#Super Smash Bros: The Next Story Chapter 3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

juli-sama · 3 years

Note

hii!! could you do a sp character x fem!reader playing video game really late?? sorry if its confusing! first time askin haha <3

Hey guys, this on landed on my like "private"?? (no idea what to call this blog) blog because the ask got send here.

You dont need to follow this one, dont worry XD

Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I wrote, even if I feel like I didnt do so well. ಥ_ಥ

_____________________________

the boys x fem!Reader - Video game weekends!

Cartman:

Cartman is the type of person that stays awake the whole weekend to play. Only if it’s a good game of course.

So, staying up with you is really no problem.

Between you too, you’d probably fall asleep first since he is so used to staying up.

He will still be surprised about the whole thing. A girl. Staying up late. To play videogames?

He sure learned something new that time.

Cartman is one of the best people to lean on to sleep, since he is pretty cuddly.

Stan:

This boy will bath in energy drinks.

He needs them to stay awake, or he will just fall sleep eventually with a controller in his hand.

The idea of staying up late and play video games? He loves it to pieces.

He’s down to play whatever.

Just dance on the Wii? Yes.

Smash Bros on the Switch? Yes.

Story driven game on the console, where you change who plays after a chapter? Hell yes.

He’s also a snack master. He will get everything for a perfect gaming night.

Kyle:

Kyles’s mum will 100% make every snack possible when she hears you come over to play video games.

Kyle will be embarrassed when she comes in to give you more food, but calm down, once you tell him you like that she does that.

He doesn’t really care what you guys play, as long as its not super boring or not his interest.

He is willing tp try anything but will honestly tell you if he hates what you picked.

You two would eventually fall asleep, leaning on each other, controllers still in hand.

Sheila would secretly take a photo of it.

Kenny:

If you hang out at his place, Karen will be with you until she falls asleep, and Kenny has to carefully carry her to her room.

Kenny is a master at staying up.

After such a weekend you wonder if Kenny ever really sleeps.

You don’t see him sleep; he’s just always awake.

He is still awake when you slowly drift to sleep, and he is already up and making breakfast the next morning before you even get the chance to roll out of bed.

Kenny can’t offer to bring any games or even provide a console, so it’s a standard that you either stay at your place or you bring your stuff to his.

He’s super thankful for that, won’t complain about whatever game you want to play and takes care of snacks in return.

You just don’t know where he gets those from.

Butters:

Butters has an Xbox but he barley plays on it.

He prefers his Switch (special Animal Crossing edition) much more and so you guys manly play on the old Wii he has or the multiplayer switch games.

Be careful though, as Butters will probably beat you in Mario Party or Mario kart every time.

He knows all the minigames by heart and is an absolute God in Mario kart.

But he’s a really enjoyable companion anyway.

You can try to persuade him to play other games with you.

Butters will eventually around two in the morning tell you its late and then you guys will stop playing to sleep.

Clyde:

He will bring sweets and get high on sugar.

Clyde stays awake because of all the sugar intake, be it gummi bears that he stuffs inside his mouth (he will do a fist full and show you how many he can fit inside his mouth) or the liters of cola he downs all night.

Around five in the morning he will have a tummy ache and fall asleep while crying about how much it hurts.

Clyde is one of the few people who take just dance super serious and he’s a master. Good luck beating him.

Clyde is open to any kinds of games, but prefers fun multiplayer games like Mario party or Smash Bros.

Falling asleep eventually with him means that you two will be all sprawled out on the floor, the game you played still running.

Token:

Token isn’t that used to staying up late.

He sure can stay up late sometimes, but almost every weekend, like some people he knows? Nope.

Anything you need for a perfect gaming night he will get.

New game? He has it. A Snack you like? Already there in neat bowls. Some drink you fancy? Prepared before you arrived.

He always wants you to choose the game and makes sure you are 100% comfortable and happy.

Token will always have a pair of sweatpants at his place that he gives you, so you can be comfortable. If you ask nicely, he might even give you (happily) a sweatshirt.

At 3 in the morning, he would maybe ask if you’re tired. If you are, great, he will suggest sleeping. If not, he will down an energy drink and stay awake with you.

Craig:

Craig is a big stargazing fan, so its normal for him to be awake when no one else is.

So when you asked if you guys can do all-nighter videogame marathon, he was on board.

If you do it at his place, you will have Stripe in your lap at some point.

Don’t come at Craig with Mario party or something… He is more of a horror game fan. Resident Evil Village, Outlast, The Evil Within.

He will at some point give in and let you choose something.

Around one in the morning he will ask you if you want to go and stargaze.

If you agree, he will make sure to show you everything that there is to see.

Should you get sleepy, Craig will gladly offer himself up as a pillow to sleep on.

If Craig gets sleepy, he will just chill on the bed, and slowly drift to sleep, smiling while he is thinking about you.

Tweek:

Tweek runs on caffein and like Cartman, he has absolutely no trouble staying awake for long periods of time.

Don’t worry, you will be able to match him if you stay over, since his parents will make sure that you also get enough of their homemade coffee™.

He’s open to play whatever and to your surprise he has some hidden gems on his PlayStation that are super fun with him.

He will 100% bake for you guys whenever you make gaming nights and make them fit what you play.

You agreed to play a horror game together?

Get ready for horror themed cupcakes!

If you fall asleep somewhere late in the night, he will probably stay up and just chill next to you.

Jimmy:

Mario party? Mario party.

Jimmy and you will know every minigame by heart once you’re done.

You don’t know how, but no matter how much you play, it just doesn’t get boring with him.

If you do get sick of playing with Mario and his friends, Jimmy will show you his collection of interactive story games. Detroit become Human, Telltale games, Life is Strange, Until Dawn and the likes.

Debating with him what’s the best path or choosing the obvious bad or awkward choices are fun.

Misses Valmer will gladly bring you some chips or bring you something to drink ever so often.

Sleep? For the weak.

When you’re with Jimmy, he is pure entertainment, and you just can’t get tired.

Jimmy himself is just super eager to do all kinds of stuff with you, so that keeps him awake.

#south park x reader #stan x reader #kyle x reader #cartman x reader #kenny x reader #butters x reader #clyde x reader #token x reader #craig x reader #tweek x reader #jimmy x reader

396 notes · View notes

tossawary · 3 years

Text

Chapter 24: “Seeing is Believing” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines and commentary. Not a full list or full commentary, but longer commentary than usual to talk about quest construction.

AN: This was... a weird chapter to write. When I started outlining, I had... the conversation with Shen Qingqiu planned... the conversation with Shen Yuan planned... the fact that SQH, SY, LQG, and LFL was the quest party... and the fact that they get the Eye at the end of it. That was everything.

The entire rest of this chapter came together FRIDAY LAST WEEK.

Huan Hua Palace wasn’t going to be there. The Weeper didn’t exist. The Eye or its previous owner wasn’t at all connected to the Garden Master. The Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders didn’t exist. The murder plant didn’t exist. The mysterious monster showing up at the end wasn’t originally planned either.

I mean, I had a lot of pre-existing plot threads to tie in and weave with, but ohhh boy! Picture someone lying facedown on a floor like, “I forgot to plan the contents of the super important quest...”

I was originally going to have the Eye quest a lot simpler, but given the weight “Death of the Author” had when I finally reached this part of the story, that wasn’t really going to do! It had to be bigger than that! It needed oomph! This also felt like a good opportunity to really establish the new SQH-SY dynamic. To explore SY fumbling to find a place in this world without strict character role, especially in relation to settled and well-supported SQH.

“One attempts to remain dignified,” Shen Qingqiu agrees. “As there is little point in kicking and screaming about how such ignobility isn’t fair.”

“Ha! Is there ever?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not cute when I do it,” Shang Qinghua jokes.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips actually twitch at that.

Success?!

AN: I wasn’t going into this fic with the intention of writing any Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu almost friendship! But it started developing and it seemed a shame not to explore Shang Qinghua developing a real relationship with Shen Qingqiu (though not a particularly close one) when the man is suppose to be the scum villain (and the readers know that the man might get replaced by Shen Yuan).

I can see myself writing more Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu content in the future. Someone dropped a particularly nice prompt for them in my inbox that I’m looking forward to exploring at some point.

(I mean, not to say that Shang Qinghua has a type, but Shang Qinghua has a type and it’s handsome, deadly, intimidating, frosty men with a villainous character design and trust/abandonment and communication issues. I could make it work.)

“Ah, well, two ‘ideal’ situations come to mind: severing the personal relationship for good… or, ah, talking about how to do better and trying that. You don’t have to forget or even forgive if you don’t want to! But, ah… there’s got to be a difference between totally swallowing your anger and cutting ties forever, right?” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “If there’s… ever going to be anything good afterwards…”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him for a sweat-inducing length of time.

“Ah, fuck,” Shang Qinghua thinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ahhh, I’m just… thinking about something someone told me… in… in regards to some of my own problems. Never mind! Never mind!”

AN: Luo Jiahui really is out here making Moshang and Qijiu get their fucking act together just by setting a better example.

“Shizun, my apologies for the interruption, but I came to ask Shizun if he would be willing to join our music lesson today? The disciples have missed his playing and are eager to present their improvements.”

“...Very well, unless anyone here would disagree…?” Shen Qingqiu looks directly at the Qian Cao Peak cultivator, as though daring her to object and die.

“It’s an excellent suggestion!” the Qian Cao Peak cultivator says quickly.

The young woman smiles. “And perhaps Shizun could sit in on the calligraphy lesson afterwards? In order to offer his opinion on my progress as a teacher?”

“Fishing for compliments is unbecoming,” Shen Qingqiu says dryly.

“Wait, what?” Shang Qinghua thinks.

AN: So, this has all been happening in the background, but Shen Qingqiu accepted this House of Rejuvenation woman onto his Peak about... 6-ish years ago now? This is kind of meant to parallel Shang Qinghua’s once-secret relationship with Luo Jiahui.

Shang Qinghua was out here trying to be a better person and Shen Qingqiu noticed; now Shen Qingqiu has his own positive (platonic) relationship with a nameless background character who was meant to die for plot reasons. What a thing, huh? If the story was saved because Shang Qinghua started a domino effect of saving random people who went on to change things?

After all, as Shang Qinghua said to the kid, besides Peerless Cucumber’s apparent talent for cultivation, he knows that his fellow transmigrator has three very important skills that will serve him well on An Ding Peak! 1) An encyclopedia knowledge for even seemingly pointless bullshit (which is kind of flattering, honestly). 2) The willingness to fight total strangers over seemingly pointless bullshit. And 3) a sharp enough tongue to win.

Peerless Cucumber didn’t find these points as funny as Shang Qinghua did.

AN: Shen Yuan was always going to end up on An Ding Peak. I thought about sending him to Qing Jing or Qian Cao or Qiong Ding... or any other Peak... but that would take him too far away from Shang Qinghua to really explore their relationship and to move him around conveniently in the story. And SY sticking to An Ding seemed to best illustrate the fact that SY is lost and doesn’t know what to do except cling to SQH.

“It’s not much, sure, but it’s yours,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “You’ll be joining the talisman classes soon, so don’t try anything from a book and then need to request some home repairs.”

Peerless Cucumber nods and puts his stack of manuals down on the table.

“How’s your tutorial mission going?”

“Fine,” the kid says shortly. “Have you found anything for the other one yet?”

“Ah, not yet.”

AN: “Are you winning, son?” meme energy here.

Ah, now Shang Qinghua recognizes his fellow transmigrator’s expression! That’s the same stunned expression one of his Huan Hua not-disciples, Yu Chaonan, made upon meeting the Bai Zhan Peak War God for the first time. Shang Qinghua assumes that Peerless Cucumber was expecting a man who looked more like a musclebound giant and less like a pop idol (if one with amazingly muscular arms), which is a super common and never-not-funny misconception people have about Liu Qingge.

“Brother of one of the most beautiful women in this world, bro,” Shang Qinghua reminds his fellow transmigrator, amused. Aha! Now Peerless Cucumber’s vehement disinterest in the harem stuff is making even more sense than before!

Shang Qinghua’s assumption gets 100% confirmed when it comes time for Peerless Cucumber to fly with Liu Qingge for the next leg of the journey. The other transmigrator is so embarrassed and awkward about it that Shang Qinghua’s super direct brother-in-law asks if the young man is alright.

AN: This was so fun to write. Shang Qinghua really can use the Liu siblings to gauge people’s sexual/romantic orientation.

The map (or rather, the copy Shang Qinghua made of the delicate original map) takes them to a green and grey landscape of leafy trees crawling over a wide network of tall cliffs and deep gorges. Gurgling rivers cut through twisting rock formations. Shang Qinghua can’t see any of these rivers on the map. Or these deathly drop ravines. From the outside, the whole thing looks like a natural maze (holy shit, there could be so many monsters and death-traps in there!), and Shang Qinghua would know those golden robes flying low over the hanging trees anywhere.

“Huan Hua,” Liu Qingge mutters.

“Do you think they’re looking for what we’re looking for?” Luo Fanli asks.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Peerless Cucumber says, before Shang Qinghua can.

AN: I came up with the skeleton idea first. Then I was like... “I should give it three eyes.” And then I was like... “But who IS this dead author? A god? A spirit? What grander implications am I spinning here?”

