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torchickentacos · 8 months

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AG Watchthrough Episode 1: Get the Show on the Road! AG001. Long Post, I promise they won't all be this long, this is AG commentary georg, outlier.

Well. Outlier until contest episodes. I won't apologize for who I become once we hit those. Anyways, RE: above. There's usually not TOO MUCH of a plot in AG eps to even comment on, hence this post as an outlier for the pilot episode. So! Starting a full AG watch. I have never fully watched all of AG by sitting down with the intent of watching all of it. I have seen all of it, but not in a directed, intentional, in-order way. Changing that today to really see how it holds up as a whole outside of the episodes I tend to gravitate towards! I don't think I'll realistically follow through with this for more than a week. Going to be honest. BUT I HOPE TO! We'll see. The plan is to watch episodes in bulk but schedule posts once a day. Posts will likely get pretty long for some episodes, short for others, because AG is wildly varying in 'things to talk about' episode to episode. Anyways, episode 1: Get the Show on the Road! AG001.

Side note. I think I will put this in relevant character tags if I have any commentary on specific characters. One, so I can find my own posts. But two, I know as someone who likes characters who don't always get a whole lot, it's SO EXCITING to see people talking about them, so on the off chance there's, like, a Morrison fan out there, I think I should put it there??? Like, I'll read Hoenn Coordinator commentary from 2013 to feel something, so I want to be able to provide that on my end, too. I'd be heartbroken if someone did an in depth ep-by-ep analysis on them but didn't tag it so nobody could see it. ANYWAYS!!! I'll play it by ear and do it when it feels relevant and not just 'yeah this person showed up, I guess'. I don't want to be annoying but also you can just block the #ag watchthrough tag. Or just block me, I guess lmao.

So, the episode opens where the last episode of Master Quest left off (OS274, Hoenn Alone). Basically, Pikachu has electric rabies and May is getting her first pokemon.

The episode opens with May giving her internal monologue/narration about starting her journey. She hits her head on a tree, which may explain some of her decisions later in the series (/joke), but she's on her way to Birch Lab to get her first pokemon. Does she want to? Not really, but she DOES want to travel and this is a way to accomplish that. This is instance one of what I'm dubbing 'Early AG Girlboss May'. (Basically, in Early AG May was more of a go-getter. Or rather, she had more agency and opportunities to get her own way. Early AG May is far more... frankly, shown to be intelligent, which drops off rather quickly in favor of big of heart, dumb of ass May [whom I do love dearly]. I think it's largely done to emphasize Ash's mentor role and her student role, but I digress). I can and will make a separate post on this if anyone wants my thoughts on her character inconsistencies. But for now, just know she's not a fan of pokemon but will deal with it to have a chance to travel the world. She has a goal, she will get it done and use what's at her disposal. Anyways, behold. A girlboss in her natural habitat.

Now, we switch to Ash and Pikachu, alone and Brock and Misty-less (well, until the mirage special. I'll... get to that when the time comes, I guess...sigh).

We also find out Jessie's been to Littleroot before. I, uh, don't know if that was ever expanded upon??????? WAIT same thing after iirc spontaneous combusken where she makes some comment about young love and heartache and stuff. Jessie has some weird backstory in Hoenn (well, SC is Kanto but yk) that I don't remember ever hearing more about? Huh. Anyways. You'll notice a pattern of this in AG, of random interesting details being brought up and immediately forgotten.

Back to Ash. No pokemon center in the town, so he's headed to the Lab, where May's headed too. Birch is 'out conducting an experiment', so Ash just hangs around until he can go to the lab.

IN COMES BIRCH WITH THE JEEP!!! Ash's uber is here.

After giving Pikachu a quick look-over, Birch explains that Pikachu can't release its electricity regularly so it's all building up and getting a bit explodey. Apparently it's due to magnetic field exposure, and I won't question the science or lack thereof. Birch, fascinatingly, doesn't question when Ash explains that Pikachu was strapped to a magnet. Anyways, Birch's driving remains amusing to me.

Look at him go. This is fine and normal. Average Maryland driver.

Anyways, they get to the lab and hook Pikachu up to, quote, 'A device that will rid Pikachu of all its trapped electricity'. It goes bad. Another pattern you'll notice in AG- lots of explosions. Not just Team Rocket blasting off (solarbeam, go), either, just... lots of general, everyday explosions.

So, Pikachu quite literally blows a hole in the side of the lab and escapes in a frenzied state. Ash runs after Pikachu with no other pokemon, Birch follows Ash with the three Hoenn starters, and Joshua the lab assistant is like "WAIT what about that girl we're going to give her first pokemon to- oh, okay bye I'll figure that out myself then".

Team Rocket's... here, I guess. Another AG pattern we'll notice. They show up. they blast off. they leave. rinse and repeat. Jessie is depressed this time around I guess.

Anyways, says Pikachu could explode at any sudden disturbance, so that's a hell of a way to start off here. New season with the beloved mascot? Yeah, he's about to explode. Sorry about that. So, Ash and Birch split up to look for the imminently detonative rodent.

Switching over to May now, who shows up at the lab. Joshua explains that Birch has an emergency in the mountains to deal with and asks May to wait there.

May does not wait there ("I've never been much good at waiting! Bye!"). Joshua uses one of his, like, four lines to complain about kids these days. Instance two of Early AG Girlboss May, having, uh, an actual choice that she can make that isn't just travelling with the group in the back until a contest episode and then going back to travelling with the group in the back. Brock and Max get this FAR worse, though, a topic for a few episodes later.

SO. Birch and Ash are split up looking for Pikachu still. Birch slips and falls and we get a reference to the opening of RS(E, but E has Zigzagoon iirc), with Birch being bullied by puppies. Take note of May's bike in the back. Last we'll be seeing of it. I wonder if she got a new one in the johto arc that we never got to see. Sigh.

We aren't quite halfway done with the episode yet.

Anyways, Birch asks her to help him out and to choose a pokeball. She chooses Mudkip, who promptly water guns her in the face. I guess Mudkip is like a horse or something, it can sense fear. Or rather, it can sense dry apathy and mild dislike. Birch directs Mudkip to use watergun on the Poochyena, which it does.

Ash finds Pikachu and is promptly electrocuted. Badly. But he's fine.

...He's fine, right?

Birch and May see the thunderbolt and rush on over. We get this line from Birch, which admittedly did make me laugh.

"Pikachu. It might explode."

LIKE. OKAY THEN! Way to tell it like it is, bud. Then, seeing Ash, he yells, "PIKACHU COULD EXPLODE AT ANY MOMENT!" So, things are going absolutely perfectly great here. Pikachu panics at the noises and runs right off of a cliff, and Ash dives right after it.

We are interrupted by who's that pokemon.

It's Lanturn. 👍

Ash is falling, he catches Pikachu and a branch and is dangling. Birch and May get a rope and pull him up. Pikachu bites Ash and feels bad about it. Ash doesn't really acknowledge the random person there (May) but to be fair, he's got other stuff going on.

Team Rocket shows up. Pikachu blasts them off and releases electricity that way. Get REALLY USED to the team rocket portions being blown through like this. Just trust me on this, I'm doing us all a favor here. AG TR is REALLY FUNNY when they're funny!!! But... all the great one liners can't make up for the repetition of AG TR. Moving on. Pikachu feels better now (well, he passed out but isn't sick anymore), and....

Yep. Bike barbecue'd. 2 for 2 now, we all saw it coming, there it is!!!

They go back to the lab. May eavesdrops on Birch, Ash, and Joshua, and knocks over a flowerpot, alerting them to her presence. She introduces herself and Birch asks May to choose her first pokemon. Ash asks if Treecko is a water type. It is not. May chooses Torchic!!!!! Birch tells May that if she works hard, she can be an even better trainer than her father. I'm sure we all know who that is but it's meant to be a mystery at this point so let's all act intrigued.

I'm going to expedite the end of the episode. May inspects her bike, it's dead, she goes in and sees Ash asleep next to Pikachu and seems to think their bond is nice, even if she herself doesn't care for pokemon. She just watches them through the cracked door, slightly weird but go off queen, and she attempts to bond with Torchic.

NOW. TAKE A LOOK AT THIS. THIS IS GOING TO BE A RECURRING THEME. MAY IS TALLER THAN ASH IN THIS EPISODE. ALL THROUGHOUT AG, THE HEIGHTS ARE HILARIOUSLY DIFFERENT. I will be pointing out amusing examples of this. AG001: May is tallest. I am making a spreadsheet and keeping track. This gets far funnier when Morrison and Drew come into the picture and we get to just watch it wildly vary every single episode.

Now, Ash AND May are sent off to register for the Hoenn League in Oldale.

SO, this is interesting and another instance of Early AG Girlboss May. May doesn't want to go alone on foot, and her bike is ruined. So, she plays this pretensive game of "oh, my bike is ruined (thanks to you), and I don't want to travel alone on foot, if only there was some solution- OH I KNOW! Let's go together, I happen to know the way, it's no trouble at all, shall we?". This interests me because it shows... manipulation is the wrong word here, but again, like, it shows pretense?? that May generally lacks once her characterization firms up a bit. They're still figuring out writing her at this point, I guess, and we see her be more calculated and thinking and using things and situations and people to achieve her goals. Again, this does drop off into dumbass territory before too long, but it is interesting to see and to think about. When writing May I try to strike a balance- more emotionally intuitive and more of a go-getter like early ag, but not in that premeditated sort of way. She's interesting with the amount of wiggle room you have in her personality, because it simply isn't the most consistent. You get to pick and choose a bit more.

But the episode ends, and May and Ash head on over to Oldale town to register for the league.

End of episode metrics:

Height ranking: May > Ash.

More metrics will be added as we go on. I considered an explosion counter but I would lose track. We're already at like, six /not joking, deadass.

#ag watchthrough #i need to make a tag for when i watch pokeani as a whole #i have the regular tag i use completely arbitrarily and the trashcan for shitposts/memes and the talk tag #BECAUSE I NEED THEM SINCE THE SEARCH FUNCTION IS NOT AN ACTUAL THING THAT FUNCTIONS #uhhh #taylor watches pokemon #👍#i need to make a tag directory for myself tbh #anyways #pokeani #coordinator may #^I have nothing interesting to say about Ash here. might be a pattern.#there's a reason nobody watches AG for Ash. even when they do watch ag for ash plotlines #it's for cotds and battle frontier stuff #and not. ash.#LOVE ag ash!!!! but he's the least interesting thing about ag aside from some of the episodes themselves #I LOVE AG I PROMISE GUYS /GENUINE #I just love AG for reasons that we'll get to later and. not yet.#scheduled this post btw #halfway through this i got worried that people would think it was dumb that i was putting this much effort into pokeani stuff #but ONE this is my blog. TWO i'm doing the lord's work #THREE literally you guys are here to listen to me talk about pokeani so like. here we go

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kairiscorner · 9 months

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OKOK BUT

Jealous!Miguel stealing your attention only because you told Ben Reilly he has nice muscles 😭

You know that dude, when he's jealous, makes it clear that you only belong to his *wink wink*

AGHHHHHHH i live for jealous miggy for real

(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)

yeah, i'm... just a jealous guy, so what? — jealous!miguel o'hara x reader

miguel was at his wit's end, hearing you giggle as the blonde, buff-oon of a spider man was entertaining you with his muscles, that miguel was very certain that he had beat in every aspect possible. he didn't mean to brag–he honestly wouldn't care in a normal setting–but objectively speaking, his muscles and figure was far more superior than that of ben reilly's.

he respected ben, both as a spider man and a person, though he couldn't bear the thought of you–one of his only real friends and someone with a decent, functioning brain in the entire spider society–entertaining the blonde boy by giggling along, praising him, and running your fingers and hands over his biceps and muscles. ben dared not to show his true, flustered self as he kept 'accidentally' flexing at you, making you chuckle even more–annoying miguel even more, because... he should be the one making you all embarrassed, flustered, and giggly with his own much thicker biceps and muscles.

"it's just... so stupid." he muttered to himself as lyla chuckled. "gonna challenge ben to a flex off?" she sarcastically asked miguel, who–for a hot minute–ironically considered the notion, but ultimately decided against it with the shake of his head. "no, no need. i'll get over it." he said as a low grumble, which lyla raised her eyebrow at. "oh, will you, now?" she asked him with a hint of mockery, which made miguel snarl a little and sigh loudly. "you'll see." he declared with some spite in his tone.

he did not move on from it, not one bit actually.

it was driving miguel insane, because every moment he caught you that day to catch up and talk, he always caught you with ben–watching him entertain you yet again with him 'coincidentally' stretching and flexing those muscles he was so proud of but always played them off coolly when you happened to come by and... stare at him showing off.

this was it, this was the final straw–he had to prove to you once and for all just who you fold to, who makes you so flustered with a simple gaze your way with those piercing hazel (sometimes red) eyes of his–who made you want to have more and more of him and wouldn't be ashamed to get on your knees, or on all fours if he commanded you to, and beg for him to love you all evening into the early hours of the dawn. he had to show you who loved you, and who you loved endlessly.

when you entered miguel's office to report back to him on the statuses of some anomalies he needed word back on immediately. though when you entered the room, the atmosphere felt... entirely different now. you searched for miguel here and there since he wasn't there up on his platform, nor was he anywhere where the small pools of light touched the walls and floors of his office–he wasn't there, at least, not in front of you yet.

"you called, querida?" he asked you as he placed his larger palms on your smaller shoulders, feeling up your flesh gently and letting out low breaths as he got closet to you. your back felt his chiseled abdomen pressing against you, his pectoral muscles being pushed against your shoulders. you shuddered and felt your face get a little heated. you tried turning around to tell miguel you had the reports he was asking for, but it was a little hard to do with him pressing against you like this.

you finally turned around and pulled away from his grasp, but when you did... you were taken aback by the sight. he was completely shirtless, showing off his sculpted upper body, the curves and bulging of his arm muscles and built abdomen, and the only thing he was wearing was a flimsy pair of boxers that... looked a little thin from where you were standing. you gulped at the lump in your throat and tried to ignore the heat in the walls of your throat as you faced him with an embarrassed expression. you hurriedly handed him the report and tried to get away from him, but he blocked you in your tracks and looked down at you with darkening eyes.

"what's the rush, cariño? run me through these... one-by-one." he asked of you, which sounded more like a demand for you to stay, really, as he moved closer to you while you backed away–backing yourself up against a desk and being pinned against the wall by miguel as he loomed over you and stared you down.

"again, cariño... what's wrong? you gotta run me through these all... now tell me, what's the status on these anomalies?" he asked you as he gently ran his hand over your arm and raised an eyebrow again and involuntarily flexed his arm muscles by pinning his arm against the wall you were nearly backed into if not for the desk in between you two.

"y'better start talking, bella, or else... i might just make you talk myself." he said with a lower, sultry voice as he brought his face even closer to yours, your noses brushing together, and him hearing you whimper a little as he took your smaller hand in his own, bringing it to his abs. "what, cat got your tongue? that's not the little sweetheart i know... c'mon, say something." he encouraged you as you whimpered again and finally mustered the words to utter to him. "...you're... kinda big..." "kinda?" "v-very big..." you blurted out, all flustered as miguel leaned in closer, smiling, about to plant a kiss on your luscious lips. "how sweet..." he muttered as he kissed your lips gently, buttering you up before he shows you how much he's craved your attention before making you desperate for his attention soon enough.

you're in for the long haul this time... before the night ends, all your love and attention will all be on him, and only him–nobody else, just him and his body–and how his face contorts into a wide grin when he sees you stammer, eyes wide, and fluster over how much of a grip he has on you with those muscles he's got. maybe you'll spend the rest of the day with miguel tomorrow, hmm? ben and everyone else can wait... but miguel certainly can't.

tags !! @miguelswifey04 @binibinileonara @hisachuu @wreakingmarveloushavok @fictarian @yuridopted0 @simsrandomstuff @luvstarrstruck @popeheywardssecretgf @meeom @arachnoia @melovetitties @fable-library @ophanimgold @smokeywhalee @capnshtfce

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runaeveena · 4 months

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Your dashboard if you were in a d&d fantasy world still involved in fictional erotica discourse part 2

⛰️ berenicesblade Follow

now that the new Mountain Angel volume has come out can we please tag spoilers, some of us are still waiting for our pigeon mail

🦚 faeynadaughter Follow

you can access the volume in full on TomePlane!

