#HOW DO YOU DO ALL OF THAT- its because of ea i know that but still. how.

[goodneighborxfallout]

I just found your blog, it's really cool you're doing this!

Anyway, how do you think the companions would react to Sole being seriously injured/nearly dying?

Thanks for requesting! Sorry it took me so long to write this.

Cait: “Shit, shit, shit! You better not die on me, Sole!” she’ll curse while picking you up from the ground and hauling you over to the nearest doctor she can find. She will threaten and beat up anyone to get you the help you need as fast as possible. 

Codsworth: “Sir/Mum, please hold on!” Codsworth will frantically try any sort of first aid he can to stabilize you. He won’t admit it to himself, but he is not optimistic about your survival chances because his Mr. Handy body does not allow him to pick you up and get you help. He’ll have to find a way to get help to you and that will take double the amount of time. 

Curie: Curie will be the most calm and collected. Being a doctor, she has experience patching people up and she knows panicking will only make things worse. With Curie by your side, you are in good hands. She’ll do whatever she can with the current equipment she has and once you are stabilized she will bring you to either a hospital or a friendly settlement to nurse you back to health completely. 

Danse: Danse might freeze for a second. Instinctively, he recalls Brotherhood protocol but he hesitates because he also knows how harsh that protocol can be. You are not just any soldier, you’re you, and no part of him is willing to risk you dying just because the protocol doesn’t care for your survival as much as he does. So instead, he’ll forgo protocol, forgo the mission in general if necessary and bring you to safety. 

Deacon: “It’s just a flesh wound. Carrington will patch you right up,” is what he tells you to keep you calm, but he himself does not believe it. Your condition is a lot more severe than he is letting on and he has to try hard not to openly panic. Luckily, Deacon knows his way around the Commonwealth pretty well, so he’ll pick you up and take the fastest and safest way back to HQ, all the while cracking some lighthearted jokes to keep you smiling. 

Gage: Raiders are mostly not known for their medical skills. The lifestyle Gage chose is one where death is accepted. However, raiders often also stock up on drugs. He himself is not a fan of it, but he does know where others hide their caches around Nuka World. So he’ll give you some buffout and med-x, and then haul you over to the nearest doctor after which he goes off on his own for a bit. Gage normally doesn’t care when others die, but seeing you close to death made him panic, which made him realize that he’s grown attached to you. He is not sure how he feels about that and needs some time alone to reflect. 

Hancock: First and foremost, Hancock will get you to safety and bring you to a doctor for help. He’ll stay really calm during this. He won’t show you how he feels and he’ll just focus on reassuring you with comforting words. However, he also won’t stick around when the doctor is treating you because he will be hellbent on getting revenge on the people who dared to hurt you.  “You’re in good hands here, Sunshine. I have to go take care of something.” 

Longfellow: “Told you the island would eat you alive,” he mumbled while dragging you back to the doctor in Far Harbor. Longfellow hasn’t gotten attached to someone in a long time, and even though he likes your company, he always kept himself shielded. Of course, he hopes that you’ll pull through, but he’s not panicked or upset. Most people die in the fog, so why not you too? 

MacCready: Mac is a survivor. He’s been fighting since he was a little kid and he’s found himself in countless hazardous situations. Therefore, MacCready is wise enough to not go out without some healing supplies on hand. Still, he panics seeing someone he cares for so dangerously hurt, and will fumble around looking for a stimpak in his backpack, finally emptying all its contents out onto the ground to find it more easily.  

Nick: “I ain’t gonna lie kid, it’s not looking good. How are you feeling? You think you can walk?” Nick has lived a long life - even if doesn’t see all of his memories as his own -, he’s lost a lot of people and in his line of work a happy ending is mostly not the outcome. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care or that he won’t try everything he can to save you, it just means he’s good at staying calm and collected during these kinds of situations. 

Piper: “You’re not going to die out here, Sole! I promise!" Piper will quickly administer a stim, then put your arm over her shoulder and drag you to the nearest doctor. She’ll try to remain calm but small things give away that she’s panicking, like having trouble aiming her gun right at enemies along the way, and losing her temper at every obstacle you encounter. 

Preston: “Come on, general! You can pull through!” Preston will be terrified of losing you. While carrying you to the closest doctor around, he’ll still beg anyone he meets along the way for help. 

Strong: “Human fight well! Now die like warrior.”  

X6-88: “The Institute needs you, sir/ma’am.” He’ll administer a stimpak and will then ask you to teleport back to the institute for further treatment.

#fallout 4 #fallout 4 reactions #fallout reactions #fo4 reactions #fo4 companions react #fo4 companions #fo4 #fallout #cait #codsworth #curie #danse #deacon #porter gage #gage #john hancock #hancock #old longfellow #longfellow #maccready #nick valentine #nick #piper #piper wright #preston #preston garvey #strong #x6 88

[quietwingsinthesky]

no one ever fucking talk to me about the leviathan dlc and its implications. even thinking about it made me mad again. how do you create a story about artificial intelligence that is a direct consequence of its creator’s hubris (thinking that they, unlike more “primitive” species, could create robots to fix their problems that WOULDN’T rebel and kill them. only for the robots to rebel and kill them.) and also a reflection of their beliefs uninterrogated: that there is no possibility for peace between artificial and organic life, that it must all be extinguished for the sake of “peace”. how do you have a story where one of the main (paywalled. dlc.) squad members is the remnants of an empire that conquered and controlled other species in the same way the leviathans did, and met the exact same fate because their imperial power was an illusion created by the reapers to make them weaker, to make them easier to exterminate. how do you make a story about these cycles, about how the council IS repeating these cycles, they just do it in a “kinder” way, a way with a veneer of democracy while still holding the same kind of power the protheans did over their empire, taking the same corrupted seat and continuing to rule their even after they find out, in mass effect 1, that it was a time bomb of extinction. how do you write all of that. how do you write the geth/quarian conflict and give us an ending that proves that peace and reconciliation is not only possible, but the best option. and then. star child. and you can’t even fucking argue with him that his ideology is bullshit.

#HOW DO YOU DO ALL OF THAT- its because of ea i know that but still. how. #not that mass effect isnt a fantastic story on its own but god the implications. theyre right there. you had them in your grasp. #what the fuck happened here. #mass effect #not even a fucking paragon check at the end to go ‘rip to you you shitty child but you were programmed by the guys who thought it was okay #to enslave half the galaxy and they maybeee weren’t right about their views.’ #unbelievable. absolute disgrace. javik is right there and you disrespect him like this. you make a crucial part of understanding all of this #DLC!!!!

[volk-swag-genitalia]

the prophetic dreams are getting much more concerning

#not a joke #so like im pretty damn convinced i have prophetic dreams #except one problem is they're not very straightforward #and i never really realize they are prophetic until its too late #i had a dream my lil brother attended the former school i used to study at and something bad would happen to him #i brushed it off at the time because i thought there would be no way in hell my parents would send me off to this school #years later they enrolled him in. #and well its an average school experience for him. some classmates are absolute jerks tho. but the main event in that dream didnt happen ye #because the main event happens at a school camping event. now im worried my brother would die at said camping event. but hey no camping yet #another instance was when i dreamt we went up the escalator up the mall we used to always go to #it was late into the pandemic at the time so i thought ''no way would we end up going'' but then i woke up to my mom announcing that #you guessed it #we were going to that mall #anyways those are a few instances. #right nowi had a dream i went out to lunch after college and snapped at a man for calling me ''ma'am'' because i mentally could not take it #and im scared now #with how i've been mentally. something like that WOULD happen. poor guy #but also i had a beard. why would he do that? #and the dream was also veryyy vivid. #granted not all of my dreams come true. #and i hope it STAYS that way #anyways aside from that i've also had recurring dreams of the ocean levels rising so bad that my home town ended up flooding and dissapeari #well i havent been having the flood dreams lately #that dream had two outcomes. in both outcomes people have adpated and started building a city that could take in the new environment #in one outcome they managed to build an underwater city to regain what was left of the cities that got submerged. people actually helped ea #h other and people were thriving. #in another outcome #society just ended up the same. all of the problems we had now carried on & we were eaten by the sun. except the sun was an eldritch being? #ok for sure that sun thing wont come true. or would it??? #nah. i mean according to what we know of the sun. nah.

[straykats]

anyways i just find it very soft and nice that i have people (hi mutuals) who share more than one of my interests and are rather active about them..? as in, they'll occasioanlmy post about x y z or reach out when i post about x y z or like they'll incorporate one into the other?? like. im so used to just having like.. oh this is the friend who i can talk to about anime, this friend about kpop, this ine about books.. and now its like.. i could put all my mutuals names in a hat and draw one out and i could talk about a multitude of things with them and its so weird because i.. i dont know you guys but i can talk to you about so much more on top of those interests as well? and i just :(

sorry the tags are a little bit of a love letter but like not poetic or romantic and super super ramble-y

#like how actively do i talk to my mutuals??? definitely not as much as most people do (sorry) #but everytime i do i just. #not to sound sappy and cringey or whatever but i just. feel so happy and loved??? #but at the same time its a little bittersweet because like. i dont knoe you guys and i probably never will and maybe irl we would clash a #bit or we wouldnt really... feel comfortable with eachother etcetc #but i guess thats the beauty (and admittedly danger) of online friendships? #like. i just. sad sounds. #and i just appreciate all my online friends/mutuals so much and i use them interchangeably but i know #there are mutuals i dont talk to ever or ive barely talked to or i dont talk to anymore #but like idk its like. #its like the whole 'everyone you meet eill impact you in some way' thing #and i havent /met/ met you guys but i love you all the same #and im sorry if my use of 'love' is a bit !!! but i am feeling emotions #and i know ive diverted from the original post but sigh i #i just truly sincerely wish that five days from now #five weeks or months or years or even fifty years from now #youre all happy and content and livijg ur best life in a rocking chair or whatever idk maybe 50 years eas too much HAHA but my point #still stands - i hope you all are happy and loved by those you love #and i just. thank you so much for allowing me this soft and safe space #even if i can be a little annoying at times hehe sorry but like. yknow i just. QHHHH #anyways i do hope my mutuals see this post/the tags HAHAHA #should have just made a whole text post instead of ramble in the tags #and idek if ehat uve said makes sense #but i know i defninitely have not conveyed everything so uh :( #kat loves u all so much #kat talks #okay just read the tags and i did not express myself well at all #i just appreciate you guys so much and am so so so so thankful for every interaction we've had #and im so.. honoured? amazed? lucky? to have met you guys and know you exist ??? #not to sound dramatic but thank you for baring the knowledge of my existence

[treasure-mimic]

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

#Unity #Unity3D #Video Games #Game Development #Game Developers #fuckshit #I don't know what to tag news like this

[brainrotdotorg]

imagine a dashboard for alligators. what do you think that would look like

2 notes

🍏gatoridae Follow

Controversial opinion. If you're doing nothing but eating meat, what are you even doing. Remember to include bugs, fruits, and legumes into your diet in order to help aid digestion of the meat that you get from snakes, fish, and mammals.

Just because we have the reputation for eating lots of meat, that doesn't mean we have to stick to it.

🥒biting-you-biting-you Follow

counterpoint: fuit yucky

🪵blog-from-a-bog Follow

wdym reputation of eating meat. i float lik ea log thats what im known for

4,904 notes

🌿swamp-ass Follow

asked dad if i could go and steal some Floridian guy's lunch and he said "we have prey at home" girl we have been doing shit ALL DAY i am an awesome 600 pounds and I need some meat left on me to deathroll with. let me get a quick snack that i don't need to kill mmmmmmm burgers I want people food soooooo badddd....... i know they shouldn't feed it to me but I have such a lovely smile oh please oh please give me your burger.........