And THEN I remembered that I had some ambiguous powerful being force the Garden Master into exile due to a flood. This was because, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the immortal man Gilgamesh meets in the abyss is the survivor of a great flood. So I was like, “Reduce! Re-use! Recycle! There’s my skeleton!”

So I wanted to relate the skeleton to water because of the flood angle. Water as a symbol of cleansing/reincarnation is a big thing throughout many cultures. I can’t remember exactly how the crying aspect came up, but I knew there was going to be water in the temple now, so at some point my brain like was, “Bro, this skeleton should totally be crying because mythology vibes.”

So I built the surrounding land off the idea that there was water flowing from or around this temple. At this point, I had decided that Huan Hua Palace should also be looking for this artifact, so I had to come up with a way to hide the temple, yet have a way for SQH’s party to track it down.

The damage to the doors is worse: someone once upon a time collapsed a part of the cliff face around the entrance, essentially leaving only the top fourth of the utterly smashed stone doors visible. It’s a wall now and has been for ages. It looks like it would take days to dig through the rubble. Someone has even super helpfully carved, “These doors will never open again,” just above the wreck.

“Guess we’ll have to go in as intruders rather than guests!” Luo Fanli says.

“What would be welcoming us inside a lost temple exactly?” Shang Qinghua asks vaguely, inwardly cursing the fact that explosive mining techniques will definitely attract the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators’ attention and also probably collapse the whole cliff on them.

“We only have to clear a passage for us, not the whole door,” Peerless Cucumber says optimistically. “Is there a special technique for this kind of thing?”

“Aha, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we just keep following the water?” Luo Fanli says.

“...How so?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Some of those waterfalls could be passages inside,” Liu Qingge explains, because he and the little sister-in-law apparently share the same brain. He’s already eyeing the waterfall wearing down the giant statue on the left.

AN: Temples in quests need to have traps and obstacles and monsters! Well, not ALL of the did, but this one did. I based the obstacles they faced as much as I could around the whole “Death of the Author” theme, while using this whole quest to explore Shen Yuan, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, Shang Qinghua and Liu Qingge and Luo Fanli, and so on.

The idea here with the door is that the “author” is not going to let them inside the temple to take the interpretation of the narrative (the Eye) for themselves. The story is over (the temple is closed for business)! The author is dead! If they want to get inside, they have to break inside or slip inside as intruders.

This also creates a convenient obstacle to hold up the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators so that our party can be nearly caught later! And shows off Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Luo Fanli’s twisty lines of thinking.

Luo Fanli is holding the light and Shang Qinghua passes the other transmigrator to her, while accepting Liu Qingge’s hand for help getting out of the water.

“Ahhh, that was fun,” Shang Qinghua mutters.

Then he notices that Liu Qingge has the Cheng Luan sword out and ready. Shang Qinghua looks through the surrounding darkness, but all he can see are columns and water. For a moment, he thinks he sees something, a prowling shadow at the other end of the cavernous room, but he wipes the water out of his eyes and it’s gone.

AN: The water in Shang Qinghua’s eyes briefly lets him see a flash of the invisible monsters who show up later! It helps up the tension.

Another low growl rips through the darkness and Peerless Cucumber shuffles a little closer to Shang Qinghua. Because that sounded really fucking close and yet Shang Qinghua still can’t see the thing that’s making that sound.

He doesn’t see Liu Qingge lunge at him either. He only feels his brother-in-law shove him into Peerless Cucumber, knocking them into the water, out of the way of something that howls when Liu Qingge slashes at it with his sword. Shang Qinghua rolls off Peerless Cucumber and looks up just in time to see dark blood splatter across the watery floor. Liu Qingge pursues the attacker with a second slash, but only seems to meet thin air this time.

“It’s invisible!” Luo Fanli cries. “Fuck!”

“Behind you!” Liu Qingge snaps, and spins to slash at the thin air beside him. Dark droplets of blood hit the water again and something hisses at him.

Luo Fanli whirls and slashes, searching for an opponent.

“They’re reflected in the water!” Liu Qingge yells at her, standing guard over Shang Qinghua as he gets to his feet again. “Listen for their footsteps and vocalizations! Feel the demonic energy and air displacement!”

AN: I got this from a list of Dungeons and Dragons puzzles. The idea is that there’s some puzzle that must be solved, but the truth of the room can only be seen in the reflection of the nearby water (or mirror or whatever).

Which felt fitting for a “Death of the Author” quest! Whatever an author’s intentions, the story is what they actually wrote, so the audience interprets a text without the context of the author’s insight. The truth (of the story) is in the reflection (audience interpretation)! It felt like a fun idea.

It also allows Shen Yuan to actually contribute to the quest via monster lore and bring up his impaired vision problem. And to confront Shen Yuan with the reality of this world. And to show off Luo Fanli’s fighting skills. And to show off LIU QINGGE’S legendary fighting skills, instincts as a warrior who fights many dangerous beasts, and the fact that he’s clever and observant!

Liu Qingge is good at what he does! And this is what he does!

Someone has… angrily… or desperately… carved a lopsided message into the wall.

“‘If I go blind, so does the world,’” Peerless Cucumber reads.

“...That’s probably not good,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Nooo…” Fanli agrees.

The messages continue as they climb, carved into the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Most of it is illegible. Some of it is just nonsense. Some of it looks like the same kind of historical records carved into the broken tablets. Some of it looks like someone attacked the walls after reading what was written there. There are deep gouges in the walls and cracked marks that would match a giant’s hands.

“‘The water cleans the lies,’” Peerless Cucumber reads. “‘I am the only one who can see.’ ‘Lies everywhere, lies everywhere, lies everywhere.’ ‘The water cleans the evil.’ ‘I do not have enough tears.’ ‘Everything is nothing now. Everything in vain.’”

“You really don’t need to read them!” Shang Qinghua tells the kid. “It’s fine. It's totally fine.”

AN: This is mostly here to up the tension, but it’s also here to try and give insight into this being and relate them more to the “Death of the Author” and the “Seeing is Believing” themes.

I also saw the phrase “If I go blind, so does the world” while I was browsing a list of riddles for D&D campaigns and I was like, “THAT’S SICK, I’M USING THAT.” Really brings the “an eye for an eye” and vengeance vibes. (The riddle was longer than that one phrase, but the answer was “the sun”.)

The top of the temple reveals one massive room that looks like someone was alternatively scratching their insanity into the walls and tearing chunks out of the interior design with their bare hands. Overtop of the rubble is that eerie overgrowth. There’s a fine layer of water over the floor. At the center of it all is an incredibly enormous desk, cracked in half, with a robed skeleton sitting behind it, slumped over the top. It’s a little too large to be an ordinary human.

Plus, its skull is a little too long, probably to accommodate the third eye socket in the forehead. There’s something gleaming softly yellow in the third eye socket.

“Is… there water dripping from its eyes?” Luo Fanli whispers.

“It looks like it…” Peerless Cucumber whispers back. “Like it's crying…?”

“Still…? Is it dead or not?”

“Holy shit,” Shang Qinghua thinks, slightly nauseated. “System, bro, the worst bro I’ve ever known, tell me that we have not been swimming in a three-eyed skeleton’s magical undead tears or something this whole time.”

The shitty, no-good System stays unsurprisingly silent.

AN: Okay, so the idea here is that this being was someone who recorded history and shared their knowledge freely. This being had the ability to discern the truth of a person - they were extremely perceptive. (The Weeper is either female or doesn’t have a gender, by the way.)

The Weeper met the Garden Master at some point. The Garden Master was an asshole, a liar, arrogant, etc.. The Weeper and the Garden Master clashed badly, until the Weeper sent the cleansing flood that nearly destroyed the sect and the Garden Master essentially had to flee to a personal abyss.

The Garden Master sent the plant as a final “fuck you” to the Weeper. The plant caused the Weeper to slowly go mad. The smashed tablets and destroyed temple are the Weeper’s work. The Weeper (not in a great state of mind) had the temple closed themselves once they realized they and their work had been corrupted. This was a “you destroy my (embellished) reputation, I destroy yours (and your entire life)” plot by the Garden Master.

The idea behind the tears is the whole “water is cleansing” thing. The Weeper tried to clean away the madness using their magical water-related abilities... and it actually worked for a long time. But eventually the madness began to overpower the effects of the magical water. The Weeper’s tears are from frustration and helplessness at losing control.

The water inside the temple combats the plant’s physical effects. Also stabbing the root killed the plant and essentially broke its mental/spiritual powers.

Unfortunately, to get the fuck out of here, they have to go back through the temple. But hey! That’s still a lot better than an extended hike through an underground, haunted desert in darkness! The battle with the now-dead plant caused its growth to writhe around the temple. The vines need to be hacked through sometimes as they travel down through the rooms of broken shelves and shattered tablets.

“So much history lost…” Peerless Cucumber murmurs.

“He still thinks of himself as a reader - an observer, a visitor, separate from the flow of fate.”

AN: This is... absolutely based on the Heart from the Dishonored franchise. But this sort of item didn’t originate with Dishonored and I need it! It’s a surprise/mystery tool that will help us later!

The Eye isn’t exactly a mind-reading object. I mean, it kind of is, but it works in a very specific way that I’m looking forward to getting into.

From there, their path back out of the natural maze is even more careful and stressful than before, now that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators are actively looking for them rather than the temple. It’s slow-going and stressful and silent, except for when the Weeper’s Eye presses too close against his chest.

“He is afraid that if he starts screaming, he will never stop,” it tells him, when he’s looking at a pale-faced Peerless Cucumber, as they fly over a particularly deathly-looking drop.

“Oh, me too, bro!” Shang Qinghua thinks. “Seriously! Tell me something I don’t know!”

AN: Having Shang Qinghua be totally unimpressed by an object like this was very funny to me. He’s the author! He’s a transmigrator! He knows these people well! He already has insight into their situations.

Shang Qinghua groans, but supposes that Peerless Cucumber would have at least been disguising Liu Qingge from the back. “You tell them that you were tracking thieves who stole something from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” he says quickly. “Rule of embarrassment! Admitting something that makes us look bad to a rival makes it sound true. Don’t tell them what was stolen and act really offended if they try to poke into Cang Qiong business. I’ll come back as soon as I get these two out!”

Liu Qingge nods and launches forward into the fight.

“We’re just leaving him?” Peerless Cucumber says, as they do exactly that.

“I’ll get changed and come back ‘looking for him for urgent sect business’ as soon as I’ve dropped you two off in the last town,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m really good at acting stressed and confused, and at desperately needing an unstoppable wandering Liu Qingge back at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect immediately. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Mission isn’t over yet!”

AN: Shang Qinghua is, at heart, a liar. I love him.

#tossawary updates #tossawary svsss #pride is not the word #tossawary commentary

67 notes · View notes

blue-haired-grace · 4 years

Text

Masterlist

Star Wars

Commander Fox Week, 2020

Day 1: The one That got Away (Ship fic, Vox)

Day 2: Stress Relief (Ship fic, Vox)

Day 3: Right now (Gen fic)

Day 5: Relax (Ship fic, Vox)

Day 6: Reversed Ends (Ship fic, Vox)

Spark Squad Series (My Original Clone Trooper Characters)

Part 1: Shine a Light in the Dark, let me see Where you are

Part 2: Careful What you say and who you say it to

Part 3: Don’t Give up now, There’s Already so Much at Stake

Part 4: In the Wake of the Odyssey, we Will Still be Thick as Thieves

Part 5: There’s no Need to Panic, ‘Cause You’re Just as Tragic

Part 6- Are you Living Through the Ghost?

Part 7- I Never Thought You’d Slip Away

Miscellaneous One-Shots

Next Time

Bring What’s Yours, I’ll Take What’s Mine and Meet you on the Other Side

The Gift of Giving

Body Swap Saves the Galaxy

Part 1: Reversed Ends

Chapter 1: The Switch of the Century

Chapter 2: The Ending of a Sith Lord (Coming Eventually!)

I Still Love you the Same

Chapter 1- Kamino

Chapter 2- Coruscant (Part 1)

Chapter 3- Coruscant (Part 2) (Coming Soon!)

Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children

Discovering the Future (Characters read the book, super unoriginal)

Totally Spies

Jazz Hands Returns Again (Not very good, planning on rewriting)

Super Smash Bros.

Kid Icarus: World of Light

Part 1: On my way

Part 2: Never Left Behind

Part 3: Interlude: Mario and Luigi

NBC Rise

A Story Unfinished

Part 1: You can be an Angel of Mercy or Give Into Hate

Siremy One-Shots

Ease Your Pain

#my writing #masterlist #subject to change #star wars the clone wars #ship fic #gen fic #spark squad #clone trooper dogma #commander fox #vox #super smash bros #mphfpc #totally spies #nbc rise #siremy

36 notes · View notes

mysmashplaythroughs · 3 years

Text

Super Mario Advance Playthrough

Fighter: Princess Peach Toadstool.

Game: Super Mario Advance, Wii U virtual console (GBA). First Released on March 21st 2001.

Fighter Bio.