🎭 bardcampistrash Follow

until TomePlane acknowledges that its interplanar storage is made possible by binding aboleths to the plane and killing them then we are going to continue not using that platform, thanks

🦚 faeynadaughter Follow

aboleths killed my cousin who was a royal cleric. ill never understand why theres a whole movement to protect abyssal creatures when theyve caused so much damage to our kingdoms. and disliking a pocket dimension which provides thousands of people access to books? your attitude reeks of anti literaturism and mal-aligned virtue signaling and im not sure which is worse

🫒 tenthday237 Follow

Aliizya gets pregnant on page 62

⛰️ berenicesblade Follow

banished

620 Notes

🏰 finchtruther Follow

okay but the way that faelor finch writes every song that perfectly fits pennbiel liiike its giving closet fangirl

🧭 waywardwarlock

seriouslyy!! like what else is "give me your unmarked hand / in the shadowfell we won't be a secret" supposed to be about if not pennipher and corabiel

16 Notes

🌫️ cloudgiant-snailboy Follow

yall please dont fill up the unseen servant tag with your super fucking weird smut posts im just looking for tips on how to find my unseen servant

🪡 scç-writer

the search function on tomeblr does need to be updated but we dont have to kinkshame :)

🌫️ cloudgiant-snailboy Follow

the site is being overrun by virgin degenerates

🍯 treebarkhookhandwagondoor

sounds like you need Wilam the Wizard with Wandering Hands to help you summon the unseen stick in your ass

290 Notes

🗝️ crypt-princess Follow

so whose going to be the first to commission a painting of that scene with Aliizya and the beholder 👀

🍎 bloodmaledickening Follow

i already asked my local artisan he said he's gotten two other commissions for the same scene lmao

🐁 softbarbarian

girl i commissioned a tapestry

45 Notes

🕯️ andersfirelight Follow

friendly reminder that devil deals are a real thing that a lot of people fall victim too and that demons are malicious and do destroy peoples lives if theyre not careful so please be careful when consuming works like Hellionfinity which romanticizes devil deals and fiendish soul contracts

🌾entangled-farmer Follow

imo any work of fiction that involves a romance between any type of fiend is not just problematic but harmful

🕯️ andersfirelight Follow

i used to be indifferent to books that had devil romance interests because like thats their whole thing theyre seducing people to get their souls and the mc overcomes it, but reading through the replies i see that Hellionfinity actually ends with the devil character as the main romantic lead which is super problematic in terms of power imbalance and the fact that he has a redemption arc is so out of touch especially since our military is finally recovering from the azgurian assault

🧚🏻‍♂️arms-of-faelor

helliofinity also has a scene where the main character uses a soul coin that an imprisoned mortal gave him and he uses it to bring the devil out of avernus so he doesnt fully die and no one in the book mentions it or talks about how messed up it is to use soul coins and we never see the now bound to hell prisoner ever again

🕯️ andersfirelight Follow

hellionfinity officially cancelled on my end!

88 Notes

☘️ celest-ial Follow

moment of silence for all the customers waiting on drink orders while the tavern wench gets her back blown out by a new guy every night ✊��

🦁 king-killa Follow

the gods work hard but Girthy Gladys gets worked harder

57,022 Notes

🎲 beholdersbeholdingme

paladin and warlock romances are OUT! cleric and necromancer romances are IN!

🪭 royalcoinpurse Follow

the only thing a cleric should do to a necromancer is beat him to death so she can revive him and kill him again

🎲 beholdersbeholdingme

❇️ arch-dryad Follow

i think we need to analyze why we're so quick to place women in categories of devious seductress or healer in romance novels as if that hasnt been the pervasive trope that holds magic-touched women back in our actual society

🍯 treebarkhookhandwagondoor

why do you assume these fictional tropes are mf couples only? can a gay cleric not beat his gay necromancer boyfriend to death?

🎲 beholdersbeholdingme

and off! beat him off cmon guys

5,275 Notes

🧀 weremouse Follow

yall ever be talking or whatnot and feel like no one understands you

🪨 sebrenenogdon Follow

ᛄᚠ ᛡᚢ ᚳᚪᚾ ᚱᛁᛞ ᚦᛄᛋ ᛡᚢ ᚺᚪᚠ ᛏᚢ ᚱᛁᛒᛚᚪᚷ ᚦᛄᛋ

🧀 weremouse Follow

say that shit fr (<- looking around clueless)

🪨 sebrenenogdon Follow

ᛋᛁᚱᛁᚪᛋᛚᛁ

60 Notes

🌠 crownofstars

remember when that person made a call out post for the author of ilairepeler for using a ghost writer and it turned out the author was an actual ghost. writing. like a literal ghost writer. like.

🍄gnomestool Follow

arent you the dwarf that fucked a slaad

🌠 crownofstars

how would you like to become a ghost so you can write more witty comments like this for eternity

301 Notes

#round two please laff i did this at work #fantasy dashboard #tumblr dashboard meme #dungeons and dragons #d&d #bg3 #dungeon meshi #my post

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a-edgar-allan-hoe · 2 years

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Wild Horses

Simon “Ghost” Riley x Female Doctor!Reader, Soap x Reader Part 2

Part 1 , Part 3 , Part 4

A/N: Y’all have asked and y’all have received. Enjoy! Let me know what you guys think, I always love to hear your thoughts! Reblogs are much appreciated! 😊💜

Summary: Imagine being the new physician assigned to the team and a certain masked individual takes a new keen concealed interest in you. The two of you are too awkward to function.

Warnings: language, fluff, angst. This one might be a little sad and Ghost is a bit of an ass-jerk so be prepared.

As mentioned before, Ghost completely stays clear of your vicinity after stepping out of your office. It’s not that he hates you. He’s just slightly irritated. With himself? Or is it you and that pretty face of yours and your comforting voice and your goddamn politeness and your accent. To be honest, the whole team adores your accent. He can’t tell. Remind you, this is a man who has probably never been shown any affection or tenderness so don't expect him to fall for you on the spot. This man needs therapy, like a lot of therapy. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to go through whatever it is he is feeling, finding the whole thing to be an inconvenience really. And because he doesn't know how to understand or face whatever these emotions are, he just buries it. It's easier for him that way.

Poor dude couldn’t even sleep last night, staring at the ceiling of his room and haunted by the idea that he accidentally offended you. This man may have a cold exterior but your scalpels are colder and sharper than the devil's jawline. He almost couldn’t blame you if you decided to inject some foreign substance into his bloodstream and make the whole thing look like it was a stroke. Wait, could you do that? Bloody fucking hell. This man spends too much time with his thoughts I swear.

The man spends the whole night trying to assess his feelings, or rather his attraction towards you, convinces himself you're just another pretty face. The man may be touch-starved but he knows there are other methods to handle his needs, even though it's been a long time since he's slept with a woman, like a really long time. But even then, that situation was different. There was never any intimacy involved, like a quick business transaction that finished just as quickly as it started. It only left him feeling as empty as he was before. Not to mention, he doesn't do well with human interaction and that one and only moment he had with a woman daunted him more than it needed to, and so he has remained abstinent ever since. And if he were being honest with himself, you're just a distraction. And how do you handle distractions? You steer clear of them.

So what does this man do? He does what he intended to do. He avoids you at all costs. Oh, is that you walking towards their small, makeshift kitchen to fix yourself a bagel in the morning? Guess what, he’s doing a full 180 and lurking behind a wall like Michael Myers and his stupid hedge, waiting until you’re finished so he can make himself his morning tea.

Not only that but he makes sure to take extra good care of himself, Vitamin C supplements or multivitamins, whatever it takes to keep himself in best health. He even looks up on Google for extra tips to prevent himself from having to send himself in. He had heard of the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and goes out of his way to buy an apple during his morning runs. But the poor chap has it all mixed up because when you walk into your office the next morning, you're surprised to see an apple just sitting there on your desk.

Ghost doesn't know that it's supposed to be the other way around and that the apple is actually supposed to be for himself. He doesn't bother to search up the meaning, nor does anyone bother to tell him because they don't even know that he's doing it in the first place. So every morning he goes on his run, he goes out and buys an apple, and so every morning you find one placed on your desk.

The first time you saw the fruit sitting there on the table where you worked, surrounded by your scattered paperwork, you were confused no doubt. You picked it up curiously in your hand, inspecting the bright red fruit before giving a shrug and biting into it, after you wash it of course. You think it's just a small little token of thanks from one of the men. Possibly Soap considering how flirty he was yesterday. Alejandro doesn't seem like the type to give fruits. He's more of a red rose and a bottle of wine kind of man.

But as days go by, each day you find an apple sitting on your desk. And as thoughtful as this gesture is, at this point, considering the amount of apples you've eaten, you're either going to have serious digestive issues or die of cyanide poisoning, as if you don't already have IBS. So what do you do? You start to collect the apples each morning, deciding to throw in your own twist to this gesture until one evening, the men come back from one of their missions to find a freshly baked apple pie and a stack of paper plates and some utensils sitting out on a table for them, including a small little card with the handwritten words "bone apple tea". What in the hell.

"What in the fucks is bone apple tea." Gaz scrunches his nose at the writing on the little card.

They're all standing around at the table staring at the pie with confusion written across their faces. All except Ghost of course, the way his eyes slightly widen once he sees it. His gut is telling him you're behind it. Hm I wonder what gave it away.

"What’s this?" Alejandro asks, tilting his head at the thing.

"Looks like apple pie." Gaz answers.

"Yes I know that." Alejandro remarks. “But what is it doing here?"

"Doubt it's from any one of you muppets." Price speaks up. He knows damn well none of these men know how to bake. There’s only one person here whose hands are skilled or nimble enough to make the braided trim on that crust. Not to mention the detailing in the center, like the way you carefully placed little leaf designs made from the crust on top of the braided design. Yup this was definitely you, unless someone else here had a secret talent they had been hiding.

Literally why are these men acting like the pie has poison it. As if Graves sent it or something. Just shut up and eat the pie before it gets cold you himbos.

"So who made it?" Soap asks, looking towards the others for answers.

"This," Alejandro chuckles after finally realizing, "this was made by the hands of a woman."

"Who, y/n?" Gaz quirks a brow, you're the only woman here.

How in the hell did you get the means to bake a complete fucking apple pie in a place like this? They always heard doctors have skilled and steady hands but what the actual fuck.

"Well don't mind me." Soap literally cuts a big ass slice for himself before going off to devour the thing.

The boys watch Soap basically almost moan once he takes a bite of your pie as he goes off yelling out something along the lines of "well tidy scran", before helping themselves to a slice.

Ghost is the last one to cut himself a slice. He was hesitant at first before finally giving in, plus he also got back from a mission and he's hungry. So when he digs in his fork and has his first taste, it's kinda like that scene from Ratatouille where the food critic Anton Ego finally takes a bite of Remy's food and is reminded of his childhood, except Ghost doesn't have a childhood.

Let me tell you these men are obsessed with your pie and are practically fighting over the last slice like a pair of siblings so don't be surprised when you wake up the next morning to the see that the plate that your pie was in is completely empty without a single crumb in sight. Jesus. Did they lick the table down too?

Also I think you may have just given Ghost a newfound sweet tooth. When he went back to his room that night, he's debating on whether he should keep his daily routine of giving you apples, so far it’s kept you away. What he doesn’t get is that you made a whole damn pie out of the apples he gave you when they were actually supposed to be for you, or him, if you look at it from his distorted perception. But wait. What if you know it's him, and that's why you made the pie in the first place? A way to a man’s heart is not only between the forth and fifth ribs, but it’s also through his stomach. And as much as he wants to deny it, he also kind of secretly wants you to bake another one. It's almost as if he's completely forgotten why he placed those apples on your desk in the first place.

So what do you see when you wake up the next morning? An empty plate and yet another apple sitting on your desk. Okay what the fuck. You've let it slide all those times but now you have got to know who's pulling this shit. It’s not that you hate apples, but the conception that you have no clue who’s behind this is making you start to view the poor defenseless fruit as an object of taunting and torment. And to be honest at this point, you're beginning to think this is some kind of joke. So with the apple in your hand, you head towards the common area where the others are currently settled.

“Okay who did it?” You call out once you enter the area.

Crickets chirping.

All heads snap towards you to see you standing there with an apple held in your hand. They're almost stunned to see you wandering about. They rarely ever see you since you're usually locked up in your office or your room.

The men have done a lot of shit so just what is it that are you asking. They stare at you with not a single thought behind their eyes, that is until their blood runs cold at what happened last night. Was the pie not meant for them? Shit.

“Did what?” Gaz gulps, trying to play it off as nothing happened.

"Who keeps leaving apples on my desk like I'm about to host a county fair?"

"Come again?" Price asks, not that he didn't hear you, but it's probably the most anyone has heard you speak that isn't related to your work. Not only that, but they’re so used to hearing your “doctor” voice that your normal voice is a whole pitch lower and almost sounds foreign and alien to their ears. Not that they’re complaining because they honestly love hearing it.

"Someone has been leaving apples on my desk every single day." You repeat yourself more slowly. "And I'd like to know who."

So you're not mad about the pie.

Ghost immediately snaps his head away from your direction and nearly chokes on his tea. It's almost a miracle he doesn’t get whiplash from how fast he turns away.

The others are still staring at you, a tad bit scared of the expression that sat on your face. They couldn't make out if you were upset or not.

"Well?" You ask, leaning against the doorframe with your hand stuffed in your coat pocket while your other hand tossed the apple about in the air.

"Couldn't be me." Soap answers.

The others shake their heads as you squint your eyes at each and every one of them, trying to decipher the culprit. "Whoever it is, I will find out." You take a bite out of the apple before tossing it to the nearest person, who happened to be Alejandro, before starting to leave the area.

Alejandro catches the apple between his hands, staring down at the fruit with a chuckle to see where you had bit into it before taking a bite of his own.

Soap can't help but clench his jaw at Alejandro's cockiness. Ghost just turns away unbothered, it’s none of his concern. Or at least that’s what he tells himself.

"Wait you're not mad about the pie?" Gaz calls out after you.

"What pie?" You turn back.

Wot

"The pie....from last night."

"I have no clue what you're talking about." You put on your best innocent expression before walking away.

The men snap their heads towards each other. Have they been poisoned? The longer they stare at each other, the more panicked they get.

Alejandro glances down at the apple you had thrown in his hands and is so close to spitting out the bite he had taken.

"I'm kidding." Your voice nearly makes them jump out of their skin as they turn to see your head popped through the doorway. "The pie was from me." You walk away again before turning back around. "Oh, I almost forgot. I have your blood results so if you're free, come see me when you get the chance."

Shit. Ghost thinks to himself after hearing you mention the blood results. He is hoping his blood sample got demolished in some shape or form, but the way you didn't even try to pull him aside to break the "unfortunate" news tells him otherwise. He's just not going to show.

The men watch you walk away in silence after your little moment of humor. They almost don't know how to react. The way the warmth of your voice blended with the obscurity of your words threw them in for a loop.

All except Ghost have no clue who has been sending you apples, but whoever it is that is sending you the fruit, they think that person is trying to win you over. So what started out as some misunderstanding on Ghost's end has now turned into this whole peacocking ordeal. Now it's a competition of who gets you better gifts in order to gain your affection, mainly Soap and Alejandro and even Gaz, but mostly Soap. Price still shows you appreciation for your work and what you do in his own way.

Poor Ghost was just trying to manifest "an apple a day keeps the doctor away". So who’s gonna tell him?

Anyways, when you return to your office to work on your paperwork, the boys go out to get you a little something before meeting up with you to go over their bloodwork results. Despite Soap and Gaz's efforts, Alejandro is the first to leave and the first to return. And just as Soap returns with his little gift for you, Alejandro beats him to it, a smirk playing on his lips as he enters your office with a red rose in hand. Poor Gaz wasn't able to find you anything special so he gets you a cool looking rock he saw instead.

Soap is practically fuming. If you squint hard enough, you might see smoke coming out his ears.

You hear a knock on your door and look up from where you sat at your desk to see Alejandro stepping into your office, a sly smirk on his lips as he holds out a rose.

"Alejandro." You quirk a brow. "What's this?"

"For you, hermosa."

"Oh?" You cock your head back in surprise as you take the rose from his hands. "What for?"

"Oh just a little way of showing appreciation." Alejandro leans against your desk.

"Why thank you Alejandro" You blink, trying your best to push down the blush that tries to creep itself onto your cheeks.

"My pleasure."

You decide to place the flower inside the empty vase you had already set out from before when you moved your things in. "I had been meaning to get some flowers to brighten up the area."

"There's no need" Alejandro smirks. "I'm afraid the rose doesn't compare to you. You do that all on your own."

Little do you know Soap is listening in on the whole thing with a frown. If he pressed his ear any closer he'd fall right through the door. Sure the Scots have their special charm but Alejandro is different and has the most rizz out of all of them, and Soap is fully aware and has always heard they make better lovers and that only adds to his panic.

Now you're definitely not able to hide the heat that spread through your face. You can't tell if it's the state of being flustered or just social anxiety. Well they weren't wrong about Alejandro having a way with words. "Geez, thank you Alejandro. But there really is no need for flattery."

"For you, anything hermosa."

Omfg this dude.

You look away from his strong gaze, managing to shove your flustered state away and stopping yourself from releasing the sharp wit you inherited from your father. Clearing your throat, you open up his file. "Well that really is kind of you Alejandro. And since you are already here, I have the results from your blood work."

"Oh? Everything should be good yes?"

"Well yes, for the most part but-"

"But what?" Alejandro looks confused. What's wrong with his blood?

"Your cholesterol levels are pretty high." You open up his file and read over his results.

"They are?"

"I'm afraid so, but not at a dangerous level. You should probably cut out some of that fried food and red meat and watch your butter intake. Nothing too serious though. Add some greens into your diet, as well as some nuts and whole grains and definitely more fruits and veggies and you're good to go." You hand him a copy of his results before giving a look of grimace. "But watch out on the fiber though. Too much of it can lead to increased bowel movements."

"Increased what?"

"You know, a case of the shits."

The way Soap pulls his ear away from the door and slaps his palm on mouth to keep himself from letting out the most offensive laugh known to mankind. If only you could have seen it. Is he going to bring this up in Alejandro's presence? Maybe.