182 notes

🥗aliali-seeyoulater Follow

mom says it was cold the season she laid me so i have to be a girl. because girls are always born from eggs laid during cold seasons.

cope and seethe mother first of all, second of all, the reason i am transgender is because you kept me too fucking snuggly warm in the nest.

#i guess if you wanted a daughter you should have. idk. made a shittier nest? #thats not really my fault man

81,337 notes

⛰fuckyeahhugesnout Follow

You'll never guess how I just learned that we have the honor of being the "loudest reptiles in the world"

🫑teethem Follow

Yeah yeah, the 90 decibel mating bellow, we've all heard it.

🤢ch0mper Follow

we've all heard the what

135,633 notes

🩲gaytorrr Follow

this guy asked if i wanted to see his gator hole and i said fuck yes. why this boy take me into a 65 foot long hole in the mud at the bottom of the lake

6,421 notes

🏞daily-clawsitivity

✨Remember to take it easy sometimes!✨We thrive in slow-moving waters!✨Even though we can run fast, we get tired fast too-- it's okay to let yourself take breaks!✨Let yourself relax, that's how we made it this far as a species.

mud-rocks-deactivated20140706

Yeah, imagine telling your prehistoric great great great great great great great great great great grandpa or something to calm down and relax when he should be doing nothing but deathrolls. the longevity of the species should be your only goal. It's irresponsible to encourage your fucking species to fall behind even more than it already has? Have some pride, you're not a crocodile.

scalesssss-deactivated20150310

jesus christ calm down

alidile-crocogator-deactvated20140709

Okay, this post has a lot of misconceptions in it. There aren't as many differences between crocodiles and alligators than you think. It's really harmful to think that we have nothing in common with each other. So what if they're carnivores and we're closer to omnivores, or their snouts are more U shaped while ours are V shaped. We're both badass miracles of nature that have no reason to be pit against one another all the time.

Don't listen to guys like this. It's just hateful and small-minded.

stop-jawlock-androll-deactivated20140911

crocs are like. like them shoes that float right

wetlandia898 Follow

i wish i was a crocodile because i could have a virgin birth and i wanted to see what it would be like to eat an immaculate conception.

bigchallengesrealblog-deactivated20190412

welcome to the no notes gator/croc discourse post.

🦖l8rg8tr-z Follow

omg this is the post.... i can't believe i would see this naturally on my dash

🎍taildraggers Follow

Uh are we just going to ignore the virgin birth reply orrrrrrrrr

🐊gator-heritage-posts

gator heritage post

0 notes

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Follow

hgwiow h

hsfhjs

howw ws i nbevyrboy tyopingssaog oo vd wi hhrth rh thrre cl alawas ?>>

🌴a-l-g-t-r Follow

lmao this idiot never learned how to use their tail to type

#/j lol yeah its kind of hard at first #actually i'd say cut your losses and forget how to type bring the laptop back to the dumpster its not worth it

39 notes

🐍bellowbellowmygoodfellow Follow

am i fucking stupid. i just learned theres another species of alligator other than just me and the guys in my swamp. and i said "oh wow I didn't know that! which one of the two are we haha" and my buddy just stared at me like I was a fucking idiot. how am i supposed to know if no one ever tells me this . WHICH AM I

🍖meet-eat3r Follow

there are only 70-80 mature chinese gators in existence while there are 750,00-1 million mature american gators . do the math.

🐍bellowbellowmygoodfellow Follow

i could have just hatched you don't know me.

20,570 notes

🍀gatortears Follow

a group of queer gators in church call that a congregaytion

#reblogging this one bc none of you appreciate me

1 notes

👞makemeintoshoesdaddy Follow

I'm seeing the no notes gator/croc post circulate again and ha ha yes it's very funny, but we are NOT starting gator/croc discourse in 2024. lets leave that shit in the past. i know that's not what the post really ended up being about but i am soooooo sick of it.

🌾clawstothewalls Follow

okay, so the one with a fetish for getting turned into handbags is gonna talk down to us now.

👞 makemeintoshoesdaddy Follow

Not to be a pedant but its Shoes Actually. It even says so in the name. Shoes.

2,663 notes

#this post was all an excuse to tell you alligator fun facts #i fucking got you dude. i got you

[andrevasims]

Pretersolaria Institute: CC-Free Uni & Individual Lots

Eventually I want to share the entirety of Rhyolite Valley, but it's a bit hairy with the 47 sims & CC hood deco & the garbage data I let seep in while playing (so I'd have to remake all of that before sharing).

I thought I'd "practice" the process of remaking the hood by starting a little smaller: The uni subhood. Since I only made a handful of sims for it (which are not included... yet) and it works aesthetically without CC hood deco. Sounds simple, right? Weelllll it took about a week of near daily effort to actually do. Makes the prospect of doing the actual hood soooo much more exciting lol /s

Anyway, that's what this is: A new university subhood template that's CLEAN & EMPTY. As a bonus (or if you just don't like the subhood), I've also included individual lot packages for every lot in the subhood to use wherever you want.

The "gimmick" of this hood is that Rhyolite Valley, and by extension Pretersolaria Institute, is entirely self-sufficient & cobbled together by the local residents. Which means there's no indoor plumbing lol.

That also means simply sitting down at a computer to write a term paper isn't as easy as a regular uni. Students have to go to THE BOOKMOBILE to access computers. Same goes for the skill building required for each semester/major. You have to venture out to the relevant community lot to find the means for skill building.

I've included in the uni's photo album & the lot descriptions which skills are available to build on each lot. It'll say "+Cooking" or whatever skill(s) the lot can provide based on the objects it has.

— WHERE/HOW TO INSTALL: —————————

Place the "PRTR" folder in its entirety in the "Program Files > EA GAMES > The Sims 2 University > TSData > Res > NeighborhoodTemplate" directory. Or whatever equivalent location you have for a TS2 University folder in the Program Files section.

Mootilda's Subhood Selection Mod is required to see additional universities below the main 3 pre-made ones.

You can then select Pretersolaria Institute in the list of options when creating a new uni subhood in a neighborhood.

— UNI SUBHOOD LOT INFO: ——————————

• Dorms: 1 (Klaatu Mobile Park)

6br / 5ba | Value: §20,444 | Size: 30 x 20

• Residential: 3 (Fulquard, Mushnick, & Burson Shack)

1br / 1ba | Value: §3,816-§3,862 | Size: 10 x 10

• Greek House: 1 (Tobor Testing Bureau)

10br / 10ba | Value: §30,363 | Size: 30 x 20

• Community: 6 (Wiploc Amphitheatre, THE BOOKMOBILE, Ikron Confectioneries, Zarkov Training Center, Big Heart Dude, Krelboined Horticulture)

• Secret Society: 1 (Temple of Laganaphyllis)

Value: §56,035 | Size: 20 x 20 | Zone: Community (individual version)

— NOTES: ———————————————————

• On 2 lots (Big Heart Dude & Wiploc Amphitheatre), I used the Seasons Music career reward The Rock Hammer for speaker deco. I used MoveObjects to delete the guitar but keep the speakers.

It's possible that either A. The guitars will respawn when you move the lot in the hood, or B. Sims will attempt to play the guitar and complain about being blocked (because I purposely blocked them).

If the guitars respawn, open the lot in Buy/Build mode and with MoveObjects On use the sledgehammer tool to remove the guitar.

If sims are complaining about not being able to reach the guitar, well they're not supposed to be able to lol. If hearing them complain is annoying, you can either use this mod that makes them stop yelling when something blocks them and leaves only the thought bubble, or delete the whole object.

• The Wiploc Amphitheatre may also have some glitchy-looking ground that you can see in neighborhood view when the camera moves. This is because I shortened the lot with Lot Adjuster. I don't know how to make it stop doing that, because I've transferred the lot to other hoods, packaged the lot, Lot Cleaner'd it, Lot Compressor'd it, moved it to the Lots & Houses Bin, etc. and it has never stopped looking like that. So again if that annoys you, remove the lot I guess?

• Please let me know if there are any additional problems.

I've never done this before specifically with a uni subhood, so it's very likely I messed up somewhere.

Additional Interior/Detail Pictures

DOWNLOAD UNI SUBHOOD: SFS | MF

DOWNLOAD INDIVIDUAL LOTS: SFS | MF

#cc free lot #no cc lot #download: lot #sims 2 cc #ts2cc #s2cc #ts2 download #sims 2 download #my cc #Pretersolaria Institute #download: hood #download: community lot #download: dorm #download: residential lot #grunge sims

[cumikering]

Ex bf John Price x reader 2

2.6k | soft smut, angst, comfort Your closure (part 1)

You fiddled with the simple gold band. You hadn’t expected to see John, especially not there of all places. You didn’t know why you even said anything. You should have walked past.

But you remembered how you shook that afternoon in Hereford, gripping the edge of your seat and how you broke down as the train departed. You didn’t care what you looked like. How could you when you’d just ripped your heart out.

For days you holed up in your childhood bedroom, where you’d taken him into countless times. Your bed didn’t dip the same way without his weight. When you unwittingly pulled out one of his shirts from your wardrobe, you sobbed into it. You lived out of your luggage until you got your own place.

Perhaps you were desperate, or just silly, that you wore his gift as a wedding ring. That way maybe you could rationalise the hole in your life was from losing your husband, not just a boyfriend because dear God, he was so much more than that. As a sick vow that you’d never want to lose him to war, so you’d never crawl back. You had wanted to so many times.

You wrote John letters the nights you couldn’t sleep. Some mornings in the haze of slumber, you’d wake up to your empty bed thinking he’d left for the day. It took another second for it to dawn on you that he was never there. You took 10 more minutes to get up.

Sometimes you grabbed plates, one too many, and cooked four eggs instead of two. At the supermarket you’d reach for his favourite crisps before realising you didn’t have to anymore. Some nights you left the door unlocked out of habit.

The sun promised yet another day. The tears grew fewer and further between. Spring came and you found the box of letters you wrote. You counted - there were 56.

You’d never forgotten about him, even that the memory had loosened its claws on you. Despite the gnarly scar, the wound had dried.

But that day, after not speaking to each other for years, something crumbled in you. Was it his tired eyes? The way he stood, his weary smile? His beanie?

John Mother Fucking Price.

Did he hold onto the memories like you did too after all?

That evening, you laughed at yourself as you drove to his parents’. Knuckles white over the steering wheel, you stared at the front door as your heart raced. You rested your forehead against the wheel with a heavy sigh.

Why did you even come? What were you going to say? Did he even want to hear whatever it was you had to say?

You heart almost stopped when there was a tap on the passenger’s window.

It was John. Of course it was.

You unlocked the car with a shaky breath. He slipped right in and shut the door, rubbing his hands together and blew into them. The distant streetlight cast a soft glow on his face as he held your gaze.

“You alright?” he rasped, breaking the long silence.

You gave him a crooked smile, shaking your head. “I don’t even know why I’m here,” you muttered, more to yourself.

His eyes flicked to your hand. “I think you do.”

“It’s from you, John.” You held it up to him. “The last one.”

His breath caught, blue eyes searching yours. “Tell me you hate me before I do something stupid.”