Princess Peach Toadstool, known as Princess Peach more commonly now is the crown Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom. She is famous and well liked both within her Kingdom and in a lot of locations outside of it. Peach’s role in the Mario series varies with her most common role often being kidnapped by Bowser, but other villains have also captured her before. Based on my estimate, I believe she has been kidnapped roughly 31 times so far in the games including all spin-offs. Sometimes these kidnappings take place before the game starts meaning she only appears in the ending, other times she’ll have a role in the game before it happens and sometimes it will be a short part of the game like for a single chapter in one of the RPGs. Often in that last example it relates to another one of her roles, being a playable character who is either a party member or optional character to play as, with her sometimes becoming playable after being rescued. In the cases where Peach is not kidnapped immediately, she’ll often tell Mario and the others what they need to do when a crisis is taking place, advising them where to head to next or setting them off at the start of the game on their quest. Being captured so often, one skill Peach seems to have picked up over the years is her ability to often stealthily slip around her captors, sometimes simply working out a way to send Mario assistance such as items and advice, and other times managing to spy on her captor’s plans. Often due to the location she’s being held in she is unable to fully escape from her captors however, or in some cases her sense of duty to her also captured people will make her not try to leave without them.

The Mario series doesn’t have a solid timeline, so a lot of this is just my own personal ideas, but unless a game is explicitly taking place in the past with Baby versions of the characters, I tend to just go by the order in which the games are released regarding character’s histories in the franchise, something possibly evidenced by a scene in Super Mario Sunshine where F.L.U.D.D. searches its databank and has data on Mario’s adventures prior to that game as past events. I also personally like to consider the Paper Mario series broadly canon to the Mario series as a whole so I will be including aspects from that here. Peach first met the Mario Bros and Bowser back when they were babies, with her first meeting with them being during the events of Yoshi’s Island DS. In this game Peach was one of the babies who the Yoshis are trying to help get home, with her ability when riding a Yoshi being to use her parasol which allows them to ride on high winds. The next appearance of Baby Princess Peach was during the Shroob invasion where her older self went back in time and was kidnapped by the Shroobs. Baby Bowser planned to kidnap Baby Peach, however he was interrupted first by the Baby Mario Bros and then by the invading Shroobs. Baby Princess Peach actually manages to not be kidnapped throughout the game instead remaining in the future Castle with a young Toadsworth who is her caretaker. Following these two events (excluding spinoffs with Baby Peach where she appears but there’s no story such as Mario Kart) the Mario Bros seemingly left the Mushroom Kingdom possibly for New Donk City. Despite their absence, Bowser didn’t attempt any more kidnapping plots for some time, possibly not until the Mario Bros returned to the Mushroom Kingdom following the events of Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros seems to be the first time Bowser successfully kidnapped Princess Peach taking over her Kingdom entirely until the Mario Bros managed to defeat him and save her. In the backstory to this game, Bowser apparently used magic to transform the people of the Mushroom Kingdom into various objects and then kidnapped the Princess to stop her from turning them back. It’s due to this as well as Peach’s abilities in some games that it seems she is capable of certain forms of magic, often of the healing variety. It is only rarely however Peach is shown to use these abilities.

When it comes to her personality, Peach was probably the earliest character in the series to have dialogue, with her having lines in the very first game and most others after, whereas other characters like Bowser would more often only have dialogue in the instruction book at most. In the very first game it was fairly basic with her simply thanking Mario or Luigi for saving her and offering them the chance to take on a new quest, which was a harder version of the game. Super Mario Bros 3 however had her show a bit more personality, with her making a joke to her saviour at the end of the adventure based on the infamous line Toad would tell the player in the original game, “Thank you Mario but our Princess is in another castle.” Before telling them she was just kidding. Peach’s personality varies a little from game to game, but usually the main aspects of it are that she’s kind, generous and when not captured is good at advising the others what needs to be done. Despite being fairly reliable, she can sometimes be somewhat whimsical, especially in spin-off games with her often enjoying frolicking and singing, and she can when pushed show a fairly strong angry side, with her either aggressively convincing a character such as Luigi to go and save his brother or reacting angrily to those who mock her. Finally, despite her longstanding friendship with Mario, she’s willing to tell him off if he’s getting too carried away, almost abandoning him and Bowser at one point when they start squabbling and she just wants to go home.

Friends: Princess Peach is fairly popular throughout the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond and as such a lot of characters know of her even if they haven’t met her before. Peach’s subjects seem to all adore her a lot with them often being depressed when she’s absent. Of her closer relationships, her closest arguably is with Mario, with him often rescuing her and sometimes her returning the favour. Their relationship tends to be teased sometimes as possibly romantic, but there are times Peach will find Mario a bit too overbearing. What is clear is that they trust each other entirely and when possible will often work together. Peach is close with Luigi also although not to the same degree as Mario, however she will still in some games treat Luigi the same way she does Mario in the ending when Luigi is the character being played as, such as giving him a kiss on the cheek. Later games have shown she extends this to anyone who helps her as a sign of gratitude, including Yoshi, Toad and Toadette. The next closest relationship Peach has is with Toadsworth her elderly steward who has taken care of her since she was a baby. Toadsworth often worries for the Princess’s safety and tries to accompany her whenever he can. Toad is Peach’s attendant and often fulfils Toadsworth’s role in his absence sticking by her side when possible. Toad is fiercely loyal to Peach despite his cowardice and will often try to help her out however he can.

Toadette is someone Peach gets along with, however the two don’t interact that often with Toadette often doing other roles to help Mario. Peach has a connection to the Yoshis due to them saving her with the other Star Children when she was a baby, however besides this there is only one instance of her ever riding Yoshi, which is in the ending of Super Mario World where she rides Yoshi on the journey back to his house after Bowser is defeated. Of the rest of the cast Peach seems to get along fairly well with most of them, with possibly her best friend being Princess Daisy who she often partners with in various sports and other games and the two will also act as friendly rivals when in competition with each other.

Enemies/Rivals: The relationship between Bowser and Peach seems to have developed over the years. Initially Bowser seemed to aim to capture Peach simply because she was the princess of the Kingdom he was invading and then because she could undo the magic he used to transform her citizens. Eventually however, Bowser seemed to develop an affinity for Peach, one which she does not reciprocate at all. Due to this, Bowser’s aim is always to kidnap Peach and try to convince her to marry him rather than just destroy her as with his other enemies. Bowser also at one point told his son Bowser Jr that Peach was his Mother, which led to her being shocked when Bowser Jr claimed this. Despite Junior revealing later on he knew Peach wasn’t his real Mother, he still referred to her as Mama and seems to like the idea of it, kidnapping Peach sometimes so she can be with Bowser. Although Peach does not get along with Bowser or his troops, she will work with them when needed, and in cases where Bowser helps against another enemy she is willing to do things such as send him a cake as thanks. Beyond this, Peach has had a few other enemies, often them being villains who kidnap her as part of their plan such as Sir Grodus or Cackletta. Peach has fought against a couple of villains herself including Count Bleck’s minions, Smithy’s Gang and Wart, leader of the 8 bits who invaded Subcon.

Crossovers with other Smash characters: Being from the Mario series, Princess Peach has had a fair few crossovers, although not as many as the Mario Bros themselves. Super Mario RPG had Peach playable as part of the party, and therefore she was also present when Samus made a cameo in the game. Link’s cameo in the game appears before Princess Peach joins the party, however they are still technically in the same game so I feel it’s still worth mentioning. Princess Peach similarly to Mario appears in the crowd for both the Megaton Punch minigame and Kirby’s Battle in the Boxing arena with King Dedede in Kirby Super Star and the remake Super Star Ultra. Princess Peach is a racer in Mario Kart 8, where there was a Mii costume for Captain Falcon, along with the Blue Falcon as a kart and two F-Zero tracks. In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there is also Link in both his Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild incarnations as well as both default Inklings, two human Animal Crossing Villagers and Isabelle who are playable. Princess Peach is a character in the Game & Watch Gallery games and as such has crossed over with Mr. Game & Watch. In the NES version of Tetris, Pit appeared playing a harp alongside characters such as Princess Peach, Samus, Link and Donkey Kong. Princess Peach is a character in the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games series therefore crossing over with Sonic. Pac-Man has crossed over with Princess Peach in the arcade Mario Kart GP series. Whilst Princess Peach has never directly crossed over with any of the Hero characters from Dragon Quest, many of the Fortune Street games have featured crossovers with the Dragon Quest and Mario series, with many other Dragon Quest characters interacting with her. Finally, and perhaps most notably is a game where Princess Peach has a direct cameo and Mario doesn’t. (There is however a character based on him) In all versions of Link’s Awakening a character named Catherine sends a photo of ‘herself’ to Mr. Write (a character who is a clear reference to Dr. Wright from the SNES SimCity game who is also an assist trophy in Super Smash Bros) with him showing Link the photo which is a picture of Princess Peach. In reality, Catherine is a goat living in Animal Village. Whilst normally I tend to not include pictures or outfits in other games as cameos (Peach’s dress and parasol appear in many other series such as Animal Crossing for example) I felt in this case it was justified as the photo is part of the actual sidequest regarding the character’s identity rather than just being a background cameo.

Why this game?

Princess Peach has been playable in a few games so I had quite a few to choose from, Super Mario 3D World was one contender with Peach playing somewhat similarly to how she does in Super Smash Bros, however she lacked something specific in this game that I went for with my final choice. The other two notable options, Super Paper Mario and Super Princess Peach which was her starring role both had her play in a somewhat more unique way to how she did in Super Smash Bros, with Perry the Parasol being a big part of her moveset in SPP, whilst in SPM Peach only had her Parasol lacking her floating jump. Super Mario Bros 2 was the first time Princess Peach was playable, and most of her moveset in Super Smash Bros originates from the game, with not only her being able to float for a short time when she jumps, but perhaps the most unique aspect from the game being her ability to pull out turnips to throw as weapons, something she only does in SMB2. It was for these reasons I decided to go with Super Mario Bros 2 in this case, especially as those other games will still be covered later down the line on my list. When it comes to the version of the game I chose, I went for the Super Mario Advance incarnation rather than the original NES or Allstars version, however I will detail that more in the next section overall.

My past with this game.

So this game is one of the select few specifically from my childhood. I had Super Mario Allstars on the SNES with this game on it, but also I had the NES version as well. With the NES version the main thing I remember is just having the box with the picture of Mario on the front. Similarly to other games then I never completed this one, however it was probably the Mario game I got the least far playing. I believe I would only ever get to 1-3 before usually not making it past the Phantos to face Mouser. For some time I mostly remembered the game but didn’t really revisit it, it wasn’t exactly in the same class as Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World even if I did have some fond memories of it for being so different. Probably the most confusing thing with the game for me back then was related to the cartoon show. In the cartoon show, Bowser is depicted looking different to the games, with him being mostly green with a crown on his head as opposed to his look in the vast majority of other appearances with orange scales on his body and only his head green as well as lacking a crown. Wart, the antagonist of Super Mario Bros 2 however, was all green with a crown on his head. Due to this, I believed that the King Koopa on the cartoon show was actually Wart (which might not be that outlandish as the first version of the cartoon show was based on Super Mario Bros 2, so it was likely King Koopa was just an amalgamation of Bowser and Wart, although this is DIC so the possibility of them just screwing it up is always the most likely scenario) Another perhaps somewhat unique source of this was my Grandma when I’d visit her as a kid, who would have various games I could play with my Cousins, and one she had was a card game called Super Mario Bros Blockbusting Card Game. Of course, being a big fan of Mario then I would love getting this out, especially as the big cards had artwork of the various enemies, powerups and the Mario Bros. What was interesting was this also had artwork of Wart as well as Bowser, which therefore for me back then looked even more similar, so I just assumed Wart was the King Koopa from the cartoons and Bowser was from the games. What helped with this was there were a fair few of the bosses from Super Mario Bros 2 who were cards in the set.

It was only with magazines I believe that I gradually learnt that Wart was the antagonist of Super Mario Bros 2, and at first I believed this meant he was the villain from the cartoon show till I finally realised the cartoon show wasn’t really relevant to the games at all and King Koopa was meant to be Bowser. I also at this time learnt probably the other most notable aspect of this game, that it wasn’t the original Super Mario Bros 2. Despite having Super Mario Allstars, back then I didn’t exactly look at the Lost Levels as anything else other than a weird version of Super Mario Bros I couldn’t get anywhere on, and it was only later I learnt that that was the game in Japan that was SMB2 and the SMB2 I knew had been another game altogether, Doki Doki Panic. What’s interesting is I believe apparently Miyamoto was more involved in Doki Doki Panic than SMB2 (Lost Levels) overall, so it’s not as if the game becoming a Mario one was completely out of nowhere. It’s also very interesting that so many factors of this game, things like Peach’s movement, Luigi’s distinct character design, Toad being playable and perhaps the biggest one being various enemies such as Bob-ombs and Shy Guys became a huge part of the Super Mario Bros series, with Bob-ombs appearing in the following game SMB3 (Which meant in Japan these enemies somehow went from being in Doki Doki Panic to Super Mario Bros 3.) The reason for this apparently was that they believed the original SMB2 (Lost Levels) was too difficult really to sell outside of Japan, something that tends to be mocked now, but personally I think it makes for a more interesting and unique sequel so I’m kind of glad it happened. It’s also interesting to me that due to this, outside of Japan Super Mario Bros fits a slight pattern I noticed with a couple of franchises on NES, where the second game in the series would be quite different to the first, then the third would end up being more like the first game again but expanded. The Legend of Zelda had Zelda II Adventure of Link which had sidescrolling as a major gameplay element before A Link to the Past brought the series back to how it was in the original game, Castlevania 2 Simon’s Quest was a lot different to the first game, but Castlevania 3 Dracula’s Curse brought it back to the gameplay of the first game, and with SMB2 it was radically different to SMB, but then SMB3 brought it back to the style of the first game.

