel ashamed for looking up a walkthrough to prepare you ahead of time - you're still the one who has to beat the area by yourself, after all. While it did make me a little sad after the fact that I didn't get to experience the game blind, honestly, if I hadn't played like this I might never have had the courage to experience it AT ALL, so I'm glad that I did. I still felt pride when I conquered a tough area or boss on my own, even if I knew what to expect before going in. I guess it's like, if you were going to climb a mountain or explore the woods, wouldn't you feel a bit more peace of mind if you had a map of the area? But the map isn't going to climb the mountain for you...at the end of the day that's still something you've gotta do with your own power, and you can still be as proud of that as the guy who didn't buy a map. Or something like that, anyway. And also, don't believe everything you hear about on the internet, because I feel like the game's difficulty has been memed and exaggerated far beyond the actual truth anyway. Just take it slow and steady, prepare as much as you feel comfortable beforehand, and whatever you do, don't you dare go hollow.

Skyrim Together

Oh boy. So as we know, every year I find some way to play Skyrim again (except last year where I played Oblivion instead), and this year that took the form of trying to get Skyrim Together Reborn - the multiplayer Skyrim mod - set up and working with some friends. Except the idea of playing vanilla Skyrim (even with friends) sounded too boring to me. No, instead, I waited until someone else released a stable Skyrim Together modlist and then tried THAT out...and then proceeded to cannibalize it, removing mods I didn't like and adding new ones in that we wanted instead. You know. Just normal Skyrim PC player behavior.

Anyway, after about two weeks of working basically nonstop on my list, patching it and everything, making it as stable as absolutely possible on singleplayer...we took it online. And I learned that just because I've got Intermediate+ Skyrim modding knowledge, I don't know SHIT about what's going on under the hood in Skyrim Together's arcane black magic system. Long story short, we had uh. Problems. Lots of them. Most of them actually very funny, like, being attacked by a wolf (on my screen) and being told I'm actually crazy because it's a fucking skeever (on their screens). 

Or looting the dead wolf/skeever and finding 148 bones, 296 dog meat, 539 skeever tails and 148 wolf pelts on it. 

Or having...whatever this is, happen whenever your friends move around, except on THEIR screen YOU’RE the one doing it

Or getting launched into the sky for having the audacity to shield bash... 

OR the respawn system sending you to the back half of a dungeon you just started, potentially behind locked doors that only open from the front side, leaving you essentially trapped. 

Or

You know. Normal Skyrim behavior.

Suffice to say, after many days of saying "okay let's try it again but do [x] this time", we just couldn't get past a lot of these issues. And funny as they were, they were kind of impeding our ability to play Skyrim...together. Eventually we all just kind of got so tired of trying that we quietly abandoned the project. Even me, with the fierce determination I had to make the modlist work for that two week period, just couldn't understand why things were so hilariously broken once we got online, and lost all my zeal for trying (the only thing I could possibly think to do was to ask for help on a support Discord, and given the choice between troubleshooting with a stranger and just giving up, I chose giving up).

Honestly, even if things WERE working as intended, the whole process quickly became tiring. Every time I made changes to the list I'd have to reupload it for my friends to then redownload and overwrite their files with. And we had to get VPNs to connect to a private server session with (the need for extra tools like this is why I listed this as "PC" and not just "Steam"), and depending on which one of us was hosting we'd often experience slightly different flavors of bugs. And it didn't even matter how hot we made our orcs, because certain RaceMenu features just don't sync properly to the server, so all the time we spent perfecting our Himbo body morphs was for naught. It just kind of kept chipping away at our patience a little at a time until the cons started outweighing the pros of playing Skyrim together, and we all just lost the desire to keep trying.

But hey, this was all happening in September, just a month or so after Skyrim Together Reborn's official launch. And it was only DAYS after I saw someone else post a modlist that I then used as the basis for mine. It was probably too early to be as ambitious as we were. My hope is that development on Skyrim Together, and its Nemesis fork, make enough progress that by the time ky desire to play Skyrim again rolls around I might be willing to take another crack at it, and maybe things will work better by then. The day may yet come that our hot orcs will finally be unleashed on Skyrim...together.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

I've mentioned a few times how me and a friend of mine like to co-op play ostensibly singplayer games with Switch Online, but they do have some multiplayer-friendly games on there too, and sometimes we do also play those. One time we got very into playing Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on Genesis. And then shortly after that my friend discovered an alarmingly similar game on the SNES called Kirby's Avalanche. We started to suspect this might be a case of some Japan-only game that they didn't expect to take off in the west without more familiar marketing, so we looked into it and it turned out to be the case - for a series of puzzle games called Puyo Puyo. After finding out there was a modern Puyo Puyo x Tetris crossover for Switch (that might be easier to play together than doing it via Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine) we both grabbed a copy...and I even grabbed a second copy on Steam when there happened to be a Sega sale about a week later and I spotted it there too.

Anyway, I may have briefly fallen into a week-long period of Puyo Puyo Fever where I couldn't stop playing, and all my dreams were haunted by falling puyos and tetris blocks. I got over it, but I still think it's a really fun and addictive game, and the multiplayer aspect of dumping garbage on your opponent's field to screw them over is a really fun way of turning what I tend to think of as a singleplayer genre into something competitive. And there's tons of different modes and ways to play, too, whether you wanna play Just Tetris or Just Puyo Puyo or a combination of both, time attack, all kinds of weird variations...and there's a weird over-the-top anime singleplayer story mode as well, where you can launch special attacks at your opponent as well. I actually got stuck on one of the bosses in this mode because I suck at utilizing the special attacks and you REALLY have to in order to beat her, but I'll get her...one day...

My nephew also got addicted to it and even got his own copy of the game for his birthday, so we can play together too (or by himself instead of him borrowing my switch all the time). He particularly likes that you can reskin your puyos to look like Sonic characters. But yeah, honestly it's a pretty fun game, especially if you just want something to pick up and play on the bus, or while you're in a hospital waiting room because you've had an ear infection for 3 weeks, or something. It's pretty pricey on Switch at least, though, so I'd either grab it on Steam (where it's $10 cheaper even when it's not on sale) or wait for some kind of Sega sale to get it cheaper. I think it's a lot of fun, just like, not $40 fun. There's also a Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 that's cheaper, which I imagine can't be all THAT different unless you care about the online scene or something.

Super Mario 3D World

My Switch co-op friend got me this because he thought we would have a fun and friendly time doing co-op together. Oh how wrong he was.

First of all. It’s a fun enough little game, though I prefer the gameplay style of Mario Odyssey myself. I feel like this game’s levels are definitely designed more for quick play sessions, with the star and stamp hunts kind of working like bite-sized versions of tracking down moons in Odyssey. I played through the first world or two by myself before we headed online together for jolly cooperation. Or more like (I’m Mario)...

You see, the game feels nice and friendly and colorful and there’s even a lot of cases where co-op is encouraged. But you can’t show me a results screen at the end of the level where one player can do better than the other, even to the point of being awarded a crown to wear into the next level, without awakening the blood fury inside me. Every time he performed better than me (due to my overwhelming tendency to hurl myself off cliffs) it would ever so slightly raise the rage meter inside my heart. I would become obsessed with doing better in the next level. And at first this was sensible...get more coins than him. Collect the stars before he can. Get the checkpoint and exit flags to show my M instead of his dumb L. All things that would give ME more points. But sometimes you’re just not as good at Mario games as the other person and it’s easier said than done to just BE better than the competition.