You wrapped your arms around him over the console. He took a frantic breath of your hair, and you almost whimpered at the way your face still fitted so perfectly in the crook of his neck. He smelt the exact same.

“I can’t hate you,” you sighed. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

You told yourself if you shut your eyes tight enough, the tears wouldn’t spill. They did anyway when you heard the choked sob from him. His beard tickled and it didn’t take long for his tears to dampen your neck.

“Love, I’ve- Fuck. Nothing has ever hurt this much.”

Your fingers ran through his soft hair, right above the nape of his neck the way he liked it.

“If call it quits… If I give up everything, would you have me back?”

“You wouldn’t,” you whispered. The truth still tasted bitter despite the years.

He gripped your shoulders. “Each time I come knocking with someone’s tags, a part of me dies too. I never want it to be you. I’ll never let it be you breaking down at our door.”

“Don’t do this to me, John.” Your face twisted. “Don’t… Don’t say all these things when-“

“You gave up your life for me. It’s my turn to do the same.” His thumb caressed your cheek. “I’d follow you anywhere. You just have to ask.”

You sobbed. He stroked your hair, your face pressed onto his shoulder, leaving dark patches on his sweater. His cheeks were still wet when you cradled his face.

In his steady arms, you could never be safer. As the windows fogged up, you wished the night was as endless as your kisses.

The streets of Liverpool had settled when John closed the door to your apartment. His eyes remained a little puffy, but his smile was brighter than when they were dry.

You’d missed that. The way his warm eyes crinkled, how his lips curved.

He tentatively pulled you by the waist, pressing your body against his. You never thought you’d feel those sturdy hands on you again.

You led him to your bed and flicked the bedside lamp on before pulling him on top of you. He stilled over you, the warm light illuminated the lines of his face. You traced the shape of him, his lower lip, his faint freckles, his tired eyes. He shut them with a shaky sigh. He was perfect.

“I’ve missed you,” you whispered.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how much I miss you,” he rasped, grasping your waist as his lips closed over yours.

He licked along your lower lip, nipping on it. The small gasp you let out allowed his tongue to slip past your lips, brushing against your own. When you arched your back, his hand slid under your top, kneading your hip.

“John,” you breathed against his lips, tugging on his shirt.

With you between his hard thighs, you watched with lidded eyes as he pulled his shirt off. His muscles weren’t as defined as they once were, but the same strength under was evident in the way his chest and arms flexed. You wasted no time running your hands over him, from his happy trail, partly hidden under the low hanging waistband, up to the darker fuzz of his chest. His abdomen rippled under your touch, bulge forming in his sweats.

He leaned back down and you palmed over the stretch of his back. There were raises you swore weren’t there last time. As you ran your fingertips over the scars, his lips didn’t relent against yours. Your tongues swirled between the nibbling and sucking. It surprised you how you were still in sync, not missing a beat despite the years.

He was still yours.

“Want you, John.”

“Anything for you, sweetheart.” He helped you out of your clothes before himself. Kneeling before you, he parted your thighs and settled between them.

He exhaled, a rough hand trailed from your knee along your inner thigh. Your skin pulled as he squeezed the flesh at the thickest part, giving him a peek of your slick. He licked his lip.

His eyes flicked up to you, watching as you bit your lip, chest rising and falling, your nipples at attention. He climbed over you, licking a stripe up your breast before his hot tongue flicked over your nipple, rolling the other between his fingers.

Your fingers ran through his hair, clutching his roots. You hummed in pleasure when his mouth switched with his hand, teeth playfully grazing against your hardened nipple. Your back arched, yearning for more and more of him.

He sat back on his haunches, wet lips parted. Your hips bucked when his thumb swiped over your needy clit. The motion continued as his fingertips trailed from your waist down to your knee. His eyes transfixed on you as you shut your eyes, your breath shallow.

You gave a small nod when his finger circled over your opening. He barely had to push before slipping right in. He curled his finger, building his pace as he leaned over, planting kisses across your chest up your neck and jaw before meeting your lips again. The noises filled the dim room.

Your hand ran down his side, to his fuzzy pelvis and heavy balls. Your fingertips traced along his length and he twitched when you got to his leaking tip. You stroked his desperate cock, spreading the wetness it over him. You moaned into his mouth when he added another finger.

He pumped faster as he licked along your neck, his tongue grazing the cuff of your ear. Your arm slung over his neck, your nails digging into his flexed bicep as he held his weight up, clinging onto him.

“Always so good for me, love,” he breathed, his warm breath making you shiver.

Your back arched to meet him, hips rolling. His long, thick fingers grew urgent, thumb rubbing your swollen clit. The squelching merged with the sounds of the wet kisses your neck.

The familiar pressure settled in your core. Your breathing quickened, your moans shallow as he relentlessly hit the right spot.

“John- ah- Don’t stop, John,” you whined.

“Wanna make you feel good.” He nipped at your lobe. “Let me hear you.”

You unravelled with a moan, your head thrown back. Your trembling thighs closed around him.

“That’s it. Such a good girl for me.” He sucked on your exposed throat as his pumping slowed down to deep, long strokes, stretching the rest of your high.

He lied on his side facing you, rubbing your thigh as you caught your breath. He sucked his fingers clean with a deep sigh, eyes closed.

“John,” you began when you realised. “I don’t have any condoms.”

You tasted yourself on him as he leaned over to kiss you, his cock still hard and wet against your thigh. “We don’t have to. It’s all you tonight.”

“Has there…” It was irrational but jealousy crept up. “Have you been w-“

“Never.” He shook his head. “No one else since you.”

You felt like crying. “Please,” you whispered against his lips, cupping his face. “Need you.”

He kissed you once more, kneading your hip up to your breast before crawling between your legs. His eyes lidded, breathing shallow like he was delirious. He stroked himself a few times, as if his aching cock wasn’t ready enough.

A hand on your waist, he rubbed himself along your glistening slit, biting his lip as he watched. His tip circled around your opening. “Ready, love?” His eyes met yours.

When you nodded, he eased the first inch in with a groan, making you moan with the delicious stretch. He held your gaze, taking his time pushing further and further before he stopped with a teasing smile.

“John,” you whined, legs hooking around him.

He lifted your hips off the mattress and slid his last inches into your sopping pussy. The sensation of him bottoming out in you always intoxicated you. Your breath hitched as he grinded deep against you. Nothing ever felt a good as him.

His grip tightened before his hips moved. He reached to rub your clit with the pad of his thumb, making you whimper. He always knew how tilt his hips the right way, to reach that deep and undo you. The way he fucked you, sometimes you thought he knew you better than you knew yourself.

You fisted the pillow under your head, jaw slack. His eyes flicked to your tits as they bounced with each thrust.

“Fuck, it’s been forever,” he grunted.

He leaned onto his forearms to kiss you as his fingers laced with yours above your head. His body flush against yours, his breath warm. His scent carried a touch of smoke as always.

His thrusts were deep and languid, pulling out all the way until only the head of his thick cock remained before burying himself to the hilt again in smooth strokes. He fucked you into the mattress like he wanted you to remember every drag, ever curve of him. Only he could make you feel this way – nothing ever came close. It was your sentence for stealing his soul.

“Want to make you come again, love.”

You weren’t sure it was muscle memory or what, but the intensity of his gaze, the way he rocked against you and the way he surrounded you made the heat pool deep in your belly again.

He tilted your face away with his nose, allowing him access to suck on the base of your neck. The way you tightened around him was his que to pick up his pace. He pounded into you, his balls smacking against your ass. He groaned, his breath searing against your skin. Each thrust pushed a huff of breath out of you.

Your fingers squeezed his. He knew what it meant.

“Don’t ever leave me,” he panted against your ear. “Oh God, never leave me again, sweetheart.” His voice cracked.

His wet eyes bored onto yours. You couldn’t help the tear that slipped.

“I promise, John. I promise I won’t.”

He lifted your waist, angling himself to reach even deeper. Your moans grew louder, your fingers pulling on his hair.

“Come for me,” he said with urgency. “Let me make you feel good, love.”

You moaned, legs tightening around his waist as your second orgasm washed over you. He thrusted faster into your fluttering pussy, his breath heavy against your ear. He kissed you again, tongue dragging against yours.

In a swift motion, he pulled out and came on your stomach, moaning into your mouth. You reached down, milking the rest of him, his hot come ran between your fingers.

He peppered kisses all along your jaw as his breath evened out before cleaning you up. You wiped away his tears with your thumb, giving him a peck on the lips. With a grunt, he lied on his back as he pulled you against him. He clasped his hand over yours, resting it in the middle of his chest, pressing kisses on your forehead.

“Love, can we have a bath?” There was a tinge of embarrassment in his voice. “My joints hurt when it gets too cold sometimes.”

Your heart wrenched. He’d made you feel so good despite the pain. When he followed you off the bed, you shook your head.

Moments later, you led him to the hot bath you’d prepared. You knelt by the tub and as he hunched over his bent knees, you helped him wash his hair and body. In the light, the scars he’d acquired since were clear, but it wasn’t what caught your attention.

For your last anniversary, he got a tattoo of your favourite flower on his back. After an array of art, it was easy for one to be just another piece, but this... He never covered it up.

Your finger traced over it. “You’re beautiful, John.”

He let out a deep sigh.

His head tipped back against the tiles as he soaked. Your arms folded over the edge of the tub, your head resting on your forearm. With a soft smile and lidded eyes, he gave your hand a squeeze.

The dark didn’t have to be endless tonight. Because there was going to be a tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.

You believed him this time.

@glitterypirateduck @sofasoap @shadofireshinobi @tiredmetalenthusiast @gamergirlbonestaskforce141riot @two-gh0sts @rowanyaboats @rainybubbles @erinfern0 @devcica @sacr3dm1lk @esthervalea @katz-chow @captainjamster @aethelwyneleigh27 @thatgoblin @rennroo

#codholiday2023 #call of duty #cod #cod fanfic #cod mw2 #cod mwii #captain john price #captain price #john price #cod x reader #call of duty x reader #cod x you #call of duty x you #cod smut #call of duty smut #john price x reader #captain john price x reader #captain price x reader #john price smut #john price x you

[michaeljoncarter]

how to roll back your game version & play the early access version of bg3

because all the people in my notes talking about being sad about never getting to play during ea are making me sad. you can still get in there!! easily!! and you don't even have to uninstall the current version to do it! you can have the current game & the ea version at the same time and switch between them by just moving around a few files

all you need to do is follow a slightly tweaked version of this guide on how to roll back your game to a previous version--slightly tweaked in that this is a guide for people whose games are broken and yours isn't (hopefully?) but more on that in a sec

you need two different id numbers to download, the "main" depot's (1086941) and the "bin" depot's (1419652). the very last update to the early access game before its full release was hotfix #32. if you're just interested in playing the early access version in general, i'd suggest going with this one! but i'll also be putting in the ids for the various other patches for anyone interested in earlier versions of ea

the "main" (1086941) id is 2986558115270870303 and the "bin" (1419652) is 3491586966951526173, so in step 3, your console commands would be "download_depot 1086940 1086941 2986558115270870303" and then "download_depot 1086940 1419652 3491586966951526173" (without the quotation marks)

after you've gotten that downloaded, those slight tweaks come into play. since your game is (hopefully) not broken, in step 6, when it tells you to "Go to %LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\ and delete there everything except PlayerProfiles folder," make a new folder somewhere easily accessible (i just keep mine on my desktop homescreen), give it a recognizable name like "bg3 full release" or smth, and toss all those files into it for safekeeping instead of deleting them

then, make a copy of the PlayerProfiles folder to go into %LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3, and continue with the rest of the guide from there

hopefully, everything should work and you'll be able to play the early access version!