Another big part of my history with the game, as with a fair few franchises, goes back to my experiences on the early internet, specifically Newgrounds flash animations again. Back then, there was a flash animation at the time called Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom which I really enjoyed. It was bloody and involved Mario dying and Luigi setting out for revenge, fairly tame compared to a lot of stuff on Newgrounds then and with some really nice usage of sprites. It was the second flash movie in this series however that involved Mario setting off to face the real villain behind the events of the first movie (which turned out to have been a dream) Wart that really made me appreciate SMB2 more. At the time I was really getting into messing around with sprites and Games Factory, trying to make my own games, so this flash movie made me look a lot more into SMB2 and all the unique enemies in it, with the various bosses such as Mouser, Tryclyde and of course Birdo and Wart being characters I wanted to see more of. This all led me to finally properly play SMB2 and beat it some time after I had beaten SMB3.

For my final history with the game, it relates mostly to Super Mario Advance, the remake of Super Mario Bros 2 that launched the Game Boy Advance. It was traditional at that point to launch a new Nintendo console with a Mario game, a pattern that would be broken only a few months later with the release of the Gamecube (which instead had Luigi’s Mansion, and the Wii wouldn’t have a Mario series game at all at launch.) This game was the first in the Super Mario Advance series and it’s arguably the version that was changed the most from the original game, with a few changes to the levels such as new giant Shy Guys and a fair bit more voice acting with all the bosses getting lines they’d say when you met them. This is pure speculation I’ve had since then, but I feel like they possibly picked Super Mario Bros 2 as they felt it was the game that they could risk changing most, and also that they changed it the most of the series so as to show off what the GBA was capable of with the voices and sprites. I remember when the GBA was the current console, Super Mario Advance was the game I’d tend to see most often being shown off in stores, even sometime after other games had come out. Despite this, it was probably the last game in the Advance series I got, but I’d say out of the Mario Advance series it’s the game I’d most recommend instead of or alongside the original or Allstars version as it’s the more unique experience. It’s due to this that I chose Super Mario Advance as the version for my playthrough rather than the others.

My Smash Playthrough.

I have actually played through this game fairly recently from start to finish, for a character much further down my list so the game is somewhat fresh in my memory compared to other games I’ve written about so far here. For this playthrough as it was the game I chose for Princess Peach I played through the whole game solely as her. In comparison I’d say she’s one of the characters who I prefer playing as due mostly to her extremely useful floating ability, with her downside (being her power which means she’s unable to pull vegetables or pick up enemies as quickly and a slower running speed) not really feeling too much of a hassle in exchange. I want to focus on Peach mostly, but Mario as always is the all-rounder having no real weaknesses nor gimmicks that make him excel in any area, Luigi has the best jump but is a little slower and less powerful than Mario (this is also the game where he first had his scuttle jump) and finally Toad (the character I played through the game as recently) is the fastest and most powerful but has the lowest jump, often requiring you to charge up a super jump (done by crouching down until the character starts glowing) to reach higher platforms. The plot of the game is that Mario had a dream one night where he went up a staircase and found a mysterious door. Opening the door he saw a vast world before him and heard a voice telling him this land was Subcon and that the evil Wart is causing suffering there. The voice tells Mario that only he can save the land and to remember Wart hates vegetables before Mario wakes up. The next day, Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Peach go for a picnic, Mario tells them of the dream he had and they all say they had the same dream. During their picnic they see a cave and look inside it, finding a staircase leading up to the same door from the dream. When they open it, they are once again standing before Subcon, with them this time entering which is where the game starts.

Probably the most immediate point for most Mario players to notice when first playing this game is how it is very different when it comes to a lot of the standard Mario mechanics, granted when the game came out this was following only the original Super Mario Bros, so it wasn’t quite as unusual. Some aspects remain the same, such as the characters turning small when they have only one hit left, however unlike in other Mario games their health is restored by finding hearts, with any amount of hearts over one bringing them back to regular size. Mushrooms are in the game still, but this time finding one and picking it up gives the character an extra heart (as well as fully healing them) which means they’re a lot less common than in other Mario games. This game also lacks any sort of power-ups such as the Fire Flower, with the only alternate form being brief invincibility when touching a Star. I quite enjoy the main mechanic used to fight in this game, being picking up objects or enemies and throwing them at other enemies to defeat them, it provides a fun and fairly unique style of gameplay to the other games in the series and creates fairly basic puzzles in some cases where you’re required to build a small tower of mushroom blocks as an example to be able to reach a high platform. Possibly one of the most infamous aspects of this game are the keys that are sometimes required in stages to get through a locked door. You are required to carry the keys similarly to other objects to the door, however when holding the key, the evil Phanto Masks will relentlessly pursue you, and only stop either when you use the key on the door or drop the key. Despite their reputation and giving me some trouble as a kid, nowadays I barely find them a problem as just throwing the key ahead of you usually gets them off your back long enough to travel a fair distance before they pursue you again.

When it comes to difficulties I faced playing the game, it’s a fairly easy game, with only two sections I remember really causing me many problems both recently and back during this playthrough. The first is a stage where you’re travelling across the tops of whales in the ocean. The top of them is a fairly big platform, although the middle of the platform will sometimes have water spout out of their blowhole. Touching this water from the side will hurt you which can be somewhat annoying, however jumping on top of the water that’s spurting out provides a platform. Perhaps the most irritating part to me is when you’re required to use the whales tails as platforms, mostly as they are very small and it can be very easy to slip off of them, leading to an instant death. The second and probably most irritating situation in the game for me are parts featuring you digging through sand. In these parts of the level there are layers of sand that you can dig by pulling them similarly to how you pull vegetables out of the ground. The problem with these parts are the Shy Guys who constantly walk from left to right, and will fall down the layers of Sand you’ve removed. Due to how little room you have to manoeuvre when you get lower in the sand, picking the Shy Guys up and throwing them doesn’t really work, often with them catching on a layer above and instantly walking back into you taking off health. The way I describe this sounds like it’s a design issue but it’s more just hard to describe and really makes sense when playing, it’s not unfair or anything, it’s just these sections are the ones I tend to die most at and find the most tedious, possibly simply due to impatience when it comes down to it.

The stages aren’t really ground-breaking, but when compared to the stages in the original Super Mario Bros I feel they have a fair bit more variety. The themes for them are grassland, vertical waterfall stages, desert stages, underground caves and snow stages, with some of them simply being at night. I still find the stages do some interesting things however with them not seeming just like variations of each other but often having a few unique features to them that makes them stand out, for example the very first stage is a fairly basic grassland, but the end of it has you going into a cave to reach the top of some hills, then climbing into the clouds before facing the boss. The levels are longer than those in the original Super Mario Bros, however there are less of them, with each world only having 3 stages, and the last world, World 7 only having two. The game is somewhat challenging, it was probably the one I got the least far in of the Super Mario Bros games as a kid, but despite a couple of issues I find it fairly simple to play through now, especially with Peach.

The Bosses are probably the more interesting of the first three Super Mario Bros games with there being quite a few variations, although some are repeated a few times. This game was the debut of Birdo who appears in a few variations. The most basic battle with Pink Birdo has her shoot eggs from her mouth at you, which you have to grab from the air and throw back at her. Red Birdo shoots eggs also, but varies it with some fireballs, so you have to be careful which projectile you jump onto and which you just avoid. Green Birdo is the final variation shooting only fireballs, requiring you to grab other objects from around the room to throw instead of eggs to beat her. There is a fourth sort of variation exclusive to Super Mario Advance, being the Robo Birdo. This boss fires eggs also like Birdo, however the eggs are giant and it also has a charging attack which requires you to grab one of the chains hanging from the ceiling to avoid. Birdos are usually the bosses of the regular stages in Super Mario Bros 2, with the third stage of each world having a unique boss to fight, Robo Birdo being one of these unique bosses who replaces a repeated boss in the original versions of the game. There are a couple of unique appearances of Birdo in the game however which I find neat personally, one of which is a Pink Birdo who appears at the very start of stage 4-3. This Birdo will always respawn when defeated when you leave the area through a door and return again. The reason why is that the eggs she fires are actually meant to be used to ride across a large chasm to reach the rest of the level, which is probably one of my favourite little gimmicks in the game.

Mouser is the first main boss in the game, a Mouse with sunglasses who likes to throw bombs everywhere, naturally the way to beat him is to throw his bombs back at him. I remember finding this boss a little annoying mostly as he’s on a platform above you, and only gets effected by the bomb if it goes off where he’s standing. Due to his erratic movements this can be down to luck somewhat as to whether he’ll stand in the right spot when the bomb explodes, although it’s hardly a difficult battle overall. What’s probably most interesting to me about Mouser is that he is probably the boss who varies the most between versions of the game. In the original form of the game, Doki Doki Panic he appeared as a boss three times, with a green eared version in stage 3-3 and a white furred version in 5-3. Super Mario Bros 2 replaced the version in 5-3 with another boss, and then Super Mario Advance replaced the green eared version with Robo Birdo, but actually had a second boss battle with the regular Mouser replace a second boss battle with another character. Tryclyde is the next boss faced all versions of the game, being a three headed snake that shoots fireballs and has to have mushroom blocks thrown at it. Interestingly Tryclyde appears again as a boss in SMB2 but in Super Mario Advance it’s replaced in it’s second battle by Mouser. Another odd factor with Tryclyde is in Super Mario Bros 2 it is red, but in the remake for Mario All-Stars and Super Mario Advance it is instead green with red patterns on it’s back. It’s particularly odd in this case as some enemies, Cobrats who are single headed snakes that appear in the game remain red in all versions. Tryclyde is more of a challenging boss than Mouser and caused me perhaps a death or two but wasn’t that tough overall. The next boss is probably the one I had the most trouble with, Fryguy a living flame. Due to being a flame, touching Fry Guy at all causes damage, so you have to throw mushroom blocks at him. What makes this battle more difficult is that Fryguy moves around a fair bit, and hitting him with the mushroom blocks due to this without being hit yourself can be a lot more tricky. On top of this, when you beat the first phase of the boss fight, Fryguy then splits into four smaller versions that can be just as tricky to hit and all need to be extinguished in order to beat him. Fryguy is probably second only to Wart when it comes to how often I’d die to him, and I think in this playthrough actually killed me more than Wart did. Clawgrip the crab is the final of the standard bosses in the game, throwing boulders at you which have to be picked up and thrown back at him. I remember this battle being a little tricky as landing on the boulders properly could be tough, and approaching from the side at all would cause you damage, but overall he was less tough than Fryguy to me. Clawgrip replaced the white Mouser and was the only boss who wasn’t in Doki Doki Panic (besides Robo Birdo.) Every boss is voiced in this version of the game and I find them fun little voicelines overall that make them more memorable, with lines like Mouser going “Here, have some bombs!” or Birdo’s “This is as far as you go!”

The final two levels are the most difficult overall, not being as irritating to me as the digging through sand or whale sections earlier in the game, but more difficult stages overall than the others, with the first having you travelling across clouds with a lot of enemies and pits to overcome and the second being a big palace which is probably the biggest maze in the game. They are both however, probably my favourite levels in the game overall. I tend to have an affinity for cloud based sky stages and I find the palace a fitting final location. Wart is the final boss of the game and is fought in a room with the Dream Machine which he has been using possibly to create the various monsters that make up his army of bad dreams. The Dream Machine seems to perhaps possess some sort of sentience however, as in the final battle it starts shooting out vegetables which can be grabbed and thrown into Wart’s mouth to defeat him. Wart fights by shooting out bubbles and it is only when he opens his mouth to do so he can be hurt by throwing a vegetable in there, which was why at the start of the game Mario was told about Wart hating them as a hint. I remember having some trouble years ago with timing the vegetables so as to not get hit by the bubbles, but this time it went fairly smoothly and I beat Wart I think first time. With Wart defeated you go through to the next room and free the native inhabitants of Subcon from a jar, who celebrate Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach defeating Wart and saving them before seeming to throw the defeated Wart out of the Palace. With this, the scene then switches to Mario in bed, revealing the whole game was a dream as cast credits for all of the enemies in the game go by, which in the original version of the game had a couple of mistakes such as Ostro, a minor enemy and Birdo’s names being swapped, which is corrected in this version. It’s a nice ending and for those who overanalyse these games like me, somewhat interesting as a few of the enemies who first appeared in this game such as Shy Guys and Snifits actually also appeared in Yoshi’s Island when Mario was a baby, so as this is part of a dream those memories might be related to them appearing in Wart’s army of bad dreams, although I know it’s probably nothing that deep overall. So overall, I enjoyed playing through this game, it’s not overly long or difficult and as a portable game back when it came out and the first example of what the GBA could do, it was very good overall I’d say.

