#And I have to go see these ppl tomorrow and either a) swallow my feelings some more or b) try and deal with it but risk making things worse

[runa-falls]

First off, you're amazing, you're a star, so let's just get that out of the way 👏👏

Second, I wanted to ask your thoughts on the Moonboys' reactions if the reader came home with really short hair one day out of the blue?

I've got a pixie cut with shaved sides and I usually love it but I've gotten two comments from close friends recently about it making me look masculine. :/

they'd be surprised for sure, but not in a bad way!

jake would probably greet you at home first. he likes to think he's something of a househusband even though he's the only one with an economically sustainable job (either chauffeuring for dumb rich ppl or killing for money -- the only two options im afraid).

"cariño, you're home--" you'd stand there awkwardly 🧍 as he approaches you with wide eyes. "did...someone steal your hair...?" (why is he dumb -.-)

"no, i, uh, just wanted to try something different." *nervous chuckle* you rub the back of your neck, still unused to the shortness at the nape of your neck.

his eyes soften as he takes you in. he likes it. really likes it. now he can see you're beautiful face and that shy smile that you try so hard to hide. but without your hair, you're you, wholly and truly.

"you look beautiful, mi vida."

"really? it isn't too...boyish?"

he shakes his head, "you're perfect."

--

marc would see it next. somehow, he finds the weirdest times to front. you and jake were on the couch watching some action movie after dinner. he's all wrapped up around you, nuzzling his face into your newly uncovered neck. he's got really touchy since you got home, wanting to kiss and nuzzle you everywhere where your hair used to inhibit him.

a soft sigh replaces the quiet growls that accompany the nips on your collarbone. marc.

"mm...i love waking up to this." you gasp as he sucks a small bruise onto the base of your neck. marc knows you have work, so he tries to place them somewhere you could hide easily. with your former length of hair, that is.

"marc!"

"hm?" he's so lost in your touch (our touched starved baby) that he barely processes your fussy tone.

"not there" you whine, though it's hard to stay mad at him when he's loving on you so tenderly.

his voice is muffled as he speaks against your skin, "why not? just cover it up tomorrow."

"can't."

he removes himself from your neck to give you a look. but that look turned into one of surprise. he glances down at his work dotted on your neck, "shit. you might have to wear a turtleneck baby..."

you grumble. of course, that's the only thing he's thinking about. it does ease your concerns a bit though, knowing that your new haircut isn't a big deal to him.

"well...if you're already going to wear something to cover it up..." he pushes back against you. "might as well make the most of this, hm?" he grins at you teasingly.

"marc!"

---

steven would see you last and gasp in awe, "wow you look amazing, when did you get this done?"

"yesterday. after work."

"whot, no fair! the others got to see you like this yesterday, didn't they?" he pouts.

"well, you were sleeping like a baby and i didn't want to disturb you."

"should've woken me up!"

"well...do you like it?"

"so cool, love! could i...touch it?"

"sure, baby. go ahead."

he runs his fingers through the short hair, hand tickling from the new texture. you nearly purr at the feeling. you didn't think you'd like this feeling so much.

steven swallows when he sees your reaction. you're practically vibrating under him. "s'this good?" his voice is huskier as he gently scratches against your scalp.

"mm...r-really --" *nervously clears your throat* "i-it's, uh, nice, yeah."

---

needless to say, the moonboys are a fan! i'm sure by now you've grown out your hair, or have gotten used to the haircut XD so sorry this took so long for me to answer, but i hope (if you find this again) you enjoy my take on the situation!

for a lot of people their hair is a big part of their identity so it's understandable why changing the length/style can make such a big impact in your life. but don't listen to your friends. you're beautiful no matter how much or what type of hair you have!

#anon #new year new inbox (possibly) #so sorry this took so long to answer XD #moonboys #moon knight #head (lol) canon #moon knight headcanons #steven grant #jake lockley #marc spector

[puddinqcup]

the great mammon

mammon x gn! reader 

warnings: depression, bathing together but nothing happens, angst, swearing, fluff, just mammon being soft for his human :,(

a/n: first post but i thought of this while working and wasn’t in the best mindset and felt as if mammon would be good for this. sorry if it’s ass lmao

    it’s been about a week since you’ve been feeling like this. feeling as if you’re a bother to the brothers and how they probably would’ve been so much better without you here. you haven’t eaten or taken a shower, you’ve been in bed all day wanting to do nothing but the blankets and bed to swallow you whole. 

    whenever the brothers bring you food you text beel to eat it since you “ate at school” beel looks at the text confused, ‘how did they eat in school if they haven’t left their room at all?’ he doesn’t want to push you so he sends you a smile and takes the food. all the brothers believe you’re just homesick and need your space. they all leave you alone except one, mammon.

    mammon checks in on you everyday before and after school. you cry everyday over it because you feel as if you’re just bothering him and that he’s doing this out of pity since lucifer assigned him to watch over you. he comes back from school and walks straight to your room, asking you about your day, if you had water and if you’ve gotten up to use the bathroom and you just shake your head no. mammon gives you a small smile and puts his hand out, you look at him with confusion “what are you doing mammon?”