if you need to make space, you can just delete the files in %LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3, replace them with the original files from this folder that you moved to their own folder earlier, and go back to playing the full version of the game

OR if you have enough space and just want to go back to playing the full release version for a while with the option to go back to ea later, you can make a second folder in that same easily accessible location, name it something like "bg3 ea," and move the ea files from %LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3 there for safekeeping while you switch the original files back in. and then whenever you want to go back to ea, you just switch them out again!

if you just want to play ea generally, that's all there is to it, but for anyone interested in the earlier versions, i'm also including the ids for everything back to patch 5 or 6 (more on that below) under the cut!

steamdb's "main" depot ids go back all the way to the beginning of early access in october 2020, but the "bin" ids only go back to september 2021. i have no idea why or if there's a way to get around this to allow access to the super early versions of the game (let me know if you know), but from what i recall, most of the big changes came post-patch 6 (which dropped in october 2021), so i don't think you're missing all that much here

i'm going to list 2 different versions for each patch--the version of the patch that dropped and then the very last hotfix of that patch that was released before the next patch's release. i strongly recommend using the pre-patch hotfix versions since they'll be the ones that's already fixed any major bugs found in the patch, including the ones that caused crashes (which weren't common but did very much happen from time to time), but since there were sometimes changes made in the hotfixes between patches, i'm including the raw, sometimes buggy initial patch itself, too, for anyone who wants the true ea experience

whenever a patch dropped, there was usually a patch announcement post that included a long list of everything added/changed and a community update post that highlighted & went into more detail about some of the biggest, most significant additions/changes shortly after. i'll be linking both of them for each version so you can see what was added in each patch & decide which you'd like to see!

final pre-release patch 9 hotfix - january 26, 2023 - hotfix #32

main: 2986558115270870303

bin: 3491586966951526173

initial patch 9 release - december 14, 2022 - announcement post, community update

main: 6537615510298161288

bin: 5945988095619420679

final pre-patch 9 patch 8 hotfix - hotfix #29

main: 4587530374381214828

bin: 1158786419690212446

initial patch 8 release - july 7, 2022 - announcement post, community update

main: 6228241067016987625

bin: 7406932516672251230

final pre-patch 8 patch 7 hotfix - april 7, 2022 - hotfix #23

main: 2158159273108954060

bin: 5051502138264372142

initial patch 7 release - february 15, 2022 - announcement post, community update

main: 2319709286482444091

bin: 5051502138264372142

final pre-patch 7 patch 6 release - december 2, 2021 - hotfix #19

main: 7168428077382038060

bin: 3275005870898440938

initial patch 6 release - october 14, 2021 - announcement post, community update

main: 7453809126564301688

bin: 9049843173236541567

the oldest entry of a "bin" id is from september 16, 2021. there are no community posts or hotfix announcements from that day, and i haven't tested it myself, so... possible pre-patch 6 version? but i'm not sure! if anyone tries this one, please do let me know

main: 6252948475239841962

bin: 7144137622957893936

good luck & have fun!

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #long post #lemme know if you see i messed up any of these links or numbers or anything #because i double checked everything but it's a lot of numbers and im very dyslexic lol #posting this super fast super early before i have to leave hekrvn #so i might not see any corrections or anything for a while if there are any but i will eventually ! #hopefully this makes sense and is understandable <3 im horrible at giving instructions but yk

[askagamedev]

About Unity these past few days

A lot of people have asked me about Unity and their strange new per-install charges policy that they rolled out on September 12th, 2023. I wanted to give them at least 24 hours before I posted my take on it - let the dust settle a bit so I could get a chance to read the new policy properly and all that. First, however, I think we need to take a step back and get a wider perspective. Unity Software Inc. is in some serious financial trouble. Here are their operating numbers from 2019 to 2023.

The blue line here is how much money they take in and the red line is the amount of money they are spending each year. You may notice that they are spending significantly more money year over year than they earn. In fact, over the past 12 months alone (August 2022 to August 2023), Unity Software Inc. has lost almost $1 billion.

In 2022, Unity spent four times as much money as they did in 2019. If they had managed to keep costs at double their spending in 2019, they still would have earned $243 million in profit. Instead, they lost $882 million in 2022.

Where does all of this cost come from? In any software company like Unity, the vast vast majority of costs comes from employee salaries. And we can directly see it in Unity's number of employees:

Unity Software Inc. more than tripled its headcount from 2019 to 2022, and it did all of this hiring during the pandemic while competing with many many other developers all trying to hire from the same pool. I don't work for Unity, but I was in the market and I had lots of recruiters trying to recruit me during that time.

In short, Unity is suffering from the same miscalculation that Embracer Group did, that EA did, that Activision-Blizzard did, that Square-Enix did, and just about everybody else in the tech industry - they misjudged the good times at the beginning of the pandemic, overspent hiring people thinking the good times would last, and are now scrambling to figure out how to survive. The difference is that Unity was getting all of their operating money from Venture Capitalists (VCs) hoping that they would eventually become profitable, but VC money has all but dried up because it's become much more expensive to borrow money over the past two years.

As a result, the Unity executives are likely grasping at straws in hopes of saving a sinking ship. This wild and decidedly senseless pricing plan is their (seemingly-desperate) attempt to juice their revenues. It really makes very little sense from the developer perspective, which is what makes the whole thing reek of desperation. That isn't greed talking, it's survival. My guess is that Unity is currently desperately looking for a buyer to save them and doing whatever they can to buy themselves some more runway. They already announced layoffs back in May, but I suspect they'll probably have to announce some really big layoffs (e.g. 40-50%) soon. Unity Software Inc. is living on borrowed time and they know it.

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#the business of video games #unity 3d #business business business #where the money goes #financial things

[ishaslife]

Astarion has been breaking my poor heart.

This post will contain spoilers for the game and Astarion's romance/backstory. Before anyone comes at me, I want to say that you are the main character, you are supposed to change the fates and behaviours of your characters, especially if you are romancing them. It's a video game, that's kind of the point.

This post is extremely long and I apologise.

This analysis is based off my playthrough.

(*) means check notes at the bottom of the post.

I wasn't expecting to like him as much as I do. Don't get me wrong, I really liked him during EA and I thought he was funny, charming, flirty with a dark past and all that was just a means to cover his trauma but since the full game has come out and we've gotten to know more of him, it truly breaks my heart to see and know what he has been through. My sister and I were watching his reactions to be being rejected, being told that Tav only wants sex and forcing him to do things he doesn't want to do, it is truly heart-wrenching.

Many people expected Astarion to be this "I am so sexual and my romance will mostly be sex, also I will betray you the first chance I get." and it couldn't be further from the truth. Astarion is extremely loyal, and yes he has that air of flambouncy to him, will often make japes and say evil things but most of the time, it is just a facade. It's his shield in a way, he has been treated with utter cruelty for two hundred years of his life and now that he finally has some control over himself, he doesn't wish to be hurt again.

I don't think Astarion is ever completely evil, even in the beginning. He just wants to have fun and enjoy life after so many years of slavery. He likes it when you are snarky, say mean shit to people for fun but, he doesn't like to see innocents get hurt, and he doesn't support fighting for people who don't fight for themselves. Yes, he will support some of your evil decisions but they will lead to a bad ending, for you and your characters. It'll make Astarion wallow more in his greed and he'll lose the little humanity he has left. He doesn't really have a clear sense of direction in the beginning of the game as he's just found freedom and obviously wants to live life to the fullest, being evil comes naturally to him, it's instinct as its what he's been doing for two centuries.

This is my assumption since we don't know his actual age but since he's an elf who was well-respected in society, had a pretty prestigious job and was rich enough to be corrupt. I'd assume he was at least 70-100 years old before he was turned into a spawn. (EDIT - in a recent post by @deluxetrashqueen I saw the translation of the dates of birth and death on his tombstone:

"Astarion Ancunin

229-268 DR" to which he adds, "458DR - "

which shows that he was only 39 at the time of his death, which explains his emotional immaturity for an elf.) My point being, I believe he has been a spawn for longer than he's ever been a regular person. He has spent the longer part of his life doing evil things for an evil man, that was what his life was on a daily basis with Cazador. And his former work experience probably helped, he likely learnt pretty quick how much he took for granted as a living person and the harshness of his master, peers and people he seduced made him harsh and unforgiving in return.

Once you start getting close to him, you start to learn that he is only mean to people because of how life has treated him. In his romance, he says "no one ever looked out for me, no one ever said a kind word to me. You're the only one, no one is like that." Astarion starts to see, because of you that there is kindness in the world, and he finds kindness in you. Especially after his quest, as much as he'd hate to admit it, he also sees friends in your other companions as they do in him. By the end of Act 2, he starts to get more soft towards you and the decisions you make, often even disapproving of evil decisions. People often tend to forget that a lot of Astarion's evil personality is a front, it is not who he truly is.

These points will be better explained individually so I will talk about some themes.

Power: power plays a big part in his entire storyline. In the beginning, he wants to harness the powers of the tadpole to become powerful and at first, you think that it's simply because he's an evil character and he wants power for the sake of having it. Then later, he wishes to take over the power of the ascendant but mostly only to spite Cazador and take something important from him, not fully realising the true power of the rite.

As he slowly starts opening up to you, he tells you "the mind flayers tore me from that place" and you realise that its the tadpole that let's him walk in the sun, do things a vampire or spawn would never be able to, you learn that he hates being a vampire because he can't even remember what he looks like. He seeks power outside because he has had no power over himself for about two centuries, he thinks that having this power will fulfill his needs but it won't, we know it won't because in truth he only needs to reclaim his autonomy, physical and mental. Of course Astarion would never truly admit to this for a long while, even when he's romanced. I personally really love his good romance arc where he doesn't have sex with you, not because he dislikes you or doesn't want you but because, as he says "any kind of intimacy was something I performed to lure people back for him. While I know things between us are different... being with someone still feels tainted. It brings up all those feelings of disgust and loathing." He has spent 200 years or so bowing to Cazador's whims, done things to people he didn't want to do and I assume since it's heavily hinted at, were very sexual in nature. In a relationship, he simply wants to be seen as a person and I think that's really sad because that's how low the bar is for him.

In the ending of his quest, you can persuade him and tell him that going forth with the ritual won't set him free even if he thinks it will and I agree. If he's a slave to Cazador now, later he'd be a slave to power and greed. Just look at Cazador, despite being one of the most powerful beings in existence, he still wanted more power. That kind of greed and hunger never ends and Astarion would lose himself and who he has become while he was with us. Yes, it makes him walk in the sun again and do things a regular vampire can't but at what cost? 7,000 lives and his humanity. He would never be able to enjoy this "freedom" because he'll only strive to seek more power. In his ascendant ending, he becomes everything he's ever hated about Cazador, the cycle repeats itself, from Vellioth to Cazador and from Cazador to Astarion. And it will never end. Astarion even refuses to turn you into a vampire and wishes to keep you only as a spawn. With an insight check, you can learn that he thinks you're degrading yourself and he doesn't care. He now sees you as something to own, something to possess, not love. All his good qualities, wants and needs get twisted. Astarion truly only needs to feel like a person again but he doesn't fully realise this until you show it to him, through good deeds and actions, through simple acts of kindness. As he says in his "good" ending "I've been dead in the ground enough. It's time to try living again. With all that life has to offer."