Specific aspects about the game relating to Peach in Smash.

I’ve pretty much gone over the main aspects of Princess Peach in this game when it comes to Super Smash Bros, this game was the origin of Peach’s floating jump ability and her pulling turnips out of the ground to throw at enemies. In Super Smash Bros, very rarely Peach can pull other items out of the ground instead of a turnip, one of which being a Bob-omb, which is possible also in Super Mario Bros 2 where some of the tufts of grass when pulled will turn out to be a Bob-omb which has to be thrown away immediately or else it will explode on you. Other than this however, most of Peach’s other moves come from other games I will cover later, such as her frying pan being from Super Mario RPG, Tennis Racket and Golf Club from their respective sports series and Parasol from various other games. There’s nothing really to customise so that’s pretty much it for Peach’s appearance in this game.

Credits.

For information on this game including dates of releases I must give credit to Super Mario Wiki.

The screenshots in this post are taken by me using Miiverse before it shut down.

#Princess Peach #Princess Toadstool #Super Mario Bros #Super Mario Bros 2 #Super Mario Advance #Super Smash Bros #GBA #Wii U #Virtual Console #My Smash Playthrough #My Smash Playthroughs

7 notes · View notes

ashiversary · 4 years

Text

If We're Honest - Chapter 3

Read the full fic on ao3!

It was a testament to how little Blanche knew Candela that they did not see this coming.

Blanche stared at the restaurant, which was one of the most upscale in Opal City, with dismay. The patrons glittered in suits and floor-length gowns with diamonds and sipped the most expensive wines the city had to offer. “I am not dressed for this,” Blanche said as Candela took their arm and steered them through the door.

“Don’t worry, darling, they know me here,” Candela replied. This was not reassuring, as Candela was wearing a red silk gown with a plunging neckline and golden six-inch heels. Rubies glimmered at her ears and throat, and a series of gold bangles covered her wrists. She was stunning. Blanche could not believe she kept red-carpet attire in a gym bag in her car.

They considered it extremely discourteous of her to not warn them. Or give them the chance to stop by their apartment to change into a suit.

The only comfort was that Spark hadn’t changed either, and was still in his orange tank and leather jacket.

“Candy, I thought we were going to a steakhouse!” Spark complained as Candela spoke to the hostess.

“This is a steakhouse! Yes, I have a reservation for three,” Candela said when the hostess asked.

“Just because steaks are on the menu does not make it a steakhouse,” Blanche said. Spark sent them a grateful look for taking his side, and the sense of camaraderie made Blanche feel slightly better.

Candela did not reply, and Spark and Blanche were forced to follow her and the hostess through the restaurant to the table. It was covered by a snow-white tablecloth and crystal wine glasses. Spark went to pull out Candela’s chair, which pleased her, but Blanche made sure to sit down before Spark could repeat the gesture for them. No thank you.

Their little group attracted some curious and amused glances, which was no surprise given that Candela was the only one dressed appropriately for the venue. Blanche did their best to ignore the attention as they unfolded their pristine white cloth napkin and draped it over their lap. Despite their efforts, their face and chest grew hot and sweaty at the sound of nearby laughter. It was a couple on a date who weren’t even looking in their direction, but it felt like their amusement was directed at Blanche regardless.

It could have been worse, they knew. At least Spark was in the same boat as them. He whined to Candela for misleading him about where they were going to eat, and she smirked in reply. She seemed to enjoy being the best dressed person at the table. Blanche could deal with agents of chaos, but they liked to have some warning that was what they were dealing with.

As Spark flipped his menu open, he grumbled, “They probably don’t even have chicken tenders here.”

Blanche had to stifle a laugh as they were reminded of their twin, whose tastes leaned toward juvenile.

Candela grimaced. “Definitely not. But they do have steak!” She helped Spark by flipping to the appropriate page of his menu. “Ribs too, see?”

Appeased for the moment, Spark scanned the page for his choices while Candela ordered a bottle of wine for the table. Red, of course.

Blanche scanned their own menu and winced at the prices. They had been a research assistant for the last few years, and that had not been a high-paying job. Spark must be able to read their face, because he leaned into their space while Candela was busy chatting with the server about the day’s specials. “I can cover ya, if ya want,” Spark whispered.

Blanche flushed. They could make it work with their finances. It just would have been easier if they hadn’t moved from a different region recently. “It’s all right. I’ll manage.”

“Seriously, it’s fine. Candy comes from money, so she forgets about this stuff. It’s not payday yet. Let me cover you.”

Ugh, he had such a reassuring smile. “I’ll pay you back later.” They hoped he would not argue. Soulmate or not, they did not know him well enough to accept freebies yet.

“Sure thing!”

This arrangement did make them feel better, and they were able to choose a tasty-looking seafood dish without too much guilt. Spark ordered his steak, along with vegetables and an extra side of potatoes. Blanche couldn’t imagine attempting to eat that much food at once, but Candela acted as if this were normal.

The table lapsed into silence, and Blanche felt that they ought to say something to incite conversation. After all, they were the new person being integrated into an established friendship (Blanche wasn’t sure about thinking of either of them as more than that yet). “So, Candela, were you born in Opal?” Blanche asked, fishing for a safe topic.

Something flickered across her face that told them that this topic might not have been as safe as they had thought. However, before they could apologize and backtrack, she smiled. “Oh, not at all! I’ve lived here for a couple years now, but I was born in Unova.”

“I see.” Blanche had never been to Unova and was curious about what kind of pokemon Candela saw growing up. But there was a strange tension in the air, so they weren’t sure it would be right to ask.

Spark, however, felt no such restraint. “Candy’s got four older brothers!” He grinned as he said it. “Can ya believe it? I’m an only child, so I can’t imagine.”

“It sounds boisterous,” Blanche replied.

Candela waved a hand. “It certainly was! It’s much quieter now that they don’t talk to me.”

Oh. Despite her flippant tone, there was pain in her eyes. “May I ask?” She didn’t have to tell them if she didn’t want to, but they would like to know the source of her pain if she was comfortable sharing it with them.

She sighed and drummed her fingers on the table before she picked up her wine and took a generous sip. “It was stupid, really.”

“I’m sure it isn’t stupid, if it caused you pain,” Blanche murmured.

Candela sent them a grateful look. “Thank you, darling. But how it happened was stupid.” She sighed and tapped the side of her wine glass. “Spark knows the story. My family has a long history tied to Moltres. It’s kind of like our guardian legendary. The tradition is that the oldest child will form a bond, which is like this telepathic connection, with Moltres. It was supposed to be my oldest brother Lucifel next, but I encountered Moltres while walking home one night. It recognized my bloodline and formed the bond.” She sighed again.

“And that’s bad?” Blanche asked.

Candela shrugged. “My parents were furious. In their mind, I usurped tradition and stole my brother’s birthright. It didn’t matter that I didn’t do it on purpose. I was a bad and rebellious daughter who brought shame to the family. Everyone stopped talking to me, even my Grandma. Eventually I couldn’t take it and moved in with my cousin in Alola. Her family is much less traditional than mine. One way or another, I ended up here.”

Spark reached out to rub her bare shoulder. She leaned into the touch and managed a small smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put a dampener on our date.”

“It’s no problem, Candy. Don’t worry about it.”

The server came back with their meals, offering fresh ground pepper before disappearing to serve the next table. Blanche sampled their seafood pasta and was very pleased - it was delicious, with just the right amounts of butter and garlic.

Blanche didn’t want to detract from Candela’s story, but now seemed like a good time to mention Articuno.

“I do know about bonds with legendaries,” Blanche said. Both of the others looked at them in surprise, though Candela recovered first and took advantage of Spark’s inattention to steal a bite of his steak. Blanche ignored this and continued. “While I was travelling around Kanto and Johto with Professor Oak, I encountered Articuno.”

“And it bonded with you?” Spark asked with far more excitement than Blanche thought that the situation warranted. He shook Candela’s shoulder. “Did you hear that, Candy? Can you believe it?”

“Right?” Candela said around another stolen bite of steak. “Three for three. What are the odds, Sparky?”

“I beg your pardon?” Blanche was missing some context.

“Sparky here is bonded with Zapdos!” Candela said, laughing, draping an arm around Spark’s shoulders and pointing to his face.

“Are you joking?” Blanche wanted to make sure. They weren’t always the best at catching on to jokes.

“Nope! Met it at the power plant with my Uncle when I was a kid. Been together ever since.”

Blanche looked between them. They could understand the other two’s mirth now. What were the chances of the three of them being soulmates, team leaders of the Go Program, and bonded to Kanto’s titans? “Unbelievable.” Was all they could think to say.

“I know!” Spark said.

“Well, eat up, you two,” Candela said. “The food is getting cold.”

The date was very relaxed after that, enough so that Blanche forgot to be self conscious that they weren’t dressed appropriately for the venue. The wine made them all tipsy. Spark and Candela tried to talk Blanche into coming to Spark’s apartment to play Super Smash Bros, but Blanche wasn’t comfortable with that yet and ended up taking a taxi home. Once there, they kicked off their shoes and flopped face down on their bed until morning.

The next day, the soulmate bond between the team leaders seemed to be all anyone could talk about. By lunch Blanche was both annoyed and flustered by all the people congratulating them and the shy approaches from young interns asking if the rumours were true. It didn’t help that interest kicked up several notches when Spark and Candela showed up at lunch with grins and sandwiches.

Blanche accepted their invitation to a picnic with a sigh.

“Aw, Blanche, we’re gonna think you aren’t happy to see us,” Spark teased as they settled into a small courtyard outside Mystic Headquarters.

Blanche was squinting at their sandwich with suspicion. It was somehow their favourite, despite the fact that they had no recollection of telling Spark what kind of sandwiches they liked. They hadn’t been so drunk the night before as to have forgotten something like that. “Did Annie tell you what sandwiches I like?” they wondered out loud, for that was the only explanation they could think of. As their assistant, Annie was almost always around. She would have picked up on their tastes.

Spark’s expression turned sheepish, and he shook his head. “Um, no, about that…” he began, and Blanche turned their suspicious squint from the sandwich to him. Candela choked on her apple juice as she laughed, and Spark waved a hand. “No, no, it’s nothing weird! I just, y’know, happened to run into Noire, so I asked.”

That didn’t clear things up. “How did you run into Noire?”

“Well, they dropped by Instinct - like, literally, through the ceiling - to steal some rare pokemon eggs. I recognized ‘em as your sib, so, y’know, once I’d thwarted their plans I asked.”

Candela laughed harder. “Darling, you’re so weird,” she sighed. “You captured a Rocket exec just to interrogate them about Blanche’s food preferences?”

“Well, sure,” Spark said. “Why not?”

Blanche put their face in their hands. They could not believe Noire had not called to laugh at them about their soulmate being a major dork. In fairness, Noire was also a major dork.

“Anyway, they’re coming over tonight so I can wreck their ass in Mario Kart. Wanna join?” Spark continued.

Blanche supposed they could not complain about Noire and Spark getting along if this fledgling potential relationship was to work out. But goodness it was awkward.

“Oh, I’d love to come,” Candela said, getting her laughter under control. Her smile glittered dangerously, and there was no doubt she would also love to kick Noire’s butt at Mario Kart. “I have to pay them back for messing with my team, don’t I?” She leaned over to wrap her free arm around Blanche’s. “Do come, Blanche. It won’t be as much fun without you.”

And if that wasn’t one of the sweetest things Blanche had ever been told. Their cheeks went pink. No one had ever called them fun before. They were too serious, too awkward, too stoic. Noire was the fun, friendly one. But if they were wanted… “I’ll see if I can make time,” Blanche said, trying to play it cool.

“Great! I’ll provide snacks. All ya gotta do is show up,” Spark said, beaming.

“Very well.” Blanche was abysmal in the kitchen, so at least it wasn’t going to be a potluck. Candela was still holding onto their arm. It felt nice. Very nice.

Blanche still had not told them.

The thought of bringing up their background made their heart hammer and a lump stick in their throat. It was too hard. They did not want to. But if they did not, would it not be deceitful? Candela and Spark had both told Blanche things about their pasts, things that were difficult for them to say. Reciprocating would be the right thing to do.

“While you’re here, there was something I wanted to tell you,” Blanche began. Even those words had to be forced out of their mouth. Candela gave their arm a brief squeeze. There was so much comfort in that touch. It gave Blanche the courage to continue. Spark stopped teasing the wild pidgey that had landed on his shoulder in hopes of bits of sandwich, and was giving Blanche his full attention. He didn’t seem to notice that this gave the pidgey the opportunity to steal a large chunk of his sandwich meat and take flight for a nearby tree to eat its spoils.

“When we were children, Noire and I were found on the streets of Orre.” The memories, vague and clouded as they were, came up. Blanche pushed the back in order to continue. “We were found by Team Rocket taking shelter among stacks of pallets at an abandoned warehouse. I do not remember how we got there. Neither does Noire.” They only remembered two days prior at most, but they weren’t sure of that. They remembered twisting a spigot on the side of the building and getting a thin trickle of water. They remembered hunger, blistering hot days, and cold nights. Fear. That was all.