But what if there was no competition in the first place? The solution was in front of me all along. Eliminate him. Pick him up and throw him off a cliff, or into an enemy, then use the resulting precious seconds to race ahead and get all the goodies before he can catch up. Of course, this became less and less successful as time went by and he caught onto the fact that I’d try to throw him at virtually any opportunity. Sometimes he’d flip the script and throw ME off before I could get a chance, resulting in a lot of back-and-forth warfare. But more often than not it goes like this

Turns out I’m REALLY good at playing myself. In fact, while looking for a video clip for that first gif of me throwing him off the cliff, I found about 6 like this where I try to pick him up but end up being the one who dies instead.

Honestly though, my favorite was this time, where I spent a while playing nice and not doing anything overtly evil, until we got to a toad house...

The toad house gets marked as cleared as soon as you exit, and he didn’t have any powerups on hand while I was running around with my raccoon suit, so he was pretty pissed about this one. Perhaps my finest moment of video game dickery of all time, and it’s not like it was premeditated (I’m not that smart). I just thought it up on the spot and thought it would be funny. And it was (to me). And that’s what it’s like playing Super Mario 3D World with me.

#sg2 plays video games #sg2's game reviews #this post was already long enough but I also had a little writeup about my experience with the bosses of dark souls #since I've already got it typed up in a txt somewhere I'll probably throw it into a second post and just link back to it here

[themightywolftiger]

Mighty Has A Funky Dream

So, had a funky dream last night. I had joined a new season of Hermitcraft; however, I wasn't the only new person to join (more on that later).

This new world was a strange modded world for some reason. There was a bunch of modded textures like big dinosaur skull patterns in the ground, bones, and other oddities.

I had just gotten back to where I was going to build a starter base when I came upon the Boatem gang + Zedaph and Xisuma dangling foxes and other creatures off some scaffolding. Cleo and Doc were also watching the contest. I was going to join but I was afraid of heights and nearly fell a couple of times.

A few moments later and I'm mining some bone, iron, and coal. Cleo joins me and I'm pointing out the odd textures that I've been finding.

This is also when we're joined by another new member to the server, CaptainSparklez. The two of us start joking with each other (making bone puns mainly) until Cleo calls out to us and tells us to look at this zombie goat texture on the ground. Cleo winds up hitting the thing with their pickaxe and bam! An actual zombified goat pops out.

The thing waddles around for a bit, making a horrid bleating sound before stumbling up to Sparklez and myself. The thing bites Sparklez on the arm before dying.

Cleo and I both ask if he's okay and he's uncertain. He says that we'll find out in 10 seconds...

But then a massive lightning strike hits near my house and wakes me up.

#mightyswolf #dream #hermitcraft #Stupid lightning strike #I wanted to know what happened

[1nfine77]

Modded DR

I could shift to a better CR. I could shift to a reality linked with dark-academia, like somehow being involved with the Greek class from that one very popular dark-academia book. I could...

...It turns out I don't have that many media interests, actually, and I can't really be asked with constructing an entire reality of my own, and so that is about where it ends for me. I've never even bothered with the concept of a waiting room reality.

Where I am actually focused on going is a reality based off fucking Mxnecraft (censored because I badly don't want someone looking for block-game content to find this lmao) because I obviously only have my best interests at heart here.

Basics

Time ratio: 1:1 (no regrets on this one - when I'm gone I am gone for as long as I feel like, thanks)

No, things aren't blocky. Things look as they do in the CR, with some exceptions here and there.

I've had this DR for around three years now. It's also the first DR I ever considered shifting to. I'm bloody committed to this place.

I am basically the same person there as I am here, except with a completely different set of circumstances.

I eventually decided to have no way to change the permutation of the DR I'm experiencing while already experiencing one of those permutations, if that makes sense. I'm not giving myself in-universe cheat codes. I also figured that, if I shift back to any version of the CR, I can just... Figure out which one on the fly, since I will have some vague access to CR memories anyway. No need for LIFA-anything, in other words.

Links (updated as I bother creating posts):

[bear in mind that, due to the proximity to real people in my CR, some things are going to be either round-about or not-quite-accurate when it comes to some things, specifically names]

[also no guarantee i'll fill out the contents in the order they appear here lmao]

[x] IRL Backstory (Just a general look at the blend of circumstances that made this ever seem like a good idea)

[x] How the hell does this reality function

[x] Self

[x] Friends

[x] People who are important but sure as hell shouldn't be considered friends

[x] In-universe backstory

[x] In-universe current circumstances

[x] How I choose to script any of this

[x] Specific changes from the base material (ignoring things that were changed for safety reasons, because...)

[x] ...And how are you keeping yourself alive here, exactly? (Discussion regarding safety in a reality where most things in it want to kill you, and both info- cognitohazards are a very real thing, among other threats to your continued existence. Also, the respawn system, and how injuries and healing work with regards to both the Minecraft health and hunger bars and how things look in the CR).

Notes

I have been fucking around with various bits of this reality for around three years now. Needless to say, as I think I've mentioned in a previous post, I do have the 'staying alive and sane and safe and well' bit almost entirely covered, although I don't have a post out about it currently... And might not for another month or so. We'll see.

I have been fucking around with various bits of this reality for around three years now. Looking between my original script and the one I have going now is a bit of a trip. I am very comfortable with randomly changing things on the fly, whether they're very minor details or pretty major ones, and not really caring about having absolutely everything set in stone. Every single iteration of this DR I've set down or kept in my mind exists; whichever one I go to is the one I go to, as far as I'm concerned. It all counts. That means nothing I post about this DR is guaranteed to be accurate in even a week's time.

I originally scripted that my memories of my time in my DR would, in the CR, be vague and dream-like. It was like that for months. I recently remembered I put that and fucking cussed myself out and changed it, because sure, having that barrier is very very important in this case, but I needed a better way of doing that that didn't boil down to 'you will come back (if you come back) and it will feel like it never happened'.

There is an in-game sanity mechanic one of the mods adds. I am keeping it. I find it fucking hilarious, okay? (To be fair - the specific kind of sanity it refers to is as much a physical distortion of the body as it is a disruption of the mind, and is affected only by very specific cognito- and infohazards, so I am almost treating it as sanity 2.0 rather than the actual overarching system of how brains and trauma work)

I had a much funnier/more clever version of the contents list but I decided to be less of a smartass.

...I am sure I am forgetting So Much but I don't care enough to sit around and change this post for the nth time, so... Whatever. I'm sure I'll edit things in or clear things up in subsequent posts, or whatever.

#[𝒽𝓎𝓅𝓃𝒶𝑔𝑜𝑔𝒾𝒶 - 𝓂𝑜𝒹𝒹𝑒𝒹 𝒹𝓇] #reality shifting #shifting realities #shiftblr #reality shifter #yeah no i'm definitely forgetting so much here #and some things are going to be so unclear i'm sure #but oh well!

[lovemesomesurveys]

[joybucket @ bzoink]

How long has it been since you moved out of the house you grew up in?   A little over a decade ago. 

What color shirt are you wearing?   It’s like a periwinkle color. 

The last time you ate leftovers, what was it that you were eating?   It was the last time I had pizza. 

What was the last flavor of ice cream you ate?   I had Reese’s ice cream just a bit ago. So good.

Do you regret anything you've done in the last 24 hours, and if so, what?   I don’t think so.

What is your favorite type of soup? 🍜   I don’t have one. I used to be obsessed with ramen as some of ya’ll may remember, but I don’t know everything got all weird when my health really declined and my tastes changed.

When was the last time you saw a beautiful sunset? 🌅   I have no idea. 

What is your favorite song at the moment?   I don’t have a particular current favorite. 

What are 5-10 things you love about being you? Mehhhh.

What is your favorite board that you've made on Pinterest?   I have various boards that I enjoy.

Do you get on Facebook or Instagram more?   Facebook, but I really don’t spend much time on there either. I just rarely go on Instagram, so. Not sure about this Threads thing, but to be fair I fought against Facebook when everyone started ditching Myspace for it and even my very first post on here says something like, “I don’t know how much I’ll actually use this.” That was in 2009, by the way. 