Safety: Astarion wants to feel safe. He is so scared of being found by Cazador, he knows he's looking for him and the only thing giving him some form of safety from Cazador is the tadpole so of course he wants to harness its powers that is until he finds out it'll turn him into another kind of monster, a mind flayer. He doesn't wish to lose himself and his freedom again hence is vehemently against taking on the tadpole's powers but he doesn't stop you because that is of course, your decision to make. He says "if such power would please you, darling, I won't stop you. But do be careful, I want you to remain you." Now the only thing left that can properly give him his freedom is Cazador's death and he wants to kill him himself which I think is perfectly acceptable, Cazador deserves to die and if it is by Astarion's hands, all the better. But, in his romance, he makes it clear that he's doing it for safety, and he tells himself that he wants to take the power of the rite for safety as well because in truth, he is terrified of being powerless again. He does want revenge yes, but he also wants to keep you and himself safe from Cazador, even in the dungeon, if you run an insight check, the narrator tells you that he is losing his mind because of the power that's on offer and the smell of blood in the air. It's almost as if to say "he's losing his mind, please stop him before he forgets who he is." Astarion NEEDS your guidance*, eventually he even thanks you for 'saving him from himself.' In his good ending, he sees that in taking the power, he would be no better than Cazador and would become everything he's ever hated about him, and inflict on others what his former master inflicted on him, starting with you. His ascendant ending is honestly a very sad ending for his character, all that growth, change and development you bring to him throughout your journey just gone down the drain as he becomes an unfeeling, evil, narcissistic arsehole who only craves for more power. In his good ending, he will be safe, with you and with the friends he has made along the way. He is proud of himself and so is everyone else, it offers him a kind of friendship that's afforded to very few in the D&D world, especially a vampire/spawn whose very existence is hated. It is a bond based on trust, loyalty and to a degree, even love instead of fear like in the ascendant ending.

Abandonment and Fear: Astarion is driven by fear but he also knows facing Cazador is inevitable and something he needs to face rather than avoid. Even if he isn't outright seeking it (but he does seek it) I think he is braver than he likes to think and he definitely has some anti-hero traits. He likes the tadpole because it helped him get away from Cazador's authority and he enjoys bending others to his will since it makes him feel more powerful compared to how he's felt the past two centuries. But if you choose to not do the same, he doesn't really care. He doesn't except it of you nor is he disappointed (since he neither approves or disapproves. He only disapproves helping people who didn't ask or didn't want to be helped) he only gives a snarky comment or two about what he would've done instead and follows you anyway. He realises you're a good person. If you indulge too much however, I would argue that he agrees simply because he doesn't want you to turn against him. Perhaps he believes that you can turn on him and kill him as easily as you killed the tieflings or other innocents. He probably thinks it's easier to turn a good person evil than an evil person, good (tbh he wouldn't be entirely wrong.) And making bad choices does negatively affect his character of course but I just thought I'd put that out there as I think it's very likely for him to do so. He is definitely extremely paranoid, he hardly ever says how he truly feels out loud but when you break up with him (it's so heartbreaking omg) he says "I was beginning to think someone truly wanted me. I shouldn't have deluded myself." and "From the start, I was rather counting the hours until it was going to end. Midnight chimes, eh?" As heartbreaking as it is, the latter line shows how terrified he was of being abandoned or only be used for his body, he kept obessesively worrying that Tav would leave him after he bore his heart out to them. There's another bit of dialogue in Act 1 where he is trying his lines with you to get you to sleep with him a second time and you can say no which he is fine with but if you outright reject him there, meaning "I never want to see you like that again" he gets extremely sad: "Well, excuse me while I die of a broken heart. [slight chuckle] In all honesty, it's a shame. That time was special to me. I've gotten on my back 10,000 times or more and forgotten half of them. But you, I'll remember. [long pause] Have a fine evening... dear." Mind you, this is after you've only slept with him once. His dialogue makes it seem like he was already catching feelings for you, and not realising that himself until this happens. Seeing this made me realise that you're the first person he's slept with of his own volition, even if it was to seduce you. For the longest time, I think Astarion doesn't even want to believe you'll like him as something more than someone to sleep with, he hopes you might as his rejection line says so but astarion is nothing if not careful and well, paranoid.

That's why he's so shocked when you choose to not let him bite Araj at Moonrise even if it gave you something powerful in return. He sees that you chose his comfort over a genuinely useful commodity. Biting people or using his vampire, well, anything makes him extremely uncomfortable since it reminds him of things he needed to do for Cazador. If he bites her, it makes him feel like being a slave again, but bending to your will and wishes instead of his former master's. He realises he doesn't know how to say no. Which is another thing he says if you wish to pursue only a sexual relationship with him. He feels played.

Freedom: this is probably the main theme to his character arc. He wants to be free, not only from his master but also free to make right decisions and make decisions for himself, something he hasn't been able to do for years. This is why respecting his decision to not sleep with you is important to him, he doesn't feel comfortable being physically close to someone in a sexual way as it makes him doubt the person's true intentions and feelings and of course, makes him feel loathsome and disgusted with himself. He needs that time where you just connect as people to really see that you are in fact genuine and he wouldn't be hurt if he trusted you or gave you his heart. Towards the end of the game, he is still quite ruthless, but mostly only towards people who do wrong and are criminals. Astarion has a very strong set of ideals, he believes that people who do wrong deserve to die no matter the crime. I don't think this is entirely true, every crime deserves a different punishment but most criminals, those who do severe wrong and still get away with it, do deserve to die but this is just my opinion of course. He is ruthless towards bad people because that's how people have been to him, at least Cazador and I wouldn't be surprised if he was treated badly during his sexual encounters with strangers while working for him.

Why I think the Ascendant ending is a tragic ending for Astarion's character and for you.

I won't lie, there are some aspects of ascended Astarion that are pretty hot and I'm a sucker for (pun absolutely intended) powerful, gothic vampires but this ending comes at the cost of way too much. One simply being: Astarion isn't Astarion anymore. All his snarkiness, playful nature and strange innocence is gone. In his ascendant ending, that is, when he takes the power of the Rite of Ascension for himself by carving the same rune on Cazador's back that's on his own, Astarion loses himself. In D&D lore, full vampires are unfeeling, ruthless and have all their good traits twisted into something more malignant and evil. If Astarion loved you, that love turns into possession, if he cared for you, it turns into obsession. He doesn't truly care anymore... as a vampire, he is manipulating you and telling you things you want to hear instead of what he's actually feeling. He never truly got that moment of catharsis by killing Cazador as he does in his spawn ending. That simple bliss of killing the man that enslaved him and worse all these years; he never gets to experience that because he ends up using Cazador for the same power Cazador killed Vellioth for in the past, albeit worse. It's a never-ending cycle. And if he turns you into his spawn, you will go through the same fate Astarion went through and probably turn on him the same way he turned on Cazador. He has absolutely no sympathy for you or for anyone that is not him, in fact he feels almost disgusted by you because he thinks you're degrading yourself in front of him. There is a conversation between him and if you refuse to become his spawn, and I think it sums up his character perfectly as a vampire, it goes like this:

(choosing different options will have different dialogues but they more or less lead to him saying the same thing.)

ASTARION: Just so you know, I have everything I've ever wanted. Everything lies ahead. I can see my path to a waking dream. From the Crimson Palace, I will govern day and night. Create a city of spawn who bow before me, cast a fog over the world for my children.

TAV: But the Palace halls will be lonely.

ASTARION: You'll be lonelier than I. Very soon I will discover how to call my legions of wolves, become a sea of mist, run wrongside-up on roofs. [laughs] Everything vampires do best.

You could have, too. [sniggers] What a waste.

TAV: You don't really have anything at all.

ASTARION: I can take anything I want. I should've made you a spawn just to teach you that.

And there we have it, that last bit of dialogue shows how Astarion is now everything he hated about his own master. He is Cazador's literal and spiritual successor, he thinks you need to be punished for rejecting him. He doesn't feel for you anymore, at least not in a human way. He has become someone else entirely, for the worst. His drive for taking the power of the rite was to be able to walk in the sun again but as a full vampire, he wants to "dominate it (the world) until the sun melts and give ourselves over to the night."

Astarion NEEDS change, he needs to see that the world can be a kinder place than the one he's lived in this whole time. Just a bit of care and love with him goes a long way. In his spawn ending, he comes to realise that you gave him his life back even if it was as a spawn because that is true freedom. He is free from his master, and greed & power which was in the disguise of safety. He may never be able to walk in the sun, but he is free to make his own decisions that are driven by his choices. One of them being; wanting and loving you, living a full life with you, whatever that may entail.

If you went into the game thinking that Astarion will betray you no matter what then giving him the ascendant ending brings your fears to life. Astarion doesn't learn anything, by making him a full vampire, you basically tell him that he can only be powerful and worth something if he has super vampire powers, and in turn, you lose everything too. Astarion may have gained unparralled strength but now he has no need of you, you gave him everything he wanted and nothing he needed so now he can do whatever he wants with you because you are lesser than him, literally, he is much stronger than you are and his power will only grow as he discovers more of it. He tries to manipulate you into turning you into a spawn. A dialogue being:

TAV: After everything you went through with Cazador, you're going to make me a spawn?

ASTARION: Oh that was completely different, I'd never hurt you. I love you. That's what you've been waiting to hear, isn't it? That's what you want?

Which just shows you how he's only saying "I love you" because that's what you want to hear, so you agree to becoming his spawn. He doesn't mean it, it doesn't really have any feeling behind it whatsoever. And if he turns you into a spawn, you have basically lost everything. Because he is obsessive over you, he'll never let you go and since now he is properly evil, he likely won't turn you into a vampire either, even if he says he will.

This is just my take on the ending though, I think we can all agree the ascendant ending is the evil ending for his character, even if it is an ending you prefer. I'm not trying to hate on anyone who does like this ending, only stating that I think it is meant to be evil and I personally don't like it.

CONCLUSION

Once you get to truly know Astarion, he's a pretty decent guy. I can't speak much for people who didn't romance him, I'm not entirely sure how his non-romance route plays out. The good conclusion of his quest is so wholesome, where he says he feels "truly, honestly free" and tells you "you saved me from myself. This is a gift, you know, thank you. I won't forget it." getting full circle to the first time you let him bite you (the only time in my case.) It shows so much character development and pure joy in the way he thanks you (it doesn't need to be said but props to Neil Newbon for bringing the character to life.) He will always be a spawn and yet, he feels like "anything and everything is possible" because of you and the choices you made with him, you believed in him when he didn't believe in himself, you showed him that he is enough just the way he is and he doesn't need to become a full vampire to be strong and powerful. Astarion comes out of his finale, a much more positive person, who actually cares even if he won't show it and the best part is, he always keeps that tiny streak of evil and mischief within him. He hasn't lost sight of himself, he's just less spiteful now and feels free to actually enjoy life rather than constantly being scared of what might happen to him. He finds trust and happiness in you and it makes him happy that you find the same within him. You are his home and he hopes he is yours.

I understand that my analysis may not be perfect and my interpretation of the character may be different from someone else's but that's fine, he is a video game character that can be played so many ways and people can go around it however they like, interpret his character however they wish. This is just what I think.