“That’s okay, Blanche,” Spark hastened to reassure them. “We’re all orphans, in a way.” He glanced at Candela, whose parents were still alive but had effectively abandoned her. “It’s okay.”

“Thank you. But that’s not it.” Blanche drew in a deep breath, then pressed on. “I don’t recall anything before that clearly. But I do have… I suppose I would call them *impressions* of things. Nothing clear. Locked doors. Needles. Terror. People in white coats. That’s all.”

Spark scooted until he was sitting on Blanche’s other side. He draped his arm over their shoulders and squeezed. “That’s rough. Thank you for telling us,” he murmured.

Blanche was mortified to feel tears prick their eyes. They swiped at their face with the back of their hand to wipe away the moisture, and Spark squeezed again. “Hey. It’s okay. Cry if you gotta. It’s tough stuff we’re talking about.”

Blanche hiccuped, and despite Spark’s reassurance, they were ashamed of their weakness. How stupid was it to cry over things that the didn’t even remember? “I might not be human,” they choked out.

“Of course you are!” Candela’s voice was fierce. She pushed up until she was kneeling and cupped their face in her hands. Blanche wanted to look away, but Candela wasn’t having it. “No, no, you listen to me,” she said. Her eyes were gold. Had Blanche ever noticed that before? “You are human. Absolutely. Just as human as me and Sparky over there, even though he has the mentality of a pokemon sometimes and eats weird things he finds in the forest.”

Blanche gave a wet laugh, and Candela smiled in relief. “Hey, I’m serious! He once ate this weird twisty berry and his face was paralyzed for an entire day. Who does that?”

“Hey! It was only temporary. And Go dared me. I don’t back down from a challenge, Candy.”

“But did you learn your lesson? No!” Candela shot back. “He tried to eat an apricorn the next day,” she explained to Blanche.

“Apricorns can be juiced, but they are not edible raw,” Blanche said.

“Well, I know that now,” Spark said. “Geez, Candy, you never let anything go.”

“It was only two months ago Spark!” Despite her more aggressive tone toward Spark, Candela’s hands remained gentle on Blanche’s face. She stopped frowning at Spark to smile at Blanche and give them a soft kiss on the forehead. Blanche flushed and automatically pulled away. They weren’t used to such casual affection.

Fortunately, Candela didn’t seem to be offended. “Finish your sandwich, Blanche,” she said, and settled herself back on the grass to eat her own.

Spark was frowning as his sandwich like he’d just realized there was a chunk missing. Blanche opted not to tell him about the pidgey. “Like Candy said,” Spark continued. “You’re human for sure. No matter how your life started. Okay?”

“Okay,” Blanche said.

The other two had to leave shortly after in order to make it back to their respective team headquarters in time. Blanche was sorry to see them go. They couldn’t quite see the relationship as romantic yet, but they were starting to consider Spark and Candela to be very good friends.

And maybe that was how it started. As friends. There was always the chance to move on to other things later.

Then again, given the behaviour the other two had exhibited, they clearly didn’t view this as a platonic relationship of any sort.

When they got back to their office, Annie had a stack of reports waiting that needed their review and approval. She smiled at them as they slid behind their desk. “Did you have a good lunch?” she chirped.

“Yes, thank you,” Blanche replied. They picked up the first report in the stack and grimaced, already knowing that this one was going to be a mess. This tech was brilliant in the lab, but their writing left much to be desired.

“I’m glad you’re taking proper breaks now,” she said. “I thought you were going to be one of the types that works themselves to death when you first started, so I’m glad that’s not the case.”

Blanhce grimaced at being so accurately called out. “I am exactly that type.” It was difficult to focus on a conversation and skim a report at the same time, and their attention drifted away from Annie to the report in their hands. “I haven’t been given much of a choice about taking breaks at the moment, though.” After all, it was Spark and Candela who kept showing up unannounced and making them leave work that they otherwise wouldn’t.

Because Annie no longer registered in their mind, they missed her murmured, “Is that so?” and the thoughtful gleam in her eye. Therefore, they did not expect it later when she put her hands on their desk with a smile and said, “Chief! Leader Spark is here to pick you up!”

Blanche was in the middle of working through a thorny supplier issue and it took them a second to process what she’d said, so what came out was an intelligent, “Huh?”

Annie continued to smile. “Leader Spark is waiting for you down in reception! We couldn’t let him come up because of the Pokemon snuffles outbreak among some new breeding pairs at Instinct. It’s a minor illness but highly contagious, so it’s better if he doesn’t access the elevator used to transport lab pokemon.” While she talked, Annie packed the materials she knew they would want to take him with them into their briefcase, along with some thumb drives and a malfunctioning lure Blanche had been trying to repair in their spare time.

“But why is he here?” Blanche glanced at the clock. “It’s only six.”

“It’s 6:45.” Was it Blanche’s imagination or did Annie’s smile look a bit threatening? “I heard that you, Leader Spark, and Leader Candela have plans for the evening. It’s rude to keep them waiting!”

Blanche blinked at her as she tossed their coat over their shoulders and shoved their briefcase into their hands.

Baffled by Annie’s pushiness, Blanche nonetheless logged out of their computer and complied. They did not want to be on bad terms with their assistant, and it seemed important to Annie that Blanche clear out. The warning edge to her tone dissipated when Blanche stood up and shoved their arms through the sleeves of their coat.

They eyed Annie with suspicion. “You seem to be in quite a hurry to see me out.”

“Not at all!” That was feigned innocence if Blanche ever saw it. “It’s just that Leader Spark is already here and all, and it would be rude to make him wait.”

Blanche didn’t know what she was up to, but they supposed it wouldn’t be anything nefarious. To their understanding, Annie had been with Mystic for some time and there had never been any complaints about her conduct. “All right. Have a good evening.”

“You too, Chief! See you tomorrow!”

Blanche locked the office door behind them, and with a final wave, Annie skipped off to her own, smaller office, presumably to get ready to leave herself.

Spark was indeed waiting when Blanche reached the main level. Rather than his typical leader attire, he was wearing jeans that appeared to have torn and faded through wear rather than been purchased that way and a T-shirt that said “If found, return to Go.”

“Is that a custom shirt?” Blanche asked as they approached.

Spark had been browsing memes on his phone. At the sound of Blanche’s voice, he put his phone away and leaped up to take their hands. Blanche was caught off guard and let him, though their cheeks went pink when he squeezed their hands with obvious affection. “Heya, Blanche! Ready to go?”

“I suppose. I’d like to stop by my place and change, if that’s all right.”

“No prob!” Spark let go of one of Blanche’s hands, but held on to the other as he led them to where he’d parked his car on the street. “And yeah, me’n Go had these made up a li’l while after I started with Instinct. I keep it and the jeans in a bag at work in case my clothes get yucked. You know how it is, working with pokemon.”

“Indeed.” Blanche slid into the passenger’s seat and crossed their legs. “I find your change of clothes much more practical than Candela’s.”

Spark laughed, and Blanche knew they were both thinking of the red dress and accessories from the other day. “Yeah, well, Candy’s like that. She does have a change of more practical clothes at Valor, too. And gym clothes. She says she’s gotta be prepared for any situation, her appearance included. Gotta admire that, even if it’s not for me.”

“I suppose.”

They pulled in next to Blanche’s apartment. Blanche went upstairs to stow away their briefcase and change into something more casual. They weren’t comfortable enough with the other two yet to not dress on the nicer end of casual, so they put on their nicest pair of jeans and a teal button-up shirt. After that they floundered a little, unsure what was expected of them and if they needed to bring anything else. Spark had said they just needed to show up, but did they really?

This was ridiculous. They were keeping him waiting with pointless dithering. Blanche sighed and trooped back out. Spark had passed the time by browsing memes again, and he put his phone away and headed in what Blanche assumed was the direction of his own home.

The inside of Spark’s apartment was cluttered and cozy, but also gave away the fact that a bachelor lived there. There was equipment for raising baby pokemon scattered about, dirty dishes scattered in the sink, and Blanche saw through an open door that Spark’s shower curtain was shoved straight through the rod. There was a nice smell wafting from the kitchen, and Candela poked her head out.

“Spark! I pulled the stuff in the oven like you asked!” she said, coming over to give Spark a hug. They seemed to have adjusted easily to the reality of being soulmates and had made the shift from friends to lovers without thinking too deeply about it. Blanche wished they could be so lighthearted about things.

“Thanks, Candy. Ya got it at the right temperature, yeah?” he asked, kicking off his shoes and placing them on the rack by the door. The shoes on the rack were a mess, but Blanche supposed the fact that they were up off the floor was a point in Spark’s favour as they discarded their own shoes and added them to the mess.

“Of course I’ve got them on the right temp. I know how to work an oven,” Candela said, her lips turning downward in a pout. This might be the first time Blanche had seen her without lipstick. Candela rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest as Spark passed her on the way into the kitchen. “He doesn’t trust me,” she huffed to Blanche, who smiled.

“I do trust ya, Candy! I just… gotta make sure.” Blanche could not see Spark from their vantage point, but they could hear pots clanking as he moved around.

With no idea what else to do, since they doubted they would fit in Spark’s kitchen while he and Candela were already in there, Blanche sat on the couch. Their lap was immediately invaded by a clutch of tiny Vulpix kits, who seemed to have been sleeping under a blanket until Blanche disturbed them. Delighted, Blanche scratched their little heads and was relieved that they had not chosen to sit on that blanket. If they had crushed the little babies, they would have died.

There was a knock at the door, which Candela went to answer. “Hello Rocket,” she said, managing somehow to sound both cheerful and menacing at the same time.

The response was unmistakably Noire. “Bite me.”

Noire stomped into the apartment still wearing their boots. “We brought booze- oh, babies!” they broke off with a gasp. Noire shoved the packs of beer into Candela’s arms and knelt on the floor in front of Blanche to coo at the kits.

Amelie kicked off her own boots, gave Candela a polite nod, and came in to join them.

Whatever Spark was doing in the kitchen caused the apartment to be full of delectable smells. Noire kept sniffing the air as they tried to steal all of the Vulpix kits from Blanche’s lap. Blanche kept stealing them back, and this continued until the kits began to protest loudly and Amelie confiscated them all.

Noire counted this as a victory until they realized that she did not plan to share with them, and they returned to the couch to sulk with Blanche.

Spark came out of the kitchen bearing steaming pans of food, and they all gravitated in that direction with their mouths watering. “I didn’t know you could cook,” Blanche commented to Spark.

He grinned, but there was an edge of shyness to it. “Oh, yeah, I love to cook. Feeding people is one of my favourite things.”

There was rice and stir-fried veggies, a platter of meatballs, bread that appeared home-made, though it was not fresh from the oven, and a plate of fresh-baked cookies. They all piled their plates high and settled around the living room, since Spark didn’t have enough chairs in his tiny eating area, and the chairs he did have held baskets of sleeping Pichu.

Candela and Spark opted to sit on the floor, sitting close enough to brush against Blanche’s legs. Amelie sat on the couch with Noire half lounging in her lap. Whenever Noire’s feet came too close to Blanche’s lap, and therefore their plate, Blanche would pinch Noire’s toes.

“This is delicious,” said Blanche. On impulse, they ruffled Spark’s hair, and was immediately embarrassed.

Spark twisted around to grin up at them. “Thanks! Glad you like it!” He lifted one hand to squeeze Blanche’s knee, and their face went hot. Spark blinked in surprise at their reaction, then smiled. “Hey, uh, Blanche,” he said, almost shy.

“Hm?”

“Sorry if this is sudden, but… Can I kiss you?”

Blanche flushed all over and a nervous, fluttery feeling filled their chest. It was probably too soon, but Blanche wasn’t as opposed to the idea as they thought they would be.

Blanche’s hands clenched their jeans and they bit their lower lip as they nodded. “I suppose,” they said, aware that their voice sounded small and uncertain.

Spark had not removed his hand from Blanche’s knee. He kept it there for support as he turned toward Blanche and shifted into a kneeling position. Blanche’s heart pounded against their ribs as he leaned closer. When they felt his breath on their face and his hand cup their cheek, they closed their eyes.

The kiss was soft and gentle. It was obvious that Spark was trying not to scare them away. Blanche’s hand came up to grip Spark’s t-shirt, and they only pulled away when Noire started making fake gagging sounds.

“Blanche, gross,” Noire groaned.

Blanche turned their head to glare at their twin. “Like you don’t kiss Amelie in front of me.”

Noire glared back. “That’s different. I’m eating here!”

Blanche was going to snap back, but hands on their face distracted them. Blanche looked up in surprise as Candela shoved Spark out of the way and settled on Blanche’s lap. “Aw, does little Noire not like PDA?” she purred, snuggling against Blanche’s chest and turning their face the same red as her t-shirt. She looped an arm around Blanche’s neck and smirked at Noire.

While Noire sputtered, Candela leaned in so close that her breath tickled Blanche’s ear as she whispered, “May I have a kiss too, darling?”

Half the reason they accepted was desire, but they would be lying if the other half wasn’t the need to antagonize Noire.

Whatever concerns Spark had about scaring Blanche away, Candela did not share. This was not a light, gentle kiss. It was hot and hungry, and by the time Candela pulled away Blanche was panting to catch their breath.