Alejandro looks over the papers you gave him. "Wait really?"

"Yeeaaah." You give the poor fellow a sympathetic smile. "But hey, everything you need to know is right on those papers, so as long as you cut out the foods mentioned and get a higher intake of the others listed, you'll be back to normal in no time."

"Oh uh. Thank you y/n. I appreciate it."

"Anytime Alejandro." You smile. "You know where to find me."

The way Soap nearly trips over himself as he backs away from the door after hearing footsteps, as if he wasn't eavesdropping on every thing.

Alejandro opens the door and walks out of your office, eyes glued to the papers while Soap is just standing there trying not to be noticed.

The moment Alejandro is out of sight, Soap goes over and knocks on your door.

"Come in." You look up and smile to see Soap. Over the course of the few days since you first arrived here, you were to quick to warm up to the young Scotsman, finding comfort and humor in his personality. You enjoyed hearing him talk about just about anything, and his accent always helped to make whatever he had to say all the more interesting. It really is a good thing he does most of the talking since you make a better listener and love to hear what others have to say.

Soap knows you don't talk much and how you prefer to listen and hear stories, so he always makes sure to keep you entertained. This man is 100% golden retriever energy. Also he calls you lass and lassie and you just eat that shit up, he loves how you blush and that small restrained smile appears on your face whenever he says it. Don't worry, so would I. "Soap! You can have a seat if you want, this will be brief."

"Oh uh, I've actually got you something." Soap hands you a small box.

"Oh?" You quirk a brow as you take the box from his hands? What is it with everyone giving you gifts? Are they in on something you're not? "What is it?" You ask as you open the small box to see a bunch of what looks to be biscuits.

"Scottish shortbread." Soap smiles, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. "I brought them along with me from back home but I thought you'd like them with your morning coffee."

"Wait, are you sure you don't want them for yourself? I feel bad."

"Nah. I can always get more.......if-when I go back home. You keep em. It's for ya. Think of it as a welcoming gift.....for all ya done, and the pie ya made for us."

"Soap, I don't know what to say." You give the man a heartfelt smile. "Thank you.....really, it's very thoughtful of you. It'll give me a variety from my bagels."

"Don' mention it." Soap places his hands behind his back before noticing a small framed picture you had set up on your desk that definitely wasn't there before. "Is that you?"

"Hm?" You raise you brow to see what he is referring to and seeing him gesture to the photo.

"Oh. Yeah, that's me as a little girl." You glance at the photo as a soft smile appears on your face. It was a picture of you when you were a little girl around the age of 5, when your dad took you on a camping trip to Zion. The two of you were sitting near the tent he had set up overlooking the mountain range with you sitting in his arms while he played his guitar, wearing that same old baseball cap of his that you had grown accustomed to seeing as you grew up. The longer you looked at the picture and relived that core memory, glancing at the crooked grin that sat on your little face and the way your father beamed, the more your face began to match the fond look that radiated off your father's eyes as he looked down at your giggling state.

"That's quite the smile you got there." Soap teases, chuckling at the expression you held in the photo.

"Oh please." You roll your eyes, knowing exactly what he was joking about. "I know I looked goofy. My baby teeth were falling out."

"And that's yer dad?"

"Yup. That's my old man."

"Ya have yer father's eyes." Soap smiles at you, knowing now where you inherited that certain warmth held in your eyes that was able to put the coldest man at ease by just one look.

You let out a soft chuckle, glancing down at the ground to blink away the tears that have yet to form before looking back up at the soldier. "I've been told."

"Where was this taken? The scenery is absolutely braw."

"That was taken at Zion National Park in Utah. My dad had taken me there on a camping trip."

"It's absolutely gorgeous."

"Maybe I'll take you one day."

"Ya mean it?" Soap turns towards you, a grin forming on his face.

"Why not? It's been a while since I went, not since the photo."

"I think you've just made my day lass." Soap smirks before turning to the other photo. "And I'm guessing that's you as well." Soap gestures to the other photo of you around your middle school years that your dad had taken of you, wearing a wet suit as you sat on your surfboard, a grin on your face and your hair matted with salt water while one of your hands formed the shaka sign. "I dinnae ken you surfed."

"Oh yeah, surfing was my life. This was back when I had caught my first wave in Hawaii. My dad was so proud. Took me out for shaved ice right after and couldn't stop bragging to everyone there about how effortlessly I had tube ridden that thing."

"Your dad sounds like a great man."

"The best."

Soap notices the way your smile ever so slightly dropped at one of the corners, as if some sadness had managed to overcome whatever memories that lied in your head so he clears his throat, deciding not to press on the subject any better. "So how does my blood look?"

"Good actually." You blink, his statement reminding you of what you were going to do since he stepped into your office in the first place. "Your levels are all pretty balanced." You hand him a copy of his results. "As for the muscle cramps you mentioned, try to get a higher intake of electrolytes like potassium, magnesium, and calcium. And most importantly, don't forget to stay hydrated and drink lots of water."

"Aye ma'am. I'll make sure of it."

"Thank you Soap."

"No, thank you." Soap gives you one last smile before heading out. "I'll see you around."

"Bye."

It was not long after Soap left that Gaz entered next followed by Price, hearing you go over their results with intent ears. You actually really loved the little rock Gaz had given you, he had even drawn a smiley face on for you. You thought it was really cute despite his embarrassment in not finding you something better. And after the two left, there was only one person left that had yet to show up at your door. Simon 'Ghost' Riley.

Not wanting to pressure the man who looks like he'd stab you for looking at him the wrong way, you decided to stay at your desk, working over some paperwork of your own until the time comes when he decides to show up whenever he sees comfortable.

Picking up your mug, you decide to get some more coffee, leaving your office and heading to the kitchen area to brew yourself a new cup. Looking up from your feet, you see Ghost walking walking in your direction in front of you.

"Ghost!" You call out to him, or as much as you can call out. You never were one for raising your voice, despite the many times your previous teachers had urged you to speak up, displeased with the way you preferred to keep to yourself as opposed to your more extroverted peers. But even when carrying out their commands to speak louder, you always hated doing so, thinking it drew too much attention towards you. It's a wonder you got through med school and became a doctor in the first place.

Ghost had heard you calling out his name and immediately his muscles tense. The last thing he wanted was for you to see him because that only meant one thing, being dragged into your office to go over his blood results until something else insulting slips from his lips. I promise he doesn't hate your guts! So in order to evade you, this man does the first thing that comes to mind, he walks straight into the nearest room, which just so happens to be the shared showers. Simon you dumb fuck. Let’s hope Price isn’t butt ass naked in there for Simon’s sake.

You blink, standing there with your mug that your friend from college thought would be funny to gift you when you started med school, the one that had the words "I have a PHD" in bold colorful letters with the finer print "pretty huge dick" right below it (of course you never used that mug back at the hospital or else you'd hear about it).

So with your mug in hand, you watch the masked man walk straight into the room where the shared showers were. Huh. Well that's weird. You try to give the man the benefit of the doubt, thinking he just did not hear you. Maybe he'll stop by later. So shrugging off what just happened, you head into the kitchen to make yourself a fresh cup of coffee. God an iced coffee sounds good right now.

Once you had headed back to your office, finishing up your work and taking little breaks in between to read your book or snack on something, an hour turned into two, and so forth. Until you looked at your clock and it was already past the time of sunset. Jesus. Where did this dude go? Getting up from your chair, you step out of your office, holding the door open and seeing not a single soul headed in your direction. What in the-

With furrowed brows, you step back into your office, staring down at Ghost's results that just sat there waiting to be picked up.

"Goddamn it." You hiss between your teeth. You have no idea what his issue is or why he avoids you as if you spit in his fruit loops or tea or whatever. But if he keeps this up, it could interfere with your own job. Looking around at your desk, an idea pops into your head as you grab two things that lied there, a sticky note and a two dum-dum lollipops, a sugar cookie flavor and a butterscotch one.

Heading out of your office, you head towards where the men's rooms are located before stopping at a certain particular one, surveying the area around you to make sure no one sees you before staring straight at the door in front of you. Taking out your pen, you write on the note "please stop by my office when you get a chance", making sure to add your initials in the corner before taping it to his door along with the two lollipops, hoping the candy will be some sort of bribe.

"God I hope this works and he doesn't shoot me in the head." You mutter out before heading back to your own quarters that was separate from the men's due to standard protocol. Throwing off your coat and your clothes, you threw on an oversized t-shirt and some sweats, eating a microwaveable dinner in your own room before getting ready to go to bed. There was nothing you craved more than to collapse onto the mattress and bury yourself under the covers. And as you finished brushing your teeth, turning off the lights and getting into a comfortable position under your blanket, all you could do was stare at the ceiling above you.

Little did you know, that same night, in that same moment, there was another who could not sleep, staring at the ceiling as you did now. He had saw the note that you had left him on his door, as well as the two lollipops. It almost annoyed him, whatever it was you were showing towards him. And it did not help that the note had smelled of you, of that perfume that oh so enriched his senses. The man literally has your note laying on top of his bedside table along with the lollipops. He'll throw it out first thing tomorrow he tells himself.

"Oh come the fuck on." You moaned as you turned over onto your side but to no avail. No matter how hard you tried to shut your eyes and shut out any thoughts that attempted at keeping you awake, you just could not fall asleep until you finally give up. "Jesus fuck shit fuck." You hiss to yourself as you throw the blanket off you, sitting up on your bed and throwing on your sweatpants before getting up. Usually on nights like this where you couldn't sleep, you'd find a way to calm your nerves, whether it be reading or drawing or listening to a comforting audiobook.

So, grabbing your pillow and blanket, you open up your closet and grab your father's acoustic guitar, going back over to your bed and staring at the framed photo of your dad that sat on the bedside table before taking that with you as well. Leaving your room, you make sure to be as quiet as possible, looking both ways before heading up towards the roof of the building.

When you were little and had trouble sleeping, your dad used to take you outside to where the two of you had built a little fort, where the two of you would lay under the stars, brushed over by the cool night breeze as he played his guitar, singing old folk and slow classic rock songs until you finally fell asleep. And as you stepped onto the roof, craning your neck to stare up at the stars above you, you were reminded of those moments and the peace it gave you. Setting your bedding down, you prop the picture of your dad up next to you before sitting down with the guitar in hand.

"Hey dad." Your voice is a whisper as you look down at the photo of your father beside you. The photo was taken not even a month after you were born. He had taken you to the fire station he was stationed at, excited to introduce his team to his new precious baby girl, his first child. You could almost say it was your favorite photo of him, sitting on the front bumper of the firetruck in his uniform with you bundled up in a pink blanket in his arms.

"I know it's been a bit of a while since we've last talked." You sigh, forming your fingers into a chord on the fretboard of the guitar. "So to make up for it, I'm going to sing you one of the songs I always used to sing. You know the one, it's one of my favorites, and yours too."

Despite his efforts to fall asleep, Simon had ended up stepping out of his room, walking about the grounds to somewhat ease his mind. This was obviously nothing new to him, he always had trouble sleeping. And during those nights he had trouble sleeping, he'd take a walk to help clear his head. He found comfort in the silence of the night, when everything and everyone was asleep. He would usually go to his favorite spot on the rooftop, where he would seek refuge under the obsidian skies and the silver stars.

As he goes up the stairs that lead up to the roof, he stops at the sound that comes from beyond the door, what sounds to be someone singing and strumming the guitar. Curious to know who the hell had taken his spot and had the radio playing, he goes up further to investigate. So imagine his surprise when he finds you there instead, wrapped up in your blanket and strumming against your guitar, singing The Sundays cover of Wild Horses.

"Childhood living is easy to do The things that you wanted, I bought them for you Graceless lady, you know who I am You know I can't let you slide through my hands" Your voice is ethereal as you sing out the lyrics, your face molded into these deep emotions you can't quite explain.

"Wild horses couldn't drag me away Wild horses couldn't drag me away

I watched you suffer a dull, aching pain And now you've decided to show me the same No sweeping exits or offstage lines Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind

Wild horses couldn't drag me away Wild, wild horses couldn't drag me away

Faith has been broken and tears must be cried Let's do some living after we die

Wild horses couldn't drag me away Wild, wild horses couldn't drag me away

Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them someday Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them someday."

During the entirety of the song, Simon stands there in the distance behind you, hidden in the shadows, entranced, and can't seem to explain the tingles he feels washing over his body. He thinks he has intruded upon you and wants to leave you to your solitude in what seems to be an intimate moment for you, and yet he can't seem to be able to get his feet to move. Instead he's watching you with this newfound interest. He had never expected you to play the guitar as you did, nor have the voice that you did. So as you finish your song, he almost trips over his own feet trying to back away, scared that you might somehow notice that he had been there this whole time.

"God I miss you dad." You wipe away at the tears that start to spill down your cheeks despite your attempts to wipe them away with the back of your sleeve, scanning your eyes over the stars that scattered across the sky, imagining he was up there amongst them. "I miss you so much."

Regaining his footing, Ghost is careful to open the door leading back into the building, that is until he hears you let out what sounds to be a choked sob. He turns his head back towards you, seeing you bring your knees up to your chest as you cry out, mumbling something he can't quite understand. With his hand still holding the door open, he looks down at the set of stairs, turning his head back towards you for one more time before going down the steps, being careful to shut the door without any noise possible.

Part 3

Tags: @souls-rain @euovennia @i-wish-we-could-stay @depressedacidtest @gh0stm3g @thequeenofbigmacs @k1llerch4n @abbiesxox @feraltiddies @wand-erer5 @1redheaded3dragon @anisa269 @joceymoo @mango-corner @classickook @trueee33 @sockertop @lupskelly @chxbits @kuwizo @sluxm3ozt @tobybestupid @anarchygoose @lez-zuha @thatoneautor0123 @marvelmysterywoman @ella-error505 @awkward-0 @ariessux @kermitdefroghere @urloverx @alldaysdreamers @rat-elbows @nananarc @watersquirtpewpewboomm @izzyisstuff

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saerins · 1 year

Text

─── 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑

+ itoshi rin x f!reader | wc 6k | content: mostly fluff, some angst, rin is so awkward, childhood friends to lovers

notes: my first time writing something for rin so i’m nervous but i hope you guys like it <3 pls i hope i didn’t butcher him >_< rbs & feedback appreciated muwah !

summary: rin thinks about you all the time, for better or for worse. problem is, he really shouldn’t be anymore. things never seem to work out for the both of you, will trying even make a difference this time?

rin knows you don’t like flowers. no wait, you like them, you just don’t like receiving them. you cried once, when the flower he plucked for you died within a few days in your makeshift vase.

rin also knows that while other girls dream of their dream wedding, you dream of a nice cosy house, a modern one with touches of japanese accents. he likes to hear you talk about it. he likes to hear you talk about anything at all, actually.

he’s known you ever since you were both little, since you were both five and just two kids in the playground playing hide and seek.

rin would always win, because you’re as clumsy as it gets and you’re not that observant. you could never find him, even if he’s right there. he likes it though; seeing you look for him, that little panicky look in your eyes when you think he’d ever actually abandon you and run off.

he played with you whenever he could—you were both neighbours after all. it was fun, being with you was fun.

you reminded him of new beginnings, like how it feels like jumping into a pool after a long hard day of training, or how the sun feels like hitting your skin on a cold winter day.

it was second nature for him—to seek you out whenever he had a hard time, to look for you when he needed a distraction, to search for you in the crowd to seek some familiarity.

but it’s easy for flimsy things to break. the both of you were just kids, and kids did childish things, like think only for the moment and not further into the future, did silly things like saying you’d marry one another with fake paper rings and forget it the very next day (rin remembers). kids also handle things in a bad way, in the way that leaves no room for the friend they pushed away.

if rin regrets anything from his past, it’s that he took sae’s departure out on you.

rin doesn’t know how to process things well. can’t decide why exactly he’s so pressed about sae’s choice of words. doesn’t know what to make of why he even plays soccer. is it just because of his brother?

he doesn’t fucking know.

rin’s sorry.

it isn’t your fault his brother found a different path. you had nothing to do with it. you and those brownies you cooked for him. he’s sorry that he let them fall to the ground and just stormed off.

that was what, three or four years ago? you’d moved out by then, and the both of you had never spoken since.

if he’s being honest, he misses your presence. maybe it’s the fact that you were his manifestation of a safety net, someone that he could fall back on, someone he could lean on.

maybe he’s just being an asshole.

now he’s seventeen and probably even more of an asshole. if anything, sae’s departure left a bitter taste in his mouth that he wasn’t able to cleanse.

but he’s lucky you’re you. you’re you and that means you don’t hold grudges and you’re still the kindest person he’s ever known.

“rin?”

he stops his hand in mid motion, the key between his fingers dropping onto the wooden floorboards below. rin can’t seem to function anymore—he knows that voice. all too well.

it’s the voice that made him excited as a kid, it’s the same voice that comforted him whenever he fell short of perfect, the same voice that haunts his dreams sometimes at night, even now.

rin turns around and sees you there, at his front porch, smiling all awkwardly and chuckling nervously, your hands in your pocket because you never know what to do with them when you’re uncomfortable.

“hi,” is all he manages to choke out because he’s still a little stunned and his key is long lost and forgotten on the ground.