NOTES

'Astarion needs your guidance.' - no, this is not gaslight-y. Astarion is a deeply troubled character and clearly finds it hard to differentiate between right and wrong. He often asks for your input and what you think by Act 2 which isn't a bad thing, he's asking for help and I think that shows how far he's come. In the final scene of his quest, he is overcome by the promise of power and the safety it would've provided which would've consumed him as it did Cazador, Astarion admits to this himself too later on once he can think clearly and is in a more positive mindset. There is nothing wrong with guiding your partner towards something that will eventually be better for their growth as a person in the long run.

#astarion analysis #forgotten realms #astarion and tav #astarion x tav #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate #astarion bg3 #bg3 astarion #astarion baldur's gate 3 #astarion baldurs gate #astarion x mc #tav x astarion #astarion romance #bg3 #astarion #astarion baldur's gate

[headkiss]

hiiii can i request and Eddie or Steve x reader where r scrapes their knee really bad and either one won’t stop babying them til it heals? may or may not have scraped my knee really bad 🫣

hiii i went with steve for this one, hope that’s okay!! and hope your knee heals soon lovely <33 | 0.7k fluff, tw for blood !

Steve stays by the windows this time of day. He glances up at everyone that walks by, waiting to catch a glimpse of you.

You walk your dog every day, the same route and everything. When you were a kid, you’d promised that if you got the dog, you’d take care of it, and somehow, you kept that promise.

It’s a nice routine, getting to spend a little time outside, nothing but your footsteps on the sidewalk and the jingle of your dog’s collar.

It’s even better when Steve happens to be outside, when you get to pause and talk to him for a bit.

You’re in front of your house once more when your dog gets distracted by something, circling you and before you know it, the leash is tangled around your leg. When your dog tries to take off, you end up on your hands and knees on the ground with a curse, feeling the sting right away.

Pushing yourself back to sit down, you swear again at the scrape on your knee, the blood coming to the surface, quickly running in a red tear down your leg.

Remorseful, your dog sits next to you and whines. You scratch the fur behind its ears.

Steve, of course, sees the whole thing. First, the little flutter in his chest when he saw you walking by, then, the small panic at seeing you fall. Seeing you even remotely hurt.

He grabs his car keys from the table by the door (to look like he was going somewhere, not like he’d just been watching you) and heads outside.

“Hey, are you okay?” He calls, lightly jogging down his driveway to get to you.

His voice warms you at first. And then the embarrassment creeps in. You cover your face with your hands, and pull them away before replying, “I’m fine, I swear. It looks worse than it is.”

“Why don’t I grab my first aid kit anyway? You can come sit on the porch.”

He holds out a hand, and you grab it with the one that isn’t grasping the leash. Sparks shoot from your fingertips all the way up your arm, landing in a pulse in your chest.

“Thanks, Steve.”

It hurts to bend your knee too much, and you hiss as you stand. So what if you use that as an excuse to lean on him just a little more, to hold onto his hand a little tighter?

Steve helps you sit back down on the porch step, crouching down with you.

“I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Okay,” you nod.

Steve walks inside, and once the door’s shut behind him, he all but runs to the bathroom to grab the first aid kit. He’s not sure what it is about you that has him scrambling to spend more time with you, all he knows is that there is something. That it’s sort of undeniable.

While he’s gone, you take a moment to breathe, to try and get over how embarrassed you are that he’s seeing you like this, how much you like being around him even in these circumstances. You press your palm to your forehead and shake your head. You’re a mess.

Steve comes back quickly, a small white box in hand and the sweetest smile you’ve ever known on his face. He’s so kind, he makes it difficult to keep feeling embarrassed.

“Here we go.” He sits down beside you and opens up the first aid kit, grabbing some wipes first.

“I can do it,” you offer. Because as much as you’d love his hands on you, him taking care of you, he really doesn’t have to.

“It’s alright. Let me,” he says, placing a gentle hand around your ankle.

Steve starts by wiping up the blood from your leg, then from around your wound. He’s as gentle as can be, his touch delicate, his voice soft when he apologizes anytime he catches you wincing.

Then, something to clean it, “this might sting a little.”

“Okay,” you practically whisper, afraid to break the softness of the moment. Afraid to mess it up.

He’s right, it does sting, and when you suck in a sharp breath, he’s quick to ease you, “I know, I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

And, well, how could anything hurt when Steve calls you sweetheart?

#steve harrington #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington request #steve harrington one shot #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington story #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington requests #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington oneshot #steve harrington blurbs #steve harrington blurb #steve harrington hurt/comfort #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fanfic #stevie blurbs #stranger things #stranger things fic #steve stranger things #stranger things steve #stranger things fanfic

[cupcraft]

At the end of the day, dreams behavior towards his fans is gross and he encourages unhealthy parasocialism.

In the lead up to his video he said deeply awful and victim blaming things. He made that inappropriate joke with the tik tok/miners shirt. He has leagues of history lying, being racist, bigoted, and recent history continually being misogynistic. His fanbase makes me deeply uncomfortable and unsafe with the amount of shit that is said. He never truly stops his fanbase from doxxing ppl, even when he "says its bad". The way he deflects blame onto other people really shows how awful he is. The way the video is framed to not just address serious allegations tells you all you need to know about him (like why eas the dsmp in there brother). The way he'll accuse fellow friends of causing his family's doxxing just because he didn't answer his text and Dream was the only one causing drama. He's said leagues of inappropriate things to Tommy who was a minor at the time during the dsmp days. Dream is a liar, and he can never take accountability for his actions. He can make this video, but it doesn't erase what he said about potential victims leading up to it. Dream is bigoted and it's clear with that recent tweet where he victimizes himself he doesn't care about that either.

Lastly, I will never apologize for supporting potential victims ever. I will always support victims no matter what as a victim myself and because I know how disgusting the justice system is in preventing justice for victims.

And im ending this post saying fuck dream. And I think after this whole ordeal im done posting about him as much as I've been doing so. It's a lot and stressful and seeing the things his supporters say that are wildly anti victim is so harmful to me. Its not to say ill never comment on anything but I think im.done and i just need to focus on the things and ccs i enjoy.

#dream situation #can rb

[qqueenofhades]

JSYK the OP of the Crab Day post is a self-identified conservative Christian. Can't speak to anything she may have done or said, but I do know that Crab Day wouldn't actually fix Tumblr - the site is running a 30mil *deficit,* which is different from debt. All Crab Day would do would be telling staff that their current policies get users to send them more money, which doesn't actually change anything. Corporations change only when their business strategy is losing the shareholders money.

Gotta be honest, my friend, I'm... not sure what you're trying to do here? Warn me that the original post was made by a Problematic Person (tm) and therefore that must mean it's all wrong, or.... what?

We know that Tumblr badly needs money, because they have told us that and openly admitted that the unpopular new changes were spurred by a need for increasing revenue. I logged on just now on desktop and got a suggestion that I could purchase an ad-free browsing subscription to help support the hellsite (which is the word they used, because they have very much embraced the joke). I have in fact already bought an ad-free subscription, both because I like the product Tumblr provides and want to keep using it in its current form, and because it makes my mobile experience immeasurably nicer. I am well aware that especially in this era of social media sites dropping like flies, the continued existence of a platform that is 30-million-dollars underwater (however you want to split hairs about exactly how) is not a guarantee. And we all complain about Tumblr, but we have all been here a long time (me, uh, over 10 years), we have a solid community, there's no other alternative that's really ever come up or gotten the same kind of uptake, and if it went under, we would be uh, screwed.

Tumblr is kind of a mess, it's the antithesis of every social media site, and it doesn't (for now) have the crap that makes The Artist Formerly Known As Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so utterly unusable, or if it does, you can (mostly) turn it off. That's why we all like it and why, even if we are resolutely anti-capitalist gremlins who resist being marketed to with every fiber of our being, it doesn't change the fact that servers, staff, and all the rest cost real human-people money which the site, by their own frank admission, is struggling to raise. Even if staff does often make crappy updates, they generally at least TRY to listen to us and include a feature to make it optional or roll it back, unlike certain unnamed idiot billionaires. Their mockery of other social media sites can sometimes be a little much, but for now, Tumblr is pretty much the last place on the internet that does what it does, and I like it that way. If it went under and took my blog of 10+ years and all my friends with it, I would be incredibly sad.

That being the case, and basic financial realities being what they are, encouraging people to toss a few bucks at a TOTALLY OPTIONAL and fun gimmick that increases functionality for a product we like is actually not a bad thing. TumblrMart has crabs, checkmarks, Ea-Nasir merchandise (seriously), ad-free browsing, etc., and if our choice is voluntarily supporting the site through fun (and again, OPTIONAL) purchases versus having us all be involuntarily subject to some horrible data-scraping mechanism or forced off altogether because they couldn't keep the lights on, that is fine with me. Nobody is making anybody do or buy anything. But if you like the product Tumblr provides and want a fun material way to show your appreciation, then I don't think it's some Great Transgression to participate in that.

#temperedknight #ask #crab day

[felassan]

Image credits: David Gaider [source link below]

Article: 'Who is qualified to make a world? In search of the magic of maps'

"You're travelling with your imagination..."

An extensive feature article about maps, map creation and world-building. It refers to David Gaider and the team's early world-building and early-days process of creating the universe that would become Dragon Age. It includes this early series of original sketches of the map of Thedas through time that Gaider drew when the world was being created.

Excerpts under the cut (due to length):

"Dragon Age. That's the game Gaider was working on - or rather, it was the world he would dream up. Ideas had been swirling about what Dragon Age would be for a few months. The team knew it would be like D&D but would not be actual D&D, because BioWare was sick of licensed games at the time. They knew they were going for Tolkien rather than Conan or Diablo. "We definitely had at least some idea of the kind of RPG this was going to be," Gaider tells me when in a video call. But BioWare didn't have a world. One day, Gaider was handed a historical atlas of Europe and tasked with going away and coming up with a fantasy world for players to explore. And almost immediately, he sketched a map." - "What is it about a map that gives it magical powers to bind us and pull us in? I wanted to know more, and through talking to David Gaider and learning about his creation of the map for Dragon Age, I hoped I might find out." - "In fact, he corrects me, "I sketched a lot of maps." But they were the same map, replicated over and over, because in order for a world to make sense to Gaider, it needed history. "I drew this coastline and then made a bunch of photocopies of it," he says, "and did this series of sketches, like, 'Okay in this era, this is where people lived and where they migrated and created different cultures,' and those cultures changed over time as they got conquered. Much like the book of European maps I had, I was doing it in eras and forming an idea in my mind about how these groups all mingled together. David Gaider was kind enough to share his original sketches of the Dragon Age world with me, and in them, you can see an emerging flow of history. You can see the spread of the Tevinter Empire as the race of Men lands in the north and then begins to spread out. You can see, in the earliest images, there's still a kingdom of Elves in the forest of Arlathan, nearby. Then, they are forced out by the growing Tevinter Empire, south to the Dales, where we encounter them in the Dragon Age games, subjugated to being a kind of slave race. Tribes give way to kingdoms, and names we're familiar with begin to appear." - Caption on the sketches: "David Gaider's original sketches of the Dragon Age world. Wherever you see a name typed in, it's because it was changed by EA's in-house sensitivity team, which cross-checked place names with real-world names in case there was a clash. The area of Antiva, for example, used to be called Calabria, but Calabria is the name of a region in southern Italy. "Well, if you do something with the Calabrians that real Calabrians don't like, they might get upset," the sensitivity department at EA told Gaider. "So I was like, 'Oh fine, I'll change it,'" he says." - ""My feeling on history when it comes to worlds," Gaider says, "is that you need to have a lot of it." Without it, he says a world will feel like a facade. "Sometimes you'll see worlds where they've made only what is needed for their current story, and it's like an old Western set: it feels right, it looks right, but then you slowly get a sense of, 'Oh, there's nothing behind those doors.' Before he sat down to draw, Gaider already knew some of the geographical elements he wanted. He knew he wanted a topsy-turvy 'South was cold and North was hot' idea for the continent, to play with people's expectations, and he knew he wanted a large waterway - that he likens to the Mediterranean - carving its way far inland. Today, we know this as the Waking Sea, and it's an incredibly important feature in the Dragon Age games. Gaider also knew he wanted islands far up in the north, from which an unknown race could invade. "I knew that I wanted an 'other' race that would come along," he says, "which ended up being the Qunari." Gaider also knew he wanted untouched areas for adventure, like forests and mountains, just in case the game would need them. "I didn't want every place to be so civilised that when it came time for 'we need ruins' or 'we need massive wilderness', we've got nowhere to go because I've civilised the entire thing," he says."