What color is your favorite sweater?   Black.

What are three things people would never guess about you just by looking at the photos you post on social media?   -Well, I have a friend I chat with in a tiktok live for someone we both obviously watch, but also someone we mod for. Anyway, she was apparently shook when I told her I was turning 34 soon. She claims she legit thought I was 21. I was like omg nice, good people do exist thank you so much lmaoooo. 

-You couldn’t know what health struggles I’ve been struggling with physically and mentally just based off a selfie. 

-Uhhh, you couldn’t guess .... I don’t know, there’s a ton of things you couldn’t guess just based off a photo.

What is one thing you have too much of?   Stuff. But I waaaaant it.

What was the last thing you ate or drank that was blue raspberry-flavored?A slushie quite awhile ago.

What are three of your favorite scents?   Patchouli, cedar wood, sandalwood. 

What was the last flavor of tea you drank? ☕️   Chamomile. 

When was the last time you wore your hair in a fishtail braid?   I’ve never worn my hair that way. I don’t know how to do that type of braid myself and I’ve never asked anyone else to do it for me. 

What is one annoying thing your computer does?   It’s getting a bit laggy. It’s my brother’s that I’ve been using ever since mine went kaput last April, for which I am extremely grateful for. However, it’s full of stuff and it’s super unorganized, so it drives me nuts but I can’t just go cleaning out his laptop and shit. I’m gonna have to ask him if he can clear stuff up, though. I feel so bad I like took over his laptop. It was especially nice to have when I was in the hospital. He’s been really cool about it cause he really didn’t use it anymore once he finished school, but still. He’s furthering his education and going for his master’s, so I think he may need his laptop back. Although, I honestly kinda think he’ll just buy a new one. 

What type of fruit do you eat the most?   I very rarely eat any fruit or consider myself a big fan, but I do like bananas. 

How often do you go out to eat?   I haven’t been out to eat in SO long, but I get takeout all the time.

What would your dream wedding dress look like? 👰‍♀️   I’ve never thought about it, honestly. I don’t see myself ever even getting married to be honest. 

Which fall flavor do you prefer: pumpkin spice or apple cinnamon?   Apple cinnamon.

What is the most annoying thing about your life right now?   Being stuck in this damn bed. It’s beyond annoying. 

Which holiday treat do you like better: candy corn or conversation hearts? I like them both. I know, so controversial. 

What is your favorite apple-flavored treat?   Apple fritters are good.

What are you counting down the days to right now, if anything?   My birthday, kinda. I’m not able to go anywhere again, but at least I’m home and not in the hospital this year. Oh, so since the Barbie movie comes out near my birthday and I was obsessed with Barbies as a kid, I kinda joked about having a Barbie cake and wanting a Barbie, right? Well, it became a thing and now they’re looking for one and I think are getting me Barbies lmaooo. Anyway, so that’s something fun. 

What was the last book you read about?   It’s a murder mystery FBI type stuff.

Have you been daydreaming a lot lately about a scenario you wish would happen?  Yeah. I really want to travel. I need a vacation. I neeeeed the beach. I need a change of scenery. Can I be on bed rest at a nice beach rental overlooking the ocean? ha.

What are three of your favorite things about camping? ⛺️   Nothing, I’m not a camping person.

If you could choose what month to be born in, what month would you have chosen as your birth month, and why?   October would be cool.

...and what is your actual birth month?   July.

What are three of your favorite things to do on a rainy day? 🌧️   I don’t do anything different, but I do love the rain.

Would you rather eat strawberries 🍓 or watermelon 🍉?   I like both.

Do you prefer smoothies or milkshakes? 🍹   Milkshakes. 

Do you prefer hamburgers 🍔 or hot dogs 🌭?   Hot dogs. 

When was the last time you felt nauseous?   Earlier. I feel that way a lot. 

What was the last thing you ate that made you feel nauseous?   I always feel sick after getting my formula in the g-tube.

Do you enjoy going to your local county fair?   I have never been. Not my thing.

How far away do you live from the place where you were born?   Like 10 minutes.

Do you prefer zebra print or cheetah print? I’m not a fan of either, honestly.

#personally #text #survey #surveys

[madameriasims4]

Back to Basics Kitchen Set (BGC)

This kitchen set comes in five parts, with the swatches of the main components split into two standalone zip files:

MadameRiaBacktoBasics GREYSCALE

MadameRiaBacktoBasics COLORS

MadameRiaBacktoBasics Addons*

MadameRiaBacktoBasics Decor

MadameRiaBacktoBasics Modular Shelves**

You can find the Buy items by searching "Back to Basics" in the search bar.

Please let me know if you run into any problems! This is the biggest cc project I've ever undertaken, and it took me so long to finish because I was working on/off it for months. I feel like I've learned so, so much in doing this set, and I am really looking forward to implementing my new skills!

*Someone on kindly informed me that my functional tea kettle in the Addons file no longer works with the new Wedding Stories GP. Until I can purchase the pack I won't be able to fix it, but I will keep you all updated!

**I wasn't sure about posting these modular shelves - They are based on the Dream Home Decorator modular system (still BGC though!), so they are made to slot to each other, but I know some people have had problems with things disappearing from the EA shelves. I wasn't able to replicate the bug myself, but I separated them from the rest of the set so you can choose not to download them.

Download Link and More Images Below the Cut!

--- Here's an overview of what's in each file ---

MadameRiaBacktoBasics GREYSCALE/COLORS:

Counter - End pieces are half-tile and 3/4-tile wide; use quarter tile placement (F5) for maximum versatility!

Island - Island counters where the drawers are on the cooking side, not the eating side!

Cabinets - End pieces are half-tile wide! Mix and match! Huge thanks to @peacemaker-ic for letting me use his Quintin Cabinets as a reference for the footprint edits!

Fridge Nook - Fits most fridges

Bar - Has empty shelves with slots for decorating

Island cart - Slotted for decorations/clutter and functions as a cooking surface if there's enough room on the top

Note: To reduce the swatch count for the COLORS version, I did not pair the red swatch with the mid-tone woods because they didn't look good together.

MadameRiaBacktoBasics Addons:

Apron/farmhouse sink - Basin comes in white, grey, and black, with 5 metal tones for the hardware

Bar Stool - In the same swatches as the items in the Decor folder (a combination of greyscale, colors, and browns to match the butcher block wood tones)

Tea Kettle (Functional)- No longer working with the Wedding Stories GP! Please remove it if you're encountering issues!

Four Walls in 48 matching swatches - Comes in Plain, and Tiled at Backsplash, High, and Full heights

Tile Floor in 48 matching swatches - Made to match with the tiled walls

Neutral Slate Floor - 20 Greyscale/Brownscale swatches of a large-tiled floor with a slight shine

MadameRiaBacktoBasics Decor:

Over 20 Decor/Clutter objects, including stackable dishware, slotted baskets, and foodstuffs (and a small rug/mat I forgot to take a nice screenshot of). Most things come in 22 swatches (a combination of greyscale, colors, and browns to match the butcher block wood tones)

Looking for a matching dining set? SaxonSpud on the Sims4Studio forums has made a lovely set which you can find it here! 

Attributions:

Chicken and Cow Icons by Alistu

Bowtie Pasta: Food vector created by vectorpocket - www.freepik.com, Tagliatelle Pasta: Background photo created by stockking - www.freepik.com, Oats: Background photo created by luis_molinero - www.freepik.com, Coffee Beans: Background photo created by wirestock - www.freepik.com Mug Pattern: Background vector created by GarryKillian - www.freepik.com, Wildflower Vector: Pattern vector created by pikisuperstar - www.freepik.com, Constellations: By Bilberry Create on DesignBundles.net , Forest Gifts: By HannaYelsukova on DesignBundles.net, Watercolor Vegetables: DesignBundles.net (link not found)

Having weird shadows in your game? Check out @peacemaker-ic's No Occluder mod!