“we’re going to go shower! i know ya haven’t been in the mood but don’t worry! the great mammon will do everything for ya.” you try not to cry telling him it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to do this. he picks you up and hugs you while bringing you to the bathroom telling you that he wants to do this because you’re his human. he places you on the toilet while setting up the bath and getting your clothes and towels. he checks the water and then turns back around to see you, he ask if you can lift your arms up so he can help take off your shirt. he began taking off your clothes and places them in the dirty laundry bin, he picks you up again and softly places you down to the water.

you look up at mammon,��“if you want you can join me.” he ask if you were comfortable with it and you nodded your head yes. he begins taking his clothes off and goes to the other side of the bath sitting across from you. he adds bubbles to the bath and starts washing your hair while talking about his day. he starts washing your body and lets you wash the parts you’re not comfortable with him touching. he does little things to make you chuckle or give a small smile, he would make a bubble beard or show little magic tricks with the water. 

after the water got cold mammon comes out to wrap a towel around the two of you. he dries you up first and puts on your pajamas before putting on his and even stole some skincare products from asmo to use with you. he brushes your teeth and you two walk to the bed together he changes the bed sheets, since those haven’t been washed in a while either, and you two lay down just enjoying the silence and being together. 

“i’m sorry” you tell him, he looks at you with a confused look “what are ya sorry for?” he ask. “you had to look after me and do all this for me, i took your time this whole week because i’ve been doing nothing but being a selfish piece of shit” you start bringing yourself down and telling him how he could’ve been doing anything else but he stops you from continuing. “i wanted to do this, you’re my human. i care about ya, can’t have ya getting sick on me. i will do this for a thousand years if i have to. anything to see ya better again.” after those words you start crying softly, hugging him and thanking him for everything he has done for you. 

you two fall asleep holding each other, a small smile on both of your faces. maybe tomorrow will be a better day for you, all thanks to the great mammon.

-

a/n: tbh this is mostly for me?? i just want to write soft scenarios of the boys and if ppl do see this i hope it helps them out because remember, your faves love you. you are loved and you are amazing. if you want you can even request too but hope whoever reads this enjoyed it!! <3

#obey me #shall we date #obey me fluff #obey me x reader #obey me x you #obey me x mc #obey me shall we date #obey me mammon #mammon x reader #the great mammon #mammon drabble #mammon #mammon x mc #mammon x you #otome game #mammon fanfic #mammon fluff #obey me writing #obey me oc

[translightyagami]

lawlight 59 you own my heart

59 lawlight (loved ur last prompt was so cute great job!!)

i got two requests for this prompt and huhuhhuhh i didn’t do anything cute w it bc it just didn’t flow well for me?? but i did write something and its like my favorite thing which is phone conversations and ppl being snippy w/ each other. anyway.

59: “ You own my heart. ”

Light came around the corner from the stairs and caught a glimpse of the television. Sayu’s drama was still on but near the end. Some idol he didn’t know the name of held his lover’s hand and looked earnest. A chuckle fell out of Light.

“What are you watching?” He folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. “This stuff is going to rot your brain even more than it is already.”

Sayu looked over her shoulder to glare at Light. Her hands were fists and even her hair seemed balled up, fizzling from excitement.

“Shut up!” On the screen, the characters, a man and a woman, sat in chairs across from each other with placid, almost dream-like expressions. They were dolls, barely acting their way out a paper bag. “I’ve been waiting weeks for these two to get together so you can either be quiet or go back to your room.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Light sat down on the couch next to Sayu and didn’t speak. Instead he scoffed at every line. A low light was the only thing illuminating their living room and the television speakers blared every part of the conversation. Sayu threw her hand over his mouth after the third tsk he let out and Light wrestled it away.

“This is the good part,” she said. “So don’t be a jerk.”

“You’ve captured me in every way,” the man said. “There’s nothing I could do but fall in love with you.”

“I feel the same.” A soft smile held the woman’s face captive. Light rolled his eyes and behind him, Ryuk crowed something unintelligible. There wasn’t any nuance to these performances, nothing that felt staked in reality. Was this what passed for entertainment? He nearly hummed his displeasure but caught sight of Sayu’s hands tight on her knees. The sound shrank.