“hey stranger,” you grin, and his heart beats faster and faster as you get closer and closer.

the both of you are no longer kids, and it’s so painfully obvious now in front of him. he can’t stop fucking staring even if his inner voice is screaming at him to.

“i thought you moved away,” rin manages to say, and because he’s really curious as to why you’re even here, in this place you’re not supposed to be, talking to someone you haven’t spoken to in years.

“i’m, uh, here just to visit my family,” you stutter out, and rin wants to call you out on it so bad, but he can’t do that without exposing himself.

how could he possibly tell you that he knows none of your family is left here in the neighbourhood because he’s asked everyone who used to be in contact with your family? how can he possibly say that without exposing himself for going through your social profiles just to find out that you’ve moved out to another city with your entire family?

so, what are you here for then?

“hey, you wanna, uh, go eat dinner together? or something? later?” you’re so awkward rin could die. rin’s so awkward he could just kill himself.

the silence is deafening and it’s not that he doesn’t want to have dinner with you, it’s just that he has soccer training in the evening and he’s still in shock from the fact that you’re here in the flesh and—

“it’s okay, forget i asked, i was just—”

“no, i mean,” rin trips over his own words and the two of you are just two stupid idiots standing on the itoshi family’s porch doing stupid idiot things. he takes a deep breath, “where should we eat?”

that smile you shoot him is deadly and he wants to keep it forever. if that’s even possible. but he’s really awkward with his feelings and he doesn’t even know what he feels for you. all he knows is that he wants you to stay here again, be within reach for him.

“pick me up at six on your bike?” you nod over to his bicycle, and he blushes so hard because despite getting countless valentines from other girls, none of them have the same effect on him as you do.

rin thinks he should shake his head and say no and pretend like you don’t exist again. he shouldn’t go on this pseudo date with you.

yet he does. he picks you up where you said you’d be, at a hotel near the heart of the city. he’s on his bicycle, just like you asked of him, and you definitely dressed for the ride, comfortable in shorts and a tank top. you’ve gotten from cute to so so pretty and rin finds it so damn difficult to tear his eyes away from you.

when you get on the back of his bicycle, you put your hands around his waist and he can actually feel how fast your heart is beating. rin’s is too, but he’s grateful you probably can’t tell.

also at your request, he takes you to a spot he chose—which is nothing extravagant because you’re both still broke students who haven’t earned your own money, but he thinks you’ll like it anyway.

after getting some cup noodles from a nearby convenience store, he pedals over to the playground the both of you used to spend ages at when you were kids. the place where you used to play hide and seek with each other.

it’s a place of significance. at least, to him. he wonders if you even remember this place.

“nice choice, itoshi rin,” you say, and rin has his answer. “i missed this place.”

and rin missed you, but he isn’t going to say that.

“i’m surprised you remember,” he tells you, choosing to sit down on the swings. you follow and sit on the only other one beside him, your cup noodle hot and ready in your hands. “how’s kyushu?”

you slurp up some of your noodles, and rin thinks you look beautiful just like this anyway. “it’s okay, made some friends so that makes it more tolerable.” you’re shrugging like it’s no big deal, but he can tell by the faraway look in your eyes that there’s more to it.

“tokyo’s better, huh?” he isn’t much for small talk, but he can’t help himself—it’s been far too long without you, and he wants to feel close to you again. it’s as though after everything that happened—sae moving abroad, you moving away, rin feeling lost—it’s like he doesn’t really know how to be your friend anymore.

nodding your head, you turn to him. “much better.”

and rin can’t help but think that there’s a deeper meaning to your answer. but he doesn’t press.

maybe he should’ve, because when you switch the topic, he finds he doesn’t like what he’s hearing.

“anyway, i’m only here for a day,” you tell him, going back to your noodles. “i fly back tomorrow.”

some part of him wants to ask you why you’re even here. he wants to know about the you now, about how much has changed in these few years, what you like now—do you still like hot chocolate in the winter, do you still get colds easily, do you still think about him after all this time?

“are you… going to come back for college?” because if you still wanted to go to university in tokyo, you’d have to move back here. rin thinks he’d like that.

you’re a little taken aback because from what you’d heard from your old friends, rin had become someone they barely recognised; cold, blunt, more like his brother than himself. but in front of you now, you feel like the rin you know is still in there.

but this is where it gets hard.

“actually…” you trail off because you don’t really know where to start. “i got into a university in america. my mother got a job there and she wants me to go with her.”

you don’t even want to look at him right now. you don’t really know what you want to see. some silly part of you wants to see that he minds, that he’ll make a big deal out of you going away somewhere even further than the other side of japan. but if he doesn’t, if he looks like it doesn’t affect him at all, then you don’t think you can handle that.

“oh.” ever the best at giving a non-response, you’re not surprised.

it’s silent for a while, and the two of you are just eating your noodles, and it’s so suffocating that you want to bolt and run but that means you probably won’t ever get to see rin again and you don’t want that.

your body is screaming at you to do something, to say anything, to savour whatever time you have left with rin now properly—but you can’t.

beside you, the gears are turning in his head. rin’s noodles are already gone and he isn’t even aware his chopsticks are grappling around for nothing but soup.

america? that’ll mean you’re at least twelve hours away and he can’t even imagine what that’ll mean for your friendship. or whatever the fuck this muddy waters is.

rin wants to say something, anything—but what? don’t go? when are you coming back? are we ever going to be at the same place at the same time again after tonight?

he’s conflicted between his possible feelings and his selfishness. so he resigns to not saying anything at all. all that’s left for the night is hearing the wind blowing past your faces and the creaking of the swings, very much like how he envisioned a bad goodbye to go.

that night he gives you a ride back to your hotel despite your insistence that it’s late. because who do you take him for? did it mean nothing to you that this might be the last time?

“so, uh, i’ll see you around, i guess,” you say as you step off of his bicycle, after a trip that seems way too fast. rin already misses the sensation of your arms around his waist.

he thinks it’s a stupid sentence. realistically, in every single way he can think it’ll play out, it ends with the both of you drifting apart anyway, and he finds himself wishing you never came back.

which is untrue. which is the furthest it could possibly be from the truth. but rin doesn’t want to think about that right now.

“okay then, goodbye,” rin decides, because he’s not about to get his own hopes up for nothing. if you’re about to vanish, then maybe it’s high time he gets it done.

rin steps on the pedal, but then you stop him, voice clear as the first day he met you. “rin, wait!”

you’re not sure why it slipped out, but it did.

“what is it?”

his eyes are cool, calm, a dead teal that stares right through you. you’re almost intimidated because you’re not sure just what he’s thinking of you right now. he must think you’re a freak, showing up like this and dropping a bomb that he may or may not care about.

“um, nothing, it’s just- is there anything else?”

some part of you wants him to ask you to stay in tokyo. maybe the both of you could find a university together and stay in close proximity, just like when you were kids, just like how you liked it.

just like everything you missed.

and now the two of you are staring at each other, knowing yet not knowing everything that’s going through one another’s mind. but it gets lost in translation because neither of you can find the words to say.

rin blinks at you, and you can’t even read him if you tried. “no, nothing. is there something you wanna say?”

you shake your head, smiling through it. “no, nothing. goodbye.”

you’re back through the hotel double doors before you know it, and rin’s left to watch your silhouette fade away.

for the first time in his life, he feels like he’s lost something precious that he’ll never find again.

life goes on.

rin graduates from high school and so do you. the texting stopped, and that much he expected. better to cut the cord sooner rather than later, even if rin wished for otherwise.

he rides on a full scholarship to university, and from the online grapevines, he hears that you’re doing the same. you’re smart, so he’s not surprised.

this is the right thing to do; both of you have your own lives to concentrate on. some stupid crush doesn’t matter. and yes, rin has already conceded to the feeling because he can’t explain this any other way.

his frustration that comes from your separation, his anger when it comes to being helpless, his endless regret from not saying anything that night—it’s only because he wants you.

“i hear y/n’s doing good at her new school,” rin hears his mom cooing from the kitchen. he sighs. of course she did, yours and his moms are both close. yet another channel through which he can get updates on you, warranted or not.

“yeah?” he pretends not to care much, but he’s hanging on her every word.

“yeah, it’s valentines’ day around the corner too, i hear she has lots of guys lining up.”

kill him. kill him right fucking now.

“good for her.” good for you he’s not there to stare daggers at all the guys ogling at you. good for you he’s not there to commit bloody murder.

“i think so too, ah she’s all grown up,” his mother chatters on, completely oblivious to the torment she’s subjecting her son to. “i hear she’s having her first date next week, i heard he’s a model too, did she talk to you about it?”

you must’ve played it off to your mother that you and rin are fine. rin sighs, tired of the thoughts running through his head. as if soccer wasn’t tiring enough already.

“don’t know, maybe.”

just like his feelings for you, and his willingness to act on it.

two years into university and it isn’t that hard for him anymore.

actual lectures and assignments take up half of his time, and the other half is reserved for soccer. with teammates like isagi yoichi and bachira meguru annoying him even outside of practice, rin doesn’t even have much time to think of you.

until he’s forced to.

“what about you, rin? is there anyone special in your life?”

bachira tuts, “isagi, he’s always buried in books and practicing soccer, it’s obviously a no.”

rin’s annoyed, half because what bachira said is true and half because isagi made him think of you. it’s been a while since he knew what was up with you. you’re probably doing well, probably thriving in that environment, probably all in love with your boyfriend—that stupid yukimiya kenyu that you accepted for valentine’s last year.

he carefully extracts himself from isagi and bachira’s bickering, feigning that he’s looking through the aisle for books except what he’s really doing is scrolling through his phone and hunting for your profile.

what other way is he supposed to get updates? definitely not from you, because you’ve been so fucking radio silent since that night.

all that rin sees that day is a story posted to your account. just a backdrop of the view in your city with the words some things just aren’t meant to be.

you’re right. some things aren’t. including the both of you. so rin tucks his phone away in his pocket and goes about his day, half happy that it sounds like you’re not with yukimiya anymore, half concerned that this is what the both of you became.

somehow he’s here. he’s right fucking here and it’s him this time that’s going to surprise you. unintentionally. or intentionally, if you argued that he agreed to come in the first place.

“isn’t this place so beautiful?” his mother’s words are lost on him. he’s too busy thinking of you.

his mother’s here to visit your mother and by extension he guesses you’ll be there. it’s supposedly the summer break anyway.

and you really are there, on your front porch this time, freezing up when you catch sight of rin walking up your driveway.

nothing can describe his relief when you actually walk up to him and talk to him, because a part of him was expecting you to slap him for some reason.

“still watching horror movies for fun?” you ask him when you’re finally alone together, away from the ruckus of both your moms.

you missed him, he and his teal eyes and his absurdly longer fringe and his awkward demeanour. he’s a long shot from the person you knew as a kid. he’s taller, more muscles, more stoic, handsome. you were too shy to look at him properly that night in tokyo, but you can now.

“i don’t really have time for fun.” rin turns away, a little horrified you remember as much about him as you do. you’d been asking him things you remember from back when you guys were five. “how’re things here?”

you hum in contemplation, like you’re considering your words, and rin looks at you this time, admiring the way you look in the sunlight, the smile stuck onto your face, the voice that he’d never get tired of.

“it’s fine, school’s great, boyfriend’s great, everything’s… great.”

boyfriend?

“that yukimiya guy?”

fuck. fuck fuck fuck. he didn’t mean to say that. fuck. you’re gonna know he stalked you. he doesn’t even fucking follow you, he has no good excuse for knowing that.

you blink once, twice, confused and then getting bashful from the realisation. “um, yeah. things were rocky at first and then it got better so…”

rin is internally strangling himself. he needs to stop having thoughts about a taken girl. he needs to stop wondering what you taste like, what you look like in the mornings when you just wake up, what you’d sound like when you’re sleepy.

“that’s… good.”

the two of you are awkward to bits and he wishes he was someone different right now.

the day ends with nothing substantial. rin couldn’t talk much after he hears you’re still with yukimiya. you couldn’t even stay much because you had plans with him anyway. who’s he to stand in your way? rin’s just an old friend from the past. that’s all. there’s nothing more.

that’s what he thinks. until that same night when he’s all packed and ready to go for the next afternoon’s flight. all because you called him out of the blue. he’s amazed you still have his number.

“hey, rin.”

from the first moment you opened your mouth, he can tell you’re crying. shit, why are you crying?

“are you okay?” because you’re probably the only person in the world who can tug on his heartstrings like this. for being the only person in this world he has feelings for.

you’re forcing a laugh, like you’re not sure what to say. rin doesn’t really know either.

“am i not worth anything?” your question takes him off guard.

doesn’t take a genius to know something probably happened between you and yukimiya. and it doesn’t take much for you to get rin bolting out the door.

“where are you?”

“home,” you sniffle, and you must hear him getting into a cab, “i’m fine, you don’t have to come—”

“i’m coming,” he tells you, firmly, and he can almost tell you’re smiling from the other side of the line.

rin’s heart is racing, adrenaline pumping through his veins. he’s not sure why, but he’s ached to get closer to you since forever, and he passed it up the last time, the previous time you met in tokyo.

his heart’s still racing when you let him into the house, when it’s all dark and unfamiliar and you’re so close to him he can smell the shampoo off your hair.

apparently yukimiya never got over his first love, and you’d caught him locked in a kiss with her right before your dinner.

he’s not good with these situations. at comforting people, at being so close to the girl he likes that he’s trying his very best not to fucking kiss her right now. how does he tell you that you’re good enough, right now, when you keep rambling on and on about how you think you’re not? he really wants to shut you up but he can only think of kissing you and maybe that’s not a can of worms you want to open right now.

besides, if he does that, you might look at him as something temporary, a crutch you need right now but not for the long run and call him crazy but if he’s going to try this much for you, he doesn’t want to be the rebound.

but god fucking damn it, he’ll kill himself if he chickens out now.

you fall asleep after crying your guts out, and rin’s barely said ten words to you all night. he carries you to your room, puts you down on your bed and he resists placing a kiss on your forehead even if you won’t know it.

there’s no time left here for him, he’ll have to go back home tomorrow afternoon and you’ll be worlds apart once again. tonight may have been just a fluke; you probably just needed someone and rin was a safe bet.

he writes something down on a rough paper sitting on your desk and leaves it there before he goes. it’s irritating, how much you’re making him think, how much you’re making him flip flop between various moods.

one moment he decides to leave you alone and the next moment he doesn’t want to leave your side. there’s just something about seeing you so heartbroken that he can’t forgive.

and how kind the world is, to serve the guy who broke your heart to rin in a silver platter. he’d recognise that hair and those glasses anywhere—yukimiya kenyu.

“who’re you?”

rin doesn’t respond, only pushes him away. “if you know what’s good for you, leave.”

“what are you talking about?”

“i know what you did to y/n.”

yukimiya sighs, “look that’s what i wanted to talk to y/n about. i wanted to do this properly, to talk it out with her properly but then my ex was the one who—”

“shut the fuck up, i don’t care.”

yukimiya looks like he wants to retaliate, like he wants to argue back, and it would’ve probably turned into an all-out brawl if your mother didn’t rush out of the house at just the right time.

rin doesn’t bother with anything else after that. he leaves even though your mother tells him he can stay. frankly, he’s not sure he can stand being in the same room as yukimiya without giving him a punch.

the next morning comes and you haven’t left any messages. rin’s already back in japan for a while when you decide you’re finally ready to call him. but he’s heartbroken from thinking he was stupid to leave you that note so he rarely pays attention to his phone.

you end up having to leave it on his voicemail instead.

you said to call you if i wanted to try and… i do.

whatever yukimiya had come to say to you that night, it probably didn’t work, because rin does hear your voicemail. he hears your voice saying that you want to try, with him, and he thinks he may have been dreaming for a while.

but then he plays it over and over and over again.

he’s a few years late, but better late than never, he thinks.

you have two more years before you get your degree, and rin’s not about to get in between that. what he does do is pay you a visit from time to time because he hates this goddamn physical distance between the both of you.

it starts with the both of you talking to each other over the phone, the painfully awkward conversations turning more and more bearable. after a while, you’re the one getting him out of his shell, purposely teasing him all the time, getting reactions out of him.

he stays over at your apartment near school whenever he visits. you share the same bed for the first time and somehow it’s not uncomfortable. he lays beside you like he’s meant to be there. and you fall asleep so fast whenever he’s there, like he’s your damn lullaby.

distance starts to feel like nothing for the both of you, because it never wanes your feelings. even when he’s in japan and you’re halfway across the world, it doesn’t feel like you’re very far.

besides, he likes how it is—you chase your dreams, he chases his. the future can wait. the uncertainties can come later.

they come faster than he bargained for.

you’re nearing graduation while he’s nearing the end of his current contract term with a japanese club, but you’ve scored a job with one of the hottest startups in america. which means you’re going to be there.

for a long while.

“take it,” rin tells you, because you’ve called him to tell him this because you don’t know if you want to. but he can tell, like he always can when it comes to you. you want to take it, and he’s the only factor that’s stopping you. because before now, you’ve been thinking of coming back to tokyo and working at one of the bigger firms here.

looks like that plan’s not going to pan out though, because rin will kill himself before he becomes the reason that you’re not being the best version of yourself.

“but that means…”

there you go, hesitating again.

“we’ll figure it out. we did it once before, we’ll do it again.”

you chuckle in relief because somehow, itoshi rin has become your rock. he went from being some stoic and inexpressive human to being your voice of reason.