Download (Patreon) Always free, no ads.

#ts4 kitchen #ts4 cc #ts4 maxis match #ts4 mm #ts4 bgc #ts4 clutter #my cc

[mingis-lightbulb]

A Dream Is A Nightmare

Yandere! Choi San x Reader x Yandere! Choi Jongho

Summary: The royals are having a ball for their boys to find them wives. Of course (y/n) a bright and young girl wanted to go, but her mother did everything in her power to stop he form going. But was it for good reason or just greed? Were the royals hiding something behind their clean and pristine imagine?

Warnings: Yandere San and Jongho, abuse (both physical and Mental), death, murder, manipulation, slight stockholm syndrome, royalty au, twisted fairytale au.

Taglist: @mingissoggywaffles @damissub @yungisstar1117 @beomnoi @justforyookihyun @wooyoungsbae @blessednhighlyfavoured @do-you-actually-care @winterciella @soft-teddybear @sanraes

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When you wish upon a star, your dreams will eventually come true.

I’ve been wishing for years, still hoping for a miracle, wishing that something would change

“Y/n!!”

Maybe i’ll get my own happy ending, prince charming that’ll come and rescue me from this hellhole.

“Y/n L/n!! Bring your ass down here right now!!”

I sighed softly as I climbed out of my comfortable bed, dusting myself off and heading up to the living room. I took a deep breath, preparing for the screeching that I would face. When i reached the room, my stepmother, Amanda (sorry if that's your name!), was standing with her arms crossed, a scowl on her face. I opened my mouth to speak but she marched up and brought her hand across my face, her rings leaving a small gash on my face.

“You ungrateful bitch! When I call you, you better answer! Now get to work before I fling you to the dogs!” she threatened, I quickly got up and scurried off to the kitchen to start my day. I held my cheek, trying to stop the bleeding , wincing as I leaned over the sink to run cold water on the wound.

I hate my life, to put in simple terms.

Ever since my father passed away things have been hell, my Step-Mother took over the house and fortune, not letting me have anything at all, everything going to her banshee daughters. Samantha was the worst of the two, she purposely mod your life hell, ripping my clothes, pouring/wasting her food on me, hitting me, the lift goes on. Miranda went for a more word based approach. Seh constantly told me I was ugly and beneath her, always blaming me for my fathers death, telling me that no one would ever want me because I’m just a dirty maid.

And that I could never say anything because that would end in me getting abused by their mother and locked in the basement for days without food. I could not win in this house, It was everyone in this house against me and I was always losing. After putting a bandage over my wound, I went to prepare brunch for the ungrateful family, quickly preparing it and bringing it into the dining room. As I move to the room, I hum a slight tune, trying to keep my spirits up, knowing one day I would make it out. “Ugh, about time you arrived you wasteful urchin.” Amanda sneered as i placed the tray on the table and stepped back. The two pigheaded daughters began digging in the food. “Girls, Girls! You’re behaving unladylike! How are you going to attract the princes like this!” my ears perked up at the mentions of the princes.

The land of Utopia was ruled by the King, but he had two sons that looking for brides. I cleared my throat “U-um mother, are the princes having a ball?” I asked scared a bit. Amanda smirked and chuckles softly, “Of course, They have invited all the eligible women in the land to attend” She said in a sickeningly sweet tone, my step sisters laughed amongst themselves. I gripped the side of my dress, working up courage. “M-may I go mother I know I don’t have a dress but i’ll find something-” I was stopped by all of them laughing at me. “Oh you stupid, ignorant little girl, balls aren’t for maids, They are for sophisticated women who have things to offer to the princes” She said, “Yeah! Mother says that the princes will marry us and we’ll move to the palace,” Samantha said with an evil smirk on her face. Miranda joined in, looking me straight in the eyes. “And we are going to leave you here to waste away as we become royalty like we deserve.” She said, her voice dripping venom.

I felt tears well up in my eyes as I held my head down, I could hear Amanda walk over to me, placing her hands on my cheeks. She raised my face, a slight look of care in her eyes, as if she was begging me not to go. “Y/n. Do not go to this ball. You do not have anything to offer to the royals, unlike my daughters.” She says sternly and I just nodded, turning to runback to my room as tears began to fall from my eyes.

As soon as I reached my bed laid myself down on it, allowing my tears to fall freely. “I-i can go, I can be the woman that the princes would want.” I told myself, burying my face into the pillows, crying out. My father always told me that I was a princess, that I was made to be something better, and once he passed away, all my happiness went with him. I lifted up out of the pillows, with a look a look of determination, marching over to my notebook, I opened it to a dress my mother designed but never made. I grab my sewing materials and get fabric as I decided to get to work.

“I’ll show them, I’ll show that I can be royalty.”

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

After about 5 hours of working on my dress, I finally tried it on and excitedly cheered as I looked at myself in the mirror, the dress was a pretty light green ball gown dress with a sweetheart necklace, I felt proud of myself and made my way upstairs to show of my dress to Amanda, hoping it would change her mind. I happily giggle as I find my step mother and sisters getting ready in the bathroom. “Mother! Mother, I look! I made a dress!” I said excitedly, giving a twirl. I actually saw a glimpse of a smile on her face and she was about to speak before Samantha and Miranda interrupted her. Miranda grabbed scissors and and began to cut away at my dress as Samantha threw ink on it, adding insult to injury.

“You aren’t going anywhere! The princess want real women!”

“And you are nothing, but a measly servant! Not a proper woman!”

They contiuned to ruin my dress as I begged and yelled for them to stop, only mkaing them laugh at me and continue the torment. My step-mother watched before calling her daughters. “Stop it. The carriage is here girls.” She said flat, the two girls smirked at their work and turne daway, heading out to the carriage. My gave me a mixed look, as if it said ‘I told you so’ before leaving out with her daughters, leaving me on the ground, covered in ink and torn fabric. I managed to stand up and wobbled over to the outside garden, tears welling up and trickling dow my face. I wiped my eyes as I went to sit down on the fountain, letting my sobs just go.

“Why..Why..” I sobbed out, placing my head in my hands as I had completely given up. I can;t win when it comes to this family, thewy always found a way to ruin my plans. Leaving me unhappy and continuously living in their shadow.

“Oh Honey, What are yu crying for?” A soft voice called out. I lift my head confused, looking around until my eyes landed on a woman standing there. She was wearing a mermaid gown that was a beautiful gold, she wore a kind smile on her face as she slowly walked over to you. “You want to go to the ball so bad don’t you young one?” She asked, I nodded slowly and she chuckled. “Well you can’t go looking like that!” I blushed softly as I looked down at my ruined dress. She simply waved her hand humming something to herschel before snapping her fingers.

I was covered in a brihgt shine of light before it cleared. I looked down at my dress with a small gasp, my ruined dress was replaced by a beautiful black tight fitting dress that had a hint of red along the bottom, roses adorned on my waist and a beautiful choker on my neck. “Oh! And Don’t forget the heels!” She cheered happily. I lifted my dress to gaze down at my feet, seeing them covered in pretty crystal glass shoes. I squealed happily as I twirled around, glitter circling me as I did. “It’s so pretty! Thank you so much-” “Jaehee, I’m Jaehee, Your fairy godmother~ And i’m not done yet!” Jaehee says before working her magic again, turning a pumpkin nearby into a carriage and a few mice running around into some horses and Jaehee herself hopped up to drive the carriage herself.

“Your carriage is awaits my dear~” Jaehee said, ushering me into the carriage, I climb in happily, excited that my child hood dream was about to come true.