“No matter where you go I’ll find you.” A deep breath proceeded the man’s every line as though he needed the extra air for the mediocre dialogue. “We’re connected, you and I, by our thoughts and feelings.”

A plinking tune vibrated in Light’s pocket and when he took his phone out, earning another of Sayu’s glares, the number was L’s. What was he thinking calling so late in the evening? Their last meeting had been three hours ago. Maybe he had some evidence he forgot to give Light. Whatever. L didn’t have anything to tell him that Light didn’t already know.

Although, he began to surprise Light more and more. The lengths L would go to in order to trip him up were extensive and interesting. Even during mundane conversations like the kind they had in-between classes were rife with jabs. Whenever they spoke, Light felt the sharp of L’s nails digging into his thoughts, his feelings and their sting shocked him enough to let pieces rip away. He couldn’t let him hold anymore of Light than he already did.

“Hello?” Calculated disinterested lined Light’s voice. Chewing noises smacked over the phone and Sayu hit him again.

“Don’t talk so loud!”

Unable to stifle the impulse, Light stuck out his tongue at her and received a similar response. He pressed the phone closer to his ear and swung his legs up on the couch. Stretched out with legs crossed at the ankle, he listened to L chew for a few more seconds before he spoke.

“Are you just going to eat over the phone all night?”

“No.” L swallowed and sniffed. “What is Light doing right now?”

“Watching some silly thing with my sister,” Light said. “Why? Do you need me to come over?”

“So eager to see me?”

The hair on Light’s arms prickled at L’s amused tone. His teeth gritted but he let out a breathy laugh. Sayu gave him a funny look but said nothing. Something happened on the television and distracted her. Ryuk was quiet as well. Eyes trained on the screen, he played a captivated audience member.

“Very funny, Ryuga.” Light said. “I just don’t see why you’re calling me so late at night. Have you got something to say to me that you didn’t already?”

“Perhaps I’d just like to talk to Light more,” L said. “Does that bother you?”

“Of course not.” A peculiar rumble went through Light’s stomach and he felt both weightless and heavy. This was an obvious attempt to bait him. Any show of frustration would be interpreted as Kira-like aggression and there wasn’t room for anything like that. Yet something in the way L spoke made him feel some kind of way. It was such a way he was reluctant to name. He shifted until he settled deep into the cushions and thought about his next words. “I enjoy talking to you. But I doubt that’s the reason you called.”

“You’re wrong.” L’s voice moved in lazy waves as he kept on. “What show is Light watching?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “It’s my sister’s show.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s bad.” Light rolled his eyes over the television screen where the man and woman started to kiss. Their mouths smashed against each other’s. His lip curled. “I just don’t understand these romantic shows.”

“Perhaps Light has never been in love,” L said. “And that’s why you don’t enjoy romance.”

“How would you know if I’ve ever been in love?” A stab of offense rippled through his voice and a heat rose beneath his collar. Who did L think he was to speak to Light like this? Sayu gave him another look, this one colored with confusion. He barely noticed except to wave a dismissive hand at her.

“Your eyes.” L’s tone was flat but curious. There were his nails under Light’s skin again, pulling for another scrap of him. “They don’t have the look of someone who’s been in love. Light should work on that.”

“Oh?”

“It doesn’t look good to have cold eyes,” L said.

Cold eyes? There was no way Light’s eyes were cold. Already an itch to go to the mirror started in his mind. Another smatter of chewing noises echoed over the phone. That bastard. Eating while he was on the phone? Light could throttle him.

“That’s not very kind of you.”

L scoffed through a full mouth and on screen, the man pulled the woman down to the floor.

“Kindness isn’t my aim,” he said.

“I think I have to go,” Light said. His fingers were freezing and he folded one hand into his armpit to keep it warm. L hummed with a soft, almost imperceptible note of concern.

“I hope I haven’t offended you. I don’t mean to be cruel.”

“No.” His voice was an egg shell–empty and breakable. “You haven’t. Sayu’s show is on and I don’t want to talk over it anymore.”

“Of course. Well, enjoy your show as much as you can. I’ll see Light tomorrow at class.”

“See you then.” Light shut his phone before L could say anything else. The man curled into the woman’s shoulder and spoke into her skin.

“You own my heart,” he said and Sayu swooned. But Light didn’t see what happened and he couldn’t hear it either. All his thoughts held tight to what L said. He let the words run around until their footprints embedded themselves into him. A sickness spread its way through his chest like a spider’s legs. His concentration broke when a hand brushed his foot and he jerked it back, almost hitting Sayu in the thigh.