“you’re right, you’re right,” you concede. because yes, he’s always right somehow.

so you accept the offer, signing yourself away for another five years.

“what does that mean for the both of you though?”

you sigh. you’re not sure. rin hasn’t said much beyond what he did during that phone call nearly a year back, and he hasn’t come to visit for a few months now so you can’t really tell what’s going on in his head.

long distance sucks.

“i don’t know, mom,” you confess, “i don’t want this to be the end. but i can’t see a future where the both of us are always in different countries.”

your mother doesn’t say anything much after that, it’s not like she has any personal experience on the matter.

you think about it all throughout your finals period, all throughout your graduation transition. you’re not sure that you and rin can just make it through this by just winging it like how you’d always been. and you think maybe rin is just full of it, maybe he’s just as much in denial about this as you are. he hasn’t even been texting you as much nowadays, not after the news.

your phone vibrates on your table as you’re idly staring out the window. it’s a week to graduation.

a text from rin.

meet me after your ceremony next week, we need to talk.

and the anxiety kicks in.

rin shows up at your graduation ceremony like he said he would. he dresses up nicely, white dress shirt and black pants—simple, classy, handsome. you can spot him even from where you are, up near the stage.

yeah, you’d been nervous ever since he sent you that text.

it didn’t help that he didn’t talk to you much up until today, when his flight landed and he’d told you about it even though he knows you have his flight details in your handy little app.

when you run over to him after the ceremony, you find quite a funny sight before your eyes. never in your life did you think you’d ever see rin looking sharp as ever in a white shirt and pants only to be carrying what looks like a bouquet of—not flowers but—nuggets on sticks and chocolate.

rin smiles sheepishly when you get to him. “you don’t want flowers right?”

yeah, you’re in love with him. dorky, stupid rin with his abstract ways of showing love. you love how he remembers details like this since way back when you were kids. you love his awkwardness and his acts of service. you love him and everything he has and all that he doesn’t.

“thanks, i love it,” you gush, taking the bouquet from him, accepting your parents’ offer to help take a picture of the both of you.

they take a ton of pictures.

in one of them, rin kisses your temple and you think you might melt. in another, you kiss his cheeks in return and he’s a deep shade of red. those are before the last picture where he turns you to face him and presses a kiss on your lips, earning a few whistles from the people around you.

you punch him playfully on the chest for that. you hear him chuckle and that might be your favorite sound ever.

rin surprises you too, because the next thing you know, he’s dragging you along with him, running to his car parked by the curb; you’re wondering how he even had the time to rent it.

“where are we going?”

your gown is long discarded into the back seats and rin only offers you a smirk in return. he’s not telling, and you roll your eyes and let it be.

whatever it is, you’re excited.

maybe it’s the fact that you had been thinking the worst up until this point. or maybe it’s the fact that he has his hand on your bare thigh. hell, it could even just be the fact that you’re sitting in a car with the prettiest guy you’ve ever met. but your heart is beating out of your chest and for the first time, you feel like this can be nothing but good news.

rin proves you right, because he takes you somewhere unfamiliar and then tells you why exactly he’s been distant the past week. he takes your hand and leads you through the front doors of what he now calls “our house”.

everything you’ve ever told him you wanted in your dream house; wooden overheads, small koi pond out back, a beautiful rooftop garden with a wooden porch swing.

everything.

he made it real. he made your dream house without you asking. he’s telling you he’ll move here if that’s what it takes to be with you. he tells you he loves you more than he can ever imagine loving anything else at all. he says that he’ll always be with you, and this time he doesn’t want to be apart to do it.

he asks you, “will you try to make it work with me?”

as if he even needs to.

if anyone asked you back then if you thought rin was capable of any of this, you’d say no. because the boy you knew at five is passive, quiet, not the kind to make declarations like these.

yet here he is, almost twenty years later, promising to put you first and make this last because he’s sure this is what he wants.

“itoshi rin,” you slowly call his name, roping your arms around his shoulder while the both of you look at each other and only each other as you stand on the staircase landing. “what would you have done if i said no?”

because this is all extravagant—rin put his everything into this. dug up all the memories of your dream house, ran himself haggard just to get all of this done on time, and who knows what else because he kept all of this from you?

rin has a straight face, beautiful teal eyes rolling to the side as he contemplates. “guess that was never an option in my head.”

“you’re so stupid,” you tease, pressing a kiss onto his soft lips and relishing in the fact that this is just the first kiss of many to come.

because he’s now here. here with you. and he’s here to stay.

“guess that’s why i need you around to take care of me,” rin teases back, biting his lower lip and smirking at you.

you jump up and he catches you, your legs crossed behind his back as he carries you to the kitchen, setting you down on the countertop.

“so, itoshi rin,” you say again, suppressing a grin. “does that mean you’re gonna make me your wife one day?”

rin sighs and rolls his eyes, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “okay, trouble, dial back a bit now. one step at a time.”

he’s lying through his teeth, a ring passed down through his family for generations already nestled neatly in the hidden compartment of the nightstand in the bedroom. he’s lying—but you don’t need to know that. not yet.

you’re all trouble, and all beautiful and all his and rin is going to marry you someday.

because he may be dumb in a lot of ways, may be a little awkward and terrible in most situations and not the friendliest guy out there. but somehow you chose him and you always did and you always will so he’s not going to let you regret that decision.

so before you can make a comeback and expose him for really wanting to marry you, he kisses you to shut you up, and you know anyway.

because you’ve known rin since you were five, playing hide and seek in the playground. you never won because you could never find him. but you think now you have; you’ve found him and he’s not going anywhere. not anymore.

“i’m never gonna let you leave me, itoshi rin.”

he chuckles, “i’m all yours, trouble.”

#bllk x reader #itoshi rin x reader #rin x reader #blue lock x reader #rin itoshi x reader #itoshi rin fluff #blue lock fluff #itoshi rin x you #rin x you #rin x y/n #itoshi rin x y/n #bllk x you #bllk x y/n #rin itoshi x you #rin itoshi x y/n #૪ aeri’s fics !

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audiblehush · 2 months

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Okay, so post-P1 trailer, the thing I’m MOST excited about for is Colin and Penelope’s ACTUAL friendship!

Because while Colin has always viewed Penelope as a genuine a friend, she has always had the added lense of “I’m in love with you,” and that changed the way she interacted with him.

But now, to Penelope, Colin has essentially closed the door on him ever seeing her in a romantic light, both with his end of S2 words AND their “friends” handshake in S3. “Okay,” she probably thinks, “that dream is dead but friends. I can do friends.”

But what this opportunity does is this give us Penelope functioning in this friendship as an ACTUAL friend, and not just “yes sure friends but I can’t get the heart out of eyes enough for it to be truly genuine because I’m wearing a mask so you like me” - That didn’t make her a bad person; it made her a girl with a strong crush worried about his view of her; it’s normal! But it also obviously led to her putting on airs around him, while also having him on a pedestal and not seeing him as a fully realized person.

But these “lessons” allow for them to be around one another without expectation. That scene of them giggling in the ballroom like dorks, as if no one else was around them??

ABSOLUTE PERFECTION!!!!

Colin will begin to see Penelope as a true friend because she’ll LET him; she’ll drop her guard enough to be real instead of trying to impress him all the time. THAT is (hopefully) when Colin starts to realize his feelings: because Penelope will finally be her authentic self… while feeling more confident because of her new wardrobe. He’ll be attracted to her new confidence, and her ACTUAL personality she’s letting him finally see, not just her physical glow-up (the candle symbolism!!!!).

COLIN will now have heart eyes for her, and maybe the one to have her on a slight pedestal… only for the LW reveal to happen and shake his world… letting us see his hurt, his anger, his worry…

Once they work through all that is when these two see each other for who the other REALLY is, flaws and all, fighting to grow individually, as a friendship, as a COUPLE… and choose each other every time.

THAT. IS. MY. JAM.

I still have my concerns about the season. I do NOT want Colin only realizing his feelings once some other guy pays her mind. I NEED him to already be struggling with and analyzing his feelings before Debling get involved. If I had to guess, it will be more than Colin is like “okay, I’m pretty sure I have feelings for Penelope, but how do i know for SURE when I’ve thought that before?” (thanks S1…) … but then Debling comes along looking for a wife, and Colin is suddenly between rock and a hard place because now he has a sort time limit to sort through really complicated feelings.

Violet says “ what more could SHE want?” mostly likely about Penelope and Debling, because Debling is wealthy, titled, and has strong interests and beliefs he is committed to (based on his promo info, anyway). This has already been an insecurity of Colin’s since S1. He’s a third son (with wealth, yes), but he has been searching for “his purpose” for ages now; it’s all over S2 how lost he is and how that frustrates him. His family tends to tolerate him at best and kind of ridicule him at worst, and so he flits by being easy-going and “charming” when he just wants to know who is and be accepted for it. So Violet says all this and Colin says “but you said friendship is the best foundation” and she tells him to follow his heart.

But that’s the problem: Colin struggles to KNOW HIS OWN HEART, and not just romantically! So I just want to know how much of his feelings for Pen has he grappled with at that point? How much exploration outside of his Pen stuff has he done regarding his own person? Because he IS a person outside his relationships, but HE doesn’t feel that way.

EDIT: Also, ALSO Yes, Colin is hyping pen up, but I want her to hype HIM up once she sees that he’s not as confident as he acts. She’s seen glimpses of that in S2, but S3 can let her be like “actually, you are AMAZING…” and without romantic intentions, just her telling her friends he has so much to offer the world.

I’m also scared Penelope will make some awful choices (Nicola hinted at this in interviews) and like, i get it we need conflict, but my poor heart can only take so much…

At the end of the day, it’s all speculation. It’s so hard to say with how trailers are cut, and I know they can’t include it all, and most people are here for the romance so that is what they would lean into… so I’m really trying to avoid doom-theorizing, or even getting attached to things I WANT to happen. We won’t know until it’s out, so I’m just trying to contain both feelings of nervousness AND excitement.

I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH, YOUR HONOR!!!!

#polin #bridgerton #penelope featherington #colin bridgerton

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kelocitta · 1 year

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Hey I was just wanting to ask if you some tips on drawing Slugcat legs. I really want to be able to draw these little cuties and I have everything else done but the legs (specifically poses and action) is really tough for me

It'll depend heavily on how you actually wanna do their legs, but since your asking me I'll assume you like how i do them- I draw them digitigrade when in motion, which basically means that the weight of the animal is carried on the on the toes (the other is plantigrade, which means the back of the foot makes contact with the ground when moving.) This is important since it changes how the leg tends to be formed and rest, but slugcats have a lot of flexibility here.

The other thing to keep in mind is that slugcats are *sleek* and tend to be smooth no matter what pose they're in, so you can hide the specifics of the legs under this and squash and stretch them as you see fit. Think about how fur or feathers tend to hide exactly how the body looks (and thats why so many animals look weird when wet and all that stuff lays flat) As for how I do it, I try to keep slugcats to a tube or triangle shape with most of the weight/fat being in the hips and tail. In most cases, you can get away with just imaging the leg as a flexible ball, and treat the foot as a point (like your pulling on a water balloon). The further the foot from the body, the more that ball stretches. The specifics of whats going *on* in the ball can be hidden unless its its really stretched out

Mentally I don't put much thought into it, but if you need more structure think of the bones of the leg as three sections- the foot, fibula/tibia (Lower leg bones) and femur (Upper leg bone/thigh). Digitigrade and plantigrade tend to favor certain positioning, but ultimately the only major focus is on how the foot functions. Digitigrade in particular tends to favor this sort of 'z' formation even when fully stretched (Humans, in contrast, are plantigrade, and our legs can be fully straighten out even if they still fold the same way). So if your going for that you'll always want to keep a bit of a 'z' shape even if your stretching it waaay out. When at rest, I keep the foot of the slugcat flat. But anytime it's in motion or would be active they shift weight to their toes. You could keep them fully plantigrade, but personally I think digitigrade allows for easier shows of motion and more natural looking action shots with the upright posture if you dont want to stretch the leg out fully. Also i just like the look of it more. (If you want to get into biology more, this would normally be hard on the legs weight-wise, but I like to imagine slugcats are mixed tripedal rather than strict bipeds, and make use of their tails as a third grounding point.)

And heres a very quick run over some of the official cutscenes to show similar:

I personally just wing it when it comes to the sizes of those sections, but a general rule of thumb is that everything gets shorter as you go down- the upper leg has the longest bones, then the middle leg, then the foot. A lot of that is hidden in the body of the slugcat, but keeping that in mind might help keep the leg length feeling natural. (But the biggest secret is that your drawing a fake, stretchy blobby animal so you can bs a lot and be imperfect and honestly just do whatever in a lot of cases and not end up with something that noticeably wrong. This DOES get a little harder if you draw them more lithe or cat like, just because that exposes the leg more) And lastly, if cutscene art isnt helping and you might benefit from a real life reference- rather than using an actual cat I would actually recommend mustelid like a ferret, otter or stoat. They're plantigrade rather than digitigrade, but their form and posturing is a little bit closer to the slugcat and it might help with visualizing the way the legs can sink into the body. I will give a heads up that these are little predators so general search results do tend to show them hunting small animals like mice, if your sensitive to that stick to domestic ferrets for safer results.

Just remember to fatten them up- they're way longer and thinner than slugcats are

#rain world #ask #long post #sorry i edited a typo and it moved the read more irknfmldc #edit two: added some more regarding leg styles

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thetravelingmaster · 6 months

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Reasons Why you Should Check Out ROM

(readonlymind.com)

I've done a similar posts before for this site when I first joined up ROM as an author, but I feel like it deserves a little boost and some visibility out here as one of the many sites where one can enjoy erotic mind control literature. And also, because I'm a little selfish! I figure that if more people know about it, there's going to be more erotic stories to read.

Back when I joined, thanks to @arihi 's post on the matter during the 2018 tumblrapocalypse, I believe that there were barely 150 authors that published on the site, but as of today, that number has risen to 446. The list keeps growing and so does the variety of stories available.

Much like mcstories.com, the site is very easy to navigate and search through, even if you aren't 'logged in' as an author or reader. It offers us simple ways to search out and find the stories or authors we most want to read about. They've done an awesome job with the tag system so that regardless of which story you are reading, you can click on a tag to see what other stories that have the same theme.

It's a lot like a porn site actually, but for mind control themes.

And speaking of the tags...

The search function is rather advanced. Not only can you click a specific tag to see which stories have them, but you can also use the 'advanced search' to combine them and refine your search. You can add as many as you want to really find out if a specific theme is available. In fact you can also exclude tags to make sure you only get the stories you truly want.

Of course, when you do find a story you like, the author name will be a link to their page, which will list their stories as well as an introduction about themselves if they chose to add one. Since the site is all about open discussion, they accept self promotion so you can expect to find contact information on authors you like or even a link to other sites they post on.

Another very useful thing you'll find on their page, which I haven't seen on any other MC site before, is the 'story suggestion' link. There, you'll find all the stories the author recommends.

I've found that it's a great way to discover other authors because if you enjoy someone's writing, there's also a good chance you'll enjoy reading the stories they've enjoyed and recommended. Plus, if the author is so inclined, they can do more than just list off a bunch of stories, but also add a comment as to why they enjoyed it. I personally try to always add a little something to entice those that end up on my list.

Another feature I truly enjoy as an author is the fact that you can always go back an edit your stories because you always have full control of what is posted. Honestly, if I had discovered this before I opened up my own website, there would have been no need for me to do it. Although, I might have been a little disappointed about the fact I couldn't add the lovely images that inspire me so much... hehehe

But regardless, as an author that has many stories with many chapters, I've quickly discovered how easy it is to organize my stories because I can add a new chapter to an existing story, which is great because the reader doesn't have to look for previous chapters. Plus, you can add titles and even small descriptions to each, which will show up in the story index. In addition, you always get a word count for each chapter (or full story in the story list) so you know how long it should take you to get through it.

Speaking of readers, the site offers a little more than just a well organized and searchable site.

Well... If you register that is!

You don't have to post anything though, so registering is simply like creating an account. What you get for registering are a few fun bonuses like the ability to 'snap' a story you liked. Which is basically the equivalent of a 'like' here on tumblr. As an author, it's always a great inspiration to add chapters when I notice that one of my stories becomes popular and I know readers want more. It's also a great indicator for readers, as you well know!

Another bonus you get by registering is being able to comment on each chapter. I love the comments section because it not only gives me the ability to get feedback, but it also allows registered people to tag each other and reply to comments. As an added bonus, once you register, you get access to a notification page and if someone's replied or tagged you, you'll be notified there.

Speaking of notifications...

As an author, I get a bunch of notifications every time a user 'snaps' one of my stories, leaves a comment or recommends it to others. But as a reader, I can also 'follow' specific authors and be notified when ever they publish a new story or add a chapter to an existing one. But hey, that could be bothersome too so you ALSO have the option of just following ONE specific story so you are sure to know when the latest chapter drops. I'll admit, I use this option a lot!

Another option you may notice in the above image is the 'Read Later' option. I've used that as both a place to list off stories I like to read multiple times, as well as the obvious happenstance where I find a good one I want to read, but don't have the time.