I was giddy all the way there, thinking about all the fun people I would meet, all the food I would eat, and hell maybe I will meet one of the princes if i was lucky. I was so in my thoughts that I didn’t even notice we had arrived until Jaehee opened the door. I jumped, making Jaehee laugh as she helped me out of the carriage, leading me into the large palace. I smiled happily as we entered, gazing at all of the people and decorations. Jaehee tapped my shoulder and leaned over to whisper in my ear. “ When the clock strikes 12:00, I’ll be waiting out here, The magic will fade, we will leave here. “ I nodded before heading off into the crowd to go mingle with the crowd.

I smile as people gave me compliments on my dress, making small talk with me, I was happily talking with a women until someone grabbed my hand. I looked up and felt a blush rise to my face. An attractive male with a gummy smile on his face, he had jet black hair and beautiful brown eyes, he wore a whitew suit adorned with gold and silver pieces. “Greetings, may I have this dance with you?” He asked and I nodded. “May I know your name? He asks, “My name is Y/n,” I answered. “Such a beautiful name.” His hand that was on my shoulder dropped down to my back to pull me closer. “What are you doing here? Do you wish to marry one of the princes?” He asked with a playful smile.

I rolled my eyes with a smile. “Maybe, if i’m worthy of his presence.” I say jokingly and he chuckles. He pulls me closer until our faces are close together. “I think that you’re worthy of me. My Princess, can I steal you away?~” I blush at the sudden closeness as we danced around the ballroom, his eyes only focused on me. I didn’t notice it until we reached the middle of the crowd that people were looking at us.

Thats when it hit me.

“W-wait...are you?” “A prince? Yes, prince Jongho, my darling. Is that a bad thing?”Jongho asked, tilting his head to the side, a smile on his face. It still took my brain a few moments to realise I was dancing with one of the crown princes, just sitting here having casual conversation, WITH THE FUCKING PRINCE. I was freaking out and I slowly pulled away from Jongho, making him give a confused look. “Where are you going?” he asked and I quickly turned on my heel and took off in the crowd, ignoring the gasps, glares and stares. He was following close behind me, calling my name, I quickly ducked and weaved my way through the people, hoping that he would get stopped by someone. And luckily he did, Miranda popped up and pulled him away from me.

“W-wait! Princes come back! Unhand me!” Jongho yelled as I continued to run through the crowd. I ran and ran until I made it to the courtyard. I leaned on a pillar to catch my bretah and took time to look back, seeing the moving around with no sign of the prince. I took a deep breath and slide down to the ground, resting for the first time this night. “God, Maybe mother was right, I shouldn’t have come here…” I started sighing as I covered my face. “I’m not made for the princes, I don’t know anything about royalty” I mumbled, trying not to cry. I could hear soft footsteps coming towards me and I kept my head down. The footsteps come up to me and stopped.

“Are you okay? It’s cold out here?’

I looked up to meet kind brown eyes, a male with short blue hair, an all black suit with some accents of gold. He gave a gentle smile before crouching down in front of me. “The ball got too overwhelming?” I nod slightly and he chuckles. “I understand. I hate balls too.” He says. “Why’d you come then?” I ask with a cocked eyebrow. “My mother made me. I had to come along or else she’ll flip, you?” “I came here to get out of my home, my mom is overbearing.” The male nods in response, he sat beside me, grabbing my hand and gently running his fingers along the back of mine. “Well, and can get to know each other, and avoid the crowd here.” He chuckled softly and giggled as well. He was such a gentle and kind guy, he seemed caring and listneing. Never failing to make me feel safe in this small time we had together.

I just seemed so enarmored by him, like something me was pulling me towards him and I couldn’t put a finger on it. I found myself staring at his lips, seeing how pretty and plump they were, a soft blush coming across my face as my eyes raised to meet his. He smirked a bit before leaning forward, placing his lips upon mine. They felt as soft of they looked, and I couldn’t help but kiss back. He ended up pulling me into his lap, deepening the shared kiss, and I could feel fireworks going off in my head. Just like that, someone had gotten my first kiss, not that I minded, Hell, I needed to live a little after being cooped up in that house.

I pulled away first, being spooked a bit by the chime of the clock, I glanced over in the distance, seeing that it was 5 till 12. I hurriedly got up, knowing that our short time together was coming to an end. I stood up straight with him following suit, “where are you going?” He asked, echoing the same phrase that I had heard from Prince Jongho earlier. I gave him a soft smile, “U-um, I’m going home, it’s quite late and my mother will have my head if i’m late.” I said, beginning to walk away, He grabs my hand, a soft look on his face as he stopped me from leaving. “Can I atleast get your name, I want to find you again.” “Not until you give me yours first.” I say quickly, pulling my hand away from his. He looks at me before chuckling to himself.

“San, My name is Choi San.”

I could feel my heart sink down to my stomach.

Our land was ruled by a King, though his two sons would soon be taking over. San was the oldest of the two, he was stunning, smart and the most sought after of the two. He was the reason they had to have a ball, as his orignial suitor only wanted him for money and power. While Jongho was the younger brother, he was kind and adorable, his kindness often being taken for granted. He was just as attractive as his brtoher but woman seemed to take him for granted and not seeing him in the same light that they saw San.

I began backing away, San walked forward. “You’re different. You treated me like a human being, Not some way into success!” He said. “And that kiss we shared. I felt a spark between us, like it was almost destiny for us to be together!” He yelled, sounding nearly crazed. I whipped around quickly and started to run. “Why are you running?! We can be something amazing. We are going to be something!” I heard San yell, I did not care. I was not fit to be Queen or anytype of royalty at all. I just wanted to get out and enjoy myself for one night. I was not made for this life. And granted I did feel something towards the princes, the moments I shared with them lighting something deep in me, but I was not worthy of being theirs.

“I’m sorry your highness! Please find someone else!” I yelled to him. San stopped in his tracks before taking off after me himself, barking orders to nearby guards. “ You are the one I want! You will become my wife!”

I was booking it in my heels, trying so hard to keep a distance between San and I. When I reached the stairs, I began running down them only to trip over the bottom of my dress, calling the rest of the rest of the way down. When I hit the bottom, I cried out in pain, there was a sharp pain shooting up my arm as I looked down to see a deep gash on it. I could hear San gasp as he near the top of the stairs. He looked down at me and worry filled his eyes, “My Darling! Stay right there! Don’t move!” San yelled out rushing down to me. I managed to get to my feet, realising a shoe came off when I fell and was resting on the stairs. I shook my head, deciding to leave it and hurried away to my carriage holding my arm, the large clock striking twelve.

“You’re hurt! Stop! Stop running Dammit! Stop her!” I ran and hopped in the carriage spooking Jaehee as she was reading. “Oh my dear, is it 12-” “Go!, Let’s go!” Hearing the urgency in my voice She quickly nodded, hopping out and getting up to the reigns, snapping them. I watched as San yelled to the guards surrounding him as he held my single glass shoe in his hands.

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

That next morning was hell, as I was trying to cook breakfast with my arm hiddened. Meanwhile my family were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. “Y/n! Get in here now!” I sighed heavily and walked from the kitchen to the living wondering what I was going to get yelled at for. Not expecting Miranda to be holding my glass shoe in her hands with a wicked smirk on her face.

My step mother stood up and marched over to me, jacking me up by the collar. “I told you not to go to that damned ball! Now you got the princes looking for your peasant ass you worthless bithc!” She screamed, pushing me back into a vase, breaking it and sending shards into my back. I cried out in pain as she shoved me into the ground. “When the royal guard comes, you better tell them that it was not you. I refuse to let an urchin like you wiggled their way into the castle. ‘ She growled, kicking me in my injured arm. I winced in pain and could hear my step sisters laughing at me, tears welling up in my eyes.