“Hey.” Her tone was soft. “Who was on the phone?”

“Just a friend,” he said. The line of her mouth went slant and she patted his leg.

“You’re just really worked up,” she said. “Must be some kinda friend, huh?”

“Yeah.” Cold eyes. Cold eyes. Cold eyes. “Yeah, they are.”

#death note #my fic #yeah i don't know either #but i like it better than my other more cutesy attempts #Anonymous

[because-its-important]

making a pico8 game during my first week of RC

tl;dr - Play my first ever solo game right here!

On my first day of Recurse, fellow W1 2017 batcher Ayla Myers (whose work you can peep here) presented on fantasy game consoles, PICO-8 in particular. Her presentation ran roughly 5 minutes, but it only took about half that time to convince me that I should give it a whirl. Since asking for help is more than encouraged here, I approached her immediately afterwards and asked if she could do a quick walkthrough of PICO-8 sometime.

“Yeah, of course. When do you want to start?”

“Uh…” It was already 6pm. “Tomorrow?”

“Okay!”

And lo, 11am the next day found myself and a handful of other Recursers sitting around a table in the Turing meeting room as Ayla showed us the ropes.

PICO-8 is a highly-opinionated, highly-constrained fantasy console with a robust set of tools for quickly developing and sharing games. While I’d played a few PICO-8 games before, I hadn’t realized just how core the commitment to retro-nostalgia is to the engine itself. Here are some fun things I learned about PICO-8:

It includes a pixel art editor and a chiptune mixer, both of which are a delight to use.

PICO-8 games can have 2 players, but each player only gets 6 possible inputs: four directional keys and two others (typically Z and X).

On the programming side, developers are allowed a maximum of ~8k tokens and ~65k characters. This incentivizes some extreme optimization, overloading, and other tricks in larger games that near those limits.

The games are super easy to export and share, either as embeddable HTML and JS or as downloadable executables.

As someone who has shipped dozens of games professionally but has never personally programmed one from start to finish, I decided that it’d be a good exercise to build one during the remaining 4 days of the first week.

On programming in a new language.

PICO-8 uses a subset of Lua, which I’ve never read or written before. Under other circumstances, I probably would have preemptively given up and shied away from using a tool that required learning a new language. Fortunately, my current circumstances are “you are entirely here to learn new things and surrounded by people who can help, actually” so I waved off the anxiety and plunged ahead instead.

Turns out that Lua felt very similar to other game programming I’d done in the past, so there wasn’t any need to worry anyway! (One begins to suspect that there is rarely a ‘need’ to worry… 🤔)

There were a few things that stood out in particular as I built my game.

First, to handle animations - like bobbing a sprite or moving UI elements on and off screen - I found myself repeating a pattern using a counter (incremented every update loop) and a maximum (resetting the counter to 0 when it reached this value). I wasn’t sure if a series of timers would be a better fit for cycling through animation states, especially since this pattern meant assigning at least two tokens per animation. Since I was focused on building this quickly and wasn’t worried about running up against the token limit, however, I figured that consistently using a single pattern that I knew worked was the way to go.

Example of the section of the bat’s update loop that flaps her wings up and down and plays a quick beat on each flap:

Second, I learned that tables are “the only data structuring mechanism” in Lua, and that there is no readily available method to query them about the number of items they’re holding. To solve this, I tracked the count of items as a separate variable and updated the count any time I was adding or removing items from the table. If I were pinched for tokens I’d probably handle this differently, likely by writing a separate function that iterates over the the items in the table and returns the count.

Lastly, and this one was a pleasure to discover, Lua is perfectly a-okay with removing items from a table while iterating over items within that table. For example, during the update loop I want to iterate over each of the moths in the game and check if the bat is in a position to eat them. If the bat should eat the moth, I want to add a quick sound effect, draw some bug-gut splatter to the screen, and remove the moth from the moths table.

I can do all of that like this:

This was a big relief to me because I’ve had trouble doing the same with JavaScript in the past!

On finding relief in constraints and designing a tiny game.

I didn’t have a strong idea when I first started making Sonar, other than that I should be able to finish it in a few days and that it should be about animals. Certainly my appreciation for earth’s non-human lifeforms would stave off any temptation to jump ship if things got confusing or tedious. 🦇

There was a brief moment where I sat, staring at my laptop screen, wondering what I could even do with only two non-directional inputs. It took about five minutes for me to come to my senses. What if this constraint, much like the constraint on tokens or audio channels, was a blessing? “Wow, I’m so glad I only have two buttons to work with,” I told myself, found it to be true. “In fact, let’s start by using only one of those buttons.”

Changing your perspective sure is a time-efficient way to clear obstacles!