"Because remember, the team didn't yet know where the game they were making would be set. That's why so much of the continent you see in the sketches is as yet unused in Dragon Age games - the series hasn't needed all of it by this point. Continents are vast, after all, and realising them in 3D for players to explore is a mighty task. "I guess in my head," Gaider says, "we would be probably either on the north of Ferelden, on what became the Free Marches, or maybe off in the west more towards the Tirashan Forest or the Hunterhorns. That was a very wild area and I was like, 'That's a good place for an adventure to be.' Atlas at hand, photocopies in front of him, Gaider set about his work of growing a game world from a bunch of maps, and with not a small amount of trepidation. There was a lot riding on the world after all; it was a far cry from the worlds he'd created and freely abandoned as a teenager. "This is going to form the foundation, ideally, for a lot of games," he says, "and a lot of people are going to do work [on it]. And the trepidation is like, 'I don't know what I'm doing.' I'm essentially the equivalent of a 13-year-old just going, 'La la la, I'm going to call this Ferelden!'" - "Some things bother David Gaider about the Dragon Age 1 map, still, and they occurred when artists prettied his sketches without his involvement. "Oh," he said awkwardly when they were presented to him. "I didn't want it to look like this, exactly." He says they added a lot more rivers and mountains, and flipping between his sketches and the Dragon Age: Origins map, you can see some have moved around, or gained prominence, and places like Redcliffe have shifted. Apparently people would take to the BioWare forums after the game came out to complain about the map's geography. "And I'm like, 'You know what? You got a point,'" Gaider says. This is mostly anger at himself, though, for not doing more about it. Similarly, he wishes he'd been able to sit down with artists and work out what the rest of the continent you don't see in his sketches looked like, so they didn't have to have "the continent just keeps going..."-like messages at the edge of it. "But to where?" Gaider says. But it speaks to something he's noticed in his decades working in games about artists and writers. "They really speak two different languages," he tells me. They process things differently and they tend to care about different things. There were reams of history and lore written in a "world bible" for the Dragon Age team, but getting artists to read it was another matter. They wanted clear visual cues, not piles of backstory. Dragon Age: Origins eventually found its setting in Ferelden, the kingdom in the bottom right bulge of the sketches, so it left a huge portion of the sketched world unused, which the team presumed no one would ever see. "We thought that was going to be the only one," he says of Dragon Age: Origins. "That's why when you get to the end of Origins, there's so many epilogues that cast off far into the future, which, if we'd known that we were going to keep going and keep going with history, we wouldn't have said, 'Oh, in fifty and one hundred years, this is going to happen.' I think we would have played our cards a little closer to our chest. EA apparently found the game very old-fashioned and thought no one wanted turn-based role-playing games like that any more, which of course now seems ridiculous given the success of Baldur's Gate 3. "Baldur's Gate just goes to show how wrong people are when it comes to industry wisdom," Gaider says."

-

"Nevertheless, when Dragon Age 2 eventually was green-lit, the scope of it, and the focus of it, would completely change. With it, BioWare and EA would push towards a console RPG experience that stopped and started less, and had more action-packed combat. And EA only gave BioWare 18 months to make it, so BioWare decided to make a much smaller, more tightly focused game. It seemed like a good idea at the time. "People at BioWare convinced themselves that the fans would be okay - it'll be fine if it's a smaller game," Gaider says. "And I don't know why we thought that was the case, but for a moment there in time, we were like, 'Yeah, sure, it'll be fine.'" As for the mapping, a tighter focus meant centering on one place rather than a whole region, so the city of Kirkwall on the Waking Sea became the heart of the game, and BioWare developed a time-jumping idea for the game so you could see it at various different points in your character's lifetime, which I still think is really neat. And because there wasn't a large region to explore, the game didn't need a sprawling map, so BioWare turned the map on its side to give Kirkwall some height and majesty instead. It wasn't particularly memorable, but it looked nice. The game didn't go down well. "Its highs were really high, and its lows were really low," Gaider says now. "It was very unpolished. If it even got six months more polish, I think the reception would have been a lot different." More importantly, it meant everything would need to change again for Dragon Age 3." - "In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third game in the series, the map plays a starring role. It's built into the game world specifically so you and your Inquisition advisors can gather around it and push pieces about as you choose where to go next. Thematically, this fits neatly with the theme of running an organisation like the Inquisition, but the map was also required to cover a lot of ground. One thing BioWare knew the moment it started making the game was that it needed to be bigger than DA2. This time, the game would spread across areas of Ferelden we hadn't been to as well as some we had; up to Kirkwall and into surrounding Free Marches, and then west to the city of Orlais and onwards until it reached past the Waking Sea and arid desert land. But the sense of scale was an illusion. Dragon Age: Inquisition wasn't a continuous, open world, but a fragmented one, made up of a few open-world-like zones, some small parts of cities, and many 'you can't actually explore there, but you can read about it' text-window interactions. Again, this was Gaider's idea, to give the game "a feeling of breadth" without needing the art department to render it all in 3D. By the time Inquisition came out in 2014, the world of Thedas - the name an amalgamation of "the" and "Dragon Age Setting" by the way - had been reinterpreted for three games and touched by many pairs of hands. Gaider's writing team had plugged the holes he, as a single writer, couldn't fill, and the art team had shown us what the world looked like. There was even, fittingly, a Dragon Age encyclopaedia released, compiling the teetering piles of lore and backstory, and maps and imagery that BioWare created for it. People were now joining the team who were already fans of the series. This was no longer an imaginary world; Thedas felt real. And perhaps it no longer needed Gaider to steer it."

- "So Gaider left BioWare in 2016, having worked there for 17 years, most of it spent on Dragon Age. Really, he'd had enough of wizards and demons, and Anthem wasn't the tonic he sought. Eventually, he'd move all the way from Canada to Australia for a fresh start, where he'd start Summerfall Studios and make a role-playing musical called Stray Gods, which was released last year. That game, incidentally, only featured a small map for travelling between city locations. Today, he awaits the arrival of a new Dragon Age game - Dragon Age: Dreadwolf - like the rest of us, having had no direct input. It's an anxious wait, as you can imagine. "I was Mr Dragon Age for ten years," he says, "so there is a certain amount of attachment. I'm not sure how I will feel when Dragon Age 4 comes out. I have a hard time believing that if I play it, I won't spend a lot of the time second guessing any choices I see, like, 'Oh, hmm, I wouldn't have done that.' What if they bring back some characters that I wrote? They're going to Tevinter so what if Dorian's there? Gah! I don't know; I am of two minds as to whether or not I will even play it." "It makes me wonder about these people who create worlds, who draw them into existence - whether that's in a preliminary sketch or a lavish piece of artwork - and whether there's always a point where success comes with the consequence of ceding control. Had Gaider kept the world of Dragon Age to himself, a photocopied map, folded and stuffed in a back pocket, we'd never have played it. And had millions of people not played and enjoyed it, I wouldn't be writing about it now and have that feeling when I look at an image of one of Gaider's photocopies, that I'm in the presence of something special, something powerful. But it's no longer Gaider's map, and no longer Gaider's world. It's all of ours."" - "For Gaider, maps are snapshots of history, photocopied slideshows explaining how places came to be. And of course they are, because he was thinking about Dragon Age when he started in on maps, which meant that he was thinking about geography, sure, but also the passing of time, and the way the latter affects the former."

[source and full article]

#dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #longpost #long post #anthem

[scribblestatic]

I hope y'all had a good 4/20. Anyway, here's more Sheepzun.

---

Finding his way out of the caves was much easier than going in. The flow of qi seemed easier for him to discern, and his senses were stronger. How curious! He was sure he'd be able to sense predators much easier now.

He cloaked himself in his qi and snuck out the caves, ensuring no one was looking at or for him. This time around, it seemed he had enough qi to do so easier than before, not feeling any pull or strain on his meridians.

He was a right chuffed lad, all things considered!

Shen Yuan made his way back to Qing Jing Peak without much of an issue. Disciples didn't seem to sense his hiding. Those with stronger cultivation did seem to look around, a tad unsettled if anything, but overall, none of them saw through his illusion.

It also helped that he was a prey animal who preferred to not leave things up to risk or chance when being careful was a perfectly reasonable option.

As he travelled, he noticed that the season seemed a little different. A tad on the warmer side than he last remembered. He had entered a few days after spring began, and the flowers he remembered were supposed to bloom seemed to already be at the end of its blooming cycle...

Was it the end of spring? Goodness, time flew!!

Thankfully, not an excessive amount of time passed since, upon making his way out of the forest near the woodshed, Luo Binghe didn't look too much taller. Yes, at the very least, only a few days or weeks had passed.

Hearing Shen Yuan's purposeful rustling, Luo Binghe's slightly pointy ears almost seemed to twitch. Then, he turned around quickly, eyes wide and swiftly becoming watery with unshed tears.

"Shizun!!"

Shen Yuan huffed, amused as the boy, sticky as ever, ran up to him and immediately hugged him around the neck.

"Shizun! Shizun, you came back! Shizun!!"

'Who do you keep calling out for, ah? I'm right here,' Shen Yuan thought.

Luo Binghe went still.

"...Shizun?"

'Yes?'

The boy suddenly let go of him and leaned back, staring right into his eyes. Then, slowly, like the flowers he missed bloom at the start of spring, Luo Binghe's smile spread across his face in a vibrant flourish.

"Shizun!! Shizun, you can talk now?!"

Shen Yuan paused, blinking.

'...You can hear what this one is...saying.'

"Yes, I can! I can finally understand you, Shizun! Has my cultivation gotten better? Is... Is this because of what you taught me?"

I don't know, what the heck?! This is scary!!

So, if he was actually thinking as though he was speaking to Luo Binghe, then the boy would actually hear it? After all, he wasn't responding to his thoughts now. Was this because he taught a spirit creature's Dao to a human that he became Dr. Dolittle? That's an entire genre change!

...Whatever that was supposed to mean! Who even was Dr. Dolittle?!

'...Indeed, it seems likely. However, this one admits that this is the first time he's taught this Dao to a human,' Shen Yuan replies, his mind in utter disarray and panic. 'As much as you are a student, this ram is still learning himself.'

There's no precedent for this! I'm sorry, Binghe! This ram is only about a year old!