As you ALSO may have notice, there are well known authors publishing their stories there too. @scifiscribbler, @jukeboxemcsa, @darthkyra, @ellaenchanting, @hypnoticharlequin and @skaetlett, to name a few you might know from tumblr.

If you can't get enough of reading MC stories, then this site will definitely help to feed your cravings. It's still relatively new and small when compared to others, but so far, it's proven its potential for growth.

The more the merrier

#news #ROM

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 2 months

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Obligatory, I don't think I'm technically wrong, but I know I could be an asshole, I think I'm justified, I wanna know what other ppl think, etc,

This is mult. fandom related and I'm 25 and have been on Tumblr for approx 10 years so I'm not speaking as someone new to either Tumblr or fandom spaces

AITA for reporting art and fic as spam when it's tagged as something else in a tag I'm searching for?

This applies to many fandoms I'm in not just one so I feel no need to list them since it's not like personal beef or fandom specific drama but basically as I'm sure many people do when I want to see fan art or even the occasional fic for my favorite character I'll go into their character tag via Tumblr search, it's one of the few things I enjoy about this website is it's semi functional tagging and search system. But more often and usually lately I've been finding a lot of stuff in say character A tag that doesn't have character A in it, it's a drawing of character B that's been tagged with the main fandom tag, B, and every other main character. I know its so the art or fic gets more views but it's annoying ESPECIALLY if it's fic because not to generalize but fics tagged like that usually dont have a read more either so I have to scroll past this massive block of text that's not only a fic I'm not interested in, but one that's incorrectly tagged for a character I'm trying to find content of so they're the ones I tend to report as spam the most over art which is easier to scroll past ill admit

Even on ao3 it's a feux pas to tag characters that just "appear" if they're not central to the fic so they already shouldn't be tagging any character mentioned in their fic

This USUALLY tends to happen with people's oc posts as well and nothing against OCs they're just not my thing and if I were in the main tag I'd happily scroll by since I recognize their place but just like the other two I'll notice it's just a drawing of someone's oc or their OC's profile and it's tagged with the full main cast, thus showing up in the character I'm looking for's tag

Or character x readers and character A (and C, D, E, F, etc) will be tagged on a B x reader fic, obviously I have no interest in reading a fic like that especially when again the entire cast has been tagged not because they appear in the fic but for engagement

Also I'm not dumb I filter for fandoms so like if the tag I'm in is just "Steve" obviously I know it'll apply to multiple fandoms like Minecraft or avengers since that's a super nonspecific name/tag I'm talking about deliberate tagging within the same fandom

I also don't report the post if they're like "this is my OC his name is James Bond" obviously that's gonna show up in like the James Bond tag which while more specific would not count as spam since that's still a proper tag that would apply, it's the OC's name that just happens to be the name of another character

So, while I don't feel bad because I find these people annoying since they're obviously tagging things like I mentioned on purpose for attention but on the other hand I feel a little guilty because fan art and fan fic is important to any fandom but just, that is one of the definitions of a spam post is something improperly tagged on purpose

TLDR: I report posts in my favorite character's tag as spam when they don't have my favorite character but are tagged with them because they clog up the actual tag with garbage

#aita #am i the asshole

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she-is-ovarit · 10 months

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This is for all the younger gen Z women, particularly those of you within the ages of 17 to roughly 23. This is written from an American perspective, things might be a little different depending on where you're from.

I graduated high school with the unconscious assumption that certain systems will take care of me. The medical system would educate me on proper nutrition and health issues was probably my largest underlying assumption, but really I just had trust in institutions generally.

This isn't true. You are responsible for learning. As an example, I have been vegetarian since age 14. Nobody talked to me about proper nutrition, they just told me I needed to eat more protein.

I lived a decade of my life having shortness of breath, sleeping issues, clumsiness, cold hands and feet, having brain fog, extreme fatigue, heightened anxiety, etc. My period was extremely light and brown, it'd last for about 2 or so days. I'd go and talk about these problems, and telling doctors that I was vegetarian was one of the first things that came out of my mouth just with any visit because I knew at least that piece was important to communicate.

There was really no action taken over the span of about 10 years. I was told the period thing was normal, that changes for women. A sleep specialist let me know that feeling exhausted was also normal. The brain fog was probably due to anxiety. Here, try allergy medication (tbh that did help for other reasons). Then one day I just asked them to check my vitamin and mineral levels. Prior to this I didn't think you can make requests to doctors, I thought you showed up and they performed tests on what they recommended. With some reluctance from my primary care physician and some compromise because she said my insurance wouldn't cover testing things like B12 levels (I later found out from a nurse that, they would, she would have just needed to fill out extra paperwork), she did some tests.

I found out both my iron and D3 levels were low. What else could be?

I later learned pretty much all the vitamins common to be low for vegetarians were low. D3, magnesium, vitamin Bs, iron, and healthy fats. Bought some liquid vitamins (because the body only absorbs 10% of the pill supplements), began eating an avocado a day, my period became normal for the first time in nine years, and I am able to function.

Another example of how human systems won't educate you: I don't have feeling in some of my toes due to wearing incorrect sized footwear for years resulting in permanent nerve damage. I'm size 11.5 in women's, and I was relying on someone to tell me how proper footwear worked, because surely the guy in the minimum wage position working the footwear section would know.

Don't trust human systems to guide you through how certain things work. Seek specific specialists and experts when you can, and inform yourself on your own. Don't blindly trust search engines like Google, it's not like how it used to be when I was growing up and many millennial adults will tell you to "just google things" because we're used to finding actual substantive answers when we do. However, now, usually whoever pays is who makes the first page or two of search engines, it has nothing to do with what information is "most correct". Don't be afraid to request certain tests be done by doctors or certain referrals made to different specialists.

Edit: And also, I've found general practitioners are terrible when you walk in and tell them about several different symptoms at one time. They're more used to treating one symptom at a time, and they treat the symptom not the root cause. If you go in with a runny nose, general practitioners are going to throw medications at you to try and treat the runny nose, not look deeper into what's causing the runny nose. It's equivalent to if you're in a boat and it's sinking, they're bailing out water without actually fixing the hole or trying to figure out where it is, with the exception of emergency situations and even then it depends.

#tangent #health #nutrition #gen z #medical system #healthcare #women's health

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friendlybowlofsoup · 9 months

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Another Update

Hello Friends,

I have a rather long (but optimistic!) update to share with you all today. As many of you are probably tired of reading these kind of posts, I have a TL;DR here, but I did want to share what has been on my mind in that past half-year that I haven't been here.

It has been rough, and busy as always, but I think I'm finally facing myself and my project for the first time in a very long time.

TL;DR (it's actually long, I have a lot to say (*_ _)人)

I soul-searched and decided to stop compromising on my own feelings with regards to this project. I gave in to everything I wanted to do.

Plot changes, which means some character changes, which means some of the demo is outdated.

GotRM will be switching over to Twine.

----

OH MAN DID I SUFFER THE LAST FEW MONTHS

After my previous update, I hunkered down and really analyzed how I wanted to proceed with GotRM as a project. Because even prior to that post, I had already been going through long periods of hiatuses (which you are all aware of), and while I didn't lie about school taking up my time, I was also harboring a growing dissatisfaction with my own writing that really killed my progress for a long time.

So after everything had settled, I sat down and forced myself to peel apart my work. I know I said I would answer asks, but I uninstalled all of my social media and put aside this blog to focus. I made a note of all the things I liked and didn't like, and I made a list of things I wanted to change or improve on. The biggest point was that I also looked at my efficiency during actual writing sessions: how much of my time was spent writing vs. fighting with code? How could I change that?

And after a lot of deliberation, I figured there were a few things I had to change from the ground up, summed up in four points:

My working style was super incompatible with grad school. I can't spend 20-30 minutes scrolling up and down CSIDE checking code or looking for narratives while also jumping between chapters to make sure events line up. As this story grows, the more difficult it becomes to keep track of all the branches, so I needed an alternative working method, which I am adhering to now, and it prioritizes efficiency.

I hated the way I was tracking and coding stats in-game. I have griped so much about coding stats, and I have adhered to such a rigid style that I really felt trapped whenever I was confronted with balancing them out. So I'm throwing that to the wind and redoing how I utilize and convey them. Player-side, this decision doesn't change much since I never fully utilized stats in the demo anyway, and the stats page with indicators will still exist, but I'm getting rid of stat bars and how I treat stat checks.

The story I want to write now is different from the one I started out with. I've known for a while that GotRM was becoming far more than the tiny, wishful novella that I wrote as a teenager. I held onto that old story for a long time, but there's just so much I want to change that I realized I'd been clinging to a story I no longer enjoyed writing. So I spent the majority of the last few months rewriting GotRM from scratch. I redid some worldbuilding, I changed a lot of plot points, and I fixed a lot of characters' backstories accordingly. This meant scrapping stuff from even the demo, but that turned out to not be the biggest issue because:

I wanted to branch away from ChoiceScript. Honestly, I never really cared about getting officially published, but the camaraderie in the forums and on Tumblr were why I committed to CS and CoG. However, ultimately, I really want the functionality that other tools can offer GotRM, and so after a long internal debate, I will be switching over to Twine. Fortunately, since I was rewriting everything anyways, this has been relatively painless, and passage mapping has made everything so much neater. I am trying my best to make it up to chapter 2 before I release the new demo, so please look forwards to that!

And so yes, I am still here, chugging along.

I love this game and this story: it's been my creative escape for as long as I could remember, and you can imagine how frustrated I was when I realized I was starting to dread working on it.

I am forever learning more about myself and my writing style, and this is simply more of that journey. Thank you everyone for sticking around, for joining the discord, and for checking up on me--that I have all of you has truly been a dream.

Hopefully more updates to come soon! I understand that there may be questions about these new changes, so please ask away! I will (try) to release some asks that I've been working on in the drafts too, but I will wait until at least tomorrow to release them so that this post doesn't get drowned out immediately.

And as always, with a lot of love,

FriendlyBowlofSoup (Mei)

#writing update

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koolades-world · 2 months

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Your Umbrella (solomon x reader)

It'd been a long day. The rain poured down like the heavens weeping. He had forgotten to bring his umbrella from home. Resolved to the only good part of his day being getting to get to bed, he set off to Purgatory Hall through the onslaught of rain.

As he walked, he contemplated his life, staring down at the sidewalk. Simeon and Luke had headed back at the end of the school day, but he had to stay behind to help out with setting up for tomorrow's lesson in potions since he'd agreed to help since he knew a thing or two. At the time, he was all for it, but now that he was actually there, he couldn't be dreading it more. The last thing he wanted was to help teach a lesson.

Maybe his social battery was just finally drained, after all these years. Maybe RAD had finally been the thing to wear him down. Or, maybe he just needed to power through it. He had no clue what he needed. But, he had to figure it out, or it he wouldn't find the answer he was searching for. That's that way it'd always been.

Despite always seeming chipper, he wasn't sure how much of that he had left in him. He'd honestly lost track of how old he was at this point. He vaguely remembered his birthday, but for a while, it stopped mattering to him because despite the passage of time, his physical body showed no signs of aging. Most of the demons around him knew this, and it felt like common knowledge. But something none of them had considered was the state of his psyche. The human brain wasn't meant to function for an indefinite amount of time like his. He wasn't sure what it felt like to be normal anymore. Was he even human anymore? Even if he was, he wasn't sure he really enjoyed it anymore. Anything that was joyful about being human he felt like he lost long ago.

Being surrounded by demons who were hundreds of thousands of years older than him was troubling at times like this. Sure he was young by comparison, but that thought didn’t comfort him. He should've died a long time ago. Yet he was still here, and it felt as if he was rotting away from the inside out. They didn't stop to consider the toll of spending so much time with them was taking on. And, it wasn't even like it was anything they did on purpose. He wasn't trying to discredit their efforts of course, but they just didn't know what it was like to be human. If he didn't understand himself, how could they?

At this point, it just felt like he was dragging himself through the days. He honestly wasn't sure how he'd made it this far, or how he'd done this in the past. He felt like a dead man walking. He felt like he was wasting away.

But that's when he met you.

Mc made him feel young again, like he finally had a place to belong. Someone that kind of understood him and the struggles of being human. He didn't know what he'd do without you. You breathed the life back into his daily routine, by doing all sorts of little things you probably didn't even think twice about. You actually understood his struggles, and he felt as if turning to you was embracing the sun's rays. He smiled to himself as he continued to shuffle through the rain. He found himself thinking of you more and more as of late. You were nothing but the sparkle of joy in his day.

Behind him, he heard someone splashing through puddles through the din of rain. As he turned around, with the echo of the smile still on his face, he saw the very person he was thinking about. You had a cute pink umbrella in hand that was proabaly a gift from Asmo, blocking the rain from directly hitting you. However, you were still pretty soaked and water was practically dripping from your RAD uniform.

"Ah! You caught me. I was hoping I could sneak up on you and jump on your back." You walked over to him and immediately pulled him under your umbrella.

"You're so interesting." Solomon found himself laughing a little at your antics.

"What're you doing out here all by yourself? I went looking for you and was told you left in this awful weather." You immediately reached up and brushed his bangs out of his face so you could see his eyes. He reeled for a second, his heart thumping, before remembering he had to respond.

"Oh, I just wanted to get back to Purgatory Hall. Simeon took my bag home with him when he left at normal dismissal, and the rain didn't seem too bad when I left. Clearly, I was wrong." He tried to smile and brush it off, but you saw through him.

"Are you upset again? You don't have to tell me why, but let me just be with you and try to cheer you up, if you'll let me." The smile faded from your face a little, and he saw the concern shine through.

He didn't have it in him to speak, so he just nodded. You grabbed one of his hands with one of yours unoccupied with the umbrella. The way you quickly pulled him close and covered him with your umbrella felt oddly fitting to him. You were quick to grow close to him, for whatever reason, and he felt as if when he was around you, it was alright to feel how he was feeling. "Let's go do something crazy! We're both already wet, so what'd you say to dancing in the rain somewhere, then heading to Purgatory Hall to enjoy a movie together? Your favorite, of course. We might get sick, and while magic could solve that, that just means we could take a few sick days together." You leant into his side, placing your chin on his shoulder.

"I'm following you, Mc." He felt himself begin to smile again. He couldn't lie about how enamored he was with you. He couldn't say no to you. You made him happier, like he didn't just have to let the days bleed together. Not everything was going to go his way, but that's alright. At least he knew you'd be by his side.

Maybe being human wasn't so bad after all.

#obey me #obey me!#obey me x reader #obey me asmo #obey me solomon #omswd #obey me shall we date #obey me! shall we date #obey me simeon #obey me luke

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theminecraftbee · 6 months

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second’s slightly arbitrary guide to vault hunters knowledge unlocks

so, one of the main questions I see new vault hunters players have is “which mods should I unlock in what order?” unlike skills or even, if expensively, expertises, mod unlocks in vault hunters are completely irreversible, which means they can be kind of intimidating for new players. so here’s my (somewhat arbitrary) guide to what to unlock! keep in mind I’m not a “top player” or anything, so these might not be the PERFECT meta picks, just a guide for new guys.

also if your question is “but I have one knowledge star and am like level 5 what do I unlock NOW”, the answer is probably vault compasses if you’re getting lost, either stack upgrades or double pouches if you’re having inventory management issues (depending on whether “numerous stacks of common items” or “many types of items” is currently your larger problem), or storage drawers if overworld storage is giving you nightmares.

additionally, my biggest unlocking mods advice is to check how much the thing you want to do costs in materials before unlocking it. nothing sucks more than unlocking a cool mod and only realizing you need an echo pog to interact with it and you’re only level 15 afterwards, after all!

anyway let’s go, general guide beneath the cut.

STORAGE MODS

these mods give you the first three without price increases before they start getting more expensive, which is useful, since people almost always combine more than one solution. even after they start getting more expensive, it’s only +1, so this is a category you should get the thing you want or need in when you want it without worrying about it locking you out of other options later.

Storage Drawers are the backbone to basically everyone’s storage system. they work fairly simply: each drawer can store a certain number of stacks of a single item. add upgrades to increase the number of stacks or make the drawers automatically void excess. if they are connected by other drawers or trim to a drawer controller, you can double-click the controller to move everything in your inventory that goes into a drawer to one of them, and that controller acts as a port for other storage interacting with it. because they can store an absurd quantity of items, are way cheaper than basically every other storage option, and are useful right up to the late game, these are by far and away the most common first storage option. I can’t recommend them enough. even early game before you can afford a controller they clean up your inventory SIGNIFICANTLY with the number of stacks they can hold.

Colossal Chests are a trap earlygame. unlike regular chests, you can’t use quark’s sorting or searching functions, which means they’re effectively the “hiding it under the bed” solution to chest monsters. however, mid-game once you actually have another storage mod, these become fantastic, since they’re much cheaper and use much more common materials than storage disks and capable of storing large amounts of items. the largest one you can make in vault hunters is 5x5 for the record. a lot of people like using this with ssn to help reduce lag.

Simple Storage Network is… controversial. it’s the cheapest early way to make a searchable storage network, but it gets very laggy the more chests you attach to it, and many of a storage system’s most useful functions are no longer possible to craft in vault hunters because of it. also, it eats items with NBT data, so never store crystals, jewels, gear, or similar things in it. my general recommendation is to do whatever you want in singleplayer (although if you want a crafting interface you’ll need to upgrade out of this eventually), but in multiplayer only use it if you’re using colossal chests or something else that prevents you from having to make massive silos of chests, and save your server the headache. it’s only one knowledge point, though, and it’s much cheaper generally than the digital options, so I totally understand why people go for it, and it can super be worth it early game when you just need to be able to search your inventory! just be aware of the caveats.