Candela smiled at them, softer and happier than Blanche had ever seen her.

They opened their mouth to say something, but were interrupted by Spark’s whistle. “Nice, Candy,” he said, awed.

Candela snorted.

Blanche peeked to the side to gauge Noire’s reaction. Noire was red-faced and sputtering. When their eyes met Blanche’s they snapped. “What the HELL. Did you invite me here just to watch you guys make out?”

Blanche couldn’t help it - they started to laugh. Soon the others joined in, even Amelie, while Noire whined and sputtered.

This wasn’t bad. It was quite nice. Blanche wouldn’t mind having soulmates, if it meant they could have a lot of days like this in their future.

#Pokemon Go #Ashiversary #chiiwifruit #submission #fanfiction #Blanche #Spark #Candela #Team Mystic #Team Instinct #Team Valor #If We're Honest

17 notes · View notes

ririloloarts1 · 3 years

Text

Every game I’ve ever played (That I can recall)

On Xbox

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus

w/ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Game

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare

w/ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time

Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom

The Spongebob Squarepants Movie Videogame

Spongebob Squarepants: Lights, Camera, Pants

LEGO Star Wars: The Videogame

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Pac-Man World 2

w/ Pac-Man Arcade Game

w/ Pac-Attack

w/ Pac-Mania

Spider-Man (The tie-in to the movie)

Spider-Man 2

The Incredibles

The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer

Chicken Little

On Gameboy Color

Toy Story 2

On Nintendo DS

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

LEGO Batman: The Videogame

LEGO Rockband

Bionicle Heroes

TMNT (2007)

Pokemon Platinum Version

Pokemon White Version

Pokemon HeartGold Version

Pokemon White Version 2

Drawn to Life

Drawn to Life: Spongebob Squarepants Edition

Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter

Scribblenauts

Super Scribblenauts

Mariokart DS

Pac-Man World 3

Sonic Rush

Sonic Rush Adventure

Sonic Colors

Sonic Classic Collection (Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles)

Transformers Autobots

Transformers Animated: The Game

On Wii

Wii Sports

Wii Sports Resort

Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

LEGO Batman: The Videogame

LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes

Spongebob Squarepants: Truth or Square

Super Mario Galaxy

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Mariokart Wii

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games

Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games

Sonic Unleashed

Sonic and the Black Knight

Sonic Colors

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

Sonic 4: Episode I

Sonic 1 (Mega Drive Virtual Console)

Pac-Man (Virtual Console)

On Nintendo 3DS

Sonic Generations

Sonic Lost World

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed

Scribblenauts Unlimited

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)

Pokemon X

Pokemon Omega Ruby

Pokemon Moon

Pokemon Ultra Moon

Pokemon Shuffle

Pokemon Art Academy

On Wii U

New Super Mario Bros. U

Super Mario 3D World

Super Mario Maker

Mariokart 8

Sonic Lost World

LEGO City Undercover

LEGO Marvel Superheroes

LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

The LEGO Movie Game

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (remake)

Splatoon

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

On Switch

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (remake)

Splatoon 2 (+ Octo Expansion)

Sonic Mania

Sonic Forces

Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero

Lethal League Blaze

My Hero One’s Justice

Super Mario Odyssey

Pokemon Shield (+ Expansion Pass)

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

On PC

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle

Sonic Generations

Jet Set Radio

A Hat in Time

Skullgirls

Batman Arkham Asylum

Batman Arkham City

Batman Arkham Origins

Batman Arkham Knight

On Mobile

Angry Birds

Jetpack Joyride

Fruit Ninja

Temple Run

Temple Run 2

Sonic Dash

Sonic Forces Speed Battle

Skullgirls Mobile

Pokemon Emerald Version (Emulated)

Pokemon FireRed Version (Emulated)

Pokemon Sweet Version (FireRed ROM hack)

Total: 122 games

2 notes · View notes

recentanimenews · 4 years

Text

Licensing of the Monsters: How Pokémon Ignited An Anime Arms Race

"Hey, what do ya' got there? A rabbit?" Batman asks his mentor, staring at a video of Pikachu on a massive underground computer screen.

"It's a Pokémon," Bruce Wayne replies.

Five seconds later, Batman is shocked so hard by the tiny yellow creature that he ends up flying headfirst through another computer monitor (Using a clip from the "Blackout" episode of Batman Beyond, an episode that would've aired for the first time just days earlier.) It doesn't make much physical sense, but this bizarre 1999 crossover promo did establish two things: 1) Pokémon was coming to Kids' WB, and 2) Pokémon was important. So important that Batman actually took time away from obsessing over crime and vengeance to care about it.

Echoing a 1997 promo where the comedic Bugs Bunny let us in on the "secret" that the serious, dark Batman was coming to Kids' WB, it almost seems like a passing of the torch. Kids' WB, up until then, was a programming service chock full of classic Warner Bros. cartoon properties like Bugs, Daffy, Pinky, Brain, and various members of the Justice League — all animated Americana.

Pokémon wasn't a huge risk as the 4Kids Entertainment dub of the show had done well in broadcast syndication, they had plenty of episodes to work with (sometimes airing three in a row), and it was based on a game series that was already a worldwide smash hit.

But the show was ... different.

And it would end up changing cartoons as we knew them.

Part 1: Batman Jumps Ship

It's hard to think of a better scenario when it comes to appealing to kids than the one Fox Kids had with Batman: The Animated Series. Debuting in September 1992 and airing on weekdays just after school let out, it received immediate acclaim due to its moody, beautiful animation and storytelling that didn't talk down to anyone. Little kids could get into Batman throwing crooks around and adults could marvel at plots like the one where a former child actress with a medical condition that keeps her from aging takes her former co-stars hostage and ends up holding a gun, hallucinating, and sobbing into Batman's arms.

It did so well that Fox tried to air it on prime-time Sundays and though this was short-lived — turns out, Batman was no match for Ed Bradley on CBS's 60 Minutes — it solidified the show as "cool." This was a show that could hang with the big boys. You couldn't say the same of something like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

And then, in 1997, it was gone. A five-year contract ran out and Batman leapt completely to Kids' WB, where a continuation of the show (the often even grimmer The New Batman Adventures) aired later that year. There, it joined Superman: The Animated Series in a one-two punch of programming called The New Batman/Superman Adventures. When it came to Kids' WB, competitors not only had to deal with the Merry Melodies crowd, they now had to face the World's Finest Heroes.

This, along with a departing Animaniacs, left Fox Kids with a gap in flagship programming. Sure it had various incarnations of the Power Rangers (which was still holding strong) and Spider-Man, but if you look back on 1998 programming, little of it would survive the year. Silver Surfer? Gone by May. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation? Out by December. Casper? Dead in October. By May of 1999, Warner Media would announce record ratings thanks to Pokémon, while its competitors, including the Disney-led ABC, Fox, and even Nickelodeon, would suffer losses in the Saturday morning area. Pokemon would have the best ever series premiere numbers for Kids' WB at the time.

A chunk of that has to do with 4Kids Entertainment's (or to be more specific, 4Kids Productions) handling of the show. Again, Pokémon was a proven concept. If you love monsters, adventure, and collecting things, you'll probably find something to enjoy in the franchise. But the dub was particularly strong. For years, dubbing was seen as an inherently laughable thing in America, full of exasperated voice actors trying desperately to convince you that they weren't portraying three different characters, and lips that didn't match the dialogue. Entire Japanese series were reduced to laughing stocks in the U.S. because why focus on the lovingly created miniatures and top-notch tokusatsu action in Godzilla if one of the actors sounds weird?

But while Pokémon wasn't the first great dub, it was a remarkably underrated one. Veronica Taylor's work as Ash Ketchum was relatable, funny, and consistent. And Racheal Lillis, Eric Stuart, and Maddie Blaustein's turns as Team Rocket's Jessie, James, and Meowth gave us villains that could've easily been the most repetitive parts of the show — you can only try to capture Pikachu so many times before you should logically find a second hobby — but instead were one of the most entertaining aspects.

Aside from some easily meme-able bits — Brock's drying pan and jelly donuts, for example — Pokemon became a seamless addition to the Kids' WB lineup and would end up giving many fans a lifelong love of anime. And it was great for 4Kids, too, as in 2000, they would be number one on Fortune's 100 Fastest-Growing Companies.

Fox Kids wanted an answer to this. And it would soon find one.

Well, two.

Part 2: Monsters Rule

Saban Entertainment was no stranger to Fox Kids. They'd been the one to adapt Toei's Super Sentai into The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for American and international audiences, creating an unexpected sensation that combined monsters and martial arts. And in 1999, they nabbed Digimon Adventure, a series about kids that gain "digital" monster partners when transported to a "digital world," which had begun airing earlier that year in Japan. Based on a fighting virtual pet that had already been around for a few years, Digimon was a natural fit for an anime series and also a natural fit for a climate that was desperately trying to find the next Pokémon.

Renamed Digimon: Digital Monsters, it premiered in August of 1999. Of course, accusations followed that it was a Pokémon rip-off, considering that they were both about befriending terrifying laser critters, but they offered fairly different things. While Pokémon was more episodic, Digimon gave viewers a more Dragon Ball Z-esque experience (they were both Toei productions, too) with the titular monsters evolving and gaining "power-ups" due to fighting increasingly powerful villains.

Almost two months later, Monster Rancher would join the Fox Kids lineup, airing on Saturdays at 8:30 AM after Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (a Fox Kids lost relic if there ever was one). Together, Monster Rancher and Digimon would cover the programming block with monster action, sometimes airing twice each. Meanwhile, Pokémon would do the same for Kids' WB, and if you look at their Saturday morning schedules from 1999 and 2000, it appears they just shoved Pikachu in whenever possible.

Looking back on Monster Rancher is always odd, though, because it's so specifically trapped in the time period where it originated. The video games used metadata from readable discs to create new monsters for the player, meaning that as soon as people gained the ability to download or stream media online without having to travel to their local Circuit City, the game would look absolutely archaic in comparison to its peers.

Monster Rancher is a very fun show based on some very fun games, and the dynamic array of personalities and their particular squabbles in the core group actually reminds me a lot of One Piece. But even the show itself deals with reviving monsters on giant stone discs — a prehistoric-looking adaptation of a video game gimmick that would, a decade later, appear prehistoric itself.

The Monster War was waged across 2000 and 2001. And though it appears Pokémon was the clear winner — in 2020, it's the most popular franchise with the widest reach, even if Digimon does produce some stellar shows and movies — the ratings tell a different story. In the May sweeps of 2000, Pokémon (and Kids' WB) took the prize among kids 6-11, but in the end, Fox Kids would score a victory of a 3.1 rating to Kids' WB's 3.0 (the first sweeps win since 1997, the year that Batman left.)

Early the following year, Fox Kids would score again, narrowly beating Pokémon on Saturday morning in the same timeslot and even coming ahead of properties like X-Men. And what would propel this February 10th victory? The first appearance of BlackWarGreymon, the Shadow the Hedgehog to WarGreymon's Sonic.

However, Pokémon would still help create ratings records for Kids' WB, even though late 2000/early 2001 saw a slide that would often cede dominance to Nickelodeon. Jed Patrick, who was president of The WB at the time said: "I didn't think Pokémon would fall off as much as it did ... every fire cools down a little, but that doesn't mean it doesn't stay hot."

Even though, in retrospect, claims that "Pokemania" had died seem a little ridiculous — the latest games, Pokémon Sword and Shield, just became the highest-selling entries in seventeen years — big changes were ahead.

Part 3: It's Time To Duel ... Or Not

In early 2001, Joel Andryc, executive VP of kids' programming and development for Fox Kids, was looking for a "Digimon companion series to create an hour-long anime block." He felt they were too reliant on Digimon, as they were airing it three times in a single morning. Likely not coincidentally, that summer Fox Kids Fridays were dubbed "anime invasion," advertising Flint The Time Detective, Dinozaurs, Escaflowne, and Digimon. In one commercial, a single quote zips across the bottom of the screen: "Anime Rocks!" Nicole, TX

That it does, Nicole from Texas.

Meanwhile, 4Kids Entertainment would provide Kids' WB with another monster show: Yu-Gi-Oh! Known as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters in Japan, this anime adaptation absconded from retelling the stories found in the early chapters of the manga — which were mostly devoted to Yugi running into jerks, only to have his Egyptian spirit "alter ego" deal karmic retribution on them — and instead focused on the parts that involved the cool monster fights. So basically the parts that were the most like Pokémon.

But how would this be received? In 2000, Canadian studio Nelvana had licensed the anime Cardcaptor Sakura and turned it simply into Cardcaptors — an extremely edited version that removed many important relationships and plotlines and tried to streamline the show into a pseudo-Pokémon story. It's gone down in history as one of the most questionable dubs ever, and never really made a splash on Kids' WB. So they wouldn't want a repeat of that.

But would kids be into a card game? The cards did summon monsters, but in Pokémon and Digimon, the monsters are just there, moving around and not relegated to a glorified checkers board arena. It turned out, yes, kids would be REALLY into that. Yu-Gi-Oh! debuted at number one in multiple demographics in September 2001, and would remain a steady part of its lineup for years to come.