Luo Binghe looked as though the meaning of the Dao was explained to him in elementary terms, as though he made a huge mental breakthrough with his words alone.

"I see... Thanking Shizun for his knowledge and education all this time!"

He bowed so respectfully, Shen Yuan immediately felt like a terrible saber-toothed wolf dressed up like a newly born spirit lamb to prey on the little human's trust.

But, well, he was at least somewhat honest just now. He really was also a student in all of this.

'This ram thanks you as well. Even through our language barrier, you've been an exemplary student. Now that we can understand each other more freely, we can further improve your cultivation.'

"Yes, Shizun! I'm looking forward to it!"

Shit.

[More under the cut, this one just got kinda long]

----

Okay, so, it wasn't all that bad.

One, it really was much easier to speak with Bing-lamb, and the boy seemed to flourish further under his his verbal guidance. He didn't really have to say much, though. Whatever Luo Binghe lacked in prowess, he was steadily making up for it in motivation.

All Shen Yuan had to do was correct him a little here and there based on whatever kind of strange animal instinct he had that said,

'This stance is a little off. Keep you knees elastic. Firm, but ready.'

or

'You must connect with your surroundings and hone to your senses. Humans, as predators, rely strongly on their eyes. But you must learn to use your nose, ears, and touch as well.'

"What about taste, Shizun?"

'There are some things a mouth shouldn't touch. We can build up to that as you learn more.'

Though, perhaps he asked such questions because Shen Yuan occasionally found himself chewing on Luo Binghe's clothes. It was more affectionate grooming for the boy than anything, honestly. But he was also a prey creature rather than a human, so it could be excused as such.

Two, after Luo Binghe's lessons with the human instructors, Luo Binghe would sometimes ask him for questions and clarification as he did the pile of chores constantly assigned to him. What was with all these duties, anyway? Weren't all of the disciples supposed to do these things? They were working too hard on purpose, but why?

Anyway, despite not being a human, it turned out Shen Yuan could read quite well. He wasn't sure where he'd learned such a skill, but it was nice to see it be useful. So, because Luo Binghe's questions never got answered in class, as the boy's Shizun, he took it upon himself to do his best to help.

It meant he sometimes had to get a bit creative with how he explained things, but he was doing well enough, it seemed.

Of course, there were limits to what he could do.

As a ram, teaching the four arts was mostly out of the question. Give him some paints and he could maybe bang something out on a canvas, but he had no guarantee it would look like anything useful or recognizable. Same for a guqin or calligraphy.

Go...well, if the pieces and board were big enough, maybe. But anyway, he had his limitations. Not that Luo Binghe seemed to see any of them. With the way Shen Yuan loafed and Luo Binghe sat in front of him, his workbook open, one would think he'd hung the moon.

It was...admittedly very nice to be so appreciated.

Also, getting petted. He'd stopped for a bit after they first spoke, but Luo Binghe did it by accident again later. When Shen Yuan stayed quiet without scolding the action and slightly shifting his head closer, well, he got the picture.

And snacks. Luo Binghe didn't have access to a full kitchen for reasons he didn't understand, but Shen Yuan just knew. The day he had kitchen privileges, it was over for Qing Jing Peak. They'd become Qing Jing Restaurant or something.

Although he still had to be careful, he found he was actually starting to enjoy living the way he was now. He didn't feel the need to look over his shoulder as often, Prey and predator, bridging the gap, huh? What a lovely story.

As Luo Binghe improved, keeping his sheep shizun a secret, several more months passed. Spring turned into summer, into fall, into winter, into spring, into the touches of summer heat once more.

Over that year, Luo Binghe grew taller and broader. His shoulders were starting to fill out, his hands and feet better sized for his body. From his experience working with his shizun's hair-like wool, he learned how to take care of his own hair better, the curls becoming shinier and tamable, no longer as difficult to pull into a ponytail. He also learned all the little nooks and crannies of Qing Jing Peak after going foraging with his shizun, and the mountain climbing and hunting he'd done for himself.

He'd thought his shizun would be against him hunting the birds and other creatures on and around the peak, but though he never partook himself, he was ambivalent.

'You are human. Even sheep eat meat when necessary. For you, it's even more so. This ram shan't fault his student for doing the best for himself.'

And so, with his own hunting skills built up, despite still living and sleeping in the wood shed and lacking some of the more artistic prowess of his sect siblings, he's grown considerably in strength, speed, and build. As he sometimes heard his shizun murmur, 'Born to Bai Zhan, raised to Qing Jing, manages both.'

Meanwhile, Shizun himself...

Luo Binghe had visited Xin Ya Peak before, alongside some of his sect siblings. He'd seen what spirit sheep normally looked like--fluffy, with slightly curved horns, and a nice sheen to their wool. Not particularly tall--mostly reaching around their knees or thighs.

Shizun, however, drew much more regal of a figure. His wool was less fluffy but somehow even softer. He was taller, too, reaching up to the bottom of Luo Binghe's chest. His horns had grown out considerably, to the point they were curling outward. Unlike his farmed comrades, Shizun was exceptionally fastidious. Though, it likely helped he was not locked into a barn or kept around mud. So, he was not only impeccably clean, but he kept a long, undocked tail that swayed behind him with his steps.

He kept his wool a beautiful shade of ivory white. The only discolorations were the slightly green tones that occasionally hung onto his stomach and legs from loafing on the grasses around the bamboo forest and the ever-present blood red huadian on his forehead. Moreover, after Shizun had returned from wherever he'd gone, his eyes had changed. Irises that were once a striking brown had become a soothing blue-green color, much like the peak colors of Qing Jing.

Perhaps spirit animals needed less effort to attain godhood. Luo Binghe could believe it. After all, his shizun appeared like a god nowadays.

'Binghe' he'd hear, his soft and elegant voice calling out to him in the dewy mornings.

He would look up to see his shizun returning from some place he'd found his wild breakfast, leaving him to sleep longer because, as the ram said, he was a growing boy and needed it more.

The sun would peek out at just the right time to shine on his arrival, making him look ethereal, even if he was holding moss in his mouth.

'Have you eaten yet? If not, add this to your food today. It has absorbed quite a bit of yin qi. Considering your yang constitution, it will help promote more internal balance.'

Shizun places the stringy, thick moss in Luo Binghe's waiting hands.

'This is called Qiyan Root, despite not being a root at all. Strain and boil it twice for the best effect. You can also dry some of it for medicinal use. It should taste quite nice in an herbal tea.'

His shizun hummed in consideration as he tilted his head, long white lashes against the fur of his cheeks.

Luo Binghe couldn't help but wonder what his shizun would look like as a human. He was quite the handsome animal, much like one would compliment a horse for its strong physique and beautiful sheen. Surely he'd be a handsome human as well.

Though, wondering such a thing would have to wait. It was time for morning chores, then his lessons could begin in earnest.

It was after one such set of lessons with his other teachers, when he was chopping wood with his shizun at his side that the ram suddenly raised his head with a frown.

"Shizun?"

'...The air feels different. What do you sense?'

Having learned his cultivation mostly from a spirit animal rather than a human, Luo Binghe honed his senses and listened. Indeed, the peak seemed quiet. Too quiet, however.

"Something's not right... Shizun, I'll be back."

'Be careful, Binghe.'

The boy nodded in return before he ran off, Shen Yuan staying behind as he tried to better understand what this energy fluctuation actually was.

Eventually, curiosity and concern won out over wariness, and he concealed himself as he headed toward the rainbow bridges separating Qing Jing from the other peaks.

There, he found several demons cracking away at the bridge between Qing Jing and Qiong Ding. Several were smaller demons with tiny horns and large machetes in their spindly hands. They were accompanied by a larger, more boubous demon in a loincloth, using an axe to slice and wear away at the energies keeping the rainbow bridge connected.

A siege? But this is Cang Qiong, one of the most powerful sects! How could these demons have the gall?!

Shen Yuan wasn't aware of the politics that came with running a peak, so, of course, he was unaware of the peak lord's absence. Several lords were away--more than honestly permissible--leaving the little lamb-like disciples without their guard dogs. Though, judging from the coordinated actions of the demons, the little troupe he was looking at was the least of his worries.

Binghe!!

If he was running this way, then surely he would've encountered the demons! But he could smell no blood or anything from his student. Perhaps he already passed through before they arrived. After all, behind the troupe, he could see several groups of demons destroying the bridges and leaving the peaks isolated...

No, not all the peaks. Qiong Ding.

Something about this scenario struck him as...oddly familiar.

But he shoved that thought aside. Now wasn't the time for excessive questioning! His student was in danger!

As much as he liked to believe he prepared Luo Binghe for combat in some meaningful way, he would never overestimate his teaching abilities. He's a ram for fucks sake, how could he be much better than human teachers and their opposable thumbs?!

Not letting up his concealing qi, he began running across the bridge, heading straight for the small crowd of demons.

Though they couldn't see him, his weight and trotting seemed to alert them as they turned his way. Cruel smirks spread on the imps' faces as they raised their weapons and prepared to strike.

Deciding not to conceal himself anymore, he instead focused his qi on his attack, suddenly appearing before them. For some reason, they seemed surprised despite already preparing to attack him.

His qi-filled horns collided with one of their machetes, causing it to crack and shatter. Milliseconds later, the same cracking and shattering came from the imp's ribs.

Gritting his teeth, he flung his head to the right, throwing several of the imps off the cracking bridge. But he still had some momentum and wasn't done yet.

Facing the bulbous demon and its large axe, he charged up as much as he could, enough that his horns began to glow dimly.

The demon bellowed as it swung the axe, intending to split his skull. But Shen Yuan was faster.

Putting more force in his back legs, he jumped forward, tucking his front legs close to his body. His curved horns rammed against the demon's chest, the bones giving way under it. It let out a choke, then it spit up blood as the wind moved around them.

When the demon fell back, Shen Yuan blinked, realizing he was going butt up.

With a surprised bleat, his legs stretched out as the momentum had him flopping on his back above the demon's head. At least it was on solid ground! Dirt, even!

He wiggled, then quickly got himself up, shaking the dust off his head. Reorienting himself, he realized he was on Qiong Ding Peak. Huh... He didn't think the demon was so close to the land there, but maybe he miscalculated.

Anyway, Binghe!

Worried about his student, he quickly ran off to find where he was, concealing himself behind a cloak of qi once more.

Of course, Shen Yuan missed several things.

For one, the imps and demons had not noticed him at all. What they had noticed were several Qing Jing disciples arriving with their swords drawn.

Secondly, the machetes and axes the demons held were not supposed to crack so easily to a ram's horns. They were made with reinforced metals to be sturdy. A regular spirit sheep would've long lost its horns and skull to them.

Thirdly, the largest demon on the bridge had indeed been standing further away from Qiong Ding Peak, and Shen Yuan hadn't miscalculated. He just didn't realize that his body, weighing over 160 kg (352.7 lbs) plus the force of his qi-powered forward thrust was, even by physics standards, enough to blow a large demon backwards by several meters and shatter their collarbone on impact.

He'd turned his body into a literal battering ram.

Lastly, the Qing Jing disciples, whom the demons actually saw and prepared to fight, were able to witness the entire event, and were now staring, wide-eyed, at the large, mystical, disappearing sheep.

...But those were concerns for the future Shen Yuan.

#sheepzun au #svsss #svsss au #static drabbles #au post 4 #static writes #shen yuan does a whoops #he's got binghe on the brain he can't help it