Applied Energistics 2 is one of your two main digital storage options. digital storage should be your end goal with a storage system! it is the more complex of the two. my understanding is that it’s cheaper if you know what you’re doing, as well as more powerful, but that it’s notoriously a beast for people who don’t know it to try to understand. if you don’t have good spacial reasoning skills maybe stay clear, but if you do and you like a more involved storage approach, go with this. also, be aware you’ll need something that can produce power in order to use this mod. (ae2 comes with power generation on its own, but I don’t remember if you can craft that in vault hunters or not.)

Refined Storage is the other of your two main digital storage options. digital storage should be your end goal with a storage system! compared to ae2, refined storage is fairly straightforward, but it’s slightly more expensive and a bit less powerful at its highest levels. it is the one I recommend to most people, though, just because “straightforward” is really valuable if you don’t want everything to be a puzzle. also, be aware that you’ll need a mod that can produce power to use this mod.

Mekanism QIO is a third digital storage option you can only use with Mekanism unlocked. my understanding is that it’s quite powerful, although it does not work with altar automation. most people won’t use this on account of mekanism being a pre-requisite and mekanism being fairly late-game, but if you want to use it, it’s almost certainly just as good of an option as the rest!

LOOTING MODS

the majority of these are pouch upgrades, but this also contains bulk soul dust recycling and the vault junk controller. these mods get more expensive by two points for every one you get, so the order does matter somewhat; remember for each mod in this category you get that is not “a bigger pouch”, the slightly further away bigger pouches get, and for each bigger pouch you get, the further away other inventory management gets. so it’s a balance for when you get what! that said, most players end up unlocking basically everything in this category eventually, because it’s all quite useful, and even at maximum price it doesn’t get as expensive as the production mods or big mods or big toys get. unlock things as you need them in this category. I tend to unlock things in this category whenever I have the knowledge stars to unlock it and nothing else I want to save up for at that exact moment!

Bigger Pouches are the vast majority of the unlocks here (being double pouches, belts, small backpacks, and large backpacks). they’re prerequisites for each other, so you have to unlock them one by one. normally, I unlock them when the pouches I have aren’t cutting it. that said you could just as easily get by with a small army of smaller pouches, you just won’t be able to fit as many upgrades! so this is a mileage may vary thing.

Stack Upgrades are the most useful pouch upgrades, and should be the first ones you buy. these are multiplicative by each other—two tier 2 stack upgrades in the same pouch don’t add 8x the number of stacks a single slot can hold, but 16x! these also mean pouches with a lot of stack upgrades can be a poor man’s storage drawers in a pinch. you will need these, get them before you upgrade past double pouches.

Refill Upgrades are one of the two QOL pouch upgrades. you can save this until late, but the ability to automatically always have a stack of an item (or, well, up to nine items!) in your hotbar is extremely handy for things like marking blocks, kiwis, and food, and helps save hotbar space and time managing inventory. I personally find this more useful than the feeder upgrade but that’s a preference thing.

Feeder Upgrades do one thing only: automatically have you eat a food (which can be controlled with a whitelist/blacklist) from the pouch it’s installed in when your hunger goes down. this seems sort of arbitrary in vaults since hunger doesn’t heal your health but it’s actually really nice and once you get used to it you’ll be so sad whenever you don’t have it. set the food it feeds you to vault sweets and literally never have to worry about your hunger bar again. this is normally either the last pouch upgrade I get or second-to-last (before big backpacks) but I could totally justify getting it way sooner.

Junk Controller is… interesting. it sometimes doesn’t play nice with pickup upgrades and pouches, although I think that’s fixes at this point. it automatically voids items you pick up in the vault that are on its list of controlled items. it’s capable of handling WAY more than a void upgrade can, but honestly I find the advanced void upgrade can do everything I need it to when it comes to voiding vault items, and the junk controller is pretty expensive. however, if you’d prefer not to have to use void upgrades and to never have to deal with vault junk again, I could see this being the thing for you!

Soul Harvester is pure QOL. it is so much faster than and so much more efficient than the soul diffuser that I recommend everyone get it at SOME POINT, if only to make processing things into soul dust more efficient, but if you don’t do much recycling it’s probably not very useful for you.

POWER MODS

this is the first category on the list that makes other mods in the category enough more expensive that the order you unlock in, and whether you unlock at all, matters, at +6 per mod. you will also almost inevitably need at least one of these no matter what you do. as such, this category can be overwhelming for people. luckily it has an answer! the answer is powah. you should get powah. yes I know it’s the most expensive one and means you’ll have to wait longer but you’ll thank me later.

Iron Generators are sort of a trap. they’re cheap at low levels and good for early game, but the cost for higher-level power generation is very high compared to how much power they make, they burn fuel whether something is currently drawing power or not, they don’t come with any kind of cables so you’ll need a handling mod to move the power or to place them directly next to the things they need to power, they can’t charge items like the mining gadget or the building gadget, and they make everything else in the category more expensive. however with all of that said: if all you’re doing is powering an RS system, then yeah, you’re probably fine to just use these forever and buying these as the cheap option is probably fine.

Powah is the most versatile of the options here and comes with literally everything you need to make a decent self-sustaining power grid. the best generators for most people are the solar panels, which only require direct sunlight, and thermo generators, which provide power as long as they’re above a heat source and provided water. a supplementaries sink (which doesn’t require a mod unlock) or a thermal expansion aqueous accumulator (which does) can do that job easily. additionally, batteries are really useful for various gadgets, the ender network lets you move power remotely, and it can charge items inside its energy cells. the main downside to this mod is that it’s a royal pain in the ass to actually CRAFT any of this; while most of the individual ingredients aren’t that expensive, there are normally many steps to any higher level craft and the base ingredients add up. luckily, mod boxes are really good with this mod, and you can normally get a decent system running from almost only those.

Flux Networks are vault hunters’s best option for storing and moving power around. this mod doesn’t come with power generation options on its own, but it’s the most powerful for transferring power around by far. a good purchase in tandem with another mod.

Botania Flux Fields allows you to turn botania mana into power. it doesn’t come with any cables, so you’ll need a handling mod to move the power around, but as several botania mana flowers can be made self-sustaining, this is probably an interesting option if you already have botania before you need any power.

Thermal Dynamos are like if iron generators were actually good. they require constant fuel like an iron generator, but they have a much wider variety of things they can burn and actually produce meaningful power. they require thermal expansion to unlock, though, so I’ve never used them by virtue of the fact that by the time I have thermal expansion, I almost always also have powah. they also don’t come with cables.

Mekanism Generators are the best solution for producing very large amounts of power. the mekanism reactor is more than the vast majority of players will ever need, but if you’re getting deep enough into mekanism that you need a nuclear reactor’s level of power generation, you should accept no substitute. once again though for most people a large powah setup will normally cover your needs, this is, quite literally, the nuclear option.

HANDLING MODS

these mods don’t do much on their own, but they make handling output from other mods much easier. they make each other somewhat significantly more expensive, but tend to be overall cheaper than power mods, so even with that +5 knowledge points required for each new mod in the category, it’s not normally hard to get more than one. these are a very “get them as you need and/or want them” category, but you’ll almost always find yourself wanting at least one, if not more, to get things done.

Modular Routers are probably the best mod in this category. they do just about everything, able to wirelessly transfer items, fluids, or power, sure, but also able to activate things like a player, automatically kill mobs, vacuum items (or experience!) from the ground, and probably more. a common sight in many vault hunters bases are the signature laser beams of routers shooting things around. they can be a little complicated to understand at first and I highly recommend watching someone like iskall use them when you’re starting out, but once you understand them you will soon learn to love them. they work by creating a router, then placing “modules” in that router that tell it what to do. you can also add upgrades to the routers! this is my biggest recommended handling mod; if you only get one, this is the one that can do most everything anything else in this category can.

Pipez are simple: they’re fairly cheap pipes that move items, fluids, power, or gasses from one place to another. this is the quick and cheap option for handling, and are often the most intuitive. the downside is that you physically need to lay the pipes between places, so they take up a lot of space. fun bonus fact: at a certain level of power draw, a power pipe with an advanced pipe upgrade will be MUCH cheaper for rate of power transfer than using powah cables. I learned this the hard way. in general these are fast, minimally laggy, and surprisingly useful, especially for fluids (or gasses if you’re using mekanism).

XNet is presumably powerful but I don’t know anyone who uses it on account of it also being kind of complicated. my understanding is that if you have any kind of item/energy/etc transfer that you want to apply interesting logic to, this is your solution, so it’s probably nice as the “brain” of your base. I can’t say much else because I don’t use it though.

Dark Utilities is a small but handy mod. its biggest draw are its plates, which are items that can be placed like a carpet that do things to entities that step on them. most notable are the vector plates, which push a mob in the direction they point and the various damage plates, including a non-lethal damage plate that’s great for exp farms or the player damage plate, which makes mob drops fully AFK-able. also not to be discounted are a few redstone odds and ends (including a randomizer) and special blocks that only certain types of entities can pass through (great for filtering in farms). this mod is almost always recommended in tandem with ispawners, but can be useful in all kinds of farms outside of that too.

Iron Furnaces are basically a fancy QOL mod: they let you make really absurdly fast furnaces, including ones that are powered by power instead of fuel. they’re almost surprisingly useful though; a fast furnace can save you a whole lot of time!

Automatic Genius is—well, if you’re at the point of unlocking automatic genius, you probably already know, to be honest. it’s auto-crafting, it’s useful, it practically has the entire game as prerequisites so. there’s that.

BIG MODS

this category is one of the ones that gets to people, because it’s one of the +12 categories. whenever you pick a mod in this category, make sure it’s one you want, because the next one will be very expensive! chances are if you’re a modded player, you already have an opinion about which of these four is the most useful to you, but if you aren’t, I’ll attempt to give some tips.

Thermal Expansion is probably the easiest of the four for a new player to understand. it requires power generation, but most of this mod works by simply building a machine, which then does that machine’s one thing. (for example, the redstone furnace, which cooks things using redstone, or the pulverizer, which crushes things.) I personally really like thermal; it’s extremely straightforward and compact and decently powerful as an earlygame option. it also sort of has ore doubling; you can pulverize raw chromatic iron to make two raw chromatic iron dust, which can then be smelted to two ingots, but for other ores the ratios are a bit messier and often comes out to “just use fortune and a normal furnace unless you need the secondary products”. still, very useful as a mod!

Create is a mod you probably already know; it’s taken the world by storm, after all. building create contraptions is fun and more intuitive than redstone and routing power to a lot of people, and it has a number of very useful tools, such as the crushing wheel and its ability to ore double, the various ways you can convert items using fans, and one of the very few ways to automatically farm trees in vault hunters. the main downside of create is that it’s deceptively expensive in larimar and chromatic iron and that it can’t produce power. also, in my experience, create is the laggiest of the big mods, although your mileage may vary on that front.

Botania is a magic mod that’s secretly actually a tech mod. it doesn’t require power, instead using its own power called mana, and can be used to do a large number of useful things, including farming trees, making cobwebs and other rare and hard to make altar ingredients, and making some very pretty decorative blocks. personally, I always had trouble wrapping my head around botania for some reason, which is silly since I’ve somewhat figured out mekanism, an objectively more complicated mod. of the four big mods, botania definitely helps you get the most hard-to-get and unique blocks, but it’s the only one that doesn’t have any kind of ore doubling.

Mekanism can get you as much as quintupling your ores, has a number of fairly high-powered machines, but is also really complicated in a lot of places and requires an entire power grid to use effectively. also, the mek suit isn’t in vault hunters, if you wanted that. I love mekanism I think it’s very fun also you should NOT get this as your first big mod unless you have so many resources to spare. make this your second one at the very least, it’s VERY late-game, but enjoy it when you do.

UTILITY MODS

unlike the last several categories, these don’t make each other more expensive ever! instead, these are all mostly small but useful mods that don’t fit in another category. whenever you want one of these go ahead and buy it, there’s no reason not to and it won’t make anything else more expensive!

Vault Compasses is one of the most useful mods in the game. all it adds is a vault compass, which is a compass that always points back to the entrance of the vault. you can also hold down shift+right click to set it to point to a new point in the vault, such as a loadstone in an elixir vault or the last monolith in a defeat the guardians vault. it costs four netherite ingots, which is a lot in the early game when most people get this, but it’s VERY WORTH IT. you’ll never be lost again!

Elevators create a special block that, when above or below each other, let you jump to teleport up to an elevator above you or crouch to an elevator below you. they’re very useful in bases with verticality; I like to use them to hide a lot of my storage and mechanisms in a basement that’s invisible from the main build, lol, but they’re handy for any kind of similar thing. pro tip: you can disguise them as any block by right-clicking them with that block!

Trash Cans are what they sound like: a special block that permanently destroys what you put in them. they can have a whitelist/blacklist, and you can pipe or hopper items into them. they’re handy for things like getting rid of unwanted armor from mob farms or other junk items that would otherwise clog up your handling.

Waystones allow you to teleport to pre-determined locations; a waystone lets you interact with it to teleport to any other waystone you’ve found, if you have the mod unlocked, and the teleport pads teleport you to a specific other pad. they’re just extremely handy for getting around a server, and on my friends’ server we just give everyone a knowledge star to unlock these on day one so we can get to each other’s bases easier.

Torch Master gives you several tools for preventing mob spawning. there are ways to prevent both passive and hostile mobs from spawning, and to place large amounts of light. the mega torch has a pretty wide radius too, so it’s fairly easy to cover your whole base.

Altar Automation is the only prohibitively expensive utility mod; this is meant for use lategame. it can be bound to either an ae2 or rs controller, and then will automatically take items from that storage system to complete the altar for you, leaving your only job to hit the button and get the crystal. it’s very handy, but also deliberately meant for buying after you’ve mostly already got all the other mods you want.

BIG TOYS

all of these mods are fancy QOL mods. they all require power, so don’t get one before you have a power source! additionally, only building gadgets come with a way to charge, so make sure you either have batteries or a way to charge before getting these. at +12, this is once again a category where order matters. however, since they’re all QOL, it’s a less massively consequential choice than your choice of production or big mods. go with the one that vibes with you most.

Building Gadgets are tools to help you place blocks, copy/paste structures, swap blocks, and delete blocks. they’re held in your inventory but require power, which means they either need to be charged or you need to have a battery. luckily, they come with the enercell for charging. I can’t express enough HOW MUCH EASIER these make building large structures; the base building gadget alone speeds up building massively. I highly recommend these on any skyblock world just for sheer ease of building platforms, but also anyone who likes Big Buildings should probably consider them.

Weirding Gadgets are chunk loaders. they require power. not much else to explain other than the obvious “be careful on servers when you are leaving your farms loaded please”, I think.

Mining Gadgets is a mod that gives you a cool laser to mine blocks with. I love my mining gadget, it’s very fun, but fully upgrading a mining gadget is very expensive in chromatic steel (and in echo for the magnet and void upgrades) and a very, very solid argument can be made that the only advantage this thing has over a hammer is that it has a long range, the ability to automatically place lights, and the ability to stop liquids in their track. meanwhile, it has the very large disadvantage of requiring being charged with power, costing a lot to get upgraded, and not being able to mine more than a 3x3. it’s up to you if any of those benefits sound like they beat a hammer to you and you decide to get it.

Digital Miner is a mekanism device that automatically mines out everything in an area for you (rather like an old-school quarry). just place it in a location, give it power, and let it run! like most mekanism devices, this thing requires a lot of power, and it is, once again, arguably slower and more expensive than a hammer. however, it’s also fully automatic and requires no effort on your part to get a LOT of resources, so it can be very worth it for those who do not enjoy mining themselves!

PRODUCTION MODS

arguably even more consequential than the big mods you choose are the production mods. which production mod you go with will decide on a multiplayer server what is your “thing” and what requires trading; on singleplayer it will decide which altars will be easy for you and which will be hard. there’s also no right choice here (although I’d argue there are two wrong ones). at +12, it’ll be a bit until you unlock your second one, so choose wisely!

SNAD is a trap. it vastly speeds up the growth of things that can grow on sand but it’s just not worth the +12 to everything else for that alone—and that really is all you get. don’t get it.

Easy Piglins are less of a trap but still a trap. they allow you to put piglins in special boxes for trading, as well as make automatic traders. however they don’t really do anything that picking up a piglin, putting it in a hole near your portal, and throwing gold at it manually doesn’t do, so for the +12 to everything else, for my money, this one isn’t worth it.

Easy Villagers by contrast is worth it. while the ability to pick up villagers and easily re-roll trades doesn’t require unlocking this, the various villager blocks this mod unlocks are very handy for doing trades much easier. it also comes with one-block breeders, iron farms, and crop farms, and the ability to automate any of them, including the villager trades. personally I tend to find villager trades aren’t my main alter bottleneck, so I go for this last, but someone else may disagree with me on it, and honestly I don’t blame them. a solid choice.