Here I thought that maybe my step mother felt bad for me, that she only wanted the best for me. But at the end of the day, she only wanted the best for her own daughters. There was a sudden sharp knock at the door. My stepmother forced me up and pushed me towards the door, giving me a look that said ‘You better do as I say.’. I hold back my tears and swallow my pride as I open the door. I let out a soft gasp, Prince Jongho and San stood there with two royal guards behind them. Jongho quickly pulled me into his arms, making me wince and freeze up.

“Y/n! We’ve found you aft- o-oh my! What happened!?” He let out, looking over at my injuries. I simply shook my head. “Y-your highness, I’m sorry. I am not the one for you, I am nowhere near prepared fo-” “Shh.,Shh.., don’t say that love, don’t say that. Jongho quickly cut me off “Who did this to you? Who dared lay a finger on you?” He asked before his eyes drifted to your arguing sisters. Their attention went from each other to me, their faces turning red at seeing me in the arms of one of the Princes.

“What are you doing you urchin!? Get your dirty hands off of the prince! Miranda screeches as she marches over and snacthes me out of Jongho’s grip. She flung me to the ground, making me land on the back, shards from the vase pushing deeper in making me cry out in pain. She placed herself infront of him. “DOn’t waste your time with trash your highness! I would be an amazon-” Miranda suddenly stopped talking, falling flat on her back near me. I screamed as she had a hunting knife lodged deep in her chest, leaving her sputtering and coughing up blood. I backed away seeing Prince San emerge from behind Jongho. “Y/n...such a beautiful name for a lovely girl.” He says looking at me, eyes filled with nothing but love. “Jongho told me your name and I found your home. Princess, if your home life was so awful why did you run?” San asked as he stepped closer to me. As he stepped over my dying sister, his smile dissappears and a scowl was there as he stomped on the knife lodged in her chest, pushing it deeper until he hit the ground. He continued walking over to me, kneeling infront of me, he placed his hand on my cheek, and I leaned into his touch.

I couldn’t even fight what I was doing, this man just killed my step-sister. But the way he and Prince Jongho looked at me with such lover, that I wanted nothing more than to run away with them. They promised me a new life, salvation from my abusers. “C-can..Can I come with you?” I croak out and San smiles at me, placing a kiss on my forehead. “Of course, let us get you up. God I hate that they did this to you.” San says as he pulled me back to my feet, making sure to be gentle with my back.

Quick footsteps came running in and screaming started. “What have you done to my daughter!? You disgusting bitch.” She screeched. “I did it. Your daughter disrespected me.” San said bluntly, catching my step mother off guard. “Now. Raise your voice at my Queen again and you won’t like.” San warned and Jongho walked up to me, holding me in his arms, whispering sweet things to calm me down. “What!? But your majesty she’s not-” “Yeah! I’m ready for marriage your highness! Please chose me-” Jongho smiled at me before covering my eyes.. “I don’t want you to see this my love, come on. Let me get you to the carriage and San will join us!”

I was distracted by the blood curdling screams of my family, two loud thumps were heard against the ground as two hands cupped my cheeks. “Jongho uncover her eyes.” Jongho moves his hands and San smiles at me, blood splashed across his face and suit as he places his lips against mine. “We have much preparation for our big day. And don’t worry about your fathers things, we’ll get all of his things and leave their shit.” San says smiling and I nodded a small smile grazing my lips.

I was finally going to be royalty, and my dream was coming true.

And my family can no longer get in my way.

#ateez fanfic #ateez fanfics #ateez x reader #ateez fanfiction #choi san x reader #ateez san #ateez san x reader #san x reader #jongho x reader #ateez jongho x reader #choi jongho x reader #choi san fanfic #choi jongho fanfic

[sg-marshall]

sims 4 trait legacy challenge

Overview:

This is a ten generation legacy challenge based on some characteristics people can possess. Each generation will be based upon a new trait. The style and gender of the generation is completely up to you (I usually play as women but gender does not matter in this challenge)! Complete all goals before focusing on the next generation. Some may play onto each other, so be sure to look ahead before moving forward! I created an adapted version for people who do not have the packs I used listed below the challenge. I wanted to make sure everyone could play and not feel left out!

Rules:

No cheats or mods!

Start off with $20,000 and a build a house wherever you want one.

Complete all six goals for every generation before moving onto the next one.

Complete the full aspiration and reach level 10 in the set career.

There is no rules when it comes to aging up but I suggest waiting until it is their set birthday.

Play on normal life span.

Packs Used: Base Game, Discovery University, Seasons, City Living, Get to Work, Cats and Dogs, Parenthood, Spa Day, and Knifty Knitting

Generation One: Responsibility

You are a very old fashioned person who believes things have a certain way of being done. Every object in your house has a set place, the person you marry you are supposed to stay with forever, and the world should be a clean place to live in. Never once have you strayed away from your beliefs and you’ve always lived your life by the book. Even once your partner dies and you are left with a child who cannot handle their passing, you stay true to your morals. (EDIT: I have been playing this challenge myself and found that the final level of the aspiration said “have a child master a career”. I do not know if you have to be in the household for that, but if you do, just add this generation to the household of the next one before they master it. It is also okay if you want to ignore/cheat this part.)

Traits: Neat, Good, Green Fiend

Aspiration: Successful Lineage

Career: Education (Administrator Branch)

Goals:

Max charisma skill.

Max research and debate skill.

Be married as a young adult, but have your partner die (do not tell your child how) once they reach adult hood. Never remarry.

Have only one child with your partner.

Complete the snowglobes collection and have them set up in a specific room in your house.

Make your neighborhood green and keep it that way.

Generation Two: Determined

You’ve always struggled to cope with the death of your father/mother ever. Maybe that's because you never really knew why they died in the first place. Left with too many questions to handle, you destroy your relationship with your friends and family and run away to find some answers. This entails a trip to Sixam, where you can finally wrap ahead around the passing of you mom/dad. You decide to come home just in time to see your mom/dad just before they too pass away. After a heart-breaking conversation, you realize that all the secrecy was for the best.

Traits: Gloomy, Ambitious, Loner

Aspiration: Nerd Brain

Career: Astronaut (Interstellar Smuggler Branch)

Goals:

Max rocket science skill.

Max mischief skill.

Build a rocket ship and fly to Sixam.

Run away and live on your own as a teenager. 

Have a horrible relationship with your mom/dad as a young adult, but become best friends with them before they pass away.

Complete the microscope prints collection.

Generation Three: Loving

Your mother/father was extremely distant growing up, which caused you to rely on friends as your family. Your childhood best friend has been with you every step of the way, and you ended up fell in love with them. All you wanted to do was be a mother/father, but found out you could never have children. You adopt a child as a baby and raise them as your own, teaching them everything you wish your parents did for you.

Traits: Romantic, Family - Oriented, Foodie

Aspiration: Soulmate

Career: Babysitter (Teenager), None (Young Adult and older)

Goals:

Max parenting skill.

Max wellness skill.

Marry your childhood best friend.

Adopt a baby after you get married.

Teach your toddler to max all skills.

Have a side passion of knitting.

Generation Four: Intelligence

You grew up incredibly smart with no knowledge of who your real parents were. However, that never mattered to you. Your adoptive parents have made it their life goal to advance your gifts in every way they know how. Late nights of helping you with homework, early mornings of finishing projects, and spending their fortunes to enroll you into the college of your dreams. All you wanted to do was repay them by becoming a world renowned journalist. You dedicate your best-sellers to them because, after all, they’ll always be your biggest fan.

Traits: Genius, Bookworm, Unflirty

Aspiration: Academic

Career: Writer (Journalist Branch)

Goals:

Max logic skill.

Max writing skill. 

Reach level eight in five other skills of your choice.