On making art and SFX.

While I’d done some game programming (though never a complete solo project), I’d certainly never done game art or audio. In fact, art and audio often felt more intimidating than the rest of the design or development. I didn’t really know anything about creating reasonable looking pixel art or have any kind of background in creating music or sound effects; I just knew that both were important to making a game feel whole.

Once again, PICO-8 provided seamless introduction to these areas of game development. With only 16-colors and 8x8 pixels to worth of space to work with, I never got stuck trying to pick the perfect colors or shape for a sprite. If it worked, it worked, and it only took a matter of seconds to make changes and see them live in the game.

As someone who has zero musical education the responsibility of creating audio made me more than a little apprehensive, but I found the SFX editor similarly quick to learn and pleasant to use. I stopped short of making any ambient music, but I did make a few sounds: a steady but muffled bassline for the bat’s wings flapping, a high-pitched chirp for the echolocation, a gulp for a bug being swallowed, and a confirmation bloop for starting the game. SFX are necessary for giving a non-haptic game the illusion of tactile feedback, and even just these few simple, two-note sounds do a lot of heavy-lifting in making the game feel more responsive.

On jamming fast, alone, in an environment geared towards collaboration.

The single biggest struggle I had while working on this project was worrying if I should be spending my time doing something else. Whenever I spent large chunks of time coding alone, rather than pairing or attending study groups, I couldn’t help but feel like perhaps I was missing the forest for the trees. Shouldn’t the first week be about learning as much as possible about my peers and their interests, in the spirit of future collaboration? Did I somehow find a way to ‘do it wrong?’

Hard to say, what with only one week’s worth of information! My current guess, however, is no. I became familiar with a new language, I learned a new toolset, and I finished a project that I feel at least remotely comfortable showing to other people. Those are pretty solid accomplishments, even in the face of a gnawing suspicion otherwise!

More importantly though, I practiced being comfortable following my own intuition of what an ideal first week might look like. I proved to myself that I could set my own goals and meet them. I also developed a general feel for the ebbs and flows of working with myself as sole author and stakeholder on a project. I’m sure this kind of self-knowledge is valuable at any level, but as a beginner it feels like an especially worthwhile point of reference.

Besides, this was all made possible because I was inspired by a fellow Recurser, asked them for help and got it. 

How could that be wrong? 😊

You can play Sonar right here.

ps. I almost forgot something funny!

This is one of the first things that happened when I began animating my pixel bat:

I laughed at this for a solid minute. It was wonderful, and only more so because I had spent the previous two hours setting up new software, familiarizing myself with basic Lua syntax, and fretting over whether my pixel art would be at all legible.

As one of my friends commented, “OH NO, HIS FLAPS FELL OFF!” And then, “or HER flaps, excuse me.”

Making games is generally time-consuming, tedious, detail-oriented work. On the bright side, many of the bugs and SNAFUs you run into are just silly as heck. The moments where ish goes off the rails can provide exactly the right dose of harmless humor to revitalize your motivation to finish. 👑

edit (11/15/2017)

Once again going above and beyond in her helpfulness, Ayla informs me that you totally can get the length of a list in PICO-8!

Here’s how, using the # operator:

local some_list = {32, 4, 72} print(#some_list) -- prints 3

✌️🦇

edit (11/17/2017)

So probably it makes sense to link to the the code, since becoming a better programmer is the whole gosh darn point! 😑

Also, because it may be helpful, I want to provide a quick outline of how you might also crank out a small game in a narrow window of time:

day1 - purchase and install pico8 (if you’re at RC, talk to someone about using their license!) - install a lua linter on your text editor of choice - run pico8 in console mode, so u can use printh to debug - make a player character that responds to input - make a 2-state animation for that player character (eg. flip between two sprites, add some bobbing motion, etc) - get ppl to Play Your Game!

day2 - make an enemy (note that these could also just be Collectable Objects if u aint feeling like defaulting to violence ✨) - make a 2-state animation for that enemy - give that enemy some passive behavior - disappear the enemy conditionally (eg. touched by player, hit by bullet) - make another enemy with similar but more challenging behavior - get ppl to Play Your Game!

day3 - add an end-condition (eg. eating some amount of bugs) - add SFX. this is more important than music for making your game feel whole, and you can do just about everything you need to with 2 note blips - add UI elements (eg. health bar, bullets left, etc) - add a start screen - add an end screen - get ppl to Play Your Game!

day4 - add finishing touches - export your game as html from PICO8 - host somewhere, like itch.io - write a blog post!! - share with your friends and the rest-o the world

#game development #pico-8 #recurse center #lua #pico8 #games #bats #pixel art