Cagerium is one of the two mob farming options. cagerium works by creating terrariums for passive mobs, mob cages for hostile mobs, or a binding plate for boss mobs, and then putting spawn eggs you get from the vault in them. it then outputs that mob’s drops into a chest below, passively. you can put up to four eggs in a cage to make it faster, but you need a skeleton key to swap out what’s in a cage. also, it’s slow compared to ispanwers. however, it’s cheaper early game, doesn’t require building a farm, and is better at a few edge-case mobs (namely, boss mobs like the wither or ender dragon if you get one of those eggs and shulkers, because shulkers are a nightmare).

iSpawners is the other mob farming option. this lets you create an expensive item called a survival spawner that works like a regular vanilla mob spawner, only you can pick it up and move it, it’s much faster, you can swap what egg is in it whenever, and it is active in a much larger radius of the player. ispawners are more reusable and much faster at producing drops than cagerium, but they require infrastructure like a farm to be built around the survival spawner to be effective, and while the survival spawner is a one-time craft it’s a VERY VERY expensive one. which of the two you prefer is a matter of preference.

Botony Pots are one of the two plant-growing options. this mod lets you make pots that automatically grow plants over time, including plenty that can’t be farmed normally, such as spore blossoms or small dripleaf. the hopper botony pot has been made more expensive than it used to be, so it’s at parity or more expensive than swapping things out of a phytogenic insulator to have a lot of them, but for passively farming plants, botony pots are still king. the one plant it can’t do is any of the trees, however, so you will still need a solution for that.

Phytogenic Insulators require thermal expansion and power, and are your other plant farming option. they’re rather expensive, but they can be freely swapped through, can produce things like trees that botony pots can’t, and are much faster than botony pots (especially when maximally upgraded). like with ispawners and cagerium, this is a matter of preference for which you pick, but you’ll probably only need one of the two.

ALCHEMY MODS

these, thankfully, don’t require any strategy or explanation; you can only go one at a time, and each unlocked mod is a new upgrade to your existing vault potion (or vial to start with). each upgrade heals more health and has a stronger chosen effect. that said, no matter how high you upgrade, you always have the same number of charges. take these when you start needing that extra health!

and that’s everything! hopefully this is helpful for new players playing along with the hermits! happy vaulting!

#vh talk #vault hunters #things I do when I have insomnia apparently: this #I get asked sometimes what mods to pick and ultimately it’s a personal decision #but I thought maybe people would appreciate this guide?#so hopefully you appreciate this guide!

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0046incognito · 7 months

Note

also, do you think at some point you could make a CMY2K oc checklist, as in some do's and do not's when making an oc for it? I'd just think that'd be cool!! ^^*

i've been meaning to do something like this for a long time and y'know what i need a fun new way to procrastinate on these storyboards tonight

THE OFFICIAL CMY2K OC CHECKLIST

first off to get it out of the way: human OCs can be basically any kinda normal human person you could meet in jersey city acid city NJ circa 1999-2000, and for cyborgs it's pretty much the exact same, just humans with cybernetics; the only thing to note in that regard is that bio-cybernetics are still fairly New in the CMY2K universe and they function on windows 98-era technology, so they're big and bulky and clunky and not very graceful. cybernetics are also Not simply cosmetic, they're usually meant to be disability aids, but some super-rich get experimental cybernetics because it's fashionable

NOW onto the fun thing that i'm certain you were actually interested in: HALOSOFT LIVING COMPUTER ANDROIDS!!!!

A) PRIMARY FUNCTION

i'm starting with this because it's the most important defining part of a livicom's character, i think, since it determines what kinda features they'd be built with

basically, livicoms can be built for LITERALLY ANY JOB A HUMAN CAN DO; it's easier to list the things livicoms CAN'T be built primarily to do, which are:

1: making original art. sure, plenty of livicoms are built to perform music or copy prints, but the thought of a robot having original creative ideas is just silly and would be a waste of halosoft's resources, so they aren't produced. similarly, there aren't any android authors or journalists, but plenty of magazines and newspapers do have android employees for things like spellcheck/editing or photography, photography/"camera guy" is probably the most creative type job an android can get, but they're less like a photographer or cinematographer and more just a camera with legs

2: driving. their AI would just be far too dangerously easy to trick with fake road signs or painted lines, not to mention the whole trolley problem thing would risk a HUGE violation of the first law and put halosoft in SERIOUS ethical and legal trouble, so they're playing it safe and just avoiding the risk altogether. that said, there are still bots that do delivery-type jobs, just on foot, so it's just the jobs that Absolutely require driving a car that livicoms are Legally Forbidden From

3: any kind of executive leadership type position in any field. humans don't want to be bossed around by robots and a robot that bosses humans around won't sell [unless it's a more specific niche kinda bossing around, those ones sell like hotcakes] not to mention humans don't trust computers to make all the big decisions for them. the highest up the executive ladder a livicom ever gets is personal assistant to the big man. livicoms only get Actual leadership positions if they're bossing around Other Robots, not people; this is jack's function as a construction foreman.

besides those exceptions, livicoms can do literally anything you can think of! cooking, cleaning, general housekeeping, sanitation, delivery, entertainment, sexwork, acting, retail, construction, security, pest control, maintenance, newscaster, fuckin IDK paparazzi you name it a livicom can do it

B) SERIAL NUMBER/NAME

all livicoms are auto-assigned a serial number following a very simple pattern: the first four letters indicate their primary function, and the following three numbers indicate the order in which they came off the factory line. for example, SING-072 is a singing entertainer bot, VOLT-808 is a voltage control electrician bot, HELP-444 is a search and rescue bot, so on and so forth.

How Ev Er, one of humanity's most charming traits is its propensity for bonding with literally anything, and this includes robots. more people like robots than don't--granted, androids specifically are seen as a little less charming than less humanoid robots, people often think they're creepy or uncomfortable to be around or just fall too close to the uncanny valley, but in general, most humans like robots enough to at the very least nickname them, so they don't have to keep referring to them with a clunky serial number. some robots prefer their serial number or just don't like the name they were given by humans, but like that's the same with humans y'know

like the jobs, robot names can be basically anything, but it's very common for them to just be nicknamed based on their serial number. for example, BDSI-371, a bedside nurse, is named betsy, because BDSI kinda looks like it'd be pronounced similar to "betsy" when read phonetically.

there's also EXEC-013, an executive secretary bot, nicknamed teeny after the number thirteen in her serial, and her successor, EXEC-014, nicknamed forzie for the same reason.

RUSH-066, a traffic guard bot, nicknamed russe. VOLT-808, a voltage control electrician bot, nicknamed voltaire. all of these are canon examples, i could keep going, but you get the gist

C) LED COLOR

i used to be stricter about this, but for the sake of having more interesting character designs, i've started to loosen up

basically, every livicom has LEDs on their ears and shoes, and their eyes are the same color. this color, generally, is related to their primary function, and there are four Main colors that most primary functions can be sorted into:

PINK: any domestic job or one that focuses primarily on working closely with people as clients. this is usually things like housekeeping or teaching etc, and most personal bots that live with you in your home are probably gonna be pink unless they're a medical bot

BLUE: medical bots OR any kind of repair or maintenance. nurses are the same color as mechanics and electricians. if it fixes something or someone, it's probably blue. also, to avoid any "is there a doctor in here" "i'm a psychiatrist" type confusion, ALL blue bots regardless of job are pre-programmed to be skilled in first aid

GREEN: anything that works primarily with or for money, like retail or customer service or finance or business.

ORANGE: anything that needs to be seen from a distance. this includes entertainment and safety/security and anything else that'd be wearing a hi-vis vest like construction

of course, these aren't the Only colors an android's LEDs can be, but the vast vast VAST majority of livicoms Are these colors. exceptions are few and far between, but even then, the color still has something to do with their job.

for example, carmine was originally built for phlebotomy, IE taking blood samples, so xyr LEDs are red like blood.

mantid is pest control at a botanical garden, so his LEDs are pink while the rest of him is green so he matches the plants.

whiskey is a bartender, so instead of being green like other food service androids, he's orange to match both the color of liquor and the dim lighting in the bar he works at.

also, here's a special case: since blue LEDs are reserved for medical and repair bots, blue is the only color LED you Won't just find on any random non-medical android. saph is a paparazzi photography bot, which is a job Without a standard assigned LED color, and most of her is blue [like her name sapphire get it] But her LEDs are red. it's case by case!

D) AGE

robot age is weird. computers age and grow obsolete MUCH faster than humans do, so livicoms have significantly shorter lifespans. that said, they don't really age like, At All? the only thing that really decays with time is the health of their hardware and technology standards over time.

but as a general rule, all livicoms are adults EXCEPT hibiki, he is the only child because kid-bots are not mass produced, there'd be huge ethical concerns, and the only reason hibiki exists as he is is because he's a Custom model.

but besides him, all livicoms are born as adults with the standard base programming knowledge approximating the maturity, intelligence, and sense of an adult. livicoms are designed to learn and develop individual personalities over time based on experience, which i'll get to in a moment, but the standard base programming For said personality includes simple data determining how mature they should be based on their intended age.

it's basically like sims ages, you got young adults and older adults and the exact number in between is generally a guesstimate based on a sliding scale of "this robot acts like they have the same amount of life experience as a human of this age"

E) PERSONALITY

as i said, livicoms are shipped out with standard base personalities depending on not just their age, but also their primary function.

for example, a retail android on their first day on the job would already have a perfect customer service smile and helpful attitude, but not much else. the unique traits that make each livicom feel less like a mass-produced robot and more like a Person are developed over time based on experience, just like with humans. that customer service bot might grow to hate their job, but they can't stop working it because it's their Sole Purpose In Life, so that friendly smile turns into a sarcastic smirk as they pretend to give a shit about each and every customer.

let's look at some other specific examples: jack is a pretty clear one. he was originally a construction foreman bot, bossing other construction bots around, so he's stern and commanding, yet amicable and social, since he needs to be a good boss.

444 is a search and rescue bot who has come across more dead human bodies than he'd like, so he's become distant, unempathetic, and numb to the suffering of others.

mantid works in a place that gets a lot of human tourists visiting, but he's just pest control, not a tour guide, so he wasn't programmed with any social skills and instead of developing them, he's just become jumpy and always dreading the next person to speak to him mistakenly assuming he;s a tour guide and can tell them about all the flowers in the room.

all this to say: livicom androids are like people, they can have basically any personality, but it makes more sense to have one that lines up with their experiences. and also, the more recently an android came off the assembly line, the Less personality they'll have; they're brand-new, so they're still a blank slate!

F) OVERALL APPEARANCE

halosoft livicom androids are NOT human-passing and they never will be; they MUST look robotic at a glance, so no human skin tones. they didn't even start getting soft artificial hair strands instead of just hard plastic helmets until like 1994. however, they are still Androids, so they must be bipedal and a close enough approximation of a person, so no tank-bots. they Are supposed to be marketable to the general public!

a lot of how your livicom will look will depend on When it was built, so here are some general guidelines for that first

older livicoms [especially circa about 1992 and earlier] tend to be bigger and bulkier to compensate for bigger bulkier hardware on the inside, and their colorschemes tend to run closer to beige box computers, so mostly y'know. shades of beige and grey, mostly. it's good to look at historical computers to get an idea for colorschemes. shapes are mostly sharp and square or triangle. earphones especially tend to be just cubed bulky headphones.

newer livicoms [circa 1998 and on] tend to more closely resemble an imac G3, so they're rounder blobject-type shapes, and colorschemes tend to shift out to the extreme ends of the spectrum, IE instead of greys and beige, now it's closer to black and white, especially white because Y2K futurism is a very Chrome kinda future. they're also generally a little lighter and more compact as technology improves, but it's still windows98 type tech, so it remains pretty bulky. by the year 2000, it starts becoming a trend for humans to like androids with emotive cat ears, so that replaces earphones for a lot of them

android Hair wasn't invented until 1994, and standard colors until 1999 tend to be either "metallic tinted a similar shade to the LEDs" or "black that tints a certain way when the light hits it" or "just dark grey". come 1999, white hair like hibiki's starts becoming the new trendy look, but it'll take until at Least late 2000 for it to become actually Standard

also, for the most part, androids tend not to wear clothes, mostly due to overheating risk [these Are 90s PCs after all]. some androids do wear clothes, but that's usually either for personal reasons or they work somewhere that requires a uniform for human And android employees, or they just work closely with humans and it's to make the humans more comfortable. usually, they just have a built-in bodysuit and light armor

G) EYES

unless your livicom is Brand Brand Brand new, like "built literally this year" new, their eyes will probably be a monochrome LCD display, and there are two types: either a negative display, so the scleras are darker and the irises are lighter, or a positive display, so the opposite. but if your android Was built in 2000, then they'll more likely have 8-bit color display screens, so they can display Lots of colors actually [but still not as many colors as a modern computer screen]. also, android irises/pupils [especially on screen-type eyes] are rectangular/square instead of round

now the thing about android eyesight is, in more cases than not, they don't actually See through their eyes, they're purely cosmetic. for androids with screens for eyes, they're technically blind and see more like silent echolocation! IE with proximity sensors to scan 180 degrees around them. it takes a little extra longer to scan for color data, too. this isn't the Most efficient way androids can see, but for most bots, this is the best way to do it since it provides them with both depth perception And 180 degree vision

the Other type of android eyes is: cameras! these are Not screens, they're camera lenses, and they are FAR less common because they're reserved for bots who Need to see either very very small things or in clear detail. for example: mantid has camera eyes, because he needs to be able to see teeny tiny insects from across the room nestled in among different plants. saph also has camera eyes, but that's because she IS a camera

camera-type eyes, unlike screen eyes, Are actually round, but they still don't pass for human eyes because the sclera and iris are almost indistinguishable from each other from a distance since they're both so dark.

H) FUNCTION-BASED APPEARANCE TRAITS??

OK so obviously a nursebot and a constructionbot are not going to look indistinguishable from each other, they're built to do totally different things, so they should not only look different from each other, but look like what they're supposed to. even within the same primary function, unless they're literally from the exact same model line for the Exact Same Job, no two androids look exactly identical, even though they're mass produced! humans love one-of-a-kind personalized products. plus, it'd be confusing and creepy if All the employees at your local walmart were identical twins

basically: GO NUTS HAVE FUN with incorporating how your livicom's job affects how they look. some livicoms just look human with robotic paneling or earphones, especially if they work closely with humans. it's mostly the armor styles that change; a construction bot might have big gauntlets for better heavy lifting, or even excavator claws for arms. an audio engineer bot might have cables resembling braids for hair to connect to different audio inputs. 444 has big wings that cast a searchlight so he can fly and better find missing people down below. herbie is a delivery bot with built-in heelys and exhaust pipes. hijinx is a clown with big extendo arms???? voltaire is basically a walking male/male plug adapter because he's designed to transfer excess electricity to different sources more in need of it. betsy is a bedside nurse bot, so she's intentionally squishy so that she doesn't accidentally hurt patients or so they can squeeze her arm for comfort while getting an injection

I) COMBAT

this is my favorite part of CMY2K bot conceptualizing and usually like the first or second thing i come up with for them, usually in tandem with their primary function Because their dedicated weapon and/or fighting style is going to Incorporate the unique features from their primary function!

let's use hibiki as the first example, because he's kind of a weird one, especially since he's a custom model. hibiki is basically an astroboy expy, IE he has the jetboots and arm cannons, but there's a FUnctional Reason for that besides just that it's cool. he's a housekeeping bot, so the arm cannons are modified vacuum cleaners, and the jetboots are just so he can reach high shelves. simple!

jack is also pretty straightforward, because he's just a big strong construction bot who punches hard with his big strong hands, and he has jackhammers that can extend out of his heels for stab-kicking. voltaire uses that male/male plug adapter i mentioned as whips to wrap around and electrocute.

mantid is literally an Exterminator, but he's a fun one: he doesn't just kill bugs with pesticides or what have you, because that's boring in a combat scenario, instead he snipes with high-precision lasers.

sawyer resells used electronics, so he's built-in with a localized EMP generator that disables and shuts down other electronics [including androids] as long as he can close a circuit around it with his hands.

444's big searchlight wings are like a flashbang so he can run, because he really isn't all that interested in fighting, and he sure is good at evading.

072 is a less obvious example because they're just a singer in a pop group, what built-in weapon could they possibly have? well. it's the 90s, wallet chains are a hugely iconic fashion accessory. 072 wears and dances with a big long chain they can also use as a whip, i mean that's the exact reason wallet chains were banned in so many schools LOL

due to the first law of robotics, livicoms aren't designed Intentionally to have weapons, but it's fairly easy to reverse-engineer their unique functions Into weapons, and even for androids who Don't necessarily have anything on them that could be weaponized, they always have the option of Body Modification!

KK is the most obvious example. it won't divulge its original primary function, but let's just say it wasn't something that allowed it to just go and hide things in its pockets. so, once KK jailbroke, the VERY first thing it did was modify itself to turn its entire body into a swiss army knife.

doctor heckle Also modified himself, but for him it was necessary because he had to rebuild his whole body from junk with just an arm and a head. he gave himself like, sickass spider legs on his back that also shoot lasers, and not only that, but he built himself a frankenstein's monster he can pilot like a mech

J) ETC

uh i can't think of anything else. if i missed something obvious feel free to point it out cuz if i Do think of something i'll definitely be editing this later

here's a few pinterest boards i use as design insp, go nuts

#not art #cmy2k #oc

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