Go to the University of  Britechester and study Language and Literature (distinguished).

Join the Debate Guild and reach the highest rank.

Write five novels.

Generation Five: Hard - Working

Fashion has been your passion since you were a little girl/boy. You even asked your parents to stop dressing you as a toddler because the clothes they picked were “not stylish enough.” As a self-proclaimed style icon, you knew you had to make your biggest dream come true: to create your own fashion line. So, as soon as you graduated high school, you packed your bags and moved to the big city - San-Myshuno. There you created your social media platform and blew up! A normal life was never your style, and you made sure to put in as many hours as it would take to achieve all you ever wanted.

Traits: Perfectionist, Self - Assured, Materialistic

Aspiration: City Native

Career: Style Influencer (Stylist Branch)

Goals:

Max photography skill.

Max painting skill.

Must live in San-Myshuno.

Complete the crystals collection.

Hire a nanny for your child and do not spend much time with them.

Gain 10,000 followers on Simstagram.

Generation Six: Resilience

After being known as “the child of the most famous fashion designer” all your life, the city became a toxic place for you. You hated the loud noises, constant stream of people, and just wanted to live a quiet life. You loved visiting your grandmother/father’s house and hearing one of her/his famous stories. You decided to pull inspiration from one of their novels and live off by the coast in the adorable Brindleton Bay. Your passion for crafting and living off the land inspired you to start a small business selling your candles and juice - all locally grown of course. 

Traits: Loves Outdoors, Maker, Creative

Aspiration: Master Maker

Career: Freelancer (Simply Crafted)

Goals:

Max fabrication skill.

Reach level eight in both candle making and juice fizzing.

Move to Brindleton Bay as a young adult.

Have four or more kids.

Complete the frog collection.

Never go to an event in the city or visit the city once you are a young adult.

Generation Seven: Carefree

Being in a big family is can be hectic at times. So, you decided to be the happy jokester in the middle just trying to get people to crack a smile. And you got really good at it. As a major people person, you made sure to get to know everyone you meet. You even started a tradition of taking a picture with them so you could never forget that moment. Your friends will always invite you to go out because you are known for being the life of the party. However, the parties you host, are even better. You decide to live life as if it was one big stage, and you’re the star performer.

Traits: Goofball, Clumsy, Outgoing

Aspiration: Party Animal

Career: Entertainer (Comedian Branch)

Goals:

Max comedy skill.

Max singing skill.

Host a party every week.

Take a photo of every person who visits you.

Marry someone you met just two days before.

Attend every festival or event you are asked to attend.

Generation Eight: Kind

Expected to be just like your mother/father, no one ever assumed you would be the quiet kid who preferred reading over partied. However, that is exactly who you were. When it was that time of the week for a new social event, you either left for the library or locked yourself in your room, praying it ended soon. Your parents noticed you struggled talking to people, so they allowed you to adopt a puppy once you became a teenager. You and your dog instantly became best friends and you took them everywhere. Even though you may not be great with people, being compassionate was a skill you ranked high in. You always looked out for the less fortunate and wanted to provide in anyway you could.

Traits: Vegetarian, Loner, Good

Aspiration: Friend of the Animals

Career: Gardner (Floral Designer Branch)

Goals:

Max gardening skill.

Max flower arranging skill.

Keep up a garden of just flowers.

Adopt strays: one dog, and two cats.

Marry an ambitious sim.

Donate $100 to charity weekly.

Generation Nine: Impulsive

You grew up hearing stories of your grandmother/father’s so called “wild days” and fell in love with the energy it brought. However, your mom/dad raised you better than to go out spending life as if there was no consequences. Finding a balance started off to be very challenging for you. You could never hold down relationships and even got pregnant/got someone pregnant twice. It wasn't until you became a secret agent and learned how to live two lifestyles: one full of fun and adventure; the other more stable and structured.

Traits: Active, Non-Committal, Bro

Aspiration: Bodybuilder

Career: Secret Agent (Diamond Agent Branch)

Goals:

Max fitness skill.

Max handiness skill.

Go to either college for Psychology and play soccer.

Have four failed relationships and never get married.

Have two children from two different relationships.

Move three times once you become a young adult.

Generation 10: Passionate

Because your mother/father’s job required you to move around so much, making real life friends was a lot harder than it seemed. So, you built your relationships within the online community. Every day, you and your closest friends would hop online and compete in tournaments or even play for fun. As the years went on, you became really good at coding and even started working on your own apps. You looked up to the players from ESports Gaming - only the best gamers in the world - and longed to be sitting in one of their spots. And sure enough, after years of perfecting your strategies and game plays, your dreams came true!

Traits: Geek, Hot-Headed, Outgoing

Aspiration: Computer Whiz

Career: Tech Guru (ESport Gamer Branch)

Goals:

Max programming skill.

Max video gaming skill.

Complete the MySims Trophies collection.

Attend and compete in every Geek Con convention.

Make five video games or apps.

Mentor your child/ren for five hours each.

Adaptations:

Gen 1:

If you do not have Discover University, go into the Business career (Management Branch).

Max cooking skill if you do not have Discover University.

If you do not have City Living, complete the postcards collection.

Gen 2:

Unlock the secret world in Oasis Springs if you do not have Get to Work.

Gen 3:

If you do not have Parenthood but do have Get to Work, max the baking skill.

If you do not have both Parenthood and Get to Work, max the gourmet cooking skill.

If you do not have Spa Day but do have Knifty Knitting, max the knitting skill.

If you do not have both Spa Day or Knifty Knitting, max the photography skill.

If you do not have Knifty Knitting, have a side passion of photography.

Gen 4:

If you do not have Discover University, read a new skill book every week instead of attending university.

Gen 5:

If you do not have City Living, have the  Fabulously Wealthy aspiration.

If you do not have City Living, live in Oasis Springs.

Gen 6:

Do not have a career if you do not have Eco-Lifestyle. Instead, craft item on the woodworking for money.

If you do not have Eco-Lifestyle, max the fishing skill instead of reaching level eight in candle making and juice fizzing.

If you do not have Cats and Dogs, move to Evergreen Harbor.

If you do not have both Cats and Dogs or Eco-Lifestyle, live in Willow Creek

If you do not have Eco-Lifestyle, have the self-assured trait instead.

If you do not have Eco-Lifestyle, have the Angling Ace aspiration.

Gen 7:

If you do not have City Living but do have Get Together, max the dancing skill.

If you do not have both City Living or Get Together, max the mixology skill.

Gen 8:

If you do not have Dogs and Cats, have the Freelance Botanist aspiration.

Do not have a career if you do not have Seasons. Instead, sell your plants for money.

If you do not have Seasons but have Get to Work, max the baking skill.

If you do not have both Seasons or Get to Work, max the violin skill.

If you do not have Dogs and Cats, but have Seasons, own three bees nests and two insect nests instead of owning pets.

If you do not have both Dogs and Cats or Seasons, have three children instead of having three pets.

If you do not have City Living, have the cheerful trait.

Gen 9:

If you do have Strangerville, go into the Military Career (I do not have it, so I played as a Secret Agent)

If you do have Snowy Escape, have the adventurous trait instead of the active trait (I do not have it but believe they would be adventurous).

If you do not have Discover University, read five skill books over different topics, instead of going to college.

Gen 10:

If you do not have City Living, compete in an online tournament weekly instead of going to Geek Con.

#sims #sims 4 gameplay #sims 4 legacy #small creator #newchallenge #lilsimsie #clairesiobhan #maxismatch #maxismatchccworld #legacy #sims4 #basegame #traits

[lululawrence]

Wordplay 5.0 Reflections

I dunno what else to call it lmao it doesn't sound right to call this a meme, but whatever it is, here we are! lol @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed came up with these questions after @wordplayfics wrapped up last year and I love them so i'm gonna use them for this year as well.