And how did Fox Kids respond? Did the "anime invasion" work out? Well, sort of, but not in the way they were hoping.

In 2001, due to diminishing ratings and audiences, Fox Kids Worldwide (along with Fox Family Worldwide) were sold to The Walt Disney Company. By November 7th, they'd canceled their weekly afternoon blocks, and the next year, they'd end up selling their entire Saturday morning block to a company that had provided their rivals with the very same TV shows that aided in sinking them: 4Kids Entertainment. The final show to premiere on the original Fox Kids was Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension, a live action series that stood beside Alienators: Evolution Continues (a cartoon sequel to the mediocre 2001 comedy Evolution) and the underrated Medabots as the block's last gasp.

Renamed FoxBox in late 2002 (and later 4KidsTV in 2005), the 4Kids run schedule would, over the years, include anime like Kirby! Right Back At Ya!, Ultimate Muscle, Fighting Foodons, Sonic X, Shaman King, and eventually, in 2004, the infamous One Piece dub. The first Saturday of the new FoxBox lineup would also outdo the previous Saturday's Fox Kids lineup. Disney would acquire the rights to Digimon and it showed up on ABC Family in late 2001 (eighteen years later, a reboot of the original series would air, which can be watched on Crunchyroll).

Eventually, in 2007, the Monster War would come full circle. 4Kids Entertainment announced they would be taking over the Kids' WB Saturday morning block entirely, renaming it the "CW4KIDS," as The CW had been born after UPN and The WB had ceased to be. Pokémon was long gone by this point, having been dropped by Kids' WB in 2006, and was now overseen by The Pokémon Company International on Cartoon Network.

"We wish Pokémon USA much success going forward," the CEO of 4Kids Entertainment said. Later sued over "illegal agreements" regarding the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, the company would eventually file for bankruptcy in 2016. Pokémon Journeys, the latest installment in the franchise, launches on Netflix on June 12th.

Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

4 notes · View notes

cwgames · 5 years

Text

Hello C.W here its time another fan audio of Triforce Of Power for @nayru-s-clay-tablet by @mcaquila . Link and Ganondorf are going to a new chapter 14 that's great. I hope I can to start on chapter 2 audio but only if I ask permission first. If you want to read her comic you can check out the tag on @nayru-s-clay-tablet or the website Triforceofpower.smackjeeves.com. Which is right down there. 👇

Here are the Song I use on downloads.khinsider.com for video game music. While toon link and Ganondorf fight their foes on super Smash bro ultimate. (Toon link is red because it represents a scarf he wearing of someone special)

Animal crossing 3DS

Sonic unleashes

yoshi story N64

kirby right back at y'all

Super mario world 2: Yoshi island dinosaur band rehearsal [Athletic] by MC Vaffe (this one is not from downloads khinsider it's from OC remix)

kirby dreamland 3 SNES

digimon next world PS4

Thanks for listening now my Mii fighter OC going to train with Ganondorf and Link

Boot to the face you don't need magic to fight.

Link always wanted to fly

Have a great day of year of the Ganondorf :)

#cwgames #nayru's clay tablet #fan audio #ganondorf #toon link #Nintendo #super smash bros. ultimate #kirby #nintendo #digimon tamers #digimon #pokemon

16 notes · View notes

rose-of-pollux · 5 years

Text

Fanfic Writer Ask thing

Author’s Name: Rose of Pollux on AO3 and here; Crystal Rose of Pollux on FFN.

Fandoms you write for: Currently, I write mainly for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Super Mario/Super Smash Bros, with some Pokémon, Hogan’s Heroes, and now Perfect Strangers on the side.

Where you post: For drabbles, post my MFU stuff here and try to cross-post on AO3 (been really lazy about that lately, oops...); I post larger fics (1k words or more) on AO3 and FFN.

Most popular one-shot: “Heroic Resolve,” an MFU blurb involving the classic hypothermia trope. Sometimes, clearly, the classics are best... (slash)

Most popular multi-chapter story: “A Devil Put Aside for Me,” a Super Smash Bros fic based on the World of Light story mode in the latest game, focusing on the Mushroom Kingdom characters, but also featuring several others in the game (gen). It’s a sequel to the fic I wrote the year before (“The Devil’s in the Details”), inspired by the E3 and summer Smash Direct trailers, but this one eclipses the previous in popularity by a long shot. (gen)

Favorite story you wrote: ...so, I have 2-- “The Jack o’ the Lantern Affair” (MFU) -- this was the fic where I finally, finally achieved what I wanted to do for a Halloween fic. Ghosts and skeletons wandering around, the epitome of the Halloween aesthetic... oh, and an absolutely indulgent chapter where Napoleon becomes a vampire (it makes sense in context, I swear...). (slash) “A Devil Put Aside for Me” (Super Smash Bros) -- I mean, I put a lot of work into this (26 chapters, 99k words), and I’m absolutely proud of how it turned out and pleased that it ended up being so popular, especially when the concept of World of Light fics are a dime a dozen. (gen)

Story you were nervous to post: “The Fundamental Things Apply” (MFU)--so, this was the first time I had ever attempted writing romance in... a very, very long time, and at a time when I considered myself incapable of writing romance. But I gave it a try, and this was the result--the start of Napoleon and Illya’s relationship in my fic ‘verse. (slash)

How do you choose your titles? ...With great difficulty. As you can see from some of the fics mentioned above, song lyrics are my usual source of title inspiration for long fics. For drabbles/short blurbs, anything goes.

Do you outline? For multichapter fics? Absolutely; I need to know where I’m going at all times. Outlines are not set in stone, though; my original outline for “A Devil Put Aside for Me” was only 17 chapters--final chapter count was 26, and what happened with that was because I had Luigi access the Dream World partway through, ending up on Koholint Island--and the Link’s Awakening remake was literally announced in a Direct the following week, and out of sheer hype, I extended the Dream World arc in the fic.

How many of your stories are…

*complete? 306 (AO3)

*in-progress? 4 (AO3)--I have a lot more WIPs on FFN, since a lot of those fics are from fandoms I haven’t thought about in a good long while...

Coming soon: More weekly MFU blurbs, a Smash Bros oneshot that will wrap up my Ultimate story arc, Inktober for Writers, my annual MFU Halloween fic, something that will undoubtedly be inspired by Luigi’s Mansion 3, and a Perfect Strangers fic that is a light crossover with MFU (already started that one, actually...).

Do you accept prompts? When I reblog those prompt posts, yes.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: Aside from the MFU Halloween fic and the Perfect Strangers/MFU crossover, I’ve been sitting on a plot bunny for well over a year and a half now about Napoleon and Illya caught up in a murder mystery in a mansion on a stormy night (it will literally be called “A Dark and Stormy Night Affair”). It would be my first “Whodunnit,” and that one may be coming together next spring. I hope.

#Quiz #This was fun

8 notes · View notes

cerastes · 5 years

Text

Brief Summary of Luna’s God Damn Mess [spoilers of course, though it’s all in an event that probably won’t be rerun for a while, and that’s never been run in Global or Asia servers]:

There’s this place in the Eureka continent, on which our main story HAS NOT taken place yet, called Wintenberg. It’s famous for dragonslayers and for its war against dragons who live in the valleys.

One day, a dude named Straze (higher scope villain of E7) waltzed in with his Asshole Army and started causing trouble for both Wintenberg AND the dragons in the valleys.

Queen Francesca said Oh Fuck Dude and the dragons say Oh Fuck Dude so they join forces against this common enemy and thus PEACE is signed between humans and dragons, with the Queen allowing the dragons into the kingdom, and allowing half-dragons (such as Luna, born from a human father, a dragon mother, and a lot lubricant) to become knights.

But not all dragons liked this idea, especially the ones under the leadership of Ragnar, who hates hates hates humans. So those were not allowed in and the war continued against those, resulting in a 3-way war.

ENTER LUNA, who became inseparable with Cecilia, the Queen’s daughter. Luna fervently believed that if they could get rid of dragons that opposed this peace, humans and dragons would finally be able to live in peace :)! So she trained and trained alongside her bestie Cecilia in order to become a knight and realize this dream.

However, this is Epic Seven, so we can’t have things such as ‘joy’ in this house.

One day, Straze and Francesca had a 1v1 and it lasted forever, it was some Gilgamesh vs Enkidu shitfest, like three days swinging at each other. They couldn’t clinch it and decided to back off and try again another day. However, the fight was so intense that all of Francesca’s equipment broke. The same happened with most of the army’s weapons.

Luna and Cecilia are like “Your Majesty/Mom, shit’s fucked”, but Francesca is like “do not worry, my lily white daughters, for I have a plan”, and this greatly reassures Luna! She’s so glad to hear this that she goes into the valleys to hunt for Ragnar just in case they want to launch an opportunistic attack on Wintenberg after this melee.

Luna fights with Ragnar, who tells Luna she’s really gonna regret helping the humans. She kindly asks him to shut up and perhaps die. Luna beats him but he retreats. Oh well, next time! However, when Luna returns home, she finds her panicked sister, Yufine, freaking out because she can’t find their mother or any other dragons.

(Clarifying Intermission: Luna and Yufine are half-sisters. Luna was born to a human father and a dragon mother, making her a half-dragon, whereas Yufine was born to the same mother but with a dragon father, making her full dragon).

Queen Francesca tells Luna “oh yeah all the dragons just pussied out and ran back to the valleys”, which Luna found hard to believe, as she didn’t buy that her mother would betray the humans like that, given she also had fervent wishes to live in harmony with the humans of Wintenberg and mama was no bitch!

COME NEXT MORNING, Yufine is missing.

Ohfuck.mp4

Luna goes back to the valleys and finds her!

:)!

Cradling their mother’s bloodied, brutalized corpse.

:(.

Ragnar is also there, and explains that it was none other than Queen Francesca that did it.

:(.

And then he explains that the land that is now Wintenberg used to belong to the dragons long, long ago, and that some humans came and begged the dragons to let them use the land, offering part of their livestock as payment. The dragons were super chill and kinda thrilled to make contact with another intelligent species so they said sure thing bro and so they settled.

And so the humans multiplied and no one dared fuck with Wintenberg because, you know, dragons. All was well!

Except this is Epic Seven and things can’t be well.

Humans eventually got greedy and poisoned the livestock that they gave to the dragons, weakening them and then killing them in cold blood.

Then, they took their scales, claws, and eyes to forge armor, weapons and magic items.

:(.

Then humans used Propaganda and painted the dragons as evil.

So basically, Queen Francesca’s plan was to murder the dragons to take their scales, claws, and eyes to replenish the armor, weapons and magic items they lost in the war with Straze.

Starting with Luna’s mom.

:(((((((((((((((((((((((.

Luna decides “well I guess I am going to murder the fuck out of my personal hero and my best friend’s mom now”, and so she returns and acts as if nothing had happened, all the while preparing to strike.

And the chance presents itself not long after. Queen Francesca, still feeling the effects of the fight with Straze, is ambushed by the Luna drunk on hatred, and Luna defeats and kills her, tearing her body apart as she did with her people’s.

Luna rolls a nat 20 and is not found out.

Luna’s not had enough, however. All related to her must pay.

Luna, Cecilia, Rose (a dragonslayer) and Nemunas (a dragonslayer-in-training) are hunting down one of Ragnar’s lackeys one day, Lucius, and Luna says “OK GANG LET’S SPLIT UP, I’ll go with Cecilia over to that conspicuous cliff, Rose and Nemunas will cover that patch of grass over yonder really far away from us, and Scooby and Shaggy will lure the monster into our trap”.

Everyone agrees because Luna is nice.

Big Mistake.

When they are near the edge of the cliff, Luna goes full Heihachi Mishima and Electric Wind Godfists her off the cliff.

I want to remind you that Luna and Cecilia are the bestest of friends and are explicitly described as “inseparable since childhood”. Luna just drops her. Luna has submerged this hard into despair and hatred.

Yufine knew something about her sister was off, so she tailed them and tried to stop Luna from doing Cecilia in, but is too late.

Rose and Nemunas however weren’t too far and rush in to confront Luna for this.

Luna Mishima uses the Electric Wind Godfist (623B) to knock both of them down the fucking cliff too.

Yufine tries to stop Luna’s Super Smash Brothers Power Hour and fights her.

During the fight, she missteps and also falls of the god damn cliff.

Well.

And the direct results of this are:

We have no idea where Luna is and what she is doing currently, but it can’t be anything good, going by her voice lines, which are dripping in hatred and a lust for further revenge.

The ones thrown off the cliff ended up hitting a Chaos Gate which sent them to another continent, Ritania, where the main plot takes place so far.

We have no idea where Nemunas is.

Rose ended up meeting Tenebria, an Acolyte of the Archdemon, and pledged her loyalty to her strength. This directly leads to her appearance in Chapter 10, where she fights against Ras (the protagonist), juices herself up on magic steroids, loses, and possibly actually fucking dies (and permadeaths ARE VERY MUCH A THING in Epic Seven).

Yufine is amnesiac and lost in Ritania.

Cecilia is alive but lost as all hell for a while, and mostly takes to adventuring on Ritania, becoming something of a folk hero.

Rose might be super dead, though.

So yeah, Luna.

#epic seven #e7 #I like my women like I like my coffee #bitter

115 notes · View notes