I'm going to start out with listing the prompts and linking the fics i wrote for each one for everyone's reference, though I'll be linking them again through the answers as well. I'm also putting all the questions and answers beneath a read more because, as usual, I rambled lmao Alright! Here we go!

Struggle: I Said It Wrong, But I Meant It Right Reduce: I Love This Feeling (But I Hate This Part) Divide: He Carries The Key Rise: Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy Sketch: I Heard You Talking

How did you come up with your ideas for the fics? Can you take us through your process after first receiving the prompt?

I don't know that I have a set way I come up with my fic ideas for Wordplay. It all depends on the prompt and what fic ideas I've got on my "to write list" that might fit that prompt. If nothing on my to write list fits or can be tweaked for a prompt, then I just go through my prompts tag until something strikes me for it, or I just ruminate on the different ways the word can be used and see if something comes up.

So, when I did the random word generator for the first prompt and "struggle" was the word that came up, I immediately thought of "struggle bus". lolllll and when I went looking through my to write list, I saw the girl Payneshaw fic I wanted to write and I was like omgggggg Nick ABSOLUTELY is riding the struggle bus the ENTIRE FUCKING TIME and I knew that was my fic for the week. lmaoooo and there you have it.

What is your favorite fic you wrote for Wordplay this year?

oooohhhh this one is HARD AND MEAN lmaoooo i forgot this was a question asked. okay legitimately i cannot choose a favorite because i'm actually stupidly proud and happy with all of the fics i wrote this year.

If you’ve participated in previous years of Wordplay, what has been your favorite prompt from all years you participated in?

WELP. as the creator of this challenge, i've participated in all 5 years which means there've been 25 prompts i've written. lolllll and honestly i think my favorite prompt is STILL from the first year. it was "bloodsucker". like, how great of a prompt is that???

What was the shortest fic you wrote this year? The longest?

the shortest one this year was... I Said It Wrong, But I Meant It Right at 4381 words.

the longest one was... I Heard You Talking at 10580 words.

What fic of yours surprised you?

i think all of them surprised me in some way. that's part of the joy of writing fics, isn't it? lollll but i think the one that surprised me the most was Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy. it was a last minute change (i'll elaborate in the answer to the next question haha) and it was a VERY different direction than i had planned. it was all based off of a photo i saw on tumblr, and there was no prompt with the photo. i got to just take in the basic idea of the sticker being placed on a bridge overlooking the city and what might make that spot a good kissing spot.

now, as an ace who doesn't actually ENJOY kissing, i... didn't think about the fact that i would be writing a lot of it. lollll i actually have a super hard time writing kisses and trying to make them varied while also relaying the emotional intimacy of the moment, and then add on top of that the fact that once i started writing the fic, both harry and louis let me know pretty much as soon as words started getting written that they were both genderqueer and that worked differently for each of them, so harry would use they/them pronouns and louis would use he/him still, it just made things more interesting. and the way the fic developed??? like, i had a very vague idea of what would happen in the fic. so the way it actually came about all surprised me.

long answer short, from the very start, this fic surprised me and i was just along for the ride. it was a BLAST and i sure do love it, even if it does have the second lowest hits of all the fics i wrote this year haha

Were there any prompts you struggled to find an idea for?

STRUGGLED HAHAHA sorry. just funny since struggle was a prompt this year. ANYWAY. the prompt i had the hardest time with was defo rise. i've had this fic idea ever since greg james tweeted with shawn mendes months ago about how shawn basically forgot his interview with greg on the breakfast show, so greg had to last minute wing a LOT OF AIR TIME AND SHOW CONTENT and he did a great job, but it brought about some funny content... anyway. that made me wanna write a triad a/b/o fic where greg is louis and harry's beta. rise was going to be used in a lot of different ways through the fic, as well. because breakfast show requires greg to rise from bed early, he gets a rise out of harry and louis with his behavior and overt flirtations with shawn, they have to rise above their jealousy, etc etc etc. i was VERY EXCITED.

except i only had three days i was able to write every week this summer, and those were really really difficult to get. if i wanted to write on tuesday or thursday, i was often curling up with my laptop in a dark room with some caffeine and candles burning to soothe me after the insanity that is my life atm, and write for as long as i could before my brain stopped functioning, which was often only around 30 min. but see, that particularly week was the worst part of my son's 18 month sleep regression, which meant instead of him sleeping and letting me write, i was driving him around or trying to rock him back to sleep or letting him play in an attempt to tire him out etc etc etc and by friday morning i had to admit to myself there was no way i could write that a/b/o fic in my one guaranteed evening to write every week (saturday, btw). so i was suddenly left with around 36 hours to find a new fic idea and develop it enough to be able to write it in one evening.

as i said in the answer to the first question, i usually go to my prompts tag to see what might inspire me with this prompt word in mind, but for this one that wasn't the first place i went. i tried looking at more definitions even though i'd done that earlier and nothing was inspiring me. so i then spoke to several friends and was still having a hard time finding any ideas that felt like something i would enjoy writing and could do so quickly.

by saturday morning, knowing i had less than 12 hours to figure out what i was writing so i could actually WRITE IT in only like 2-3 hours of writing time, i finally sat down and scrolled through my prompts tag. once i did, i saw the photo for the "good kissing spot", and i immediately thought of sunrise. so i ran with it. but i wanted to make it stylinshaw, so how would i work that in, etc etc etc. it was just very fast and very difficult trying to figure out how i would structure it so it could be a fun meet cute kind of fic, but also work into them actually building a meaningful connection etc and... well. it was a lot. haha so yeah, it was just a hard time overall that week, but i'm super proud of it in the end.

Were there any prompts you had an idea for but ended up writing something different? If so, what made you choose to change what you wrote? Do you think you’ll ever write your original idea at a later date?

HA okay well i already answered most of this above, but for the last part of this question, yes i will absolutely write my original idea at a later date. the whole reason i decided not to do it wasn't because i couldn't turn it into a fic that could be written in that one writing session, but because i had hopes for what that fic would be, and i didn't want to shorten and condense it enough to do that. i didn't want to have to lessen the dreams i have for that fic in my head, so i decided i would just put it back on my to write list and save it for later. who knows when, but that fic will absolutely get written.

What do you think was the most difficult as well as the easiest part about the Wordplay Challenge?

most difficult was 100% finding the time to write. that was insanely hard for me all summer, but by the time wordplay was going, things at home had ramped up to being very overwhelming regarding the demands on me and my time, and what i had been doing to carve out some time for myself and writing wasn't working anymore, so i had to adjust even more with the understanding that i was working on a really strict timeline too. so yeah. just finding the time was absolutely the hardest part for me.

easiest part was the actual writing. these fics really flowed from me, outside of the pack fic, that one was actually pretty difficult to make sure i was getting the dynamics exactly the way i wanted to have them turn out, but even with that aspect, it still was like it flowed from me most of the time. these fics really just took over and i was along for the ride. it was a blast.

If you participate again next year, is there anything you’ll do differently? If so, what?

lmao well assuming people still want wordplay to happen again, i'll run it again and very likely will take part. so... with the difficulty i had in finding any time to do anything this summer, i was actually ridiculously stressed when it came to the writing part, but also the modding aspect of it. so i am not sure that i'll run it during the summer again next year. i might have it go during the early fall once school is back in session so i at least have only one child at home instead of three to battle lol so that's one thing i'll hopefully be doing differently.

as for the writing aspect, i don't think so actually. i've done 5 years of this, and i'm having fun with it. haha if i ever find a fic idea i think could work for it, i would consider doing a series for it next year, but it all depends on if there's something i'd like to write that could work for that kind of set up with this challenge.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading!!! xxx

#wordplay 5.0 #writing stuff #my fics #mine